In the last year or so I started to see so many people of my age that have done truly incredible things and still doing more.
For the vast majority of my life my only goals were gettimg academic satisfaction and doing unproductive stuff in the free time to get temporary pleasure. No end goal whatsoever.
I kind of don’t know what I’ve been doing in the last 17 years while someone gets a patent on solar systems, other invents a new recyclable plastic, and another found a successful startup. I mean, they all find what they’re supposed to be doing with their lives and excel in them.
I feel overwhelmed for trying to pace up with these kind of people. Yet I don’t like the way the things are and I can’t do anything but envy those people.
Anyone with experience in this regard? How did you deal with this? Did you eventually “pace up” with these people or was it too late or an unattainable goal?
Edit: Whoops, I didn’t expect so many replies! Thanks, I’ll look into them all
Not really. Part of my life’s adventures have just been showing up.
“Wasted” as in how? Who are you answering to? What standards are you judging by, and are they your standards, or the cultural standards pushed onto you by a capitalistic “must be productive” mindset? Or parents pushing their own hopes and dreams unrealized by the same mindset? Are these friends really successful?
Maybe I was cursed or blessed by having parents who really didn’t give a shit about me, were constantly “disappointed” by who I was, and not really caring about me as an individual person but how I made them look. My dad was a sociopath who never wanted children, and my mother was an alcoholic who wanted children to show that her marriage was successful and good unlike what all her relatives kept saying. Until she committed suicide and my dad threw me out while I was still a teen. Thankfully, I learned early on that my parents would NEVER be proud of me because it wasn’t about me at all. It was about them. The disappointment was their motivator with no real strategy behind it, and they set me up to impossible standards with bad examples, and frankly, lies they were trying to make into truth. So I stopped seeking their judgement, because I could predict it would always be disappointment.
Last time I spoke to my dad (1998), he asked what i was doing career wise, and I told him, and he dismissed it as “you have no idea what you are talking about,” as if I was making it up. The thing was, I was still making money. The money was real, his opinion of my success was worthless. He had to one-up me, and always will. I felt so free after that, and never spoke to him again. He never missed me because he does not love me or hate me. He just doesn’t think about me at all.
The expectation of others is a powerful drug, I won’t claim to be immune to it. But at a certain point, you have to ask who you are answering to when you determine your own success and failure.