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I made a topic like this about three years ago, when I graduated from college. The premise was that teenagers get tons of advice on how to endure their adolecent years, but advice on how to manager the first years of adulthood is weirdly scare, or contradictory, or inappropriate/outdated given the current economic clime. Basically, being a twenty-something nowadays is confusing as gently caress, and maybe it always has been confusing as gently caress, but especially nowadays, given that we're aren't GIs fresh from WWII, with a neat house in Levittown and a guaranteed middle-class job waiting for us. Two of the lessons from that previous thread that remain in my memory are: 1. It's way harder to maintain friendships in your twenties. It's a genuine effort, and you have to go out of your way to keep people you love in your life. 2. Your parents will probably go from being authority figures to confidants and friends, which is a great feeling, but also comes with the anxiety of knowing you may have to take care of them some day. I found it super helpful to hear from other goons who had advice or insight or experiences about being in their 20s to share. I'd love to hear what you guys have to say, and I suspect a lot of people my age (25) would too. I guess if I'm going to be fair, I'll have to share a lesson I've learned as man half-way through my twenties: It's amazing how much hiring and professional development occurs in social arenas outside the formal structures provided for by HR departments. I once got a job because an officemate of mine turned out to be a bigshot executive - he was just super friendly and unassuming so I assumed he was another random worker like me. He liked me and helped me transition from temporary employment to full time work at his company. HR was minimially present for this process, and it happened organically. I encourage people seeking to make traction professionally to make sure they're taking full advantage of the social opportunties in their offices. Not in a starkly utilitarian way, just to exploit friendship for professional advancement, but with the awareness that being more social allows for greater contact with people who can help you in a lot of ways. For someone prone to social anxiety like me, this was a really vital lesson.
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Aug 18, 2014 16:18
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Radio Talmudist posted:1. It's way harder to maintain friendships in your twenties. It's a genuine effort, and you have to go out of your way to keep people you love in your life.
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Aug 19, 2014 07:13
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Close this thread. e: not cuz of tiggum
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Aug 19, 2014 07:53
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Better yet close this thread and sticky it.
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Aug 19, 2014 08:03
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I had a full head of hair in my twenties. It was quite nice actually.
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Aug 19, 2014 11:02
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Radio Talmudist posted:1. It's way harder to maintain friendships in your twenties. It's a genuine effort, and you have to go out of your way to keep people you love in your life. I really don't agree with this. I'm 29 and haven't encountered this issue. If anything, with all of the methods of communication available today it's easier than ever to keep close acquaintances and friends in your life. It's only hard if you and your friends start to grow apart, as tends to happen at all ages
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Aug 19, 2014 11:15
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QuarkJets posted:I really don't agree with this. I'm 29 and haven't encountered this issue. If anything, with all of the methods of communication available today it's easier than ever to keep close acquaintances and friends in your life. It's only hard if you and your friends start to grow apart, as tends to happen at all ages I don't use Facebook and basically except for a few friends people are impossible to stay in contact with. I will shoot people emails and give them calls but not using Facebook basically kills the friendship with some people. On the plus side you find out who your real friends are.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:22
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spwrozek posted:I don't use Facebook and basically except for a few friends people are impossible to stay in contact with. I will shoot people emails and give them calls but not using Facebook basically kills the friendship with some people. On the plus side you find out who your real friends are. I don't own a telephone and I live in an isolated cabin in the wilderness with no postal service or roads and for some reason my friends just don't seem to make the effort to contact me like they used to. It's crazy.
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Aug 19, 2014 15:30
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Tiggum posted:I don't own a telephone and I live in an isolated cabin in the wilderness with no postal service or roads and for some reason my friends just don't seem to make the effort to contact me like they used to. It's crazy. That wasn't my point. I call and email and text people. My real friends do it back. But I lost a lot of friends (maybe they were not friends I guess) because I don't use Facebook. If someone tells you 'you should have came, I sent out a Facebook invite', what do you do? (Besides having to get Facebook) I am just saying that for some people they are so into whatever technology that they don't know how to stay friends outside it. This is one thing I have noticed in my twenties is all.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:06
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Spent my early 20s homeless essentially, sleeping on friends couches and my car until I ate my pride and asked my parents to moved back in. Moved out a few months later with a better head on my shoulders and money in my wallet to a house I could afford on my 8dollar an hour wage. I didn't go to college, stupidly. Looking back, I would. I ended up joining the military, and haven't looked back since. My old friends are still working dead end jobs in the same poo poo hole town. I can see that they are trying to do better, but the town doesn't offer any opportunity at all. The type of town that you go to college, or join the military to get out. I joined the military with the clothes on my back, that's it. I learned a lot of life lessons, spending a tour in Iraq and Haiti when the earthquake happened. Had friends die, go to jail, and spiral out of control. It made me realize that you need to learn to be accountable for the things you do, and think "how much poo poo can. I get in for this?" I'm not the model of excellence, my hands are dirty, but I got lucky. In fact, one of my coworkers was murdered a few months ago, someone I talked to daily by someone I used to drink a lot with when I was in town. It was sobering because I never pegged him for that, and it could have been me at some point. Now, I'm married, have a wonderful wife and a great newborn son. I'm overcoming some surgeries and can start to do what I enjoy again. The most important things I've learned are this. 1) there is always more than one solution to any given problem. Literally. You may end up with the same end result, but the process to get there can be altered. You'll be surprised at what you can think of when you try to go outside the norm. 2). Everyone struggles to find the meaning of life, but it's simple. My theory is that the meaning of life is purpose. Giving your life a sense of purpose occupies your mind, and fills your life with meaning. A good example would be dogs. A dog that feels like it has a role in a family is happier, more obedient, and doesn't misbehave nearly as much. Because it has purpose. The same applies to us. Set a goal, stick to it. Make it fun, reward yourself. My motivation to go to college was letting myself take an easy class that I wanted to do, and go from there. I'm now about 15 hours shy of getting my AA. Hopefully this isn't just a wall of text, but I guess just have fun, but be responsible. Bad financial decisions and stupid actions will follow you for a long time. I put 5k down on a 7k car 7 years ago, and no bank would give me a loan for the car.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:10
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spwrozek posted:If someone tells you 'you should have came, I sent out a Facebook invite', what do you do? (Besides having to get Facebook) There is no "besides", that's what you do. You get yourself a Facebook account. If you refuse to use the communication medium that the majority of your friends prefer, you're going to miss out. That's you making it inconvenient for people to include you. The problem is you.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:28
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Tiggum posted:There is no "besides", that's what you do. You get yourself a Facebook account. If you refuse to use the communication medium that the majority of your friends prefer, you're going to miss out. That's you making it inconvenient for people to include you. The problem is you. Wow, OK.
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Aug 19, 2014 16:33
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You would probably get invited to more stuff if you had a cellphone too, rather than just a landline.
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Aug 19, 2014 18:23
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Sorry I ruined the thread OP.
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Aug 19, 2014 18:39
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I went from more money than I knew what to do with during the dot com boom to unemployed to trade school and now making a fraction of what I made as a 19 year old at age 34 while working a lot harder. Also got fat.
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Aug 19, 2014 19:05
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Don't believe the hype; compare yourself to yourself.
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Aug 19, 2014 19:06
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I think plenty of people are still social in their twenties and still meet people, but you have more and more obligations and its tougher to have that free time that was so plentiful as a teen or graduate student. You have to make a concerted effort to socialize sometimes, and that alone stymies some people who are used to friendship just sort of happening. Again, this was the case for me, and I don't want to generalize and claim everyone is like this.
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Aug 19, 2014 23:46
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Whatever you spend your 20s doing, you'll be really good at when you're 30.
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Aug 20, 2014 05:19
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A hard lesson that I've learned as I've progressed through my twenties is that it's ok to cut people out of your life if they're toxic. I know maybe this is common sense to some people, but in school they always encourage you to work out your differences. Probably on the virtue that you're going to see these people frequently on campus so you have to get along. I went into my early 20s with a bunch of people who were borderline abusive to me and I just kept trying to make our friendships or relationships work. If I had cut them out of my life instead, I would have saved myself so much time, money, and pain. Now if someone's mean to me repeatedly I just cut off all contact. My question for everyone is about maintaining friendships over long distances in the same city. I have a ton of friends who live in the same city as me, but due to the way the city is setup they're over an hour-and-a-half away by public transit on a good day (late at night it could be more like 2 to 3 hours). They constantly invite me out or to parties, but the travel barrier keeps me away.
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Aug 20, 2014 12:50
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Rosalind posted:My question for everyone is about maintaining friendships over long distances in the same city. I have a ton of friends who live in the same city as me, but due to the way the city is setup they're over an hour-and-a-half away by public transit on a good day (late at night it could be more like 2 to 3 hours). They constantly invite me out or to parties, but the travel barrier keeps me away. If you want to see them, just go anyway? 
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Aug 20, 2014 13:13
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I got conscripted a while there around 19/20 and I went from overweight 100kg to 79kg in 6 months, I have since gone up and down between 80-90kg, but I've never gotten as fat again as I used to be, and nowadays muscles make up more of my weight too. Then I stopped the drinking & partying lifestyle after I got into a steady relationship, turned out it was about all I had in common with my friends so I kinda lost contact with most of them over time, I am also the type who never calls or bothers keeping up so. Then I moved away, then I found some new hobbies, then I had kids (well I was 31 then). Biggest change is when I was 20 I was totally practical, no interest at all in working with my hands or the like. Now I am quite the handyman by contrast and I got a workshop and I like tools and working and building stuff. Mostly my social life nowadays is my kids and closer relatives (my parents and sister and her family, and my fiances sisters who also have family, it's all pretty family oriented). I don't mind as I'd rather spend my Saturday in my workshop than going out drinking or wasting money in a restaurant, I cold spent that on tools or something useful and practical. Looking at my life now I am so goddamn busy all the time and I hardly have time for the things I used to, and it's just great. People who think they have it great because they have all the time and money to go travelling and shopping and partying, they're the ones I pity. I used to be one of them, I hated the very idea of kids, but now that I have them I realize they're the greatest thing. Feels as if I wasn't truly an adult until I had kids and had to outgrow some of that selfishness I had. I do have Facebook since that came up, I post on it sometimes and it helps me keep in touch somewhat with people I used to know. I kinda think facebook is a bad thing anyway though. Feels like a place that dumbs you down, since facebook is made so that things you like, opinions you share etc, are what you get most of, so it just becomes one big echo chamber.
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Aug 20, 2014 13:18
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His Divine Shadow posted:...I kinda think facebook is a bad thing anyway though. Feels like a place that dumbs you down, since facebook is made so that things you like, opinions you share etc, are what you get most of, so it just becomes one big echo chamber. facebook caters to the lowest common denominator of humans around you - operative word is lowest.
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Aug 20, 2014 14:52
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His Divine Shadow posted:Looking at my life now I am so goddamn busy all the time and I hardly have time for the things I used to, and it's just great. People who think they have it great because they have all the time and money to go travelling and shopping and partying, they're the ones I pity. I'm only half way through my twenties but I've learned how to not be a judgmental prick.
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Aug 20, 2014 15:06
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Oh you'll see that when you get older you'll become a far more judgemental prick than before. It's one of lifes greatest pleasures, treasure it when you get there. I also acknowledge it's a personal thing, but I still think the way I do. I think any normal person who is a parent would, it's just a biological function being put to use, and even if I am perfectly aware of that it doesn't diminish it for me.
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Aug 20, 2014 19:07
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His Divine Shadow posted:Oh you'll see that when you get older you'll become a far more judgemental prick than before. It's one of lifes greatest pleasures, treasure it when you get there. I think as I've gotten older I've become more discriminating but less judgmental. Like I've become more aware that people are dealing with their own poo poo so I try not to judge people for being different from me, but also as I mentioned above I'm much more willing to kick people out of my life. I've learned that there's nothing really gained by being judgmental and I don't think it's something to strive for as you age.
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Aug 20, 2014 19:19
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I spent all of my 20s either in the active military, the reserves or at university, apart from a year working as an assistant teacher in a French high school. Overall I spent exactly half of my 20s overseas, slightly more as a civilian than a soldier. I remember when I was 27 and I had just got back from an Iraq deployment was about to finish up by first undergrad degree and several of my friends were trying to sell me on buying a house in my old hometown and settling down. I remember being very weirded out by this as it hadn't even occurred to me to settle down and start the daily 9-5 grind. I was at that time in the pre-planning stages of a plan to move to France and work in minority language revival efforts, which I ended up doing. I'm 32 now and I'm just now one masters degree away from having a stable job and settling down with my fiance, who also on the same career track. I'm pretty glad I did things the way I did, I grew up poor in a dirt poor part of the Midwest so I managed to go a lot of places, meet a lot of people and do a lot of things that most of the people I grew up with would never have the opportunity to do and I think it helped me enormously to grow as a person. I know that the person I was when I was 20 would hardly recognize the person I was when I was 30. That said, I'm getting pretty tired of being a dirt-poor student and am pretty glad that the end is in sight and I can start living like a normal adult. Also, I've found I've gotten way less judgmental as I've aged.
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Aug 20, 2014 19:43
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20-21 school. 21-22 poo poo job for poo poo pay. 22 got my foot in the door of great job(tm). 23 general manager at great job(tm). 24 bought a house, 24-27 work, hang out after go on vacations with friends. 27-29 married, work, go on vacations with wife. 29 first kid and made a career change from great job(tm) to even greater job(tm). 30- current more of the same thing which is still enjoying life, also still married, working, going on vacations with wife and kids as well as get to take time off to go on field trips with kids during school year and take Fridays off to take kids places during the summer. The 20's may seem like a pretty lovely time for certain or even extended periods, but this is really the time of your life you're taking poo poo jobs for poo poo pay to get your foot in the door of something greater so keep your eyes open for an opportunity and take it. If you're going to take risks, your 20's are the decade to do it in because even if things don't work out, you can still shoot for your 30's-early-mid 60's for a career.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:12
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Made decent money but largely pissed it all away on stupid poo poo (Not like in debt, just if I saw something I wanted, I bought it with cash). Spent a lot of time driving too and fro to various things that seemed fun at the time, but were largely just giant wastes of money. Drank a lot, partied every weekend. I distinctly remember having a mohawk at one point. Ultimately I settled down to be the square I am today though. EDIT: Also my first run in with an office job got me fat. Who knew sitting around for 8+ hours a day could do that? I'm loving young and invincible.
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Aug 20, 2014 22:57
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hooliganesh posted:facebook caters to the lowest common denominator of humans around you - operative word is lowest. You've created an ironically apt analogy here without even realizing it. You meant it as an insult to Facebook users, but if you actually know what a common denominator is, then what your sentence actually says is that only weirdos that have nothing in common with anyone else don't use Facebook.
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Aug 21, 2014 19:34
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I've got a little under 2 years left in my twenties and I think you can change almost as much in your twenties as you can in your teens. The big difference is that in your twenties it requires effort and it's easy to just tread water. As for mine I don't know where to start and could go on for hours. At 20 I was living at home, spending every weekend partying, camping and seeing bands. I got up to some insane poo poo and did some very stupid things such as getting myself into stupid amounts of debt for no real good reason. At 28 I'm a married senior IT consultant who just got him and his wife debt free. I'm also fitter than ever and, honestly, I just never thought I'd make it to this point. The other thing is long term planning - at 20 the thought of planning (like properly planning, not just aspirations) a few years ahead was crazy. Now I spend serious time thinking about the future. I no longer make time for those who don't try to better themselves and I now have a very small but close circle of friends. I'm very happy now, but I always have been. You just have to enjoy each stage of your life as it is IMHO. My next stage will be mortgages, kids and learning to be married. After that who knows!
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Aug 21, 2014 21:16
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Tiggum posted:There is no "besides", that's what you do. You get yourself a Facebook account. If you refuse to use the communication medium that the majority of your friends prefer, you're going to miss out. That's you making it inconvenient for people to include you. The problem is you. This is horse poo poo. If I want to spend time with a friend I communicate however I have to and vice versa. If someone can't be bothered to invite you off of FB then they don't give a poo poo obviously.
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Aug 21, 2014 23:18
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hermand posted:I've got a little under 2 years left in my twenties and I think you can change almost as much in your twenties as you can in your teens. The big difference is that in your twenties it requires effort and it's easy to just tread water. Basically this. The most important point is cutting people out of your life that suck. Treading water? rear end in a top hat tendencies? Abusive to other people? Just straight up stop associating with those people. You'll be way happier.
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Aug 21, 2014 23:23
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leica posted:This is horse poo poo. If I want to spend time with a friend I communicate however I have to and vice versa.
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Aug 22, 2014 07:07
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leica posted:This is horse poo poo. If I want to spend time with a friend I communicate however I have to and vice versa.
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Aug 24, 2014 20:34
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i just entered my twenties and quite frankly life has never been so straightforward
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Aug 24, 2014 22:58
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leica posted:This is horse poo poo. If I want to spend time with a friend I communicate however I have to and vice versa. It's a 2 way street - I have a Facebook that I ignore 99% of the time, but I also make a point of reaching out to my friends on a regular basis to see what's going on, if they want to get together, etc. One thing that's hard is that as you get older (I'm 30), more and more of your friends simply won't be as social any more. Not through malice, but life gets in the way - people get jobs that demand more time, parents get older and require more time/care, or in my case, I just found out my best friend's wife went into labor an hour ago. It takes effort in both directions to maintain those relationships, anyone who relies strictly on facebook, or who expects the other person to do the work, is going to wind up very lonely in the long run.
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Aug 25, 2014 01:07
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Tiggum posted:You're wrong. Well, no, he's not, actually. At least not entirely. It's a two-way street. Depending on how much you like and care about someone, you'll be willing to put in more effort to stay in touch. Now, you can say that he doesn't care enough because he's not making the effort to be on Facebook in order to stay connected, but it's equally true that if they cared enough, they'd shoot him an e-mail or pick up the phone.
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Aug 25, 2014 13:32
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It's all downhill from there. I crave the sweet release of death.
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Aug 25, 2014 18:37
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I spent most of my 20s (29 now, creeping up on 30) doing pretty much everything that I knew I couldn't do later in life when I had more serious commitments and responsibilities. This mainly boiled down to having fun with vices, weird/eccentric jobs, and doing a fuckton of travel. Travel is the biggest advice I can pass along. The culture of backpackers around the World revolves around gap year kids (18-21ish) and then the rest are mostly mid 20s to early 30s, the older you get the more fringe you get on the backpacker scene, I found this to be true myself spending 4 months in SE Asia last year. As an older backpacker, I found myself incredibly turned off by the younger backpacking scene that I was a part of just a few years prior. The constant drunken hook-up mode isn't what backpacking should be all about (it's definitely a part and don't get me wrong, I didn't go prude-backpacker and still had my nights of drunken debauchery and wandering through strange cities in incredibly dangerous ways due to my own inebriation). The hostel lifestyle also gets harder and harder each year you get older. Hard to explain the feelings until you experience them yourself, but you find yourself on the "outside looking in" quite a bit in the rowdier hostels. So that said, get in those rowdy hostels while you're still young enough to just say "gently caress it" and enjoy the hell out of it. But yeah, travel as much as you loving can is my biggest advice. Go hit up A/T Tourism & Travel for a great starting point. The biggest thing I always hear from people is that they don't have the time or money to travel. That's loving bullshit, it's just a matter of adjusting your priorities while in your home city/country. Drink less when you go out to bars with friends. Hell, don't go to bars, get your friends together with a bottle and go to a park. Don't buy that new vidyah game, be happy with the ones you already have. Don't buy a new car, just get an A to B car or use mass transit (the mass transit option is a great one because it preps you for using mass transit in a foreign country). Cook for yourself instead of going out or buying pre-made food (also a great skill to have while traveling and will save you a fuckton of money on the road and make you friends everywhere you go). Get a job that you can leave in a heartbeat once you have the money and that you won't get invested in climbing the corporate ladder or chasing promotions. Hell, go wait tables for a year. You'll have enough cash to go backpacking for a year if you stash away those tips instead of burning through the pocket money. Go see the world before you're tied down by a job, spouse, pet, kids, car, property, or whatever it is that you can't just walk away from. Oh, and don't get a pet in your 20s. You aren't ready for that kind of responsibility if you want to have any sort of real life. Wait for your 30s for that once you're settling down. Or don't settle down. Keep going. edit: I also agree with the above poster that you'll experience as much change in your 20s as you did in your teens. I look back at myself at 20 and I was a loving idiot. I look back at myself at 25 and I was a loving idiot. I look back at myself at 28 and I was a loving idiot. The good part is, you learn from it and grow. I'm going to look back at myself at 29 in a couple of years and again wonder what the gently caress I was doing with my life. The key is to not dwell on it too much while you're living it and just make decisions and go with the flow, doesn't matter if the decision is good or bad, you'll learn from it and have a story. Hobo Grandpa fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Aug 25, 2014 |
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Aug 25, 2014 20:46
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Hobo Grandpa posted:I spent most of my 20s (29 now, creeping up on 30) doing pretty much everything that I knew I couldn't do later in life when I had more serious commitments and responsibilities. This mainly boiled down to having fun with vices, weird/eccentric jobs, and doing a fuckton of travel. This is wonderful advice, but the flip side: don't let other people shame you for "settling down" into a steady job/routine. Only you know which lifestyle is the proper one for you. Only you can be the master of your own happiness. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being an introverted customer service specialist with three cats and an ungodly collection of high fantasy novels, if that's what rows your boat. Know yourself and know who you are and if you're happy with that, don't give two shits if not a single other person on this world approves. As someone who is a bit more in need of security and stability, the idea of backpacking across the country with no job has me breaking out in cold sweats.
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Aug 26, 2014 03:12
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