Quote Originally Posted by greenhippo View Post
Only 26 myself, still lots of years to go, but even now I can think of a dozen things I should have done (some of them small things) but was too chicken shit to do it, or thought better to go another route. I'll never have those same opportunities again and knowing that just sucks. I also work for every dollar I make and do sports betting on a small scale just for fun, I don't want to wake up and be 40, stuck in a rut and wonder where the last 20 years went.
I was watching an interview with Graham Norton the other day (British talk show host in case he's not big in the US) and he was talking about how when he was in his early 20s he was living in a house with other random people, one of them a 40yo woman studying nursing. They were drinking one night and he kind of ripped into her about going back to school at 40 because she was "so old". She fired back at him that she would have at least 25yrs ahead of her working as a nurse... longer than he'd even been alive to that point. He said it really changed his mindset about how to think about the concept of time in relation to your life. Whether you start something when you're 20 or don't make the decision to do it until you're 40+ you still have a big chunk of your life to live doing what you want to do.

And I think the people who would typically be on their deathbeds now ie 70/80+ are from a generation where men were the sole income earners and weren't as engaged with their families. They came home, ate dinner, watched some tv and saw their kids on the weekends. Typically. Of course some fathers from the '50s and '60s fell outside that norm. And some of the women would regret not pursuing their careers or their dreams regardless of what they were. People of your generation are much more aware of the importance of being truly happy and not just fulfilling a role in the household. With that comes the worry obviously that you're the making the right choices now but I think that self-awareness goes a long way to making a difference in how you will feel lying there at your end.