Did your life turn out the way you thought it would?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

I would say mostly no. It turns out just skating through life without solid plans is not a great strategy. Things happened and mistakes were made. Certainly my two children are better than anything I could have imagined but my wife turned out very much not to be who I thought she was which has left me lonely and somewhat bitter.

I have always been and will probably always be too sensitive although I wish it was otherwise. There is so much more pain and heartache in the world which I wish I could ignore but I cannot. That is probably one aspect of life that I was not prepared for but I do the best I can and carry on.

All in all I think I have had reasonable success but I know just a handful of more thoughtful decisions on my part could have led to much a better life.

42

I can’t say my life turned out the way I expected. That’s because I didn’t have any real expectations. Life has been quite good to me most of the time, at least in the way most people would view it. From my own point of view it’s not that great. I really should do something about that. I’ve got a full glass and I look at it as half empty.

43

Mostly no. My younger self only had very general ideas about what he did and did not want to do with his life.

When I was a teenager I wanted to be a fighter pilot (Top Gun helped, but my interest was mostly stoked by any number of documentary programs I had watched, and aviation discussions with my ex-navy-pilot father). That interest faded a year or two after starting college, but I still didn’t know what I did want to do with my life, so at the end of four years, I started grad school, pursuing a masters degree in mech engineering. After nearly two years of that, my advisor asked if I had plans; I said no, and he invited me to stay on for a Ph.D. Not particularly wanting to get on with my life, I agreed. Four years later, I graduated and was kicked out of paradise into the real world.

That was fourteen years ago. Since that time I’ve worked in a nice, secure, stable (and sometimes boring) job as a scientist for the federal government. The opportunity was partly luck: my employer was looking for an ME with a graduate degree, and contacted my advisor, who recommended me. On the advice of my advisor, I acted almost comically enthusiastic during and after the interview, and I ended up getting the job.

If you had told my teenaged self that he would be getting a Ph.D. and working in a government lab, well, that was pretty far from being a fighter pilot, but I suspect that teenager would have acknowledged the reality that ending up as a fighter pilot would have taken long odds.

I had (and to some degree, still have) a problem with growing up. Getting married, having kids, owning a house - “settling down” - all seemed repellent to me.

At 32 I bought a house. My first house was an unpolishable turd, and I was glad to get out of it five years later, losing only ten grand in the process. My second house has been much better; the “growing up and settling down” aspect hasn’t been so bad, and I enjoy having four walls with nobody on the other side compelling me to keep the noise down.

At 35 I married. The decision took a lot of soul searching. Overall things have been good since then, although at times it chafes and I wish for the freedom and solitude I enjoyed as a single man.

Well, that’s two out of three. No kids. I’m ambivalent about that last one. It’s been nice being one of the kids at an extended-family gathering, but I struggle to imagine myself as a patriarch of my own family, and can’t imagine tearing down the life that I have and rearranging it for the next couple of decades to accomodate a small group of resource-intensive midgets with questionable judgment. On top of that, child-rearing seems weird these days (maybe just because I’m paying attention to it like I never used to?). It looks awfully challenging to steer a kid on a straight path past all the junk food, TV-overload, and internet porn. OTOH, I worry that when I hit my 60’s with no kids, my life might seem kind of vacuous. Either way, this part of my life is consistent with what I imagined as a teenager.

44

This thread is from 2006.

45

Yes, it is. And I’m happy to report to my 2006 self that I am now married and have one kid.

46

It’s actually turned out far better. I wish I’d known myself at 18 (or believed those who did know me), I would have made so much better choices and then who knows?

But as it is, I survived my poor choices and have gone on to have a lot more interesting life than I thought I would.

47

It turned out much, much better. At one point I was deathly afraid I was doomed to being able to aspire to nothing more than, say, the graveyard shift in a 7-Eleven store in West Texas. What actually happened has been one wild and crazy ride.

48

Last time I checked, I wasn’t an international spy astronaut detective fireman.

Well, 3 out of 4 ain’t bad. :stuck_out_tongue:

49

It all depends on what age I start from. But from I was looking from at age 20, I would have to say overall yes.

When I was in HS and before I said I wanted to be a doctor, but inwardly knew I wouldn’t. It was just what I said to please my mother. (Old joke: Why are so many doctors Jewish? Ans. Because their mothers are.) I vaguely thought I would study chemistry. I was always good at math, but didn’t much like it. Calculus was easy but boring. Then I discovered abstract algebra and fell in love. At that point, I majored in math and, while I really didn’t envision a future (I tend to live in the moment), if I had I might have thought I would become a professor, do research in math, publish papers (I am inching up on 100), all of which has happened. I also hoped to find a woman, get married, have kids, etc., all of which happened better than I could have imagined.

50

There’s absolutely nothing in my life that I would have predicted before it came to be. Not personally, not professionally, not even mentally or physically. I’m amazed that there are some people whose lives proceed on a straight line.

51

Not even close. At 18 I expected and hoped for was a big family, reasonably profitable mundane job, and a rather dull but satisfying future. What I ended up with was no kids and an interesting life (in the sense of the old Arabic curse). Wouldn’t trade it it for nothing!

52

I thought I’d be raising a dozen kids on a goat farm or something. Now I find myself a single parent of two living a fairly average life, working two jobs I like, getting my mortgage paid mostly on time, with nary a goat in sight.
It’s awesome. The most surprising fact of my life is that I’m working in an OFFICE. I still find myself feeling kind of unreal sometimes.
(I’m still considering a mini goat. I wonder if it could sleep in the garage with the dogs?)

53

I figured that I was going to die young.

I didn’t.

That was really all the thought I put into that. I’ve been playing it by ear since then and the last 40 years have worked out real well.

54

This may sound strange, but I never thought that far ahead.

I mean, I knew it was important that I finished school and get a good education. I had some early exposure to the field of theatrical lighting and I liked it and I thought I might become a theatrical lighting designer. But I never thought ahead beyond that, never had fantasies about husbands and kids, or old rich boyfriends and yachts, or protracted singlehood.

And I think that was the best thing ever. I think all these young people with their 5 year plans and 10 year plans might miss out on a lot of opportunity. I considered any job that sounded cool and fun and took a lot of work largely for the experiences. These lead me, in a twisty way, to a very cool career ( home automation systems for the really really rich)…something I had never even heard of when I was at the age when folks were making life plans. I describe myself to friends as a old hippie that tripped and fell into something lucrative.

55

My life far, far exceeds any expectations I had in high school.

To say I was a slacker who, at best, just expected to slip through life taking whatever came along as the best I could reasonably expect was probably the kindest thing you could have said about me at 18.

I’m 65 now and as happy as I’ve ever been in my life. Married for 44 years and I have to say that we are probably happier together now than we have ever been. We live well, lot’s of travel, good friends, have excellent health. Without work we have about 1% of the former level of stress. We have more income than I ever, in my wildest dreams, expected to have and have no debt. I’ve written a book (600ish pages) that I always wanted to write and if I ever get it published that will be icing on the cake.

Yeah, gotta say it’s all worked out very well at Casa de Hook.

56

In my early 20’s, I basically could discern no worthwhile future for myself, at all-the girl I loved had rejected me, my attempts to do anything useful in college kept coming balls up, and I was as lost a soul as I could possibly be.

If I went back in time and told that young man all the crazy twists and turns, all the growth, all the insights that I have experienced since then-well he’d never believe me. So, no-and I thank TPTB for it, every day.

57

Yes – I hoped to be reading a zombie thread about this very thing today!

58

I wanted to be a college professor with two daughters, a happy marriage and a few books under my belt. I have the daughters, the happy marriage and one book so far so I am pretty happy. On to the second book next month!

59

Not yet, but I’m still plugging.

60

No. Looking back at where I’ve been and what I’ve done, taking a look at all the major decisions I’ve made in life… I can’t really see any decisions that were the right ones. I’ve just sort of blundered along from one situation to the next, did what was expected of me and took the path of expediency and least resistance.

I don’t know that I’d be in any better situation now if I had made different choices, but I had no idea that the choices I was making were going to lead me to where I am, and what I’ve been.