I’m definitely telling me how to build the time machine I’m using to talk to me.
Well, right after I tell me the code I agreed upon with myself years ago to identify me to me if I should ever manage to time-travel.
- That condition you have is called Dyslexia. Get help for it.
- Play more sports, you’ll grow to love them as you get older.
- Stay away from refined sugar.
- Embrace being Bisexual. It gets better.
- Learn to code now, rather than later.
- Buy Marvel when it becomes a penny stock in the late 90’s.
The people who say these are the best years of your life are full of shit. I won’t lie; it will take a while to get better, but when it does it will really get better.
To my college self: Yes, I know you’re finally getting your growth spurt and are always hungry, but the all-you-can-eat meals at the cafeteria are a trap. Try to eat as healthy as you can, and get more exercise. That extra weight you’re putting on will catch up with you in thirty years.
Besides, keeping in shape now may even improve your chances at getting a date.
Don’t be so damned scared of talking to women!
I’d say you’re an unique old soul with a strong sense of self preservation. I believe your strengths are empathy and listening and your stubbornness creates the calm you need around you.
You really need to put yourself numerous uno and just do it. Play the role reap the rewards. Don’t compare and wallow in self recriminations unless in the tub. Always a tub and tears erase all our fears.
Kick ass with class!
Pointless nitpick: Frost’s poem says that the paths are basically identical, but that in later years he’ll boast about the choice anyway.
I would take the opposite angle from many in this thread, and encourage myself to be somewhat “looser.” Not that I was very responsible, I was definitely a slacker, but as a youth I was also a real choirboy and, as a means of coping social anxiety and not fitting in in my school, glommed onto what many on this board might, for lack of a better term, call Puritanism–the idea that sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll were bad and immoral. It was almost like my form of adolescent rebellion was to become more conservative. When in high school my friends started experimenting with marijuana, I was horrified and withdrew from them. I had nothing to talk about with the other kids at college because I didn’t like popular culture. I couldn’t bring myself to use even by then timeless slang like the word “cool” or calling people “man” or “dude.” I didn’t kiss a girl until I was 21; she became my first girlfriend and though we dated for 2.5 years, we never went beyond heavy petting. After she broke up with me, I spent the rest of my twenties sitting at home alone playing computer games and having a crush on this devout evangelical girl I met at a Bible study, which went nowhere. Now in my mid-forties, I’m too old to go out and pick up young hotties in bars and clubs. My younger self would be shocked to hear me say this, but I regret not being more socially mainstream when I was younger.
So, “you can still believe in your ideals, but you’re going to have to take something of a 'if you can’t beat 'em, join ‘em’ attitude and deal with the world as it really is to get what you want in life. And doing so isn’t as big a deal as you think it is. Don’t become a totally debauched lech, but keep up with your friends, go to parties, fool around with girls, say ‘dude’ and ‘man’ and ‘cool,’ admit you like rock music and even learn to strum a few chords on the guitar yourself. Notice the kids who do these things are not getting struck by lightning; in fact, 25 years from now, they’re not going to be in prison as you believe, but rather have normal marriages and family lives, while you, if you don’t put yourself out there, far from being rewarded for your moral goodness, are still going to be alone.”
So many kids need to hear this message. As a teenager, my fetish felt extremely isolating. I would have told that kid that it gets better: a day will come, not so far in the future, when you discover that there are other people like you.
I would also advise that kid to drive smart; some of the worst feelings you can give yourself can start by exercising bad judgment behind the wheel.
Also, start being more considerate of other people. Make it a habit. You will remember years later, with painful clarity, all the times you weren’t.
I wouldn’t listen if I told me, since I’d still be scared of it if I were suddenly single again.
Your first real girlfriend, who you dated well into college, and assumed you’d marry?
Don’t get too invested in that dream…
You’re going to end up touring the country in a van, but she’s going to want you to work in her dad’s factory. And she’ll dangle a lot of money in front of you and pressure you to spend the next forty years “in the family business”.
You can believe me, because after you break up she immediately marries your best friend. And his dreams of a medical career will get tossed out the window because she’ll reeeally want him to go make commercial floor protection for “Daddy”.
Marry the person you enjoy being with, not the person you “ought to” marry.
Don’t be so shy that you can’t speak up for yourself.
Start saving money and continue to save.
Stay away from credit cards.
Follow your dreams when you’re young. Life flies by so fast that before you know it, it’s too late.
Don’t try to hang on to a relationship that’s exhausting.
It would be fun to talk to my 17 year old self, on the condition that my 17 year old self instantly completely forgot what my 61 year old self said.
My life was a little bit of a crooked path, but ended up very well, it would be very easy to screw it up it. I believe if following the path where it takes you.
I sure would like to see my 17 year old self respond to what I say though. Would love to show my 17 year old self all the new tech. Some of which I’m involved in today.
I’d also tell me that you are going to still be listening to Pink Floyd, and just about everything else you listen to now when you are nearing retirement.
On thing that I would tell my younger self that I would not want me to forget is to get into actually PLAYING that music. Or any music. The instrument does not mater. But learn about that stuff.
You’re not ugly. Plenty of women find you attractive. You won’t believe this for decades to come, but it’s true.
Remember when you were 15, working at B-R, and you stayed after closing, just talking with that coworker? She was really impressed. Be that guy: honest, vulnerable, nice, funny, dorky. I’m 59 now, and I still don’t know why women are impressed by you, but they are, when you’re not even trying. Be that guy with all women; older, younger, relatives, etc. Don’t try to be what you think they want you to be. The harder you try, the less charming you are.
And again, you’re not ugly.
I would tell my younger self that I’m not ugly, that’s not the reason you have trouble attracting women. You don’t know when they are and aren’t, and at 57 I don’t know either until it’s said directly. May as well wait until September 2005, when you’ll get approached by “the one”. Yeah, it seems like a long wait. We’ve been together a lot longer.
Stop caring what others think of you. You don’t need their approval to be worthwhile. Talk more.