

8 Things I Wish I Knew When I Was 22 - edw519
http://almostfearless.com/2008/05/21/8-things-i-wish-i-knew-when-i-was-22/

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scooter53080
I would agree with most of these...or at least don't disagree enough to parse
them out. I would add two more to the list that I wish I knew at 22... 1)
Don't buy a house. Yes it may be a good investment. Yes owning/living in your
own house does provide a lot of personal satisfaction. But it can really tie
you down. Aside from housing market woes, you become invested in a house and
can become incredibly attached to it. It makes it difficult to just up and
sell it in order to travel. Even if you can travel for $1000 a month, that
doesn't work if you have mortgage/bills/upkeep on a house back home. 2) Don't
get pets unless you are willing to be tied down or have a built in plan for
having the animal taken care of while you are gone. Dogs/cats are a long-term
commitment.

I'm drawn to a more nomadic life, but am having problem breaking free because
of these. Anybody else run into these problems? How did you solve them?

~~~
axod
Why the emphasis in the OP and your comment on travelling? I'd say it depends
on what you want out of life, and in what order. I'm happy to go see the world
when I'm retired.

~~~
asdflkj
Travel is not a thing that you try, say to yourself that you've done it, and
be done with it (like coke, say, or S&M). It's more like college; you do it in
large part because it will benefit your life from then on. Traveling at the
end of life makes about as much sense as going to college at the end of life.

~~~
axod
I don't agree with that. Plenty of people go to college later in life. You
can't do everything at every time in your life. I'd rather see the world when
I have money to see it in a bit of style.

Everything shapes who you are from then on, and an experience like travelling
may have a big effect on your later life. But so does being a parent, or
starting a company, or any number of other big experiences. You just have to
make a judgement as to which you want to experience first.

You could make a similar argument for having kids later in life - to some it
doesn't any sense to wait until you're old and tired to have kids.

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menloparkbum
I have lived this lifestyle, it is ok, with some caveats.

If you do extended travel, learn how to be outgoing. My first long trip was to
Japan. Being shy and quiet made the first 3 months a nightmare. Luckily, at
the time I was young and still reasonably good looking so women would ask me
out. But it would have been more fun and easier if I hadn't had such social
anxiety. I did some extreme personality modification afterwards and when I
went other places I had a much better time.

It is very important to nail #1, figure out a career that you love, or at
least LIKE. It isn't as though you come back, return to work, and your work
anxiety is alleviated by your fond travel memories. In fact, your travel
experience makes it much worse because you are just thinking "fuck I could be
on the beach in Thailand right now instead of rebooting these servers at 4 in
the morning."

Safety net is sort of important. You don't want to return and then be stuck
taking the first job that comes along. Note that safety net doesn't
necessarily mean having a bunch of cash. It could mean having a friend or
family with an extra room where you can stay in the area where you want to
work. In my case it sucked, because most of my friends were bums like me who
live in studio apartments, and most of my family lives in the extreme middle
of nowhere. Trying to find a job in Palo Alto while you are in the Yukon is
not easy or fun.

Also, figure out what you really want. Travel is easy. You just need money for
a plane ticket. You can go almost anytime. I didn't realize until after I
traveled that what I really wanted was financial and career independence. I
probably missed out on 5 prime career building years by bumming around doing
the travel/slacker thing. Now I have to compete with Google Ycombinator
braniacs. Back in the day, I only would have had to be as smart as the guys
who made BlueMountain.com or geocities...

~~~
wallflower
> I did some extreme personality modification afterwards and when I went other
> places I had a much better time.

I'd love to hear more about this. Usually when I go to a party I talk to a few
people and have an OK time. However, the few times I've talked to everyone at
a party, I've had a memorable blast. It's definitely not natural and I feel I
have to be warmed up socially.

~~~
menloparkbum
Well, I am crazy. Around my friends I am outrageous and will say anything for
a laugh. Around people I don't know I clam up and hide in the corner. I just
decided to act the same way around strangers as I do around close friends.

------
tom_rath
Hey, 22-year old self, you know all that stuff you're worried to death about?
All those failures and existential crap that's keeping you awake? It doesn't
matter. I know it really seems like it does but, trust me, it doesn't. No, not
that stuff either: It really doesn't matter.

Now stop reading about mistakes to avoid and start discovering new ones to
make by yourself. Those mistakes will end up perversely leading you to your
greatest successes, but you can't make them if you try following someone
else's retrospective perfect blueprint for happiness.

~~~
wallflower
“Hurry up and lose your first 50 games.” - Go proverb presented by Adam Keys

Adam then keyed in on the core of his talk: Learning. He said there are only
kinds of learning: Learning from others & Learning by doing. You only learn by
falling down. Nobody gets everything right the first time. Set yourself up to
rapidly trying things until you find what’s right. Just like you don’t play
hockey without padding: don’t develop without padding. Unit tests, exception
notifier, cheap branching/merging in git, fast deploy with capistrano are all
padding that mean you fear less and can try things that might hurt you because
you can fix them fast."

Adam Key's talk summarized "Oh the Fail I’ve known"
[http://drewblas.com/2008/06/01/railsconf-2008-sunday-
afterno...](http://drewblas.com/2008/06/01/railsconf-2008-sunday-afternoon-
summary/)

~~~
Alex3917
One of my favorite proverbs, although I've always prefered the phrasing "lose
your first 50 games as fast as possible." That, and "win all four corners and
the game is lost."

------
Monkeyget
On the subject :

Advice to Young Men from an Old Man
<http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/279126743.html>

Things I wish I’d known when I was younger
[http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/things-i-
wish-i’d...](http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/things-i-
wish-i’d-know-when-i-was-younger.html)

~~~
AndyKelley
_21\. Becoming a woman’s friend and confidant is not going to get you into an
intimate relationship. If you haven’t gotten the girl within a reasonably
short period of time, chances are you won’t ever get her. She’ll end up
confiding to you about the sexual adventures she’s having with someone else.
23\. Realize that love is a numbers game. Guys fall in love easily. You’re
going to see some girl and feel like you’ll die if you don’t get her. If she
rejects you, move on to the next one. It’s her loss._

Oh dear. I hope there are exceptions.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
sorry bub. if a woman likes you she will sleep with you within a couple weeks
of meeting you. If she doesn't she either doesn't like you or has emotional
problems.

~~~
AndyKelley
You think if a woman doesn't give out sex within a couple weeks of meeting a
guy, she has emotional problems? I'm pretty sure it's the exact opposite.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
Excuse YOU? _"give out sex"_ huh? Like it's a commodity they can run out of?
were you raised by religious people or something? I'd classify that under
emotional problems. If two people meet and like each other, why would they
wait longer than a few weeks to have sex? methinks someone has a romanticized
and/or puritanical notion of sex. This is 2008, we have birth control and STD
prevention. Sex is just sex. Time for social values to catch up. On the female
side in particular, I get pretty damn tired of guys who don't get laid
spreading rumors about girls because said girls won't sleep with them. Every
girl I've encountered who has been called a slut has been for this reason.
It's the most disgusting to watch in high school aged kids. Assholes really
screw up these girls self esteem at the most important part of their emotional
development and then they can't enjoy sex as adults. Sometimes takes years to
get over. And we wonder why most women in their twenties act so neurotic?

sorry, i'll stop ranting. I just want women to be able to screw whomever they
want without consequences. :)

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pmjordan
Corollary: you're more likely to regret _not_ doing something than you're
going to regret _doing_ something.

~~~
hugh
Exceptions: Tequila, mountain bike stunts and anything that didn't start to
seem like a good idea until three drinks ago.

~~~
helveticaman
More exceptions: accidentally having a baby, committing a felony, ruining your
reputation, dropping out of college, risking brain damage, etc.

~~~
etal
"Ron's first law: All extreme positions are wrong." -- Ron Garret

(Naturally that only applies in some cases, but here I think it's pretty apt.)

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notdarkyet
Well, being 22 I must say that a few of these I had realized a long time ago.
The theme of this post seems to be that living somewhat of a nomadic lifestyle
and traveling is what we should all be doing. Similar to how drug users and
people who don't have 100% faith in what they are doing attempt to bring
people in with them, this author is trying to convince us all to be free
wielding travelers in a time when we have no commitments. Sort of a validation
by mass usage. Not all of us have an extra $1000 lying around to just leave
everything on a whim (and some simply do not want to). While I would like to
travel someday, it is simply not in the cards now.

One most important things that I have taken notice to in the past few years or
so is that your life path is exactly what you want to make it. Early on in the
school systems we are led to believe that your life will go as follows: School
=> Find High Salary Job => Retirement => Death. They train you to become
reliant on the system and think that your goal should be to exit schooling
with a high paying salary and if you don't you are screwed. You will be
miserable and lonely forever. They never suggest once that you can stray off
that path and most never question it.

Another realization that I have come across lately is that it is easy to
become caught up in idealism. It's nice to dream up what you see for your
future and forget where you are now. Steve Jobs spoke in his 05 Stanford
commencement speech of connecting the dot's in hindsight and not realizing the
impact that some previous events had at the time. The important thing to
realize is not that we should look back in hindsight and connect the dots
rather, focus on the creation of the dots themselves. You are in control and
your future is not some mystical set-in-stone experience that you will have a
great epiphany over sometime in the future while reflecting. So rather than
hope that everything will work itself out, find out what you want and be the
one to create the dots, not connect them. I could go on more but it's time I
go create my reality rather than ramble about potentials.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
i think you're neglecting the fact that School => high salary job => early
retirement with no obligations => happiness

this is a startup site, aren't we all trying to get rich so we can work on
what we really care about without interference? that's what money buys.

~~~
notdarkyet
I agree. Maybe I neglected to put the emphasis on the point I was trying to
make which is that they attempt to scare you into believing if you stray off
the beaten path you will be screwed.

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webwright
I'd add: "Live someplace cool." Cool is a moving target, but I'm always blown
away by people who spend their life in unremarkable places due to inertia.

For me, cool was Alaska for 10 years (a few years longer than I should've
stayed, really). If you love tech, get to a place where tech is exciting. If
you really love tech, that's probably SV. If you'd like to live someplace less
crappy/expensive, that might be Seattle, Austin, or (if you can stand the East
Coast) Boston.

~~~
timr
_"if you'd like to live someplace less crappy/expensive, that might be
Seattle"_

Heh. That's funny...if I could give my 22-year-old self a piece of valuable
advice, it would be to stay the hell out of Seattle.

(It's June 3, 55 degrees and raining. Fun stuff. Y'all come.)

~~~
webwright
Heh. I'm in Seattle, too. Ever make the local startup meetups?

IMO, Seattle beats SV/SF as a place to live, but I'm moderately outdoorsy
(sailing, kayaking, etc) and travel a lot during the wet winter. I only lived
in SV for 3 months (for YC) but I really didn't care for it. I like Austin,
but 95 in the summer is murder.

~~~
timr
Yeah, we met at the last STS meeting, and the drinking afterward. I showed you
guys how to get there....

------
wave
I find Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech to be a very good real life
advice. If you are graduating this year, please watch it and learn from his
experience.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA>

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davidw
I'm glad I traveled when I was younger, but that seems to be the main point of
this article/site... it's kind of an advertisement for itself.

Incidentally, does the background of the title look like Oregon's Crater Lake
to anyone else? That is water I would _not_ want to jump into... It's "cold,
damn cold".

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pxlpshr
Pretty good advice overall, but #6 I disagree with... and contradicts #2. You
don't build wealth by spending... and while optimistic, chances are you won't
go from $0 to million. But I suppose it's all relevant to one's goals... so
long as your choices don't impact my taxes.

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auston
My 22 year old self is less than 1 year away!

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mhb
9\. Traveling is overrated.

