I asked this same question to my older coworkers back when I was 20. The main answer I got was: travel, travel, travel! “Travel before you have kids.” “Travel before you start a long-term career.” “Travel before you buy a house.”

Naturally, being a Millennial, all three of those things became non-issues. 🙃

So let me give some advice for the ages instead, regardless of what the future may hold for you:

• Never stop learning

• It’s okay to not know what you want to do with life

• And, especially in a post-truth, AI-infested world, question everything!

Take the time to learn what logical fallacies are (at least the common ones.) You WILL encounter them, and knowing when you or someone else is using faulty logic can keep you from harm, whether it be from another person (like what we see in politics) or from yourself (like the “Sunk Cost Fallacy,” which might otherwise lead you to stick with bad jobs, bad relationships, and more.)

Tangentially, it’s okay to say, “I don’t know.” Nobody knows everything. Anyone who expects you to know any given thing (unless you’re known to have studied it, of course) isn’t someone worth the admiration of. People with realistic expectations will see you as genuine, and being genuine can carry you far.

I could probably think of more if given the time, but those are the most important things off the top of my head. I’m open to questions in the comments; I’ve lived quite a peculiar life, so I’ve got a range of experiences, from being a homeless vandweller, to being a pilot, to pivoting 90° to working with kids and making art. I’m more than happy to answer any questions that might help people out!

Oof, yeah, same. There’s too much cringe.

I also can’t stand fight scenes. They’re way too intense. The best I can do is zone out when they happen and at the end ask whoever’s watching with me, “Who won?”

It’s sad how terms get co-opted. I get it’s part of the progression of language, but it still sucks.

I soak up the feelings of those around me, but it’s not some hippie woo-woo thing. I don’t think it’s “special,” just uncontrollable empathy. I love watching game shows because I take in the excitement and happiness of the crowd/players. On the flip side, if I see someone crying, it’s hard to stay neutral, because I feel their pain without trying to.

Is it a normal human reaction? Absolutely. Do most people experience it as strongly as I do? I have no evidence either way. It could be more extreme for me, but it could also be normal - just boiling down to differences in emotional regulation.

Either way, I guess I’ll be using the old, unambiguous term “empathic.” It still works, after all, and doesn’t carry the baggage of the newer term.

Earn 3 times the amount of a proposed rent? You’re golden.

Earn below 3 times the amount of a proposed rent (but still enough to pay it each month)? Now you have to pay a guarantor to back you up. Last estimate I got was $800 for that service. You’ve gotta pay that before a landlord will accept you.

So if you earn less, you’re forced to pay more. It’s so fucking backwards.

Source: currently homeless, on numerous “waitlists” for low-income apartments that can take years to get through, housing lotteries that have 10s of thousands of people also hoping for a home, and attempting to scrounge the bottom of the barrel with tiny studio apartments (which, even if I apply to immediately, I’m behind others who somehow got to them faster.)

The system is absolutely fucked. I’m just grateful I enjoy my job (which, yes, I work full time, and earn above minimum wage for. Modern US society has no mercy for any of us.)

Sometimes I cry happy tears when I hear kids having a grand old time playing at playgrounds. That sort of pure joy is so far from my grown-up experiences, it’s like my brain can’t process it anymore.

Search for low-income housing.

Receive ads for $100,000 condos.

Yeah, just rub it in, why doncha

How do you choose who the unlucky bastards are that get sent to the field to grow food for the people who don’t have to work?

Preferably, they’d be people without disabilities that prevent them from doing that kind of work. OP didn’t say, “Nobody should work,” just that being able to live shouldn’t be dependent on working.

For millions of people with disabilities, the difference between those two ideas is life-changing. It’s important not to conflate them.

I love to make a positive impression on the world. I love to empower children, give comfort to those around me, to volunteer my energy and talents for a greater good.

But in the back of my mind, sometimes there’s a little voice that reminds me, “Whatever good you put into the world, your mom can vicariously claim to have created. This will never not be true, because she is responsible for your existence.”

And I hate it. I learned what not to be by observing her. I learned how hypocrites are able to function, how some people are able to override reality with their “feelings,” and how manipulators manage to get their way. Credit goes where it’s due, for sure, but she really shouldn’t be proud of the things she taught me. I became who I am in spite of her, not because of her.

I came to the same conclusion. I know how my mom reacts to news she doesn’t like - she defaults to denial. My memory has always been stronger than hers, so there’s no shortage of incidents that I remember, that she has long forgotten. (The tree remembers what the axe forgot, after all.) If I were to attempt to bring things up, she’d deny such things ever happened. Instead of me having catharsis and her having self-recognition, I’d be put in a defensive position and she’d say I’m exaggerating or making things up. Which is to say, attempting to have a serious talk with her always makes me feel worse.

Thankfully, I have siblings, and they remember what our childhood was like. We have all given up on trying to get our mom to see the light. Instead, we have a secret group chat where we can vent as needed.

This is why I love Lemmy. There’s a recognition that we’re all imperfect beings stuck in this crazy thing called “life” together. It only makes sense to support each other.

my existence is technically “illegal” lol

Small community Lemmy, you’re one of those commenters that I feel like I kinda know (even though I totally don’t. But I seem to upvote you a lot, so you’re recognizable in a good way.) I just want to say, I think this is a really cool fact about you. It’s like you were born a badass.

The only things that could make it cooler would be if you were born with your middle fingers raised, or your first words were, “Fuck the system” (in any language.)

You got it. I can easily assume, but I wanted to know for sure. Ingredient lists would’ve been far more helpful than Quora.

bullshit options with shit ass quora usually at the top. Who dafuq uses quora?

I wonder the same thing. I used it once, and only once, in my life. I had been trying to find vegan birthday candles and having no luck finding sources for the wax (since I was explicitly avoiding beeswax), so I asked Quora where I could find vegan candles. The answer I got?

“Don’t eat birthday candles.”

Uhhh…

Apparently whatever fool worked there had no idea that “vegan” is a lifestyle, that goes beyond food. The question was closed and I had no way to appeal or add information. Fantastic.

Thank you for the clarification. I agree 100%!

Not once have people channeled negative emotions into action or art. It’s impossible.

Except, no? Art is about expressing one’s self. There’s tons of art out there inspired by negative emotions. Anger-fueled protest songs, Emily Dickinson’s poems about death, countless paintings created to express a people’s or an individual’s plight, the list goes on.

Being positive is definitely better for one’s health, but to say negative emotions have never and could never be used to create art is absurd.

Edit: Or was your comment sarcasm? I truly cannot tell anymore.

More and more of that cheap tacky plastic crap littering front lawns.

The inflatable decorations are my pet-hate. If you don’t keep them running 24/7, they look like a bunch of garbage strewn across the lawn.

Oh snap, you’re me.

As an agendered pansexual, the wildest thing to me about the trans/cis divide is actually feeling that strongly about having a preferred gender. I simply can’t fathom caring hard enough to put up a fight about it. I default to “female” because I was AFAB, but if someone calls me by a different pronoun, it’s whatever to me.

Now let me be clear - just because I don’t feel gender for myself, doesn’t mean I can’t respect and support those who do feel strongly about their genders.

And as a reference to this comment, this post was fueled by unmedicated ADHD, autism, and cannabis (and a bit of frustration, since I accidentally closed the window after the first time I wrote it, so I had to write it twice.)

As one of those neurodivergent kids, my mom explicitly laid all the blame on me whenever she felt embarrassed in public. I was removed from activities countless times without any clear understanding of why - all I knew was I wasn’t allowed to do fun things. There was no accommodation for sensory issues, no space provided for me to self-regulate, no understanding that I was having a difficult time and needed support - just labels thrown at me for “being difficult”, as if by merely existing, I was a problem.

Every child deserves to participate in enriching activities regardless of their neurotype. By removing neurodiverse kids (and not returning after they calm down) or outright keeping them away from such events, they may internalize the idea that who they are is not acceptable. Parents, there are resources available today that didn’t exist in the 90s. There is no reason to raise your neurodiverse kid the way we used to be raised. If you don’t know what to do with your kid and you haven’t already done so, get help. Please.

Indeed, I was never a “typical teen.” I always felt older than I was, and I’ve never fit in well with those my age. I came to most of my current religious and political philosophies in middle school, after I realized the beliefs I was raised in didn’t make sense and I plunged into self-discovery and research.

One of my mottos since that time is “question everything” (which lines up with the decision to pick this username.) Over the years, I’ve met people at various stages of that journey, including some who may never even begin it. I’ve learned, I’ve grown, and yet I’ve found that a lot of the conclusions I came to on topics long ago have only strengthened with more information. I saw fascism in my school admin, and 20+ year later, I know for sure that it was all part of the same big picture we see today. I saw corruption, I saw manipulation, I saw reasons not to trust anyone who expected blind authority. I was told I was “overreacting” by people who couldn’t see what I saw, and it’s hard to reconcile the normally-positive “having been right” with the negative of, well, gestures around.

I am not the same person I was as a teen, even if those core beliefs remain. For example, I’ve come to embrace polyamory, to understand and accept those with drug abuse issues, and have learned a lot about social situations (I may have been quick on figuring out a lot of things, but my social skills perpetually lag behind. Yay autism.)

The key thing that helped across the board was when I decided to refrain from taking sides on any major issues until after I’ve researched it thoroughly. Too many people react impulsively to new ideas, often against them, only to later on embrace them. I saw it in many of the adults that were around me, adults who heard a biased headline and drew wild assumptions based on it. But when the thing ended up actually being beneficial, they never acknowledged their past stance - they just quietly ignored it and acted like being pro-whatever is how they’d been all along. I told myself I never wanted to become such a hypocrite, and the best way I’ve found to avoid it is to take in information and consider all sides of it prior to forming and expressing an opinion on it.

I know that’s not “normal,” though I do wish it was. But yeah, I can understand how “having the same beliefs as teenage-me did” is more likely to be a sign of stagnation. However, self-reflection is practically a daily task in my life. If some of my beliefs haven’t changed since my teenage years, it’s because they’re still solid today.

Indeed. I didn’t intend to deny that. The phrase just got me thinking, and I realized that “normal health” is hard to even imagine. It would require so many things to be different. The chronic stress alone must be destroying us.