Misspent Youth - Wasted Time You'll Never Get Back

[Wise Fool]

All of it.

[eyenon15]

I'm saddened by all the video game regret.

I wouldn't trade my video game hours for anything

[drawkcabi]

I've gotten to the point where I embrace anything that gives me enjoyment in life. Video games, television, movies, reading, writing - having written something. even a good sleep. Going to the casino once or twice a year. I don't consider any of that wasted moments because they are moments that brought me comfort and joy.

The only thing that would have made it all better is to have more people around to do those things with.

My youth was the best time of my life, I yearn to go back just to do it all again. I'd only relish the people in my life more than I did, of course I'd also set myself up financially...but the main reason for doing that after being able to be a good provider for my family, to be able to bring even more people into my life and care for them, after that I'd just watch more movies, more TV, read more, and play more video games.

It's all about finding what gives me comfort and happiness that's also feasible, knowing it, and not being guilty for it but appreciative.

[Mark Antony]

Regrets:

100% of the "gallon of milk challenge"

#noregrets

[Larry of the Lawn]

#noregrets

You're a sick man.

[DireWolfSpirit]

I tried to think of any regrets I had,

but I just kept remembering Al Pacino speeches.

http://youtu.be/3bzK8r4c6Xc

[Spring Bass]

I've wasted most of my twenties in an alternating mix of depression and service sector work. Thirty isn't far off, and I feel like I haven't progressed much as a person personally in 5-6 years, although I'm glad that I've become more tolerant and liberal over that time.

[awesome possum]

I regret the doobie cruises in high school my senior year. I had a novel I was working on, had been working on since I was 14, but I'd continuously put it on the back burner so that I could go get high with my friends and then drive around for hours being stoned. I could have been working on that thing, finishing it. It was only halfway done at that point.

I'd been given the gift of a desktop computer in my bedroom when I moved in at my friend's house (because the friend's mom didn't know where else to put it) and I wrote like the fucking wind on that thing when I was writing. I watched my story grow from a clumsy 16 pages of hand-written journal pages to 32 hand-written pages to 80 pages printed out on the old Apple CPU that I'd spent a school year writing during lunch time in the library to now over 250 pages. But when I was writing wasn't often enough. And so when I had to move out of there suddenly, instead of a fully printed-out novel or the two or three saved floppy disks that I'd planned on having, I had the story on one disk. A single solitary disk that in a fit of apathy and depression I tossed into my "junk" box, which contained - among other things - a giant magnet. Then I permanently deleted all of my files from the computer.

So I lost it. And it destroyed my creativity for years. I spent 6 years not being able to write anything outside of class assignments. It wasn't until I took a creative writing class in college that the dam broke and I was able to write for myself again. I've written many short stories, many nonfiction essays, but I've never been able to unravel the novel that was unraveling perfectly when I was 17. I've spent chunks of the last 18 years trying and I know I should probably let it go, but I can't. I go to sleep almost every single night thinking about that story, over 6000 nights I've drowsed off with those characters and events stuck in my mind, trying to will myself to start it again.

But I can't, and I will always believe that if I'd just said no to a few of those doobie cruises - we went on one every single damned day so it's not like I was ever missing anything - if I'd just done what my brain was begging me to do at the time and write, then most of my life would be different. I don't know if it would have been published, I don't know if it would have been good. But finishing it and not losing it would have stopped years of writer's block. Would have potentially saved so many of the awesome story ideas I had throughout the years that I ignored because "what's the point." They're lost too.

My life is about halfway over and the only thing I've wanted to be since I was 14-years-old was a successful writer. And I can't help but believe I threw away my chances at that so that I could go get stoned - again and again and again - with people I haven't even seen or talked to in almost 15 years now. People who ended up being nothing more than extended cameos in my life.

[Theda Baratheon]

I often (all the time really) really regret not auditioning for drama school but that isnt because of misspent time, its bcus when my parents vetoed that idea my 18 yr old self was too pathetic and clueless to stand up to them but i guess if i manage to miraculously graduate from uni with a decent grade then i didnt just spend the last 3 years in uni depressed and anxious for nothing lol

[Bluetiger]

I don't think I'm currently wasting my time...

Maybe I put too much effort into learning useless things like how to make a AM radio, or how to animate in Scratch, (school :( ) instead of writing more...

[S John]

I used to very much regret that I did not apply myself more in college and instead favored less scholarly pursuits, but I've gotten over that I think. Part of getting over it was that I went to grad school and did pretty well so now my time in undergrad feels (and probably is) less relevant.

While there are plenty of actions and non-actions that I regret in life, I don't really regret time that I have spent on unproductive things. Overall, since probably age 16 or so, I have always been in a state of thinking about what my next pursuit is going to be. I have a tendency to put a timeline of everything and think ahead a lot, without fully appreciating the present moment.

The present is probably the first period of time in my adult life where I am not really doing that. I plan to stay put and build my career where I am for the next several years and I'll worry about my next step when I feel like it is time to do that. I think there is something to be said about taking a step back and spending some time just enjoying everyday life without spending a lot of time thinking about the future. Maybe I'll come back to this thread in 3-4 years and let you all know if I've wasted my time. :laugh:

[SkynJay]

Competitive soccer.

I don't regret playing it, but joining the competitive league put me in a year round cycle that never let me play any other sports (and i regret not playing football quite a bit). Especially since I was good, but never special. Soccer was never going to take my past high school, so why did I put everything into it?

[Stubby]

I regret using the excuse of writing a novel to delay starting my law degree.

But when I think about that in more detail, I realise that I got so much more in the way of good things out of that period than not. So it's only a small regret.

[Tears of Lys]

I don't regret much since my life turned out pretty well. Maybe I wish I would have gotten more out of school - but it was a pretty shitty school system, so maybe I wasn't missing much there anyway.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly when I was younger, and that I don't regret.

Maybe I wouldn't have auditioned for "Up with People" when I was 20. That could have saved me some massive embarrassment. But then again, it makes for a pretty funny story. I laugh every time I think of it.

Regrets are some of the most useless things in the world. The past is over and done. Live in the now and you won't go wrong.

[satori26]

99% of the time spent just surfing the web (I think message boards can be a good time to chat and self-reflect, but otherwise, total waste)

80% of the time spent worrying if my body will measure up (prevented me from getting fat probably, but there's a better way to go about it)

99% of the time spent on single-person computer games (but I certainly don't regret playing with friends)

100% of the time spent procrastinating (kind of goes with surfing the web)

20% of the time spent hanging out with people I don't have a thing to say to (just overdid it, I think spending time with different sorts is generally great)

50% of the alcohol (overdid it again often because of anxiety tipping my hand faster than my brain could monitor)

In a nutshell, about 99% of the time I spent doing so-called leisure activities that don't involve other people. Most of them I just was so involved in because I was silently looking for an excuse not to engage because of social anxiety.

But, I'm not quite 30, so I'm hoping I can turn some things around. I've realized there are 6 + billion people on the planet, and you can't and certainly shouldn't please them all. The best you can do is treat everybody with respect. Good fences make good neighbors, oftentimes. /wisdom plurge

[Elder Sister]

I don't really believe in looking back, personally. I had a great time in my misspent youth. And I've made some extremely stupid mistakes, but I learned something from every one of them, and thankfully, haven't repeated any of them. Yet. . I think, had it not been for all of that hell-raising in my youth, I would probably be very off-kilter right now.

I'm sort of in a strange period in my life. Professionally, life is great. Personally, I'm starting over. I'm too old to be young and too young to be old and I don't know how to do what I'm doing. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing, honestly, and I'm a bit adrift. I have people telling me to jump back in there and go nuts with dating, and men, and all sorts of crazy stuff. Other people seem to think I should be in a perpetual state of mourning. Because of this, I'm just trying to ignore all of the all of the advice and try concentrating on the things that I know are meaningful and make a difference to me; family, my faith, friends, nature. I figure I'll either figure it out or I won't.

I don't regret anything in my past other than I wish I had been a bit nicer to people. And I try not to look forward too much, because I have a tendency to worry. And all I'm really given is the here and now, so I try not to screw that up too much.

[rocksniffer]

i will be 64 later this year. so i think it is funny that a person in their thirties is looking back at misspent youth...you are still young at thirtysomething so enjoy it now and don't worry about the times that are behind you...old fart advice concluded

eta: because it just occurred to me that my one and only real regret...that i didn't take an offer to move to colorado when i got out of navy, cause now i could be growing weed and smoking on my front porch without a care in the world...

:smoking:

I wish that I had not wasted so much time and energy on toxic people who didn't care about me.

I try not to dwell on regrets now because the way I see it, that's just them creeping back into my heart to waste even more of it in the present.

You can't do anything about the past, but time spent regretting the past is just time spent wasting the present. Like gramma's tattoo says, Just keep on truckin'.

i would very much like to meet your Granny...she sounds like my kinda people

Fuck that. It's this misspent adulthood that that bums me out

now this i can get behind....as a foolish boy i just did shit for fun, damn the consequences...as an asshole adult i have done shit cause i am selfish, tired, bored, pissed off, blind drunk...etc. i regret many of those things...boyhood shit, not so much

Regrets:

90% of the cocaine

40% of the alcohol

20% of the sex

80% of the people I let waste my time

100% of the "gallon of milk challenge"

90% of the video games and tv

But the rest was pretty terrific!

:lmao: only changes i would make would be...

only regret 75% of my coke use since some of it was during some seriously epic all-nighters that have become legend on more than one continent...

more like 60% of the liquor i drank could have been spent drinking beer and i would have probably remembered the good times better

and 0% of the sex...i mean c'mon Imp...it was all good, even when it was bad :thumbsup:

I don't really believe in looking back, personally. I had a great time in my misspent youth. And I've made some extremely stupid mistakes, but I learned something from every one of them, and thankfully, haven't repeated any of them. Yet. . I think, had it not been for all of that hell-raising in my youth, I would probably be very off-kilter right now.

I'm sort of in a strange period in my life. Professionally, life is great. Personally, I'm starting over. I'm too old to be young and too young to be old and I don't know how to do what I'm doing. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing, honestly, and I'm a bit adrift. I have people telling me to jump back in there and go nuts with dating, and men, and all sorts of crazy stuff. Other people seem to think I should be in a perpetual state of mourning. Because of this, I'm just trying to ignore all of the all of the advice and try concentrating on the things that I know are meaningful and make a difference to me; family, my faith, friends, nature. I figure I'll either figure it out or I won't.

I don't regret anything in my past other than I wish I had been a bit nicer to people. And I try not to look forward too much, because I have a tendency to worry. And all I'm really given is the here and now, so I try not to screw that up too much.

what my young elder sis just said....in spades...

[maarsen]

I spent too much time reading and getting a head stuffed full of trivia. Now that I am getting old, I am finally forgetting a lot of it. I also spent way too much time being shy and lonely only to find out that something about me drove the opposite sex mad with lust. I just hope it was not my shyness.

[Eponine]

One person's wasted time is another person's enviable normalcy.

I feel like one of the reasons that my youth was wasted was because I didn't get to play video games. (Or watch TV or movies or otherwise do normal age appropriate time wasters). Every time you're tempted to regret those video game hours, remember that you could have been spending them doing parentally enforced devotions.

[Relic]

i will be 64 later this year. so i think it is funny that a person in their thirties is looking back at misspent youth...you are still young at thirtysomething so enjoy it now and don't worry about the times that are behind you...old fart advice concluded

Wise words. I don't spend much time on regret. Very little of it, actually, since im loving life. I started this thread as a sort of tongue-in-cheek response to someone who was spamming new threads in some misguided attempt to get under my skin. Huge waste of time. However, i do think there is merit to having a thread like this, if it makes just one person rethink what they are doing and invest their precious time into something (more) important.