Constantly looking back on the past

[PP34]

Anyone else have issues with this and is there a way to stop doing it?

In my case I feel like since finishing high school and coming up to now (end of uni) I've wasted several years of my life because I never took uni seriously enough. Multiple classes failed, marks are average in general and now when it comes to finishing and looking for jobs I regret that I decided that working, partying and lazing around was a better alternative to putting in more effort at uni.

I also constantly reflect on shitty decisions outside of uni over the same period. I feel like I dwell on the past a lot because I'm uncertain about where I'm headed.

Is this normal?

 

[Off The Couch]

We all have regrets but it’s done and while it’s okay to look back occasionally it’s important you don’t get stuck there. Think of it as a chapter in a book - this one is finished and it’s time for the next one. I don’t know about you but I rarely reread a book.

Sounds corny but it’s true and you should never look at something as time wasted - you learn something with everything you do. The decision now is what choose to do with what you’ve learnt. There’s no hard and fast rule that says you have to be at a certain point in your life at a certain age (some will try). Just think about where to from here and what you need to do to get there because tbh it sounds like you weren’t really invested in what you were studying - try lots of different things until you find something that sticks and makes you happy

 

[peasantbruh69]

Anyone else have issues with this and is there a way to stop doing it?

In my case I feel like since finishing high school and coming up to now (end of uni) I've wasted several years of my life because I never took uni seriously enough. Multiple classes failed, marks are average in general and now when it comes to finishing and looking for jobs I regret that I decided that working, partying and lazing around was a better alternative to putting in more effort at uni.

I also constantly reflect on shitty decisions outside of uni over the same period. I feel like I dwell on the past a lot because I'm uncertain about where I'm headed.

Is this normal?

Embrace your so called 'shitty decisions'. Sounds like you had a good time and learnt some valuable lessons. Yes it might be more difficult to find a good job than had you stayed dedicated to your studies, but if you really want a certain job bad enough you will get there. I was in a similar boat myself, I made mistakes when I was younger that hurt me for years, and constantly regretted them happening. Some of those past mistakes are still affecting the position I am in today. But funnily enough I am glad they happened, because of the lessons that I learned from them. I am sure many people have experienced similar. What are some examples of those shitty decisions outside of uni that you regret?

 

[perthblue]

you've made some mistakes, you're going to make plenty more. thats life. learn from them and don't let them paralyse you.

If you are unsure about your future and its causing you grief, book in a session with your uni career advisor. Might not have all the answers but its a good start.

 

[JG22]

in a similar boat but tend not to worry about career a lot, perhaps because i don't yet have the full time job search pressure

guess you have to ask do you still really want to pursue that career or have your opinions changed since starting.

 

[Catfish Alley]

Do they ask for your Uni marks these days? You should be ok with just the degree.

 

[Demosthenes]

There is a school of psychological thought called transactional analysis which you might find interesting. It is mostly about interacting with other people but it also applies to our own internal dialogues.

When all is said and done, all we can do when we wake up today is make decisions that are consistent with the person we want to be. Then we go to bed and do the same thing tomorrow.

 

[JW Frogen]

I am of the Time Lord school when it comes to past, present and future.

The longer you live, the more experiences you have you use to redefine your past with. Your memories of the past is not set in solid time, indeed there is no such thing, it is a mental state which focuses on some aspects of the past and dismisses others, indeed even changes memories, and that changes as you do, so your view of your past changes too and this changes your present and future too.

Past, present, future, it is mental carnival ride.

Enjoy it, throw your hands up and yell out and turn even the past suffering and mistakes into lessons and joy.

 

[M Malice]

Past, present, future, it is mental carnival ride.

Enjoy it, throw your hands up and yell out and turn even the past suffering and mistakes into lessons and joy.

 

[I Lost My Keays]

I wish I took year 12 seriously and wasted two years doing useless courses. However, I did the STAT test to try and get into university over a two year duration and got knocked back twice until I got an email saying I got accepted at Flinders University doing a Bachelor of Social Work. I would have to say it was the best decision I made even though it's a 45-1hr trip to get there. The biggest regret I made was not taking year 12 seriously as this could've been my last year.

 

[I Lost My Keays]

Do they ask for your Uni marks these days? You should be ok with just the degree.

I think it depends on what degree. In my degree, it's about whether you have experience such as volunteer work.

 

[CheapCharlie]

Mistakes made in the past. esp. relationship and financial, have been valuable lessons to where I am now.

Try and avoid making the same mistake, or at least be aware of what the past errors were

 

[JW Frogen]

I miss Bill

 

[MaddAdam]

Someone should write a book about the danger of obsessing on the past and wishing you'd done things differently and trying to change the past to reflect the present or your future.

You'd have a girl in it for sure, and a series of metaphors that illustrate the protaganists struggle to try and make the past change, or to get back stuff from the past into his future.

I mean, you wouldn't go so crazy as to have a bit where said protagonist actually like knocks a clock off a shelf and breaks it or anything, that'd be going to far.

And you couyld have lots of sweet party scenes as well, though no Jay Z playing in the movie version, that'd be silly too.

 

[MaddAdam]

I am of the Time Lord school when it comes to past, present and future.

The longer your live, the more experiences you have you use to redefine your past with. Your memories of the past is not set in solid time, indeed there is no such thing, it is a mental state which focuses on some aspects of the past and dismisses others, indeed even changes memories, and that changes as you do, so your view of your past changes too and this changes your present and future too.

Past, present, future, it is mental carnival ride.

Enjoy it, throw your hands up and yell out and turn even the past suffering and mistakes into lessons and joy.

I'm more of the Arrival school these days, sans direct input from giant space octopuses.

 

[Gough]

I'm more of the Arrival school these days, sans direct input from giant space octopuses.

Looking back, there was a copy of this bloody thing in every house in Australia when I was growing up.

 

[MaddAdam]

Anyone else have issues with this and is there a way to stop doing it?

In my case I feel like since finishing high school and coming up to now (end of uni) I've wasted several years of my life because I never took uni seriously enough. Multiple classes failed, marks are average in general and now when it comes to finishing and looking for jobs I regret that I decided that working, partying and lazing around was a better alternative to putting in more effort at uni.

I also constantly reflect on shitty decisions outside of uni over the same period. I feel like I dwell on the past a lot because I'm uncertain about where I'm headed.

Is this normal?

You're in what Jack Kerouac called the "beat and evil days that come to young guys in their middle twenties".

You too Silent Alarm

You do grow out of it, but best to actively get rid of them by DOING something rather than just letting them hang over you and get worse and worse.

Because if you don't, you'll be in your mid 30s feeling not the same, but worse and worse. And that's really bad, that's when guys do really dumb and bad stuff.

 

[perthblue]

People who take casual jobs and travel in the years after uni will find it extremely hard to land a job in their field when they decide to settle down. It's best to try to lock something down within a year of finishing uni, and then build your career from there.

In all likeliness, your life won't resemble the Instagram account of a 21 year old Insta model, whose global travel is paid for by either companies she promotes, her sugar daddy, or both.

It will most likely resemble 40-plus hours of work per week, a mortgage, and a biennial holiday to the Gold Coast.

But who says that's a bad thing? I have mates who were scared shitless when they finished uni, but they've settled into their lives pretty seamlessly. They take joy in coming home to their partners, or to their dogs, or by going for a bike ride with mates on the weekend. Grand aspirations of global travel are replaced by receiving a promotion, or by having a baby, or by getting married. Travel is usually a weekend getaway to Sydney, and perhaps a larger holiday once every few years if your workplace allows you to accrue annual leave and use it in one go.

But that's life mate. If everyone decided to hold off on a career to travel, the world would come to a screeching halt. But to be perfectly honest, you'll get over the uni lifestyle. I can't tell you how healthier I am by getting a decent sleep every night and by having a structured life. My weekends are usually mine to do with what I please. Achieving tasks is much easier when you have the carrot of a comfortable salary behind you, rather than the gallimaufry of student loans, future job uncertainty, and quarter-life crises, which most students experience. So I'm told, anyway.

You'll be right.

 

[MaddAdam]

People who take casual jobs and travel in the years after uni will find it extremely hard to land a job in their field when they decide to settle down. It's best to try to lock something down within a year of finishing uni, and then build your career from there.

In all likeliness, your life won't resemble the Instagram account of a 21 year old Insta model, whose global travel is paid for by either companies she promotes, her sugar daddy, or both.

It will most likely resemble 40-plus hours of work per week, a mortgage, and a biennial holiday to the Gold Coast.

But who says that's a bad thing? I have mates who were scared shitless when they finished uni, but they've settled into their lives pretty seamlessly. They take joy in coming home to their partners, or to their dogs, or by going for a bike ride with mates on the weekend. Grand aspirations of global travel are replaced by receiving a promotion, or by having a baby, or by getting married. Travel is usually a weekend getaway to Sydney, and perhaps a larger holiday once every few years if your workplace allows you to accrue annual leave and use it in one go.

But that's life mate. If everyone decided to hold off on a career to travel, the world would come to a screeching halt. But to be perfectly honest, you'll get over the uni lifestyle. I can't tell you how healthier I am by getting a decent sleep every night and by having a structured life. My weekends are usually mine to do with what I please. Achieving tasks is much easier when you have the carrot of a comfortable salary behind you, rather than the gallimaufry of student loans, future job uncertainty, and quarter-life crises, which most students experience. So I'm told, anyway.

You'll be right.

Bullshit, don't be like Johnny Ontime squarepants yes sir how many bags full sir where would you like my soul sir?

Go travelling, if that doesn't grab you, can always come back here and sign up for a drudge like existence as advocated above.

Might want to get a good OxyContin script if you do though, to dumb the endless pain.

 

[Silent Alarm]

I do it every day.

I'm a melancholic, sensitive person and someone who finds the good times tinged with sadness. Every day I consider the good times and to me they're of being overseas generally, the small stuff like a random shitty pub or the big stuff like a super-famous band in one of the world's great cities... I've walked around random towns all over the world and had this 'I'll look back on this one day' and weird shit like a weird hotel in Milwaukee is like the best thing in the world to me, ya feel? Or going to a festival and thinking about the zeitgeist and youth and how cool it is to be in the here and now... sometimes it's just yearning for a weird mental image I have of me and one of my best mates sitting down a sunny Fitzroy pub, neither of us with the money to drink there, but pissing ourselves laughing. Other times it's of being 19 and rocking up to tutes in what I wore the night before hoping people would notice I was at a club 'til 4am on a Tuesday the night before. Sometimes it's the time I kissed a girl I really liked at Moonee Ponds station and seeing a 'don't let the Dockers steal our cup' poster right there on the way home and listening to Jamie T's Direction Home. Sometimes it's Ding Dong Lounge and meeting my girlfriend. Life is ****in wild and the idea of a highlight reel is a ****in privilege... part of the modern condition is the luck we have in maybe being able to be retrospective and looking inward and reliving the good times... tough young blokes shit scared in the war didn't get that.

I've tried a few drugs in my life and came to the conclusion I'm a drinker. Over-drinker. But that's because it taps into my same sense of saudade that I feel.

You're a person who will absorb the small things. Be happy for that. You're the sorta soul who'd rather a single game in the AFL for North Melbourne than 125 for Sydney. Don't let that get to you.

 

[imadodgyumpire]

Anyone else have issues with this and is there a way to stop doing it?

In my case I feel like since finishing high school and coming up to now (end of uni) I've wasted several years of my life because I never took uni seriously enough. Multiple classes failed, marks are average in general and now when it comes to finishing and looking for jobs I regret that I decided that working, partying and lazing around was a better alternative to putting in more effort at uni.

I also constantly reflect on shitty decisions outside of uni over the same period. I feel like I dwell on the past a lot because I'm uncertain about where I'm headed.

Is this normal?

Yes.

Now what are you gonna do?

 

[Gosha]

Drink piss and take drugs while you can. I’m 27 and I feel the end is nigh.

 

[Silent Alarm]

I misread this.

So maybe heed what I said and live that.

This idea you **** up and don't land a job, or this dichotomy of 'travel, party, live a fun life' or 'study hard and get a job' is so dumb. Most young people can't own a home so take pingers way too much or piss away their lives and do dumb things. I don't know many people that went into a degree and stayed in it. Most people change degrees once or twice or don't know what they want. We live in weird times for young people because a degree is obvious, a trade sounds hard, and conking out is a cop out. Ultimately I know people who did podiatry and engineering and sensible degrees and are struggling, and these dux of schools and whatever else were found out for the sycophantic turds they are and moved home as soon as uni finished or even before. I was a smart kid but from day dot the report card was 'SA has potential but spends it on talking and distracting others.' I was too cheeky, too obsessed with a good time, and my mentality was 'maths sucks – I'm into English and Arts' and I excelled in those but sucked in the rest. Probably coulda done law. Didn't wanna. Probably could be thinner, I'm not. My main regret is giving up footy at 8 and playing soccer exclusively for a few years, felt I coulda done something and maybe made it. So what, I didn't?

Youth is ****ed. You've studied man. If you did something truly bad you are not smart enough to evade it and this isn't the 1970s. You're young, it'll fly by and you're at the tail end of true youth. So what? Be blessed and happy you are aware of things going and be happy you can see what slips and what never got to.

It's very hard for young people to look up and out and think there's a silver lining. Doing a degree can mean working in retail for five years afterwards because it pays and your calling ain't whispering, yet alone calling. You can't move on out of uni and walk into relative certainty. It's tough and a weird flux and you feel trapped because you're not young enough to shrug your shoulders but also not too old to just have a wife. You feel this is the time for foundations but no one leaves home until 22 now so what's the difference? ****, this is a new time for the young person.

You took drugs, you pissed away in Melbourne – one of the great piss away cities. Don't forget stumblin to a 7/11.

And no matter how it goes, just compare it to the war. Like people and if you'd fight in a trench with 'em, would you be happy to go down with what you've got? I would. You would too. Spending 20-something years in safety is a blessing. Have a beer.

 

[JW Frogen]

I'm more of the Arrival school these days, sans direct input from giant space octopuses.

My time tentancle is about to tickle you.......

 

[JW Frogen]

Drink piss and take drugs while you can. I’m 27 and I feel the end is nigh.

Your life has not even started mate.

And I have drank more piss and taken more drugs than almost anyone on Earth.

Live your life, do not run from it.