Constantly looking back on the past

[Gough]

Why Leeds SA?

 

[Scotland]

High school gets you into uni, Ps get degrees. If you want a prized internship at some high end law firm or want to do med and get a research fellowship at Harvard or something then you pretty much need to work your arse off from 16/17 through to early to mid 20s but for most people coasting is fine. I know a dude that spent 8 years at uni and walked out with a commerce degree. He's doing fine. I know people that put off uni to dick around after high school and people that traveled straight after uni and people who have taken years off after working a few years. There's no hard and fast rule for everyone. Once you're in a career it's pretty rare for anyone to want to know what your uni marks were let alone high school. It's a big deal at the time but once it's done it's done and really not something to look back on and worry about.

 

[BotsMaster]

I actually look way more favourably on someone who has some international working experience on their CV than someone who has only been in Oz.

Which industry?

 

[JW Frogen]

I just love you lot.

End of rant.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Why Leeds SA?

Arctic Monkeys

Edit: Wait they're Sheffield.

 

[MaddAdam]

If I go a few days without piss I feel amazing. I'm more in touch with my emotions and feelings and take in the world. I get joy in smaller things like seeing an act of kindness on the train, or even get a bit angrier than I usually would, but things feel fuller and more colourful. When you're always hungover or thinking about drinking life becomes pretty two dimensional. I put on a bit of weight a couple of years ago mostly through drinking but this year dropped it and I'm the thinnest I've been since I was 16, but despite a good diet alcohol can make me feel rancid. I go through patches of not drinking much at all then drinking pretty much nightly and the feeling of the latter is this dryness, this gross interior feeling of needing fruit and water and not ****in yeasty breadiness.

Sometimes my hangovers are awful because I know I've wasted a rare day off feeling crap, I've eaten crap, I've probably done something wrong, and I've spent money I shouldn't have. Having more money and less mates means I tend to get that less these days but I stew on small things for days. Never understood how some people don't get that day after feeling after a big session on the grog. It kills me.

I think the worst thing for not drinking is the monotony. You miss those peaks and troughs. The enjoyment and fun of a few beers or even looking forward to the relaxation is big, but even not going through the grief of a hangover is gone. You're sort of just there and navigating life's normal ups and downs, which come a lot less frequently.

The anxiety associated with alcohol use is something it takes ages to twig to, but when you do, its life changing.

You're only young though, you can piss on for at least another decade before it will become problematic.

See, doing and thinking all the stuff you are 25 when drinking is all well and good.

Doing it at 45 is called being a sad old boozehound.

 

[Gough]

Arctic Monkeys

That would explain it. I saw them around that time at the Thebby. Cracking night out.

 

[MaddAdam]

Which industry?

Media/politics.

 

[Bostonian]

Yes it's a common thing for Carlton fans.

The past actually was better.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Looking back I'm pretty bitter on my high school experience. Shoddy and domineering parenting + general adolescence meant I was never going to have a great time but the academic side of it was a piece of shit. Public school filled with dickhead kids derailing lessons and jaded teachers the wrong side of 40 just punching the clock until retirement. In The Wire there's a dickhead student called Namond who gets the teacher's and school's attention because he just ruins everything. And there's a kid called Dukie who doesn't get any support because he's quiet and doesn't cause problems. While I wasn't poor and didn't end up a heroin addict like Dukie that part of The Wire reminds me of high school.

Somebody in a thread about schools once said "If the kid wants to learn they'll do good at any school". Maybe in a certain sense that's true but a kid in a crap school is up against it. Me in a private school probably has the first degree by 21. Me in a dogshit school avoids university for years.

 

[Silent Alarm]

This idea of 'so what do you want to do?' is pretty warped. I want to be a rock star like Damon Albarn and do interviews and spend my days travelling the world, playing music to people who tell me how good I am, drinking beers. If not then I'll be a tall AFL midfielder wearing long sleeves and Copa Mundials. I don't really give a shit about work because ultimately nothing will adhere to my true passions and a job will always be a job to me. I've been paid to write about things I care about and it ended up feeling like... work. Ultimately I want to spend my next ten years being with my friends, drinking a few beers, seeing the world as much as possible, you know. I don't give two ****s about my job so long as it's paying me. I'm a young person and work 30 hours a week generally and the idea of stuff like holiday pay or sick pay even excites me. But to me all jobs suck nuts, bosses are generally ****heads, and most coworkers are okay at best.

Your life ain't a job. Maybe a hundred years ago it could be because you had options and didn't have this thing constantly breathing down your neck, telling you this is due now and that's needing paying. You struggle to get a job these days. Very intelligent, decent people don't get what they want – and they're the ones who apply themselves! I'm too lazy to even search on seek. Ultimately a job is a means to an end and a way to fund the good things. Maybe I'm realising I'll never be up on a stage saying 'this is a new one, I think' and people YouTube-ing it because it matters, but maybe the world isn't just work. Work ****ing sucks. Make everything around it cool.

I wanna do the drinking, the relaxing, the meals out, the cooking at home, the footy when the game is good, the travelling to Italy, the kicking the footy in the park, the feeling good in a new outfit, the excitement of an album release, the thrill of meeting a girl you probably do actually love, the laughs that make your rib cage hurt. That's what I wanna do. I don't wanna work. I'll do it though just so I can do that other stuff.

 

[JW Frogen]

I wanted to be Keith Cassidey in a previous life.


And I was.

 

[JW Frogen]

Or maybe I was David Cassidy, I cannot remember, it was a previous life.

 

[JG22]

I wish I partied harder in my younger days. Responsible parent these days, in my young 20's I wasn't much of a drinker at all. Socially I'd have a few, but rarely got hammered. Considered myself above it for some stupid reason.

Around my mid 20's I started to really let loose and had some great nights. And now, I really wish I went harder earlier because those days are gone.

I only see about 2 people regularly from that group of friends these days and only for brief social stuff as we all have kids now. Those days of all nighters on the piss talking shit are long gone, and I kick myself for not getting involved earlier.

real

 

[Doss]

If I had my time again, I'd go back and advise 18 year old, just-finished-school me to take a year off and travel. I think in hindsight I needed a year away from study and this was borne out in my struggle to maintain focus in first year uni.

But, if I'd done that I also probably wouldn't have met the girl who is now my wife; she was one year above in the same course, but if I'd delayed things a year and started the same course a year later, I would have been much less likely to have mixed socially with her at all as she would have been two years above and the chances of social cross pollination would have been exponentially less.

So, academically it was a poor choice to go straight into study, but I sure as hell don't regret it.

 

[revo333]

I wouldn't dwell with working hard straight after school and not travelling until your late 20's.

You won't take it as for granted as you would when you are younger and less stress coming back to a base of savings.

 

[Doss]

I wouldn't dwell with working hard straight after school and not travelling until your late 20's.

You won't take it as for granted as you would when you are younger and less stress coming back to a base of savings.

I guess my problem, though, was that I didn't really work as hard as I should have when I went to uni and I suspect part of that was that I needed a break from study.

I didn't go overseas at all until the age of 24 and while that put me behind most of my friends, in hindsight I don't regret that. It meant I didn't have to travel on quite as shoestring a budget as I would have had to if I'd travelled at 18 or 19.

 

[Off The Couch]

You never know what life holds - I married young, bought the house, had the kids, all with the view to us travelling later.

Shit happens and due to an illness we are limited in what we can now do. At the end of the day all you can do, is what you think is right for you in that moment because you sure as shit don’t know what is going to happen next

Stop living in the past and just live in the now

 

[Mootsy]

From 2010-2016 i was a very nostalgic person, constantly missing the 90s, early 00s, and I have a good reason for it in terms of being younger and having less pressure and i preferred music culture back in those days.

People are very complex. Even in capitalist society, there doesn't seem to be any rule of thumb that is distinctly universal in its approach.

- You can have a career person with money that has hardly any personality progression or hobbies or time for any sort of fun in life. They've essentially just conformed to every single expectation and never question authority, are all about status.

- You can have a creative type that makes less money but has a fulfilled portfolio of work and loves their life..

A poor person who enjoys life, a rich person who hates that they are trapped into responsibilities and high stress...

You can have a fat guy who is happily in a relationship and a fit guy who has depressed and single.

High IQ person who can't get a job, lower IQ person who is great at getting a job. Visa Versa.

There are so many variations and contradictions to everybody when you deeply think about this, you realise how laughable everything is.

And so once you realise that you can do what you want in life with work ethic, it's all about decision making, that's it.

There is no pressure because nothing makes any sense across the broad spectrum of everything.

 

[Mootsy]

One thing that has helped a bit in terms of mindfulness, is Bob Ross videos and his philosophy on life, is a pretty awesome thing to behold!

If you look at the way he paints, it's relaxed, easy and philosophical, now he could easily do 100 paintings in a week, and as you can see, if he makes a mistake, it's not a mistake, he says "we don't make mistakes, we have happy accidents!"...

 

[Gibbsy]

I've been thinking about it a little the past six months. I feel like I'm entering phase two of my immediate youth. Trying to hold on maybe a little bit too much to that feeling of being 19 and unstoppable, except now I'm 23 with a degree and have been working full-time for a year. Sometimes I miss the 8 contact hours a week of uni where I would just decide one day that I couldn't be arsed going. And the weekday trips up to Melbourne to see mates just because I could. I dunno, it's sort of odd. I think those years around 21 were the best of years of my life - going overseas for a few months all on my own, making friends that even though you didn't want to admit it at the time, you knew you'd never see again - and like Silent Alarm I too got that feeling of "what if I grew up in England and never knew any better?" Would I have already travelled to 10 different countries by the age of 20 but to a Pom does catching the Eurostar on a weekend feel no different to me travelling from the coast to Melbs each Saturday?

Although by Year 12 I was feeling really cemented in my life, knowing what I wanted to do, developing a really decent friendship circle and although I look back now and cringe a little - attaining that 'Tier 1' status that a lot of high school kids wish for when they're sad and confused years earlier - I still couldn't wait to get out of my little town near Geelong. I thought the be-all and end-all was Melbourne and I wanted to essentially start a new life there, make 20 new friends who didn't know a thing about my life up until that point, meet a girl who was into the same indie rock that I was into. And so I spent every weekend, sometimes twice a week, going up to Melbourne and hitting the town with two of my best mates who I incidentally met through this very website. And I will tell you and they will tell you that those years were the best of our lives. Sometimes I wish I wrote a diary and could look back on all the nights out in more detail. Or that it was easier to scroll through historic Facebook messages, all 125,000+ of them with one mate. But now it's just little bits pieced together. Taking a laptop up on the train and finishing my freelance work in a hotel room while still drinking beers and already getting ready for a night out. Going out on a random Tuesday night at a club night called Grasshoppers and seeing the best room of talent I've ever seen... anywhere. Making a plan to get to a venue half an hour earlier than these girls we were meeting up with to try our luck with someone else first... only to realise they had the same idea and bump into them in the queue. Drinking shit beers from Aldi. Sleeping on a park bench. Fishing for a house key through a window, hearing some mad sounds, buying a deck of ciggies just to pass the time even though I don't smoke. Seeing some of my all time favourite bands like Arctic Monkeys and Blur right up close. Sunday morning texts on the train back to nowhere. All this stuff made me feel great but it was always gonna come to an end if I didn't end up living and working in Melbs.

So after I finished uni I was on a plane to Europe to go backpacking and fit in all the travel I wanted to do before I was inevitably going to get stuck in the mire of full-time work. I did it and I loved it. This time I documented it. 120+ days, each one written in a daily blog post. Although it was tedious at times, I'm so glad I wrote it and I enjoy reading back on it. But then life changes. Through circumstance, both my mates moved away. I stopped travelling up to Melbourne. I was out job-hunting for like six months, becoming lazy and goalless. All I wanted to do was go back overseas, but even then, the desire eventually waned. I joined the local footy club after a few people told me it'd be a good thing, increase my social circles etc. At this point I was probably only talking to two or three friends a week. Life was going backwards a little. And then footy happened. I hadn't played for four years - work, injuries, lack of interest - but getting back into it has been the best thing that's impacted my life in a long time. I'm living out of home with two new mates who joined the club the same year I did, got 20 other blokes I see on a regular basis who all value me for who I am... it's really fulfilling. I didn't know how much I missed that club culture until it was gone. Unfortunately footy clubs are still inherently linked with drinking - there's nary a Saturday when I'm not on the piss - but I only drink once a week and never to the point where I can't remember the night.

Why I say I'm in phase two now is because a lot of these mates are two, three years younger than me, probably doing similar stuff to what I was doing back then but I guess more locally. We don't really leave the township that much because town's a half-hour drive away and the local pub is pretty decent... there does become a sense of the same things happening every week, but that's small-town syndrome. And now I can't see myself leaving the area any time soon and I live my life a little bit through these younger guys because I still want the carefree and the fun of youth. I know I'm only 23 but... I dunno. You spend your teens wishing you were older and then once you hit maybe 21 you wish you could stay that age forever. I've never been in a legitimate relationship because A) I have high standards, too high; B) I find texting mundane; C) Intimacy and commitment still intimidates me. So maybe that's the one thing I'd correct. I still miss my Melbourne mates but that life seems a world away now. It's phase two. I like it but I just don't want to get bogged down and feel like going to Bali (I've never been) is the best you can do for an overseas trip. The daily grind sort of stuff. I'm actually typing this at work. Do I sound paranoid? Shit.

 

[Mootsy]

Gibbsy you're doing really well!!! Living life.
At least you are in phase 1 and phase 2 and not lost in idleness for years and years, which can happen to people. Depending.
Heck, people can even get stuck in nostalgia and never live a day for a long time, they just work a job that is stressful and trying to stay functional. Take a long time to complete their studies, etc.

 

[Run n Spread]

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.

True

 

[Silent Alarm]

I think there's a school of thought that life naturally progresses as and when it should. I get a lot more out of drinking a few beers with a mate down a pub than I would sitting at home and going stupid with a carton, and having a few with my dad on a Friday when we've knocked off is valuable to me in the way vodka raspberries once were.

Think back to high school, and by the time you're 17 you want to be seeing the world and meeting new people. I guess in five or six years the young blokes feeling a bit disillusioned and stagnant will be getting value and contentment out of having a nice girl to come home to. One day your weekend will be doing the garden or re-doing the kitchen and sinking 5k into that seems cheap or a good use of money. You know. Things come and go and maybe it's obvious or it isn't, but those changes come at the right time.

Maybe that's the quandary now, because at 23-26 you're sort of nowhere. Uni has probably passed by but it's no shame to not have a full time job, but also, you don't have the refined outlook of 'okay, get a degree, this is my plan... okay, I'm working, next step is locking down 20 grand...' You're treading water. I'm sure if you have a full time job that can feel a bit banal too and you probably don't want to stay there for much longer or you don't want to admit you will. At this time chicks start hunkering down and trying to find an okay guy or getting a serious career, but blokes are a lot less refined and probably more susceptible to feeling in between.

Young men probably get into habits like drinking, drugs in this time. Most girls who become meth heads are more of the socio-economic sort, not the 'pointlessness got me here' sort.

 

[MaddAdam]

You never know what life holds - I married young, bought the house, had the kids, all with the view to us travelling later.

Shit happens and due to an illness we are limited in what we can now do. At the end of the day all you can do, is what you think is right for you in that moment because you sure as shit don’t know what is going to happen next

Stop living in the past and just live in the now

Thing with "travelling later" is, as you say, lots of stuff can happen.

Ever since I was a little kid I had wanted to see Krak De Chevalier - it was like a "bucket list" thing. Then in 2010 I was coming home from a long spell living overseas and it struck me this was my only opportunity to see it - it cost me lots and took me well out of the way - but I saw it.

Had I listened to the voice in my head that said "No, you're going back to Oz to set up a life again, you need that extra couple of grand" then I'd never be able to see it. As it was I got home and didn't need the extra money.

Yes, don't live in the past, but also, don't plan TOO much for the future.