At what point did you realize you’ve done nothing with your life?

Humanity is meaningless in the universe. All your achievements and failures amount to nothing. Birth is enslavement. Work is enslavement.

So, cheer up OP ❤️

Middle Management is the worst. Complete hell

I realized it at age 49, after I had finished my second master's degree, was still working as a waiter, and had to max out a credit card for back surgery.

I kind of feel the thing I'm proudest of is the opposite of the refrigerator magnet about living life to the fullest: I may not have done much, but I can honestly say that I don't know of any enemies. I live, I smile as much as possible, I tell jokes... and, when it's over, I'll probably go without causing anyone remorse or pain.

In Kindergarten.

Early 40's.

I wasn't happy with it, but ....

Realistically most of us haven't done anything life changing (my life or others). Nothing wrong with that, but don't hold your standard to Ghandi or Mother Theresa.

Just do the best, every day, that you can. You don't have change the world. Just change someone's day (yourself or someone else) for the better.

I’m beginning to realize that work, for most people, is to make money for weekends and vacations.

Some people have a real passion for where they work but that’s likely a very small group

Due to mental health issues that have stabilized but still continue my life tbh has been a bit of a war. Especially the last 20 years. Any achievements I do only for myself. When I was younger I wanted to be remembered. Now I just want to be happy.

[quote]At what point did you realize you’ve done nothing with your life?

The same day you stopped beating your wife OP.

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes"

Mid-twenties. Barely launched into the professional world I realized that I could scratch and claw to the top of my field and make about 25% more than I was making then. But to do that I would have to fly to every conference, smile every insincere smile, give the appearance that I might not always be dissgreeable to the idea of sucking the dick of an ugly man (or a few score of), and be attentive to my advancement at every step.

Done nothing with my life? I’m quickly closing in on 10,000 WWs on Datalounge. Speak for yourself, OP.

I’ve been to paradise but I’ve never been to me!

Love ya, R11.

I peaked professionally around mid 20's, quit my job and it's been rocky since. I think I'm lost. Now I'm almost completely checked out of the traditional professional world and trying to work on my own. I'm still waiting for the best part of my life - at age 40. I still hope/want to experience the best life has to offer, hopefully with another person. Traveling the world and finding love.

It's been bleak and IS currently.. I believe things have to get better!

I never did: I feel like I've been doing it for years and continue to do so in retirement.

When you asked me that just now

I moved to San Francisco in 1981. Yes, I know, exquisite timing and I mated up with a 40something gym rat who had been there forever. He made a living casting horoscopes and was very well known. He acted as a guide for the short time we were together and told him many of his friends, Castro clones had wised up and moved on. After decades of marginal jobs and absorbing night life, they enrolled in SF City College for a quickie vocational certificate and decamped for the southwest. They saw he writing on the wall and read every word.

I realized it the moment I was spending 18 hours/day on DL.

Work has always been a drudge for me, an unpleasant necessity. I never went to college, so a lifetime succession of deadend McJobs.

The things I'm proudest of is planting lots of trees and saving the lives of many cats. And just surviving almost 6 decades as a gay man, against all odds.

In fact, just living a decent life as an out LGBTQ person - just fucking surviving- is a major accomplishment.

You're never too young to be bitter.

Many years ago:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

I’ve been mostly unemployed BUT I wanted to be on Broadway. I was on Broadway. I wanted a TV show. I got a TV show. I’m proud of what I accomplished and it’s nice to know I’ll still entertain people after I’m dead.

Very few people do anything with their lives other than maintain a decent existence for themselves. I'm 49, make a solid six-figure income, have a good life in Brooklyn - but I'm totally dead on the inside. That's the hardest thing to deal with. The realization that life ultimately has no meaning or purpose.

I'm not suicidal or anything...just numb.

So yeah - I'm really feeling it now. Part of me is considering quitting my job, going back to school and becoming a psychotherapist. At least then I can have a life dedicated to exploring the human condition. I'm just...in a questioning, immobile place right now.

I also think the older you get the less stock you put into "doing something" with your life. I have 3 friends who are best-selling novelists. Another friend is a famous actor (we were waiters together many moons ago). I'm not jealous nor do I envy them. They made some decisions and followed through with them. That's it. (though yes im aware their talent has much to do with it too).

The only person I'm a little envious of is Howard Stern. He gets paid hundreds of millions of dollars to make fart and vagina jokes. That's a pretty genius position in life to be in.

Reading this thread.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

Around 40. Worse yet, is the realization that people I always thought were losers have actually accomplished more.

Around 44 (last ear). Up to that point, I had worked my butt off to get to the middle. I'm a hard worker, but I'm not good at schmoozing, and I'm not "connected". Last summer, I was laid off my job. I decided that, instead of jumping into the first rebound job I could find, I would take some time off from working to focus on my Masters degree. I finished it a couple of weeks ago, but I don't want to go back to work. I have some money to live off of for several more months. My new field is better; there's some leeway for me to be creative on the job, but it will never make me rich.

In my spare time, my mind has wandered, and I'm remembering a lot of the bullying I suffered in middle school and high school (and later). I always thought that something great would happen that would make up for all that suffering. But it hasn't. And I don't think it ever will.

It's not that I've done nothing , it's that I haven't done enough and never will. I'm slowly coming to terms with that.

After the second person I donated a kidney to became a Trump supporter.

When I lost number 7.

About 8-9 years ago. Going back 15 years, I was laid off by Company A but jumped right into a job with a school district. The project at the school district ended and never really happy at the district, I declined an opportunity to stay on with another project (for good reason, it was a clusterfuck led by a dickhead).

I do nothing for 6 months but collect unemployment. Colleague from Company A reaches out and finds out I'm unemployed--leading to a contractor job at my old team there. Same exact position. I dreaded it but since I had zero prospects, I took the job. I told myself to be humble but get my butt in gear to look for something else and treat the job as temporary. When I was there a year (as they promised to convert me to a regular employee again) and had done nothing about another job--that's when I realized that the one thing I was good at in life was settling. And I settled for years and years while hating the job. Doing the same thing I was doing 15-20 years ago.

Well, Company A has laid me off again. Which pretty much seals the deal that I don't have a career, just a job that paid me. And to complete the circle twice over, my team is trying to get me back as a...contractor. And the inner voice is telling me to make the break even if it's scary. But with 43 million unemployed, I'll probably settle again. Of course, telling myself that it's only temporary and I will look for something else...

The coward in me hopes the contractor gig is rejected by upper management so I don't have to make the decision.

Inventing lovers on the phone

Inventing other lives unknown

Age 48 ..I’ve been in human resources for too many years than I care to admit. It’s absolutely the most soul sucking god awful existence one could ever live. Once my credit cards are paid off this year I’m quitting this bullshit! I may not change the world but dammit I’m gonna be happy for one fucking day in my life.

This thread reminds me how much I love this song.

[quote]that's when I realized that the one thing I was good at in life was settling.

If it's settling in your career, and lack of great accomplishment measured by career, that can be a liberating thing, I found.

Living in a city populated by career cunts demonstrated swiftly and profoundly that I didn't want to be one of those relentless climbers, always networking, the hot button to LinkedIn never cold, honing the art of whole conversations built on humble-bragging about my state of busyness—about how very busy we all are!—what with gearing up for our annual report and our big meetings and then the big conference in the fal!. I decided to minimize my exposure to careerists, to people who spoke and spoke and spoke about their jobs but even knowing them for years you had no idea what they actually do except use vague action words and sound busy, ever busy. I "settled," negotiated a lot of leave time and personal freedom at the likely loss of some advancement opportunities that would have removed me from work I enjoy for work that I don't, and for very little additional money or advantage.

In place of what little I gave up, I used my considerable time off to travel, and without a leash of having to check in about the Johnson Report until I was back at my desk working again. The difference in money in one route versus the other is fairly negligible; the reward of having my work be part of some of my days instead of my constant identity and worry was far more rewarding. Giving up the scramble for a better job, a better job title, a bigger list of contacts, a few more dollars was a far better reward than any outcome had I stuck to worrying about careers and career accomplishments.

Some of you sound like suckers for misery.

I was born poor and will die poor but fuck has the ride been fun! I’ve traveled around the world, ate amazing food, had great sex, and experienced great times.

Just because I’m not rich and still struggle with daily normal things, doesn’t mean I don’t consider myself as having accomplished much. All I’ve accomplished has been experiences and that’s good enough for me.

I like r18 and his attitude.

R34, I'm not interested in climbing the career ladder all that much. Just want to be paid a good wedge for work that I don't hate. The nothingness is from realizing that I settled for jobs and organizations that made me miserable. And now that I'm closer to retirement, I'll continue to settle so I can save up to retire and get the hell out.

I lied to myself about going to grad school to pursue a passion. The result was that I settled for a comfortable position with big global company while many of my classmates are putting the same grad degree to use. They've completely surpassed me now as I tread water for a couple of decades. And our major wasn't about money so it's not just about wage and prestige, it's about actually doing something you believe in and being an expert or influential in the field. I'm a cog monkey...a laid off one at that.

Is...is R24 going to go off on a screed about the Female Void and the Blessed Male Light, next?

My job was utterly amazing for 10 years. I woke up every day excited to go to work.

And then my boss retired and we got a new boss.

The new boss cared about ever single company rule like it was from. She showed no flexibility at all. She was a clock watcher--5 minutes late and then you were "written up." We're a company of experienced professionals so none of that shit has gone over well.

It's the first time I started to hate my job. Everyone's productivity plummeted and she's scratching her head why.

It also made me think about what I wanted to accomplish in my life and whether this job was the vehicle to do it.

It pays really well, so it may take a while to find a new job. But it's amazing how the boss sets the tone for so much

I'm still alive, OP, and after the neglect and abuse I've experienced in my life, that's a miracle.

This is stupid American aspirationalist gogetter jerkoff bullshit. Mute America.

Exactly R38.

I remember at one of the many, many, many temp jobs I've had there was a cool, lovely senior exec who just kept her head down and did solid work. All of the sudden one day she was catapulted to Senior VP for a new, totally unrelated line of business. People from all over the firm were clambering to go work for her, she had the best and the brightest to build her team and did so not by experience but skills and dynamics. It was instantly a success.

As I permanently pass out from a white copy kneeling on my neck.