THEN vs. NOW: How are you different? - by Wynne
heywood on 24/5/2018 at 19:22
Life was great 20 years ago. I was a young military officer with a job that involved R&D of some very cool stuff. But I was anxious to complete my service and dive into the exploding software industry. I was newly married and had tons of free time. We were fairly active people and would run, cycle, play tennis, golf, and other sports. But I still had plenty of time for solitary pursuits like gaming, hacking around with Linux, and motorcycles. We had lots of friends and would spend the weekends staying up all night drinking and partying. And back then I was perpetually excited in anticipation of the next game or piece of gaming hardware about to come out.
Now I’m stuck mid-career in a high-stress job that pays well but isn’t interesting or rewarding. It’s the sort of demotivational job situation I’d never let myself get stuck in when I was younger, but it’s harder to walk away from now because I’m supporting a wife and two young kids. Having kids is wonderful and I wish I had them 10 years earlier. But I definitely live for my kids now. I don’t see my long-time friends much anymore. And it’s a rare treat when I can get a few hours of uninterrupted game play or go out for a long ride. I’m not nearly as active as I used to be and it shows in my health. I’m just getting over some depression that has dogged me on and off for the last couple of years, so that’s a good thing. Another change is that cooking has become one of my hobbies.
CoffeeMaker on 29/5/2018 at 00:04
20 years ago: gettin' ready to retire early (glad I did), trying to decide what stuff to take upstate to a then seasonal residence and what to leave (brought too much up), flipping a coin to figure whether to insulate the upstairs bedrooms or just pile on the quilts and buy another Apple laptop. Settled for the laptop and leaving the woodstove cranked up until almost time to head upstairs. You haven't lived until it seems normal to “camp out” at 45ºF in your own bedroom and wake up to that as a matter of course on a winter morning. I didn't ask the laptop to share that environment; it waited downstairs in its royal nakedness. Me I was upstairs under three thermal blankets and two comforters, sometimes along with an iPod and earbuds. There was no cell service so it was music or audiobooks up there as amusement if it wasn't comical enough just having managed to get into bed first and undress later. Rule one: if it's ten below zero outside, don't undress at all: who knows how cold it will be inside in the morning.
Now: 18 years without a cigarette, 40 without booze, don't miss either; ten years of settling for a higher gas bill in lieu of burning wood for fuel, don't miss the mess and the work of splitting kindling, never mind risk of burning the place down... Still happy to be alive and connected to the net at all here in the boondocks with something slightly better than a POTS dialup; the DSL is rated 6Mbps. There's still no cell service but at least there's WiFi calling. Few complaints that aren't somehow related to current occupant of the Oval Office, but I digress. I highly recommend rural life for those who don't mind leaving the city behind and who like to hunt and fish or read and surf for true news (v Faux Snooze) and grow a few veggies and flowers on the side in the late afternoon of a life.
Vasquez on 30/5/2018 at 08:58
Hello Wynne! :)
But oh this topic makes me depressed.
Me then: Happy, carefree, steady income, as introvert as now but the social kind - going out with friends, dance the night away, and then spend 2-3 days on my own and enjoying that just as much. Or some weeks at the summerhouse. Long walks with the dog, biking, swimming, none of it hurt. Parents still doing fine on their own. My first novel had just come out, the next on the way, and I was still full of illusions what a great writer I'd become :rolleyes: World seemed nicer and less hate-filled, no Facebook to make it seem everyone else is doing fabulously except you.
Me now: Burned out twice, once for work and once because of my parents. GAD and somatization pains all over. Stress-induced sleep problems, fatigue, brain fog; memory, cognition and creativeness down by at least 50%. Still writing, full time now (so money comes and goes, mostly goes) and even though I try find all kinds of writing gigs, well, you can guess how wanted a 50-year old woman is in the job market (or anywhere really) and I admit it makes me bitter to see that 30 years younger blogger girls are hired for this and that even if they're barely literate.
Okay, it doesn't feel so terrible all the time. I still have friends, I'm still writing, I dog-sit for my friends so I get plenty of lovely doggy time even though my own dog died 11 years ago. I play Hearthstone! :D But sometimes I feel just totally old and useless. Like when I compare my now-me to me 20 years back.
demagogue on 30/5/2018 at 11:26
20 years ago I was 22, I guess 2nd year of university (the important one), and I don't think I've really changed all that much. I have the same basic interests and obsessions, I think, just now I'm a more knowledgeable and experienced in them and have the wider lens perspective on them. Probably the biggest change is since then I've lived abroad in different countries for long periods, so I'm more open minded about the world and flexible with what life throws at me. Really though, there's a quote by I think Fellini where he says from when he started making movies all through his career he was in a timeless loop of creation and didn't feel like he was aging, and I think I feel sort of like that ... except I don't have all the creations to show for it (yet), just a lot of notebooks full of the outlines. So many of the key ideas I keep coming back to were first starting to blossom right around that time.
Queue on 2/6/2018 at 03:52
All in all, I'm still a Toys R Us kid.
(It's the rest of the world that keeps changing for the worse and letting me down.)
Tocky on 3/6/2018 at 21:12
Twenty years ago I never thought the world would be this messed up. It seemed to start with 9-11 but it's begun to get increasingly worse. I hate knowing there are so many lunatic evangelicals all around me. Enough to elect an egomaniac and further the wishes of a cabal of wealthy fucks who care nothing about the good things in America, the really good things, that made it such a fun place. Even technology seems to turn and bite the hand that feeds it. Greed rules. I wonder if it was a mistake to bring children into this world. No matter how I tried to arm them with actual reason the world is insidious. The fanatical are coming. The new dark age.
And then there are the Muslims who are even more religiously tyrannical. I hate to say it but they are infecting the world with their own lunacy and breeding like crazy as they move into every corner of the world. I feel we are doomed. All the nice reasoning folks are drowning in a sea of authoritarian monsters biding time till they gain numbers. Waiting till they can make you do what they want. Waiting to make you fear doing otherwise.
But I can't think about that right now. If I do I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow. I'll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. I'll think of some way to get the world back. After all, tomorrow is another day.
Starker on 4/6/2018 at 03:41
Er... why? It's a pretty famous movie.
demagogue on 4/6/2018 at 03:47
Trump's favorite movie. My first inkling of how batshit he really was was in 2000, when he was a guest host for Turner Movie Classics and he picked GWTW as the greatest movie ever, and then went on about how great the antebellum south was. Some things haven't changed Then vs. Now. It's just now things are more transparent.
LesserFollies on 4/6/2018 at 04:54
20 years ago I was a complete idiot, especially here.
Now, I still am, just more discreet about it
*hugs vas and THE duck*