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What have you done in the last ten years?
Asked in the spirit of the new decade.
I am 14, so mostly growing up and realizing that the world is probably going to enter a recession when I reach adulthood which will suck for reaching financial independence.
Going through puberty, even if it's just the beginning of it and seeing one of my cats die from kidney failure and hearing that my grandma died from cancer, which is very sad :(
In the last 10 years I have:
Man, a decade's a hard thing to sum up. Thank you for this. I was looking ahead at what I'm afraid is going to be a hard decade for us all, and looking back at how far I've come was comforting.
Congrats on your decade! That's some big stuff you accomplished! 🎉
Thats kind of an odd sequence of events, given that most motorcycles are manual.
I did notice that.
But then I got distracted by the second oddity.
I can't imagine only just having figured out counter steering, then trying to also work out manual gear shifting.
I graduated high school just before the 2008 recession, so I can definitely sympathize with your concerns about moving into the workforce during an economic downturn.
A lot can happen in 10 years and I guess this has been my first real decade as an adult.
Don't despair too much @Kuromantis, despite how bleak the media can make the future seem. You really can never know where life will lead you, and you just have to do the best you can with what you have. Even then, it can all come down to luck, but we have to try to play our hand the best we can.
I lost a couple cats-- or at least my parents did, which were cats I grew up with-- as well as all three of my grandparents this decade (I never met my grandma on my mom's side). I can absolutely understand your anxieties heading into the next decade.
This is what I achieved this decade:
That's about it.
Things for 2020-2030? No idea. I didn't buy a house (that's still a pipe dream), I work at a very steady but ultimately unfulfilling job while aggressively saving into a retirement account (about 12% of my paycheck)-- but as you'd said, I'm pretty sure that shit'll crash soon, and I've heard horror stories of 401ks getting liquidated when companies go bankrupt.
We're not having kids. Too much misery is coming down the pipe between climate change and consolidation of wealth, and we're not in any financial spot to do it anyway, that it's just not a thing we're ever going to consider-- so we're "losing" a few friends that way in that they prefer to bond with couples who have kids. We'd maybe foster later in life if we're able, but right now, the decision isn't met very open-mindedly.
The only thing that I'd like us to maybe do is move the hell out of the US; the crap healthcare system feels more like a "when" than an "if" in regards to bankrupting individuals.
Maybe I'll learn some programming while I'm at it, that seems like all the rage nowadays.
Anxieties ahoy.
Your story sounds similar to mine. Met wife ok OKcupid, no kids, just recently got savings built up, shoving money into retirement accounts.
I've considered moving out of the US, I'm not sure I'm willing to make that large of a change despite all the things happening. The election this year will be a significant source of stress, and it's outcome will probably affect my mental health for at least the next 4 years.
Edit to say that if programming interests you, there are a lot of ways to learn, and a lot of ways to apply it. I enjoy it a lot both professionally and personally.
I started off the decade with my spouse getting a chronic illness and us losing $100,000 in a bad real estate purchase. Surprisingly, we made up the money in the next year in other investments, which I was not expecting, and for which I am very grateful. My spouse, unfortunately, has not gotten better.
At work, we released a groundbreaking but very controversial product at the beginning of the decade and lost a lot of our customers. By the end of the decade we had not only made it up, but doubled our user base.
My wife and I lost our 2nd dog in the first half of the decade, but we moved on and after a couple of years years got another dog who just helped us usher in the New Year.
I broke off contact with my parents who were constantly gas-lighting us. It's really helped me to grow as a person.
I went to many conferences and learned a ton of stuff related to my job (which is also my passion). We bought a piano and an ukulele and I've started making music again, which is fun.
It's funny you mention being worried about a possible recession in the coming years. I graduated college in the early 90s during a recession, and there were lots of doom and gloom reports on the news about the prospects for new grads. But the world-wide web had just been invented and took off like a rocket. It ended up being one of the best times to get a job because tech companies started hiring like crazy. If you could type or draw, you could get a job working on someone's web site.
My main point being that there are ups and downs. Don't get too caught up on the downs because they're often temporary. Do yourself a favor and learn about how to stay out of debt. Through all of these things, I've never had any debt other than a mortgage with a reasonable monthly payment that I could cover for a long time if I lost my job. That helped to make the down periods easier because I didn't owe a lot of money and could invest my extra income to make it grow.
So I am 26 - so I guess a huge part of my life happened in the last 10 years:
How come? This seems unusual.
I was backpacking in Australia and took some jobs (picking blueberries, selling fast food in a foodtruck, planting strawberries) which were just badly paid and the work conditions sucked, so I just left them after a day.
Oh right. That’s makes sense. Labour on fruit farms is notoriously horrible
Wow, a lot to contemplate in the last 10 years. I have:
10 years ago I was 18, so this decade has been pretty significant for me. I've:
This is an interesting exercise. In roughly chronological order:
Looking back, I've had a very fortunate decade. This is nice to help put things in perspective. Thank you @Kuromantis for the suggestion.
And I am where I am now. Working, engaged to a wonderful woman, and enjoying life. A lot of where I am and who I am with is all purely from luck I think. Although I can say that many steps along the way were goals that I set for myself and was able to accomplish them. I try to be as flexible with my expectations as possible so as when things don't go my way I can see it as just a journey along the path I am on.
I will say that high school me, and even 14 year old me, is radically different than who I am now. Your views and values will change along the way. My advice is to watch and learn from others. Try to let others make mistakes and learn from them but don't be afraid to make mistakes yourself.
A lot happened in my decade from age 26 to 36:
Someone asked me this the other day, and I had a distressing lack of answers that were about personal accomplishments.
10 years ago I was 15.
:/
My first sexual experience was terrible.
I was a horny 17-year-old, not yet aware of what having sex actually entails (as in, the relationship with the other person, the emotional and physical connection, the intimacy and the ensuing vulnerability...). No one there to teach me that, either. Most of my experience up to this point was from porn, and I had not yet realized that porn is pure gratification, not a source of education.
My girlfriend didn't have it in her to handle my distress and performance anxiety. We just left things where they were, without a discussion or a suggestion. Thankfully, I was still too horny to care; it would've been traumatizing otherwise.
It took a different girl – who was open, honest, and patient with me – to help me understand my sexuality and what sex really can be.