"In your twenties you worry what people think of you, in your thirties you stop caring, in your forties you realize no one spends any time thinking about you anyway."
True so far in my experience (35 with friends of every age level.) But there are also many solutions to loneliness.
My engineery brain solved it for me by figuring out that inviting people to group events, preferably ones that represent mutual interests, is a good foot in the door.
Once your confidence increases a bit you can pursue deeper relationships with some of these people, as well as further amplify your results by actually organizing something you're interested in that has reach outside of you -- think of a meetup group or business/technical community.
Eventually you have hundreds of acquaintances, many will cheerfully meet you for the occasional coffee or beer, and you can start being selective about who you spend time with based on deeper shared connections. (Prior to that you'll probably have to put up with some colorful characters and learn to limit the damage they do to you.)
Not claiming to have made any of this up or that it is easy, it's hard, it takes years, it's been talked about it before. But I think I summarized it pretty well there (there are many more nuances to learn of course).
My uncle Guus has been playing viola with an orchestra in the Netherlands for many, many years; he gave me a great way to describe some of this:
> When I was young, and my beard was not this gray, and someone at the orchestra was angry with me—could be personal, professional—I would ask myself "what's wrong with me, how do I fix myself?" But I have noticed that now that I am older, and my beard is very gray, when someone is angry with me, I wonder, "what's wrong with him?"—and I don't try to fix anyone.
A lot of the "fashion rules" were made up by people in New England and other cooler climates. As you said, good luck wearing long pants through the southern US summer, which spans from May to November, when it then becomes "fall-spring" until next May. Also of note is seersucker suits and guayabara shirts, both of which see much more formal use in the south.
Agreed, but even rules aren't followed. If you go anywhere in the summer in New England you'll find people in shorts (even in upper class areas). In NYC this summer I feel bad for the finance people who probably suffered from a heat stroke while wearing a suit during our hottest days.
People online will make up rules like "men who wear this are children!" which are never based in reality. And to keep on topic, I'm sure they too stop caring by age 40 :-)
> I feel bad for the finance people who probably suffered from a heat stroke while wearing a suit during our hottest days
In my org, my reasonning for the many people wearing suits (usually not devs and management higher ups) is that their home has air conditionning, they come to work in their car with air conditionning and the building where we work has air conditionning.
That's how I think they survive. At least, that's what I hope for them.
Having grown up in the south, and lived for several years in New England, let me assure you, "humid" in the south is in a completely different class than the exceedingly brief New England summer. I've seen humid days in NE, but it's just a different thing altogether in the south where you can open the back door and walk into what feels like a wall of watery air. I'm sure NE has a day here or there where it gets to that extreme, but it's practically guaranteed in the south.
NE is a different climate; that has its perks too: beautiful fall colors and wonderful snow storms (the milder ones I find fun to watch), and relatively speaking, no humidity.
As a Texan friend of mine once (jokingly) said "Weather is what you experience in a parking lot." (because everywhere else, on a day to day basis in a city — buildings/cars — is air conditioned; only that during that short trip from building to car do you endure the great outdoors) The few New Englander's I've tried this on didn't get it, whereas southerners seem to; YMMV, of course, there's no science here.
The other thing I've never seen, outside of the south, is the horizon turning green during a bad storm (caused by light refracting through hail). Also, I highly recommend the sight of a rainstorm moving across and towards you on the plains, and the sweet scented down-drafts that precede rain. And if you're sick of weather, Silicon Valley has none. (Unless you like fog, then see SF.)
> Having grown up in the south, and lived for several years in New England, let me assure you, "humid" in the south is in a completely different class than the exceedingly brief New England summer. I've seen humid days in NE, but it's just a different thing altogether in the south where you can open the back door and walk into what feels like a wall of watery air. I'm sure NE has a day here or there where it gets to that extreme, but it's practically guaranteed in the south.
I've been to the South too; we get like a week of weather like that most summers. Maybe you could quibble about the differences but it gets hot enough that I think the whole question about whether to wear shorts is equally valid.
As far as the parking lot thing... I mean, do you think we all spend a lot of time outside in the winter?
We had a tornado briefly touch down in Brooklyn maybe 7 years ago and the sky definitely turned that green, it was the first time I had experienced that. I had read about that before and knew to get away from the windows. Luckily we were fine, but a brownstone a couple doors down had its skylights blown out.
Even if it's 105 degrees on the subway platform trying to get back to Brooklyn I'll still be wearing black jeans or pants. Shorts are for boys, tourists, and the beach.
Recently my girlfriend told me to pack some shorts for a trip to the Caribbean coast of a Latin American country and I bet her that there was no way the locals were going to be wearing shorts. I won.
He he he, went to sports bar last night, drunk guy on the patio, made some snide comment about my black socks... I couldn't care less (other than to chuckle about it right here), thats why I went to the bar still wearing my clipless pedal shoes+socks, and probably a line of mud on my ass...
My favorite version of this insight is that people spend 90+ percent of their time thinking about themselves, leaving a scant 10 percent to think about everyone else. And /your/ share of that 10 percent is vanishingly small, in almost all cases.
In my late thirties. I didn't stop caring, I just got so full caring about other stuff—wife, kids, family, career, various projects, etc.—that I just didn't have as much capacity left to worry about what people think about me as much.
I'm 26 and I almost nearly don't care and can't relate to half the things the article said. According to (unscientific) Myer's Briggs, I am very strongly introverted, however.
can't wait for forties. I always thought 'good stuff' stops coming in mid thirties when you finally feel aging take effect, but looks good stuff keeps coming :)>
If you can say this in your mid-30's and your parents are well, then chances are your 40's will be similar. At 45 and I can honestly say I have never been healthier mentally or physically. It's great! Other than presbyopia, which is easily corrected, and gray hairs, which takes <10 minutes a month for my barber to extract, I too have yet to notice any effects of aging.
Given that my 77 year old dad says the same, I may have hit the genetic lottery. I suspect he will just unexpectedly die one day while mowing the lawn, never having known what it is like to feel old.
1) I can't just eat shit and not get fat anymore. I made that mistake around 35, and it took a lot of hard work to reverse it.
2) Thining hair. Did you know that some people say that a "cure" for baldness might be worth more commercially than a cure for cancer? I don't feel that strongly about it, but it is kinda annoying.
No. 1 is utterly true. It's like I hit 40, and my whole metabolism just spun down to about 60%, the weight piled on despite no change to my diet or lifestyle. I'm still overweight (40" waist, 5'11" height), but having never really exercised in the past, getting the motivation to do it (and more importantly keep at it) is really hard.
So now I eat yoghurts instead of bagels, and stare miserably at my sugarless fat free white tea. For all the good it does...
I got hit with 1 too, I caught it early fortunately. Don't miss fried food anymore but I have cravings for desserts which I never had in my 20's :\
About 2, I started balding in my teens and my hairline more or less stabilized in 30's. Full head of hair was never part of identity, 'me according me' has been bald for a while. 20's sucked being bald but became irrelevant in 30's :D.
It takes a while before the realization that the world doesn't really give much of a shit about you kicks in and you're like "Oh, really?" then you go through a mildly deflated feeling of disconnection from society because nobody cares and then one day it hits you like Mac truck "Oh! Nobody cares! I can do whatever the fuck I want because, nobody cares!" and it liberates you. If only we'd all realized that in our 20's.
Oh, that midlife crisis thing. Just survive it when it comes. Don't wait around for it or look for it, either. It'll find you on its own time, and you won't necessarily realize what it is till it's over. Then, things are better than ever, and you'll think things like, "Why did I do all that stupid shit when I was younger?" Then you'll chuckle and go on with your day. It's not that bad.
Surely people in their twenties already realize nobody cares about them. My self-consciousness is still there, regardless of how irrational its basis is.
Start giving a shit about what you think of you. If that's hard, it's because you've not really thought about it before. Once you've got your own back, nobody else really matters.
Also talk to people. Talk to them all the time. Standing in line at the store. Passing by on the street. Just make an observation about something to start the conversation. Compliment someone. Over time you'll get two things from this. First, you'll realize that everyone is just a person like you (like, the subconscious part of your brain will get the message). Second, you'll get a bunch of little rejections (weird looks, things like that) over time in a scenario where you basically have no skin in the game. You'll no longer care about rejection and you'll realize that people rejecting you almost never has to do with you - it has to do with them.
Yeah, realize now that unless you're making daily headlines for your misdeeds or any gossip you may be generating is actively and visibly impeding your life, even those that gossip about you will be gossiping about something/one else tomorrow. In the grand scheme of things, as far as the world at large is concerned, you're meaningless. Not to say you are meaningless, you're quite probably a most lovely person, but if you take the number of people who know you, that you care about and care what they think, divide that by the number of people in the world and the resulting number relates somehow to the amount of significance you have. Given that lack of significance, which is remarkably unfair considering how awesome you are, does it really matter what you do as long as it doesn't land you in prison or impede your freedom? I mean, if nobody gives a shit, why should you waste time caring about what they think? It doesn't serve to make you happy in any way...
Do whatever you think is more 'scary/make people laugh at you'. Then repeat, and again, until you no longer care.
I'm 33, haven't cared in a long time. Just do stupid shit and own it, with time, it is still stupid shit, but you won't feel embarrassed by it (I live in a posh area, my kid goes to a posh school, I wear 15 year old tshirts (that lost all their color due to washing), no shoes/socks, use shorts 90+% of the time)
edit: And interestingly enough, even though I'm married and with little interest in that, the amount of female attention I get over the ones that care is amazing (and no, I'm not good looking, 5'6, bald earlier in life, long beard and a few scars in my face)
I have found meditation helpful. It has enabled me to treat my feelings more like weather, to put some distance between stimulus and response. If you spend enough time sitting quietly while letting your thoughts come and go, you begin to take them less seriously.
For me it's in some ways similar to the part in the debugging or performance tuning cycle where you're just watching things happen, letting logs and metrics scroll by on your screen. Externally, you look like you're not really doing anything. But what you're doing is noticing relationships, reoccurances, rhythms. At some point you say, "That's odd. When X happens, Y follows. I wonder why that is?" And that's where the magic begins.
Pay attention to everything that is apparently mundane and ordinary. Don't dismiss it as normal or uninteresting. The more different things you can appreciate in this way, the easier it is to let go of the "surface stuff" and be who you are inclined to be naturally, as over time your values will adjust to make room for the mundane and it correspondingly becomes easier to see what you really care about. If you cling to a narrow value system then you never hit the point where it coheres into a life you feel in control of - and that will really leave you adrift when you're older and all the opportunities have passed!
It depends on what is refraining you from achieving it. Is it because you aren't confident enough? is it because you haven't achieve your most important goals in your life? is it because you are introvert? the most you understand yourself, the easier it will be to solve it.
I skipped that long line somewhere around my mid to late twenties when it became quite clear that the majority of friends I made amounted to "no one spends any time thinking about you anyway".
How's the saying go?
"In your twenties you worry what people think of you, in your thirties you stop caring, in your forties you realize no one spends any time thinking about you anyway."