Post: #1

Was a normal work day for me and by the time the weekend came around I was tired and didnt even have the urge to go do anything.

I started thinking and I realized that I am approaching 30 soon!

So whats the problem? I got a new job which I enjoy but i dont make very much money, I have a girlfriend that is good to me but isnt really exciting, I have a car which gets me from A to B but its not the car I really want, I guess im just unsatisfied over all and I feel like time is running out faster and faster, I just have no clue where to go, I work in carpentry/roof building right now so I figure I look into getting an OSHA certificate and start looking into some construction companys, at one point I thought the military was a good option but I think that boast has sailed for me.

Im not really even sure what I want, I can only compare to what I have, I have a job, not a very good one (even though I do enjoy the work), I want to make more money, I have a girlfriend that treats me good and will do anything for me but I just want to fuck a bunch of girls, I have a car but like I said I want a better one.

I guess I just want more..I dont want to be approaching 40 and be in this same spot, I have seen it so many times before, thats when the regret starts to come in, damn should I have just finished college regardless of the debt? Damn should I just have just joined the military when I had the chance? A lot of what ifs and just a year ago I was in a much better position than I was, the girl, the job, the car, it was great for me compared to the dumb 20 something year old that just wanted to drink and party...

I guess that satisfaction never lasts long though, I want more, I need more, slowly but surely I feel that dissatisfaction creeping up on me and I need to make some major moves..

Post: #2

assuming you're not overweight or disabled to a point you can't join, you're not too old for military service. But that won't make you happy, you don't even know what you want it seems, and the military while giving structure won't make you any happier if you do it just cuz you think it's a good idea.

Post: #3

(09-24-2017 10:41 AM)cascadecombo Wrote:  assuming you're not overweight or disabled to a point you can't join, you're not too old for military service. But that won't make you happy, you don't even know what you want it seems, and the military while giving structure won't make you any happier if you do it just cuz you think it's a good idea.

I concur and if you have a 4 year degree you can be an officer (2nd Lieutenant i believe). I know of a similar situation to the OP and that situation brought order to chaos.

Join the military OP. If you are not fit to join get your weight down and exercise.

Post: #4

I dont have a degree to go in as in officer though.

Post: #5

You are chasing material things not because they are going to make you happy but because you think they are going to bring you a lifestyle that will make you happier -- better car --value, more money -- value = hotter women.

Life doesn't work that way though. A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone. Sell everything you own. Don't owe anyone a dime, have money in the bank, and go after memories, adventure, and freedom; the rest is just here to make you feel secure, and being secure is it's own form of prison -- you can see it when you look around.

Post: #6

You sound pretty successful to me.

A car that works, a job that pays the bills, and a girlfriend who makes you happy.

You want more? Take some risks! But be aware that sometimes the grass isn't always greener.

Post: #7

OP, it sounds like you don't know what you're really about - and I get that. I was there in my early 30s, starting to build up steam in my late 20s. It's a time when many of us feel a call to truly understand ourselves better, since we may have the external trappings of 'success' but lack the inner satisfaction that only we can find for ourselves.

I recommend you purchase and work through this book: https://books.google.com/books/about/Is_...ead_button

It's made a huge difference in my life, once I found my 'genius' and identified my purpose. It can and does shift and grow over time but at least knowing what my core gifts are right now helps me find my satisfaction independent from any person or thing.

I believe, from my experience, it'll be time well-spent for you. More so to do this first than simply 'get a hobby' (which one?) or 'join the military arr arr!' (why?). If or when you know the why (your talent, genius, abilities, inclinations) in a very clear way as the Richards book draws from you, the what and who and when will naturally follow. Good luck!

Post: #8

(09-24-2017 10:18 AM)TheDuncan Wrote:  Was a normal work day for me and by the time the weekend came around I was tired and didnt even have the urge to go do anything.

I started thinking and I realized that I am approaching 30 soon!

So whats the problem? I got a new job which I enjoy but i dont make very much money, I have a girlfriend that is good to me but isnt really exciting, I have a car which gets me from A to B but its not the car I really want, I guess im just unsatisfied over all and I feel like time is running out faster and faster, I just have no clue where to go, I work in carpentry/roof building right now so I figure I look into getting an OSHA certificate and start looking into some construction companys, at one point I thought the military was a good option but I think that boast has sailed for me.

Im not really even sure what I want, I can only compare to what I have, I have a job, not a very good one (even though I do enjoy the work), I want to make more money, I have a girlfriend that treats me good and will do anything for me but I just want to fuck a bunch of girls, I have a car but like I said I want a better one.

I guess I just want more..I dont want to be approaching 40 and be in this same spot, I have seen it so many times before, thats when the regret starts to come in, damn should I have just finished college regardless of the debt? Damn should I just have just joined the military when I had the chance? A lot of what ifs and just a year ago I was in a much better position than I was, the girl, the job, the car, it was great for me compared to the dumb 20 something year old that just wanted to drink and party...

I guess that satisfaction never lasts long though, I want more, I need more, slowly but surely I feel that dissatisfaction creeping up on me and I need to make some major moves..

Every man goes through what you're describing.

You need adventure, fear, pain, and struggle. Without struggle there is no growth. There's nothing quite like going through a challenging portion of life and coming out on the other side a better man.

You weren't put on earth just so a woman could be good to you. One day that will satisfy you, but if it doesn't satisfy you today, then cut her out. It will be cruel, and sad, and you'll feel terrible. But you'll be free, and afraid, and it sounds like that's what you need. It's better to inflict that pain on yourself and on her rather than settle with her and always be wondering "what if". Besides, don't waste her time if your heart is not 100% in the situation. She'll respect you in the long run if you're honest and tell her that you're just not that into her.

In regards to money and cars and all that shit, you'll never be completely satisfied. Which is why you need real long term goals. It's fun getting caught up in the temporary thrills of having a fun car and a hot girlfriend, but these are not the end goal of life.

I'm 36 and have a fun little sports car and a new girlfriend that deepthroats me on an almost daily basis and makes concerted efforts to bring other girls home (no luck yet, she had one that was into her but the gf was on her period) Better believe I'm enjoying the fuck out of life right now and I'm riding high point. But I know like all things, these too will lose their shine and it'll take something else to provide my thrills. In the midst of all that I still have my long term goals I seek to achieve.

Post: #9

^ Get your residential builders license and start bidding some small weekend work - kitchen / bathroom remodels that can be completed on Sat / Sun (Assuming your work week is M-F)

For some of the small interior remods you wont even need your builders license (only need license to pull permit) but it adds credibility when starting out.

If you are in the carpenters union talk to some other guys about moonlighting to make sure the union turns a blind eye.

Post: #10

How's your fico score? How about your girlfriends?

I understand and respect those who say dontmfocus on the material things, but sometimes you need to change from the outside in.

Maybe an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrofoglio or a brand new BMW M4 is exactly what you need to get out of your rut.

Aloha!

Post: #11

Mate, you've got a job, a girlfriend and a car. That's more than many other guys have got.

My advice...go to Thailand for a couple of weeks. Don't take your girlfriend.

Post: #12

Deep inside a man is the urge to have a kid. Seeing yourself in someone else completes you. Prepare for it because life only gets harder.

Post: #13

Welcome to life.

Post: #14

OK, so you aren't satisfied.

You have one of two options:

(A) Learn to accept what you have an adjust your attitude as necessary. I've recently done that myself, as transitioning out of the student phase mentality of always having the eye on the prize and planning ahead to the next step became a lifestyle for me in the 9 years that I was focused on university level study.

However, the phase of life is over and I had to adjust to appreciating and enjoying what I have now (and taking advantage of all the great opportunities my current situation offers) instead of ignoring and missing out on all the blessings of the present just to chase the next big thing.

(B) Decide that you can never accept what you have now and create a plan for achieving the lifestyle you actually want. This is risky business, however, because gaining the material things that you seem to desire will probably simply led to more dissatisfaction and new unfulfilled desires.

The trick here is to learn to know yourself well enough to know what you really want and plan accordingly. I've also done this myself, by determining the things that I actually enjoy (and realizing that they are well within range of my grasp) and making a plan to make them accessible to me. My plan included no longer working on Thursday and Friday (because since I must work on Saturday and Sunday to meet my financial obligations, there's no good reason not to socialize on Friday, a day when people tend to be more free to meet up). I also put a bunch of time into investigating housing options in Beijing to find a neighbourhood to live in that was not too expensive, but also highly accessible. I won't bore you with the additional details of my plan, but I'm confident that there are means of achieving a more satisfying life right now and in the future without going down the road of pointless acquisition.

For most people, the best satisfaction in life will come from having good relationships/friendships with quality people who you can share time and conversations with.

Post: #15

You can either:

1. Be happy with what you have, start enjoying what life has to offer now, go through the motions at work meaning do enough to get by.

2. Throw yourself into the corporate rat race, find training/certificates, go back to school, try and negotiate a raise, look for higher paying gigs, completely change your mindset to always chasing more money.

3. Take some risks, get out of your comfort zone, try some new things. Possibly something very different that what you do for a living and try and turn that into a career. Also called "finding and pursuing your passion."

Possible Consequences:

1. Relationships with your friends and family will be great but you will not notice. All you will notice and remember is being looked down upon by those that are clearly more successful than you. As you age, your social media circles will be a constant reminder of this. Ultimately you might do something stupid like marry the wrong girl and start having children as your way of trying to "do something with your life." This way you are no some average joe with an average gf and an average car, you are now also a husband and father...with an average job, average wife, average car and probably average mouths to feed.


2. If very focused and determined, you will end up making more money, completely changing your financial situation. Not only will your net monthly income be considerably higher, you will get constantly pre-aproved for all sorts of things. You will lease foreign premium car, qualify for a mortage and quickly begin dating better looking women. Unfortunately all of those will be temporary happy moments that you will quickly forget. Eventually the law of diminishing returns will catch up with you and you will quickly realize that you need way more money then you have now for your next material high. The hotter women are you are dating are also more high maintenance, your lease requires more money down and your insurance has gone up. At some point you realize that your bills own you and the worst part is that there is no going back. Once you drive the fancy car, fuck the younger hotter pussy, live in a better place and have a high take home pay, you can longer envision a life where you make 1/3 of what you make now, live in a shitty apartment and go back to fucking single moms on their terms. As you get older, that window is no longer an option. Your relationship with your friends and family suffers as your conversations become dry and repetitive where people start to see you as more of a salesman.


3. You begin by trying something that you might have been into when you were younger or something that may currently be just a hobby. You spend more time with this and do more research into what it takes to actually turn this hobby into a viable business. As your obsession continues, you are filled with excitement that this could actually happen if you devote your time and energy to it. Ultimately you come to the realization that you can't do both work and your now business-hobby at the same time. At some point, if you are serious about this you need to quit your day job in order to focus on your night hobby. You build a plan involving saving large amounts of money that will keep you afloat as you grow your business. After you bank enough money you are now ready to embark on your new career. Right at the beginning you start having problems that you never thought you had to deal with. Budgeting, marketing, strategy, taxes etc. You quickly realize that this is even more work than your average job with currently not much pay, but its all ok because you are following your "dream." You need to work 5 times harder than your regular job to make this work. And even then, a wrong move could take it all away. You also don't have much time for family and friends.

All 3 scenarios have their ups and downs. You gotta figure out what kind of person you are, your talents and how badly do you want to change your life.

Post: #16

Geez it all sounds so bleak, I do want to make something clear though, I do live for the memories and not for the material, I’d rather die with a relativly mediocre salary but have traveled the world and seen and done it all that work my life away with just money to show, a child is something that also interests me but I have stayed clear of that for most of my life, I know what responsibility that brings.

The part about leaving my girlfriend and really doing my own thing, I love her and all (not IN LOVE with her), that would be tough as hell considering how much she loves me..I mean it can be done if need be and I can be an asshole but that would hurt me to and thats saying something, I have no issue breaking sluts off, but she isnt, she is a woman of the best kind.

Post: #17

Interesting, I had my 28th birthday yesterday too and my feelings about approaching 30s are clouding my mind too.
The way I threw up my 16 - 25 into trash and just played World of Warcraft, cs source and UT 2004 still haunts me and I regret every single day I played games instead of self development, study and gaming girls.. I also got morbidly obese which is something I fight very slowly till this day.
And I am also over 3 year on antidepressants, tho in about month I should start lowering intake and starting to live without them.

I know that I could end way worse, despite all my mistakes I made I also had weird amount of luck that prevented me from going beyond point of no return, but hell when I see people younger than me having no debts, traveling, not being years without sex, that makes my depression going away slower.

Yeah this was was mostly self sorry rant, but I feel that it belongs here as it could server as motivation to younger folks to not make same/some mistakes like I did.

Post: #18

I think it's perhaps just the nascent realisation that you are no longer a very young man, though you are still a young one.

I recently turned 28 myself, at the end of the hardest and most comically disappointing summer of my life (due to a succession of significant blows, some worse than others, and the worst of which were beyond my control. The real cost to me has been over £2 million).

I think it is a tricky age. There's a realisation that one cannot simply be unrealised potential any more. Unless you have been on a very specific path from a young age, say medicine, or scientific research because you are that type, then you probably still have that feeling that you could be almost anything in any direction - and all you need to do is apply yourself. But there is also that understanding that you can't actually be all things, and that you are reaching a point where you must close the door to all the options and opportunities of youth, which are in fact false promises anyway, and pick something which may define the course of your adult life.

It can seem terribly constricting, but I think there is actually a great deal of freedom in it. I think 28ish is a good age to make an informed, adult decision about the way in which you want to live your life. That's not to say it would be immutable, but I think you could soundly decide the broad specifics of the ways in which you would like your life to develop, and to attribute a rough weighting to them.

In a way, I think 28 is probably an age at which one can finally start to relax into life just a little. To take a personal example, it has become clear to me over the summer that, for all the frustrations, disappointments, and indeed disasters I have had to face, I simply must be an 'entrepreneur'. When I was younger, I had job offers from all the big banks, law firms, consultancy firms etc. I could have had any one of the most desirable, lucrative jobs in a range of different fields. Over the past 6 or 7 years of building businesses, and meeting with various triumphs and disasters, it has been a constant, nagging doubt for me that I could have been any number of other things, all of which carried with them far greater financial certainty and life stability than the path I'd chosen. I was consumed in many ways by the idea that I had all this unfulfilled potential, and that I could express it in almost any direction and free myself from all the tumult.

Now, on the back of this summer particularly, it is absolutely clear to me that I have no choice but to create and build businesses. It goes to the very core of who I am, and what my innate drivers are. It has been some time, the longest time to date, since I have questioned whether I was doing the right thing, even in the midst of chaos. This has been an enormous relief to me, more than I can really adequately express.

The point of the example is that I think by this age you are in a position to make an informed decision. That being the case, I think the best thing you can do for your life satisfaction is simply to pick something you know you can be good at, some direction in which to apply yourself for the longer term, and really give yourself over to it. You are of an age where you perhaps ought to be able to do this, and put aside the siren calls of 'missed opportunity', that come with being a bright young man who could do a bunch of things. I think, at the point where you are in a position to make a meaningful decision (and I'm not sure whether most people could make it before the end of their 20s), there is tremendous peace in making this kind of commitment.

Post: #19

I don't know you well enough to give you a specific answer - but it sounds like there's something fundamentally wrong/missing in your life, that you need to find.

Examine your life and find the contradiction; the source of tension. Like this article I wrote. Somewhere in your life, there's two opposing forces leaning up against each other, threatening tectonic behaviour. You need to figure out what they are before an earthquake is triggered.

Post: #20

Life's a bitch, and then you die.

I think it's good for you understand that what you're feeling is essentially the same thing everyone, for all of time, is feeling. All your friends, you dad and grandad when they were 28, everyone.

Being generally dissatisfied with life is the regular condition for the vast majority. You will survive and suffer it just like the rest of us. Hopefully along the way you can find some bits of joy, hope, and make a family to pass on that hope to as well.

Just do your best, you get what you get.

Post: #21

jesus i haven't been on here in a looooong time.

Im only 24 but i can tell you this right now, jiu jitsu will save your life.


Thank me later

Post: #22

I am a few years older than you. In the most simplistic way I can put it in writing, what you are feeling is the manifestation of your insecurities, and lack of long term goals.

You have to understand that materials things will not make you happy, but rather when you achieve the material things is the tangible result of the personal inner efforts you put in order to get to that goal. The same will matter if you buy that car you want, or if you have the wealth to buy it. You will get the same satisfaction. The decision of buying it or not, will be merely be a mirror of your personality and how you want the world/society to see and perceive you. If you are the kind that doesn't give a fuck you will most likely not buy the car (and do something else with the money); on the other hand, if you want to feel loved/accepted by the part of society that puts high value in the new car you want to buy, then obviously you will buy it.

The same can be said about your companion. The pick of women in your life has to also reflect your objective at that time. If you want to form a family and have a nurturing, loving environment for your children + you want to be there for them and be part of it all => you will chose a family oriented woman who value family and all it involves. You don't have to be in-love with your companion, I believe for a strong union you need a woman who respects and honors you above all, and you are obviously attracted to her + can live together harmoniously.

Your feeling is similar to that Sunday blues we sometimes get. I suggest you start self developing areas in which your manhood is weak. I don't know you personally, but I suggest first eating well and working out. I would start a work out routine of three/four times a week and get enough nutrition to make your body stronger, leaner and powerful looking. Just this change will change your entire perspective, it will build you confidence and it is great practice for life because it takes a lot of inner strength to keep it extended periods of times, each day is a challenge, day after day, month after month, year after year; just like life. Start with this; you feel in control of your life. After a year, ask yourself that same questions you are asking yourself now.

Life will not get easier with time, I guarantee you it will get rougher and you will face hard times and difficulty; however, you have the choice of getting stronger and be prepared to overcome all life has for you. Always look to improve those that you identify as your weak areas, one after the other; and always strive to be a better man. It is up to you to get rid of your insecurities and to keep your path to self development (long term goals.) Good Luck brother.

Post: #23

This age is seems to be crucial for most of men. I have friends of this age with different life-goals and lifestyle, but they all think something is bad. The difference is how they deal with it. One of them moved to his rented falat from grannys house, one changed his low-pay job for another low-pay job and another started own bussiness.

I turned 25 and I must say I´ve always be that kind of person, who was some kind of against this society. I thought I can live my live without much money. I was in teens. But now I see these minds as some rebelious time of my life. At this moment, I feel often lost too, but if there´s something I see as life goal of adult man, then it´s bulding. Build whatever, bussiness, family... but I think that it´s imporant for man to see something behind himself.
But you can´t say "money are unneccesary". When you build your own family, you want only best for them, when you have bussiness, you do it to be profitable...
So my opinion about money rapidly changed in past years and it´s imporant to chase them (unless you choose some extremely different lifestyle, which is option too). But it´s not like you chase money to buy good car. You should strive for building, creating, self-developing... and money should be just consequence of this struggle. The same like going to gym mentioned above. You shouldn´t exercise to look good. You should exercise to be better and looking good is just secondary consequence. That´s my opinion 3 years before 28 years.

And thought at the end. Those who say they don´t need money in their life - those do the worst jobs, that are killing themself alive.

Post: #24

I feel the same at the age of 21. One thing I have realized is though, that you gotta do what you gotta do, but remember to enjoy things that you like on your journey as well. Life is like 90% boring, but you have to make the best out of the remaining 10%.