katyg

Hello all

Hope you're all doing well, haven't posted for a long time. My question is one I have been contemplated over a cigarette today. If you could talk to your younger self - say 5 years ago - what would you say? What advice would give you give yourself in a marty mcfly time travelling situation? Or would you say nothing at all!?

I myself would tell myself not to take up smoking, love myself a little more and not worry so much....

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"We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give"
Winston Churchill

Willravel

5 years ago? Interesting...

Hey, Will.

She's going to leave you, so brace yourself. When she says, "It's not you", she's trying to say she's broken and letting you fix her will ultimately only make you less healthy.

Don't buy that Audi. It's a POS. Buy a used car with decent mileage and remember the man makes the car, not the other way around.

Host is going to get banned from TFP because he refuses to change his posting style to fit with the admins' preferences. You might want to let him know.

Protect your back when exercising.

Use low-VOC varnish on the floor.

GL, HF

Xerxys

Younger me ... a couple of things.

Be more careful goddammit!

Don't trust anyone. I repeat, trust NO ONE!! They are all incompetent fuckers that really don't care about you!

Get rid of BofA sooner rather than later.

Forget Xerox, those stocks suck ass and they're about to suck even more.

Launch and trademark the company name ASAP!

Everythings going to be fine.

levite

See, by five years ago, I was already getting my shit together. If I could talk to my younger self, what would really help is talking to myself like twenty-five years ago. If I could I might say stuff like:

* Stop caring what other people think. You will, soon, anyhow. But sooner is better.

* Be fearless about being who you are. I guarantee that everyone will like you way, way more than when you try to be what you're not and inevitably don't do it well.

* High school girls are fickle. They also recover fast. Stop being a gentleman and waiting for a girl who just broke up to get over it. I assure you, someone else will not scruple, and they will swoop in and hook up with the girl you like, and you will be out in the cold and the girl will be hooked up with a douchebag. The douchebag in question will usually be Fred.

* Lock up the porn. Your mom will find it, she will freak out, and you will have a miserable two weeks of suffering questions about your fetishes, and you will be forced to read misanthropic second-generation feminist tracts against pornography.

* Give up on getting drunk: it never works out well, and you don't even like it. Just smoke weed. You like it better, and you end up partying with much cooler people.

* Try to do more homework. I know it's idiotic and stupid. But the more you can prove how many hoops you can jump through, the more freedom you will win from having to jump through idiotic hoops.

* I know everyone is wearing them, but get rid of the jacket with all the zippers. You look like an enormous douche in it. Spend your money instead on the unconstructed linen jacket: trust me, "Miami Vice" is hot shit, and you will look way better.

* Stop using product in your hair. It doesn't make you look more like one of the teen cops on "21 Jump Street." It does make you look more like one of the unbelievably stereotypical teen Mexican drug dealers on "21 Jump Street."

* Go out for theater sooner than later. You will be good at it. Just don't be scared to sing loud. You actually can sing, despite what Jamie said to you. Don't believe him, he's a dick.

* Your stepdad is an asshole. I know your mom says otherwise, but she's wrong. She will realize this twenty years too late to do you any good. Trust me now. Stop listening to anything he says, especially when he says you're wrong. You're not wrong, and he will never get that.

* When you get to college, major in theater. Minor in English Lit. Trust me, it will work out better that way. Also, get certified as an English teacher right away. This will save you so much fucking time and effort over the rest of your life, you will not believe it.

* Also in college, don't stay together with Katie for so long. She's a lesbian, and won't realize it until you've been together for 5 years. Break up with her after junior year: you'll both end up happier, and you will get six kinds of laid your senior year.

* During the summer between junior and senior year, don't start smoking those clove cigarettes. They're bad for you. You won't enjoy shaking the addiction. Also, that unbroken streak of going to the gym and eating better that you'll be on that summer-- keep it going. It will really be worth your while, because it'll save you hella headaches later on.

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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Fotzlid

Don't buy that house...wait 6 months.

LaLa1

^^^what Fotzlid said^^^^

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Never make someone a priority in your life when you are just an option in theirs - Author Unknown

Baraka_Guru

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

YaWhateva

Have fun.
Don't ask her to marry you, it will eventually take a large portion of your young adulthood up and end terribly.
Biology is a shit degree and you will hate it very much.
Have fun.

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“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly

"This is my United States of Whateva!"

Charlatan

Five years ago? That's not all that long ago...

I would tell myself what I told myself then. Hang tough. It will get better. You've taken a big gamble and you will make it pay off by working hard, listening to the right people and absorbing everything you can.

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"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

amonkie

This is actually kind of fitting because 5 years ago almost to the week I embarked on a major life change milestone.

Once you stop trying to fix other people, you will find out that they don't need fixing.

The only person who you can change is yourself. You will save yourself years of heartache and tears.

You don't always have to have all the answers. Ask questions.

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Calling from deep in the heart, from where the eyes can't see and the ears can't hear, from where the mountain trails end and only love can go... ~~~ Three Rivers Hare Krishna

dlish

i'd give my younger self a massive slap to the back of the head.

Harden the fuck up!

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An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

ASU2003

I made no mistakes I could change in the past 5 years.

20 years ago... Go out with Jessica since she likes you, smoke weed when you are in college* (*at least when there are other cute single girls smoking it), take a year off after high school and travel the world (you can make money by working crappy jobs along the way)

Jove

I would probably say "Don't panic" and then stare awkwardly at my younger self for about 5 seconds and run away laughing.

snowy

Five years ago?

When the job at rehab goes to shit, walk away and collect unemployment. Don't stick around through the summer and torture yourself, thinking you have to work. It's not worth it.

Sell the extra car while it's still running. He doesn't need it anyway, and it will end up parked in your driveway(s) for the next 5 years.

Don't leave E.'s bike at OSU overnight. It will get stolen.

Relax about your relationship. It's fine, you're fine, and five years from now, you'll marry him.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

bagatelle

I could have said all those things to myself, ESPECIALLY the first one. I've never written, but this could be replaced by 'studying more'.

Craven Morehead

5 years ago really isn't all that long ago, however it wish I could have avoided the single most traumatic event in my life, taking a job 3 years ago that turned out to be shit and consequently being unemployed for 17 months. Yeah, I'd like to talk to myself about that.

But I think I'd really like to go back 25-30 years ago and tell myself to focus better, to plan for the future better, to go back to school and finish my degree, to not accept things as they are. But would that disrupt all the good things that occurred since then? A quandary for sure.

Grasshopper Green

I'd go back 15 years and tell myself not to drop out of college.

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"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings; steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king"

Formerly Medusa

ZombieSquirrel

• They're dead. You're kind of a whack job because of it. Go talk to a professional.
• Let it all out. It's ok to bitch about your life.
• Make a better investment with the inheritance.
• Communicate with him. Tell him why you're leaving.
• Get over yourself and be with her. It may not last, but at least you would have given it a chance.
• You're good. Get serious about rugby and play for the elite team and then the Midwest team. You'll get too old and the disease will wreck your body. Do it before it's too late.
• There's a list of people to stay away from. You were just trying to punish yourself for breaking his heart.
• You're making all the right career moves. No problems there kiddo.
• Winning lotto numbers are .............

If I could go back 10+ years....I'd make my parents go to the doctor sooner.

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Attack ZombieSquirrels

jewels

1. Don't ignore warning signs. Get over your hatred of medical professionals; stop cutting your nose to spite your face.

2. It's okay to be impulsive as long as you're willing to accept the consequences of not thinking things through.

3. It might be nice if you practiced what you preach.

4. Taking responsibility does not involve guilt, self-hatred or any negativity. Just figure out what needs to be done to make things right, do it and move on.

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We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess, than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain

rmarshall

Five years ago I was making a shit load of money and not saving it. I bought boats and junk I can't afford to play with now. So, I would warn myself about the coming recession and to put some cash away. I could be at university now getting an advanced degree in something like computer security.

Thirty years ago I just bought my Apple II computer and the IBM PC hadn't come out yet. Gates had done Applesoft Basic and was working on MSDOS. I should have bought Microsoft and Apple stocks.

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"Do not resent growing old. Many are denied the privilege" Irish proverb

Manic_Skafe

- You're crazy and really, it's the best thing you've got going for you.
- Get off your ass and stop waiting for life to happen to you.
- Drive less. Walk More. Drink less. Sleep more.
- Stop treating your relationships as boot camp for broken people. Save yourself.
- The courage required to walk away from dead-end people and situations will ultimately cost you a hell of a lot less than foolishly persisting in folly until violently forced to change. Sack up.
- The fact that you keep dating that same girl in so many different iterations has a hell of a lot less to do with them than it does with you.

...

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"Porn is a zoo of exotic animals that becomes boring upon ownership." -Nersesian

roachboy

i don't know if i could have changed the more epic fuck-ups i did...at any rate, almost all of them happened more than 5 years ago. if i could talk to my 20 year old self...i don't know how i could though because he knew everything and was an idiot because of that. but it'd have been nice to prevent him from eating a massive handful of lsd and losing a couple years because his brain turned to a thin glass ball and then broke.

it'd have been nice had he been able to understand why he considered doing it, that it wasn't really an impulse thing.

there are a few other choice that i'd prefer looking back on them not to have made, but really they're all part of the game, yes?

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

Xazy

Buy gold, and keep investing in it!

Don't worry about your mom ever, she will soon be persona non Grata by the entire family.

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Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

mixedmedia

Five years ago I would have told myself to quit that thankless job in that misogynistic, soul-sucking environment (because they're going to fire you in a year anyway) and go to nursing school.
I would be done by now.

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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce

StanT

Five years ago? Nothing really.

20? That reflux problem is going to cause cancer, go see a doctor, dumbass.

Wes Mantooth

I'm not sure I've changed enough in the last 5 years to really give any kind of significant advice, if I could speak to an 18 or 20 year old me then I'd give him and earful. 31 year old Wes would take 26 year old Wes out for a beer and hit on chicks or something equally stupid and just have a good time.

I might be inclined to tell him that success and ambition isn't everything and he should spend as much time in the next 5 years fostering friendships and relationships as he does trying to get ahead...maybe 31 year old Wes might be a little happier.

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