I am turning 18 tomorrow. Any life advice for me
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This was reported twice for not being a shower thought. The reporters are correct, it’s not strictly a shower thought.
But thinking about getting older is something we all do in the shower, for multiple reasons :)
Looks like people are mostly enjoying it so I’ll let it stay for now.
Thinks about 18 year olds in the shower
Mods get them!
I think that’s legal… Barely
It IS legal.
Here’s my rantomendation:
Don’t hit, mame or kill anybody ever. That includes when driving.
When driving pay attention to the road and only to the road. Ignore work or home or school problems. Don’t zone out.
Listen to your parents but don’t listen to the parts that limit you. Be gay if you are or straight or smart or whatever, be you. But listen to the good advice.
Fuck a lot
Eat healthy
Pay attention in school and learn from others. Be observant and follow in other people’s steps long enough to learn to blaze your own path.
Don’t get a school loan or max out your credit cards.
Work thru school in a light non interrupting way. Don’t get an 8hr job, just something part time.
Get that diploma and go find a job where they pay you for what you know. Work on something you like to do. Work to live, not live to work. But to get here, don’t skip steps…sweep the floor before you shoot for CEO.
Mourn your losses, everyone dies. Be happy with yours while you can. Family is everything and there’s not much more than your own personal desires beyond family. But if you don’t have kids by chance or by choice, still be happy. There’s plenty of people who choose not to have kids or be married or be in a relationship. Have bobbies. There’s a lot of you time towards the end part of your life. So Hobbies are good. Watching people is a hobby.
Be at peace. Don’t hate and help others not hate. Racism is the worse. So if you can help a racist person to accept others then that’s good.
Fuck a lot
Shit
That’s from “little Ms.Sunshine” you should watch it. There’s a part when they’re riding with their Gramps and he says that. Ode to gramps
Take care of your teeth. Many loves will come and go in your 20s and maybe even 30s, but if its a life partner you want try focusing on yourself and they’ll appear out of thin air. Friends are important but not as important as inner peace. If a job offer 401k start investing as much as possible as soon as possible. Everyone is going through their own crazy messed up life so be kind. Puff, puff pass and enjoy your 20s as much as possible while not losing sight of your goals. Goals are EVERYTHING, set the achieve them and set them again. Heartbreak and death are integral parts of being human. It’s important to sit with and process the pain as long as YOU see fit. Death will come for someone you love someday, don’t let drugs or alcohol be your medicine
Weed and alcohol are my medicine and you don’t want to end up like me.
Sit down pee when you’re visiting a friend’s house. Double points if you do the same at your own house.
I’ve never understood the desire to stand while peeing. Sure; when you’ve got too - like outside - or if a toilet is filthy and you don’t want to touch it; but I’ve always been happy to take the opportunity to sit my lazy ass down for a minute. Plus I never have to worry about aim or cleaning up if I miss.
Stay away from gambling sites. If you’ve got extra money and want to watch it grow, invest in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) with a low/no fee trading account. Stay away from meme stocks as well.
If you do invest, diversify your portfolio. SPY is very exciting but it’s heavily tied up in the AI bubble. Try to more international markets, clean energy, minerals, heavy industry. No matter what happens to the AI companies, we still need energy and resources to build stuff and keep our economy going.
Read about taxable and non taxable trading accounts in your country. Try to use those to avoid having your savings eroded by taxes. You will pay plenty of taxes on your income, so don’t worry about that!
DONT DO IT!!
THERE’S NO TURNING BACK
Take care of your body is the only one you have, use sunscreen.
Spend time with your parents and people you love they are not going to be around forever, do things they like.
You have time, don’t rush into things. Don’t think you are 25 you should have a family by now, life is not a race each person reach goals differently and not all have the same goals. Search what makes you happy and do it.
Worry only for what you control, if you can control it you can fix it, resolve it so look for solutions but don’t worry about what is out of your control, you won’t be able to fix it you have to accept some things are they are and learn to life with them being that way.
Who you are now, isn’t likely who you’ll be in 6 years. You’ll change a lot over the next few years as you become an adult. Legally, becoming an adult is the difference of a day. But actually maturing into an adult takes time and effort. Yes effort, you’ll meet plenty of adults who cling to their highschool self.
I don’t know if alcohol is still placed on a pedestal like it was in my teens, but alcohol isn’t that great. It’s an expensive poison humans can sorta metabolize. It can taste good, but moderation is key. The point isn’t to get drunk. As an adult who can drink anytime I please, is generally would rather just have water.
Now is a great time to get into a fitness routine.
The biggest advice I can give you is, you need to try to be social. It’s easy to hang out with friends in high school because everyone’s locked into the same building every weekday for 6 hours.
Once you’re an adult, you no longer have that limitation. Even college is more of a “go to class for 2 hours a day then leave afterwards” type of experience. It’s certainly liberating to not be forced to be someplace for long periods of time, but it also means that the primary reason that you hang out with your friends (ie, because they’re already there with you) is now gone. It can make for a very lonely experience.
You need to go out of your way and actively maintain your friendships. Make plans to meet up at least once a week or something. Otherwise, you won’t really get another chance to make deep friendships
Yeah in college I experienced both extremes. I spent about a year and a half completely isolated, just traveling between classes and my dorm. It was self destructive and my grades and mental health suffered. Then I made some life changes and started going to clubs and events and made friends and suddenly it was easier to study even though I had less time. I became extremely social and found myself spending nights doing everything from deep discussions of big ideas to long nights drinking with friends to lots of casual sex to long nights working on projects.
Because of all this I left college far more well rounded and prepared for my career and my marriage. To this day the skill of how to make friends and positive acquaintances has stuck with me and been a majorly useful skill.
This is not strictly true. You can still make deep connections later in life. Very true that it takes effort though, and not as easy as when you are younger. Not impossible though.
Do you know what the genetic difference is between a human alive today and one who lived 100,000 years ago? Almost none.
The real difference is shared knowledge. Every generation stands on the shoulders of those before it. You hold in your hands more understanding than any person in history could have imagined.
You will always be ignorant, not as a flaw, but as a truth of being human. Accepting that is where real learning begins.
Stay curious. Curiosity keeps you open to the world. It grows empathy, invites wonder, and reminds you that every person you meet carries a piece of the story you haven’t heard yet.
And when you share what you’ve learned, don’t speak as though you hold the final word. Speak as someone who has explored, reflected, and arrived at their understanding with care.
Learning is a lifelong conversation, one that connects you to every curious mind that ever lived. So keep asking, keep listening, keep growing. The future needs you.
Go to the dentist, ask them how to take care of your teeth for the next 80 years, and do it.
If that means cutting down on soda, or acidic espressos, or candy do it.
If that means buying an expensive electric toothbrush with better toothpaste do it.
Don’t send dickpics. You never know when they’ll show up on a leak.
Lift wieghts and or do some other physical activity. Its good to have two hobbies; a mental one and a physical one. The muscle you build now will be with you for the rest of your life, and its mucb easier to do it now than when you are middle aged like me.
Dont focus too hard on girls, just live your life and enjoy the experiences and relationships you build with all people; everything else will follow.
Travel, with a focus on the physically taxing things that are harder to do when you are older.
Invest what money you can, compound interest is real and it is the path to wealth (eventually).
I would encourage more than 2 hobbies. It can be very difficult to feel satisfied if for some reason you can’t engage in one of your hobbies (I speak from experience).
If you haven’t yet, question what being a man means to you, and what being a good person means to you.
You will, throughout your life, find those definitions challenged. How you respond to the first will help you to develop a stronger sense of how you relate to your gender, and how it effects the way you interact with yourself and the world. How you respond to the second determines your character, which is how the world will see you as a person, and with sufficient introspection how you will see yourself.
Keep growing. Keep learning.
Not enough people do this. Very good advice!
Start building credit if you’re in the US, but don’t treat your credit card like free money.
Don’t let yourself get addicted to alcohol (or any other drug).
Spend a decade commuting by bike if you can (rain or shine).
Get radicalized by the terrorists (people who just wanna have a nice safe society free of bigotry and hate).
