I feel like I’ve ruined my life by wasting time and I’m terrified of aging
I’m a 23F soon to be 24 and I’ve dropped out of school when I was 18. I always hated school and put it off because I was convinced I was going to be successful in acting by now because I have an acting manager and had been on a few auditions.
Now with being 24 soon, I’m terrified of being too old to keep going with acting, terrified I won’t be anywhere by 30.
If I go back to school, I worry I’ll always think of what could’ve been and worry I won’t be able to get a job in anything I’m interested in compared to younger applicants (because I’ll be like 26 or 27 at the youngest when finishing school).
I hate myself for wasting time and being too afraid to pursue either fully these past few years. I’ve been so hopeless I’ve also lost touch with friends and now I also worry I’ll be old, friendless, and doing something I shouldn’t have no matter what path I take. What the hell do I do?
I wasted years being too scared to make a decision, didnt do anything, dont know what to and am terrified of aging and giving up a dream
Netizens’ comments
Well, Alan Rickman didn’t get famous until after 40. A lot of actors didn’t get their start until after 40, including: Samuel L Jackson, Burt Reynolds, Steve Carrell, Octavia Spencer, Kathy Bates, even Betty White! You can easily Google all sorts of folks who started writing, acting, playing music, directing, painting, dancing later in life.
When I was first learning to play guitar, it was with my best friend in grade six who had learned guitar earlier than I had. I was so distraught because I was learning slower than her and I felt like a lot of her techniques and stylistic choices were better than mine. She just shrugged her shoulders and said, not better, just different. And that stuck with me. To this day we create music and art together, even though we both have other main projects, side projects, jobs and even families. Creating is still a huge part of our friendship.
Art is perspective and the pursuit of those perspectives comes from a plethora of angles.
In that, it takes all kinds.
It’s very normal to feel this way at this age, also. It’s very imposed upon us through media that there’s a finite number of years, especially as a woman, to fulfill your worth.