This sounds like you’ve given this a LOT of thought. Saving up is never a bad thing as it gives you more options, and a buffer against disaster - you’ve already seen a lot of us here whinging about sudden large expenses. The world is opening up to you in many ways, and you’ve got a lot of power over how life is going to be. I am confident that you’ll make a success of the busyness of living.
Not a lot of useful problem solving though, mainly unproductive, stressful, panic attack inducing thoughts
Having power about how my life will be is also really stressful. I’ve got a couple of decisions to make that’ll affect the next decade of my life at least, and I’m not a big fan of this whole “decisions you make now affect the entire rest of your life” thing
Fully agree. The whole decisions you make now thing is plainly ridiculous. Life has this habit of cancelling all one’s plans and then dealing out a u-turn. I’ve had at least half a dozen of these, probably more when I think about it. I am a big fan of having a Plan A, a Plan B if Plan A doesn’t work, and a few more plans depending on circumstances. I’ve lived my life re-thinking my options pretty much every few years. I suspect the real trick of doing this without unnecessary stress is to accept that this is so, and always will be so. And to stop worrying about it. Easy to say, hard to do. Having an accurate reckoning of one’s skills, talents and resources is a very good platform to base planning on. Also a good idea to keep a weather eye out for new opportunities as and when these arise. Nothing is predictable. Resilience is key.
Having just thrown my own life plan out the window to do a full re-write I completely agree with this. I think the key is to treat your plans as options you can choose to follow or not instead of contracts that bind you to a course of action. The process of coming up with your plans also tends to give you the knowledge to see other oportunities when they arise and it is important to be flexible enough to take those oportunities when they come along.
This sounds like you’ve given this a LOT of thought. Saving up is never a bad thing as it gives you more options, and a buffer against disaster - you’ve already seen a lot of us here whinging about sudden large expenses. The world is opening up to you in many ways, and you’ve got a lot of power over how life is going to be. I am confident that you’ll make a success of the busyness of living.
Not a lot of useful problem solving though, mainly unproductive, stressful, panic attack inducing thoughts
Having power about how my life will be is also really stressful. I’ve got a couple of decisions to make that’ll affect the next decade of my life at least, and I’m not a big fan of this whole “decisions you make now affect the entire rest of your life” thing
Fully agree. The whole decisions you make now thing is plainly ridiculous. Life has this habit of cancelling all one’s plans and then dealing out a u-turn. I’ve had at least half a dozen of these, probably more when I think about it. I am a big fan of having a Plan A, a Plan B if Plan A doesn’t work, and a few more plans depending on circumstances. I’ve lived my life re-thinking my options pretty much every few years. I suspect the real trick of doing this without unnecessary stress is to accept that this is so, and always will be so. And to stop worrying about it. Easy to say, hard to do. Having an accurate reckoning of one’s skills, talents and resources is a very good platform to base planning on. Also a good idea to keep a weather eye out for new opportunities as and when these arise. Nothing is predictable. Resilience is key.
Having just thrown my own life plan out the window to do a full re-write I completely agree with this. I think the key is to treat your plans as options you can choose to follow or not instead of contracts that bind you to a course of action. The process of coming up with your plans also tends to give you the knowledge to see other oportunities when they arise and it is important to be flexible enough to take those oportunities when they come along.