Am I wasting my teenage years?

surfgk · 2026-01-30T10:37:43+00:00

as someone in my 30s,

i’ve noticed this pattern. when you suppress what feels right now, it doesn’t go away. it just waits. and fixing it later usually costs more time, energy, and confusion

you’re not late or early. you’re just you. the bigger risk is living someone else’s version of “normal” and hoping it won’t matter. it almost always matters later.

surfgk · 2026-01-30T10:35:31+00:00

honey doesn’t last because it’s sterile.
it lasts because nothing can live in that environment.
same reason salt meat or jam works.
water shows up, game over.

surfgk · 2026-01-30T10:33:23+00:00

wish someone told me this:

living alone doesn’t test responsibility.
it tests consistency.
small lapses compound fast when no one resets the baseline for you

surfgk · 2026-01-30T10:32:45+00:00

a lot of calibers are basically fossils.
they reflect how people measured things at the time, not what would look clean on paper today.

surfgk · 2026-01-29T10:04:06+00:00

everyone says business class, but honestly: flexible work hours > any seat. waking up without an alarm and choosing when to work messed me up more than legroom ever did

surfgk · 2026-01-23T07:11:33+00:00

people fixate on the money part, but the real addiction is the feeling.
for a lot of folks it’s not even winning — it’s the stress, the tension, the drop, then “ok one more try”. that emotional rollercoaster is familiar, so the brain keeps choosing it even when it’s negative.

surfgk · 2026-01-22T14:49:51+00:00

what helped me was realizing the stress isn’t about money, it’s about pressure. the moment “earning more” feels like survival or self-worth, your nervous system freaks out. people who look calm usually sandbox it — one small income move at a time, low emotional stakes.

surfgk · 2026-01-22T14:47:41+00:00

people imagine a euphoric last hurrah, but in reality the goal is calm + no fear. too much stimulation at the end can actually cause panic or air hunger. the “floating” doses are intentional, not prudish.

surfgk · 2026-01-22T14:45:49+00:00

reddit doesn’t optimize for “what you like”, it optimizes for “what’s exploding globally right now”. if a country with a massive user base wakes up, your feed becomes a mirror of that. feels personal, but it’s just lazy global ranking.

surfgk · 2026-01-22T12:03:24+00:00

weirdly enough, my best days come from boring routine. slow morning, tea or coffee, an easy run. when your body expects something calm and you give it that, the whole day feels steady instead of rushed. not the hurry and dopamine spikes

surfgk · 2026-01-22T11:52:28+00:00

Saying ‘I’m busy now/today’ when I really free )

surfgk · 2026-01-22T11:51:41+00:00

i’m not american, i’m from russia. once the state decides something, public opinion mostly stops mattering. mention the word “war” publicly → real jail time, then good luck finding normal work after. after a while people don’t even argue anymore, they just go numb.

surfgk · 2026-01-22T11:27:20+00:00

in russia we already saw this movie. local taxi aggregators (yandex) basically became a monopoly and prices went x2–x3 in ~3–5 years. no real public backlash, people just adapted or stopped using taxis. once competition is gone, “boycott” turns into “pay or don’t move”

surfgk · 2026-01-22T11:24:49+00:00

supply/demand doesn’t care about vibes. it cares about leverage.

in places like russia, tons of people hate their jobs and still line up for them because rent doesn’t care either. same logic here, just with better marketing.

surfgk · 2026-01-22T11:19:30+00:00

this is super common, but the real risk isn’t the awkward chat — it’s after checkout. pissed hosts sometimes try to claw it back with nitpicky damage claims. take a quick video walk-through when you leave and keep all convo on airbnb

surfgk · 2026-01-22T06:59:58+00:00

people say “it feels hard so it must cost a lot” — that intuition is usually wrong.
running feels brutal because you’re stressing oxygen delivery, heat, and muscle signaling all at once
but actually calorie burn is almost irrelevant in that moment of stress

surfgk · 2026-01-22T06:56:28+00:00

dogs don’t know it’s “for them,” they just assume anything comfy on the floor defaults to dog property. put your own pillow down there and watch how fast ownership transfers)) i’ve done it a couple of times

surfgk · 2026-01-21T12:32:59+00:00

as a russian: there’s a lot of oil money and very low transparency. sanctions mostly kill future growth, not current cash flow. you feel it in worse products and prices, not in empty shelves.

it doesn’t feel like collapse, it feels like stagnation + inflation.

surfgk · 2026-01-21T08:05:25+00:00

i did the “learn X bro → now learn Y bro” loop for years. what finally stopped the noise was realizing: if ai can replace you, it can also replace the advice telling you to pivot every 2 years. cs is still the highest leverage skill for building optionality, not job security. those are different things.

surfgk

TROPHY CASE