what if you would have done this in life: Stay Hometown and "make a family" or Go Abroad and "make a career"?

[lillo9546]

Hi there,
Usually family talk look like there always discussions about "what should you do", "what if you would have done this"... In short, we always talk about the possibility of "how you would have lived your life".

When I hear these discussions, 2 hypotheses always come to mind:
1) Stay home and make a family: in my hometown, while I'm working as an employee, create my own company and become independent.
Many friends who live like this are happy and married and enjoy the sociality of the family. The level of education is lower. The net income of the company 100k/1M.
2) Go abroad and make a career: Gain experience outside your hometown, whether in the same country or abroad.
Friends with higher education, degree or master's degree, with careers as employees at home or abroad, who, having reached the age of 35, struggle to start a real family, because they had to focus on "career", have a very wide social circle, but they are all "friends" or "colleagues" in a superficial way. Net employee income 30k/50k or <100k.



Having seen my grampa, who just worked his entire life as a simple employee, but managed to make a beatiful family, mantaning social circles, and just have a super happy life, my goal is to start a family and have children, build a social circle, discover the world. I have always oriented myself towards the first, as the second, although I could meet people, have experiences, it all seems too "at the mercy of companies" , "looking for company promotion"... You just are in this new world that change, but you can't just build a family?

I explain my POV:
rather than spending time on other people's businesses, in other places, why not dedicate time to my business, in my location, to my family and just nutrure the social circle here?


It would be great to hear your perspective, and maybe we're lucky to know that some of you have gotten to do both!

[loutfard]

I must say that I find your way of formulating new forum topics rather tiring in that you seem to lack direction. Doubts about the past and indecisiveness about the future seem to define you.

As the wise proverb from my native area says: "If! If! If! If my aunt had had balls, she would have been my uncle!"

Try! Do! Experiment! What's the worst that can happen? Yes, you might bump your nose. So what? You're more resilient than you think!

[jacob]

Usually family talk look like there always discussions about "what should you do", "what if you would have done this"... In short, we always talk about the possibility of "how you would have lived your life".

It's possible to play this game by looking at what happened to one's class mates from school. At age 20, everybody is still pretty much of the same mold, but as time passes and people turn 30, 40, 50, 60, ... the consequences of people making different life choices accumulate and play out.

Some of this is already apparent that the 5 year high school reunion, when people are in their mid-twenties. Some went to the university and some did not. Any difference in intellect from HS is now much larger. Some now make and spend a lot of money. Others are unemployed. But overall, people still look the same. At 35, there will be two groups. One will be talking about their career moves and titles (even if they have children themselves, their career is more interesting/defining to them). The other will be talking about their children, their children's schools, their children's sports, and maybe the soccer games they go to (they typically have boring jobs). Neither group will be very interested in what the other group is interested in. At 45, it will become apparent how well everybody has taken care of their health as 20 years' worth of lifestyle choices make their impact on their looks. Expect some surprises here. Also one or two will have become rich and one or two will have become famous for something. One or two will be or have been in prison and likely it won't be surprising who that is. Maybe one has died.

Since you're not old enough for this to have played out yet, find someone older and ask them "what happened to their classmates from school" twenty or forty years later.

Basically, people will keep differentiating the older they get. And yet ... looking back, there are very few surprises in terms of where/how people ended up. This in turn suggests that people who were friends in school tend to end up in the same way in the same place(s) because friends tend to have the same interests and the same values. As such, a forward looking strategy would be to do what your friends do. You'll be quite unhappy if you get stuck in a place that does not appreciate or allow you to do what you value.

[Henry]

I remember graduating college and having a high school classmate deliver a Domino's and telling me another classmate blew his head off after he lost big on the Mike Tyson/Buster Douglas fight.

[7Wannabe5]

I was already too much of an outlier/outsider in high school to care about how anybody turned out at a reunion (young Republican boys in boat shoes now older successful men in suits, yawn.) Yeah, okay, I guess that tracks I think of my university group as being more my peer group, and to the extent that I've kept in touch, they seem to be almost randomly engaged in the full gamut of high IQ/cuckoo-bananas possibilities, such as "still secluded somewhere in black depression after achieving PhD in math" or "pot-smoking hippie chick turned investment banker" or "making art and running a green lawn mowing micro-business" or "famous president of well-known internet organization" or "nurse-practitioner running clinic for the indigent." So, yup, I pretty much locked in at mix of Green/Yellow values around age 19, due to happenstance of landing in most-educated-city-in-U.S. along with the rest of my family of origin and then marrying a boy who grew up there.

[Lemur]

I would not be the person I am today if I did not have the traveling abroad exposure that came with my 20s military service. Just the perspective of there are multiple ways to live and define success was paradigm shifting. Even more easier and apparent to see now because I eventually returned to the same town I grew up in.

[Hristo Botev]

(young Republican boys in boat shoes now older successful men in suits, yawn.)

Hey, wait, did we go to HS together?

FWIW, DW and I are from the same small southern town and met in middle school and dated off and on in HS but then left town for separate colleges, then separate travels, then separate big cities (NYC and DC), then got back together in our mid/late 20s and went to grad school in a 3rd big city and then started post-grad school careers in a 4th big city and started a family; 10+ years in that 4th big city and we realized we missed home and wanted to move back while our kids were young enough that they would eventually see this as "home" as well. So I guess I've either done both of the 2 choices you proposed or neither, depending on how you look at it. I'm kind of cheating at present thanks to remote work; my personal/family life is very much hometown whereas my career life is still very much big city.

[chenda]

That's a lovely story Hristo and rare enough these days. What do you think was the secret to your success ? Or was it just good luck ?

[7Wannabe5]

Duh, Chenda, boat shoes...

[chenda]

Duh, Chenda, boat shoes...

Boat shoes ? (Insert thinking emoji)

[7Wannabe5]

@chenda:

In post above, Hristo strongly implied that he was the sort of boy who would come to school with naked ankles.

[chenda]

I see. We did not have such boys in my day

[guitarplayer]

OP, you can do 7 year lifetimes (it is a comic strip, I never can find it but there are links on the forum). I am sort of doing it, part by happenstance now part steering in this direction. Then you can have both (and more).

[7Wannabe5]

@guitarplayer:

Great point. I once rough-mapped out my entire life going forward in 7 year chunks using this model. I would note that the order in which you do your lifetimes can make the process easier vs. more "interesting." For instance, I did my core Mom years in my 20s well before the majority of my peers, and my Fun Bohemian Single years in my 40s, and I might do my prime Careerist years in my 60s! Unfortunately, due to illness rendering me temporarily low-functioning, I also lapsed into doing my Eat all the pastries I like phase which was supposed to be reserved for my mid-80s in my late 50s,but I am now in recovery!

[mathiverse]

a comic strip, I never can find it but there are links on the forum

I've got a link to it: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-09-02

[thai_tong]

If making a career it's important to do it for the riight reasons. In Ireland a lot of people have the attitude that the country is shit and living abroad is glamorous. They leave the country with a grass is greener mindset, and many use it as bragging rights.

I believe that the glamour wears off quickly and what really matters is having good relationships and being passionate about something. If they are using life abroad as a way to brag to people back home that's no way to live life

[Hristo Botev]

@chenda:

In post above, Hristo strongly implied that he was the sort of boy who would come to school with naked ankles.

Full disclosure: I've always been more of a moccasin or "camp-moc" kinda guy; the only really acceptable "boat shoes" down here, as far as I'm concerned, are flip flops.