What was your life like at 23?

GoldenShadow

Prompted partly by the life at 40 thread, by sheer nosiness and the fact I am ill and need something interesting to keep looking at today to keep me sane!

What was your life like at 23? Did you feel young, old, happy, sad?

23 feels old to me at this moment in time (I have another four hours of being 22!) but I only came out of full time education last year so don't feel I've accomplished much. I do have a lovely boyfriend of three years, two gorgeous dogs and we're (slowly) saving for a house deposit. Career wise I got the grad job of my dreams so have been very lucky (and there was much stress on the way there...). I seem to have this (bad?!) habit of signing up for very difficult things, but I guess it's good to push myself whilst I am 'young' as everyone tells me.

Biggest goal is to buy our own home. I'd quite like my own horse again at some point but, alas, have learnt money doesn't grow on trees. Maybe that will be a pipe dream and I will stick with the dogs...

So how about you, what were you like at 23, and perhaps, what are you like now, too?

moneyistooshorttomention

I was living in the first of 2 grotty rented bedsits (home city was/is too expensive to have been able to afford to rent a flat). Workwise in an office job. Life-wise = dating and hoping to meet Mr Right and marry him.

Fast forward to today (early 60s) and:
I own a 2 bedroom detached house some distance away from Home Area (as I couldn't afford to move "up the ladder" in my own area and was too old to wait any longer to swop up from the starter house I eventually managed to buy in my 30s). I'd have almost certainly stayed in my Home Area if it wasn't for that fact.

I'm retired (just as well, as there are very few jobs in this part of the country where I am now).

I never did meet Mr Right, kissed an awful lot of "frogs", but never met my "prince", though I've had several chances of getting married (but it wasn't the right man, so I didn't). Part of me wonders whether I should have compromised and married Mr Okay (and, with that, I'd be living in a detached house in my Home Area - courtesy of two incomes coming in). Have I made the right compromise in the event? I'm guessing I've made the best one I could (like most of us), as it proved impossible to Have Everything.

I'm not that old that I don't still wonder if it might, yet, be possible to Have Everything (though I wouldn't marry, or even live with, Mr Right if I did meet him now and I'm no longer even looking for him). I would like the chance to freely choose where I live though:(, but am Making A Life where I am (5 different social "groups" to date and planning to add in a 6th one).

I don't know how many people get life working out properly for them. I was looking round one of my social groups yesterday and thinking "There's only 2 of the people here who don't seem to have Major Problems...but maybe they do and I don't know about them". As I mentally went round the room I was thinking "Permanent health problem/permanent health problem/various permanent health problems/unemployed and housing problem/unemployed and in rented place and so on".

It doesn't seem to be easy to get (and then keep) Life "on track".

Cath_Ster

I was living in a different city, in a rented house that had seen better days, in a job that had a brilliant boss but was boring as sin, with a boyfriend who was ambitious and career driven. Within 6 months of being 23, my boyfriend had moved to the US, I had moved to a different rented flat to start experiencing living alone for the first time (and was distraught, lonely and petrified), and started a long distance relationship. Wow, that seems like a lifetime ago now!

It's only 5 years later but now I am living back in my hometown, married to a wonderful man (long distance just did not work so my boyfriend at 23 became my ex at 24), with our own home that we hope to stay in for years to come. In a job I like as well - although management can be a pain in the backside, and the money's not great - Its pretty different to 5 years ago and I could never have imagined it turning out this way.

Life isn't easy by any means but at the moment it's a whole lot better than it was when I was 23!

Poppie68

I got married a few days after my 23rd birthday, had my first daughter and moved abroad....I felt completely settled with life by the time my 24th birthday came along.

browneyedbazzi

When I turned 23 I had just moved to the UK from Canada and I was just finding my feet here...and really struggling with not having a car and needing to rely on public transport! I felt really claustrophobic for the first few months in the UK - I was used to being able to get in my car and go wherever I wanted at home and to big wide open spaces which were lacking in the area I had moved to.

I'd left my first career behind and didn't want to go back into that line of work here so I was temping and trying to figure out what I wanted to do long term. Within a few months I ended up in a business development job that was an interesting new challenge.

In my personal life, I moved in with my now ex-husband - it was very early days at that point and all the alarm bells hadn't gone off yet so I was pretty happy (that all fell apart about a year later and then I spent the next few years working up the courage to leave).

It was quite an interesting time for me - enjoying a new challenge and being in a new place, exploring etc, but also missing things from home and dealing with the stresses of so much change.

As for now, I'm properly 'settled' - own a house and a car. I have a new partner (who really is a good guy, not just putting on a show for the short term). I've changed career again and I enjoy what I do most days. I'm back in education working towards a qualification that will help with career progression (thankfully funded by my employer). We travel a fair bit and I love going new places to explore and learn about other cultures and see/do new things.

I'm enjoying life and feel quite lucky to be in the position I am in now.

SailorSam

23. That was such a long time ago.
I wish i could go back there knowing the things i know today.
I wouldn't have made the mistakes and wrong decisions that i have made.

GwylimT

I was married and my wife was soon to come down with a fatal illness, we also had my cousins son living with us until his adoption was finalised. I think really the only way I can class that year is bizarre.

I'm still the right side of forty and I have a further two children.

tea_lover

I'd just bought my first house, having finalised my divorce

Penny-Pincher!!

I had been married 4 years and had a 3yr dd. We owned our own home and was both working with me studying in the evenings. This was in 1998.

cashewnut

I was still living at home, was working in my first professional job at the Old Bailey which I LOVED and was also dating a man I met at the swimming pool! (It fizzled out after a couple of months.) A fun age, seven years ago for me.

VestanPance

I was very happy. I had my own place and my then girlfriend moved in at that time. I'd just sold a business I'd started up while at Uni to go work for the man. I was going to and playing at a lot of gigs.

I was completely happy with life back then. Much happier then than I am now in my 40's.