I'm jealous, honestly. When I was in my early teens I wasn't doing anything impressive, but looking back I feel like I had momentum. I had always idolized colle

I'm jealous, honestly. When I was in my early teens I wasn't doing anything impressive, but looking back I feel like I had momentum. I had always idolized college/academia, though, so I started at 16. The next 5 years of my life were the most empty I've had so far, and it still pains me to think about how pointless it all was. My social skills only deteriorated over time, till the last semester when I ended up just ghosting all my classes and let my minor burn. Dropped my GPA from a 3.7 to something like a 2.8, but it felt so good to get a job and get back to doing the stuff I loved. I've gotten better at socialization through work, and now have a life partner and a daughter. Maybe I'm only proving your point since I'm only in my mid twenties, but sometimes I wish I'd have just kept hacking away and seeing where that road took me. I feel like I might have had potential like this fellow, but left it behind a decade ago.