powlow's comments

Try not to worry about how you've spent your life up until now. You likely have many, many years left to live your life and focus on the things that matter to you.

I used to think similarly, lamenting mistakes made and time wasted in my earlier life, but as I get older, I now look ahead to eternal oblivion, and realise that in the grand scheme of things these concerns aren't really important.

I just try to use my time as best I can now without being concerned with the past, knowing that my future could end at any moment.

Time spent wallowing in regret is also time wasted.

I'm in my late 30s and worked with an absolutely brilliant 18 year old who exceeded all of us oldies with his raw talent.

He had passion projects outside of work that were already popular within our technical niche when we hired him, and continued to deliver on these, very impressively!

We had him present at an international conference on some of the work he'd done for us, which really helped with his growth - it was very different from his other skill sets but he did an excellent job too.

But I think to be honest, the biggest change in his life was finding a romantic partner. Perhaps it was this, perhaps it was just maturing anyway, but he seemed to gain a lot of confidence and wellbeing. She certainly enriched his life in a way that the technical work didn't.

So my advice to you would be:

- keep doing what you're doing!

- but also, challenge yourself in other areas that you can branch out to

- and take some time find a candidate for your future life partner

Best of luck to you!

This is from 2008 - what are the newer developments in this space?