New ask Hacker News story: Why does 30 feel like a deadline?

Why does 30 feel like a deadline?
2 by zemahran | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I’m going to be 28 in a month, and I’ve never felt more emergency in my entire life even though I just had a good pizza and everything seems chill. This feeling sometimes haunts me at night. Some days are good, I sleep well and I have a good morning coffee. Other days I feel like I am an absolute fucking failure. I stopped taking advice from anyone regarding career expectations because I suddenly woke up to the fact that everyone is probably trying to figure it out, even the most successful ones. Luck is probably a bigger component of most successes and no one seems to know everything for sure. All what someone has in terms of advice seems to be their “best guesses”. From where I stand I don’t see any reason to take someone’s best guess over mine. If we’re all trying to figure it out, then I don’t trust anybody, except maybe a few second hand experiences from people that I find worthy. Because we’re all different, I find that most career advice sums up to garbage, at best. I don’t know whether in June 2026 I’d wake up feeling anew, as if post 30 is a new age where life would feel like it’s just starting, or I would crush myself in despair. For now I like to think that most of it will depend on what would happen during the next 2 years. Strange I know!

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