I'm 27 years old.

I live with my parents.

I have a job that pays me a little more than the minimum wage.

I'm a college dropout.

I've only been in two real romantic relationships in my life.

I've made so many mistakes...

I'm willing to bet there are plenty of young people out there in a similar position in life. It's a common tale of our current twentysomethings. Even those with a college degree have difficulty finding steady and rewarding employment. Some would even consider my two romantic relationships as "lucky", for there are so many young people out there still searching for their first. I'm not trying to tell my sob story here, I'm sure there are people out there in a worse position than I am. I simply want to warn those younger than me of the dangers in thinking you already know "all the answers".

I was like you once. I was 18, and I felt like my whole life was ahead of me. I could do anything, be anything, aspire to greatness. I wanted the world to notice my skills, for people to laud me for my talents. I wanted to succeed in every endeavor, to do big and great things. I wanted the history books to remember my name.

I was going to school for Secondary Education. I wanted to be a high school history teacher. From a young age I felt such a passion for history. I would read school textbooks for fun. I would watch war films and historical biopics on repeat. Many of my teachers in high school agreed with this choice for me, as I've always felt comfortable in front of an audience (I once gave a speech to my entire senior class for our Yearbook Dedication ceremony), and I've always enjoyed the process and patient rewards that comes from helping someone learn something new. But I soon started thinking that the idea of going to school every day for the rest of my life would grow tiresome. It's the fear of a young immature kid trying to get out of waking up at 6 am every day and dragging themselves to work every day. I began to question my choices in career, just like many young people in college do.

At this time I was also suffering from some financial difficulties. Even though I was attending community college, my family and I couldn't easily afford the tuition, so I took out a series of student loans. Not very expensive ones in the grand scheme of student debt, but money I owed nonetheless. So I then made a fateful choice, one I continue to regret...I felt that I would put my education on hold since:

A) I wanted to have a better paying job to help ease the need of taking out loans every semester and

B) I felt that until I made a real decision on what my future would be, it would be best to stop going to school

So there I was at 20 years old, with no real education, and only a part time job. But I felt invincible. I started to find new passions in my life, such as my writing (especially songwriting). I felt that with a few years of steady practicing, I could be a musician and never need to go back to school. If I'm being completely honest here, I wanted to be John Lennon. From a very young age I've worshiped The Beatles, and I've always wanted to follow in their footsteps. I even said in my head time and time again "If John could do it, why can't I?". Nothing on earth made me feel more alive than listening to The Beatles, so I went towards my passion. It just wasn't until I put my education aside that I felt confident in attempting that dream.

So I practiced. I learned music, I sang every day, I wrote song after song after song. I went out and jammed with my friends, some of which told me that I did have real talent, but just needed to learn how to control and harness it. So I worked harder. Every waking moment not spent at work was spent on my music. It consumed me. I would play my songs time and time again until I could feel them in my bones. And yet, even after my constant practicing, I made another huge mistake...I was afraid to perform in front of people. What if they said I wasn't good? What if my friends were just being nice when they said I had talent? What if all my hard work was for nothing? I had never had any real music or singing lessons, and couldn't really afford them, so maybe my dreams of music stardom where just a fairy tale. For someone who considers themselves immune to stage fright, the cold truth of rejection was always on the tip of my soul. So for years my music went unheard, my lyrics went without understanding.

My writing was always a similar story. I would write countless stories, poems, essays, I even have most of a novel written, but the idea of someone telling me that I just wasn't good enough continued to strike fear in my heart. I had spent thousands of hours with my fingers tapping away at my keyboard, turning that blank white space and blinking vertical line into real and undoctored emotion, and the thought of professionals critically destroying my work kept my writing under lock and key. It didn't matter how hard I worked on it, for the harder I worked, the more worried I became that it wasn't good enough, that I wasn't good enough.

So there I came to be. By my mid twenties I had no education, no job providing me with financial independence, and no confidence to let my art out of the darkness. With every passing year, the depression towards my life grew. I wish I could say I battled it without the help of drugs, but that would be a lie. Marijuana became my gateway to relaxation, a simple yet effective way to calm the anxiety about my future. I would smoke every day, multiple times a day, all in an effort to lose of fears and cares and let my troubling days pass me by. The truth about smoking weed constantly is that time appears to pass more quickly, and boy did the days rush by. It's nice to find outlets and distractions from your pain and suffering, but those diversions only let your problems linger for another day. The more weed I smoked, the greater the fog around my emotional state became.

It was during these years that I also let so many possible romantic opportunities pass me by. I've always been quite oblivious to a woman flirting with me, so right from the start there I was disadvantaged. And even the ones I did notice, for one reason or another, I often let them go. Other than some brief sexual moments with them I let very few of them into my heart. Many times these instances were me being afraid of asking a girl out simply because she might say no. Sometimes I would find the courage to ask them, but I was frequently labeled as a "friend" who could never be thought of as a romantic option (quick side note, I really despise the term "friendzone" now, it's repeatedly a crutch for men to use when women don't have real feelings for them...even though I'm slightly different in my romantic pursuits, in that I like to become friends with a woman first and then attempt to see if some greater sense of love can be reached, I find this term overused in the context of romantic rejection).

But the true reasoning is deeper than the usual fear of rejection that has haunted me...the truth behind this was I honestly felt like I could do better. Time after time, a girl would look to me for a sexual or romantic interlude, but because of some misguided sense of self-importance or a for-whatever-reason bloated ego, I told them no. For a guy who's overweight and never received one offer for male modeling, I continued to think I deserved better than what I was receiving. Many of these young women were decent, funny, interesting people, all in all quite compatible with me, and yet I judged them for their faults whatever they may be, physical, mental, or emotional. If a girl was overweight I would reject her, because we'd just be another "fat couple" who obviously can't get anyone else and needed to settle for someone the same body type. If a girl didn't have the requisite beauty within her face like stunning eyes or a cute smile I would reject her, because of the fear of how people would judge me for dating her, or that she wouldn't make anyone jealous of me when looking at our pictures on Facebook. If a girl had greater mental or emotional difficulties I would reject her, because those girls were "high maintenance" and I wanted someone easier or sweeter than that. I have many regrets about my choices over the past 10 years, but this one really continues to torment me, and it was a character flaw that dogged me for many years.

At this point in the story, I'd like to begin what I considered to be my reclamation. It took so many wasted years of smoking weed, hanging out and thinking myself smarter or better than the entire world, but I finally came to my senses eventually. I can't pinpoint an exact date or time it happened, but I suppose the gradual effect of consistently not achieving your goals in life takes its toll. What I'm sure took the course of many months now feels like an overnight rebirth. I think it started when my sense of loneliness and unfufillment reached an all time high. No specific event I can recall prompted the change, it simply was time for me to start taking responsibility for my own life.

I started showing people my music and writing, strangers with no personal inclination to be nice and respectful to me. I began looking for jobs that would allow me the freedom and independence I'd always wanted. I started allowing myself to accept women for what they had to offer, and not what they lacked. I still want to go back to school and finish my degree (in what I'm still not sure), and even though my same financial restrictions still exist, I won't let that stop me forever, for I've been in this world longer, and I see the value in college like I never did before.

Essentially, I finally allowed myself to live. For so long I denied myself that basic fundamental human desire, and I'm only now looking back on it as wasted time. And honestly, it doesn't really matter to me anymore if my dreams don't come true. I would still love to be a writer/musician, but if it doesn't happen, as least I can say now that I really tired. I want to meet the perfect woman for my eventual wife, but since I now know that she doesn't exist, I'll be happy to find a partner I can be perfect with. I may be 27 and still stuck at a job I'm not satisfied with, but at least I now fully understand that sense of discontent, and am taking the needed steps to correct it. I'm basically writing this to warn readers of this all too common caustionary tale. Don't spend your life afraid to live. Go out there and do what you love. I'd rather be a failure who tried than a failure who didn't.

So sing your heart out to people.

Play them the music of your heart.

Show them what you've written.

Didn't finish school? It's NEVER too late. Find what you want to do, and do it. Money is only a number, and it should never stop you from finding your place in the world.

Stuck at a job you hate, or one that doesn't give you financial freedom? Go out and find a new one. A bad economy for job growth is just an excuse, one that too many young people continue to use, just like I did.

That guy/girl you love talking to and hanging out with? Ask them out on a date. They may not be perfect, but guess what? NEITHER ARE YOU.

And most of all, don't ever let yourself down. There's no worse feeling then the realization that you could have done or been more. If you only have one life to live, it might as well be a life worth living.