Wow, so much HN hate for Polly? It's my opinion that Polly is a national treasure. Her shameless wit and sense of humor make me smile. Her profound love of humanity makes me deeply happy. Not only that, but her writing is so poetic and lovely. Truly a gem.
On the topic of this question/answer, I assume most of you are young? Or at least younger than I am. I can tell you now that the way you feel now will not last. Change is absolute. There will be a time where you will look around you for reasons to be thankful. Make as many reasons as you can. You will need them.
I get the sense that there's a lot of embittered-male, "rubbing it in" type comments in this thread. Mixed-gender communities seem to have much more balanced and meaningful discussions for these kinds of topics: https://www.metafilter.com/171539/I-did-everything-you-said-...
MetaFilter has its own problems. One common trope there is the angry, lonely person in their 30s-50s who paints the isolated life as beautiful and meaningful in order to feel better about themselves and possibly lure others into it. You see this the more you know the stories behind the usernames. The writing there is very nice at times, and I love that the small IRL communities have formed, but the discussion here is more honest and the advice is better.
I don't know if anyone here knows who Polly/Heather is? If not, check out the suck.com archives (and her weekly cartoon Filler) for your 90's dot com boom era culture flashback.
I agree, things change and sometimes you can't go back. Doors are always opening and closing, but the rate is never equal.
On the topic of this question/answer, I assume most of you are young? Or at least younger than I am. I can tell you now that the way you feel now will not last. Change is absolute. There will be a time where you will look around you for reasons to be thankful. Make as many reasons as you can. You will need them.