I didn't mean cigarettes. I'm just afraid I'll finish college, get a job, get married, have kids, etc. and then work until I retire. I won't get to see and do all of the things that I want to do that you can really only fully enjoy while young. I think I'm also just worried because I don't know exactly what I want to do.
But at the same time, if I drop out (or take time off) I probably won't be successful in the long term. So basically I can be miserable now or be miserable later. Most likely I'll choose to finish school and then move some place tropical or to a big city for my 20's, as kind of a compromise. I'll be graduating when I'm 21 so I'll still be pretty young.
I think it's the opposite for me. I can't wait to finish college, get a job, get married, have kids, etc. then work until I retire. In fact, if I'm not married by the time I'm 40, I'm probably going to be seriously contemplating killing myself just because it's better to be dead than to let my loneliness consume me. At the end of the day, I think what matters the most to me is raising a family. Sure, it would be nice to live carefree, do everything I could ever want in life while I'm young, but to me that's all superficial compared to raising a family and through them creating my mark on the future... years after I'm dead... is much more significant in my eyes. However, I'm going to need some financial backing to raise a family in the 21st century, so if I have to sacrifice some of my joy while I'm young to make sure my future family can live a decent life (shooting for at least upper middle class
) then so be it.
Seriously, this is the only thing that's keeping me from making a final decision on whether or not to go straight to grad school after I graduate next year. I fear not that my years of youth are running out and I won't be able to do all the cool things in life, but that by the time I start looking to settle down, it'll be too late- all the Ms. Rights out there will be Mrs. Rights.
Yeah, I have strange fears.