When I was in middle school, I was super quiet. Like, I would go entire lunch periods without saying a single word. I just didn’t realize that I might want to or be able to actually interact with other people. I had a cognitive impairment which stopped me from expressing myself, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I eventually realized in 8th grade that I could not hold an actual one-on-one conversation, and I decided that needed to change.

So I had to start by learning the basic conversation skills and such, and eventually moved to actually making jokes and stuff mid high-school. By the start of college, I could participate socially as a mostly normal person. I just caught up on all the social skills I had to re-develop, like making plans and stuff.

All this seems really simple, but it is hard to catch up when everyone else is already friends with each other. Now, I might be one of the most extroverted people I know, and I almost always talk to people whenever I get a chance. I accomplished my life goal when I was 20, so I am really happy about that and I’ve been riding that high ever since.

I started drinking at 13. Blacking out weekly by 15. Full blown alcoholic in 20s. The problem was, I was fairly successful so it was hard for me to admit I was truly fucked up. I managed a good career, family, friends, house, etc. I drank until blackout daily. In late 30s is when the true around the clock drinking started. Morning, noon, night and throughout the night. DT’s. Started taking Xanax to fight off the anxiety caused by around the clock drinking. That was it. That’s when I lost control. I had a moment of clarity after days of straight blackout during the first month of Covid quarantine. I asked a friend who had been sober for 15 years for help. Went to rehab. Took it seriously. Spend 2.5 months away from my family. Came back determined to live a life of sobriety and focus on family and career. I’ve got numerous promotions, my family is great and I’m 3.5 years sober and work daily to stay that way.

Tldr; lifelong drunk. Got sober at 40. Best decision I’ve ever made.

My reinvention came more or less after a breakup and the realization that my gf was quite toxic towards my naive ass.

Before the breakup, I was already looking for books about seduction and female pleasure. Said search led me to learning hypnosis. . Some time later, I also decided to try classic ballet, because why the fuck not. I actually had fun, despite never being even close to minimally acceptably flexible. Although I never got on with any of the girls there (most were too young anyway), the teacher was a blast.

So, my takeaway is to look for a group activity to do, be it some martial art, dance or something else.

Where I started

Where I ended up

Image descriptions

1st image: - A heavy set person who appears to be a man, in baggy jeans and a t-shirt, leaning against a wooden handrail, holding a laser skirmish gun

2nd image: A curly haired woman in makeup, wearing a teal coloured dress

Start 28 year old man, alchoholic, well paying job I hate.

End? Don’t know I only started when I read this post. Im screwed eh?

34 years old with two kids.

I spent my 20s working like a horse, and I eventually bought a nice house in a quiet town. I had enough money to go on vacation to Mexico every year with my wife and my kids. Basically, I was living the American dream.

Fast forward a few years later. My wife tells me that she wants a divorce and she is dating the guy she told me not to worry about. Getting divorced means that 50% of my assets go to her, and I need to sell my house. Child support leaves me with little money left at the the of the month.

So, how do I feel? Not bad at all, actually. Have I lost a wife? No, she has been returned. Have I lost my possessions? No, they have been returned.

My children are healthy. They have a good relationship with me and their mother, and they have everything that they need. I am grateful for this. Then, I am aware that they could be taken from me anytime (e.g. sickness). You have to learn how to control your expectations.

As for the future, well whatever that I decide to set my mind to, I will do so with diligence. I’m currently trying to come up with programming projects to keep myself busy. Who knows? I could hit pay dirt, eventually (or not).

Living according to Nature is what I strive for. Everything else is irrelevant.

I started with weight loss.

Lost 140 pounds, which led to me accomplishing a few other things, like performing in Newsies and becoming a roller derby skater.

I was born into an abusive “family”. Fled into my head. Became the quiet brainy kid. Underfed and sleep deprived but did well in school and most people ignored the abuse.

Eventually studied at university, very high achieving, still hiding in my head. Super awkward with people. Autism didn’t help. The awareness that I was autistic made several light bulbs go on in my head.

I stopped contact with all of the exfamily and after uni wanted to focus on healing the trauma. Picked up several chronic diseases, realized I was non binary, got adopted by a cat.

Currently fighting to be able to work, if I manage I’ll not go for academics as I always thought I would but for helping animals. Trying to get out of head. Have emotions, talk to people.

Nothing too extreme, but I’m in my mid-30s and this year has been one of the most productive of my life. I started a new job in late December. The pay is similar to the job I left. The stress is much lower. Immediately I felt like I had a better work life balance. I have so much extra energy every day.

I started dieting and taking long walks. I lost 35 pounds in 6 months. I listened to a bunch of audiobooks while walking and I’ve also read some ebooks. Together I’ve read 25 books and counting this year whereas most years I’ll read 2 or 3. Once I was nearing my goal weight I increased my calories and started exercising more intensely, with a goal of gaining muscle and losing fat while maintaining weight. I picked up indoor rowing. I’m on week 11 of a 24 week training program. I row hard (working up an intense sweat) 5 days a week Monday- Friday in the mornings. In addition to this I’ve started weightlifting 2 days a week and will gradually increase to 4 days a week while keeping up my rowing routine.

Financially, I started budgeting with YNAB and it has transformed my personal finances. My savings rate has increased significantly and wasteful spending decreased. I moved my savings into a HYSA. I left a financial advisor who was charging excessive fees and moved my investment and retirement accounts to Fidelity where I now manage my portfolio myself. Some of my reading was investing books which gave me confidence I could do this. I’ve tripled the amount I’m contributing to my 401k.

Although I’m new to my job I’ve received constant praise from multiple people in the time I’ve been there. I feel like I have room for growth to move up positions. At the rate I’m going I think I could realistically expect to move up in another 6 months or so.

I didn’t reinvent myself so much as I started being honest about my identity.

When I was younger, I was very talkative and social, and I was punished for it in elementary school because it was disruptive. This is probably because I was surrounded by family and felt comfortable talking to anyone about anything. Over time, I started to become reclusive and have a severe fear of authority. Eventually, my friend group started shrinking in high school until I had what felt like nothing. I stopped attending school and slept for six months during my senior year. Eventually, I started returning from my shell and interacting with people online.

Since I was still in my depressive state, I thought it was all too good to be true, and I faked my death online because I thought no one would care and it would be an easy transition into something else. I was very, very wrong. People I had met online started creating memorials and trying to contact people I knew IRL to give them condolences. It was the first time that I realized people liked the person I was unfiltered.

After that, I got my GED and moved to a new town where no one knew me to go to college. While there, I decided to be the person I was and not the person I had been trying to be because I thought that was what people wanted. Even then, I was introverted until COVID happened, and I fell back into depression due to a lack of human connections.

I’m glad to have learned this all now, but I wish I had known it 20 years ago.

I was born into an impoverished extremist right wing family. I enlisted in the military back when DADT was a thing. I was disowned as an LGBT teenager, and medboarded out of the military after being committed to inpatient facilities multiple times. After that, i was homeless for a couple years, living out of a car and then a backpack.

I finally ended up in this little town in Georgia, got a job at a little retail store, and moved into a trailer with one of my coworkers. Her friends kind of adopted me and i felt accepted for the first time in my life. We were all broke kids, but i told them i was going to be a millionaire by age 30. I was still pretty emotionally unstable and eventually moved on from that friend group, but it gave me the hope i needed to rebuild my life.

I slowly built a career for myself after that, working 70-80 hours a week for a couple years, until i had my foot in the door. It got a lot easier after that. I didn’t quite hit my goal by age 30, but I’m close. I founded my first company at age 28, and raised a 10 million series A. My company is now worth 60 million on paper, but of course that’s meaningless until we IPO. But it’s profitable, and in the meantime, I’ve adopted a little family of people like me, and built a comfortable life for us. Life is good, and I’m content.

I started off being born and it appears that I will end up dead.

I started off in the late 1980’s in a mid-sized midwestern city… I was smoking cigarettes, a lot of pot, drinking and carousing with the same friends that I’d had since high school, but I was in my second year of college. I was getting decent grades, but I was really distracted and having some drama with bad girlfriends.

Two weeks after my 21st birthday, I left for Southern California - I had a parent out there, and I ended up staying for 16 years. I stopped smoking basically the minute I got there, spent a lot of time driving around a new city and thinking… and basically came to the realization that since nobody there knew who I had been before, I could approach social situations without the baggage of all those previous decisions that I’d made with my old circle of friends. I was less of a “pleaser”, less of a doormat, and less afraid to speak my mind - and my new friends responded positively to it, so I was encouraged to cultivate that. It helped me be more decisive and independent, and gave me a foundation for everything that followed.

I finished an associate’s degree, got a black belt in a martial art and taught for about six years, and met the woman who is now my wife. We got married, traveled to other countries together in Europe and Central America, quit our jobs to live on a horse ranch, and eventually moved BACK to that same midwestern city to start a family.

I wish I could say that since we moved back, I’ve never felt like the person I was before - but I have to confess that I feel like being back here HAS eroded some of that confidence, like I couldn’t hack it out West and ended up back here after all.

I know it’s not true, but San Diego is where I became the person I wanted to be. Back here is where I had been the person before that. They say “you can’t go home again” - I submit that you CAN, but that maybe you shouldn’t.

36yo, I’m in the middle of tunnel currently.

I’m a spoiled, privileged shit. I have a very nice family, good friends, money to live comfortably in a big city. But my life is miserable still: after a succession of failures, I hate my job and suffer painful lonelyness, and I’m too shy to do what most normal human beings do.

I’m almost out of depression but I’ve yet to go through the reinvent yourself part. I feel like I’m going backwards.

I feel like that’s the opposite of what the question asks. Ask me to delete if needed.

Turned 41 this year. I was a moderately successful website developer and high school computer science teacher. Next month I’m joining the navy. Should be fun.