The Feeling of Moving Backwards in Life
Stories of messing up
There have been more than a few times in life when I’ve felt like I was moving backwards. I made the wrong choices, went the wrong way, and all of a sudden find myself further away from where I wanted to be. The feeling is crushing and deflating, almost the opposite of accomplishment, but just as intense. What helped me most during these periods in life was reading about other people’s challenging times. I’d visit FML and iMatterNot, read through pages of stories and anecdotes, and come out feeling better. There’s something comforting about knowing you’re not alone that lessens the sting of challenging times, almost as if the burden is being shared.
I’d like to share with you some of mine.
In school
I was not a good high school student. Actually, I wasn’t particularly a great middle school student either, but getting consistently good grades in high school proved tough for me. It wasn’t so much that the material was difficult, but that I was easily distracted and never took studying seriously. I’d do great on major tests (all 5's on AP classes, solid SAT/SAT II scores), but my disorganization and a lack of discipline showed up on quizzes and homework. My attention turned to music, acting, girls, and other extracurricular activities. Although my attitude had improved by senior year, the damage of the first three years led to a sobering college acceptance day. Rejected. From every single Ivy League college I applied to.
So I did what any respectable Asian kid would do in the face of utter disappointment and having brought shame to the family: I wallowed in misery. For several days after, I didn’t leave my room. Life was over. No Ivy League college meant being confined to a menial existence for the rest of my life. All of the efforts my parents had put into raising, teaching, and parenting me — wasted on a bad apple.
It took a good month to get over it and accept my fate, but when I did, that feeling of falling flat on my face lit a fire in me to work hard in school that I never had before. I did get into Penn State and NYU, the former I attended freshman year before transferring to the latter, and graduated magna cum laude into a job both that I loved and that paid well. It’s a lot easier to think back on that experience now, but back then I truly believed the sky was falling and the world coming to an end.
In friendships
Late last summer I broke up with my then girlfriend of 2 years, which, aside from being emotionally challenging, was logistically as well. There was a lot of sinew to disconnect from the relationship; some straightforward matters (furniture, renter’s insurance, etc) and others less so. Friends were a tricky thing to handle. ‘Mutual friends’ was the major category of friends we each had, and although there had been conversations while we were together, made in jest on “who get’s to ‘keep’ who in a break up”, reality was not as clean.
So in the months after, I left New York and avoided mutual friends. During the week I would emerse myself in work, and during the weekends I would travel. Partially I did this because I felt responsible for initiating the breakup and wanted to give her as much space as possible, partially it was therapeutic to distract myself by seeing far away friends and meeting new people. When I finally stopped running, I found that reconnecting with friends in New York had become difficult. Not keeping in touch for months and avoiding social settings had alienated many relationships, not to mention those that had not ‘taken my side’ of the breakup.
At the lowest point post-breakup, I felt waves of isolation and sadness. I had regressed in friendships that took years to develop. New York is a tough place to be alone. Although there are millions of people around you, it’s surprisingly easy to feel lonely in a crowd of strangers. As time went on though, I slowly reconnected with some friends I had lost touch with. I made new ones. Eventually, things went back to semi-normal, and I’m more diligent now than ever to work at my friendships. It took a truly tough time in my life to learn a valuable lesson on relationships.
In startups
During my second year in consulting, I pitched a startup idea to a couple friends in banking who immediately fell in love with it and got on board. The idea came from observing that large consulting firms often sent consultants to stores across the country on “mystery shopping” trips, which involved jetting to a location, visiting a retail location, taking a few notes and some pictures, and billing the client a bunch of money. Why not build a mobile app and leverage the power of crowdsourcing to do the same thing? We thought it was brilliant, started working on wire-framing the application, and found a number of retail experts as advisors. Our team consisted of three ‘business’ people, with no coding abilities and no real experience in the industry—we were young, naive, and overconfident.
As you can imagine, we failed. We struggled to find technical talent and weren’t comfortable with many of the outsourced development firms. We spent too much time designing every feature conceivable and never spoke to customers. As time went on, my cofounders spent more time on their investment banking jobs, leaving me to grind away. After being rejected from a seed accelerator, we called it, and 6 months of work came to an end. I remember in the weeks after feeling very unsatisfied with the whole experience — like I had wasted half a year of my life. Today, however, I’m grateful having had the experience, as we committed many of the canonical startup sins, and all of them serve as lessons learned the hard way.
If you ever feel like you’re going backwards in life, remember that:
- You’re not alone — everyone goes through valleys, and no one’s life is all peak (regardless of what Facebook says)
- These experiences will shape who you are for the better
If you enjoyed this read, I’d love for you to ‘Recommend’ this piece so that others can enjoy it as well. If you have stories to share about your ‘backwards moments’ in life, tweet me at @andrewjiang.
