Your "Then" and "Now"

[Saki]

The point of this thread is to describe your current life (now) and what your life used to be like (then). This is easily done if you have transitioned from middle school to high school, high school to university or college, switched universities, moved from one place to another, or had a major lifestyle change. So... what was your life like then? And what is it like now?

_________​

I'll just do a quick one to get us started!

Now:
Nowadays I live in an apartment with my significant other. We live close enough to our university to walk to school or to the small downtown area (we live in a small town, not a city). In the town we can eat at a nice crepe restaurant, or a fine dining place, or sit at one of the many coffee shops, look at some art, enjoy the farmer's market, etc. We haven't taken advantage of everything yet but it's a great place! We visit my family (mostly my mother, my sister and her husband, and my cousins) and play board games with them, or enjoy good conversation. Both my SO and I like to study together and go to class, we also like to listen to music, watch anime together and spend a fair amount of time online. My friends from uni and high school occasionally contact me and I go out with them from time to time, but mostly I am a homebody hehe.

Then:
I used to live in a city and go to university there. I used to spend every single day with my friends, either going out to eat, going out to clubs and bars, watching soccer games, or just hanging out with people. We would spend time at the library and such but my life was essentially being all social and studying.. and no time for sleep haha! I lived with 4 other close friends of mine at one point and we would have parties at our apartment occasionally, and then cab down town and such! I'd eat a lot of sushi, but I still do that haha... that is one thing that is the same. My life was very different back then! I had a lot of fun, but I love the life I have now too.

So...

What's your "Then" and "Now"? No worries if you haven't had a big change. Sometimes a significant change a smaller change... like getting your full license and being able to drive yourself around!

<3

 

[Pollichops]

Then: I was in college for... well... nothing. Because I had to. I carried over some bad studying habits (or non-studying, rather) and had to scramble to fix my grades. I tried to be exactly who I thought I should be, rather than who I wanted to be. This led to a lot of mistrust and lying amongst me and my friends. Really, they were never the right friends for me anyway. I tried to dress and act a certain way. It wasn't like I was this blatant poseur, but I definitely wasn't genuine with myself 100% of the time.

Now: I'm back at home finishing up my schooling in the medical field. It is what it is. But I'm lucky enough to be able to create YouTube content, and play music in my freetime. I also have arrangements to vacation around Europe. Mostly Netherlands, then cut all the way across to Japan when I'll be staying for 3 years. I get nervous pretty often when I think how quickly everything is moving by and how big of a change I'm about to experience, but at the same time, I wouldn't change any part of my life for anything.

 

[Skip Class]

Then: In college I was the kid everyone new because I covered a lot of important leadership positions. Nothing big like the Head Girl or being in the school council or anything, but I carried all the other important roles that required all the running around like School/Sports Photographer and head of ICT and technical productions.
However, despite all the attention and being friends with everyone, it was actually pretty lonely. I never had many close friends or people to talk to unless they needed me for something, so I was always alone. Most of the time I spent was going on forums and talking to online friends and I lost interest in the real world.

Now: I'm currently about to start my 3rd year at university finishing my last year and a half. I do a lot for the student rep group at my campus and constantly a class rep for a lot my classes. However, I've gotten a good group of friends that I regularly hang out and work with. I'm also a lot more confident than the shy kid that I used to be.
Ever since university I dropped going on PC and forums in general, but now I've come back after being bored on a summer vacation's day.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

Four years ago I was more or less in the same physical place doing similar activities. Strangely enough I am exactly right back where I started, in North Carolina with my mother and her family getting over in school. Weird.

In the summer of 2012 I moved out to Colorado for the summer and stayed with my father for two years, which had its good and bad to it. In Colorado I went to Fountain-Fort Carson High School, an incredibly wealthy and good high school for the two towns in its name. Things with my father went south and in February 2014 I moved into my mother's place, who came there in October or November I think. She was living with a really nice lady named Melodie and we stayed there having a great relationship with her while my mother worked a warehouse job with mandatory overtime making money hand over fist at Advantage Logistics - until July when I had a breakdown and we she lost her job over it. Melodie ended up selling her house in October and we moved to South Carolina and lived with my uncle on his property for a month, me reluctantly attending high school there. Things went bad with my uncle too and we headed back up to NC as a last resort and lived with our friend Kris, who ended up getting her own place so she could be a great aunt for a newborn baby of hers. In NC school was the worst and I refused to continue attending because of sensory overloads and now Wake County schools are going to be giving me at-home school that's mostly online… and we're hoping to move to Cary as well, which from how my mother talks about it it seems she's just as serious as I am about moving. Oh, and she's about to get hired at the place she's working at since her numbers are insane from working in Colorado, and she's hoping to work her way up to being the second for a supervisor of hers who likes her.

A lot has happened in the past three years and although it seems we ended up back at square one, we're definitely better for it. We're doing good.