When I was 27.....
 

When I was 27....

I got my PhD -with a bump under my gown
I had my first baby
I still had a late 80s perm (in 1997) -my hair wasn't purple or short and spiky then (second child did that....). But it would have been if I'd've had the guts....
I wore all black and purple and lots of make-up when I went out (nowadays it's just black and if I wear make-up people comment -nicely, but it pisses me off because I'm a bitch that way -I'm sure you mean well when you say I look gorgeous and should wear make-up more often, but Ihear "you're butt-ugly without make-up" /tangent)
I worked in the university bookstore and hung in there way past i shoulda quit to get maternity pay
Beest got his current job -as a temp to start -days before I was due to give birth and almost turned it down because he was worried about not being there. I nearly killed him live on the phone to the recruiter.....

How about you?

That was 1998/99 for me. I'd just become a single mother and was working with my father starting up a business. I didn't have a perm, but my hair was multi coloured. I looked a bit like a tortis shell cat. By 99 I was living in a two bedroom town house not far from work and thinking about going to Uni and wondering how I'd manage it. This was also the time I discovered the internet and spent a lot of time in a beseen chatroom. I met some real idiots in that chat room. I also met some really nice people - mostly americans and canadians.

It was a pretty tough year for me. I was at about the lowest point esteem wise and emotionally that I've ever been in my life (apart from the PND after max was born).

nice one monster ;)

in the months just before i 'was' 27, i just lost a stepson and a wife, i've already lost all financial assests and property (except clothes) when earlier i failed making a startup and just finished getting out of debt at 25, i had no college or professional degree, i had a two year hole in my resume as a stay at home dad, i was giving private lessons in english to scrap some money (with only 4 students for now) and trying to get articles published, i was sending resume's everywhere & applying for a gun license to be a security guard in case i don't find anything better, i was back at my mother's house, using my sister's computer while she's at boarding school, which isn't really powerful enough to run my hobby (gaming)... i had short hair for the first time since the army, starting to get to lazy too pull the gray hairs out, and was generally depressed to the point where getting up to shave and shower seemed like a massive achievement.

there will probably be no PhDs when i am actually 27, but getting back on my feet with a job and an apt, my own computer and mobile, maybe even some furniture, not to mention the abscure possibility of getting paid on the side for something i actually enjoy (writing) and being able to afford getting out and buying a rebound-oppertunity who i will probably only find attractive by virtue of not having the personality traits i hated in my xwife... i mean some nice interesting woman a drink or two...

those would be decent 'achievements' for when i am 27 from where i am standing right now.

At 27...

I had my second job out of college, graphic design for another military contractor. It paid well, so I could afford to rent a whole house; a really nice Victorian townhouse with 3 bedrooms, an old clawfoot tub and brick patio on Capitol Hill. I was still in good shape after losing 40 pounds or so from the previous year.

But the house, great pay and great figure were just about the only good things I had going on that year. I was in an off-and-on relationship with a psycho. Looking back, I wish I'd been mature enough to learn to enjoy my own company...but sometimes these things have to play themselves out, I guess.

The job itself was really stressful. Long, long hours, and sexist treatment by my boss, coworker and some of the clients. Hard to believe workplace stuff like that could still happen in 1993.

And to top it all off, my parents' marriage was falling apart. It dragged out painfully, and ended in divorce the next year.

Wow, I hadn't realized what a crappy year that was until I started typing the second paragraph. I may not have a job, or be in the best shape...but I am so much happier now! At least until the unemployment benefits run out. :sweat:

Hmmm ... in my second year of my PhD, living in a student residence in Canberra.

Life was pretty good, as far as I remember. But as they say, if you can remember your humanities degree, you didn't really do one.

27...

I was in a long-term relationship, living together in fairly large two-bedroomed, rented house, which let out onto a shared yard, and one of the houses sharing said yard was my Brother's. There he lived with his wife, his two little girls, one still a babe in arms, and his various critters, (including a very small and bouncy rhodesian ridgeback called Amber)

My brother and my partner, J, were business partners running a small design firm with a range of highly-crafted products for the counter-culture market. I worked for them intermittently depending on my health, which was pretty bad at the time. Asthma had gone haywire, constant chest infections, pleurisy at one point. Eczema on overdrive.

Mum had recently moved here and had a house up the road. She also occasionally helped out. And her new little puppy Dante would be playing in her garden.

I was both very happy and very unhappy. The sense of being part of a collective, and of being such a close little gang was lovely. We had such big dreams.

We also, J and I, had a beautiful brown bearded collie pup, called Pilau. He'd have been 5 months old as J and I both turned 27 in the February. We'd had him for three months and already he had become pretty much the most important thing in my life.

Online gaming was a big thing for me back then. I was fully into my 4 year stint on Ultima Online. Running a roleplay guild and flamewarring on the boards.

I think I probably did believe that the business would make it big. But in truth it had to carry too much for it's young shoulders, and the market we were heading into was just about to die on its arse. The product really was gorgeous. My brother is a stunning designer. But they were well-made and pricey, and in the end the market became one of cheaply made Indian imports. One of which was a near exact copy of our flagship design, made in cheap materials and without some of the cleverer features, the result, we later learned, of the engineering firm we'd employed sending some of our reject stock to one of our competitors.

We would eventually become embroiled in a lengthy and pointless legal action to try and protect our intellectual copyright, but by then, frankly, it was too late. Though other designs did well, that first blow would leave a wound. And then when our major clients started going out of business...and international markets became dangerous to engage in (the US in particular), the business would end in bankruptcy.

But that was still to come. At 27 we were planning international sales. I was attending the Goethe Institute in Manchester, learning German, and J was scoping out possible inroads to America. Together they were travelling about to various exhibitions, and seeing clients in Amsterdam and Germany.

And when they went away, it was just me and Pilau. And already a little part of me was wondering how it would be if it was just the two of us in a little house.

No more arguments. No more midnight tears, slammed doors, rows over the dog's training regime, awkward silences, sinking feelings of life passing by ....

It was a funny year. In some ways the best. In others not. J and I were so tight in some ways. Closer than ever. But the treacherous little voice had already started. Did I want kids? Really? Given that I wanted to kill him every time he shouted at the dog, the idea of co-parenting was beginning to scare me. And...actually, I wasn't even that sure I wanted them anyway.

There were ups and downs to follow. Times of closeness, times of utter despair. We'd been together for 9 years. We'd stay together for another three and a half years.

Ahhh, 27 and strong as I could be... Driving a 2 year old modified Corvette and a '57 Chevy, good job/good money, working a 2nd job at a speed shop for fun, getting laid 6 nights a week. It was a very good year.

1927?

*snort*

At 27 I was married and had no idea just how I was about to be treated like shit and just put up with it for years and years.

Married a year or so, then my world exploded.

At 27 i was married a year , new job , close knit circle of friends , camping fishing , dinner partys all around , hell partys all around !!
Fun year !!!

Apart from only being married one year and the new job, how is this different from today? ;)

At 27 I was married a year, I was working hard, but hadn't advanced much yet. We were both working and had a respectable dual income with no kids, so we had a higher standard of living. Went out to dinner a lot. Hadn't bought a house yet, and were still driving an old car. We went on nice vacations, but nothing exotic. Went for hikes on the weekends and got together frequently with friends. Went to bars for happy hours after work less and less. Often, at the end of a weekend we would be grumpy because we would feel like we hadn't done anything that weekend. So we tried to either fill our weekends with fun stuff or try to accomplish something. (Now our weekends have never ending lists of stuff to do, so we never feel that way.)

Basically it was a transition period. Starting to be grown up, but not with the kids and house yet.

Your salad days. :)

(From Raising Arizona.)

I miss being able to just buy the stuff I want (within reason.) It's been at least ten years since I used to be able to do that.

I think I might have been 27 when we bought our leather recliner. That thing was like $1500. I'd never in a million years pay that much money for a chair now. But we still have it and it's in pretty good shape still and it gets used every day.

27 was half a lifetime ago. I don't remember too much about it.

I remember 27 very well. It was, looking back one of those turning point times, the held breath just before the step forward.

Given it was the year we got Pilau, it's one I've been remembering in detail just lately.

^^^That^^^

but I also had three kids and three jobs. gah. Life was FLYING back then.

I was 27 from July 1999 to 2000.
I was in flux after moving from Aylesbury to London in August.
It was the time when the Evil Ex had the most influence on my life, although I wouldn't let go for a few years to come.

In my memory it was always dark and raining those 12 months. Partly because he established a routine of booty calls. But again that might have come from the next couple of years.

Life followed a miserable pattern for much of the time I lived in London the first time round, so it's hard to pin things down. Some of the high points I've remembered happened after this time, because I can order certain events (this happened when I had hair extensions, that happened after this, the other happened after the Millenium party etc).

I've written and deleted this many times, struggling to get it right!

Interesting how many people's lives were falling apart or just about to at this age.

27 was the year my daughter was born. My barely 2-year-old son was weird and pretty difficult, but not yet unmanageable. If we wanted to go to a restaurant, we just did it. When I saw cute kids' clothes at Target, I just bought them. Ha! It wasn't until a few months into 28 when the world spectacularly collapsed.

Yeah. It does seem to be a theme.

Funny thing is, I felt older in many ways then than I do now. I recall very strongly the feeling that time was somehow slipping past me unheeded, and I had done none of the things I always thought I would/should/could. Was just starting to come to the conclusion that actually I probably never would go to university, or get published or any of the other things I really had wanted to do at one time. That was ok...because I had some new ambitions, but I remember almost mourning the passing of those opportunities (as I then saw it).

It was wild times and fun as well that year. Lot of partying, and drink and uppers fuelled gatherings.

But that little part of me was yearning for something else.

Strange looking back. My ambition was a degree. Now I'm working for a doctorate. I'm not a published writer, but online friends like my poems and my readings, and if my current plans succeed, I will at some point get a book published. And, no, it's not the next great contemporary British novel...it'll be an expanded thesis on crime in the 18th century British Army.

13 little years. And the deck has changed completely.

When i was a lot younger, in my mid teens, I had as an image in my mind, the life I saw myself leading when I was grown up.

I imagined myself as a writer. Living on the Yorkshire Moors, with my dog/s.

I took a fuck of a roundabaout route, but I got pretty close to it.

Many moons ago, a month before I turned 27, I bought my first brand new vehicle. It was a 1995 Chevy S-10, black, short-bed, regular cab. I fucking loved that truck. It represented a new level of freedom for me. I no longer had to carry every tool I owned everywhere I went in fear of mechanical fuckery. I no longer had to carry a list of phone numbers of people I could call for help.

It had .2 miles on it when I test drove it, and I picked it up freshly detailed, and full of gas with 2.2 miles on it. The first sound I heard through the stereo (which was quickly replaced with 480 satan-inspired watts of 'Fuck yeah!') was 'Black Sunshine' by White Zombie, running up the on ramp WFO.

In 24 months I put 97,000 miles on that little truck.

Sadly, I traded Black Sunshine for a 32' bucket truck w/chip box and a chipper. The business I started w/that combo, I later sold to a much bigger company a town over. The money I socked away, and take little tiny nibbles of every now and then (but more and more frequently).

And I haven't worked for anyone since.

Thank you Little Black Truck!

Attachment 36806

When I was 27, I'd been married for 4 years already and had just earned my BA degree in biology from the University of Colorado (I had tuned in, turned on, and dropped out for a while). My husband was working for the forest service and we had the best adventures ever exploring the Colorado back country. I could still party big time in those days, and I made sure that I did so on a regular basis. 27 was an excellent year for me.

when I was 27, we live in our first house in coatesville. shelby was pregnant with spencer. I would read to her from what to expect when you're expecting each morning as she got ready for work. I was just working my way out of sales into management in the car business.

spent our free time doing lemas classes and preparing the baby's room. every sunday morning we would have breakfast at the ingleside diner.
spencer was born on august 11th, I turned 28 on the 24th. so I will say that august 11th 1998 was the best day of my 27th year. definitely a good year.

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tappa talk does not do capitals, I notice

Oh, I got pregnant again when I was 27....

That thing is NOT a Clown car Missy !!!

I stopped at three.....

When I was 27.. I'll let you know in 2013.

27 was 41 years ago. No idea what was going back then.

27 was the year when:
I packed in a promising career because I could see it was headed towards things which I do not like to do;
I moved to the island where I now live for the first time: the first of four major relocations, the fourth of which brought me back here thirteen years later :);
I unceremoniously dumped my boyfriend of six years in a phone call, an action of which I am still ashamed 25 years later;
I bought my first car.
There have been a lot of ups and downs since then, but here I am, just where I wanted to be back then. Here. With a roof over my head. And an income. Un. Be. Lievable. Really.

:lol2:

I always feel apprehensive about this thread.
I've started posts and deleted, deleted, deleted.

I think it's because most people have moved on and improved their lives since 27.
I'd love to go back then and change everything.
I had money saved. I should have moved back home. I could have found the job I love and retrained as a teacher.

Of course going back in time would make me the same blinkered, trying to hang on individual I was then. So apart from being impossible it wouldn't work.

Of course you can't move back in time and shouldn't. You could have found the job you love and retrained as a teacher, but it might not have turned out that way....

But why not try to be that person now, at 39? Age is just a number. Start saving, start training. You already have a job you love in a field relevant to your quest to become a teacher. I'd say at least one thrid of the student teachers who pass through our school are not typical student age.

I am seriously considering my future now. I have 30 years work ahead of me.
I am positive, because I can be; on a scale of 10 I enjoy my job as a 9.
My goodness NO-ONE I worked with in Leicester or London could say that. ETA - no-one at my salary level.

So I'm not crippled with remorse. I'm looking into a future that is so much better than five years ago.

I suppose it's a bit like looking back at old photos and thinking "What was I worried about? I was so blessed!"
I can't imagine looking back on NOW and feeling regrets.

When I was 27 I was blissfully ignorant of what a turn my life would take at 30.

I was working, going to school full time, had two in diapers and a husband who played on five (count 'em, FIVE) softball teams, a dart team, was a dedicated pool player and liked to follow the Dead in his "spare time," - wonder why that relationship tanked?

LOL.

Sorta.