I think it's perhaps just the nascent realisation that you are no longer a very young man, though you are still a young one.
I recently turned 28 myself, at the end of the hardest and most comically disappointing summer of my life (due to a succession of significant blows, some worse than others, and the worst of which were beyond my control. The real cost to me has been over £2 million).
I think it is a tricky age. There's a realisation that one cannot simply be unrealised potential any more. Unless you have been on a very specific path from a young age, say medicine, or scientific research because you are that type, then you probably still have that feeling that you could be almost anything in any direction - and all you need to do is apply yourself. But there is also that understanding that you can't actually be all things, and that you are reaching a point where you must close the door to all the options and opportunities of youth, which are in fact false promises anyway, and pick something which may define the course of your adult life.
It can seem terribly constricting, but I think there is actually a great deal of freedom in it. I think 28ish is a good age to make an informed, adult decision about the way in which you want to live your life. That's not to say it would be immutable, but I think you could soundly decide the broad specifics of the ways in which you would like your life to develop, and to attribute a rough weighting to them.
In a way, I think 28 is probably an age at which one can finally start to relax into life just a little. To take a personal example, it has become clear to me over the summer that, for all the frustrations, disappointments, and indeed disasters I have had to face, I simply must be an 'entrepreneur'. When I was younger, I had job offers from all the big banks, law firms, consultancy firms etc. I could have had any one of the most desirable, lucrative jobs in a range of different fields. Over the past 6 or 7 years of building businesses, and meeting with various triumphs and disasters, it has been a constant, nagging doubt for me that I could have been any number of other things, all of which carried with them far greater financial certainty and life stability than the path I'd chosen. I was consumed in many ways by the idea that I had all this unfulfilled potential, and that I could express it in almost any direction and free myself from all the tumult.
Now, on the back of this summer particularly, it is absolutely clear to me that I have no choice but to create and build businesses. It goes to the very core of who I am, and what my innate drivers are. It has been some time, the longest time to date, since I have questioned whether I was doing the right thing, even in the midst of chaos. This has been an enormous relief to me, more than I can really adequately express.
The point of the example is that I think by this age you are in a position to make an informed decision. That being the case, I think the best thing you can do for your life satisfaction is simply to pick something you know you can be good at, some direction in which to apply yourself for the longer term, and really give yourself over to it. You are of an age where you perhaps ought to be able to do this, and put aside the siren calls of 'missed opportunity', that come with being a bright young man who could do a bunch of things. I think, at the point where you are in a position to make a meaningful decision (and I'm not sure whether most people could make it before the end of their 20s), there is tremendous peace in making this kind of commitment.
I recently turned 28 myself, at the end of the hardest and most comically disappointing summer of my life (due to a succession of significant blows, some worse than others, and the worst of which were beyond my control. The real cost to me has been over £2 million).
I think it is a tricky age. There's a realisation that one cannot simply be unrealised potential any more. Unless you have been on a very specific path from a young age, say medicine, or scientific research because you are that type, then you probably still have that feeling that you could be almost anything in any direction - and all you need to do is apply yourself. But there is also that understanding that you can't actually be all things, and that you are reaching a point where you must close the door to all the options and opportunities of youth, which are in fact false promises anyway, and pick something which may define the course of your adult life.
It can seem terribly constricting, but I think there is actually a great deal of freedom in it. I think 28ish is a good age to make an informed, adult decision about the way in which you want to live your life. That's not to say it would be immutable, but I think you could soundly decide the broad specifics of the ways in which you would like your life to develop, and to attribute a rough weighting to them.
In a way, I think 28 is probably an age at which one can finally start to relax into life just a little. To take a personal example, it has become clear to me over the summer that, for all the frustrations, disappointments, and indeed disasters I have had to face, I simply must be an 'entrepreneur'. When I was younger, I had job offers from all the big banks, law firms, consultancy firms etc. I could have had any one of the most desirable, lucrative jobs in a range of different fields. Over the past 6 or 7 years of building businesses, and meeting with various triumphs and disasters, it has been a constant, nagging doubt for me that I could have been any number of other things, all of which carried with them far greater financial certainty and life stability than the path I'd chosen. I was consumed in many ways by the idea that I had all this unfulfilled potential, and that I could express it in almost any direction and free myself from all the tumult.
Now, on the back of this summer particularly, it is absolutely clear to me that I have no choice but to create and build businesses. It goes to the very core of who I am, and what my innate drivers are. It has been some time, the longest time to date, since I have questioned whether I was doing the right thing, even in the midst of chaos. This has been an enormous relief to me, more than I can really adequately express.
The point of the example is that I think by this age you are in a position to make an informed decision. That being the case, I think the best thing you can do for your life satisfaction is simply to pick something you know you can be good at, some direction in which to apply yourself for the longer term, and really give yourself over to it. You are of an age where you perhaps ought to be able to do this, and put aside the siren calls of 'missed opportunity', that come with being a bright young man who could do a bunch of things. I think, at the point where you are in a position to make a meaningful decision (and I'm not sure whether most people could make it before the end of their 20s), there is tremendous peace in making this kind of commitment.