People Break Down Their Best 'I Don't Know, I Didn't Think I'd Get This Far' Experiences
The advice "fake it til you make it," though often said with at least a hint of sarcasm, does carry quite a bit of wisdom.
By simply putting one foot in front of the other, weathering the chaos of not knowing what's happening as you learn as fast as possible, we can find ourselves further than we expected.
Once we're there, reaping the fruits of all our "faking," we somehow begin to take on a new identity in people's eyes They assume we've always been in control and known what was going on. They defer to us for advice.
But that couldn't be further from the truth. So we keep on faking it.
Redditor espectro11 asked:
"What's your 'I don't know, I didn't think I'd get this far' moment?"
Many Redditors discussed their experiences navigating the intimidating environment of job applications, interviews, and offers.
Oh Right, Getting Paid
"I gave my resume to fancy private school (I'm a teacher, but new to the field) and I didn't expect a call back. But they called me today to ask my expected salary and I said 'I don't know what the average is. Let me Google it.' "
"Ya girl was not prepared."
Uhhhh, Uhhhhh
"When I went for a walk-in interview looking like crap and they hired me on the spot. I get they were hiring for a new store, but they up and said 'if you want the job it's yours, when can you start?' "
"Deada** didn't think I'd make it that far."
-- NewtNeutral
Outside the Box
"Years ago I was applying to a bunch of copywriting jobs and feeling frustrated because I wasnt hearing back from any of the places I was applying to."
"It was especially frustrating because I was putting in all this time on cover letters and I felt like nobody was even reading them, so I said, 'Fu** it, I'm gonna write one that is more me.' I thought it was a dumb idea and never imagined that it would work, but somehow it did."
"I applied with this cover letter and the subject line "Copywriter: Will Work for Beer" to a job that I was very underqualified for. It managed to catch the eye of the headhunter for the ad agency and was enough to get me an interview. Shortly after that I was hired and ended up working there for a few years, but I remember thinking on my first day, 'I can't believe that actually worked.' "
-- -eDgAR-
Just Not the Right Fit
"An interview at Google. The 20 years younger than me was describing the peer review system."
"I responded with 'Jesus, that sounds awful.' "
"I did not get the job."
Things That Are Normal Where You Live But Crazy Anywhere Else | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Others also shared experiences that centered on their working lives. But these stories weren't about being hired or interviewed.
These were accounts of long-developing success stories that they never would have predicted.
A Winding Road
"My entire legal career"
"I have four degrees and a 10 year career in commerical litigation. I just wrapped up a $200mil trusts lawsuit."
"I started at uni doing theatre and stand up comedy. I have no fu**ing idea where I turned to get here."
-- lawyerlady
Big Fish
"Started at a very small company doing sales straight out of college. I went about messaging big corporate players (who obviously would never do business with us since our size) and was laughed at by my new colleagues for even trying."
"2 weeks later My boss was asking me what we (a team of 6) should say on the conference call with Toshiba Buyers."
-- TheBFG420
Putting Fires Out
"Me at work. I feel like every issue that comes up has me unprepared. But I am always praised for my good work."
"So, I assume I have imposter syndrome and keep doing what I am doing."
-- 47-Rambaldi
Others shared their experiences wondering into pretty serious romantic commitments.
Under Your Nose
"When I realized I've been in a stable relationship for 4 years and people start asking when we're getting engaged."
-- eggpantemoji
And the Rest is History
"I moved in with an old friend from high school, got horny one night and we slept together, and now we're married. We're discussing having children and I'm like, didn't think it would go this far lmao"
-- Hereatrandom
A Place of Their Own
"When me and my fiancé moved into our own apartment together (we'd actually lived together with my moms, his mom and my siblings for a year but that's a long story) anyway I didn't really know what to do because I had never fully considered it as a option- as something he'd want to do. Domestic life was domestic confusing."
Plenty Happens
"Single and renting at 30yrs old with a cat and no light at the end of the tunnel to 40yrs old with FIVE 3yo goldfish, FOUR chickens, THREE humans, TWO dogs and ONE house."
"Life's not short. Life's fu**ing long. A lot happens. Make the best of it."
-- ipsdirtleg
So next time you find yourself ruling a possibility out completely, maybe take just a few seconds to imagine it actually occurred and prepare.
You just never know.
Image by Amber Avalona from Pixabay |
It's tough believe that there is life living in an ether that surrounds us. I mean... ghosts? Spirits? Demons, floating about us?
Sounds like fun on paper, for a movie script, but for real life, I don't know. But strange occurrences do abound, and often a simple explanation just doesn't suffice.
If skeptics have been haunted, it just all leads to more questions and no answers.
Hoping to connect with other unsure "non-believers" Redditor u/LordMaboy asked to hear about:
"What is the most creepiest thing you saw even though you are very sceptical about paranormal things?"
I have to admit there have been a few instances in life when I've been... spooked. But then right away I think, "Is it just my mind? Is it the light hitting that corner at that certain angle in just a certain way? Is that last episode of Law & Order: SVU, I told myself not to watch before bed?" So many questions.
25 Years Later
shaking the exorcist GIFGiphy"A handful of times, I would feel the corner of the bed lower as if someone sat down on it. Whenever it happened, I would refuse to turn over and just face the wall until I fell asleep."
"That was over 25 years ago."
What my Cousins Saw
"This happened back when we were like in 3rd grade."
"It was around 7pm right when the sun was almost set. My cousins swore that one of my grandma's friends was in their backyard, knocking on the window in their room and trying to talk to them"
"Although not entirely strange for her to be back there (she regularly helped my grandma with her garden), at this point she had been reported missing and nobody even knew where she was."
"It was only later that we learned she was already dead sometime that morning. She had been stabbed several times and her body found in a dumpster nearby."
"I don't know who the heck my cousins saw that night."
'Omg you saw it too?!'
"The girl I was babysitting one night came running out of her room crying. Saying something was walking by her window."
"Now I get a lot of creepy stories and things from the kids I babysit. They have crazy imagination. So I go check not really thinking anything."
"Something runs by the window as I'm checking it out. A distinctly humanoid figure. At this point, I needed a diaper as much as the little girl I was babysitting. So I text the parents asking about it. And no sh!t this is the response I get."
'Omg you saw it too?!'"
"Yeah I cried. Called the cops too. They came by and said they didn't see anything around."
"The thing is. The parents had called the cops several times before too for the same reason. One of the freakiest times I've ever babysat."
The Dog Knows
"My parents have a long hallway that runs down the entire length of their house, a big bungalow. Bedrooms at the end, bathrooms in the middle with the lounge off to the side etc, but if you're sat in the kitchen you can just about make out the end of the corridor, as it has a slight slant or kink in it like a chicane on a track."
"Anyway, my nephew is like 1 years old at this point being fed in his high chair, he's banging and giggling and blah blah blah. Then suddenly he and our dog look down the hallway and are just staring at it. Our dog has her ears up and just stood in the kitchen doorway looking down the corridor, then dips her head and gets lower down like she's stalking or something."
"Nephew is still staring. Not a sound, just looking and not moving."
"Then they both just... stopped and went back to normal again. Dog trots over to me and gets a scratching from me and goes and gets her ball."
"Such a weird experience, freaked out my sister and my mum as well as they were there feeding my nephew. I went down the corridor with a knife in hand as we were the only ones there. Nothing. No open windows or anything that could have caused a noise or anything."
In the Bunks
Let Me In Conan Obrien GIF by Team CocoGiphy"Was working as an EMT in a rural small town for a few years. Was up late after a run finishing my report when I started hearing someone come down some wooden stairs in the bay about 40 ft from me."
"The stairs go up to a training room and it's just me and my partner there. I go look, nothing there. I go sit back down and try to finish the report. Sound gets loud and fast down the stairs so I just get up and start walking out when the plug in for the ambulance just shoots out and crashes against the wall. Decided to finish my reports in the bunk rooms."
Ok, so far all of this sounds like it's coming from the mind of Stephen King; or worse, Wes Craven. I enjoy their work immensely, but I do not want to live in their brains. And why do dogs always know?
Redrum
The Shining GIF by Top 100 Movie Quotes of All TimeGiphy"Had a room in our hotel where a murder occurred, got multiple complaints that the sheets have blood stains and the lights won't turn on from different guests every couple weeks."
"Whenever we'd check the room, no issues."
"One time after moving the guests, got a noise complaint that there was screaming coming from the room. Check the room, empty. Listened to the neighbours rooms and didn't note any noise either."
"We had never publicly release that the murder occurred in that room, and nobody but staff knew. I'm skeptical but creeped me out."
Don't Look Back
"My aunt has a story of her and her siblings sharing the same experience while in three separate rooms."
"My aunt and I were driving in the town she went to school in. We drove past a house and I remarked how bad it looked. She replied "it is worse inside. That place is haunted". I had never heard my aunt talk of anything paranormal and I haven't since."
"The story goes that the three of them rented out some sketchy house while going to school. Apparently, strange things would happen that made them feel uncomfortable but never anything crazy."
"They would all notice on a few occasions they would wake up in the night with the blankets off and at the foot of the bed. Nothing strange, people kick of blankets when they get too hot all the time."
"One night, my aunt recounts that she had a dream she was falling and needed to grab onto something to save herself. She suddenly realized that she wasn't dreaming and she was being pulled by her ankles out of her bed. She grabbed the rails of the headboard and after a few horrifying moments she gets the strength to scream."
"AT THE SAME TIME she hears screams from her siblings rooms."
"Just as soon as it started, the feeling ended and she ran to check on them. They all had the same feeling of being pulled out of their bed."
"Needless to say they moved out and didn't look back."
The Boots Made for Creaking
"I didn't see anything but in my old house I would be laying in bed watching tv at 2/3 am and could distinctly hear someone wearing heavy boots walk from the bathroom to the kitchen... they would do it four or five times then it would stop. At first I thought it was my mom or my grandma (I lived with both) and I would go check to see what they were doing up so late but no one was ever there."
"One day at dinner I brought it up to them and my grandma had told me she had heard the same footsteps since she first moved in. I'm pretty skeptical, the house was old and creaky it could have been anything but it sounded just like human footsteps and I can't explain the repetition... usually in a creaky house you'll hear one or to sounds then it goes away so."
The "L" Area
"I worked in the memory care unit of a nursing home facility. I was 2-10:30pm and from 8-10:30pm I would be the only employee in the unit. All of our residents were in their rooms either sleeping or watching tv around 9:30pm."
"Our unit was an L shape with a living room/dining room in the bend of the L. ANYWAYS, one night around 9:45, I was just walking from one end of the unit to the other."
"We had quite a few empty rooms at the time and we always kept their doors closed but not locked. I walked past some empty rooms, turned around at the end of the unit and as I passed back past the empty rooms one of the doors was wide open."
"I turned on the lights and looked through the entire room (they weren't very big), but there was nothing to find. There was no way any of my residents could've gotten up and opened a door and gotten back to bed without my noticing."
"I shut the door and checked that it was truly firmly closed. I sat in the living room area the rest of the shift just staring down the hallway terrified."
"Of course, I had been warned that weird things happen in nursing homes because there's bound to be lots of death. But I never talked to anyone who had a negative experience, they said it was more things that felt like a resident who passed getting confused and going back to their old room or favorite areas."
Who She Is?
The Ring Movie GIF by Arrow VideoGiphy"It was a Saturday, I was taking a nap, in my dreams a girl with a white dress came to me, got near my ear, and started screaming."
"I instantly woke up, and i heard the door ringing, it was a friend that came over, the moment he comes in he asks if I'm with a girl at home, I was like why are you asking, he said that he ringed the bell and a girl answered, he asked if i was home, and she said "yes, he's sleeping, ill wake him up, just a second." I was freakin' traumatized."
Yeah, no. I'm not cool with this. I also don't believe it all. Maybe that is the root of this line of thought. Maybe we're all just trapped by the unknown of it. Without proof it's not real... there is no proof that it isn't real. God I'm deep.