this is interesting.
obviously playing in a band and touring across the country in a van and doing shit like that is not "serving" but I'm often glad that I did something interesting and something that broadened my perspective a bit while I was young. At my last job I was talking to one of the sales directors and he mentioned he spent some time as a commercial fisherman when he was in his twenties and we connected a bit over having had a... I dunno, cowboy phase before settling into corporate lives. There are times when, of course I regret opportunities I missed when I was deep inside the bottle, and then related but separate I wonder "what if" about people who started with a focused direction really early. And there are also times I think about people who go off to college at 18 for career prep and go sequentially right through the steps and are in the burbs in a quarter zip and khakis with 2.5 kids in their mid twenties, and i do not at all regret fucking up and bouncing around and doing some cowboy shit for a while as I figured things out. And apart from just spice of life stuff, I do think that the broader experience and perspective is both useful and helps me enjoy life better.