I wasted the first 8 years of my life after college not knowing what to do professionally and being too depressed to actually get anything done in the meantime.

I also used to wasted time being addicted to the 24/7 news, which not only made subtly upset all day long, but actually made me less informed because the news puts spin on everything and winds up getting almost every key fact wrong in the long run.

I wasted time caring about memes and internet culture, but it did teach me about how ephemeral and quick-changing culture is. Everything is fashion and I know that better now.

Other than that, video games make me happy, my coding forays have made me smarter, my unused accounting degree has made me financially responsible and knowlegable, reddit and hacker news have taught me cued into new things and connected me to people from across the globe.