Despite graduating into a recession, Henry managed to land a teaching job, but two weeks in, he decided it wasn’t for him and quit. It took him a while to find his calling—he worked in his father’s pencil factory, as a door-to-door magazine salesman, took on other teaching and tutoring gigs, and even spent a brief stint shoveling manure before finding some success with his true passion: writing.

Henry published his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, when he was 31 years old, after 12 years of changing jobs and bouncing back and forth between his parents’ home, living on his own, and crashing with a buddy, who believed in his potential. “[He] is a scholar & a poet & as full of buds of promise as a young apple tree,” his friend wrote, and eventually was proven right. He may have floundered during young adulthood, but Henry David Thoreau turned out pretty okay. (The buddy he crashed with, for the record, was Ralph Waldo Emerson.)

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/01/when-are-y...

You'll eventually figure out that as you age, it's just your body aging mainly. You will continue to learn things and get "wiser," but your personality is immutable data, basically. I first noticed this at my 20-year high school reunion... I grew up without Facebook so this was the first time I had seen many people in 20 years... and I didn't recognize many of them (usually the ones who gained a bunch of weight... note, I did not)... until I looked into their eyes, and/or until they cracked a joke or said something, and then suddenly it was like OMG THAT IS THE SAME EXACT FUNNY PERSON THEY WERE IN HIGH SCHOOL, clear as day.