Eight things I wish I knew in my 20s, before I squandered my life savings on an alpaca farm

Wouldn’t it be great to go back in time and give your younger self some advice? For example, if I could go back to my twenties, I would tell myself that I travel more, live in the moment and, most importantly, Not draining my savings account to start an alpaca farm just because I read an article that says “alpaca fleece is the future of the apparel industry”. Trust me – it’s not.

To help you avoid making these kinds of mistakes, here are some other things I wish I knew in my 20s.

Better a few close friends than many acquaintances.

Unlike alpacas, who are sneaky and sneaky creatures, loyal friends will tell you when you make a big mistake, like believing you can pull off a fedora or quit your high-paying job as a corporate lawyer and order half a dozen alpacas from Peru for fifteen thousand dollars each, even though you don’t know a thing about ranching.

Don’t sweat the little things.

So your colleague was rude to you or someone cut you off in traffic. Big cheers! At least you haven’t traded your waterfront condo for a run-down old farmhouse and enough land for a small herd of South American camelid mammals to roam free. now This is something worth sweating over. (Fun fact: Did you know that alpacas don’t sweat? They expel bodily fluids by spitting at high speeds. And they often do, even with the person responsible for keeping them alive.)

drink more water

It is recommended to drink between three and four liters of water per day. You think that sounds like a lot? That’s nothing compared to the fifty gallons of fresh water alpacas need, which I found out the hard way when two of mine collapsed from dehydration on a hot summer’s day and I had to pay three thousand dollars for a consultation with an exotics specialist.

Take better care of your teeth.

Nobody wants to spend hours in the dentist’s chair! Interestingly, just like humans, alpacas have thirty-two teeth, including two pairs of particularly sharp teeth known as their “fighting teeth,” which are more than capable of getting a finger clean if, say, you were trying to give an alpaca his very expensive ulcer drug. Guess who has a thumb and a half and didn’t know this. That damn guy!

Don’t worry about what other people think.

Who cares what your friends from college think of you now? As if her life were better! So your old roommate Kyle signed a three-book deal with Simon & Schuster, and your buddy Mike started his own sports marketing agency that’s now worth two hundred million dollars. Mike asked you to become a partner in the company, but you turned him down, saying, “Thanks, but by 2030 everyone is going to be wearing alpaca fur and I’m not sure I see this whole sports marketing thing going anywhere.” Don’t we all shovel fifty pounds of alpaca shit every day, some of us just more literally than others?

Invest in Bitcoin.

Heck, I could have started my own cryptocurrency right now – alpacacoin or some crap.

It’s never too late for a career change.

In your twenties you are still young! There is enough time to try something new. Unless, of course, you have six stupid long-necked wannabe llamas to feed and care for, and not even the local petting zoo is willing to take them off your hands for a fraction of what you paid for them. Your only hope of recouping some of the money you’ve invested in them over the years is to butcher them and sell their stringy, almost impossible-to-chew meat. Except you can’t bring yourself to it because you’ve grown fond of them in a sick, twisted way like they’re your own kids, which they might as well be, since you’ll never start a family at that price, it unless you find some kind of alpaca fetishist willing to settle down with a guy who’s constantly covered in white fur and stinks of crap no matter how hard he scrubs himself in the shower.

Don’t start an alpaca farm.

Serious. Don’t waste the best years of your life taking care of those frizzy, evil camels. ♦