What were you doing in your twenties?

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A daily deal site that features underwear is exciting, but it’s the story behind the creation of cheapundies.com that caught my attention:

The site was launched by two entrepreneurs still in their 20s, Edward Upton and Michael Grider. As a teenager, Upton got into the habit of buying overstock merchandise from Abercrombie & Fitch on the cheap, and then selling them for a profit via eBay’s site in the UK. Various lessons in e-commerce and business ventures followed, before Cheap Undies—which isn’t remotely bashful about showing a whole lot of skin for men and women alike—became a reality a couple months ago.

Are you as annoyed about the Cheap Undies creation story as I am?

As a teenager, Edward Upton was purchasing overstock merchandise and selling it over the Internet for a profit.

Now in his twenties, he has launched a daily deal site that’s garnered attention from enormous media outlets like TIME, The Washington Post, Business Insider and Vanity Fair.

I did a little research and learned that Upton, now 28, launched the business in 2006 when he was just 22. A high school dropout, he initially used the site to sell his own line of “intimate menswear” as well as several designer brands.

His partner, Michael Grider, came on board a year later to serve as product manager. Grider is 26 years old.

Can you believe this? Stories like this make me crazy.

Do you have any idea what I was doing before my twenty-fifth birthday?

In chronological order, some of the highlights include:

  • Lived with friends who were attending college while I was managing  McDonald’s restaurants.
  • Hosted keg parties.
  • Played hide-and-go-seek in cemeteries.
  • Got arrested and tried for grand larceny and embezzlement.
  • Lived in my car.
  • Shared space with a goat in a converted pantry in the home of a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
  • Unemployed.
  • Worked 18 hours a day for two years at a McDonald’s and a bank in order to pay legal fees.
  • Robbed at gunpoint.
  • Unemployed again.
  • Worked for a marketing company.
  • Moved to Washington DC for six months.
  • Lived in a walk-in closet with a girl.
  • Unemployed again.
  • Worked as a delivery boy.

And that just gets me to the age of 25.

These guys who launch business and careers before the age of thirty are both impressive and infuriating.

The amount of time I lost flailing about in the early twenties is staggering, and regardless of how hard I work, I can never recapture those years.

I can’t tell you how much this annoys me.