Welcome, Chris!

I'm only 24 and I already feel like I've wasted my life, fallen permanently behind a bunch of the rest of you guys, which kind of screws up my high ambitions. Oh well.

It's poor form of me to analyze you from outside, but this reminds me of the discussion of impostor syndrome we've been having in another thread. I definitely identify with this kind of internal monologue, and it's helped me to recognize that others suffer it too (and that it's typically a distorted view).

I'd like to see a link explaining the mechanics of the karma system (like how karma relates to posting, for instance) in this post.

I second this, especially now that the karma threshold for posting has been changed.