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Ask HN: I'm in a humiliating situation, and I can't commit

6 points by Shanbo ↗ HN
Like a lot of people, I was raised by boomer parents with attachment disorders (NPD dad and BPD mom). Treated like an object, so I never felt real, did not develop a sense of agency like most people. Which led to me not knowing what to do most of life. In college I said fuck it, went into a major that I knew paid money, but that I had no real care for.

Long story short, I am 34, I have saved ~2 million in the bank. Recently to change my life, I moved to NYC to try to force myself to take action (I left my original job of 8.5 years to start a new life). I have an engineering degree, but it's not CS (and not from an Ivy).

I have not worked in 3 years. I spent a lot of this time reading all of the entrepreneur material out there, fixing my psychological issues (mostly cognitive distortions due to faulty 'programming' from early life- midbrain stuff). And unfortunately I also did quite a bit of hardcore gaming (mostly due to hopelessness/depression). I pushed myself to top 10 on wow and hearthstone, and I considered streaming, but I knew that long term, I wouldn't be intellectually satisfied with just doing that.

Since I seem to share values with a lot of the tech community and founders, I thought I should teach myself programming and start a business in that field, but there are so many directions to go, it doesn't seem practical to learn them all. Do you learn JS, do you learn mobile, should I try to become as good as an engineer that works for GOOG etc... Should I just say fuck it and become a physicist or quant and go into finance. I don't know, but I need to take action, and for some reason I cannot decide. I think part of it is also facing the humiliation of working with much younger people and them looking at me like 'holy shit, I'm glad I'm not that guy'.

20 comments

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alva
If you have a short-let in NYC I would suggest considering international travel for a bit. Can help clear the head, give you a new perspective on your depression and perhaps more importantly, give you some sense of agency.

It doesn't suit everyone but might be worth thinking about.

Shanbo
It's hard to give myself permission to do something like that when I'm so worried about actually finding something to do, but maybe that's part of the problem. I guess it is something I could experiment with, 7 days of travel, see how it feels.
val314159
That seems like it's clipped from a "You Can Do Anything!" article. He said he's full up on Generic Business Magazine advice.
superioritycplx
You're telling yourself a lot of things. You're also comparing other people's highlight reels to your backstage. You're much more normal than you think. You do seem to have a barrier that once broken will be gone forever. Usually it's achieved by meeting someone special or experiencing something special which will make you go "whatever I thought all my life is irrelevant right now because I'm enjoying this so much."

Stop planning and researching. Go outside and get in trouble.

Shanbo
If you were in my shoes, how would you go about 'go outside and get in trouble?'. I'm just not quite sure what to do.
icedchai
I recommend moving to a lower cost area of the country, investing that 2 million, and simply doing whatever you find interesting. You should be able to live perpetually on 2 million if you're getting a decent return and withdraw less than 4% annually.
Shanbo
It looks like my post was removed from the ask section. Is there a reason why?
dang
It hasn't been removed. There's a point threshold before submissions appear there.
DrScump 

  I have saved ~2 million in the bank
If that's in U.S. dollars, you can do whatever you want, within very broad limits.

For perspective, you can overspend by $50,000 a year for 40 years and still have all the compounded interest left.

Your angst seems unwarranted.

Shanbo
I just feel absolutely horrible that I'm not doing anything. It's like I'm watching all the opportunity pass by. I know I should have been part of the early tech scene. Instead I was stuck in hell with a mega neurotic family who still tries to control me to this day. It doesn't affect me as much now, because I learned about their disorders and why they are that way, and I learned about my own disorders, mostly inherited from their psychotic ways. But now I have nothing other than money being managed by some CFA whom has done a relatively decent job, but is badly outdated (I have to do all of the performance tracking on my own). So if the market has a bad crash, things aren't going to go so well for me. I have thought about just taking over the account and making my own investments, or just putting it into a bank until I figure out what I'm going to do. It stresses me to no end.
zzleeper
"Being managed by some CFA"? Dude wtf?

Just go into an index fund and pay 0.05% management fees... how much are you paying in fees right now? 2%? That's like 1/3 of whatever you earn from the market on average (if inflation is 2%, and the SP500 pays 8% a year on avg, then just by dumping the CFA and going to an index you get 50% more per year in real terms)

Shanbo
1%, but he's outperformed the usual indexes, vanguard, S&P etc by a considerable amount, so it has worked thus far.
CyberFonic
You deserve a compliment for saving $2m. As DrScump & icedchai suggest you do HAVE some easy options.

From your narrative, I get the impression that you have not received professional therapy. If that is the case, then you should really get some competent help. A dependancy on gaming is not a good sign.

Here's my take: You have a professional degree and are able to earn a good income (as your savings attest) you could do worse than continue with your established professional career. You could then develop some outside of work interests that bring you satisfaction.

Entrepreneurship, especially in programming related tech has very little chance of success, something like 0.1%. Perhaps there is some way of using your professional experience to solve a real world problem or a problem in your profession that can be solved by some software solution.

Shanbo
I am in professional therapy right now, someone who specializes in personality disorders, so right up my alley. I am not dependent on gaming anymore, I quit all of that cold turkey. My degree was in oil and gas, and that industry is in the shitter and when I quit, I told myself I would die on the street trying to do something else rather than go back. I don't respect the leaders in that industry, I don't like the goal of the work there, it's just not something I could do. Would rather die.

>Entrepreneurship, especially in programming related tech has very little chance of success, something like 0.1%

I just don't care much about polls and stuff. For what every big time entrepreneur has done, noone thought they could pull it off.

marcus_holmes
If you're going into entrepreneurship to become rich or be considered successful, you'll hit problems.

Your comment: >> I just don't care much about polls and stuff. For what every big time entrepreneur has done, noone thought they could pull it off.

The same is true of Lottery Winners. The odds of winning the lottery are around 1 in 14million (depending on the exact style of lottery). Yet every single week, someone wins the lottery. Simple statistics determines that you will die before you ever win the lottery, yet for ~50 people a year, that was untrue. We hear a LOT about those people. We never hear from the millions of people who play the lottery every week and don't win. Survivor bias plays havoc with our perception of the odds of winning, and so millions of people part with cash they can't afford to spend in the hope of making it rich.

It's exactly the same with entrepreneurship. We hear a LOT from the success stories. We don't hear from the failures. There's a lot less luck in entrepreneurship, but it's totally common to see two people do more-or-less the same things with the same idea in the same industry, and one of them succeed and one of them fail. It's VERY hard to predict beforehand what the winning move looks like.

So, don't spend your hard-earned cash playing the lottery if what you want is to become "rich and successful". You are already "rich and successful" ($2mm in the bank is rich and therefore successful in most people's eyes).

You have to enjoy the process, the journey, of being an entrepreneur. It has to be the end in itself, or there's no point and you'll just hate yourself more. If you don't enjoy the process of building and growing a business, of hiring and selling and managing and planning, then walk away now.

If you do enjoy it, then don't worry about "big time entrepreneurs". This isn't about that. It's about living life right now, doing what you enjoy right now, rather than looking forward to some mythical point where it'll all be better and you'll be happier, more successful, more respected and more loved.

[dead] pastaziti
Hn is actively hostile to newcomers. Don't take it personal and don't question it. Just lower your expectations and be happy.
val314159
I will PERSONALLY teach you to program for only $1.5M!
zzleeper
I think a lot of one's happiness comes from having a purpose and feeling useful/productive in some way ("achieving something").

A few things on top of the other good replies:

- Uninstall wow/hearth and never look back; the addiction traps you

- Get some hobbies that are non-addictive.

- With entrepreneurship, you learn more on a month of doing than on a year of reading.

- Get a job, or create one for yourself. You can write a book, you can learn web coding, join a startup. What do you want to do? what thing is both something you could do well and make you happy?

Shanbo
Oh, yea, I don't game anymore I should have mentioned. That is done. I am only doing positive things now.

I'm not even sure what I want to do or what I can do well. I know I'm good at pattern recognition and reading other people. My math skills aren't super strong, but I think I could change that. My english/writing potential is very high, but I haven't spent enough time writing to be skilled. I don't know if I would like it.

I think I need to force myself to experiment for short periods of time like the scientific method and evaluate after, not during.

I think part of my problem is that I've never learned to work for the sake of work itself. Everything in my life has always been to prove that I am 'good enough', to prove against feelings of unworthiness that pervade me, to beat the other person. But when it comes to beating myself, I suppose I have never given myself enough respect to attempt that. And it's unfortunate because that's the only worthwhile endeavor.