This is not meant to sound like an off the cuff comment, it is not, a lot of thought has gone into this:
Remember this piece before you argue with someone that they should move away from their friends, family, their support systems for work or other development opportunities. It Takes A Village, and your local support system is not to be underestimated.
In the end, all we have is family and/or loved ones ("chosen family"); everything else is fleeting. Spread your wings, but know where Home is (and remember Home is something to be cultivated, and not to be taken for granted).
Recently a family member died who did just that: asked her father to move from the city where he lived to go nearer to her so she could take better care of him. They debated this for a while, he relented, moved to bf nowhere.
So far so good.
Then, three months later she drops dead of lung cancer.
It is very fortunate that I live nearby too, total coincidence, that branch of my family I have very little contact with. So now this 80+ year old guy that just lost his daughter, the only regular link to his past and provider of all his needs has to depend on me, the nephew he hasn't really seen in the last 35 years or so.
No more circle of friends, no walks about town, just some crap flat for old people and a whole day to wait for night to come again. Card games once every week and the occasional game of Scrabble. And the rest of the time you are just alone with your thoughts of life the way it was.
The good news is he definitely did not waste his life, but it is super hard on him and there isn't a visit that leaves me unmoved about how incredibly harsh life can be.
> Being compassionate is an act of resistance; it is different from being caring, or passive. Compassion, literally meaning ‘to suffer with’, is rooted in our loving desire to be alongside one another in our common struggle for a better spiritual and social reality. Compassion is an act of resistance because the compassionate cannot rest until all suffering has ended. Compassion is the recognition that none of us are free until we are all free.
-- Keith Hebden
For me it's also a way to expand my own life beyond my own life. That is, to take joy in the wellbeing of others, even though I can't feel their wellbeing as they do, still multiplies the joy I can have in life immensely. Compassion can bring sadness, sure, but I think it's more than made up for by the satisfaction it can bring, too. You might say I try to not always be selfish for purely selfish reasons.
In a rather free and bad translation, couldn't find it in English:
> Humans keep themselves in a passable height above hellish depths towards which they gravitate only by using all their powers and helping each other lovingly. Among each other they are connected by strong ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around a person get loose and they sink a little lower than the rest into the empty void, and it's horrible when the ropes around a person break and they fall. This is why one should stick with others. I suspect that girls keep us up high because they are so light, that is why we should love the girls and they should love us.
-- Franz Kafka in a letter to Oskar Pollak, 20th December 1903
It's from 1903, so I hope it's possible to enjoy the wisdom and cuteness without getting up on the last sentence :) Also "stick with others" is particularly badly translated and sounds weird, but keep the "lovingly help each other" bit in mind, don't hold my translation against Kafka.
This is all completely true. I feel like modern living has pitched this whole idea that it's worth putting yourself into debt to "have experiences, not things" (I have my doubts that this is a true Millennial preference and rather just a bit of clever marketing that has worked exceptionally well) and to avoid investing too much in anything lest something better come along. It's the same reason I look down upon tech people's effects on housing markets in SV pushing old-time residents out because they can't afford the rent, and look down upon people who scoff at moving to flyover land where they can afford to put down roots. This woman bought into a train of thought that's not really being developed for her benefit.
>Remember this piece before you argue with someone that they should move away from their friends, family, their support systems for work or other development opportunities.
Blood is certainly thicker than water as they say, for good and for evil. I used to think exactly as you stated the above and I don't mean to suggest how rigid you are but my recent experience with family is that relationships must go both ways, and when your attempts at expressing yourself go unheard or ignored then perhaps cutting ties is the right approach.
> I used to think exactly as you stated the above and I don't mean to suggest how rigid you are but my recent experience with family is that relationships must go both ways, and when your attempts at expressing yourself go unheard or ignored then perhaps cutting ties is the right approach.
I would encourage you to use this as a growth opportunity. I had a similar situation occur with a close family member who died unexpectedly, and years later, my heart still hurts every day because of it. Take care of your self, but grow emotionally to put yourself out there when you can.
I won't discount that cutting ties is appropriate under certain circumstances. For myself, it is a last resort. People are people, fallible to their core.
I appreciate your reply, but starting a message with advice instead of understanding leaves me wondering if you're more interested in being an advice dispenser than understanding where I'm coming from and then giving advice.
Forgive my reaction, my family is adept at that very thing: pretending to listen then dispensing the advice they think will fix you and your problems; I've now realized that empathy means simply listening actively, and generally the complainer will come to the correct conclusion on their own, they just need a willful listening ear.
At least, I've never been genuinely convinced I was in the wrong unless someone first recognized my pains then gave advice or I noticed someone else's example. My entire life has constituted shame-based discipline, and not even the direct "you're stupid for doing x thing" but "she's your mother, she brought you into this world." Like, yeah, but that doesn't help me not be upset, and I may have even agreed at the time but the point is my emotions are high and ignoring my feelings leaves me subconsciously believing that my emotional being is wrong or unimportant.
tl;dr I'm a big boy, I can get over it but understand me before giving advice
This is a great point, though it's also why I had bought into the move away from your network for opportunity mentality for so long.
Of course I'll leave my immediate family for opportunity - in my case, they're terrible people who posed a detriment to my future.
On the other hand I never learned how to function as part of a community of people (family, friends, whatever), and am left feeling like I have no support system. Which is apparently super important, but I only realize that now at 30 instead of earlier. :(
Absolutely. I've termed this emotional gaslighting, where I'm frustrated about something and bring it up and the family member I'm frustrated with deflects or points the finger right back at me as if they're the ones that were frustrated all along. This leaves me doubting my frustration as if my feelings weren't ever valid at all, which I suspect had a huge hand in my intense anxiety that I've fortunately largely overcome.
Sometimes you can get distracted (for years) and cut yourself off from the world.
This can be because of adventure Travel, creating a business, or focusing all your energy on one person and then having that relationship fall apart.
I moved cities to be better positioned for my Startup. Ignored all friends and family for 4 years, and ultimately the company failed and I felt very similar to this woman.
The prison system is developing "re-emergence" programs to help inmates reintegrate with the world after being isolated for 20 years. If they can come back to happy lives, anyone can.
But I think there should be more books/classes and programs focused on integrating back with your own life after a period of isolation.
I've been doing something similar recently, and it feels really good tbh. Instead of adding to the note/list, I just reach out right then and there and send them a message/email. It's worked wonderfully to reconnect with family and friends.
When I was in college there was an older woman doing my course who was a little like this - had lived all over the world, and had had the kind of wild life that I envied. I learned from her that memories of good times don't make you happy - quite the opposite, in fact, if your present is a let-down.
Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.
I feel like what he's saying is similar to the way that the open interval between 0 and 1 has no end when viewed as an open set in real analysis. Which is nice, but the only time I felt that I could advance time by infinitesimally small increments I was on mushrooms.
While that sounds romantic and liberating, the reality is that our experience in the present is shaped by the events of the past and anticipation of the future. The greatest sources of fulfillment in my life are the result of thoughtful consideration of the future that took place in the past.
The holidays are an emotional meat grinder. Its the hap hap happiest time of the year alright. This time of year is the lowest for most people but it is demanded of us to hide our desperation. Unfortunately it also distorts are situation. The situation really is better than we think it is. A lot of us get irrational this time of year. It will be better in the spring when the holiday hysteria is long gone.
I honestly wondered if this was some kind of satire.
I have great sympathy for the person asking for advice, and I suspect they may have been hoping for something a bit more actionable. Also, the advice columnist mentioning their new book and book tour in the reply seems a bit tone-deaf to me.
I hope that she finds a way to start making the changes she wants to see in her life.
I agree. Feels like the only reason she decided to respond to this person is to use it as an excuse to shill her new book to her readers and not out of genuine care for the other person.
"Hi Dan, thanks for calling the Suicide Helpline! I know what you're going through is tough. I went through what you're going through too, which I wrote all about in my new book, Suicide Kings, available on Amazon, buy now and get it 20% off the hardcover price for a limited time only! Here's an affiliate link, and an interview I did with the Today show. So yeah, I've been feeling down in the dumps lately too, and you know what I did? I wrote Suicide Kings, only $19.99 in two easy payments if you call 555-555-1513. That's 555-555-1513. Don't kill yourself Dan. I didn't. Write a book instead."
Reiterating something I wrote in another comment: the columnist's response is more than 2,300 words long. The mention of her book is 600 words in, is limited to a single sentence with no mention of what it's even about. And it is in the context of how the columnist fights feelings of inadequacy even during the ostensible high point of her career.
I think the parents of many 20 and 30-somethings played a role in so many young(ish) adults failing to launch.
American parents could learn a thing or two about parenting from previous generations and from a lot of immigrant families: nobody owes you anything, plan for a rainy day, find a partner you love and commit to them, work hard, cherish friends and family even when it's difficult, etc.
I think parenting has over-corrected from the overly didactic and stern parenting of previous generations to endless "follow your bliss" and "you can do anything" -- which is causing a lot of young people to spin their wheels for decades at a time, never growing up while their body is growing old. It's a shame to see.
I think we're seeing the result of the baby boomer generation, essentially. They rejected the old, as you put it -- stern way of parenting. I'd argue, perhaps it wasn't so much stern as it was the structured.
There was structure, expectations, and responsibilities. Things previous generates required to live. Since then, we've grown increasingly accustomed to insane amounts of wealth (or perhaps debt?).
This enabled us to lax our expectations, because you didn't need to be super disciplined to make the wealth.
The fact that we rebuffed the social norms has it's good and bad, unfortunately it does appear that we took it too far -- at least from a "you can do anything perspective". Yes, you can do anything, but you have to work to get there. It appears a lot of people forget that last part and feel entitled to their wealth / place in society.
Social trends almost always overcorrect. I wouldn't be surprised if we overcorrect the other way in future generations, then back again, etc. People seem to have trouble with the idea that the optimum is not at an extreme.
> "... the idea that the optimum is not an extreme."
I'd put this as "not an extreme" /on any of the axes that we're considering/. Life has an awful lot of dimensions -- if you imagine a very high-dimensional hypercube and draw the optima randomly, the optima are almost guaranteed to be close to some surface (some "extreme").
To my eye, the real problem is finding the correct perspective -- the one at which an optimum lies at an extreme.
>To my eye, the real problem is finding the correct perspective -- the one at which an optimum lies at an extreme.
Something which has brought a lot of happiness to my life and dramatically changed the way I live is taking responsibility for my own happiness and life choices. I used to spin my wheels and drift through life but at 30 I was diagnosed with cancer. It's a long story and it turned out to not be serious, although I did have two surgeries. There was a time period where it seemed very serious, however, and this period completely changed how I view my own life. I didn't want to die with this sense of being so unfulfilled and I wished I had made better choices. Now I try to make these choices as I live.
I commend you for finding the way to live to the fullest.
And I am envious. I have no impending doom looming above my head and I feel that this really makes me slow and feeling that I have time. I am 38 now and I am pretty aware that my time is ticking away. But there's always another crysis to salvage... I am trying my very best to crawl out of this hole but it's taking way too long.
I feel I lack the very important perspective that you have but these things are profound epiphanies; you can't just talk somebody into having them. They are transformative experiences and the resulting change in you cannot be duplicated by just talking or reading others' stories...
You definitely can't talk someone into having life-changing experiences. In the space of two years I went through:
1) Wife cheating on me
2) Divorce after a year of attempting to make it work
3) A clinically diagnosed major depressive episode (mainly brought on by the wife stuff but also some unresolved personal issues)
4) Cancer diagnosis
These years were incredibly formative, despite happening at ~30 years of age. The years since have seen me take control of my own life in ways I would never have before. If I want something I find a way to make it work.
One thing that helps me now is I don't worry about things. There is typically always a way out of a shit situation if you're willing to work for it. I don't know your personal situation but I recommend trying to be grateful for what you've got, set a 5-year plan for what you work and start doing the things you need to do for that 5-year plan (even if they're difficult and don't pay off for a long time). Treat your future self as someone to whom you're going to give a great gift.
> These years were incredibly formative, despite happening at ~30 years of age.
You know what they say: "No good sailor is formed by windless sailing" or some such. It's absolutely never too late to not only learn but to get transformed dramatically.
I also got through a ton of crap lately -- been jobless for 6 months but that was only the tip of it. Not gonna bore you, bottom line is that yes, these things make you shift priorities and look at everything with new eyes. That much is true.
What is still not true is that I don't have that mythical perspective that people with near-death experiences gain. I wonder if it's possible to gain it without outlasting cancer or barely surviving a car crash.
As for not worrying, at 38 I learned for the first time in my life to take everything that's happening in stride and without sweating. Basically, if paying the bills and food isn't the threat, I really seriously cannot even get stressed or pissed anymore. Took me several months of a ton of stress to transform though. Looking back at the process, even though it's still ongoing, makes you appreciate how painful and slow a profound change in your character can be.
Being grateful for what you got is, again, not something you just read somewhere and start doing it tomorrow and until you die. Suffering and pain gave me much needed perspective to really become grateful. Nowadays I can't even get upset at my wife or mother if they get pissy at something; I just smile widely because I am happy that they are alive and well, and with me. (In rare cases this is misinterpreted which makes the situation even more hilarious.)
As for own schedule and plans -- thanks, that's a good perspective. I am a pretty relentless guy and I have a "grand vision" and I almost never lose the horizon but I fully appreciate that having a self-imposed deadline can be a motivator.
Do you have an advice on how do I sparkle the strong emotional reaction that makes one not want to waste another minute? I really cannot consciously replicate that. I envy people like you who got that epiphany and are now living under its flag.
Demographic replacement in the sense of the original posts "American parents" vs "Immigrant parents" will put a natural damper on whatever oscillations "American parents" try to implement. The woman in the linked story will never have descendants to overcorrect.
I spent my 20s getting a PhD. I don't think I've ever gotten the most out of my degree professionally, but as a way to spend one ones 20s, it wasn't too bad. I never had more than about $10K to my name until sometime in my 30s. Having a career in tech certainly helped--I took very few loans, but the ones I did have were paid off within five years of exiting academia and smartening up about my career.
I just wish I had gotten patents for the things I worked on in grad school, even if those patents belonged to the university.
These days I strongly advise young people to just get a bachelors and forget the rest unless it's required (e.g. for teaching).
I feel similarly with the differences between me and my family vs my wife and her family. I grew up not desperately poor, but with only just enough money to get by. In the late 90s we had a computer, a basic Windows 95 machine with dial-up and about 1/4 of the RAM/CPU that modern machines had, but we had one. That's about all we had for modern comforts, which I think forced me to be laser-focused on one activity. There just wasn't a lot of opportunity for me anywhere else but the computer. If I decided I didn't like computers and wanted to be a painter, there was no way we were buying art supplies. I asked for a computer and I got it and that was all I was going to get.
My wife's family wasn't rich, but the parenting attitude was "whatever you want, follow your heart". The kids had painting, sculpting, pianos, guitars, drums, dance lessons, soccer, karate, foreign language tutors, and anything else they desired. As soon as they got bored or frustrated, they quit and moved on to the next thing. The hope from the parents was if they were exposed to enough stuff, they'd find their passion. Of the three kids, only my wife has a steady job, and only because I nearly broke up with her when she was job hopping while we were dating. The other siblings quit their jobs at the first sign of any real struggle and move back in with their parents. I believe it's because they've never been forced to work past the uninteresting or difficult parts of any hobby or job in the past.
I don't know where the line should be drawn between giving kids every opportunity to find their passion versus making them stick with something they may not actually enjoy. I hope I figure that out before I have kids.
We didn't have Fortnite but we had many other venues for entertainment on computers: MUDs, Ultima, DOOM, Duke Nukem 3D, Wolfenstein, Wing Commander, etc. etc. The list goes on.
My early family life resembled the parent's. The difference in my case and related to your point wasn't the absence of distractions it was to get at them I had to learn how to make the damn computer work. I once tricked my 286 into thinking it was a 386 so that I could install Windows 3.1. All for the purpose of... playing solitaire. Yeah, that's how bored I was.
I'm not even sure I could replicate doing that today. As a 9 year old I was better with a rudimentary BIOS than I am today with a modern one. I'm pretty sure it was because there was a barrier between me and what I wanted and the only way to get it was to figure out that horrendous system.
Well, now kids would be learning about overclocking video cards, messing with refresh rates, optimizing their gaming mouse etc. Same idea. I had Zork and PAC man growing up and while I enjoyed it I wasn’t completely addicted to it possibly because the graphics, multi player gaming etc weren’t there yet. It does bother me seeing my son play fortnite rather than learning python etc like I’d have been inclined to do if I were his age. Then again, I’d probably be addicted to fortnite as well.
I think all parents stress about video games. Mine did. Sometimes I'd get a new game and play it incessently. Eventually I'd get bored and go back to programming. If someone is interested in the topic fun games won't stop them exploring it, I'm sure.
So much truth. I must have beat Wing Commander 100 times. To play it, I had to tinker. I didn't want to tinker, but it was the only way to blow up evil cat people in space. Things are more stable and reliable these days. I prefer it for the usability, but I recognize the limited hackability of most modern computers means few people will take an interest.
I wasn't a "follow your heart" kid, but school came super easy to me and I never learned how to force myself to do things I don't want to do. It's a constant struggle.
If your only had a piano, instead of a computer, your story wouldn't be particularly convincing. People who grew up with a computer, before most other people had one, were lucky to find a rapidly growing industry. Most other people are getting very little for their single focus.
If I only had a piano to entertain myself I probably would not be a professional piano player, you are correct. But that's not the point of the anecdote. Replace my computer with anything else, and the frustrations will still be the same. The boredom and experimentation and learning and moments of clarity and joy and pain will still be the same.
Whether I carry the piano into my adult life doesn't matter. I've still learned how to stick through something difficult without quitting and moving on to the next exciting thing. The most valuable lesson learned in this story is that everything worth doing is boring and difficult sometimes. If you never stick through it beyond that point, you'll never learn that lesson.
I do think it matters, because we are trying to establish some sort of utility of having focus in the context of the conversation. The theory of this thread is that a lack of focus is harmful and, at least partly, to blame for why young people are struggling.
You can be the most dedicated piano player, but if you later decides to channel that dedication into e.g. writing you are very likely to be struggling anyways. So now you are essentially in the same boat as everyone else.
Young people are mainly struggling because education, housing and long term careers are competitive and costly. Of course dedication can help with being successful in almost any sense of the word. But overall it is very likely overshadowed by other factors as e.g. your position in the housing market.
How many people who could afford a mortgage in a major city in their early twenties, by any means, are struggling with their lives today? Certainly a few, but surely a lot less than those who don't yet have a stable home in their thirties.
I personally think learning how to focus and power through a struggle is the important skill to learn, regardless of what form it takes. Finishing 10 imperfect paintings is more of a learning experience than never finishing one perfect painting. Finishing a terrible novel in NaNoWriMo is more important than giving up because your story is bad. Making it through school with a C+ is more important than dropping out because it's too hard. If you're going for a run, the first mile might be excruciating pain but then the runner's high kicks in. Now every time you go for a run after that, you'll know to grin and bear it because the pain will go away and it will get easier.
I'm arguing that it's not what skill you learn, but rather that you did. You moved past something being new and exciting, got to the point where it was frustrating and boring, and you kept going anyway. I'm now wishing I hadn't use a computer as my example because I still feel like you're taking the wrong lesson from my anecdote. I don't credit my childhood computer use for my successful career as an adult. I credit my (forced) single-minded focus, where giving up was not an option.
In this story, my siblings-in-law never knew that it gets easier, never knew that there is a plateau you can overcome, and never made it to the other side. Because they never had to. It's a story about not giving up, not a story about how everyone should learn to use a computer.
I just don't think it is accurate. Often pursuing something means giving up other things, which won't help you not to struggle in life. There is often no plateau in menial or highly competitive professions. Trying to e.g. become a writer will leave you struggling for a long time. Unless some can provide for you in the meantime, which has little to do with your own focus. I just don't think focus as such is that relevant for whether you will struggle or not in life. A lazy programmer is still on average very likely going to struggle less than a dedicated service worker. There are plenty of, say, high school football players who have more grit than most of us but are doing worse in life than the kid who barely knew how to tie his own shoes.
Maybe. My brother had access to a computer and a piano. For a while he was big into computer graphics and everyone in my family thought he'd be a graphics designer. He ended up becoming singularly focussed on music and is now a professional music producer. We're quite similar, we're both very focussed on a single skill and have reached professional levels in our respective areas.
So I'm not sure that sort of life is an inherent quality of growing up with a computer. It's perfectly possible to push through the hard parts and find a passion with music.
As far as I know that is a similar deal. Knowing how software works is an essential part of being a music producer today. You would have great benefit from already having extensive experience with a software suite. The same isn't true if he had been dedicated to music and dancing. People don't generally lack dedication so much as they lack opportunities. Learning about computers gives you opportunities, learning about something else might not.
My family was relatively rich. We also had a computer. With lots of games. I played Red Alert and then started programming. My brother played Counter Strike and now plays Dota or whatever, he never learned to program. I'm a successful programmer and he's a successful lawyer.
Boomers didn't just reject the old way of parenting. They rejected anything which didn't improve the bottom line for them individually. There has never been a more self-important, self-centered generation.
Don't forget that they give advice they never followed themselves.
If a millennial loses a once-profitable career due to sudden market shifts, "that's his fault for not persuing additional skills". But if a Boomer loses a job, it's never their fault.
As a relatively "young" person (teen) I feel as if I subconsciously witness or experience this all the time. However I'm not fully aware of what exactly took place that ultimately got us to where we are today e.g., boomers and their effects on modern society, aside from people wanting to have sex/kids after WW2.
I've been getting really into history recently so if anyone has any resources on the socio economic impact of other generations, specifically boomers, please let me know!
It isn't just the boomers. The "Greatest Generation" were the ones who were the most politically active at a time that they yearned for political leadership from grandpa Reagan, who had a large hand in helping weaken unions, eliminate pensions, and balloon the national debt... but at the same time they were a hell of a lot more pragmatic than their kids, who somehow decided that America had a soul that needed to be fought for by voting for corporate kleptocrats who hugged the flag and the Bible and sent kids to wars they would have protested against at that age.
It’s tough, the balance between the two extremes that you’re talking about. Immigrants, and the previous generations, were a lot more preoccupied with survival than with self-actualization. Watching a movie like Office Space becomes interesting to view from the perspective of survival. It’s almost indulgent. This guy has a well-paying job, his biggest woe is that his manager is not likeable, and he’s unhappy? But when you live it, you understand.
For me, the balance has been most aptly described by the phrase: you can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want. You can travel, follow your bliss, whatever it takes to find some self-actualization (very important in the western world), but you pay a price. This way, you’re not completely discounting the value of ‘finding yourself’, but, like any major decision, you assess the ROI.
"you can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want." I heard this quote for the first time in ray Dalio's book Principles. It's one I intend to use in the future lol
>I think parenting has over-corrected from the overly didactic and stern parenting of previous generations to endless "follow your bliss" and "you can do anything" -- which is causing a lot of young people to spin their wheels for decades at a time, never growing up while their body is growing old. It's a shame to see.
It will likely be the last generation that has this opportunity. I don't imagine our children or their children living on a planet with much 'bliss' compared to their parents. Earth's trajectory is not looking good.
It's easy to blame other people. The fact of the matter is, my generation drinks the "quit your job, sell everything, and boat around the world to find yourself" kool-aid because they like it.
Even here we'll get a few blog posts a month from a one-man-show who's just got their start-up off the ground -- or alternatively, the one that's just burst into flames.
It's the same story. "I keep putting all my money into lottery tickets hoping to make it big, with no plans for what to do when I don't." No one tells us to romanticize it. We're not ignorant of the risks. And yet, we still do.
It's also easy to look down on others from a position of moral superiority. Yeah, it's the same story, but why is the behavior so wildly rampant now when it wasn't previously? I seriously push back on the position that "nobody romanticizes it" - the self-made entrepreneur, the kid who backpacked around Africa for two years then started a successful NGO and now gets to meet celebrities every day (this is completely made up) - the point is, our culture DOES romanticize this, and frames it all in the context of "they followed their passion!" or some other baloney like that.
I have two kids, and the ONE THING I try the hardest to teach them is personal responsibility. Yet I recognize that generally the term "personal responsibility" is kind of used as a gatekeeping term against the poor and the young. Whatever their problems are, they are self-imposed as they lack personal responsibility. Sympathy, compassion, charity not required.
Every generation of parents is a generation of first-time parents. The best we can do is learn from past generations. I don't see any harm in identifying causes and effects of generational shifts in parenting style in order to better correct for the next round.
The romance around travel and adventure has been around for centuries, if not millennia. The Homeric cycle has plenty of that, and other cultures have analogous stories. I think it's a young person thing, not a generation thing.
Travel for self-discovery has the well-understood problem that self-discovery is not about the places you go or things you do. It's about how you react and change in the process.
Hedonistic travel is fine and can be restoring, but pleasure only gives you insight into what you like, not how you handle life's challenges. The latter is where you actually find yourself. For that, travel is useful because it makes you uncomfortable, but first you have to seek discomfort.
How is that any different than the hippy, free love, counter culture of the 60's. People in every single generation have wanted to do that and many have. The only difference between your generation and all the ones of the past is you now have social media around to amplify and make you feel subliminally jealous of the ones who actually do it. You're a real live productive member of society, so why aren't all these people your age able to do it right /s?
I get why you would say that and why it is alluring for people to agree, it even is for me to some extent. But I don't really see any, even indication of, evidence that it would be true. I think you are confusing cause and effect.
The people who are spinning their wheels aren't the once who just want a decent job and modest life. It is if you don't want to go into debt, you don't to move to a major city, you can't or don't want to get help from your parent and you believe in making your own way that you are spinning your wheels. The "follow you bliss" kids are all getting money from their parents.
It is easy to have an opinion about how other people should live their lives. So just tel me, after they had your ideal upbringing, what do they do then and why would they not in that scenario benefit from essentially being spoiled?
I understand the failure to launch part that modern parenting contributes to. However, from personal experience, I do not believe it is only limited to American-born parents. I grew up with a lot of Chinese/Indian/Korean immigrant families around (which are among the most "successful" immigrants in America in terms of wealth and educational attainment).
We grew up with high expectations to study hard, go to a top university, get a 6-figure job, and start a family in the suburbs. Throughout years 4-18 our parents told us "You will do X, Y, and Z because these are the ingredients that worked for us to live a good life in America, so this is what will work for you."
While this does a good job providing structure, it doesn't take the individual into account. So many of my friends from immigrant families came out of college wondering "Now what?" because being a person was new to them in the sense that they had to figure out what to do with their life once things were no longer as pre-determined.
This created a new wave of 'failure to launch' where 20-somethings found themselves living at home trying to figure out what to do, or working down a path of some job they hate because their parents wanted them to do it. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a good way to describe the situation.
"You can do anything" is a troublesome parental mindset to establish, but so is a mindset of "You can't do this because this is not one of the 5 jobs we believe is best for you". For example, my 25y.o. Chinese female friend is just now getting into CompSci (what she is good at) after dropping out of pharmacy school (her parents goal for her because "you are a girl, you should be a pharmacist or a dentist").
The pleasing-the-parents issue is one that affects every family, since there are all kinds of hidden sociocultural expectations that tend to start being confronted near the end of the educational years and the start of career building and family formation. It's expressed more strongly in this time period because the job market has quickly reshaped itself around computing, and the traditionally safe options for young people are drying up while new aspirational fantasies like "become a pro Fortnite player" or "become a cryptocurrency baron" are working their way in.
And it isn't just a generation gap - a whole set of institutions are like this, motivating the popular "Millenials killed tradition" genre of journalism. And for the Millenial generation that amounts to having to reinvent each institution in a new form. Not an ambition anyone particularly signed up for, but one where the jobs are now.
> nobody owes you anything, plan for a rainy day, find a partner you love and commit to them, work hard, cherish friends and family even when it's difficult, etc.
My SO is doing all theses things, a bit to the extreme too but she feel EXACTLY like that person in the post.
- She planned for rainy days, much more than anyone I know, much more than her parents, much more than mine too.
- She was in love with someone for a pretty long time, way too much, but he had pretty big issues and whatever she did, he would never fix his issue, he was taking her down so hard, yet she loved him and she kept committing to him, it took her 5 years to decide it was enough, 5 years where he was the priority and not her own life.
- She worked pretty hard, again, way too much, she had a good well paid government job, they had nearly no resource because of cuts, the department of one of her colleague went from 8 to 2 employees. Right before she quit, they learned that they were only replacing 1 out of 8 employee that was quitting (she was one of the youngest, most were 45+). She pushed herself up to a depression, again also after nearly 5 years of this.
- Cherish friends and family even when it's difficult. That girl has a heart so big, it's crazy. She hated spending time with her mom, her mom always denigrated her, she always pushed her to her limit and never ever she would fight back. She die recently and my SO was there for her up until the end, more than anyone else in the family.
It has NOTHING to do with what you say. You may believe that's the right way, fine, but it has no bearing over the feelings of that person.
I only started reading the answer from Polly and that make much more sense. It may help quite a bit my SO.
On the flip side, many of the previous generations of parents would kill to have the choices their kids have. They simply never had those choices when they grew up.
> American parents could learn a thing or two about parenting from previous generations and from a lot of immigrant families.
My parents and most of their peers got married right out of high school just to get out of the houses their 1st generation Catholic parents filled to the brim with like, seven or eight semi-neglected kids.
A lot of them didn't make it out of those environments unscathed, and there's no guarantee they learned how to save money or hunker down for the long haul with a partner because of it.
It's easy to look back on those times with rose-colored glasses, especially if you weren't there.
I can't disagree with your comment more. As someone who falls squarely in the Millennial Age range, late 20s to 30s (btw that's how old millennials are now), I find the issue with so many people in this position has less to do with their upbringing or personality in particular, and more to do with the fact that we are in many ways playing a game in which the rules have changed. And that's a direct consequence of the actions of not our parent but our parents' parents', who are somehow, still in power 20 years after they normally would have passed on control on the economy and government to the next generation.
And what I mean by that is, that those who have come of age over the past 20 years have spent pretty much their entire lives being read a recipe for success. Go to college -> get a degree -> get a job -> live a successful live. It's a simple step by step plan that every single person in our lives have reinforced ad nauseam, because for most of the 20th Century that has been the surest path to a happy middle class life.
The problem is that of course every single step in that path is now significantly more difficult than it was 20-30 years ago when our parents' generation did it. You can't just go to college anymore. It costs 10x what it did in the 80's and you can't even compare the cost to the 50's or 60's. It's also way more competitive getting into a top school. Even if you manage to get into college and pay for it, it's no longer good enough to just get a degree. You need to get a degree in the right thing and or find a way to differentiate yourself from the other 1 million students who graduate each year, because oh by the way our generation is the most well educated in the history of the world. Even if all those things go right finding a job is harder than ever. People retire later if at all now so the market is flooded not only with too many well educated applicants but the multitude of experienced candidates competing for the same entry level jobs. And even if you get a job, the crushing levels of student debt and the fact that wages haven't kept up with inflation, basically mean that it's incredibly hard to live a successful life on your own.
So basically the issue is that people have spent their entire lives calibrated for a set of conditions that no longer exists. There isn't a golden path to a cozy middle class lifestyle anymore. And once you start compounding that with the normal issues everyone runs into adjusting to an adult life you get this malaise. Everyone's poor and hates their life and social media is there so you can compare yourself to the 10% of the population who seem to have it all figured out either because they have rich parents to subsidize their life, or they got lucky and picked a major that actually pays decently, or they married their HS sweetheart and hate life somewhat less than everyone else.
And because it has to be said the fact that everyone keeps calling Millenial's lazy, and entitled for somehow not being as successful as previous generations despite the changing landscape doesn't help.
"cherish friends and family when it gets difficult".
I'm not trying to sound harsh, but what I hear in the article is just a lack of perseverance and persistence. Relationships are hard, if you leave because the other person fails to lift the toilet seat, or you quit your job because your boss is an a-hole I find that to be a lack of character.
Strife is what gives people a sense of satisfaction. Buying the new car after driving a POS for years that needed constant work on the weekend is massively more satisfying than having mommie buy you a BMW for your birthday. Having a good year with the wife after a couple where you barely talked... That is how people grow, not sitting in flower beds having everything handed to them and running away every-time the world doesn't respond as you wish.
I've at times felt resentment towards my baby boomer/hippy parents for spoiling me and failing to teach me discipline, which I've had to learn in adulthood at what I imagine is a steeper opportunity cost than if I had learned discipline as a child.
But on the other hand, I'm sympathetic to their impulse to reject the parenting styles of their parents. My father's father beat him brutally throughout his childhood. My mother's mother would shame her relentlessly for any slight failure to comply to her will, even well past childhood - when she earned her PhD, despite her mother's wishes for her to instead become an MD, after 7 hard years of working on her dissertation her mother's 'congratulatory' card ended with "I'll still pay for you to go to medical school" (and she had not helped her pay for graduate school).
They rejected the cruelty of their parents world, but gained a false optimism from the progressive, high growth times of the 60s through 90s, and failed to prepare me for the real world which is still plenty cruel.
> cherish friends and family even when it's difficult
I generally agree with what you're saying except for this. You should cherish friends and family... unless doing so ends up being a net negative. Maybe that goes beyond "even when it's difficult", but... life is too short to keep people around who hurt you, even if they're blood relatives.
Set boundaries. If people fail to respect those boundaries, then they don't deserve to be in your life, at all. Cutting someone out of your life shouldn't be a decision taken lightly or on a whim, but it's a tool in your toolbox for keeping toxic people from bringing you down.
You sound like someone who has never experienced poverty.
Meanwhile, the original prompt of the inciting content has... Two days' hotel stay of savings.
That's what this is about. The lack of meaning, the alienation after being told "we could be anything we want" when we grow up, to having no choice but to settle for careers in "whatever almost pays bills" since the collapse of 2008.
We're bitter. We're ashamed of where we've been and what we've done to survive. And you know what happens when we get over that? We get angry, we may get political. We might even snap.
If we're technically minded? I'm mad that I dont see more hacktivists.
>If we're technically minded? I'm mad that I dont see more hacktivists.
If you're skilled enough to be a hacktivist that can contribute significantly than you're also skilled enough to find well-paying work and you won't become bitter.
Indeed, real love is a choice you make, not a magical feeling that persists throughout life without any effort on your part. Even though that is how it is portrayed in all movies.
People always use the same old argument that it's this "you can do anything" that's ruining this generation. There's no real evidence to support that, and I can tell you there are many people who were able to advance to high places using that mindset.
"We should be more honest about the real tradeoffs between endless wanderlust/adventure-seeking and putting down real roots. The things that make for a great instagram feed or Bumble profile are very different from those of permanence that help us live well." (Friend's comment on article)
Polly's reply is so shameless (including promoting her own book in the reply) that it's incredible just how badly it missed the point.
> If you want to build a life with a partner, and have a more satisfying career, and maybe have children, you need to treat yourself like a treasured child starting today. If you had a daughter who was 35 years old and felt like all of her traveling and moving was a giant mistake that embodied everything BAD and shortsighted about her, what would you tell her? You’d tell her she was wrong. You’d say, “Your life is just beginning!”
This doesn't help the author and it doesn't help onlookers, either. There is a time window on opportunity. There are serious tradeoffs that need to be pondered when you reach adulthood, and almost none of them are helped with a "you deserve it!" attitude. And there are some things, like travel and careerism, that will not outlive you, like your children will.
> It's more like "Hey! I wrote a book on this exact issue. I really hope it helps"
Except that's your notion and not what Polly was doing with their book mention in the article. There it served as a way to kinda say, "Hey, I also share some insecurity issues with you, caused this by book I'm touring on right now, and oh, here's the link to it". There was no other nudging of Haunted to read the book.
The book is relevant to the topic being discussed, because the author talks about it to describe how she herself -- purportedly a successful published author -- has to fight off feeling inadequate, even though she's being paid by her publisher to travel cross-country to promote her book.
Take out the mention that she's on book tour, and you no longer have a frame of reference about her self-shame.
Yes, to be honest, it feels like it caught the author of the reply off guard and downed him/her into a existential crisis, and to fend that demon off - the protection spell of success, the mantra of self-promotion was cast.
Two lonely people meet in the public plaza, one walks home without its facade. But at least she is not as lonely as before. As lonely as the shining success story on the soap box. That pride in whatever-you-are-preach is so generic, so rehearsed, im sure, the author could have thrown this to a AA meeting or a junkie with the monkey on its back, without flinching.
I can totally understand this, and it seems that a lot of the blog posts that make it to the top of HN are in some way self promoting the writer's work (be it music, IT consulting, their web-product, their music, etc).
I guess it is a hard balance to strike between self-promotion and good content. Perhaps if the writer could be more open about the promotion stuff in the beginning of the article it wouldn't feel insincere.
I’m reminded of a story an English tracher once related to us. A friend of the group decided to go off and teach English in Spain, had lots of fun and few worries, life was wonderful and friends back home felt “jealous”. But this person returned one day, many years later with little in the sense of career accomplishment and security (dunno what prompted the move back, age, money, career, crisis?).
Moral was when they got back they realized all that “fun” time accomplished little but transitory happiness. They came back asking friends for job favors and so on.
There are many people in the world who will never know happiness. Life itself is transitory, 'accomplishment' is not a substitute for it, 'security' is a dream. Old men may say 'Youth is wasted on the young'; I say bravo to the young who drink life to the lees.
When you sell today, can you be so sure of tomorrow?
I guess thr issue with this person (and many others) is that they didn’t have a network, experience, etc., to fall back on in order to take steps to get back on track. Basically they would have to start from scratch. Teaching ESL in some far away place doesn’t buy you much either here or even there (unless you wanna continue in a dead-end job). Also, ESL teachers tend to be young. Older ones are rare and kids don’t prefer them-they like hip “older kids” to “teach them” not “dad”.
I think it's fair to say both viewpoints have merit. Building for the future allows one to accumulate resources and deploy them for meaningful goals, and is prone to a failure mode where one forgets how to be alive, or what is meaningful, trades away special capacity for enjoyment youth brings, and gambles against life ceasing before the building is done. Living for the moment leaves more room for present joys... and has a failure mode where one becomes unprepared for likely futures and arrives there to find the moment miserable.
Does a wise person minimax, or do they balance?
Does wisdom figure in, or do people simply externalize a neurological temperament?
Conceding your every point for the sake of argument: what use is any of that to 'Haunted' right now? It's hardly going to come as a surprise that adult life involves tradeoffs; she's speaking from a place where she has belatedly recognized that fact, and feels as if she's made every one of them wrongly. If the purpose is to help 'Haunted' - or those reading along who find 'Haunted' painfully relatable - make more of the years ahead of her than she has of those behind, where do you see this sort of thing making success in that purpose more likely?
"Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does." — Jean Paul Sartre, (French existentialist)
'Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.' — apocryphally also Sartre, but really who cares? Wisdom is wisdom.
To your quote: responsibility, sure, but its corollary is authority, and they exist together in precisely identical degree. Just as we bear the burden, if it is one, of the stories we write of our lives - we do nonetheless retain the ability to write whatever stories of ourselves we choose.
Sartre may consider that a condemnation. I can imagine no more liberating conception of life.
Perhaps advising other young women from her own experience? Then those years will not have been wasted. On the other hand, if no one learns from her mistake and makes the exact same mistake, then her years will have been wasted.
One that at least makes a credible attempt to justify privileging brutality, as in the sort of 'brutal honesty' on display here, over kindness. I have no preference over whether such a justification proceeds from pragmatism or principle, but I would like to see one attempted.
"The things that make for a great instagram feed or Bumble profile are very different from those of permanence that help us live well."
Maybe it depends on the mindset and intent. After all, what is truly permanent in this life?
If you approach traveling as a practice of impermanence and presence, then it can be a very broadening, empowering experience. Traveling can be an excellent lesson on the transient nature of life. Any one of us can lose everything in a moment without warning, no matter how well established or solid your home is.
So from that perspective there actually is no trade-off because it's all the same.
Agreed, sounds like the advice is to put your fingers in your ears, and sing as loudly as you can to drown out the doubts and questions, instead of solving them. Saying that no, the life path you are on is great, stop doubting yourself, keep doing it. If you refuse to acknowledge you've made any mistakes you don't have to deal with reality.
Some things take time and sacrifice to build. Family, friends, community. Most of us really need these things, but there is an opportunity cost to pay to get them. Sometimes we have all of it dumped in our lap and we take it for granted until it's gone. If you are willing to pay the price in time, effort, and emotion, you can rebuild it, but no guarantees.
I don't see what's wrong with the quoted reply. Why is it so wrong to not settle down before 35? I have friends who were settled down, had kids, and divorced by 35; should we seek to emulate their experience over being single at 35? Of course not.
Nor do I see what's wrong with responding to a question with a relevant and timely personal anecdote.
> And there are some things, like travel and careerism, that will not outlive you,
Apple outlived Steve Jobs. Hamlet outlived Shakespeare.
And anyway, why is it anyone's obligation to create something that outlives them. That's hubris.
Arguably, the sole purpose of life is to procreate. You can live a purely unfulfilled life and die the most miserable wretch possible, but if your children have children, and their children do as well, and so on, it doesn't matter - genetics doesn't care (barring some kind of recessive hereditary illness responsible for this original misery).
And perhaps this is why so many people get divorced, and even why there are so many bastard children and deadbeat fathers/parents: in some inherent way, such people have already fulfilled some unnamed biological goal and have no real incentive to pursue it further. Because a family, being a committed parent, is a societal abstraction that many need not bother with. Certainly you can see this in other animal species.
I think that you and Polly are both correct in different ways.
Your points on the time window of opportunity and the basic nature of tradeoffs is well-put and correct, and is the better advice to give younger people in the context of hearing this woman's story and reflecting on what the lessons are for them.
I think Polly's advice is way more helpful for the actual woman who wrote the letter, though.
"treat yourself like a treasured child" isn't going to help with anyone's concerns or goals. It's vacuous.
Women have a ticking clock here in a way men simply do not. I'd tell her "I've been telling you to hurry up and start a family for TEN YEARS"...
It's imperative to discuss with your partner your relationship requirements early, otherwise they're unlikely to meet them. If they don't coincide, either make peace or find someone else.
We're not boomers, this generation will rely on their children much more than their parents generation needed to rely on them. Those without children are going to have a much harder time into "retirement", especially if they're living paycheck-to-paycheck.
>Women have a ticking clock here in a way men simply do not. I'd tell her "I've been telling you to hurry up and start a family for TEN YEARS"...
I'd argue men still have a ticking clock in some senses. Sure you can still get it up and produce children, but your capacity to engage with them and raise them goes down over time. I certainly would like to be hale and hearty enough to see my kids graduate college and be able to travel to visit my grandkids, for instance.
Producing loin-fruit isn't the end-goal unless you have some kind of royal titles to pass on. For most of us it's just about raising a family.
> I'd argue men still have a ticking clock in some senses. Sure you can still get it up and produce children, but your capacity to engage with them and raise them goes down over time.
I used to work with a woman who was 47 at the time, in a long-term committed relationship, and still pre-menopausal.
She told me once that she and her partner have discussed the idea of having kids before she hits menopause, and they both ended up agreeing that it would be a bad idea because by the time the kids turn 18, she'll be 65 (and I don't know his age, but I met him a couple of times, and he looks to be around her age), and they wouldn't want any kids to have do deal with elderly parents at such a young age.
I agree that this is bad advice. I'm 35. I've got a wife, two kids, and a weird house with tons of maintenance projects. My parents live five minutes away, and I spend most weekends at Home Depot or hanging out in my parents' living room with the kids. I work too much and don't sleep enough. And I'm blissfully happy.
I say this is bad advice not because I think what makes me happy will make everyone happy. I know lots of people would find a life with kids in the suburbs stifling. But the "treasured child" type of advice makes the same mistake in the opposite direction. Our culture glamorizes a life of travel and adventure and experiences, but I think it dramatically underestimate the percentage of the population who find such a life unfulfilling and would be more fulfilled with roots and neighbors and a sense of place.
"What would you tell your kid?" My dad traveled the world, visiting dozens of countries helping bring health care to the developing world. He told me that the most fulfilling thing he did in his life was raise two kids. That's very uncool to say these days. But kids are always best served by honesty. They will find fulfilling whatever it is that they find fulfilling. Maybe they'll live a life of experience and die happy. Or maybe the best thing they will ever do will be to make you grandkids. But you're not helping them figure things out by trying to sell them an aspirational version of reality.
I guess the point, in general, is not to follow somebody else's story or the story that society narrates to most.
The point of life is to go with your true will, whatever that is.
For the comment above, it seems like he is blissfully happy because he has funded and followed is true will(as personal and empiric as it is).
In the case of the author in the article, seems like root is the unsatisfied purpose in her life. The depression for the past, the anxiety about the future doesn't help with the present and like a snowball, it just gets worse with time.
>I agree that this is bad advice. I'm 35. I've got a wife, two kids, and a weird house with tons of maintenance projects. My parents live five minutes away, and I spend most weekends at Home Depot or hanging out in my parents' living room with the kids. I work too much and don't sleep enough. And I'm blissfully happy.
Something that seems to come out in what you're saying is personal growth. To be a decent spouse, to be a decent parent, to work through home maintenance projects, and find new ways to interact with your parents as you both age, all of these require you to push yourself to learn and grow. It may not seem like it over 3 months, but over years of ups and downs you realize you've changed and grown a lot, hopefully with purpose.
With jobs and moves, it's easy to change jobs and places just because you get bored. But change isn't equal to growth. Sometimes it's just change and it feels meaningless.
I don't mean to say family is better than career or vice versa. But lots of people (me included) can wander through different jobs without feeling there's any thread of continuity or purpose to those changes - it's just a change. Maybe it's easier for people who can actively manage their career and always have their next move/job be another way for them to grow.
>I say this is bad advice not because I think what makes me happy will make everyone happy.
Agreed it won’t intrinsically make everyone happy, but ignoring the suburbs/kids aspect, what you are really describing, I think, is stability and that is a prerequisite for mental health and happiness.
Lack of stability, at any age, but particularly for children is significantly damaging to mental health.
I used to work briefly in dependency court (where the state intervenes when children are abused, abadonded and neglected). These children are subjected to psychiatric evaluations and they all say the same thing, lack of stability in the home devastates a child’s mental health (but also does the same to adults).
Travel/adventure are great in the context of a stable life, but on its own suggest a likelihood instability and thus mental health problems that make happiness damn near impossible. On the other hand if this person were to have sacrificed their travels early on to plant roots, that doesn’t really guarantee stability either, especially in this day and age where even if you do everything right odds are you might face the instability of employment, income, health, relationships, etc...
I think it's worth quoting the author's book promotion in context (underscores added to show the size of the link):
> Let me be more concrete: Promoting a book — which is what I’ve been doing since __my new book__ came out last month — is fun and exciting. You get to travel and meet new people. But there are aspects of it that feel a little corrosive. Too much focus on the self, on presentation, on sales numbers, on whether or not your work matters.
The columnist is doing the relatively rare thing of going beyond vague platitudes (It’s not easy for anyone, no matter how many deep roots they might’ve nurtured.) and referencing her specific personal circumstance: that even as a touring author -- they kind of life every aspiring writer would kill for -- she has a constant fight against doubt and shame.
Because she doesn't elaborate on what her book is about, nor mentions it again, I had to click through to find out -- a compilation of her "Ask Polly" columns, specifically on the topic of self-improvement. Polly's entire response, according to `wc`, is 2,337 words -- 1,700 of those words come after the link to her book.
Sure, I can agree that she should've taken the time to link to her publisher page, instead of the Amazon link she seems to have bookmarked for sharing. But if she's trying to be honest about her life situation, how is she not supposed to mention being on promotional tour? That's what a writer's life is consumed by after publication: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/th...
Obviously, there is a tradeoff between the two ends of the spectrum that you've labelled travel and careerism...
Here is another tradeoff for you to consider: One between telling an inspiring lie in order to pick someone up and being brutally honest about their life choices.
If your "advice" is "you missed your chance, you're screwed", then that does not help anyone else either. Advice is as much about inspiring confidence and fostering a change in perspective as it is about dealing with the hard truths.
"Polly's reply is so shameless (including promoting her own book in the reply) that it's incredible just how badly it missed the point."
I think that was the point, given that the whole article was about letting go of shame.
Making a subtly different point - "...are very different from those of permanence that help us live well." Who's to say what "live well" actually means? I mean, you & your friend may have an idea about what it looks like, and I may have an idea about what it looks like, and chances are they might even align. But that doesn't mean that every person needs the husband and kids and career success and creative accomplishments in that image. There's a strong revealed-preference argument that the original letter-writer wasn't actually into that; she should own those choices rather than assume her life needs to look like everyone else's life.
> And there are some things, like travel and careerism, that will not outlive you, like your children will.
Earth is changing rapidly, I don't think it's a bad idea to travel and experience certain facets of life before they're extinct. Places or things you want to see in the future may not exist by then.
But what is the long term value of seeing places and things, if the person experiencing them expires leaving nothing behind?
I went on some great adventures as a young man, backpacking round the Middle East and later in a job that involved a lot of world travel. I always thought I'd do more of those things, and while I have enjoyed family life I felt I lost something when I settled down and had kids and a career.
However, now that my kids are teenagers I can share my experiences of the world with them. We've been on some great holidays together, and have more planned. Those old adventures now have value, because they made me the person I am today and I can share that and leverage it in how I bring up my own children and shape their introduction to the world. Those experiences and the stories I have to tell and lessons I learned have acquired a new value, beyond merely myself.
I agree. This response is the author not knowing what to say, so employing all of her skills from her liberals arts degree to write a fluffy, "really positive response" that will make her readers feel warm and gooey. The actual advice is krok, and harmful to the OP, but I imagine it's creating lots of good feels and glassy eyes along her readership.
This is why assholes are important in life. They don't care about how you feel enough to lie to you, this their advice is nearly always better than coming from "nice people".
The top level comment didn't say anything bad? The person who wrote the article even mentioned they fit a cliche. All the comment did was point out that it's a cliche on the internet.
its entirely possible that certain beliefs common on 4chan strike true. This isn't so much about making her struggle a meme, but acknowledging that youth is fleeting and its particularly hard for women.
Coming to terms with this reality for a woman is even more terrifying than a man because her bodily clock is ticking and pretty soon she will have little opportunity to have a child and dare I say, attract her ideal man. Its a call for more traditional values, to acknowledging that the deal is different for men and women, and its a criticism of responses like this which tell women to embrace being a free spirit when all she wants is stability and steady growth.
Traditional values are truly counter culture in the west, and thats why pol will emphasize it.
EDIT: 4chan also likes it because it serves their tendency toward genetic determinism.
This reminds me of The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro.
It opens with an old couple who live in a land misted by a fog of forgetfulness. And one of them remembers they have a son they love very much. They haven't seen him in many years, because they had forgotten and they have to get back to him. And they set out to do so.
That feeling of, oh this is an important thing, person, event, skill, and why have I forgotten about it? Why didn't I attend to it? That is just part of the human condition as you get older.
I don't think your life is "wasted". Just accept that regret is part of all lives. Even the person who is happy, has thoughts and ideas about alternatives. Not that you would trade what you have, but you do play out alternative lives. Its perfectly natural.
I’ve always thought life is a balancing act of “building” and “experiencing.” Building relationships, communities, homes, organizations, education (your self) and experiencing other countries, different jobs, lifestyles, foods, etc.
Western culture as a whole has gone a little too far in the “experience” direction. You can see this in little ways, like the fact that Legos are sold as pre-planned structures and not generic building blocks, or how electronics today are replaced and not repaired.
We really need a revitalization of a “creator” culture to combat the present consumer one.
I’d argue that the appeal of the licensed Lego products is precisely an experience. Instead of starting from zero and building everything yourself, you’re given a premade story, world, and characters. It’s similar to the difference between writing your own fantasy novel vs. reading Lord of the Rings.
> We really need a revitalization of a “creator” culture to combat the present consumer one.
Yes! I agree so much. As Hannah Arendt wrote in "The Human Condition":
> The ideals of homo faber, the fabricator of the world, which are permanence, stability, and durability, have been sacrificed to abundance, the ideal of the animal laborans.
> like the fact that Legos are sold as pre-planned structures and not generic building blocks
This is completely tangential, but to be fair they're sold in both ways. I'm what most people would call a grown man, but I still can't help myself (or my girlfriend sometimes) and we pick up the odd set.
You can still buy large sets of mixed blocks, as well as the models. I've got a few models posted around my place because I enjoy them, but we also have [at least one] classic creator kit[s]. Even as a "grown up" it feels good for the soul sometimes.
I hear you, but this isn't a new conundrum in creative fields/play.
Artists' studios have long worked in a similar way, employing others to continually emulate an original ideal that an artist would ultimately brand.
I understand it's a little different, but we don't regret people admiring da Vinci as much as they do. People haven't stopped painting since the works of masters, and in many cases are inspired to see what is possible— and people still paint as a creative act. With reference to Lego— I covet that Apollo Saturn rocket model, and I'm often in awe of some of the creativity and skill that has gone into many of the models designed in their studios.
I grew up in the age of Lego models, though less sophisticated than they are now— I did start with my mother's early 70's sets.
Maybe the issue lies elsewhere— not that the predesigned models exist at all, but the consumerist motivation to just buy up those [models] for children instead of first exposing them to the basics without any other aspiration and gradually increasing exposure. I mean, that's how we've done painting for a long time— the kids get finger paints, wax crayons and cheap newsprint first. Then later they can see some master works, and maybe get a paint-by-numbers to see that their hands are just as capable of producing the same with the right practice.
Well I have to say that I’m really not tackling it haha.
My girlfriend and I share a one bedroom apartment and it’s a touch small (having downsized for reasons not our own).
I do keep a series of bookshelves along one wall that are largely filled with books but leave some space for other things like a couple of models. Others sit on the TV stand. They’re just kind of peppered in places where they won’t get in the way but are still viewable
When I was a kid ~25 years ago it wasn't the "classic" blocks I was jealous of my friends for having though. It was something like the Forbidden Island (6270) set as shown here:
The 90s LEGO sets were maybe the golden age. Classic pirates were maybe some of the best that there ever were. I salivated over those sets back in the day
Much of the population (me included) has become just consumers and spectators, instead of producers and players. Just look at the amount of time we spend discussing sports or politics or movies, and yet, not playing even an hour of sport a week or even trying to make a painting (no matter how much we suck at these).
Everyone around us is fighting their own little war. I've felt similarly to the writer -- I moved out of my childhood home the day after graduating college and started work that Monday. I only moved 215 miles (NYC to Boston), but it felt a world away, especially considering most Americans live relatively close to where they grew up and 215 miles in Europe goes a long way.
I've made and abandoned friends at almost every stage in my life. I have no idea who will be the best man at my wedding because to be honest my brother probably isn't up to the "responsibilities", but I have no alternative.
I now live on the west cost, a tough 6 hour flight away from home. I visited my family this Thanksgiving and am noticing so many changes, people are dying, babies are being born, my cousins who I've always viewed as children are about to graduate college. It's tough being away from home and not feeling like I have roots (I'm considering a move to Seattle or the Bay Area in early 2019), but at every step I've justified my actions because the next step always came with a significant pay increase and more career opportunities.
This January will be my 13th anniversary with my high school girlfriend (soon to be fiance). I can't describe how valuable it's been to have someone so close in age (I'm 3 months older) that can relate to the things that I'm going through, and who has my back, and knows that I have hers. Things haven't been easy, but it's become so much more than a girlfriend/boyfriend relationship, which is why marriage is in our future.
I've met so many fellow millennials who are serial monogamist or date freely, I don't judge them at all and at some times have felt a tinge on envy, and these folks may have a friend or family member who is to them what my girlfriend is to me -- I guess all this is to say that in today's society I just don't know how we can traverse this reality with at least one person who you are tightly integrated with. It's just too tough out there.
Me too. But I don’t know how to give funny speeches in the wedding. This resonates with me because I moved from Philippines to USA to pursue my graduate degree. Friends get lost along the way and it’s a big effort to reconnect due to time zone issues. Now married to my wife ( gf of 10 years) and have kids. It’s a difficult but fruitful journey.
As an addition, I really love Robert Anton Wilson's flavor of this idea:
“under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.”
Your story has a similar outline to my own. I moved from the UK to Canada which has been excellent for my career but at the same time has put enormous strain on my relationships as I just don't get to see people thanks to splitting a really shitty vacation allowance (3 weeks Canada wtf).
Now I'm torn between putting down roots in Toronto, moving out to the sticks, moving to Europe to be close to everyone or doing the right thing for my career by going to the US.
I am in the exact same situation. I moved to Canada from Europe and it has been really tough thanks to three measly weeks of vacation. I can't remember the last time I have been on a real two+ weeks vacation somewhere that is not my home country.
I am thinking about all those same options except the moving to the US thing. Even though I could earn much more money, I don't think that would be worth it living in a country like the US.
I've been trying that for years and I never get anywhere. Makes all the hoo-rah about negotiating over a job offer feel pretty hollow - the form of compensation I really want is never, ever on the table.
You should try contracting. When my son was in high school I switched from full time employment to contracting. The pay was about the same and I took every summer off.
If you've been with your girlfriend for 13 years, how have you guys been managing the movements? Does she follow you to your new job or do you follow her?
When I was in Boston and her in NYC we would drive up every other weekend to visit. I moved to the west coast and tried to make one trip every other month while we did the long distance thing.. she eventually got a job at my company and for the past two years we've been living together. However we both are about ready to move again and are preparing to be separated again, but this time we're trying to align our movements to reduce the amount of time we'll be apart.
damn dude that is rough. I did 3 years apart from my GF before she moved in with me. 13 years is redic haha. After a few years of dating and multiple years of long distance i was like 'move down here and lets fuckin do it babe!' . we dids it all right and marriage is great, even though she brought along 63k debt from grad school =(
I think that this the reality for the majority of people. We are the first generation, as a whole, that will not do as good as their parents. That the is the economic reality.
One major issue though is education. Giving a good technical education to people is fundamental. No matter how much a person falls, they have something that they can build on. They are never starting from scratch, as many people in this generation do, over and over again.
Do you need to have a best man? Just go without if it doesn't feel right. My brother was mine, and my wife had five bridesmaids, but I don't see why you'd be obliged to have one or give them any formal duties. Always baffles me when couples go to awkward lengths to balance each side of the aisle.
I'm a 29 year TCK who has moved around a lot because I don't actually have a place to call "home". I planned my life around trying to get Permanent Resident status in New Zealand, but now I'm struggling to find a job.
My latest idea is to study a certification. Has anybody done this before, and does it work? Will that help me start a career?
what was your motivation for choosing NZ? I think NZ could be a very lonely place for a newcomer without an ethnic immigrant community. Your best bet is picking up a trade. You'll not find a large enough white collar economy in NZ.
Ok, which trade? Is it possible to get a student visa to study that trade? I figured out how to find certifications that are in demand; is there a similar way to find trades that are in demand?
Lots of trades in demand in Australia. Not sure about NZ. You can get PR simply by being a bricklayer or panel beater. Not sure if you can without any experience though. Consult a migration agent or lawyer if serious
However if you're a software engineer or IT just do that
> My latest idea is to study a certification. Has anybody done this before, and does it work? Will that help me start a career?
Maybe? I suspect it depends partly on where (the company) you want to work, partly why you haven't been able to find a job yet, and partly where you do (or want to) live.
1. The sort of company you want to work for
Some places want certifications, degrees, etc. so if you identify those places as somewhere you want to work, and they need certifications to apply, or to improve your chances, then you need the certifications.
The places I have worked, and know about (hosting, SAAS, all UNIX based), are mostly interested in what they can get out of you. What you can do for them. As a result even though I have no certifications, I've managed to do well. I did have to start out pretty low on the ladder, Tech Support for a couple of years, but with hard work and motivation I now work from home as a successful contractor/consultant. It should be noted that I've got the jobs I have ahead of people who have certifications or degrees, mostly because I have convinced the people I interviewed with that have something to give. Where you want to work I believe will be an important deciding factor in wether certification will be helpful.
2. Why you haven't been able to find a job yet
If you haven't been able to get a job yet but the reason is something other than certifications then it's questionable how much benefit certifications will help. Try to work out why you didn't get a job or where you failed. Ask the company why you applied to, they might ignore you, they might help.
Are you shy? Do you undersell yourself? Do you present badly in person (disheveled, or strong smell for example)? Do you come across as a mis-understood, hard done by and unfairly shunned by the world? (the answer to that last one is yes, subjectively, from my reading of your medium post[0]. People complaining about how hard done by doesn't look good.
I've seen skilled people fall at the last hurdle, job in the bag except for the final in-person meeting, only to blow it by being a miserable fucker.[1]
3. where you do (or want to) live
I know someone who has a tech job in NZ, it doesn't pay well. NZ is pretty small, are there enough jobs? Are your expectations and/or demands too high? I started out in London, but now work remotely further North. If I were starting out from scratch it would be much harder to get where I am today by being in a much more regional place. It's harder to climb the ladder if there's no ladder around.
Some closing thoughts.
You got a paid internship that seemed to get extended, can you get a job with that company? If not, why not? Can you get another job locally? At least that way any company you apply for will know that you're at least employable. Social Proof. You need to prove yourself. I've met great programmers without a degree (or an unrelated degree in photography) and some terrible programmers with relevant academic backgrounds, having a job and being good at it might actually help persuade people that you're any good.
It might also be that you just can't go to NZ. It sucks. I want to sail around on a yacht and live in the Mediteranean instead of the UK, but kids, a wife, elderly parents etc. make that dream constantly a bit too far away to grasp. You might need to scale your pland and dreams back, or at least move them around a bit.
Good luck.
[0] That piece came across as a priviledged muddled whinge to me and if it were me I'd delete it, or at least rework it into something with observations and then a constructive conclusion. I doubt that campaigning for universities to run courses will help, it doesn't matter if companies want CCNA or whatever, if students don't want to study them universities won't offer them.
[1] If you're not good in person, practice. Go out to user groups, learn to talk to people, and listen.
I'm sorry that I'm bad with people, and wrote a "privileged, muddled whinge." I grew up in the countryside and I don't know how to meet people.
Please can you teach me how to get better? If certifications aren't the answer, do you have a better solution? I'll lower my dreams and take anything, anywhere.
> I'm sorry that I'm bad with people, and wrote a "privileged, muddled whinge."
Don't apologise to me! What you got was my take on how you have presented yourself. I've been responsible for hiring people in the past, and I'll hire people again in the future. Maybe my first impression could be useful to you.
All you need to do is take it (the criticism) or leave it. Defend it if you want, but there's no-one here interested in hearing that. Perhaps more valuably for you would be to try to work out why you came across like that.
> I grew up in the countryside and I don't know how to meet people.
I grew up having no friends at school and was bullied for 5 years. It took me until my 30s to recover from it. This included being incredibly shy and not knowing how to meet people. The process will never be complete.
> Please can you teach me how to get better?
I can tell you how I recovered, your path may differ.
After a year with no real friends in London (pints after work with colleages apart) I went to tech meetups. I learned to talk to people by just doing it. I realised that these people were very very similar to me. I persevered and eventually friendships just fell out of that.
Are you interested in reading? Join a reading group. D&D, join a… you get the picture.
I understand that it's paralysingly hard for some people to talk to other people, so I suggest gently pushing yourself to take small steps by surrounding yourself with relatively like-minded people, people who at least are likely to share a similar mental state.
I can now talk to people, go up to them, small talk. Even convince themselves that I'm outgoing. It's tiring and I need to take a break from it and it feels like an act, but it works, and I make friends and I have a better life because of it.
> If certifications aren't the answer, do you have a better solution? I'll lower my dreams and take anything, anywhere.
A better solution? Not really. Work out why you've not been getting the jobs. Getting a CCNA only to discover that not having a CCNA wasn't the reason you weren't getting the job will set you back $number_of_years_it_takes_to_get_a_CCNA.
The purpose of getting a CCNA is networking: not only the digital kind, but also the social kind. That could help me get a student visa to be in the right country, where I might meet the right people to help achieve my dream of settling there.
Well, if they're not offering the course than that makes it difficult, and if it turns out it's not the lack of CCNA that's preventing you getting a job then you've not done yourself any favours.
Maybe it will help, I don't know. Good luck though.
(Edit: see, the internet alone is part of what is wrong with the world. I share that I feel completely alone and miserable and what does the internet do? Downvote. Did you bother to comment negatively or just provide some sort of reason as to why you don't like my comment? Nah, 'here have a downvote' because you're safe and comfortable in your anonymity where you can freely show someone you don't like them because they have a different experience or opinion than you and have decide their worth is less than yours)
I'm broke, friendless and have nothing remotely resembling a meaningful life.
I however have not moved all over the place, I live 15 minutes from my childhood home and spend 90% of my life living in the same 3 blocks.
As far as family I barely have any left. My mother and my half-brother.
The bulk of my social interaction is via emails with one individual. On the occasions they reply, they're very terse due to how busy the individual is. I've met them once, for all of maybe 25 minutes. Other than that I mostly just talk to bun, a purple stuffed anthropomorphic rabbit I've had all but a few weeks of my life. As a child I was only invited to a few birthday partings or outings, as an adult I occasionally get asked why I wasn't at so and so's event 'well, I didn't even know about it...' and I was invited to a wedding of someone I went to school with from kindergarten on a couple of years ago, I was even sat at the head table with her father, with the exception of her insisting on a dance with me not a single person talked to me with the exception of the bartender taking my order. At one point I simple gave up and stood quite literally outside looking in, literally in the shadows outside of the barn the reception was at until the bartender cut me off and my contacts were gone through to find someone to collect me and my car.
The few seemingly like-minded people I've found are famous multi-millionaires and billionaires that live thousands of miles from me that I have effectively zero chance of ever interacting with. Put a gun to my head and I wouldn't be able to begin to tell you how one makes a friend because the only person that believes in any amount is essentially a stranger that I've met once and likely may never meet again.
I don't even know how to talk to people. I'm 33 and I've never actually had anything approximating a proper romantic relationship. I've never had a best friend that I do things with. I've never been part of a group carrying on and having experiences. I've never had to deal with a breakup, or co-habitated, or fought with a romantic partner. I've never had anyone phone me just to see how I was doing. I get a birthday card from corporate and sometimes from my mother when she remembers and that's the extent of my birthday being acknowledged.
The last person I got close to romantically, shot and killed themselves after we'd had 3 proper dates.
At 33 I have a GED and no college degree, I've filed bankruptcy, I've been in the same job for 12 and a half years. I'm one mild financial emergency away from being fucked.
I might as well just be a robot although, if I was a robot I'd probably have more human interaction purely from curiosity in me.
If things don't change professionally, in very drastic ways, I'll work until the day I die. I'm lucking if I can put 2-3 grand into my 401k each year.
While the woman writing to this columnist says she hasn't even the energy to contemplate humanity... that's about all I have going for me. I sit back and think about the nearly 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide we will put into the atmosphere this year, the microplastics in the air we breathe and the water we drink, the myopic and manipulated views of the world technology is giving to the masses, the growing wealth divide. I suppose I have more in common with a hypothetical artificial general intelligence though as I lack...
Do you get out much? I was friendless for a year until I went to the local Linux Users group. Now, almost all my friends (except one old school friend I re-connected with a year ago) are Ruby or Go user group people.
I get to see them all twice a month, I invite some of them to my birthdays, we get beers after the meetups. If it weren't for these people I'd have no friends either.
Oh, sure, no-one is going to get a girlfriend from attending these meetups, but it's a start. I now go climbing because of these people (one of the members has been doing it for ages), and the more things or groups you get involved with outside of tech the more exposure you have to candidates for a partner, or even just other friends.
I train at two gyms 4 days a week, aside from my coach saying hi to me and occasionally bye to me everyone talks to each other and I'm off to the side effectively invisible.
I'm an SCAdian. Every few years I'll email the baron or baroness and the seneschal and say hey I'm going to come to fighter practice, haven't been around, could you introduce me to people. They do and without fail 5 minutes in I might as well be a dust bunny in the corner.
Same at church. I go every weekend just to be around people. I don't particularly believe what they do, in fact I'm mostly team simulation hypothesis, but they are upbeat and cheery and friendly... yet again though I have a pew to myself, people will sit elsewhere even if it means in folding chairs. Without fail. Every single weekend.
I'm a Freemason, Lodge was always the same too. The casual hi to me, then everyone breaking off into their little social circles.
Without fail I can try and start a conversation, or insert myself into one, and I'll often get talked over which is an interesting thing as more oft than not I'm the largest person in a room.
It even happens in team meetings at work, it's like I've a damn cloaking device or something. You know in office space when, I believe Milton, keeps being passed the cake and being told to keep passing it... yeah, that, although it's generally more like I'm invisible. I can walk into rooms in plain site and finally say something and startle people if I talk because they were oblivious to my presence. I get the same thing at social groups.
Sometimes I wonder if people that have Cotard delusion think they're dead because they have a similar experience to me and their brain just interprets it as 'omg I must be dead'.
I don't know if it's because I simply lack in-person social skills and people on some subconscious level dismiss me like they would a cat or dog or what.
When someone does engage me though, and starts talking about something that interests me, I'll talk their damn ear off. I've had dates text me after the fact with shitty comments like I was so self obsessed and never once asked them any questions about themselves and I'm like, you brought up a topic and we had an ongoing DIALOGUE for 3 hours where we both said quite a bit...
I don't know, I just don't get people I guess.
I know there's other people like me out there. I mentioned one above, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be considered a god with the level of responsibility and impact they have and again they are a couple thousand miles away.
Try as I might, I can't find someone like that here or even someone that actually has free time for actual proper chats.
I suspect a lot of it comes down to I'm simply not interested in what many people are. I don't care about what the sports ball team did or what happened in such and such television program, I don't particularly care that your child got a ribbon at their intermural swim dance piano recital, if you need to vent about your relationship it's a wholly alien subject to me and I haven't a clue what you're on about or what to say, when you're reminiscing about college I'm just like yeahhh no clue. I care about the future of our species, what we're doing to our planet, how we're running out of time to save ourselves, the statistical hopelessness of finding evidence of another intelligent species in the firmament even if human civilization last a million years.
> When someone does engage me though, and starts talking about something that interests me, I'll talk their damn ear off.
I catch myself talking too much about stuff I'm interested in, it doesn't help. I have to rein myself in. Cut myself off, ask the other person a question. Also, I don't bring up computers or tech unless they did. Turns out it's a niche subject.
> I've had dates text me after the fact with shitty comments like I was so self obsessed and never once asked them any questions about themselves and I'm like, you brought up a topic and we had an ongoing DIALOGUE for 3 hours where we both said quite a bit...
Talking at great length about something you're interested in isn't fun for the other person, in general, even if they're interested in it too. Perhaps try this, ask them about what they like, then get them to talk about that. Ask followup questions. Remember the answers next time you see them as best you can.
"There's this place that serves your favourite pizza, do you want to go there" or "Hey, isn't that dog one of your favourite breeds?", or "How did you get on at the climbing gym the other day"??
Google "How to talk to people".
> I don't know, I just don't get people I guess.
I'm 40, it took me practice to get to the point I did, and I still have to work at it. It has been rewarding so far.
> I suspect a lot of it comes down to I'm simply not interested in what many people are.
Yes, me neither. I have (self diagnosed) aspergers and/or ADHD. I have to make a game of social stuff, though not to the point that I'm treating people like toys or subjects.
> I'm just like yeahhh no clue.
I just ask questions. Just simple ones, not argueing, or even discussion. Just exploratory. Even if it's something I don't care about. "So, what was it like at your college", "If you had your time agian would you choose the same place", "Do you stay in contact with people from that time?" etc.
It doesn't matter if you're not interested in the answers.
I suspect a good therapist could be a great help for you. As you said yourself, you don't understand why people react to you the way the do. The reason will probably be obvious to experienced therapist, and he/she will be able to create a plan for you to correct whatever's wrong.
Don't know if you've made the connection yet that first impressions can set the tone for the rest of your relationship with a group.
If you attend a new event like a church group, don't really get involved in any conversations or the ones you have go really poorly or awkwardly, and then end up sitting a table by yourself, it might actually build its own momentum and make people feel more awkward if five weeks later after coming 4 times and just sitting by yourself you try again and try to join a group conversation. It feels very weird to them because at that point they've already categorized you mentally as 'weird guy' or they mentally feel awkward when you join. First impressions matter a lot. As do a lot of the tropey dating advice about confidence, friendliness, conversational skills, etc.
And at that point, you really can't expect people to approach you if you come in and sit alone.
It's honestly better if when you join a new environment like that, you join a big circle of people, try to portray confidence, introduce yourself, try to hang back in the conversation a bit but contribute a little here and there - importantly, not just saying nothing at all or people might start getting weirded out. Maybe when you join these conversations you aren't smiling and being friendly enough. Maybe you don't know how to show people that you care about they have to say or they don't feel like you are interested in them.
Perhaps you haven't learned yet what's 'awkward' and what is not.
I have experienced the 'I may as well be invisible thing' many many times, but I can always trace back how things got there, because I can tell when someone has become awkward, and I usually kind of know why things got awkward. I might say something stupid or weird people out accidentally - but I'll at least be able to tell when I've done that.
Can you tell when things have suddenly become a failure? Or it's a mystery all the way through?
Another thing you could try to is to find some examples of socially successful people in media and try to emulate them. Act like them. Speak like them. See if communicating like they do leads you to better outcomes. And then learn to identify what those 'characters' are doing differently than the normal you.
You may also try a dating coach, but instead of having them help you with dating, you go to events with them joining you and join these group conversations, and afterwards have them debrief you on what to do differently.
You're intelligent, you're awake and have acknowledged the problems you face (as evidenced by the paragraph after paragraph you spent describing them), you're hardworking enough and diligent enough to retain your job for 12 years - that speaks to a certain type of strength of character. I googled you, found your blog, saw a youtube video of you and nothing about your appearance or your bearing was off-putting enough that you're incapable of making some friends.
Two of your biggest problems seem to be able to be categorized into career problems and friendship & dating problems.
As far as the career problems, I think given your intelligence and presence on this forum, you're likely already aware of many of the paths you could potentially take. My guess is your current position affords you _just_ enough comfort in life that despite your misgivings, your fears of the uncertainty of leaving it or undertaking something different is just too much of a risk for you to take. In other words, you likely have some vague ideas about alternatives you could follow, but you're afraid to take the leap. Otherwise, perhaps you'd already be studying at a university with free tuition in Germany or Argentina, teaching English in a poor enough place in Asia that even a GED is enough to get a job, working on a farm somewhere via the WWOOF program while you take stock of what you want in your future, apprenticed in a trade industry to a plumber or a carpenter or some other skilled trade, or something else people do when trying to advance from poor circumstances.
Or perhaps you really aren't aware of the paths you can take, in which case I would spend your internet cycles researching them.
The social problems are both easier and harder to solve.
Easier in the sense of - you have total control over your success or failure, there's no economic forces at work, no job market involved.
Harder in that the 'steps' to social success are not clearly laid out for us the way careers can be, because often you have no idea why a friendship fails to work out with a new acquaintance whereas at least you might have some idea what went wrong with a job application.
But the way to solve your social problems is to think of them the same way you'd think of any other skill you wanted to develop - to practice and put in work, evaluate what's working and what's not, and iterate.
Your failures are most likely due to one of a few things: 1) you're not actually putting yourself in the right places to meet people - that means on a Tuesday night you're sitting at home after work on the computer rather than going to where people are and introducing yourself or going to some sort of event where people work together or suffer together, or 2) you're at these types of places you might meet people but you're not taking some 'next step' - it could be the 'say hello' step, it could be the 'have a conversation trying to find mutual interests and if you do have a mutual interest engage them about it', it could be the 'ask to exchange contact info' step, it could be the 'follow up next week and invite them to another event or meal or for a drink or whatever else' step, etc, but at some point you may be dropping the ball, or 3) you could have some social tic you're not aware of that's off-putting and you're not iterating and experimenting with the way you portray yourself, the way you interact with people, the amount you smile or compliment people or make jokes or share something vulnerable or take it easy and be less aggressive - there's no way to know what it could be but you might not be modifying these variables and evaluating how they help or hurt.
But at a basic level, if you treat making friends or finding a person to date as a series of steps, and you spend your evenings actually taking those shots, and you change your approach, and you don't give up, and you lower your standards if ...
After clicking around your comment history and blog for a bit... I see you grew up and live in Indy -- I did as well until I moved to Chicago earlier this year, and we're around the same age (I'm 30). Some of what you've written definitely reminds me of myself years ago.
My (admittedly incomplete) impression of you is that you seem smart, but that you've got a lot of strong beliefs about things that don't seem to be working that well for you. I'm not sure I have any advice for that, but in my life I've found that my beliefs and values have changed and shifted over time. Usually those changes were started by external circumstances, followed by me choosing to let go of beliefs I was emotionally invested in (definitely not easy).
An example: I used to hold a pretty dim view of people, but I have changed this view over time and now see that most people are a mix of good and bad. The catalyst here was just trying to adjust my belief to be accurate -- people do a lot of good (in addition to the bad), and I couldn't square that with my existing belief that people were basically bad.
Probably the biggest external circumstance that forced me to change many beliefs was getting married, which will probably be unrelatable to you, but I'll try to relate it to you anyways: Getting into a romantic relationship changed my priorities because of the way it made me feel, and how all of a sudden I felt I had someone to really live for and strive to help in a way that I had never even really felt about myself. Things that previously seemed insignificant all of a sudden felt extremely significant. E.g. getting a better job, because I wanted to better provide.
Dating tips? Learn to filter -- go on as many dates as you can and figure out what kind of people you really work with. If you only go on one date every 6 months, you're not going to be able to figure out what it is that you really want in a partner. You might be able to do the same to find platonic friends? I haven't had a group of guys that I hang out with since high school, but my SO fulfills the friendship role mostly, and I'm too busy to even try right now.
>I did as well until I moved to Chicago earlier this year,
Go to the SafeHouse restaurant, it's on the magnificent mile!
I finally got to go aboard U-505 in October which had been a dream of mine since going up there when we camped at Dunes state park and then road the train up to the museum in scouts when I was a pre-teen, after I ended up at that restaurant. It's really goofy but was quite a fun experience from entering in a unique way to exiting in a fun way.
I sometimes feel like I've won the lottery. The win being absolute absence of urges to travel, make memories or relationships. I just want to be alone and work on my stuff, which also happens to make me financially independent.
I'm old enough to know it's not just a phase. It's just who I am.
I was going to say this. She mentions her own art and how it has lapsed, but the letter she penned is full of promise when it comes to the art of writing.
She's in her mid-30s. It's hard when you are at such a point of despair, but it's not too late to start a career, family, meaningful social activities, etc. Making progress on any of these fronts may seem slow, but it can pretty remarkable how it all adds up when you look back 5 or 10 years later.
I'm astonished that the columnist didn't advise something that seems blindingly obvious to me: find a therapist to talk to - not someone who's going to automatically say "have some Prozac" but someone outside yourself to talk with about these issues. That letter just screams depression (or maybe bipolar on a downswing), but some of it may be just needing to figure out where and what you want to be.
+1, and just to add some more perspective, "depression" comes in varying grades. It doesn't always mean locked in your bedroom for days on end with the shades drawn. Sometimes a person gets caught up in a sort of miasma of low-grade self-doubt and anxiety. Still able to go to work, do the shopping, etc., but lacking energy for things like maintaining friends, and ambition.
It can be insidious, and without outside perspective -- either yourself years later, or someone who knows what they're looking at -- really hard to recognize (and fight).
> That letter just screams depression (or maybe bipolar on a downswing),
Um no. It sounds like someone with no people to spend time with, that's living paycheck to paycheck, that is one financial emergency from financial ruin.
That doesn't automatically equate depression. When you're worrying if somethings going to happen tomorrow that leaves you penniless that other people around you wouldn't even notice the cost of, and you don't have another human as an outlet and for reassurance, you get frustrated and angry and cold and distant and apathetic all at once. You have to or you go nuts.
I don't see her as depressed at all, and unless you are licensed to practice mental health you haven't any business armchair diagnosing someone.
See my parent comment in this thread, I'm not depressed. I've got a few hundred dollars to my name, a ged, no degree, have been rejected by multiple companies this year, will most likely contract and die of cancer before I die of old age, don't have anyone I can call to hang out with, don't have anyone to call if I have an emergency and need help, don't have anyone to ring me up and ask how my life is going without wanting something.
I'm not depressed, I'm fucking tired. I imagine she's not depressed either, just tired. Worn out. In need of something to go in her favor for a change.
It's perfectly normal to feel despair and frustration with your life, that doesn't automatically make you depressed.
Try walking in her shoes, or my shoes, are millions of other shoes. We get out of bed in the morning and ranger the fuck up because we have to to survive. Just because we aren't excited to run off to our shitty jobs and come home to our empty lonely lives doesn't make us depressed, it makes us disadvantaged.
Disclaimer: no medical training whatsoever - and because of it in perfectly happy to recommend. There's not nearly enough here for real diagnosis.
There's situation (which may be shitty, been there doing that even if I am playing life on the easy setting of straight white male) and there's also attitude /outlook/approach /how you feel. They influence each other, but they're not the same thing. Your situation may make you depressed, but it's not going to give you depression. On the other side, depression doesn't mean you're in a bad situation except that it includes depression which may make it terrible because it colors everything you perceive. No friends? Maybe, or maybe you can't recognize that people really are friends and do care because depression makes you feel that way. No prospects? Maybe, or maybe...
There are a ton of ways that people get medicated (rightly or not) for depression and for some that may help, but for other people therapy to develop the ability to recognize what's going on and tackle it is going to be enough. Along with developing those skills the simple act of discussing problems with someone may also help a lot, and paying a consultant sorry therapist may mean that you take more from it because you're paying for it.
This article was linked several times in "manosphere", including a few response videos. This woman is fine, healthy, relatively young. Men face the very same "invisibility problem" their whole lives.
It rocketed to the front page without any relation to HN's usual topics. And it looked like something that the manosphere/traditionalist/right-wing-droning-youtubers would see as a vindication of their ideas. e.g. https://twitter.com/StefanMolyneux/status/974377252212346880
It is a little strange to have to take one person's letter to an advice columnist and use it as grist for which gender has it worse, but, that's their obsession I guess.
Even if we agree for the sake of argument that today, men and women have reached parity when it comes to career opportunity, that doesn't instantaneously undo the decades/centuries of traditional notion that a woman is not complete without marriage and motherhood. Men face the same pressure, but nowhere near the magnitude, nor the inherent limitations.
At least this person can communicate and can open themselves up emotionally. But it sounds like this person would have mental health issues no matter what their current situation was. A partner or job isn't going to fix that.
Anxiety is living in the future. Depression is living in the past. Wanting a good experience is a bad experience. Accepting a bad experience is a good experience.
Thats actually a very good summary. I found Vipassana mindfulness meditation helps immensely to achieve happiness by detaching the self from outside influences that would otherwise make me unhappy.
I could give better advice in a single sentence. To wit, "you should schedule an appointment with a psychiatrist to get screened for adult ADHD."
These life problems are classic adult ADHD symptoms. Moving cities every few years. Not being able to hold down a long-term relationship. Your "who-knows-what-number" job. Debt from poor and impulsive decisions. Lack of internal drive. Difficulty making and keeping friends. "Can barely remember to buy dish soap". Enough difficulty with making deadlines that her boss is reminding her of them.
Depression or bipolar disorder seem like a better fit. ADHD would manifest more in “short term” issues, i. e. difficulty getting through a workday. The fact that they can, apparently, hold down a job they don’t enjoy, and seem to quit voluntarily to improve their situation (going for an opportunity more than getting away from s/t) also don’t fit.
In the end, the point might be mood because the first step is the same, and a therapist will be far better figuring it out in person. The specific labels also seem not to perfectly fit the actual conditions, which are more fluid than what the existing lingo suggests.
Yeah, stimulant therapy works extraordinarily well for ADHD. Like, it's basically the best psychiatric intervention known. It doesn't work for everyone, but it's the first line treatment for a reason.
Is it really a diagnosis every single time? Are you saying pills will fix that? Unabashedly, no. Some people just get caught up in the wrong mentality and among peers who think a certain way. That analogy of "blindfolded, sitting on a mountain of glittering gems" makes a lot of sense. It's the lack of perspective/awareness.
I'm sure a therapist has handled hundreds of patients going through a mid-life crisis and will be infinitely more useful than some internet columnist hocking their book. (Or a random guy on a startup forum trying to diagnose you)
It's completely possible to be a neurotypical person and "getting into the wrong mentality", as you are saying. But that is why the parent suggested a -screening-, rather than diagnosing the person over the internet. Because if it is ADHD, there is help to be found that is much more effective than "just change your mentality around things". In fact, I'd personally suggest a more general screening, as there is a high comorbidity with ADHD and other psychological issues.
Further, getting a diagnosis is not only about the medical treatment itself. Understanding one's problems goes a long way in coping with the symptoms.
I think also exploring the reasons why she behaves this way. It sounds cliche but I'm guessing it goes back to her childhood. She probably had a childhood full of instability, moving, absent or indifferent father, etc. and those patterns are imprinted in her thought process now. Good psychotherapy might expose the underlying reasons for her behavior and help her deal with them.
Learning things does not help people with ADHD like it can help people without ADHD. ADHD is a performance issue; they don't end up doing things to the extent that they know how to. It is not a knowledge issue. If she has ADHD, learning about how her life patterns are dysfunctional and why is not going to fix how she executes her life in a dysfunctional way.
It certainly won't hurt though, outside of opportunity cost. ADHD has a genetic component, and growing up with ADHD parents is often a big contributory factor to the life problems that ADHD folks face. But it's not getting screened for ADHD, which if you suspect you have ADHD really should be the first step.
that was my case. Had all those symptoms you described. 30mg of Vyvanse every morning, prescribed by a Psychiatrist, allowed me to get a hold of my life again. The difference is night and day.
This sounds like me, except the debt and relationship problems.
I'm 90% sure I have add, but I'm afraid treatment would turn me into a zombie. It would be really nice to be able to work on crap at work I can't stand doing, but at the same time it would be awful.
it doesnt turn you into a zombie. You dont _have_ to take medications, and good psychiatrists will be willing to work with you with, or without medications.
There are strategies that can help without medication.
It might be good to spend a couple of hours reading and learning, perhaps watching some videos with first-hand discussions. This could help cultivate future awareness and potentially reduce impact even if you do nothing else. Or maybe you rule out ADHD as a potential contributing factor entirely. Or maybe you don't have ADHD but some of the strategies are useful anyway. You won't know until you look into it. But even if it's not applicable to you, the knowledge might help you understand someone else in your life.
This stigma about the different medications, along with worry for the view that people who seek treatment are simply looking for ADHD drugs, has prevented a lot of people from seeking treatment. It's very unfortunate.
I wouldn't call myself a believer necessarily, but I do believe in such things as many people now have dismissed due to utter faith in science. So, I'm not "Christian", but I think the bible is an important book and contains wisdom. If you haven't read Ecclesiastes, I suggest you do. It was written by some old, powerful man (no one really knows who), basically reflecting on his life and imparting wisdom. It's the kind of old testament book that has inspired great leaders for centuries.
Anyways, the idea of a church community really comforts me. I would be open with my own beliefs, and the reason why I'm attending church, and hope to build long-term relationships with those people. I also want to do some good outside of my academic work. When or if I have children, I would want them to attend church with me, with the understanding that they don't have to believe in God in order to gain something very valuable. I want them to grow up in a tangible, physical community of people who have their best interests in mind. Now that "inclusive" churches are more popular, I think I am going to find one.
> If you haven't read Ecclesiastes, I suggest you do. It was written by some old, powerful man (no one really knows who), basically reflecting on his life and imparting wisdom.
No one knows that it was written by an old, powerful man, either. The tradition is that it was written by King Solomon and contains his parables, and that the framing device of a third-person narrator reflecting on someone else's parable is a rhetorical device, but there are certainly interpretations that, whoever the subject is, the (primary, there are some parts that are generally accepted to come from a different author than the main body) author is (as the framing suggests) a third person narrator, relating wisdom sayings that came from, or at least are attributed to, another source.
What if at 55 she realizes she wasted her time reading folklore of non-existent super beings, time she could have used to advance her art or volunteer for actual charities and impact the world?
I don’t think the message “35-year old is still very young” is useful.
Life is really hard and is contant suffering. You might die at 95 year-old, but you might die tomorrow. Taking responsibilities instead of blaming the world is often the only way to go.
I think taking responsibility is important but it is also easy to take too much responsibility, be it at work, in the personal lives and choices of others, or in you own success - ultimately leading to anxiety and depression.
A concrete example that I think will echo here is the impostor syndrome many engineers face. We know it is technically possible to sit down and grind huge amounts of value in software in a relatively short period, and we believe it so strongly that we feel crushed if we don't do it each and every day.
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[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 342 ms ] threadRemember this piece before you argue with someone that they should move away from their friends, family, their support systems for work or other development opportunities. It Takes A Village, and your local support system is not to be underestimated.
In the end, all we have is family and/or loved ones ("chosen family"); everything else is fleeting. Spread your wings, but know where Home is (and remember Home is something to be cultivated, and not to be taken for granted).
So far so good.
Then, three months later she drops dead of lung cancer.
It is very fortunate that I live nearby too, total coincidence, that branch of my family I have very little contact with. So now this 80+ year old guy that just lost his daughter, the only regular link to his past and provider of all his needs has to depend on me, the nephew he hasn't really seen in the last 35 years or so.
No more circle of friends, no walks about town, just some crap flat for old people and a whole day to wait for night to come again. Card games once every week and the occasional game of Scrabble. And the rest of the time you are just alone with your thoughts of life the way it was.
The good news is he definitely did not waste his life, but it is super hard on him and there isn't a visit that leaves me unmoved about how incredibly harsh life can be.
Poor guy.
From one internet stranger to another, you are a good person Jacques. We're all just walking each other home.
-- Keith Hebden
For me it's also a way to expand my own life beyond my own life. That is, to take joy in the wellbeing of others, even though I can't feel their wellbeing as they do, still multiplies the joy I can have in life immensely. Compassion can bring sadness, sure, but I think it's more than made up for by the satisfaction it can bring, too. You might say I try to not always be selfish for purely selfish reasons.
In a rather free and bad translation, couldn't find it in English:
> Humans keep themselves in a passable height above hellish depths towards which they gravitate only by using all their powers and helping each other lovingly. Among each other they are connected by strong ropes, and it's bad enough when the ropes around a person get loose and they sink a little lower than the rest into the empty void, and it's horrible when the ropes around a person break and they fall. This is why one should stick with others. I suspect that girls keep us up high because they are so light, that is why we should love the girls and they should love us.
-- Franz Kafka in a letter to Oskar Pollak, 20th December 1903
It's from 1903, so I hope it's possible to enjoy the wisdom and cuteness without getting up on the last sentence :) Also "stick with others" is particularly badly translated and sounds weird, but keep the "lovingly help each other" bit in mind, don't hold my translation against Kafka.
Blood is certainly thicker than water as they say, for good and for evil. I used to think exactly as you stated the above and I don't mean to suggest how rigid you are but my recent experience with family is that relationships must go both ways, and when your attempts at expressing yourself go unheard or ignored then perhaps cutting ties is the right approach.
I would encourage you to use this as a growth opportunity. I had a similar situation occur with a close family member who died unexpectedly, and years later, my heart still hurts every day because of it. Take care of your self, but grow emotionally to put yourself out there when you can.
I won't discount that cutting ties is appropriate under certain circumstances. For myself, it is a last resort. People are people, fallible to their core.
Forgive my reaction, my family is adept at that very thing: pretending to listen then dispensing the advice they think will fix you and your problems; I've now realized that empathy means simply listening actively, and generally the complainer will come to the correct conclusion on their own, they just need a willful listening ear.
At least, I've never been genuinely convinced I was in the wrong unless someone first recognized my pains then gave advice or I noticed someone else's example. My entire life has constituted shame-based discipline, and not even the direct "you're stupid for doing x thing" but "she's your mother, she brought you into this world." Like, yeah, but that doesn't help me not be upset, and I may have even agreed at the time but the point is my emotions are high and ignoring my feelings leaves me subconsciously believing that my emotional being is wrong or unimportant.
tl;dr I'm a big boy, I can get over it but understand me before giving advice
Of course I'll leave my immediate family for opportunity - in my case, they're terrible people who posed a detriment to my future.
On the other hand I never learned how to function as part of a community of people (family, friends, whatever), and am left feeling like I have no support system. Which is apparently super important, but I only realize that now at 30 instead of earlier. :(
Sometimes they are actively used against you. In that case the right course of action should even be clearer.
Absolutely. I've termed this emotional gaslighting, where I'm frustrated about something and bring it up and the family member I'm frustrated with deflects or points the finger right back at me as if they're the ones that were frustrated all along. This leaves me doubting my frustration as if my feelings weren't ever valid at all, which I suspect had a huge hand in my intense anxiety that I've fortunately largely overcome.
This can be because of adventure Travel, creating a business, or focusing all your energy on one person and then having that relationship fall apart.
I moved cities to be better positioned for my Startup. Ignored all friends and family for 4 years, and ultimately the company failed and I felt very similar to this woman.
The prison system is developing "re-emergence" programs to help inmates reintegrate with the world after being isolated for 20 years. If they can come back to happy lives, anyone can.
But I think there should be more books/classes and programs focused on integrating back with your own life after a period of isolation.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
In other words, the only way to escape the concept of incremental time is to not think of it as increments at all.
I have great sympathy for the person asking for advice, and I suspect they may have been hoping for something a bit more actionable. Also, the advice columnist mentioning their new book and book tour in the reply seems a bit tone-deaf to me.
I hope that she finds a way to start making the changes she wants to see in her life.
"Hi Dan, thanks for calling the Suicide Helpline! I know what you're going through is tough. I went through what you're going through too, which I wrote all about in my new book, Suicide Kings, available on Amazon, buy now and get it 20% off the hardcover price for a limited time only! Here's an affiliate link, and an interview I did with the Today show. So yeah, I've been feeling down in the dumps lately too, and you know what I did? I wrote Suicide Kings, only $19.99 in two easy payments if you call 555-555-1513. That's 555-555-1513. Don't kill yourself Dan. I didn't. Write a book instead."
American parents could learn a thing or two about parenting from previous generations and from a lot of immigrant families: nobody owes you anything, plan for a rainy day, find a partner you love and commit to them, work hard, cherish friends and family even when it's difficult, etc.
I think parenting has over-corrected from the overly didactic and stern parenting of previous generations to endless "follow your bliss" and "you can do anything" -- which is causing a lot of young people to spin their wheels for decades at a time, never growing up while their body is growing old. It's a shame to see.
I think we're seeing the result of the baby boomer generation, essentially. They rejected the old, as you put it -- stern way of parenting. I'd argue, perhaps it wasn't so much stern as it was the structured.
There was structure, expectations, and responsibilities. Things previous generates required to live. Since then, we've grown increasingly accustomed to insane amounts of wealth (or perhaps debt?).
This enabled us to lax our expectations, because you didn't need to be super disciplined to make the wealth.
The fact that we rebuffed the social norms has it's good and bad, unfortunately it does appear that we took it too far -- at least from a "you can do anything perspective". Yes, you can do anything, but you have to work to get there. It appears a lot of people forget that last part and feel entitled to their wealth / place in society.
I'd put this as "not an extreme" /on any of the axes that we're considering/. Life has an awful lot of dimensions -- if you imagine a very high-dimensional hypercube and draw the optima randomly, the optima are almost guaranteed to be close to some surface (some "extreme").
To my eye, the real problem is finding the correct perspective -- the one at which an optimum lies at an extreme.
Something which has brought a lot of happiness to my life and dramatically changed the way I live is taking responsibility for my own happiness and life choices. I used to spin my wheels and drift through life but at 30 I was diagnosed with cancer. It's a long story and it turned out to not be serious, although I did have two surgeries. There was a time period where it seemed very serious, however, and this period completely changed how I view my own life. I didn't want to die with this sense of being so unfulfilled and I wished I had made better choices. Now I try to make these choices as I live.
And I am envious. I have no impending doom looming above my head and I feel that this really makes me slow and feeling that I have time. I am 38 now and I am pretty aware that my time is ticking away. But there's always another crysis to salvage... I am trying my very best to crawl out of this hole but it's taking way too long.
I feel I lack the very important perspective that you have but these things are profound epiphanies; you can't just talk somebody into having them. They are transformative experiences and the resulting change in you cannot be duplicated by just talking or reading others' stories...
:(
1) Wife cheating on me 2) Divorce after a year of attempting to make it work 3) A clinically diagnosed major depressive episode (mainly brought on by the wife stuff but also some unresolved personal issues) 4) Cancer diagnosis
These years were incredibly formative, despite happening at ~30 years of age. The years since have seen me take control of my own life in ways I would never have before. If I want something I find a way to make it work.
One thing that helps me now is I don't worry about things. There is typically always a way out of a shit situation if you're willing to work for it. I don't know your personal situation but I recommend trying to be grateful for what you've got, set a 5-year plan for what you work and start doing the things you need to do for that 5-year plan (even if they're difficult and don't pay off for a long time). Treat your future self as someone to whom you're going to give a great gift.
You know what they say: "No good sailor is formed by windless sailing" or some such. It's absolutely never too late to not only learn but to get transformed dramatically.
I also got through a ton of crap lately -- been jobless for 6 months but that was only the tip of it. Not gonna bore you, bottom line is that yes, these things make you shift priorities and look at everything with new eyes. That much is true.
What is still not true is that I don't have that mythical perspective that people with near-death experiences gain. I wonder if it's possible to gain it without outlasting cancer or barely surviving a car crash.
As for not worrying, at 38 I learned for the first time in my life to take everything that's happening in stride and without sweating. Basically, if paying the bills and food isn't the threat, I really seriously cannot even get stressed or pissed anymore. Took me several months of a ton of stress to transform though. Looking back at the process, even though it's still ongoing, makes you appreciate how painful and slow a profound change in your character can be.
Being grateful for what you got is, again, not something you just read somewhere and start doing it tomorrow and until you die. Suffering and pain gave me much needed perspective to really become grateful. Nowadays I can't even get upset at my wife or mother if they get pissy at something; I just smile widely because I am happy that they are alive and well, and with me. (In rare cases this is misinterpreted which makes the situation even more hilarious.)
As for own schedule and plans -- thanks, that's a good perspective. I am a pretty relentless guy and I have a "grand vision" and I almost never lose the horizon but I fully appreciate that having a self-imposed deadline can be a motivator.
Do you have an advice on how do I sparkle the strong emotional reaction that makes one not want to waste another minute? I really cannot consciously replicate that. I envy people like you who got that epiphany and are now living under its flag.
In the past I've had goals, I "try to make it work" as you say. How do you not worry about the thing that you are trying to make it work?
> Treat your future self as someone to whom you're going to give a great gift.
Thank you for writing about your perspective. I've heard similar suggestions before, but never really focused/internalized it.
jefftk makes this point in a reflection on raising his own child--that there is great value in providing an environment which is predictable: https://www.jefftk.com/p/how-to-parent-more-predictably
I just wish I had gotten patents for the things I worked on in grad school, even if those patents belonged to the university.
These days I strongly advise young people to just get a bachelors and forget the rest unless it's required (e.g. for teaching).
Really depends what you want from life doenst it? It becomes problematic when people do it without realizing the consequences.
My wife's family wasn't rich, but the parenting attitude was "whatever you want, follow your heart". The kids had painting, sculpting, pianos, guitars, drums, dance lessons, soccer, karate, foreign language tutors, and anything else they desired. As soon as they got bored or frustrated, they quit and moved on to the next thing. The hope from the parents was if they were exposed to enough stuff, they'd find their passion. Of the three kids, only my wife has a steady job, and only because I nearly broke up with her when she was job hopping while we were dating. The other siblings quit their jobs at the first sign of any real struggle and move back in with their parents. I believe it's because they've never been forced to work past the uninteresting or difficult parts of any hobby or job in the past.
I don't know where the line should be drawn between giving kids every opportunity to find their passion versus making them stick with something they may not actually enjoy. I hope I figure that out before I have kids.
You taught yourself to use a computer, without taking an expensive "kids learn computers class", right?
Signing kids up for all these classes and structured activities can lead to a sort of passivity where they expect adults to tell them what to do.
My early family life resembled the parent's. The difference in my case and related to your point wasn't the absence of distractions it was to get at them I had to learn how to make the damn computer work. I once tricked my 286 into thinking it was a 386 so that I could install Windows 3.1. All for the purpose of... playing solitaire. Yeah, that's how bored I was.
I'm not even sure I could replicate doing that today. As a 9 year old I was better with a rudimentary BIOS than I am today with a modern one. I'm pretty sure it was because there was a barrier between me and what I wanted and the only way to get it was to figure out that horrendous system.
Whether I carry the piano into my adult life doesn't matter. I've still learned how to stick through something difficult without quitting and moving on to the next exciting thing. The most valuable lesson learned in this story is that everything worth doing is boring and difficult sometimes. If you never stick through it beyond that point, you'll never learn that lesson.
You can be the most dedicated piano player, but if you later decides to channel that dedication into e.g. writing you are very likely to be struggling anyways. So now you are essentially in the same boat as everyone else.
Young people are mainly struggling because education, housing and long term careers are competitive and costly. Of course dedication can help with being successful in almost any sense of the word. But overall it is very likely overshadowed by other factors as e.g. your position in the housing market.
How many people who could afford a mortgage in a major city in their early twenties, by any means, are struggling with their lives today? Certainly a few, but surely a lot less than those who don't yet have a stable home in their thirties.
I'm arguing that it's not what skill you learn, but rather that you did. You moved past something being new and exciting, got to the point where it was frustrating and boring, and you kept going anyway. I'm now wishing I hadn't use a computer as my example because I still feel like you're taking the wrong lesson from my anecdote. I don't credit my childhood computer use for my successful career as an adult. I credit my (forced) single-minded focus, where giving up was not an option.
In this story, my siblings-in-law never knew that it gets easier, never knew that there is a plateau you can overcome, and never made it to the other side. Because they never had to. It's a story about not giving up, not a story about how everyone should learn to use a computer.
So I'm not sure that sort of life is an inherent quality of growing up with a computer. It's perfectly possible to push through the hard parts and find a passion with music.
Anecdotes, is all.
If a millennial loses a once-profitable career due to sudden market shifts, "that's his fault for not persuing additional skills". But if a Boomer loses a job, it's never their fault.
I've been getting really into history recently so if anyone has any resources on the socio economic impact of other generations, specifically boomers, please let me know!
For me, the balance has been most aptly described by the phrase: you can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want. You can travel, follow your bliss, whatever it takes to find some self-actualization (very important in the western world), but you pay a price. This way, you’re not completely discounting the value of ‘finding yourself’, but, like any major decision, you assess the ROI.
It will likely be the last generation that has this opportunity. I don't imagine our children or their children living on a planet with much 'bliss' compared to their parents. Earth's trajectory is not looking good.
Even here we'll get a few blog posts a month from a one-man-show who's just got their start-up off the ground -- or alternatively, the one that's just burst into flames.
It's the same story. "I keep putting all my money into lottery tickets hoping to make it big, with no plans for what to do when I don't." No one tells us to romanticize it. We're not ignorant of the risks. And yet, we still do.
I have two kids, and the ONE THING I try the hardest to teach them is personal responsibility. Yet I recognize that generally the term "personal responsibility" is kind of used as a gatekeeping term against the poor and the young. Whatever their problems are, they are self-imposed as they lack personal responsibility. Sympathy, compassion, charity not required.
Every generation of parents is a generation of first-time parents. The best we can do is learn from past generations. I don't see any harm in identifying causes and effects of generational shifts in parenting style in order to better correct for the next round.
Travel for self-discovery has the well-understood problem that self-discovery is not about the places you go or things you do. It's about how you react and change in the process.
Hedonistic travel is fine and can be restoring, but pleasure only gives you insight into what you like, not how you handle life's challenges. The latter is where you actually find yourself. For that, travel is useful because it makes you uncomfortable, but first you have to seek discomfort.
The people who are spinning their wheels aren't the once who just want a decent job and modest life. It is if you don't want to go into debt, you don't to move to a major city, you can't or don't want to get help from your parent and you believe in making your own way that you are spinning your wheels. The "follow you bliss" kids are all getting money from their parents.
It is easy to have an opinion about how other people should live their lives. So just tel me, after they had your ideal upbringing, what do they do then and why would they not in that scenario benefit from essentially being spoiled?
We grew up with high expectations to study hard, go to a top university, get a 6-figure job, and start a family in the suburbs. Throughout years 4-18 our parents told us "You will do X, Y, and Z because these are the ingredients that worked for us to live a good life in America, so this is what will work for you."
While this does a good job providing structure, it doesn't take the individual into account. So many of my friends from immigrant families came out of college wondering "Now what?" because being a person was new to them in the sense that they had to figure out what to do with their life once things were no longer as pre-determined.
This created a new wave of 'failure to launch' where 20-somethings found themselves living at home trying to figure out what to do, or working down a path of some job they hate because their parents wanted them to do it. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a good way to describe the situation.
"You can do anything" is a troublesome parental mindset to establish, but so is a mindset of "You can't do this because this is not one of the 5 jobs we believe is best for you". For example, my 25y.o. Chinese female friend is just now getting into CompSci (what she is good at) after dropping out of pharmacy school (her parents goal for her because "you are a girl, you should be a pharmacist or a dentist").
And it isn't just a generation gap - a whole set of institutions are like this, motivating the popular "Millenials killed tradition" genre of journalism. And for the Millenial generation that amounts to having to reinvent each institution in a new form. Not an ambition anyone particularly signed up for, but one where the jobs are now.
My SO is doing all theses things, a bit to the extreme too but she feel EXACTLY like that person in the post.
- She planned for rainy days, much more than anyone I know, much more than her parents, much more than mine too.
- She was in love with someone for a pretty long time, way too much, but he had pretty big issues and whatever she did, he would never fix his issue, he was taking her down so hard, yet she loved him and she kept committing to him, it took her 5 years to decide it was enough, 5 years where he was the priority and not her own life.
- She worked pretty hard, again, way too much, she had a good well paid government job, they had nearly no resource because of cuts, the department of one of her colleague went from 8 to 2 employees. Right before she quit, they learned that they were only replacing 1 out of 8 employee that was quitting (she was one of the youngest, most were 45+). She pushed herself up to a depression, again also after nearly 5 years of this.
- Cherish friends and family even when it's difficult. That girl has a heart so big, it's crazy. She hated spending time with her mom, her mom always denigrated her, she always pushed her to her limit and never ever she would fight back. She die recently and my SO was there for her up until the end, more than anyone else in the family.
It has NOTHING to do with what you say. You may believe that's the right way, fine, but it has no bearing over the feelings of that person.
I only started reading the answer from Polly and that make much more sense. It may help quite a bit my SO.
My parents and most of their peers got married right out of high school just to get out of the houses their 1st generation Catholic parents filled to the brim with like, seven or eight semi-neglected kids.
A lot of them didn't make it out of those environments unscathed, and there's no guarantee they learned how to save money or hunker down for the long haul with a partner because of it.
It's easy to look back on those times with rose-colored glasses, especially if you weren't there.
And what I mean by that is, that those who have come of age over the past 20 years have spent pretty much their entire lives being read a recipe for success. Go to college -> get a degree -> get a job -> live a successful live. It's a simple step by step plan that every single person in our lives have reinforced ad nauseam, because for most of the 20th Century that has been the surest path to a happy middle class life.
The problem is that of course every single step in that path is now significantly more difficult than it was 20-30 years ago when our parents' generation did it. You can't just go to college anymore. It costs 10x what it did in the 80's and you can't even compare the cost to the 50's or 60's. It's also way more competitive getting into a top school. Even if you manage to get into college and pay for it, it's no longer good enough to just get a degree. You need to get a degree in the right thing and or find a way to differentiate yourself from the other 1 million students who graduate each year, because oh by the way our generation is the most well educated in the history of the world. Even if all those things go right finding a job is harder than ever. People retire later if at all now so the market is flooded not only with too many well educated applicants but the multitude of experienced candidates competing for the same entry level jobs. And even if you get a job, the crushing levels of student debt and the fact that wages haven't kept up with inflation, basically mean that it's incredibly hard to live a successful life on your own.
So basically the issue is that people have spent their entire lives calibrated for a set of conditions that no longer exists. There isn't a golden path to a cozy middle class lifestyle anymore. And once you start compounding that with the normal issues everyone runs into adjusting to an adult life you get this malaise. Everyone's poor and hates their life and social media is there so you can compare yourself to the 10% of the population who seem to have it all figured out either because they have rich parents to subsidize their life, or they got lucky and picked a major that actually pays decently, or they married their HS sweetheart and hate life somewhat less than everyone else.
And because it has to be said the fact that everyone keeps calling Millenial's lazy, and entitled for somehow not being as successful as previous generations despite the changing landscape doesn't help.
I'm not trying to sound harsh, but what I hear in the article is just a lack of perseverance and persistence. Relationships are hard, if you leave because the other person fails to lift the toilet seat, or you quit your job because your boss is an a-hole I find that to be a lack of character.
Strife is what gives people a sense of satisfaction. Buying the new car after driving a POS for years that needed constant work on the weekend is massively more satisfying than having mommie buy you a BMW for your birthday. Having a good year with the wife after a couple where you barely talked... That is how people grow, not sitting in flower beds having everything handed to them and running away every-time the world doesn't respond as you wish.
But on the other hand, I'm sympathetic to their impulse to reject the parenting styles of their parents. My father's father beat him brutally throughout his childhood. My mother's mother would shame her relentlessly for any slight failure to comply to her will, even well past childhood - when she earned her PhD, despite her mother's wishes for her to instead become an MD, after 7 hard years of working on her dissertation her mother's 'congratulatory' card ended with "I'll still pay for you to go to medical school" (and she had not helped her pay for graduate school).
They rejected the cruelty of their parents world, but gained a false optimism from the progressive, high growth times of the 60s through 90s, and failed to prepare me for the real world which is still plenty cruel.
I generally agree with what you're saying except for this. You should cherish friends and family... unless doing so ends up being a net negative. Maybe that goes beyond "even when it's difficult", but... life is too short to keep people around who hurt you, even if they're blood relatives.
Set boundaries. If people fail to respect those boundaries, then they don't deserve to be in your life, at all. Cutting someone out of your life shouldn't be a decision taken lightly or on a whim, but it's a tool in your toolbox for keeping toxic people from bringing you down.
Meanwhile, the original prompt of the inciting content has... Two days' hotel stay of savings.
That's what this is about. The lack of meaning, the alienation after being told "we could be anything we want" when we grow up, to having no choice but to settle for careers in "whatever almost pays bills" since the collapse of 2008.
We're bitter. We're ashamed of where we've been and what we've done to survive. And you know what happens when we get over that? We get angry, we may get political. We might even snap.
If we're technically minded? I'm mad that I dont see more hacktivists.
If you're skilled enough to be a hacktivist that can contribute significantly than you're also skilled enough to find well-paying work and you won't become bitter.
Polly's reply is so shameless (including promoting her own book in the reply) that it's incredible just how badly it missed the point.
> If you want to build a life with a partner, and have a more satisfying career, and maybe have children, you need to treat yourself like a treasured child starting today. If you had a daughter who was 35 years old and felt like all of her traveling and moving was a giant mistake that embodied everything BAD and shortsighted about her, what would you tell her? You’d tell her she was wrong. You’d say, “Your life is just beginning!”
This doesn't help the author and it doesn't help onlookers, either. There is a time window on opportunity. There are serious tradeoffs that need to be pondered when you reach adulthood, and almost none of them are helped with a "you deserve it!" attitude. And there are some things, like travel and careerism, that will not outlive you, like your children will.
It feels off and insincere.
Providing a sincere response, and self-promoting are not mutually exclusive.
It's more like "Hey! I wrote a book on this exact issue. I really hope it helps"
Except that's your notion and not what Polly was doing with their book mention in the article. There it served as a way to kinda say, "Hey, I also share some insecurity issues with you, caused this by book I'm touring on right now, and oh, here's the link to it". There was no other nudging of Haunted to read the book.
Take out the mention that she's on book tour, and you no longer have a frame of reference about her self-shame.
Two lonely people meet in the public plaza, one walks home without its facade. But at least she is not as lonely as before. As lonely as the shining success story on the soap box. That pride in whatever-you-are-preach is so generic, so rehearsed, im sure, the author could have thrown this to a AA meeting or a junkie with the monkey on its back, without flinching.
I guess it is a hard balance to strike between self-promotion and good content. Perhaps if the writer could be more open about the promotion stuff in the beginning of the article it wouldn't feel insincere.
Moral was when they got back they realized all that “fun” time accomplished little but transitory happiness. They came back asking friends for job favors and so on.
There are many people in the world who will never know happiness. Life itself is transitory, 'accomplishment' is not a substitute for it, 'security' is a dream. Old men may say 'Youth is wasted on the young'; I say bravo to the young who drink life to the lees.
When you sell today, can you be so sure of tomorrow?
Does a wise person minimax, or do they balance?
Does wisdom figure in, or do people simply externalize a neurological temperament?
To your quote: responsibility, sure, but its corollary is authority, and they exist together in precisely identical degree. Just as we bear the burden, if it is one, of the stories we write of our lives - we do nonetheless retain the ability to write whatever stories of ourselves we choose.
Sartre may consider that a condemnation. I can imagine no more liberating conception of life.
Maybe it depends on the mindset and intent. After all, what is truly permanent in this life?
If you approach traveling as a practice of impermanence and presence, then it can be a very broadening, empowering experience. Traveling can be an excellent lesson on the transient nature of life. Any one of us can lose everything in a moment without warning, no matter how well established or solid your home is.
So from that perspective there actually is no trade-off because it's all the same.
Some things take time and sacrifice to build. Family, friends, community. Most of us really need these things, but there is an opportunity cost to pay to get them. Sometimes we have all of it dumped in our lap and we take it for granted until it's gone. If you are willing to pay the price in time, effort, and emotion, you can rebuild it, but no guarantees.
You're telling the author they indeed wasted their time and it's too late and it's their own damn fault. You're just being honest.
I prefer Polly's advise.
Nor do I see what's wrong with responding to a question with a relevant and timely personal anecdote.
> And there are some things, like travel and careerism, that will not outlive you,
Apple outlived Steve Jobs. Hamlet outlived Shakespeare.
And anyway, why is it anyone's obligation to create something that outlives them. That's hubris.
It's part of the human condition.
It amounts to demand to not talk about it openly, because it would be not nice (or rude) to tell someone else that she/he is lonely etc.
And perhaps this is why so many people get divorced, and even why there are so many bastard children and deadbeat fathers/parents: in some inherent way, such people have already fulfilled some unnamed biological goal and have no real incentive to pursue it further. Because a family, being a committed parent, is a societal abstraction that many need not bother with. Certainly you can see this in other animal species.
Your points on the time window of opportunity and the basic nature of tradeoffs is well-put and correct, and is the better advice to give younger people in the context of hearing this woman's story and reflecting on what the lessons are for them.
I think Polly's advice is way more helpful for the actual woman who wrote the letter, though.
Also the book plug was ham-handed, you're right.
Women have a ticking clock here in a way men simply do not. I'd tell her "I've been telling you to hurry up and start a family for TEN YEARS"...
It's imperative to discuss with your partner your relationship requirements early, otherwise they're unlikely to meet them. If they don't coincide, either make peace or find someone else.
We're not boomers, this generation will rely on their children much more than their parents generation needed to rely on them. Those without children are going to have a much harder time into "retirement", especially if they're living paycheck-to-paycheck.
I'd argue men still have a ticking clock in some senses. Sure you can still get it up and produce children, but your capacity to engage with them and raise them goes down over time. I certainly would like to be hale and hearty enough to see my kids graduate college and be able to travel to visit my grandkids, for instance.
Producing loin-fruit isn't the end-goal unless you have some kind of royal titles to pass on. For most of us it's just about raising a family.
I used to work with a woman who was 47 at the time, in a long-term committed relationship, and still pre-menopausal.
She told me once that she and her partner have discussed the idea of having kids before she hits menopause, and they both ended up agreeing that it would be a bad idea because by the time the kids turn 18, she'll be 65 (and I don't know his age, but I met him a couple of times, and he looks to be around her age), and they wouldn't want any kids to have do deal with elderly parents at such a young age.
I say this is bad advice not because I think what makes me happy will make everyone happy. I know lots of people would find a life with kids in the suburbs stifling. But the "treasured child" type of advice makes the same mistake in the opposite direction. Our culture glamorizes a life of travel and adventure and experiences, but I think it dramatically underestimate the percentage of the population who find such a life unfulfilling and would be more fulfilled with roots and neighbors and a sense of place.
"What would you tell your kid?" My dad traveled the world, visiting dozens of countries helping bring health care to the developing world. He told me that the most fulfilling thing he did in his life was raise two kids. That's very uncool to say these days. But kids are always best served by honesty. They will find fulfilling whatever it is that they find fulfilling. Maybe they'll live a life of experience and die happy. Or maybe the best thing they will ever do will be to make you grandkids. But you're not helping them figure things out by trying to sell them an aspirational version of reality.
For the comment above, it seems like he is blissfully happy because he has funded and followed is true will(as personal and empiric as it is).
In the case of the author in the article, seems like root is the unsatisfied purpose in her life. The depression for the past, the anxiety about the future doesn't help with the present and like a snowball, it just gets worse with time.
Something that seems to come out in what you're saying is personal growth. To be a decent spouse, to be a decent parent, to work through home maintenance projects, and find new ways to interact with your parents as you both age, all of these require you to push yourself to learn and grow. It may not seem like it over 3 months, but over years of ups and downs you realize you've changed and grown a lot, hopefully with purpose.
With jobs and moves, it's easy to change jobs and places just because you get bored. But change isn't equal to growth. Sometimes it's just change and it feels meaningless.
I don't mean to say family is better than career or vice versa. But lots of people (me included) can wander through different jobs without feeling there's any thread of continuity or purpose to those changes - it's just a change. Maybe it's easier for people who can actively manage their career and always have their next move/job be another way for them to grow.
Agreed it won’t intrinsically make everyone happy, but ignoring the suburbs/kids aspect, what you are really describing, I think, is stability and that is a prerequisite for mental health and happiness.
Lack of stability, at any age, but particularly for children is significantly damaging to mental health.
I used to work briefly in dependency court (where the state intervenes when children are abused, abadonded and neglected). These children are subjected to psychiatric evaluations and they all say the same thing, lack of stability in the home devastates a child’s mental health (but also does the same to adults).
Travel/adventure are great in the context of a stable life, but on its own suggest a likelihood instability and thus mental health problems that make happiness damn near impossible. On the other hand if this person were to have sacrificed their travels early on to plant roots, that doesn’t really guarantee stability either, especially in this day and age where even if you do everything right odds are you might face the instability of employment, income, health, relationships, etc...
> Let me be more concrete: Promoting a book — which is what I’ve been doing since __my new book__ came out last month — is fun and exciting. You get to travel and meet new people. But there are aspects of it that feel a little corrosive. Too much focus on the self, on presentation, on sales numbers, on whether or not your work matters.
The columnist is doing the relatively rare thing of going beyond vague platitudes (It’s not easy for anyone, no matter how many deep roots they might’ve nurtured.) and referencing her specific personal circumstance: that even as a touring author -- they kind of life every aspiring writer would kill for -- she has a constant fight against doubt and shame.
Because she doesn't elaborate on what her book is about, nor mentions it again, I had to click through to find out -- a compilation of her "Ask Polly" columns, specifically on the topic of self-improvement. Polly's entire response, according to `wc`, is 2,337 words -- 1,700 of those words come after the link to her book.
Sure, I can agree that she should've taken the time to link to her publisher page, instead of the Amazon link she seems to have bookmarked for sharing. But if she's trying to be honest about her life situation, how is she not supposed to mention being on promotional tour? That's what a writer's life is consumed by after publication: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/th...
Here is another tradeoff for you to consider: One between telling an inspiring lie in order to pick someone up and being brutally honest about their life choices.
If your "advice" is "you missed your chance, you're screwed", then that does not help anyone else either. Advice is as much about inspiring confidence and fostering a change in perspective as it is about dealing with the hard truths.
I think that was the point, given that the whole article was about letting go of shame.
Making a subtly different point - "...are very different from those of permanence that help us live well." Who's to say what "live well" actually means? I mean, you & your friend may have an idea about what it looks like, and I may have an idea about what it looks like, and chances are they might even align. But that doesn't mean that every person needs the husband and kids and career success and creative accomplishments in that image. There's a strong revealed-preference argument that the original letter-writer wasn't actually into that; she should own those choices rather than assume her life needs to look like everyone else's life.
Earth is changing rapidly, I don't think it's a bad idea to travel and experience certain facets of life before they're extinct. Places or things you want to see in the future may not exist by then.
I went on some great adventures as a young man, backpacking round the Middle East and later in a job that involved a lot of world travel. I always thought I'd do more of those things, and while I have enjoyed family life I felt I lost something when I settled down and had kids and a career.
However, now that my kids are teenagers I can share my experiences of the world with them. We've been on some great holidays together, and have more planned. Those old adventures now have value, because they made me the person I am today and I can share that and leverage it in how I bring up my own children and shape their introduction to the world. Those experiences and the stories I have to tell and lessons I learned have acquired a new value, beyond merely myself.
This is why assholes are important in life. They don't care about how you feel enough to lie to you, this their advice is nearly always better than coming from "nice people".
Coming to terms with this reality for a woman is even more terrifying than a man because her bodily clock is ticking and pretty soon she will have little opportunity to have a child and dare I say, attract her ideal man. Its a call for more traditional values, to acknowledging that the deal is different for men and women, and its a criticism of responses like this which tell women to embrace being a free spirit when all she wants is stability and steady growth.
Traditional values are truly counter culture in the west, and thats why pol will emphasize it.
EDIT: 4chan also likes it because it serves their tendency toward genetic determinism.
It's a winning game of cat lady career woman bingo in a single article. The memes are offensive because they're true.
It opens with an old couple who live in a land misted by a fog of forgetfulness. And one of them remembers they have a son they love very much. They haven't seen him in many years, because they had forgotten and they have to get back to him. And they set out to do so.
That feeling of, oh this is an important thing, person, event, skill, and why have I forgotten about it? Why didn't I attend to it? That is just part of the human condition as you get older.
I don't think your life is "wasted". Just accept that regret is part of all lives. Even the person who is happy, has thoughts and ideas about alternatives. Not that you would trade what you have, but you do play out alternative lives. Its perfectly natural.
So true, and so hard to do.
Western culture as a whole has gone a little too far in the “experience” direction. You can see this in little ways, like the fact that Legos are sold as pre-planned structures and not generic building blocks, or how electronics today are replaced and not repaired.
We really need a revitalization of a “creator” culture to combat the present consumer one.
I don't know if this is an "experience economy" thing as much as it is a lucrative licensing deal thing.
I'm sure the lucrative licensing deals help though. :)
Yes! I agree so much. As Hannah Arendt wrote in "The Human Condition":
> The ideals of homo faber, the fabricator of the world, which are permanence, stability, and durability, have been sacrificed to abundance, the ideal of the animal laborans.
If we changed to that, we can change from that.
This is completely tangential, but to be fair they're sold in both ways. I'm what most people would call a grown man, but I still can't help myself (or my girlfriend sometimes) and we pick up the odd set.
You can still buy large sets of mixed blocks, as well as the models. I've got a few models posted around my place because I enjoy them, but we also have [at least one] classic creator kit[s]. Even as a "grown up" it feels good for the soul sometimes.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/classic/
Artists' studios have long worked in a similar way, employing others to continually emulate an original ideal that an artist would ultimately brand.
I understand it's a little different, but we don't regret people admiring da Vinci as much as they do. People haven't stopped painting since the works of masters, and in many cases are inspired to see what is possible— and people still paint as a creative act. With reference to Lego— I covet that Apollo Saturn rocket model, and I'm often in awe of some of the creativity and skill that has gone into many of the models designed in their studios.
I grew up in the age of Lego models, though less sophisticated than they are now— I did start with my mother's early 70's sets.
Maybe the issue lies elsewhere— not that the predesigned models exist at all, but the consumerist motivation to just buy up those [models] for children instead of first exposing them to the basics without any other aspiration and gradually increasing exposure. I mean, that's how we've done painting for a long time— the kids get finger paints, wax crayons and cheap newsprint first. Then later they can see some master works, and maybe get a paint-by-numbers to see that their hands are just as capable of producing the same with the right practice.
My girlfriend and I share a one bedroom apartment and it’s a touch small (having downsized for reasons not our own).
I do keep a series of bookshelves along one wall that are largely filled with books but leave some space for other things like a couple of models. Others sit on the TV stand. They’re just kind of peppered in places where they won’t get in the way but are still viewable
http://legosteveblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/lego-pirates-wave-...
Not corporate-branded -- but not total freeform.
I've made and abandoned friends at almost every stage in my life. I have no idea who will be the best man at my wedding because to be honest my brother probably isn't up to the "responsibilities", but I have no alternative.
I now live on the west cost, a tough 6 hour flight away from home. I visited my family this Thanksgiving and am noticing so many changes, people are dying, babies are being born, my cousins who I've always viewed as children are about to graduate college. It's tough being away from home and not feeling like I have roots (I'm considering a move to Seattle or the Bay Area in early 2019), but at every step I've justified my actions because the next step always came with a significant pay increase and more career opportunities.
This January will be my 13th anniversary with my high school girlfriend (soon to be fiance). I can't describe how valuable it's been to have someone so close in age (I'm 3 months older) that can relate to the things that I'm going through, and who has my back, and knows that I have hers. Things haven't been easy, but it's become so much more than a girlfriend/boyfriend relationship, which is why marriage is in our future.
I've met so many fellow millennials who are serial monogamist or date freely, I don't judge them at all and at some times have felt a tinge on envy, and these folks may have a friend or family member who is to them what my girlfriend is to me -- I guess all this is to say that in today's society I just don't know how we can traverse this reality with at least one person who you are tightly integrated with. It's just too tough out there.
“under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.”
Now I'm torn between putting down roots in Toronto, moving out to the sticks, moving to Europe to be close to everyone or doing the right thing for my career by going to the US.
I am thinking about all those same options except the moving to the US thing. Even though I could earn much more money, I don't think that would be worth it living in a country like the US.
Hell. I'd take a 10% hit on salary for a week of unpaid vacation.
One major issue though is education. Giving a good technical education to people is fundamental. No matter how much a person falls, they have something that they can build on. They are never starting from scratch, as many people in this generation do, over and over again.
My latest idea is to study a certification. Has anybody done this before, and does it work? Will that help me start a career?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18562295
However if you're a software engineer or IT just do that
> My latest idea is to study a certification. Has anybody done this before, and does it work? Will that help me start a career?
Maybe? I suspect it depends partly on where (the company) you want to work, partly why you haven't been able to find a job yet, and partly where you do (or want to) live.
1. The sort of company you want to work for
Some places want certifications, degrees, etc. so if you identify those places as somewhere you want to work, and they need certifications to apply, or to improve your chances, then you need the certifications.
The places I have worked, and know about (hosting, SAAS, all UNIX based), are mostly interested in what they can get out of you. What you can do for them. As a result even though I have no certifications, I've managed to do well. I did have to start out pretty low on the ladder, Tech Support for a couple of years, but with hard work and motivation I now work from home as a successful contractor/consultant. It should be noted that I've got the jobs I have ahead of people who have certifications or degrees, mostly because I have convinced the people I interviewed with that have something to give. Where you want to work I believe will be an important deciding factor in wether certification will be helpful.
2. Why you haven't been able to find a job yet
If you haven't been able to get a job yet but the reason is something other than certifications then it's questionable how much benefit certifications will help. Try to work out why you didn't get a job or where you failed. Ask the company why you applied to, they might ignore you, they might help.
Are you shy? Do you undersell yourself? Do you present badly in person (disheveled, or strong smell for example)? Do you come across as a mis-understood, hard done by and unfairly shunned by the world? (the answer to that last one is yes, subjectively, from my reading of your medium post[0]. People complaining about how hard done by doesn't look good.
I've seen skilled people fall at the last hurdle, job in the bag except for the final in-person meeting, only to blow it by being a miserable fucker.[1]
3. where you do (or want to) live
I know someone who has a tech job in NZ, it doesn't pay well. NZ is pretty small, are there enough jobs? Are your expectations and/or demands too high? I started out in London, but now work remotely further North. If I were starting out from scratch it would be much harder to get where I am today by being in a much more regional place. It's harder to climb the ladder if there's no ladder around.
Some closing thoughts.
You got a paid internship that seemed to get extended, can you get a job with that company? If not, why not? Can you get another job locally? At least that way any company you apply for will know that you're at least employable. Social Proof. You need to prove yourself. I've met great programmers without a degree (or an unrelated degree in photography) and some terrible programmers with relevant academic backgrounds, having a job and being good at it might actually help persuade people that you're any good.
It might also be that you just can't go to NZ. It sucks. I want to sail around on a yacht and live in the Mediteranean instead of the UK, but kids, a wife, elderly parents etc. make that dream constantly a bit too far away to grasp. You might need to scale your pland and dreams back, or at least move them around a bit.
Good luck.
[0] That piece came across as a priviledged muddled whinge to me and if it were me I'd delete it, or at least rework it into something with observations and then a constructive conclusion. I doubt that campaigning for universities to run courses will help, it doesn't matter if companies want CCNA or whatever, if students don't want to study them universities won't offer them.
[1] If you're not good in person, practice. Go out to user groups, learn to talk to people, and listen.
Please can you teach me how to get better? If certifications aren't the answer, do you have a better solution? I'll lower my dreams and take anything, anywhere.
Don't apologise to me! What you got was my take on how you have presented yourself. I've been responsible for hiring people in the past, and I'll hire people again in the future. Maybe my first impression could be useful to you.
All you need to do is take it (the criticism) or leave it. Defend it if you want, but there's no-one here interested in hearing that. Perhaps more valuably for you would be to try to work out why you came across like that.
> I grew up in the countryside and I don't know how to meet people.
I grew up having no friends at school and was bullied for 5 years. It took me until my 30s to recover from it. This included being incredibly shy and not knowing how to meet people. The process will never be complete.
> Please can you teach me how to get better?
I can tell you how I recovered, your path may differ.
After a year with no real friends in London (pints after work with colleages apart) I went to tech meetups. I learned to talk to people by just doing it. I realised that these people were very very similar to me. I persevered and eventually friendships just fell out of that.
Are you interested in reading? Join a reading group. D&D, join a… you get the picture.
I understand that it's paralysingly hard for some people to talk to other people, so I suggest gently pushing yourself to take small steps by surrounding yourself with relatively like-minded people, people who at least are likely to share a similar mental state.
I can now talk to people, go up to them, small talk. Even convince themselves that I'm outgoing. It's tiring and I need to take a break from it and it feels like an act, but it works, and I make friends and I have a better life because of it.
> If certifications aren't the answer, do you have a better solution? I'll lower my dreams and take anything, anywhere.
A better solution? Not really. Work out why you've not been getting the jobs. Getting a CCNA only to discover that not having a CCNA wasn't the reason you weren't getting the job will set you back $number_of_years_it_takes_to_get_a_CCNA.
Maybe it will help, I don't know. Good luck though.
I'm broke, friendless and have nothing remotely resembling a meaningful life.
I however have not moved all over the place, I live 15 minutes from my childhood home and spend 90% of my life living in the same 3 blocks.
As far as family I barely have any left. My mother and my half-brother.
The bulk of my social interaction is via emails with one individual. On the occasions they reply, they're very terse due to how busy the individual is. I've met them once, for all of maybe 25 minutes. Other than that I mostly just talk to bun, a purple stuffed anthropomorphic rabbit I've had all but a few weeks of my life. As a child I was only invited to a few birthday partings or outings, as an adult I occasionally get asked why I wasn't at so and so's event 'well, I didn't even know about it...' and I was invited to a wedding of someone I went to school with from kindergarten on a couple of years ago, I was even sat at the head table with her father, with the exception of her insisting on a dance with me not a single person talked to me with the exception of the bartender taking my order. At one point I simple gave up and stood quite literally outside looking in, literally in the shadows outside of the barn the reception was at until the bartender cut me off and my contacts were gone through to find someone to collect me and my car.
The few seemingly like-minded people I've found are famous multi-millionaires and billionaires that live thousands of miles from me that I have effectively zero chance of ever interacting with. Put a gun to my head and I wouldn't be able to begin to tell you how one makes a friend because the only person that believes in any amount is essentially a stranger that I've met once and likely may never meet again.
I don't even know how to talk to people. I'm 33 and I've never actually had anything approximating a proper romantic relationship. I've never had a best friend that I do things with. I've never been part of a group carrying on and having experiences. I've never had to deal with a breakup, or co-habitated, or fought with a romantic partner. I've never had anyone phone me just to see how I was doing. I get a birthday card from corporate and sometimes from my mother when she remembers and that's the extent of my birthday being acknowledged.
The last person I got close to romantically, shot and killed themselves after we'd had 3 proper dates.
At 33 I have a GED and no college degree, I've filed bankruptcy, I've been in the same job for 12 and a half years. I'm one mild financial emergency away from being fucked.
I might as well just be a robot although, if I was a robot I'd probably have more human interaction purely from curiosity in me.
If things don't change professionally, in very drastic ways, I'll work until the day I die. I'm lucking if I can put 2-3 grand into my 401k each year.
While the woman writing to this columnist says she hasn't even the energy to contemplate humanity... that's about all I have going for me. I sit back and think about the nearly 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide we will put into the atmosphere this year, the microplastics in the air we breathe and the water we drink, the myopic and manipulated views of the world technology is giving to the masses, the growing wealth divide. I suppose I have more in common with a hypothetical artificial general intelligence though as I lack...
Do you get out much? I was friendless for a year until I went to the local Linux Users group. Now, almost all my friends (except one old school friend I re-connected with a year ago) are Ruby or Go user group people.
I get to see them all twice a month, I invite some of them to my birthdays, we get beers after the meetups. If it weren't for these people I'd have no friends either.
Oh, sure, no-one is going to get a girlfriend from attending these meetups, but it's a start. I now go climbing because of these people (one of the members has been doing it for ages), and the more things or groups you get involved with outside of tech the more exposure you have to candidates for a partner, or even just other friends.
I train at two gyms 4 days a week, aside from my coach saying hi to me and occasionally bye to me everyone talks to each other and I'm off to the side effectively invisible.
I'm an SCAdian. Every few years I'll email the baron or baroness and the seneschal and say hey I'm going to come to fighter practice, haven't been around, could you introduce me to people. They do and without fail 5 minutes in I might as well be a dust bunny in the corner.
Same at church. I go every weekend just to be around people. I don't particularly believe what they do, in fact I'm mostly team simulation hypothesis, but they are upbeat and cheery and friendly... yet again though I have a pew to myself, people will sit elsewhere even if it means in folding chairs. Without fail. Every single weekend.
I'm a Freemason, Lodge was always the same too. The casual hi to me, then everyone breaking off into their little social circles.
Without fail I can try and start a conversation, or insert myself into one, and I'll often get talked over which is an interesting thing as more oft than not I'm the largest person in a room.
It even happens in team meetings at work, it's like I've a damn cloaking device or something. You know in office space when, I believe Milton, keeps being passed the cake and being told to keep passing it... yeah, that, although it's generally more like I'm invisible. I can walk into rooms in plain site and finally say something and startle people if I talk because they were oblivious to my presence. I get the same thing at social groups.
Sometimes I wonder if people that have Cotard delusion think they're dead because they have a similar experience to me and their brain just interprets it as 'omg I must be dead'.
I don't know if it's because I simply lack in-person social skills and people on some subconscious level dismiss me like they would a cat or dog or what.
When someone does engage me though, and starts talking about something that interests me, I'll talk their damn ear off. I've had dates text me after the fact with shitty comments like I was so self obsessed and never once asked them any questions about themselves and I'm like, you brought up a topic and we had an ongoing DIALOGUE for 3 hours where we both said quite a bit...
I don't know, I just don't get people I guess.
I know there's other people like me out there. I mentioned one above, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be considered a god with the level of responsibility and impact they have and again they are a couple thousand miles away.
Try as I might, I can't find someone like that here or even someone that actually has free time for actual proper chats.
I suspect a lot of it comes down to I'm simply not interested in what many people are. I don't care about what the sports ball team did or what happened in such and such television program, I don't particularly care that your child got a ribbon at their intermural swim dance piano recital, if you need to vent about your relationship it's a wholly alien subject to me and I haven't a clue what you're on about or what to say, when you're reminiscing about college I'm just like yeahhh no clue. I care about the future of our species, what we're doing to our planet, how we're running out of time to save ourselves, the statistical hopelessness of finding evidence of another intelligent species in the firmament even if human civilization last a million years.
I catch myself talking too much about stuff I'm interested in, it doesn't help. I have to rein myself in. Cut myself off, ask the other person a question. Also, I don't bring up computers or tech unless they did. Turns out it's a niche subject.
> I've had dates text me after the fact with shitty comments like I was so self obsessed and never once asked them any questions about themselves and I'm like, you brought up a topic and we had an ongoing DIALOGUE for 3 hours where we both said quite a bit...
Talking at great length about something you're interested in isn't fun for the other person, in general, even if they're interested in it too. Perhaps try this, ask them about what they like, then get them to talk about that. Ask followup questions. Remember the answers next time you see them as best you can.
"There's this place that serves your favourite pizza, do you want to go there" or "Hey, isn't that dog one of your favourite breeds?", or "How did you get on at the climbing gym the other day"??
Google "How to talk to people".
> I don't know, I just don't get people I guess.
I'm 40, it took me practice to get to the point I did, and I still have to work at it. It has been rewarding so far.
> I suspect a lot of it comes down to I'm simply not interested in what many people are.
Yes, me neither. I have (self diagnosed) aspergers and/or ADHD. I have to make a game of social stuff, though not to the point that I'm treating people like toys or subjects.
> I'm just like yeahhh no clue.
I just ask questions. Just simple ones, not argueing, or even discussion. Just exploratory. Even if it's something I don't care about. "So, what was it like at your college", "If you had your time agian would you choose the same place", "Do you stay in contact with people from that time?" etc.
It doesn't matter if you're not interested in the answers.
YMMV, good luck.
That could be starting point, imho.
If you attend a new event like a church group, don't really get involved in any conversations or the ones you have go really poorly or awkwardly, and then end up sitting a table by yourself, it might actually build its own momentum and make people feel more awkward if five weeks later after coming 4 times and just sitting by yourself you try again and try to join a group conversation. It feels very weird to them because at that point they've already categorized you mentally as 'weird guy' or they mentally feel awkward when you join. First impressions matter a lot. As do a lot of the tropey dating advice about confidence, friendliness, conversational skills, etc.
And at that point, you really can't expect people to approach you if you come in and sit alone.
It's honestly better if when you join a new environment like that, you join a big circle of people, try to portray confidence, introduce yourself, try to hang back in the conversation a bit but contribute a little here and there - importantly, not just saying nothing at all or people might start getting weirded out. Maybe when you join these conversations you aren't smiling and being friendly enough. Maybe you don't know how to show people that you care about they have to say or they don't feel like you are interested in them.
Perhaps you haven't learned yet what's 'awkward' and what is not.
I have experienced the 'I may as well be invisible thing' many many times, but I can always trace back how things got there, because I can tell when someone has become awkward, and I usually kind of know why things got awkward. I might say something stupid or weird people out accidentally - but I'll at least be able to tell when I've done that.
Can you tell when things have suddenly become a failure? Or it's a mystery all the way through?
Another thing you could try to is to find some examples of socially successful people in media and try to emulate them. Act like them. Speak like them. See if communicating like they do leads you to better outcomes. And then learn to identify what those 'characters' are doing differently than the normal you.
You may also try a dating coach, but instead of having them help you with dating, you go to events with them joining you and join these group conversations, and afterwards have them debrief you on what to do differently.
You're intelligent, you're awake and have acknowledged the problems you face (as evidenced by the paragraph after paragraph you spent describing them), you're hardworking enough and diligent enough to retain your job for 12 years - that speaks to a certain type of strength of character. I googled you, found your blog, saw a youtube video of you and nothing about your appearance or your bearing was off-putting enough that you're incapable of making some friends.
Two of your biggest problems seem to be able to be categorized into career problems and friendship & dating problems.
As far as the career problems, I think given your intelligence and presence on this forum, you're likely already aware of many of the paths you could potentially take. My guess is your current position affords you _just_ enough comfort in life that despite your misgivings, your fears of the uncertainty of leaving it or undertaking something different is just too much of a risk for you to take. In other words, you likely have some vague ideas about alternatives you could follow, but you're afraid to take the leap. Otherwise, perhaps you'd already be studying at a university with free tuition in Germany or Argentina, teaching English in a poor enough place in Asia that even a GED is enough to get a job, working on a farm somewhere via the WWOOF program while you take stock of what you want in your future, apprenticed in a trade industry to a plumber or a carpenter or some other skilled trade, or something else people do when trying to advance from poor circumstances.
Or perhaps you really aren't aware of the paths you can take, in which case I would spend your internet cycles researching them.
The social problems are both easier and harder to solve.
Easier in the sense of - you have total control over your success or failure, there's no economic forces at work, no job market involved.
Harder in that the 'steps' to social success are not clearly laid out for us the way careers can be, because often you have no idea why a friendship fails to work out with a new acquaintance whereas at least you might have some idea what went wrong with a job application.
But the way to solve your social problems is to think of them the same way you'd think of any other skill you wanted to develop - to practice and put in work, evaluate what's working and what's not, and iterate.
Your failures are most likely due to one of a few things: 1) you're not actually putting yourself in the right places to meet people - that means on a Tuesday night you're sitting at home after work on the computer rather than going to where people are and introducing yourself or going to some sort of event where people work together or suffer together, or 2) you're at these types of places you might meet people but you're not taking some 'next step' - it could be the 'say hello' step, it could be the 'have a conversation trying to find mutual interests and if you do have a mutual interest engage them about it', it could be the 'ask to exchange contact info' step, it could be the 'follow up next week and invite them to another event or meal or for a drink or whatever else' step, etc, but at some point you may be dropping the ball, or 3) you could have some social tic you're not aware of that's off-putting and you're not iterating and experimenting with the way you portray yourself, the way you interact with people, the amount you smile or compliment people or make jokes or share something vulnerable or take it easy and be less aggressive - there's no way to know what it could be but you might not be modifying these variables and evaluating how they help or hurt.
But at a basic level, if you treat making friends or finding a person to date as a series of steps, and you spend your evenings actually taking those shots, and you change your approach, and you don't give up, and you lower your standards if ...
My (admittedly incomplete) impression of you is that you seem smart, but that you've got a lot of strong beliefs about things that don't seem to be working that well for you. I'm not sure I have any advice for that, but in my life I've found that my beliefs and values have changed and shifted over time. Usually those changes were started by external circumstances, followed by me choosing to let go of beliefs I was emotionally invested in (definitely not easy).
An example: I used to hold a pretty dim view of people, but I have changed this view over time and now see that most people are a mix of good and bad. The catalyst here was just trying to adjust my belief to be accurate -- people do a lot of good (in addition to the bad), and I couldn't square that with my existing belief that people were basically bad.
Probably the biggest external circumstance that forced me to change many beliefs was getting married, which will probably be unrelatable to you, but I'll try to relate it to you anyways: Getting into a romantic relationship changed my priorities because of the way it made me feel, and how all of a sudden I felt I had someone to really live for and strive to help in a way that I had never even really felt about myself. Things that previously seemed insignificant all of a sudden felt extremely significant. E.g. getting a better job, because I wanted to better provide.
Dating tips? Learn to filter -- go on as many dates as you can and figure out what kind of people you really work with. If you only go on one date every 6 months, you're not going to be able to figure out what it is that you really want in a partner. You might be able to do the same to find platonic friends? I haven't had a group of guys that I hang out with since high school, but my SO fulfills the friendship role mostly, and I'm too busy to even try right now.
Go to the SafeHouse restaurant, it's on the magnificent mile!
I finally got to go aboard U-505 in October which had been a dream of mine since going up there when we camped at Dunes state park and then road the train up to the museum in scouts when I was a pre-teen, after I ended up at that restaurant. It's really goofy but was quite a fun experience from entering in a unique way to exiting in a fun way.
I'm old enough to know it's not just a phase. It's just who I am.
It can be insidious, and without outside perspective -- either yourself years later, or someone who knows what they're looking at -- really hard to recognize (and fight).
Um no. It sounds like someone with no people to spend time with, that's living paycheck to paycheck, that is one financial emergency from financial ruin.
That doesn't automatically equate depression. When you're worrying if somethings going to happen tomorrow that leaves you penniless that other people around you wouldn't even notice the cost of, and you don't have another human as an outlet and for reassurance, you get frustrated and angry and cold and distant and apathetic all at once. You have to or you go nuts.
I don't see her as depressed at all, and unless you are licensed to practice mental health you haven't any business armchair diagnosing someone.
See my parent comment in this thread, I'm not depressed. I've got a few hundred dollars to my name, a ged, no degree, have been rejected by multiple companies this year, will most likely contract and die of cancer before I die of old age, don't have anyone I can call to hang out with, don't have anyone to call if I have an emergency and need help, don't have anyone to ring me up and ask how my life is going without wanting something.
I'm not depressed, I'm fucking tired. I imagine she's not depressed either, just tired. Worn out. In need of something to go in her favor for a change.
It's perfectly normal to feel despair and frustration with your life, that doesn't automatically make you depressed.
Try walking in her shoes, or my shoes, are millions of other shoes. We get out of bed in the morning and ranger the fuck up because we have to to survive. Just because we aren't excited to run off to our shitty jobs and come home to our empty lonely lives doesn't make us depressed, it makes us disadvantaged.
There's situation (which may be shitty, been there doing that even if I am playing life on the easy setting of straight white male) and there's also attitude /outlook/approach /how you feel. They influence each other, but they're not the same thing. Your situation may make you depressed, but it's not going to give you depression. On the other side, depression doesn't mean you're in a bad situation except that it includes depression which may make it terrible because it colors everything you perceive. No friends? Maybe, or maybe you can't recognize that people really are friends and do care because depression makes you feel that way. No prospects? Maybe, or maybe...
There are a ton of ways that people get medicated (rightly or not) for depression and for some that may help, but for other people therapy to develop the ability to recognize what's going on and tackle it is going to be enough. Along with developing those skills the simple act of discussing problems with someone may also help a lot, and paying a consultant sorry therapist may mean that you take more from it because you're paying for it.
This article was linked several times in "manosphere", including a few response videos. This woman is fine, healthy, relatively young. Men face the very same "invisibility problem" their whole lives.
It rocketed to the front page without any relation to HN's usual topics. And it looked like something that the manosphere/traditionalist/right-wing-droning-youtubers would see as a vindication of their ideas. e.g. https://twitter.com/StefanMolyneux/status/974377252212346880
It is a little strange to have to take one person's letter to an advice columnist and use it as grist for which gender has it worse, but, that's their obsession I guess.
Anxiety is living in the future. Depression is living in the past. Wanting a good experience is a bad experience. Accepting a bad experience is a good experience.
These life problems are classic adult ADHD symptoms. Moving cities every few years. Not being able to hold down a long-term relationship. Your "who-knows-what-number" job. Debt from poor and impulsive decisions. Lack of internal drive. Difficulty making and keeping friends. "Can barely remember to buy dish soap". Enough difficulty with making deadlines that her boss is reminding her of them.
In the end, the point might be mood because the first step is the same, and a therapist will be far better figuring it out in person. The specific labels also seem not to perfectly fit the actual conditions, which are more fluid than what the existing lingo suggests.
Don't dismiss a solution just because "it's a drug". It is, but for people who truly have ADHD, it's so much more.
Awareness is the antidote.
>It's the lack of perspective/awareness.
This is another ADHD symptom: a relative nearsightedness to behavioral consequences that are far away in time.
No, that's not what the parent is saying.
It's completely possible to be a neurotypical person and "getting into the wrong mentality", as you are saying. But that is why the parent suggested a -screening-, rather than diagnosing the person over the internet. Because if it is ADHD, there is help to be found that is much more effective than "just change your mentality around things". In fact, I'd personally suggest a more general screening, as there is a high comorbidity with ADHD and other psychological issues.
Further, getting a diagnosis is not only about the medical treatment itself. Understanding one's problems goes a long way in coping with the symptoms.
It certainly won't hurt though, outside of opportunity cost. ADHD has a genetic component, and growing up with ADHD parents is often a big contributory factor to the life problems that ADHD folks face. But it's not getting screened for ADHD, which if you suspect you have ADHD really should be the first step.
that was my case. Had all those symptoms you described. 30mg of Vyvanse every morning, prescribed by a Psychiatrist, allowed me to get a hold of my life again. The difference is night and day.
I'm 90% sure I have add, but I'm afraid treatment would turn me into a zombie. It would be really nice to be able to work on crap at work I can't stand doing, but at the same time it would be awful.
It might be good to spend a couple of hours reading and learning, perhaps watching some videos with first-hand discussions. This could help cultivate future awareness and potentially reduce impact even if you do nothing else. Or maybe you rule out ADHD as a potential contributing factor entirely. Or maybe you don't have ADHD but some of the strategies are useful anyway. You won't know until you look into it. But even if it's not applicable to you, the knowledge might help you understand someone else in your life.
This stigma about the different medications, along with worry for the view that people who seek treatment are simply looking for ADHD drugs, has prevented a lot of people from seeking treatment. It's very unfortunate.
1) declare bankruptcy to get rid of your debts and start over
2) join a religious community, those folks commit much faster!
I wouldn't call myself a believer necessarily, but I do believe in such things as many people now have dismissed due to utter faith in science. So, I'm not "Christian", but I think the bible is an important book and contains wisdom. If you haven't read Ecclesiastes, I suggest you do. It was written by some old, powerful man (no one really knows who), basically reflecting on his life and imparting wisdom. It's the kind of old testament book that has inspired great leaders for centuries.
Anyways, the idea of a church community really comforts me. I would be open with my own beliefs, and the reason why I'm attending church, and hope to build long-term relationships with those people. I also want to do some good outside of my academic work. When or if I have children, I would want them to attend church with me, with the understanding that they don't have to believe in God in order to gain something very valuable. I want them to grow up in a tangible, physical community of people who have their best interests in mind. Now that "inclusive" churches are more popular, I think I am going to find one.
No one knows that it was written by an old, powerful man, either. The tradition is that it was written by King Solomon and contains his parables, and that the framing device of a third-person narrator reflecting on someone else's parable is a rhetorical device, but there are certainly interpretations that, whoever the subject is, the (primary, there are some parts that are generally accepted to come from a different author than the main body) author is (as the framing suggests) a third person narrator, relating wisdom sayings that came from, or at least are attributed to, another source.
Life is really hard and is contant suffering. You might die at 95 year-old, but you might die tomorrow. Taking responsibilities instead of blaming the world is often the only way to go.
A concrete example that I think will echo here is the impostor syndrome many engineers face. We know it is technically possible to sit down and grind huge amounts of value in software in a relatively short period, and we believe it so strongly that we feel crushed if we don't do it each and every day.