HN Help: I'm lost
But I'm totally lost.
From the outside you'd be amazed to know that inside I am in terrible turmoil. You know me because of code I've written, books I've published, and my contributions here. Perhaps you follow me on Twitter. But I have reached a point in my life where I do not know what to do, or where to turn.
I'm in my early 40s, I've worked for start-ups and big companies. I made a little bit of money in the early 2000s which helped pay off a bit of mortgage. I have a family that depends on me financially. And yet I feel I have nothing to show.
I don't own my home, I don't have lots of savings, I have a job with a difficult boss. Because of the hours I work and commuting I barely see my children. I am utterly unhappy with my life.
Where should I turn? And what would you do?
I am tempted to totally change my life and stop working and create something new that will be challenging and interesting. Create something that I can do from home so that at least I am not a slave to my boss.
271 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 357 ms ] threadEvery once in a while I think about it...
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First, tell your wife exactly what you've written here. What you're about to do will scare the snot out of her if she doesn't understand your motivation.
The fact that you've posted something like this just about guarantees you've already decided to make a major course correction. Many people can work a lousy job they hate for 4 decades, get a gold watch at the end, and have as little to show for it at the end as you feel you have now. Looks like you're not one of them.
I wasn't one of them either. I told my wife almost exactly what you wrote up there. She asked me why it took so long, she'd know I was like that when she married me. We sold our house to be free of the mortgage, even though it was a bad time, moved into a rental and I've been working only on projects that interest me ever since. It was (is) scary. We've had to reduce our standard of living, but the days have turned from drudgery to adventure. Even if we end up living in a van down by the river, it will have been well worth it.
Only you can know whats best for you, but as someone who has walked this path, I encourage you to follow your heart. Poverty is uncomfortable, but regret is excruciating.
Edit: I'm serious about the tell your wife part. It instantly transforms her from hapless dependent (and one more worry on your mind) to co-conspirator and confidant. I just can't overstate what a difference this made for me.
Seriously, take noonespecials hint and talk to your s.o., it will make a world of a difference to know that you're in it together.
When I wanted to quit my job and start working as a freelancer my s.o. was very supportive, a friend who has been freelancing for a long time provided insight on what I was getting myself into, and another friend who I worked with a lot was kind enough to point out my related weaknesses.
I cannot upmod you enough for writing that. It's exactly the kind of feeling I've been having for the past few years but haven't been able to put it into words. Sometimes being poor can be one of your largest assets because it makes you more nimble and forces you to make better decisions--both in startup world and life outside. But you're right, regret is excruciating. You only get one chance (as far as I know) at life. You absolutely have to follow your heart.
Having a family changes all the goalposts.
As I've commented on here before, I and a lot of the people I know seem to have gone through childhoods where the parents believed this trade-off was really binary. I got it less than many people, but I still would have liked to see my parents, and their parents as well, not suffer through existence so much because of "needs" they thought we had. The only reason they thought we had those needs is because all the other parents in the neighborhood reinforced that children have those needs by catering to their own children thusly. It almost seems like the same force that drives parents to obsess about the safety of their children. They don't want to seem like the parent who cares the least.
The problem is that the goalposts you allude to in a higher-level comment are defined by this mechanism. I agree that goals will change -- any life change will result in resetting of goals --, but I think we absolutely suck as a collective on evaluating where those goals ought to reset to, and just let blind oneupmanship against other families guide us to local maxima.
- I should clarify that we didn't live anywhere near poverty. My father wasn't putting us in a bad situation to keep the job he loved. We were just significantly lower than the people around us, and as a result he didn't have many friends among his peers (by that I mean parents in our suburb) because they looked down on him. So that situation may not have any real bearing on this discussion since he didn't seem to be facing a hard decision: give up the respect of a bunch of career pushing suits or hate his life and his job, hmmm.
My family was completely nomadic growing up. While it was kind of a constant uncertain adventure, I see, as an adult, how it made me a better and stronger person.
Look at people with a small zone of comfort, people who are so incredibly attached to their physical manifestations of "success" and they are some of the most unhappy people ever. Living the nomadic existence more or less teaches people to value their relationships with people over things or those things that 9-5 drudgery provides.
Besides, children are resilient. I would never trade the memory of the time with my parents & family -- moving, camping, learning and adapting all over the freaking place -- for memories of what most adults would call a "stable" childhood.
You have no duty to provide "stuff" and failing to give them stuff is not deprivation.
If you can't buy your kids lots of fancy things, maybe you can teach them to be entrepreneurial early on.
If you can't buy them expensive education, maybe they can try to win grants. Besides, if you are struggling now, you probably can not buy them good education anyway.
(Ironically, I think channels like Cartoon Network I would recommend more for adults, both for the creativity of some of the shows and for the nostalgia of the old stuff. But I don't think the irony of many of these cartoons translates for many children, who are still naive enough to take them at face value.)
BTW, like someone else said, I hate to have thousands of episodes of tv trash like Gilligan's Island in my head.
We don't have video games either, and I'm starting to think that's where I would "compromise" first (although I would have to convince my wife). In general, though, I think it's easier to take a pretty hard line to start and then find points to compromise on. We have Netflix, too, so there's lots to choose from as far as things to watch. But we know some of their peers can turn the TV on at any time and watch whatever they want, which I find to be pretty scary. That whole "turn the TV to a 'kids' channel and mindlessly absorb whatever comes on for hours everyday" is the scenario we really want to avoid.
I don't care for new TV shows, but I sometimes wonder about cutting kids off from a source of pop-culture for their generation. It may not seem like it to us, but for them, the crap that's on now will be the stuff they watch on Cartoon Network in 20 years and laugh about or turn into surreal parodies.
Maybe moderation is a better solution?
From about the time my son was three years old or so, my reply to "can I have $shiny_thing_on_TV?" was "don't ask for stuff you see on TV, it's mostly junk." That simple!
Now he's nine and asks for stuff on TV, but he understands that there's a very high probability he won't get it, so he knows better than to whine about it. Instead it's "maybe I can get it for my birthday" or "how long do I have to save so I can buy that with my own money?" Either of which I think is infinitely better than the kids who nag their parents until they get what they want!
Follow your heart! I did that and led me to a low maintenance but very happy life. The less you have to more you gain.
Happiness == Success
I was a military brat. I went to 10 public schools in 18 years, mostly in poorer areas. By all accounts my education should have been terrible. It wasn't.
I got a lot out of my education, not because I went to the 'best' schools.. but rather because my parents instilled in me a love of learning. They laid down an expectation (not a demand) that I learn and continue learning throughout my life.
I didn't go to an Ivy league school (we simply didn't have the means). I went to a division II school in central Arkansas. None of that matters. I still learn something new everyday. I've parlayed my love of learning into an entrepreneurs life. I'm on my third startup. One has been wildly successful, one not so much. The third is going well so far:)
More importantly I have a great wife and live in a place I absolutely love (Denver). We have a nice house, but not too nice. We have great friends. Really, at 30 years old I just couldn't ask for more.
All of this not because I had fancy toys, private school, or even much stability growing up (moving around every year or two impedes that). Nope, I've been blessed by having parents who where adventurous and chose not to live life in a conventional way. They freed me to walk my unconventional path to happiness. That's a far greater gift than money can buy.
To the OP: Don't be afraid to step out and find your happiness. Your kids need a role model just as I had.
a) Fewer expensive toys, a smaller/no TV, a small house, cheap clothes, and public school?
b) A father and husband so busy repressing his pain, so trapped in the anguish of seeing his identity drowned, that he cannot express his true love and strength to them?
His family will benefit infinitely more from the joy of his liberation, and his children from the example of a father fully passionate about his life and theirs. Anything less is a disservice - and the money is utterly inconsequential in comparison.
I'm not as accomplished as the OP, but he may be in a similar financial state. Another big difference is that I don't have a difficult boss, and my commute and working hours do allow me a couple hours with my kids in the evening, along with weekends mostly free. So I'm definitely, definitely, definitely not saying he shouldn't feel this way, or suggesting that he's complaining. I'm just saying, I get it, I understand why his situation is a very difficult one.
If you compare yourself to your peers in SF you'll never feel good about that. Too many kids who got lucky in this town walking around with zillions.
What if you moved to one of the more decent parts of the East Bay? Easily cut your rent in half, or if you prefer, you could have twice the space.
And going the entrepreneurial route isn't exactly a way to spend more time with your kids.
I agree that escaping the rat race is a good thing overall for the family, I just disagree with the dichotomy you're presenting here.
How is that not pain?
If anything, our original poster should consider psychiatric care. This kind of seething misery isn't often fixed by dickering around your professional life.
But you are right, the OP is in a lot of pain right now. And I myself have the same fears as the OP, and even taken the route that the poster wonders about, of taking time off to do some wildly impractical and creative things. It taught me a lot about myself.
I don't have a family at the moment, so it's a lot easier for me. I'm not sure what the solution is, for him, but it could just be downshifting rather than a clean break. Or, maybe he thinks he needs to do something radical.
Kids aren't as dumb as adults think they are. Treat them with respect, explain things to them, and they will understand. Treat them as dumb consumers, and what do you get?
It's more a matter of perceived fragility, both in the physical sense (safety hysteria) and the emotional and psychological sense (provider hysteria). This is constantly reinforced by other people behaving as though their children are fragile, and falling into the hysteria themselves.
No one wants to be at the bottom of this pile. It would be the same, in a coarse sense, as being at the bottom of the pile in a high school or in a clique of society wifes. Social ostracism, harassment with and by child protective services, and honest to goodness psychological damage of everyone involves can result from such petty bullshit. That you have to deal with such pettiness is a sign not that you should try to win harder, but that perhaps you should just stop playing the game.
In all of this squabbling, it is possible that, in an absolute sense, the child's life could be awesome. They could be comfortable, psychologically stable, and totally happy with life. But it doesn't matter, because all of this social in-fighting is a local phenomena, and being on the bottom in any locality makes you a "bad parent" almost by axiom.
BTW, not arguing at you so much as using your thoughts as a basis for my own. :-)
Or it might turn out that there is some third option between continuing the current drudgery or pushing everything into the pile on some new venture. Again, there's little to be lost and much to gain from starting the conversation.
And for the lost sheep, it sound like you really need a different job. I have a job with a long commute, but a great boss and that's hard enough. In my opinion, it's just not worth the stress.
I'm not sure how to answer the money part. At least you've recognized there is a problem and can now try to address it through savings, lifestyle change, etc.
If you should happen to feel, "I am utterly unhappy with my life" at any time, it might not hurt to at least darken the door of a trusted mental health professional just to be sure that there is not a clinical element to your feelings of malaise as well as circumstantial ones.
Even mild mental illness still carries a certain stigma so its hard to do sometimes, but we've lost one too many of the good ones, even in this community, not to take it seriously.
Gender and race discrimination have mostly been tackled, sexual orientation is on it's way. Mental disorders will be the next milestone IMO.
All the best to the lost sheep :-)
But before I darken the mood too much - I can only second the advice of seeing a therapist. And if you don't feel you can connect with the one you see, switch. No point in toughing it out.
I've done it, and let me just say that both the opportunity to speak openly about issues and the proper treatment have improved my life tremendously.
It's not just a matter of pride; for my sake is a certain amount of skepticism in what all has been pathologized. Regardless of what motives, or who's, you might believe is a result of this, we seem hasty in pinning on conditions and prescribing meds. That behaviors may be off the norm seems a priori evidence that they are bad behaviors, and need to be corrected, and our triggering deviation from the norm seems to be narrowing. But then, this could be because I tend to become friends with all of the outliers, and I have a sampling bias. :-)
I have thought about chatting with one or two mental professionals myself, but more out of a sense of curiosity than a sense that I need to be chemically renormalized. I'd like to first figure out what I might potentially be diagnosed with, and then begin the much more interesting discussion of where it becomes a problem, and whether it matters as more than just a label I could potentially exploit for preferential treatment.
I think if you're not actually going crazy, I'd advise against this. Talk to any kindly outsider. If you do actual controlled studies - scientific evidence, can you dig it? - they show that if you're not organically crazy, talking to professors works just as well as talking to mental health professionals. And professors won't take all your money or get you committed or subject you to the psychoanalytic flavor-of-the-week etcetera.
Yes, there are good mental health professionals, but just going out at random is really risky.
We don't care when, where or how people work, as long as they kick ass. We have employees that have families, and they usually work while the kids are at school and then late at night. I'm sure there's a lot more like us around.
who exactly is "we"? (might help the original poster if people could reccomend specific companies with enlightened policies wrt working from wherever and so on)
It's not for everybody, it almost certainly will mess up your chances with 'striking it rich' because inevitably you'll be starting from 0 up again. I've been very lucky in always having the backing of those around me whenever I do this.
Change your line of business (I went in to alternative energy for 5 years)
Learn a new trade (for me: metal working, Cad-Cam)
Right now I'm again going through such a phase of change, I have absolutely no idea what it is leading to but so far it has been extremely interesting.
Life is all about the journey.
Security in life is worth absolutely nothing, as soon as you feel that you are becoming 'secure' that's an excellent opportunity to kill that before it becomes a habit.
The flip side of that is of course that the freedom to do as you please (within the limits of the socially acceptable) is just as addictive or even more so.
I disagree about security though. All you need to have an adventure that entirely rocks your world is some peace and quiet.
I am sorry I didn't quote the name of the author at the first place. I couldn't recall where I had read it. I searched around for a while and couldn't find it so I just posted without the author's name but in quotes to show it was from someone other than me.
Thank you for finding the book title, it helped me find the the site where I originally read this.
I cannot find power in myself to break those chains. How do you trick yourself to get rid of money-addictive soul sucking job?
But here is my take on it: I'd rather be poor and happy than secure any day, and I live my life accordingly.
I take risks, sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, on balance it seems to come out roughly even.
Case in point, a bunch of people in Canada wanted to start their own business, a local gas station was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, I put together a package to be able to buy it, invested a whole bunch of money and turned it over to them.
It failed spectacularly, which is a real pity.
But the flip side of that is that I met some guy in a waiting room somewhere, invested some money in to his business, strong armed some other investors into ponying up and he's well into 6 figure territory now and will probably strike it big.
Security is illusionary, who would you rather be dependent on, your boss or your own wits ?
How about all those people that got laid off in the last year, how secure were they before ?
Right now I'm (almost) 45 and I am not scared of doing this, I trust in my own ability to survive and make myself useful to others, directly or indirectly and I expect to pluck the rewards from that.
The satisfaction from doing this under my own power is so much larger than what a paycheck could get me. Any size paycheck.
There is no net though, maybe one day I'll mess up once too many and land on my butt.
But even that doesn't scare me, maybe it should :)
Fortunately I have been lucky to have ppl back me up too when I turned life upside down. I am much younger but would probably lead a life just like you.
I don't think you know just how right you are...I'm planning to quit my job at the end of the month do some 'hustling.' I trust my ability to innovate WAY more than my boss' ability to make money. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit.
I actually got up at 4 this morning to plan how I am gonna make some money over the Christmas. Sure they can fail, but they can also succeed. It's 50-50
People always say "Well, it could be worse." I say it could be better.
Carpe Diem!
I think the root value here, however, is that of intentionally pushing yourself outside your comfort zone. This can be done every 5 years, or every day, or somewhere in between. It's something I swear by because it keeps my mind fresh and stimulated. Taking a class unrelated to anything I've ever done is a nice example of something that can be done every few months or so.
Or, since Wear Sunscreen was mentioned here....Do something every day that scares you.
- Are you just a freakish genius,
- or do you not consider the feeling of mastery to be essential to happiness,
- or do you continue to build up existing skills AND turn your life upside-down at the same time?
I'd love to be able to turn my life upside-down, but I'm addicted to getting better at certain things and would hate to stagnate..
It's hard work (make that very hard work) but as you get more basic knowledge it becomes easier to integrate stuff that you are learning.
The only thing I would say I've ever truely 'mastered' is C programming, other than that I have lots of things where I can get by and learn from people that really know their stuff.
It is inevitable that it works like a spotlight, you turn it on an area of interest and go all out to learn what you can about it, then as your return-on-investment in time drops off you can decide to continue or quit, usually I quit when I get to the level where I'd have to go 'full-time' in order to advance.
There is just too much interesting stuff to do, no way to be an expert in more than one field.
One of the most interesting things that I've found is that as you do this you keep running in to domain specific knowledge that can fairly easily be translated in to other domains that haven't picked up on that trick yet.
This is a fairly good way to make a living.
As for doing the turning things upside-down and learning at the same time, usually it coincides, but that is not a necessity.
For me it is just a way to keep living fun.
This is HN, so I'm pretty sure everyone will advocate this option.
Whenever I've found myself in a similar position of unhappiness and frustration, I just followed my gut instinct, and it worked out great. It sounds like you have a lot to contribute and the rat race you've ended up in is stifling that.
Good luck with it. :-)
Ok, that cracked me up.
i walked away from a $100k-a-year job a little over a year ago -- and i live in tennessee, where $100k goes a lot farther than in the bay area -- because it was killing me. i've tried various things since then, none of them very lucrative.
i am now once again dependent on the generosity of my relatives to get along. but i don't regret quitting. i always manage to come back from the dead somehow, usually into an even better situation than the one i left.
If it's a long commute, one option might be moving closer to work so you have more family time and more time to think about what to do next with your life. Alternately, try to find a means to use that commute time constructively in a way that will help move you out of the current miserable situation and into something better -- books on tape, hanging on the cell phone with the wife, or even just using that time to think on your priorities and try to dream up some solution.
1. It is okay to feel rotten, isolated
Feeling glum and lost is part of life, and you should not add to it by presuming that you are some freak because you are experiencing these things. Life sucks sometimes and you may feel low when everything on paper says you should be happy.
2. Trusted Friends
No one is laughing at you, or looking down at how successful they have been compared to you. Seek counsel from trusted friends, and if they urge you to seek professional help... please do so.
3. Definition of Success
In your case you have identified some bad elements in your life, but on paper you have a Wife and Kids. You love your kids and wish to spend more time with them. At 40 you have all life's laughter and tears and wrinkles as acheivements... hardly "nothing to show"
4. Advice on the Interwebs
HN is a caring community, but only relatively. Please ignore offhand and illconsidered remarks from other commentators. The advice can be overly sacharin and not yield the concrete improvement you seek. Or they can be overtly callous, ignoring your concerns.
Hopefully you will also seek advice from Trusted Friends
5. What to do now?
Do a family budget. Work out what you can get by on, and what you could earn in more rewarding, closer employment. Can you quit your job and move?
Consider buying a franchise, or start your own business like a Cafe or Restaurant. It's bloody hard work, as my Wife owns a successful Cafe. But it is rewarding.
There are lots of options, and GOOD LUCK!!
He told me something interesting, something that has stuck with me. He said that "...a good man will always be a good soldier; but a good soldier will not always be a good man. It's more important to be a good man." Or some shit like that. But it helped me.
Focus on that: Being a good man. Be a good father. Be a good husband. And don't get all caught up in some kind of false choice: The idea that you can only a) continue commuting for hours to work for a dickwad boss on a project you hate or b) stop working. There's probably some middle ground you can find, that might allow you a shorter commute, a boss who's less of a dick, a project that's slightly more satisfying.
Just don't be that guy who quits his job to work on his novel and then, six months later, is waking up at noon with saliva-Cheeto stains on his laptop, his underwear, and his remote control. Trust me man, I've been there, too.
Namaste,
Fred
Excellent advice. I think often times when we feel 'stuck' there are a world of other options we are not considering. If things are truely that bad on all perspectives, it shouldn't be hard to find a partial solution that improves them.
It's also a form of creativity and problem solving to open up other options for yourself. The world is more pregnant with possibility than we imagine until we've seen other people get themselves out of a mess by opening up options.
The solution happened naturally as I grew up a bit. I would hop on my bike and go down and see him at his machine shop after school or in the middle of the day in the summer. Yes, he was busy, it's not like we were playing catch in the office, but the opportunity was there for me to tag-along and watch what he did.
I was extremely proud of him. He was the boss at his own company. I don't know what it would be like to have a dad that worked for other people, but I doubt I would have been as proud.
My mom started her own retail business too. I often would go and spend time with her during the day while she worked. There were plenty of slow times to have a chat about this or that.
In my own life, I don't yet have the privilege of working for myself, but I want to get to this point both for myself and for my kids, so not only will they have a guaranteed summer job :), but also so they can understand the value of independence.
If you can do it, get some savings together, or find a plan to do so. With those, spend a nice long stretch of time, six months to a year, away from the "working world" (not necessarily "work," but you want to have plenty of freedom and a minimum of scheduling and responsibility) so that you can return to sanity and sort out whatever bothers you about your life and plan how you want your life to feel - small things, big things, relationships, work, children, etc. Having the longer timespan is important because your own perceptions change gradually, and what you think you want now turns out to be illusory later.
Regardless of what specifically happens, what you think or do, what projects you start, whether you're well on the way to a new career or you have to take your old job again, by the end of the period of freedom, you'll have a better idea of what you're passionate about in life and can refocus around that.
"I am tempted to totally change my life and stop working and create something new that will be challenging and interesting."
Go grab yourself a copy of Napoleon Hill's 'Think & Grow Rich'. Read it 2-3 times. Then go for it!
So the advice I can give is - find another programming job, which is closer to your home, and chances are your boss will be better. That can solve the problem with money, boss, and time for your child.
Regarding the more existential questions (meaning of life, etc.), I personally would not looking for the solution in the work I do.
Never forget that someone else's ambition is what allows for your relative stability.
I'm not trying to be cruel, I'm reminding him that his (salaried) labor is making someone else wealthy. For those of us who have well developed senses of self-esteem, this is a wholly unacceptable situation.
Totally agree. But these values are so often a societal default, and so often never thought about except in how to extrapolate with those values as a basis.
Making a point like this can result in one of three things: the reader already though of this, and acknowledges it as such; the reader discards the insight as irrelevant or wrong; or, the reader feels a sense of cognitive dissonance, and starts to analyze the statement in the context of their core values.
The statement itself was just matter of fact. I didn't pick up any sense of judgment; more of making the point that A implies B, and that the original commenter should make sure he's comfortable accepting both premises. I don't see anything wrong with making sure that people are consciously aware of what their values imply.
This is a good way of looking at it - it's a form of self-delusion, if you ask me.
There is no "good" or "bad" in recognizing your particular comfort zone. The only issue arises in you continuing to do something outside of your comfort zone, and that's as true as being an entrepreneur when you hate it as much as it is being an employee when you hate it.
I don't have any answers yet, so this is a useful thread for me too.
Maybe it's just the time of year/state of the economy/etc?
It sounds like your first step though is to find a better job - better boss/more interesting work/closer to home/ less travel etc.) That will give you more time away from your family. This alone can have a massive impact.
I commuted 4 hours a day to a client's site almost every working day for close to 2 years on a single project and at the end of that - when I returned back to the office - 30 minutes from my house - I felt like I was on holiday! Even with a new project underway the de-stress was enormous.
You may have to take a financial drop in take home pay but it will give you space for you to evaluate your longer term options more calmly, under less mental stress and away from a work relationship that is clearly not pleasant for you.
I think it's pretty common for these feelings but at least you've recognised them, some people aren't even able to do that.
I think it's also pretty common during your 40s to feel like this - I did and still do - and I know a LOT of people in a similar position.
I think noonespecial's advice about sharing these feelings with your family is good and also about seeking mental health advice.
We decided to marry and try to create a site by ourselves. We believe in simple life and try to be frugal. Downshifting. No more commutes and stupid meetings; no more work on something we don't believe in.
We have spent more money than we got in return. But, you know, we don't need lots of money to live more than comfortably. We don't own a car and don't spend a lot of money in things like taxis or buying stuff. We buy a few things that have quality and try to increase their life span. In clothes, but also in computers, etc.
Our website is light and uses AWS-EC2. Even in there we want to be frugal.
Maybe, just maybe, our site will become profitable. If not, we are creative and love to stay together, so we'll figure it out.
Isn't it wonderful to feel one is owner of his/her plans?
I can only tell you what I am doing. I told my wife how I feel. I told my boss how I feel. Strangely, my boss had a lot more power to improve my situation than my wife did. Admittedly, he is a good boss. I'm working from home about one day a week, and I've been able to control more of my projects.
But my wife is 20 weeks pregnant with unexpected twins. So I cannot change anything right now. I cannot pack up and take risks. I need to maintain my job no matter how bad it gets, as I need the insurance and the steady paycheck.
Internal acceptance of what you can and cannot control goes a long way to resolving inner turmoil. I spent a few months dealing with the fact that I must lower my expectations of my life. I'm not pleased about it, but that is the way it rolls.
Ultimately, the act that fixed it for me was when I sat down and laid out my priorities in life. My #1 priority is taking care of my family. I wish I saw my kids more, too. But they have a stable home. Seeing them more, but being without a home isn't a good compromise. So I accept the fact that I am stuck at a job that I don't like, working on technology that I do not like, and getting farther behind the curve on new technologies, so it is even harder to move elsewhere. But -- my kids are cared for. My wife is cared for.
I just had to accept that my self-identity needs to change into "Dad", not "technology expert who happens to have a family".
It is hard, yes, believe me, I know.
And if you can change it, I'll cheer you on.
But if you cannot change it, for your own sanity, embrace it.
You're a brave guy, that takes guts.
Anyway, you probably have different dreams, but forget about the house and money. I know sometimes it can sting to see others who seemingly earned more in the same time, but in the end, it was never what I personally cared for. I would say having published books is something to show for, for example.
Also remember the law of sunk costs...
Besides of all the practical advice, there is also a philosophical aspect, isn't there? The meaning of life... It helps to think about death, and what will really matter in the end. Granted, children might be happier about inheriting a large lump of money than having a cool dad with interesting war stories. I don't know - but I personally find the thought very depressing that building a house and raising a family should be the completion of life. Nothing against raising a family, I just don't know yet what to tell my kids: I don't want to tell them "build a house and raise family and your life will be fulfilled" (infinite circle).
What a strange comment. First, the meaning of life (or the closest that life has to an intrinsic meaning coded in genes) is exactly the infinite circle that you point out. Just ask a fish or a tree :-) Second, if you go searching for some kind of meaning in life, it had better be temporally infinite! So why would you complain about that?
It is irrelevant that our genes/life "wants" to reproduce. We have to make up our mind as to what we want to do with life. Actually our genes/life does not want anything. It just so happens that historically reproducing was a good strategy for genes to survive (might not always be true in the future, or for all kinds of genes).
Or actually we don't have to - nothing really matters. But to me it matters. Other people are probably different, in fact I know several whose lifelong dream is exactly to own a nice house and a family. But for me to simply reproduce biologically is not enough.
Edit: of course my kids will still have to find their own answers. I just don't want them to be burdened by having to be my fulfilment in life.
I would just like to give you an encouraging word: If you have written books and have a high karma score here, then you are a giving person, and you should feel good about yourself. No amount of money can buy happiness although it can sometimes buy less stress.
I think nearly everyone here will support your desire to create something where you can work from home; I have that dream too, however, with a mortgage and family, your options seem limited. If you are a good programmer, you should be able to find a new job quickly, even in a bad economy. Don't settle for a crappy boss.
I have a friend that started a software company in college and is doing quite well. He wants to start a self-sustaining community where families like yours can come live (cheaply) and work for a year or two, while they disengage from the grind, and start a new independent career. I wish he had it going already.
My only real piece of advice is: I think our biggest burden in life is to be nice to others. Try to smile and talk to everyone around you, love then, give to them, and to your family, and this selflessness will make you happy.
Take a big breath nothing is lost better days are comming. Your curriculum shows you are capable to do things good now you'll have to find the new reason for your life to guide your doings
One thing is very important: stay clean, let the new goal arise from inside, from your heart not your mind. People like us reach imbalance in the favour of the brain now the heart is aiming for a little attention to become equal with your realist part. And then the equilibrum will bring the peace
given what you tell us about yourself, you could off course just go ahead and totally change your life from one day to the other and "create something new that will be challenging and interesting [...]", that you can do from home.
Sometimes though, if you don't know what "that thing" is that you wanna do, it helps to take a step back and look at the situation.
If i were in your position, i would start a list with all the things that make me unhappy. Be honest, take your time and try to dig deep. The goal here is to fully understand why you are unhappy. It is a lot easier to understand what you want to do next, once you figured out what is wrong right now. Let me give you an example. If you don't feel respected in your job, it might help to start writing a blog or start another side project that gives you the respect and the appreciation that is difficult to get in your current job.
Once you've analysed why you're unhappy you already made a huge step forward. You're now in the know and a second step from here could be to create something like a change log. What i mean is, that you could try to find a solution for the biggest things that make you unhappy. You could have a chat with your boss, check your finances to see if you could work less, have a couple of interviews to validate your options etc. Work on the change log and try to find solutions for more and more things that make you unhappy. Give yourself a realistic timeline, work against it and measure the progress. [It helps a lot if you have someone on your side to give you feedback btw].
Sometimes it also helps to make a list of all your achievements. Write down every single thing you every did. I'm pretty sure it will be an impressive list and you can use it to determine what you really want to do next.
Finally, go ahead and tell yourself that you love the long hours at work, and the commute, and your difficult boss, and the fact that you still try to figure out what to do with your life, and that you still pay off your mortgage, because this is your life, it is all there is! :)
My personal experience is the converse: that I start by being unhappy, then I find reasons for them. I suspect it's happening to you too. You think you'd be happier if you saw your children more, but reality can be rather different and surprising. Until you work out your unhappiness, better not to be surrounded by people you genuinely care about. Unhappiness can be rather contagious.
I'm over in Australia, and I can't tell you much about finances, but you need to work out how to own your own home. Once you are secure that way, you'd be able to go out on your own.
You are probably the best judge of whether the time is right to strike out on your own, and whether you have the necessary skills.
In the meantime, here is a mind hack: if you are being hit by depression - make sure you smile at yourself in the mirror several minutes a day (See the guy who wrote the Shangri-La diet). Also, exercise those facial muscles and wear a smile. It will do your mental state a whole lot of good. I wish I could point you to the study. There were some police people who were practising snarls and other microexpressions in order to learn to predict aggression - but they noticed that simply practising those facial expressions made them aggressive. So the converse has to be true too. Smile. For your own wellbeing.