Ask HN: What is your biggest problem? (2022)

I have the same issue, and I have found a bit of a way to work around it. I am always learning something new and looking forward to the next thing after that. It is who I am as a person and what drives me in life as a whole. What took me 37 years to figure out was that learning is stress and doing is stress relief. What I mean is that learning a new skill is inherently stressful, and if you do it constantly for years without breaks it starts to hurt you mentally and physically. If you don't take a break to use some of those skills and actually build something then you have all of the "I have to surround myself with information about this topic 24/7" stress with none of the "I just built something really cool" stress relief. Take a break for a bit and build something awesome. I promise it helps.

Personally, I do not fear death.

I don't fear death because I'm utterly curious. All of your thoughts are functions of a brain, a brain that will stop functioning. So what will you experience? Religious people will say there's an afterlife. A non-religious person might say you experience a void. You see, hear, feel, smell nothing. But if experiences are a function of the brain, and the brain is dead, you can't even experience a void.

It's not possible to imagine a true nothingness. So it brings me back to the original question, what do you experience after death? It's an impossible question to answer without experiencing it. Sure, people have had near-death experiences and talked about them, but I question how many of those experiences are merely hallucinations created by a mind panicking about its demise.

To die is to finally get the answer to the question. I do not fear dying because I will finally have an answer to the unanswerable.

That said, my bigger fear is aging and becoming decrepit. I don't want to survive, I want to live. If I ever get to a point where I'm merely surviving, unable to walk without assistance, unable to wipe my own ass, then I think it'll be time to say I've had a good run and end it.

ADHD, without a doubt. I take medication to manage it well enough to take care of myself and do well at work, but it's still the single largest obstacle I face in all my endeavors personal and professional.

I recently became a solution architect after pursuing this goal for quite a number of years. I love what I do, perform well, have good work-life balance, solve cutting edge technical problems, the pay is great. Wife, kids. Healthy and fit. So, enjoy your nice life, right?

The problem: am Ukrainian. It currently looks like I can get mobilized soon and go to war. If that happens, chances are that what awaits is not domain driven design and distributed systems but trench warfare. Even though I am likely to survive, my mental health and capacity for intense intellectual work may be permanently reduced.

Not just me: it's a trend. Ukraine is a major software engineering hub. The war doesn't care. Tons of talented people have to stop what they do and go defend the nation from the russian horde. Such a striking contrast where you can have cloud solutions and Ww1 style fighting within weeks from each other. Puts things into perspective.

No money to buy house, support ppl iny life.