Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

I'm intentionally delaying marriage and kids partly for this reason. I think it's important to not feel like too much is left on the table before settling down. I'm 27 now and not planning to have kids until 35 at the earliest.

A lot of it is that I'm only just evolving into the person I want to be (more disciplined, focused on the right objectives, happier, etc), and I want to capitalize on that. I studied pretty hard all the way through to the end of college. Then worked really hard after that. I think I missed out on a good amount of what makes youth enjoyable as a result.

So I look at the time between my late-twenties and mid-thirties as a chance at a redo, but this time with better financial security. It's actually a lot more fun when you're more experienced, know more about what makes you tick, and have optionality.

I sometimes wonder how many very ambitious people have a similar life experience.

1. Finding things that drive and recharge me. I feel like I tend to mindlessly go through motions but I am not getting much value out of my day-to-day and find after a while I am worn out and tend to blow up at some part of my life.

2. Ensuring I build time for myself and not lose my personal identity while being in a relationship. I tend to put my personal needs on the back burner and go out of my way to please my partner, which leads to resentment.

The two feed in to each other.. I only seem to gain value from 2, which leads to problems, and when I have time to myself I have no idea what to do with my time to make me feel like I am enjoying myself so I choose to have less time for myself.

Good one to vent a bit. I'm 30 now, living in the Netherlands, and dropped out of a PhD in epidemiology/bioinformatics to work remotely for a company in the US. This has been great. Pay is wonderful, approx 130k/year. My official title is something like Senior Data Scientist. I work mostly on the application of machine learning and natural language processing to clinical study data. Between the day to day ops and management, I sometimes put together neat little ML prototypes. And, in the past 3 years I managed a team that I personally put together through hiring and firing. The company I work for gives me a lot of autonomy, and I think we've delivered truly amazing things in that time span. We've literally build a state-of-the-art medical search engine from scratch, from the design, to the Clojure programming, down to the nuts and bolts of putting the machines in the racks. Since things were seemingly going well, I thought "good moment to buy a house". So I bought a house, approx 400k (coming down to 2000/month roughly). But ... I've recently become aware of some changes to the company structure that may or may not play out well. I think they will, but they might not. So there's a reasonable risk that I might be unemployed soon-ish. This scares me. Being in the far North of the Netherlands, there aren't a lot of job opportunities for a drop-out like me. And, finding a company that is willing to take the risk of hiring me remotely ... yeah I'd even be hesitant in hiring myself at that pay-rate. The thing is, I might have to sell the house and all that shitty adult stuff if that happens, just to cut monthly costs. That scares me.

On top of that ... I'm not even sure I /want/ to work anymore. I would love to work on things like climate change, but that being underfunded (and not having a degree) I don't see happening. The only openings I see for a Senior Data Scientist position usually require a PhD (which I dropped out of sigh), or are in the ad space. And, for as long as I have a say in the matter I will never work in the ad space.

I've been thinking of doing my own thing, bootstrap something. But I literally don't know what. Cynicism maybe. You hear all these stories of bozos pitching some idea but can't get the people to build it; I guess I'm the opposite: I think, given time and resources, I can build a lot of things ... but seriously, I wouldn't have a clue what to work on. Except maybe multi-stage flash desalination using concentrated (heliostat) solar power to green deserts as a carbon sink ... but yeah, not a civil engineer.

The thing is ... through life choices I think I've made myself unemployable. I need the autonomy to do stuff, or I'll go mad (also, don't make me get out of bed before 10AM ... just not going to happen). But on the other hand, man it's been a productive 3 years ... and I learned /so/ much. I wish I just knew what to work on next. But my dysthymia prevents me from seeing that stuff clearly. If someone with a cool idea comes around, I'd love to sink my teeth into stuff; on my own, all I think of is the impending climate change disaster. Fun fun fun.

I have struggled with this ss long as I can remember (programming since 8, I am in my 40s now). The way I combat it is by setting another ambitious goal at the start of a new project; to make at least some money with it as early as possible. That fights with new features; you actually just want to sell instead of adding new features. Now for hobby things that do not make money, I still am overambitious, I guess that is just something I will not get over as I have nothing really to combat it. Even setting goals to really finish something do not matter; my finished product looks like the Taj Mahal in my mind while I am building the garden shed. I have not found the ‘make money’ that applies to hobbies.

Even with physical things; when I go hiking, I always go way too far and end up getting ‘lost’ (never lost, I have google maps, but always thinking; I can go just this path as it takes me deeper!) for a day on a mountain coming out completely physically broken. Luckily I usually have my voice of reason in this case; my wife, who says she is turning back after an hour.

The comment didn't come off as smug to me, but rather as so clearly true that it shouldn't need further explaining.

With a high risk of being labeled a weird PUA-- social interaction is easily able to be broken down logically. Humans are animals, and just like animals can be trained and managed, humans can be trained and managed. It can be analyzed with data if you're willing to whip up a spreadsheet. It can be treated using business principles if you're so inclined.

Also, don't call yourself a male, just like you wouldn't call a woman a "female" IRL. It is dehumanizing.