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Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

#231

Post by codegeek »

"Honestly i can only guess but i don't know how to handle that i lost so much viable time"

"I am 23"

I can only smile at this. You have got tons of life ahead. Instead of comparing yourself with John Carmack, do what you want to do and you still have plenty of time.

Remember this "Don't compare with someone else. Compare yourself with yourself from the past. If you are doing better than you did in the past, be happy and keep moving forward. If you are not better than your past, work harder and keep moving forward"

Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

#232

Post by omgmajk »

I'm 37 and just started my new career after many years of doing computers and programming more or less as a hobby with the odd professional part here and there. I worked in physical security for most of the years after school and I feel like I have wasted a lot of time. In 2020 I decided to take some time to go to school again and ended up taking QA for three semesters. I now work as a developer, QA and part-time project manager. Hopefully I will have a long career in front of me but I fear all the time that it's too late.

23 is a good age to start out, and you had some fun in your teens. You'll be fine.

Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

#233

Post by sergiomattei »

bloqs wrote: post #208

Your generation is taught to be unreasonable in their expectations, this website is basically made up of prodigal children who all missed some substantial developmental milestones but who ended up being rewarded for years of interest in very specific topics. Bertrand Russell correctly stated that time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. If you have now decided you want change, then great. However, you have played s…

FACTS. Favorited for myself as well.

Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

#234

Post by bnlxbnlx »

mourning. by that i mean literally crying. tears, without any shame. this might not be easy, it’s frowned upon in western culture, in particular if you are male (boys don’t cry).

it will likely bring you a lot of softness and spaciousness, connect you to your deeper longings and let you see more clearly where to go from here.

Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

#235

Post by mod »

Carmack is the Michael Jordan of programming.

23 year old guys who have never played basketball shouldn't suddenly be sad they didn't wind up living Michael Jordan's life.

I don't regret any time I spent on anything before I was about 26. You still haven't started. You still have time to have two full, successful careers.

Just get started and don't quit easy.

Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

#236

Post by mwidell »

Maybe your passion IS video games and not programming? These days you can build just as good a career out of that – maybe start a youtube channel or start streaming on twitch? Everybody cannot be John Carmack, he is quite an exception. Don't try to be someone who you are not. Find your unique strengths and try to figure out how to best leverage them.

Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

#237

Post by dsoprea »

Read Masters of Doom.

You're either interested enough [in studying those things] to start now or you're not. If you want to look back when you're eighty and take pride in achieving and enjoy that stuff for fifty or sixty of them, then start now and write off the last ten as finding yourself, which always has a cost and is incurred by everyone. I was always a voracious coder ten to fifteen hours most days of my life. Even then, it's not with gaming, reading, travel, and family/friend development in order to feed my relationships(because code can't share your happiness and doesn't take care of you when you're sick) and give me a little variety so as to be able to think through problems while away from the screen for a little bit.

Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

#238

Post by pjerem »

> I spent my entire childhood wasting my time on Social media, World Of Warcraft, and other pointless stuff. Literally 10-14 hours a day. I don't regret my gaming interests, but i do regret the fact that i wasted so much of my life on games like World of Warcraft (I started playing when i was 10 years old) instead of finding and developing my future interests

Man, you are describing exactly the younger life of about the vast majority of technical workers nowadays. You are describing a cliché of barely anyone in this industry. Frankly I’m even surprised that WoW is still going strong.

You wasted nothing. I know a lot of successful programmers with great careers and most of them "wasted" years on WoW (some of them are still playing sometime) and they now enjoy a fulfilling life. The teenage-myself would probably not imagine any of those nerds working and having a family but hey, there we are.

Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?

#240

Post by airbreather »

well, you never know how something you do today could be useful tomorrow, a la first star wars movie...

anyway, motto in our house is "it seemed like a good idea at the time", and if it did, it probably was, or at least best choice you knew to make.

"Don't look back in anger"- Oasis.

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