The easy fix (IMO) is to go to Ukraine (easiest for US citizens), work from this location for a bit, and start attending parties/events/etc, and start talking to strangers on the streets. You'll be surprised how many male/female friends you can make in one week, and how much is going on. People are extremely friendly to English-speaking folks. I'd recommend Kiev, but I imagine Lviv is the greatest place as well.
Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
281–290 of 522 posts
Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
#282> short guys looking for girlfriends > All the "normal" people Lol thanks. I used to have self-confidence issues because I'm short. Spent a lot of time at university feeling sorry for myself, unable to make friends or see myself as worthy of a girlfriend. Eventually realised that it's mostly in my head. I got over my self-esteem issues, went out and spoke to a stranger (ikr isn't that crazy?!) and he became my best f…
Many years ago I used to be really conscious of my hearing aids - badly so. A few years before I got my cochlear implant I ingested six tabs of LSD and a friend drove me around all night (still one of my best friends to this day, we met in intermediate) and he just let me chill and have those amazing "mind blown" moments.
One moment that I'll remember forever was the fact that nobody cares if you're deaf, or have hearing aids. In fact, maybe that's why people are so rude (because I've missed what they said - take a checkout operator at the supermarket asking me how my day is going and I don't reply ) so the very next day I got a #1 haircut, went to a hardware store and the guy I asked for help saw my hearing aids and instantly perked up and was super happy to help me - but he was shaking quite a bit (anxious perhaps?) I still often come across someone who gets nervous when talking to me!!
It was a really great way to fix those terrible misconceptions I had of myself.
Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
#283Quoted post unavailable.
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Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
#284The starting point is to begin taking back your personal truth. And live in that truth regardless of what people say. Apply your talents to the people that bring you happiness and meaning. You have to stop denying to yourself what really makes you happy. Sometimes, like for me, that means a long time to wait, but at least I have hope and are working towards what I want instead of away from it.
https://semiosis.github.io/posts/describing-melee-s-painting...
Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
#285Travel more, go to countries with prevailing happy go lucky attitude.
Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
#286Take some classes. Sounds like that worked in the past.
Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
#287One word: Volunteer.
Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
This truly is terrible advice. The worst thing that could happen would be your life gets wrapped into a religious community. This is why people of seeming average intelligence stay in churches. Everyone is pretending to believe the nonsense because if anyone admits (often even just to themselves) just how stupid it is, poof goes their friends, community, perhaps even their marriage. > I’m not even spiritual and I avo…
I'm an atheist or at best agnostic, but I've met and known many highly intelligent people who are also religious. It's not mutually exclusive.
So we have an idea that is false. Demonstrably false we can agree. Also, anecdotes aside for a moment overwhelmingly higher religious beliefs correlate with lower intelligence.
So, back to the anecdote, why in the case of someone being intelligent by your judgement would they believe this story, with ample evidence easily accessible to refute it?
- They've never considered it critically--ok that's possible - They've considered it critically and decided it's true--I'd argue they either haven't or they're not - They have developed a cognitive disconnect to protect themselves from loss of community, connection to their family, or fear of death
I am nearly certain that the last item accounts for the great majority, which is why this is such a dangerous suggestion. There is a real risk of losing your agency as an individual for of the rest of your life. I have seen this happen to many many people. I have seen many many people (literally 100s) who joined a church around when they were in their 30s just drawn in by the "community" only to become deeply disillusioned now in their 60 and 70 and feel that they had lost or wasted their youth and full of regrets. These institutions have spent thousands of years refining techniques for manipulating people, and their preferred primary prey is children and 30-somethings who feel "lost" exactly as the OP describes. They literally produce videos and training materials stating such.
Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
> […] I don’t want to meet people like me How do you know they’re like you? How do you know all the single guys there are just looking to hook up or find girlfriends? How do you know all the aging, unattractive women are just looking for a husband? Feels like you are projecting. To give a different perspective - I also took dance classes before COVID. I went into it with the mindset that I wanted to learn how to danc…
>Did you try meetup.com? So this is a bit offtopic (but maybe ontopic for HN), did meetup go through some change in ownership, revenue model etc. ? I can agree with the observation that meetup.com doesn't have as many fun/cheap/random/hobby based meetups any more. Everything feels a lot more commercial compared to a few years ago. Maybe it's area specific, maybe it's COVID, maybe it's a bunch of different factors. I…
Hm…I don’t know. It would explain why so many of the meetups seem to be more like sponsored “come check out our venue” type things (the wine tasting I did definitely was). There are some legitimate ones in there, but it took a long time to find my book club. I chalked it up to COVID. but maybe it was a change in “we’re not making any money” thinking…
Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life
#290WTF is wrong with short men and unattractive women, are they not humans with emotions who can make friends? In my experience these regular folks are the ones with whom you can have strong friendships that are not just skin deep. Maybe your attitude of treating unattractive people as beneath you needs to be fixed before you can find meaningful relationships.
Imagine if I said I went to some event but unfortunately there were only x person of ethnicity. Yuck! If the OP only wants to be friends with attractive women and tall guys, more power to him but he won't get much sympathy for me for that comment. Opportunities in life comes in many shapes and forms. That short guy or unattractive woman who they could've made friends with could've also opened up more social opportuni…
> Imagine if I said I went to some event but unfortunately there were only x person of ethnicity. Yuck!
Maybe not on HN comments but IRL I've seen people already do that all the time. Women especially really seem to take race/ethnicity into consideration.