Everything you do is ultimately pointless. You feel that becoming a particular type of engineer you aspire to is meaningful, but once you get there you’ll realize you’re still yourself and you didn’t ascend to some higher level of being. Probably the most meaningful thing we can do is through social interactions. Your time in WoW must have incorporated social interactions. Be proud of those experiences - they’re in no way worse than others. Enjoy who you are and where you’ve been, avoid hurting people directly or indirectly, and you’ll be fine. If now you value your work with computers more then pursue that with the same vigor - but realize it’s not more meaningful than playing WoW, because meaning is what you make of it. Our culture will tell you productive activities that create capital and productivity are meaningful, but they only are if you find meaning and purpose in them for yourself without regard to the monetary necessities. I’m certain you felt purpose and meaning in your WoW playing at the time, and maybe you’ve just grown and changed. That’s ok too. Just because you wouldn’t spend your time doing WoW now doesn’t change you were driven to then, and the fact you could have “leap frogged” your current skill doesn’t matter one little bit. It’s not a race.
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?
#42When I was younger, I spent 10-14 hours a day on my bike or skates, with friends, and in later years I spent the same on WoW, now I spend that time at work -- if I'm including commuting. They're all different types and stages of socialization.
Don't lose sight of the fact that your fun and escape is actually the bleeding edge of technology - the Fridman podcast isn't exactly light listening - and you're familiarizing yourself through play.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#43I'm curious, what did that time playing games give you? Nothing?
I spent a lot of time on MUDs and EverQuest. But I gained lifelong friendships from it.
Sometimes I think back to all the time I spent with regret. But that helped form who I am today. Without it I would be a very different person.
Beyond that, life is not a straight line from A to B. There's twists and turns as everyone tries to figure things out for themselves. And on top of that, sometimes shit happens.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#44Regret serves a purpose - it makes things memorable and makes them affect your decision-making. If you regret wasting time on pointless things, hold onto that regret and use it as a driving force to work now and in the future. That's the proper way to cope with regret.
In an alternative universe where you don't feel that regret, you could probably keep wasting time for the rest of your life without ever noticing.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#45Take all of this for what it is, advice from strangers on the internet. I'll lay out what I think is the best advice I can give, but do realize that we are strangers on the interwebs.
First, everyone has regrets. Some you can't fix and some you can't really atone for. Those, you need a psychologist for. It just happens and there's no shame in that. The others you fix with hard work going forward. You're young, you've got plenty of time.
Second, and this is a tough one... maybe the hardest. You have to learn to stop comparing yourself to other people for your sense of intrinsic worth. You can kind of do it for inspiration, but not what have you done. You should only compare yourself today to what you were yesterday. Are you better today than you were yesterday?
Third, get off social media... maybe not entirely (I say as I write this on social media) but mostly. This is the only social media platform I'm on, and TBH I need to cut down on it. But you gotta set limits. Games need limits too. I play MMO's and I put limits on them too. Those things are a reward, not a given.
Fourth, discipline is important. It sounds dumb, but if it helps you to set a routine, then set a routine... I have to. I makes me work out, study the things I need to, set aside enough time for my family and my relationship, remember my vitamins, eat, all the adulting I need to do. If I get all that stuff in, then I get some gaming in. If I wing it, I won't get it done =/
Fifth, don't forget to make some friends and have some fun along the way. I hope you had a close friend or two that you could also reach out to with this issue and bounce some ideas off of. They're important and as I've gotten older, they're more important and harder to find in my life. Could just be me.
Lastly, good luck with college! You are going in the right direction. I'm proud of you. Also from an internet stranger, but still... education is awesome and will open up venues of thought and projects that you didn't have before. Hopefully it will open up opportunities for you that you didn't have in the past. Good luck in the future!
EDIT: Grammar and me don't get along at 6:30 in the A.M.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#46> I'm 23 and I spent my entire childhood wasting my time on Social media, World Of Warcraft, and other pointless stuff. Literally 10-14 hours a day.
If you want to come to peace with them, just walk carefully through what you did, and observe without judging [1]. Think about it. Perhaps you're a certain level in WoW. Perhaps you made some friends in a guild. If you're studying Computer Science, maybe that'll give you a leg up; you can work on building Wow addons or something!
> how would my life be if i spent that time coding/reverse engineering/learning the internals of OS, reading books, or generally developing my interests instead of playing wow and mindlessly scrolling on SM?
You might think you know an answer to this, but really the answer is "it depends". Maybe you would have done great. Maybe you would have burnt out and abandoned the idea of CS forever. Maybe you would have been brilliant, but an extreme loaner doing computing contests and nothing else. You can never really predict stuff like that, so don't beat yourself up over it.
One thing I have observed in life is that it's not necessarily the things you do consistently to get ahead that might end up getting you ahead. Despite this, the sheer feeling of excelling at something is rewarding in itself.
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[1] This sounds a bit woo-woo, but helped me overcome the instinctive and fundamental cringe that I often had when looking back at myself regarding anything – life circumstances, friendships, hobbies, you name it. Maybe it just comes with age; but perhaps if you get this ability at 23, you'll do great.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#47Maybe gaming carried you through the hardest times of your mental illness and now you're ready to learn computer science deeply? Never too late. Especially at 23... People successfully do huge career changes at 50.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#48You shouldn't look back, but look forward instead. At 23 you should have most of your life still in front of you. At 57 I'm painfully aware that I don't have all that much time left so I'm trying to make the most of it, there is no reason to wait until you are old to start realizing that your time on this rock is finite. At least you realize it now, some people never do, and I hope that you had some fun.
How are you doing that?
Doing what?
Looking forward and not backward? Trying to improve the lives for those around me, making things that are useful to people with as little abuse potential as possible, developing my skills in whatever domain that interests me at the moment (right now: piano, music in general) not fret about past decisions (not much you can do about them anyway), thinking about what I'll do today and tomorrow and then doing that rather than thinking about what I did yesterday and the week before (or even longer ago).
I'm happy I'm not a child born into the world today because the amount of distraction is off the scale, making it far harder to do something useful until you realize that you are being manipulated into changing bits on a server somewhere. (Yes, the irony of posting that here does not escape me.)
And John Carmack may be a role model of productivity but it doesn't say anything about how he is as a person.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#49When you're 33 you'll probably wish you spent more time with your friends and family over the last decade.
There's only now forward. Want it? Do it.
Re: Ask HN: How can I come to peace with the years I wasted on pointless things?
#501. You're still very young. Your life has barely started.
2. Regret is a bigger waste of energy than the things you did that you now regret. Don't waste time and energy on regret.
Just do whatever it is you want to do now. Sitting around regretting past choices is just an excuse to not do something now.