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Ask HN: Are you ok?
501–510 of 898 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#502Right now -- OK-ish. Had a good day. Buried myself in work, feeling "productive". Making, producing things. That's what I came for, that's what I long time ago
called my "hobby". Making. Tinkering. Doing.
Most of the time nowadays I feel overwhelmed, insufficient, unable. Fighting windmills. Meetings. Pointless meetings. Again, again and again. The same stories. The same questions, the same -- wrong -- conclusions. Me, predicting the -- to me -- obvious outcome.
Communicating to other humans sometimes feels so hard.
Most of the stuff I do is completely bogus and pointless. We're -- I'm in -- consulting hell in the enterprise world. Company too small to get at least "rich". Time-thief customers, can't fire them -- they pay employees. Can't fire them -- that would be the downward spiral again (been there, done that).
Thought about quitting -- my "job", I'm a founder-owner CTO, 46 years -- but imposter syndrome struck hard. Reading job postings, compared skills to things I did. I've been developing software for over 20 years now -- but can I compete? Daily HN does not help.
Change-it, leave-it or like-it -- chose to choose "change-it". Again picking fights, hopefully the right ones.
Trying to stick to principles I've seemingly forgotten -- and fight for them. Changing, trying to morph my "job" such that I like it again.
But I strongly feel that I'm running out of time. Brain does work differently -- slower, but deeper -- now it seems. Need to adopt, slow down. Keep thinking, not rushing.
Maybe I should get a therapist. Sometimes I feel I'm borderline on the manic-depressive spectrum. Should get that app idea going I have -- two buttons "OK" "BAD". See if I see cycles. But then again, reading other stories here I feel I'm unthankful, and I'm maybe OK off after all.
At least I have a very loving wife and two wonderful children. And -- compared to the world population -- I'm pretty sure I'm financially better off than 99% of all people.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#503I recently experienced months of sleeping problems. Where I wouldn't sleep for days. Or would sleep a few hours. I would be exhausted and my head would hit the pillow and BAM adrenaline and I can hear my heart pounding and I'm awake. It got so bad I would go into the basement and destroy a wall that I kept repairing. I would cry in frustration. I started to have suicidal thoughts. It was harming my marriage and made…
I feel the exact same with DoTA 2. Makes me relaxed and helps me sleep. Especially the part with "replaying some of the moments from the video game in my daydreaming imagination". Resonates a lot.
You must be getting much less frustrating team mates than me haha :)
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#504I recently experienced months of sleeping problems. Where I wouldn't sleep for days. Or would sleep a few hours. I would be exhausted and my head would hit the pillow and BAM adrenaline and I can hear my heart pounding and I'm awake. It got so bad I would go into the basement and destroy a wall that I kept repairing. I would cry in frustration. I started to have suicidal thoughts. It was harming my marriage and made…
Gaming's a good outlet for de-stressing, which is important in the evening. Add to that, I find that mentally challenging ones exhaust my mind more and improve my sleep onset latency even further.
While masturbation may help sleep I've found that pornography, particularly anything addicting like fetish varieties, will hurt sleep. Binging it especially. It messes with your dopamine levels. My sleep has immediately improved by cutting it out. Possibly my #1 rec after a) keeping a consistent wake time, and b) diet and exercise. I can only presume it's not often mentioned with regards to insomnia because of shame.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#505Thanks for asking. Not really, and it's 100% work-related. I dread coming in to work and it's given me awful anxiety that's turned into occasional passive suicidal ideation. Once I leave work, I feel like a totally different person and all the symptoms disappear. My boss calls me stupid, incompetent, r*tarded, and "like you have part of your brain missing". He grills me on literally everything I do, like why I'm gett…
Hi theanine. You are worth it to not experience any of that ever again. It will take a while, even after getting out of it, to get back to your real, healthy self. But you will. And after a good while, perhaps you will even look back on this and learn something, giving you even a few more facets.
You can get out of this and you will. Don't accept any mean thing your boss says about you. The opposite is true. If you feel like reaching out, you can find my contact details in my profile. No strings, and I'm not in a position to offer you a job, but if you feel like shooting the shit or having a banter.
Please take care of yourself.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#506No.
I’ve been really stressed out about work. This was actually a very cool job (8 minute commute, good coworkers) until about a month ago when a former coworker got promoted to manager. Suffice it to say he’s not cut out for the position. Our recent sprints have left me with fuck-all to do almost all the time while being massively overworked the tiny remaining portion of the time. Had a heart attack at work 4 weeks ago. I’m 29 with no other risk factors.
Add to this the fact that I recently discovered in my otherwise wonderful relationship that my partner doesn’t deal with polyamory very well at all, despite earlier expressions. I don’t blame her at all; you can’t know how you’ll feel about something until it happens, but it’s killing me. I don’t want to feel caged in, but I also feel like I wouldn’t enjoy any other relationships without having her to come home to. Lose/lose.
In addition, my increasingly aging grandparents (91 and 90 years old respectively) are requiring more and more care, and get more forgetful by the day. I recently found out they’ve been spraying windex on themselves for some sort of medical treatment? I have no fucking clue. Grandma always asks the same questions and I always give the same answers. I see them every Saturday to pick up my grandpa to get groceries.
Also, my actual home is a fucking mess. I’ve been letting a friend stay with me for over two years now and they have trashed one room and moved on to another because our AC is broken and the portable AC fits better in the window of the second room. Things have marginally improved on this front after telling them some things that seemed to get across how I was feeling.
I’ve been dealing with all this by eating massive quantities of clonazepam and gabapentin every day for the last few weeks, but my supply is running thin. I’m signed up for the motorcycle safety course in a week and I intend to get my bike the same day I pass. Maybe I’ll die in traffic.
Anyway, thanks for reading my novel.
No, I’m not interested in therapy.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#507Still good in September. October still coping. November wondering how on earth I’ll manage 3 more months of total darkness. December to February a blur of slugging through the dark. March to September again great. That’s a year with SAD above 60 degrees north.
Can you move south?
Probably not (schools etc) for now I have tried doing January in the Canary Islands (they have Swedish schools there) which is fantastic. Don’t think I’d want to move there permanently.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#508Honestly no. I’m preparing to interview with a big company that I’ve been interning with and I’m suffering pretty bad imposter syndrome. I’m terrified of technical interviews, because I’m worried of being called out on things I don’t know and realizing I might not be as qualified and knowledgeable as I think I am.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#509I am not okay.
I want to work at a better job, but I also don't want to suffer the stressful, months-long shitshow that is the tech job search, yet again. My current job is boring, but easy, and pays me enough to pay the immediate bills, but not quite enough to get necessary health care or save for child tuition or retirement. But I do have an office, with a door, so there is that.
I don't work on the west coast (US), or the east coast (US), nor do I want to move cross-country for work, yet again. I'm starting to get the sense that some contract manager might be setting up to screw my company, with no recourse for the common employees, yet again.
I'm mainly just tired. Tired of all the bullshit. Tired of all the politics. Tired of having my company bought by another company, and then radically changed from what I was hired into. Tired of cleaning up after people who can't or won't write maintainable code. Tired of having excess expertise that lies idle or is ignored, left over from running on the up-to-date-skills treadmill. Tired of changing the pneumatic coverings on all the bespoke reinvented wheels. Tired of hearing about nonsense that gets unicorn-funded, and bonuses and free lunches and RSUs and talent shortages. Really tired of websites screwing with my scroll bars, and hamburger menus.
I just want to sit in my mid-2007, back when everything was cool. Because it hasn't been good for me since 2008. It has become better than the low point, but my satisfaction with my life hit an absolute peak in 2007, and I have not recovered emotionally or financially, nor do I have much expectation that I ever will.
Re: Ask HN: Are you ok?
#510I'm shocked at how many people seem to be doing OK or have minor complaints. For me, I've realized that if I have to do anything for 40+ hours a week on a schedule, after a couple of weeks, I'd prefer being dead. I could be a professional ice cream taste tester or race car driver, and after about 3 weeks of showing up at a fixed time and putting in 8 hours, I'd still be ready to off myself again. When I have week-lon…
I also get the "waking up" feeling whenever I take more than a few days off, and going back to work feels like a death sentence (not in the judge-pounding-the-gavel sense, more in the it's-later-than-you-think sense). I don't feel suicidal, but I do feel desperate to waste less of my priceless time on piling up the money so that I can survive and support a family in a society that seems engineered to trap me in this…
> Maybe I'm just weak, for not being willing to throw it all away and go live in a barrel up in the mountains.
It's unclear to me if this is a weakness or a strength. I don't know which way is up.
Are you a stronger person if you're willing to say fuck it and go do your own thing and not be concerned with things like health care and financial stability?
Or are you a stronger person by steadfastly holding your station at work, because you just barely have enough grit to tough it out?
I can't shake the feeling that making peace with this half-living state as a daily existence is either the greatest achievement or the biggest mistake. So I remain anxious about it and pretend I haven't committed either way, although my resume would show you that I've clearly opted for permanent half-living through continuous employment.
Maybe it's too much to think about and I should go back to fantasizing about a life worth living while another work day ticks by...