Ask HN: How did you find your passion? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#31

Post by Nostradedamus » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #17

All my passions are either commercially not useful or things I am not talented enough to be in front. Example: martial arts and boxing. I really loved it but I am naturally very nonathletic so I was never be able to hang with the top people which is frustrating considering the effort I put into it. Same with hiking and photography. I like doing it but somehow I lack the artistic ability to stand out. I have passion f…

Remember this: Albert Einstein had a simple clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#32

Post by maxxxxx » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:21 PM UTC

Nostradedamus wrote: post #31

maxxxxx wrote: post #17

All my passions are either commercially not useful or things I am not talented enough to be in front. Example: martial arts and boxing. I really loved it but I am naturally very nonathletic so I was never be able to hang with the top people which is frustrating considering the effort I put into it. Same with hiking and photography. I like doing it but somehow I lack the artistic ability to stand out. I have passion f…

Remember this: Albert Einstein had a simple clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

I am not sure what to learn from this.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#33

Post by mathgeek » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

I pretty much found my passion when I was 5-7 years old and played my first video games on my father's Commodore 64 and Apple IIe, playing board games and card games with my grandparents, and then the day I met my wife and when our children were born. None of those pay the bills, but they don't have to.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#34

Post by gkya » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

2013. My 19yo self, having spent almost two years doing nothing but learning programming, wants to read CS at the uni, but knows not maths. Signs up for a class to prepare for the national uni qualification exams in order to learn enough 1 + 1 to qualify for a CS undergrad course. But midway the preparatory classes has a crush on the philosophy instructor and reads a platonic dialogue and 1984 to impress her. But ends up actually falling in love with literature and studying Italian literature from fall 2014. Fast forward to 2018: I'm now freshly graduated and considering whether to study general literature for my master's or comparative literature. I'm also planning a career in academia. But I also have programming skills and live in Gnu Emacs compiled from master and run Debian stable on my laptop (after a year of FreeBSD after some years of Arch Linux). So a bit of a unique blend I have ended up being :)

I guess I should be thankful to how stupid I was back then (hopefully I improved a bit since) :) Getting into philosophy and literature has not only change my career plans, but helped me tackle my adolescence depression, have peace in my mind, and overcome the coercions of tradition and society and work towards realising myself.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#35

Post by DamnInteresting » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

Originally, my primary passion (non-fiction writing) arose as a form of escapism. I was unhappy with my life due to a bad marriage; she turned out to be a nasty person and a secret hoarder who spent us into the poor house within a few years. I had long been trying to write fiction, but I found none of it worthy of exposure to the public. So I decided to try my hand at non-fiction. After all, I had been collecting knowledge of strange true stories for as long as I could recall. Writing served me well in distracting me from the crappy situation I inhabited.

In a way I was lucky; I discovered this passion and acted upon it when it was possible to launch a small website, start publishing, and have a reasonable opportunity to cultivate an audience (ca. 2005). The site now has tens of thousands of monthly readers. I still love writing non-fiction, but my life is much better these days. I divorced the wretch, married a great woman, and started a family. It's harder to find time to scratch the writing itch, but I still find scraps of time here and there.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#36

Post by Nostradedamus » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #32

Nostradedamus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember this: Albert Einstein had a simple clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

I am not sure what to learn from this.

You're not wasting your life sitting in a cubicle. Your mind is always free to create and discover...

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#37

Post by swframe2 » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:28 PM UTC

maxxxxx wrote: post #32

Nostradedamus wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember this: Albert Einstein had a simple clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

I am not sure what to learn from this.

You may need two jobs for a brief amount of time. One that pays the bills. Another that drives your passion. Think of your first job as "bootstrapping" your second job. Just make sure the first job doesn't take so much effort that you have no energy left to do what you really want to do.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#38

Post by asr1191 » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

Nostradedamus wrote: post #31

maxxxxx wrote: post #17

All my passions are either commercially not useful or things I am not talented enough to be in front. Example: martial arts and boxing. I really loved it but I am naturally very nonathletic so I was never be able to hang with the top people which is frustrating considering the effort I put into it. Same with hiking and photography. I like doing it but somehow I lack the artistic ability to stand out. I have passion f…

Remember this: Albert Einstein had a simple clerk position in a Swiss patent office. While working at the patent office, Einstein had the time to further explore ideas that had taken hold during his studies at Polytechnic and thus cemented his theorems on what would be known as the principle of relativity.

Einstein is not just another person, right? The man had amazing perseverance. Not everyone is like that.

But I am genuinely curious to know how lesser known, and the more average kind of person deals with this. Because I feel like I might end up being in the same situation judging from my current progress.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#39

Post by nscalf » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

After years of hearing people I respected on podcasts talking about how Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is one of the most dominant fighting sports, a smaller guy can beat a bigger guy, etc... I hear a philosopher I like talk about how it is the most thoughtful and complex practices he does. He says he's like an addict who is carefully maneuvering around injuries to practice it for the rest of his life. I decide I'll give it a shot.

Cut to me, a 21 year old weighing in at a strong ~200 pounds (I had been powerlifting for a couple years), getting flipped and choked in under 15 seconds by Doc, a 60-something year old brown belt at my local gym. Nearly four years later, I spend 15-20 hours a week at the gym and I think about techniques all day long.

I'm a software engineer by trade, but my "retirement plan" is definitely opening a gym and moving the other 40 hours I spend coding into this. The best description I have heard is "chess with your whole body", when you start to learn how movements interact with each other on a higher level than just trying to survive, it's the most complex and precise physical activity in the world.

And there is always someone who can make you feel like a child fighting your 300 pound uncle.

Re: Ask HN: How did you find your passion?

#40

Post by EthanHeilman » Sun, Jul 08, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

From a very young age I was obsessed with adversarial thinking. Some of interest came from being raised on heroic tales of Hannibal of Carthage and Archimedes out thinking the Romans. I can't not think about breaking systems.