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Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#371
post #226

Interviewing. I'm good at my good. My portfolio is at least decent, and I get a lot of responses on my resume, but I consistently can't close the deal. I also have a very hard time bettering myself with the lack of feedback. I've gotten better at all the stuff you can read about online and often made it to the final round, but I can't make it to an offer.

check out interviewing.io, it might be the ticket for you

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#372

I’m 30 and haven’t really had much dating experience. It boggles my mind how people are already married by 30. How does dating work? Serious question.

I didn't go on my first date until a month before my 30th birthday. Met my eventual wife on OKCupid 18 months later, married her 2 years after that, and now have a 7 month old, ~7 years after it all started. I'll disagree with a lot of the advice given here. The pictures on online dating sites are what you make of them. I didn't even like my wife's pictures, I only messaged her because she was playing 4 truths and a…

Similar to #5, so many of my friends have ended what seemed like solid relationships because the other person wasn't close enough to some magical ideal they have in their head. Obviously I'm not the one in the relationship, but I also get the feeling that they think I'm incredibly lucky to have found my wife relatively young, and it doesn't occur to them how much both my wife and I have changed over the years we've been together in order to be better to and for each other. An apparent match made in heaven takes a lot more work than a lot of people think. I had a few serious relationships before I met my wife and in my experience it's about finding someone you mesh well with and then deciding that you want to be with that person in a way that you're not constantly going to be comparing them to some mythical relationship that could have been.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#373

Every day is a struggle. For several years I've struggled to learn enough Japanese for daily living. (Spouse is Japanese and we moved to Japan a few years ago with our 3 school-aged kids). Very little success on this. しょうがないね My wife is out of town anywhere between 3 days to 2 weeks each month for her job. While she is gone, we rely heavily on her parents (with whom I cannot communicate directly). They take care of l…

As an American ex-pat (different country, different language, same shit) - 100% prioritize Japanese fluency. It really will unlock doors for you to speak the native language well, it will reduce your sense of social isolation and eventually make you happier.

Seeing other ex-pats here without fluency, their lives are so much more difficult. Not quite as isolating for them, since there's a fairly large English-speaking expat community here, but still, seeing them struggle with the most basic things has given me newfound appreciation for the difficulties that immigrants to the US face while their English skills are weak.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#374
post #7

I struggle with feeling like I never know enough. The more I learn the more it feels there is to know. As a result even as I learn more and more, I feel dumber and dumber :D

And with that realization - there is no end to learning - you have entered the company of The Wise!

Which qualifies you to sit back, quit struggling, and chuckle at that dilemma you were (and so many are still) caught in.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social activities, like all others need to be practiced regularly to become good at them. Quick question, which produces better results, going to the gym, or thinking about going to the gym over and over in your head? How about public speaking? Think of it as a muscle to be exercised. An actor friend of mine described acting in the same manner.

But it just seems impossible to practice. I'm 21 years old and at this age everyone has a lot of expectations about their partners but I know that I cannot fulfill those expectations, exactly because of what you said (because I never practiced those muscles). It just feels very strongly like if I ever ask a girl out I'll just make a dick out of myself. Ok, see I'm NOT shy, if I see you in a conference, I'l talk to yo…

As mixmastamyk said, it's exactly the same as the gym (I work out ~5 days a week too and I started from being the least athletic person in school/college).

I hear people say — I'm already 30 and starting to exercise is too late, or that they're intimidated by other people at the gym, or that they don't know where to start. Having gone through a similar experience as yours, I gotta say you just have to start. Don't overthink it. You'll fail. Try again, keep at it, and eventually there'll be a breaking point.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#376
post #306

I've been struggling with adulthood ever since turning 30 and starting a family. I have this image in my head of what life after 30 looks like from seeing my parents and all their friends doing basically the same thing as each other. It's not a life I want for myself, but every decision I make pushes me further and further in that direction. My mind has been programmed to think and act in a way that eventually lands…

I used to really hate the idea of me living an ordinary life, but I think at some point I realized trying to do extraordinary stuff was stressing me out way too much, and now I’m hard at work being as ordinary as possible. I think my goals have shifted from providing the best life for myself in the future to providing the best life for my child in the future, and I seem to be completely at peace with that.

You seem to be equating "extraordinary" life with "providing the best life for oneself" and an "ordinary" life with "providing the best life for one's child". Is that correct? If so, I don't see why that should be.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#377
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can help you overcome the first part of that, right now: it's spelled "narcissism." :)

Do you know how to overcome autism?

Would you please stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? That's not what this site is for, and we've asked you already.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#378

I struggle with scaling up my business. I have been working from home for the past 10 years and I have websites that generate ok money ($100K/y). My struggle is I just can't get myself to hire my first full time employee. I tried it many years ago but after facing the headache of hiring, dealing with attrition, training, etc, it took away all my focus from work. I feel management is a skill I just don't have. Also wo…

I can relate to this. Try to find someone part time who you can trust and will stick around for awhile. Look outside your bubble of hackernews etc, might be a mom or a retired guy, whatever. Baby steps.

This, the people you think wouldn't have the relevant skills can surprise you! My wife went through a couple professional VAs who were... set in their ways and expensive for what they were delivering and then hired a recent college grad with absolutely no experience and she's been a total lifesaver.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m playing with the idea of quitting software , getting a softskills excel/MS word gov job for equal pay then only programming on spare time in elixir and tensor flow for fun side side projects —- current web dev environment is ridiculous !

> getting a softskills excel/MS word gov job for equal pay This is a great idea ( I sincerely mean it), and I too have been toying with this. Gov programming jobs are also very cushy. The knock on them ( / "cons" ) until recently was that they pay very less, almost 40% less, and that it's full of old people. But that has changed -- atleast in San Francisco and Bay Area where I live. Esp the City of San Francisco tech…

Federal pension is not that high, just so you know. It's 1%/year, unless you have 20+ years and retire at 62 (not collect, you are still working for the government at age 62 and retire with 20+ years of service). Then it's 1.1%/year. With 17 years you get 17% of your high three year average. You can't collect that pension until you're 62, unless you want to take a penalty.

Now, if you're including the TSP (401k equivalent), maybe? That's 5%/year extra if you also contribute 5%. However, that's what you and the government put into the account, not what's available when you retire. Perhaps it works out to close to 3% average with some estimate of your TSP earnings? I never crunched those numbers.

Government salary ranges can be found at OPM. Look up the GS pay scale. Programmers will be GS-12 to GS-14 positions (most likely 12 or 13, 14 if you're a true subject matter expert, have a Phd, or maybe work at the right facility, otherwise 14s are management).

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#380
My health. The past several years have been a journey of finding a diet and lifestyle that minimizes the pain and discomfort.

The other half of that is, when genetics and circumstance have such a crippling impact on one's ability to live a "normal life", how do you cope with it emotionally and spiritually? That's the more challenging half of what I struggle with.

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