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What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

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Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#231

Post by tempsy »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #230
tempsy wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not particularly inspired by people who run away from their problems. I’ve met many people while traveling myself who were perpetually traveling and the vast majority were aimless and uninspired. The worst are the ones that resort to actual begging (yes, it happens) to continuously fund their travel. It just isn’t an enlightened pursuit. If you want to escape life as a corporate drone or whatever running away isn…

> If you want to escape life as a corporate drone or whatever running away isn’t the answer. 'Escape' and 'running away' are roughly synonymous. What other escapes do you prefer?

The key difference is responsibility.

You can leave an unfulfilling job for another form of responsibility in life that is more fulfilling.

Endless travel is really just life without responsibility. Having zero responsibility actually does not make most people happy in the long term. It’s an unnatural human state, particularly for grown men, and most will wake up eventually (perhaps once it’s too late) and realize there’s nothing enlightening about a life lived that way.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#232

Post by idclip »

taurath wrote: post #223
idclip wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After nearly 500 hours of meditating in relative isolation, i promise you, the collector collects. Something inside us, wild and free, wants to be happy, and we stand in its way.

> the collector collects Can you expand on this?

—— Short answer ——

I experienced some things in meditation, consistent with Buddhist cannon.

I encountered a “judge” mechanism, that manifested as an emotion. It “knew everything” (makes sense, it was basically me pointing the finger at me) and it wasnt interested in talking things out. It wants to be happy, and it blames me for its unhappiness. It was a terrifying feeling, very painful.

I believe non-meditators experience this during death, and that “wild part” of us comes back to have one last conversation, and a settling of debts.

——— Long answer ———

Ive spent some time doing vipassana, exploring my inner world -

I also read a lot of carl jung, and come from a family of non religious mental health practitioners. So i dont consider myself clueless, or particularly naive or impressionable.

After that intro ... i experienced some deeply disturbing things: bodily convulsions and pains, which subsided after some time too, and were experienced on an emotional level (meditation shuts/slows down thinking mechanisms, to stop generating mind chatter) -

when the silence increases inside our head, mind chatter disappears but something else takes its place .. emotions, deep intense emotions start to rise - its during those moments of deep mind silence that some pretty bad feelings start to arise inside me, of something deeply unhappy about how im living my life, because it wants to be happy, and i am in this body, is its tool. it wasn't just angry, it was full of grief, and so scared to the point of terror.

Again, it wasn't a discussion, i got the feeling it a prt lf me that wasnt interested in talking things out (it knows everything about me already, its me) it was a deep emotion of intense meaning, and terror and loneliness.

I didn't give my feelings significance before, im also still an atheist - but i now think/believe that being human has a truth we are blind to, and some of these truths are experienced at death, so if you lived a life against your “conscience” - if you ask me, id say it will hold you responsible for its happiness. (I havnt experienced the other part where its happy about what i do, in a way it was a corrective self-bitchslap. Life is still ongoing - so its not all terrible, yet)

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#233

Post by josalhor »

alecbenzer wrote: post #190
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The withdrawal rate isn't a fixed $40k. It's $40k, adjusted for inflation, annually. Year 1 is $40k, Year 2 is $41.2k (assuming 3% inflation). Purchasing power stays constant over time. Though I didn't specify the portfolio composition, most of my holding are US Large Cap, which are the 2nd best performing asset class below small cap: https://www.compoundvalue.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/IR_... , but both classes…

Taking out more than $40k/year erodes your principal though, I thought that was pertymcpert's point? Like, if you've got $800k and can reliably earn 5%, as long as you're withdrawing only $40k you're good. But if you withdraw $41k one year, your principal is now only $799k. Next year if you need $42k, the return from your $799k is only $39,950, so your principal goes down to $796,950, etc. From a quick spreadsheet, i…

He is not trying to live off the dividend (as far as I understand), he is trying to live off the principal and the dividend. At the end of the day, if his expected life span is something like 85 years and he accounts for 110 years in savings he would be left with very little principal, but who cares at that point. It is true however that getting that right may be very tricky, because if you miscalculate you have no savings left.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#234

Post by CalRobert »

tempsy wrote: post #197
alisonatwork wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does traveling non-stop make you feel like you're side-stepping your role in society? One of the things i like best about traveling is that i have the time and mental energy to engage with the people around me. I eat at restaurants, i go to bars, i listen and share stories, i'll contribute to the local economy and perhaps put a smile on someone's face. When i am working i suppose you could say i am contributing t…

Solo travel is an inherently selfish pursuit. You are just consuming, and not creating anything of value for society.

When my wife and I couldn't afford to travel we hosted couchsurfers, including solo ones, from around the world and very much enjoyed their conversation (and cooking if we were lucky!)

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#235

Post by sjg007 »

friendlybus wrote: post #222
sjg007 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The absurd is the tension between the search for meaning and the inability to find any. It doesn’t mean there is no meaning as a nihilist would argue. Nor does it imply destruction. Camus’s absurd is more akin to Gödel incompleteness than nihilism.

The article repeatedly leans on nihilism as it's counterpoint to order and meaning. Time is infinite therefore we are meaningless is nilihism. You can fill in time with what means something to you, it need not be empty. >The thirst for more sounds comically absurd when you zoom out and see that nothing matters, so it’s about going deep into the zoomed-in life you already lead. Your health, your loved ones, your work,…

Ignore the article and read Camus. The point is that existentialism is absurd.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#236

Post by bosie »

esotericn wrote: post #140
thrwaway69 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am aware of that. I am not comparing my experience but rather taking average as a baseline. If 40 out of 50 people end up in poverty in my neighborhood, then chances are I will given how similar metrics for ending in poverty is. Of course it's not always good but not sure where I can draw a line when I feel 'something' is not satisfying. You can compare it to people who are unaware that they are depressed or have m…

You need to set your aspirations at a reasonable level and have goals that are relatively close (say, one order of magnitude away by some metric) to what you have now, with a plan that can get you there. Also: > If 40 out of 50 people end up in poverty in my neighborhood, then chances are I will given how similar metrics for ending in poverty is. This isn't the case at all. Most people don't prioritise wealth generat…

> Growing up simply with not much money isn't that hard to get out of.

I might be misunderstanding but are you saying that upwards class mobility is easy, specifically from the lowest end?

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#237

Post by trevyn »

tempsy wrote: post #231
MaxBarraclough wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to escape life as a corporate drone or whatever running away isn’t the answer. 'Escape' and 'running away' are roughly synonymous. What other escapes do you prefer?

The key difference is responsibility. You can leave an unfulfilling job for another form of responsibility in life that is more fulfilling. Endless travel is really just life without responsibility. Having zero responsibility actually does not make most people happy in the long term. It’s an unnatural human state, particularly for grown men, and most will wake up eventually (perhaps once it’s too late) and realize th…

These are the traditional conservative values and beliefs, yes.

A lot of us think it’s time to design new values and beliefs.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#238

Post by Hydraulix989 »

Causality1 wrote: post #209
rabidrat wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read this as "we should be content with being well-paid wage slaves because there are lots of underpaid wage slaves". Having to give our best 40+ hours every week to simply exist is soul-crushing and society-weakening. If you "need" to have a job, you are more like those struggling millions of Americans than you are like the moneyed elite, even if you aren't stressed about money on a day-to-day basis. You still are…

Happiness scales with income until about the $200,000 mark where it levels off. If you're making six digits you have more in common with Jeff Bezos than you do with someone making minimum wage.

I don't think that's true in the Bay Area or New York. Having a house instead of renting in either area, for example, has an appreciable boost in happiness.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#239

Post by 7thaccount »

grecy wrote: post #105
nugget wrote: post #7

In my experience extreme workaholism can often be a way to avoid or defer major life decisions that someone doesn't want to make or even consciously recognize. High status careers are often structured, full of positive feedback loops, and well compensated, all of which can strengthen the urge to defer existential questions about meaning, purpose, community, and identity until some unspecified future date, even (perha…

> all of which can strengthen the urge to defer existential questions about meaning, purpose, community, and identity until some unspecified future date I've quit my Software Engineering job twice now to spend years of my life doing whatever I want. First time I spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina [1] and second time I just spent three years driving right around Africa [2]. Both times I had no job, no bo…

If you don't mind my asking, what is your Myers-Briggs if you know it (Ex: INTJ)? I would guess it takes a rare personality type to leave behind the security of career to do what you have done.
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