111–120 of 147 posts
Everyone here has better or same advice as me but this may help is ways you may not realize -- take vitamin B complex and fishoil. It'll help your depression and put in the right stuff chemically for your brain to stay positive.
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Move close in but not with your parents, get a job, and learn programming -- it's very empowering. I had one of my friends over that is doing just that. Six months back when he started he was quite bleak, but now he's close to $0, and on a roll. He seemed not tense for the first time since I've known him.
What is the best way to go about starting to learn programming if you do work a 9-5? I am finishing school and paying for a website to be designed right now but would love to learn more...
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I totally agree with erikstarck. This is actually an amazing opportunity -- when you get past the whole "being poor" thing. (Good news is that we're in a recession, so there aren't any Joneses to keep up with.) Now that you've had your cry and been flooded with support from HN, start the next phase of your life. The Starting from Scratch Phase. If you're having a hard time seeing your options clearly, pretend you're…
I just got back from McDonalds since $1 McChicken is all I can afford to eat. This is the taste of liberation. Mmm.
You will also save money. For example, tomatoes, onions, beans, chilies, rice, and spices run about $5 total, and with that you can make a gigantic bucket of vegetarian chili packed with vitamins and complete proteins. Add meat for a better amino profile, and the total will only hit about $8.
I've been struck down by crippling depression before, and had to build back up. The three things that made recovery possible were a good diet, exercise, and a project to focus my mind on.
The diet helps you keep your body from going to hell, the exercise provides a surprising amount of calm, and the project gives your mind something to do so that you don't dwell too heavily on that which you can not change.
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The praying part might be good advice but I'm not sure he needs to go to church first.
I downvoted the parent comment, but maybe I shouldn't have. Church is a pretty great place to network; I'm pretty sure my old boss got 90% of our contracts via churchy connections.
This is the dark side of the startup dream that is endlessly pushed on all the VC blogs and tech sites and boards like this that I frequent.
Anyway, with that said, I think you really just need to stabilize your situation. You (obviously) need to find a job, any job, whether it is temping, stacking books in the local library, retail, anything. Diminish your credentials if need be. You sound like an intelligent guy, you can probably think of ways to make yourself at least temporarily appealing to jobs that are objectively below you.
I am very sympathetic with your parent situation. You are lucky at least that they are old enough to be drawing SS and Medicare. It sounds like you are in a low-cost area and so that should be enough to at least support them at a minimum American subsistence level. With consistent checks coming in and government-supported health care, it would be hard for them to royally screw themselves permanently in the financial sense. And unless they are wealthy, it does not sound like they really need estate planning, and you can try to help with day to day care but you cannot let it consume you.
I echo everything everyone has said about community and inspiration. Sites like News.YC provide all the inspiration I need - I have actually found the hackers and founders type meetups I have been to to be quite underwhelming compared to what I read and the people I interact with online.
I hope for the best for you.
Lesson learned: humility. Go take a 9 to 5 somewhere. Anywhere. Doing work you would look down on. Start all the way at the bottom. Save money. Pay off your debt. Deal w/ that first. Chances are if you're smart, a side effect will be that whereever you're working you'll quickly rise to the top and new opportunities will start presenting themselves.
But deal w/ the debt first, you'd be amazed at how your outlook on life will change when you're no longer under water. Solve that and everything else will start coming into place.
Rather than thinking startup, funding, business, figures blah blah blah just get out there and start being useful to your community. You'll make friends, you'll get exercise and become more healthy, you'll make some money and you'll give yourself time to think things through.
Give yourself 2 full years. See how much money you can make and save in this time. If you're suffering from crippling debt, talk to a debt consultant or financial advisor to find out about your options. Bankruptcy is not the end of the world (although I'm not sure about how things are in the US, I've known folks here in Australia who declared bankruptcy and it was the best thing they ever did).
In short, shake things up and do something completely different. Engaging with your community is a fantastic way to overcome your social anxieties, also.
I think you need to remind yourself that life can be simple - and that all of your fears and anxieties are more ephemeral than you realise.
Assuming you are in the USA we don't have debtors prisons (for now) and creditors aren't allowed to harass you. Change your phone number and don't give out the new one to anyone. It won't stop the letters from hell, which will arrive every week for decades to come (seriously) but you can stop opening those.
Don't bother to declare bankruptcy either unless you have assets they could take away from you.
They only debt you cannot escape is student loans because by congressional law they are for life, can't be removed by bankruptcy, and can be taken from tax returns and future benefits like SS.
Become a cash customer, it's a better way of living efficiently anyway.