kayaking and camping/overlanding. Would love to get some west coast HNers together for an overlanding trip later this year after everyone's had their vaccinations.
Hadn’t heard the term overlanding before. I enjoyed learning about it.
Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
191–200 of 545 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#192- Paying close attention to nature. I've seen thousands of cool creatures I would previously have missed, and logged a lot of them on iNaturalist so it is also contributing to citizen science ( https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=any&user_i... ) - My wife and family. Without much opportunity to see anyone outside our bubble these close relationships have become even more important and special. - Dialing…
I started using INaturalist during our first lockdown. Amazing how it opens your eyes to things that you missed before. Like how some flower heads have tiny little luminous beetles during summer. Or that the random weeds I see on the side of the road are highly toxic or possibly have some obscure property. Just going for a walk is like mindfulness meditation where you learn things.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#193Getting COVID.
I've just turned 30 and I used to do a lot of cardio exercise. Over the past few years as other things have taken priority, I cut back. I'd try to do something every day but would often miss days and the workouts would be short and poor quality.
After getting (fortunately mild) COVID I was worried about cardiac issues when I resumed exercise. I decided to buy an Apple Watch to monitor my heart rate and use the ECG functionality.
A few months later, and the big thing I have learned about myself is how well I respond to "gamification" of habits. I now HAVE to close my exercise rings every day, and it's immensely gratifying to track my overall health improving - I did not realise how out of shape I really was. I'm sleeping better, a lot more productive, my mood has increased significantly, and overall I feel much better in myself.
It's also lead to me using other "habit forming" apps (I use "Streaks" - https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/streaks/id963034692) to change things I don't like about myself and generally become a better person.
Overall, I've learned a lot about myself and how I'm motivated.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#194I honestly can't think of anything and that kinda worries me.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#195Self-learning wing-foiling (when you're on the lake, being 6 feet from someone means dangerously close to a collision, so "social distancing" is natural...), kinda as an excuse to spend some time outside, move, generate endorphins and not think about other things (winds at my place are usually nothing to write home about, so actual foiling happened just a couple days). Also some trekking and reddit's r/bodyweightfitn…
This is amazing and i love you for posting this. Goals.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#196Staying away from the startup hustle and city life. I have been constantly disturbed by the chase in the startup system. Building up something out of own passion is one thing, but trying to act like the investor-led founders has been driving me crazy for years. I live a village life now, do much less software work. Have dialed down my ambitions and I am actually very happy. I do feel that my skills, acquired over 15…
How do you sustain this dialed down ambition? Community? Physical labor? Every time I read HN or watch youtube my ambition goes up. And I tried to retire last year but my mind is still restless.
I am learning woodworking. I have been thinking of this for many years. I do still get inspired by what others are doing but I have accepted that I have too much anxiety or related issues to run an investor led startup. It is a conscious choice and I am happy with it.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#197Moving to a nicer location.
About two and a half years ago I moved to Cambridge (UK) for work. Despite my salary on paper being significantly higher, I could only sensibly afford a flat on the edge of the city due to ridiculously high living costs. I still ended up with less money after all bills and essentials were paid for. The flat was also the worst in the area. It was infested with cockroaches (little European ones, but still awful to live with). Previously I lived in a flat I could comfortably afford right on the edge of a city which is nicer than Cambridge.
Despite this, I couldn't bring myself to move out of the city. I was accustomed to the city life: the convenience of having everything right there on my doorstep. The first step was realising I did not have the city life any more. Living on the edge of Cambridge is as good as being outside it, but at twice the cost and the pleasure of living right next to a major motorway. But the other difficulty was commuting. If I moved I would essentially be saving money but paying it right back through hours stuck in traffic every morning and evening. COVID was a blessing. Now it's possible to work from home I can have the best of both world. I can live further away from work knowing that I won't have to commute every day and I'm no longer pissing money down the drain on a shit flat in a shit location.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#198WFH.
I take my dog on a walk during standup.
I hang out with my kids when I can step out of the office.
I recently started exercising over lunch (this habit was never easy for me- it took getting Ring Fit Adventure on Nintendo Switch to start that).
I saved 15000 miles on my car’s odometer.
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Reconnecting with old friends from HS/college. We normally do a march camping trip every year. Not in 2020. Instead, We set up a discord server, and a Friday night video call on most nights for almost a year.
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Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operators. So much fun.
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#199[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What was the biggest contributor to your happiness in the past year?
#200Hands down, seeing people face to face. I have really discovered how much it means to me. I have been ambivalent about it because of social anxiety and low self esteem, but I have realized that in reality nothing else comes close in terms of raising my mood and giving me good feelings.
I've worked from home for nearly 6 years now, and since coming to the same realisation as you, my general happiness has grown substantially. It's as Marcus Aurelius says often, we are fundamentally social animals.
"If any action of yours, then, does not have direct or indirect relation to the social end, it pulls your life apart and destroys its unity."