The Animal Is Tired • Hacker News Board

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#161

Post by hodgesrm » Mon, May 10, 2021, 5:24 AM UTC

sebmellen wrote: post #85

hodgesrm wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key is to keep moving forward. Marion Countess Dönhoff had a great line about aging in an interview when she was in her 80s: "every day a little more self-discipline." Dönhoff was an East Prussian who became an influential journalist and later newspaper publisher in W. Germany after the war. In her family, the attitude to life was basically shut up, deal with it, and keep going. She was an aristocrat in the best…

Do you have a source for that quote? I would love to know! Thank you.

I'm sad to say I don't. It was in a German-language interview and really stuck in my head. "Jeden Tag ein bisschen mehr Selbstdisziplin."

She wrote a memoir about her upbringing in East Prussia called "Kindheit in Ostpreussen." The English translation is entitled "Before the Storm: Memories of My Youth in Old Prussia." [1] It's a somewhat wandering story but the account of growing up in a Prussian aristocratic family on a huge estate is quite marvelous. That world--for better or worse--has perished almost without a trace.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/138357.Before_The_Storm

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#162

Post by pomian » Mon, May 10, 2021, 5:25 AM UTC

djohnston wrote: post #114

I'm 29 and my lower back already has arthritis and stenosis. I don't expect to make it to 65.

Patience Paduan. It gets better. All those pains, blend into the "body". You learn how to move or something, as you get older. In other words, don't, despair.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#163

Post by Benjamin_Dobell » Mon, May 10, 2021, 5:28 AM UTC

autarch wrote: post #33

Robin Hobb is one of my favorite authors. Her masterwork is a series of series (four trilogies and a quadrology) known as The Realm of the Elderlings. She published the first trilogy, which begins with Assassin's Apprentice, starting in 1995. I saw the books when they first came out and I assumed from the title and the cover that it would be a cheesy fantasy by the numbers, so I never bought it. But I kept hearing ab…

100% agreed. Robin Hobb (Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden) was without a doubt my favourite author as a teenager.

Sadly, in the last 10 years, I've barely read anything. However, when The Fitz and the Fool Trilogy came out, you can bet I made time to read it!

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#164

Post by possibleworlds » Mon, May 10, 2021, 5:31 AM UTC

Loved Robin Hobb when I was a kid. I read a LOT of fantasy back then and she was up the top of the list next to GRRM for me.

The closest thing to traditional fantasy I have read in a very long time is Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, and now I am bit broken trying to chase a similar hit. If anyone has any recommends to scratch the post BOTNS itch please do share.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#165

Post by practicalpants » Mon, May 10, 2021, 5:47 AM UTC

rubicon33 wrote: post #2

70? My animal is only 33 and is very tired. Writing this as it lays in bed, 3 in the afternoon, because even a standard chair sounds more exhausting to it. It seems to have no motivation or energy to do much besides lay here. If I force it, it will get stuff done but at a huge cost. It will yearn the entire time to just lay back down. It's interest in things seems to be fading quickly. What desire it used to have to…

Do you have money? Quit your job, go travel, go entrepreneurial pursuing something that moves you.

Living in some San Francisco apartment, building a career at tech companies making 6 figures a year is, once you have some money, a pretty crappy wheel-spinning way to live life, by some opinions.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#166

Post by blfr » Mon, May 10, 2021, 5:48 AM UTC

Better food, more exercise, more relaxation... but I also wonder if it would have made any difference.

Yes. I'm only half OP's age but working out and eating well (well for me means much more) has made all the little aches I started to have in my 20s go away and made me much calmer, I can also sleep pretty much anywhere and at any time.

More interestingly though,

Me, and the animal I live inside.

there is no animal you live inside, this is not a meat vehicle for something else, your body is you, it's not some machine you merely inhabit. Its/your gut will affect your mood, its limitations are your limitations, being physically strong will make you feel strong and keep anxieties at bay.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#167

Post by 01100011 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 5:50 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #32

rubicon33 wrote: post #2

70? My animal is only 33 and is very tired. Writing this as it lays in bed, 3 in the afternoon, because even a standard chair sounds more exhausting to it. It seems to have no motivation or energy to do much besides lay here. If I force it, it will get stuff done but at a huge cost. It will yearn the entire time to just lay back down. It's interest in things seems to be fading quickly. What desire it used to have to…

> My animal is only 33 and is very tired In life satisfaction surveys, your 30’s are the most miserable stressful part of life. Highest amount of responsibilities, lowest amount of consistent reward, and it keeps getting worse until your 40’s Apparently it gets better again in your late 40’s and early 50’s. By 60 you’re as happy as you were at 20. https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/scientists-just-discovered-mi... (am 33…

Really? In my 30s I felt on top of the world. Enough wisdom to put my knowledge to good use and a fit body that only had the occasional ache. Everything went downhill around 42 though. Eyesight, hearing, processing speed, memory, sleep apnea, weight gain, hair loss, ED... I have to be on some combination of marijuana to sleep and modafinil to wake up. Exercise helps but the gains fade fast so it's basically a 10% tax on my waking hours to keep things from fading faster. Oh and when you're 40 something no one gives a shit. You're not old enough to pity, but you're old enough to be responsible for everything. You just have to keep slugging it out with reality until your mid 60s.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#168

Post by huxflux » Mon, May 10, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

Robin Hobb is amazing, her books which begin with Assassin's Apprentice really helped me through extremely stressful periods of life being able from time to time to escape from reality and into another world and then return.

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#169

Post by hyko » Mon, May 10, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #119

algorias wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spinach famously contains iron, but less famously also contains a substance that inhibits iron absorption. So IIRC, it actually lowers your iron, unless you blanch it and throw away the water.

Spinach famously was misreported to have iron. Somebody slipped a decimal point, and everybody after copied the mistake. Me, I don't eat spinach anymore. Never liked it to begin with. I have eaten enough of it already to last me to the end.

Spinach famously was misreported to be misreported to have iron due to the decimal point slip: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/03063127145356...

Nothing indicates that the decimal point error ever was made, but the account about it will most likely live a long and colorful life, just like its parent myth

Re: The Animal Is Tired

#170

Post by marcell » Mon, May 10, 2021, 6:08 AM UTC

I'm 35 and I don't feel any of the ravages of age that some people describe. I do exercise and eat reasonably well, but I don't think it's anything out of the ordinary. I have a desk job (programming). Am I unusually lucky? or just part of a silent majority that has nothing to complain about? Is doom just around the corner?