Ask HN: I feel trapped in my job and city

"I would love to be able to retire and get into meditation / travelling the world / learning about things for fun."

This makes you human. Unfortunately the best life for human beings was probably the farm and those days aren't coming back anytime soon.

You're in a tough spot, especially if your relationship is solid and not going anywhere. London is a large enough area you may be able to find something that suits you? I would stay in the area, and just find another line of work. Everyone is due the opportunity to change their situation.

I would recommend considering changes like that, but hold strong overall, don't toss both of your lives into massive change. You can work there, and then semi-retire early out to where you're from. Talk to your partner about that as a potential option. He may agree more than you think. Talk it out with him and go from there. That's about all you can do. I wouldn't just throw everything you've worked for into the trash immediately.

I'm actually in a very similar situation, but Chicago. I'm from a more rural area as well, and I've been grinding out my existence for a while longer than you.. I am financially prepared to move back to the countryside. Just hard to even find places at market-rate today. My wife and I are both willing to live with less money at this point.

You may have more in agreement, or come to an agreement for the longterm view once you two have a full discussion.

Well, there are very few careers that pay as much as being quant and all of them are going to be somehow similar. So lets be honest, you either get over it or take paycut be it permanent by switching careers or temporal as it is going to take time to build new consulting service or business (anything else is hardly going to pay your current salary) and you might never be able to get back to amount of money you are making right now.

I'm roughly the same age as you and I'm in more or less the same situation.

It was joy of programming and computers that got me into this line of work, and though I still enjoy it, I can no longer rely on that intrinsic motivation to get through the day.

I'm finding my 30s to be a time of major transition. I am forced to evolve from a young, intrinsically motivated and excited 20 something year old, to a more disciplined, appreciative, albeit less "happy" 30 something year old.

I miss waking up every day with a bursting energy for coding. I'd love to have that again. But the reality is, after 10+ years of doing this work every day, I cannot get that excited about it anymore. I absolutely have to find a sustainable path and the first step in that is realizing that the old me is gone.

The story of my mid 30s, maybe even all of my 30s, will be one of discovery and adaptation. I hope to arrive at the doorstep of my 40s, a well tuned and well adapted individual. I need to monitor myself, day in, and day out, and find systems that work toward the simple goal of getting up every day, doing good work, and feeling healthy. Happiness and joy are feelings reserved for mostly novel experiences. Work is a day-to-day art, the kind of thing ripe for a disciplined mind that can be productive without necessarily being massively stimulated (intrinsically or otherwise).

I am nowhere near the end of this stage in my journey. I have made mostly dismal progress up to this point but have recently started tweaking new levers and twisting different knobs with the hope of making some positive progress. I still struggle, daily, with burnout and feelings of inadequacy. I struggle to get excited about my work and so I struggle to do the work. Struggling to do the work, means I feel shitty about myself.

All that said, I do think the first step is in recognizing where you are in life. You likely haven't yet accepted what it means to be a 30 something year old programmer. Maybe there is still time for you to change your path, but it doesn't sound like it. Take stock of the positives in your life and find a determination to preserve them. That will mean first recognizing and appreciating what you have, and then, understanding that it's through your daily work that you're able to maintain those things. With that understanding, embark on the long journey of optimizing your life. Find a way to make this sustainable. You have to.

(Or, get out, and do something else!)

Once you've fully accepted your situation and are ready to work on solutions, a bunch of interesting conversations can be had. Start learning about what works for others, and try those things out in your life. Always been a late sleeper? Try a 5:30 AM routine for a few weeks. Always been a coffee drinker? Cut back to 1 a day, or drink tea. Finding these things give you a small boost to productivity? Keep doing them. Find they don't help at all? Stop doing them.

Turn the knobs, twist the levers, but always keep your eye on the goal - productive work, healthy life.

Insightful. Most people don’t have that kind of perspective on their own lives.

About number 4. If you are miserable, why is it important to retire early? Most people can't do that, and they are not miserable, in general. Scratch 4 from your list of priorities.