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Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

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411–420 of 522 posts

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#411
>Doing things by myself is boring and depressing

Only becasue you think it is. Husbands with kids would LOVE to trade places with you lol. Im single but at work all the dads complain lol

Fix yourself first.

Just look at https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice

Having a relationship is exhausting.

For me online works. Just join discords and talk & game. And if you dont like someone, just ignore or block. easy

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#412

I left coding. "Retired" at 29. goofed off until covid hit (age 33). Was very apathetic, developed some nasty self destructive habits.. covid kinda woke up me up. Moved to a rural area. Bought a 20 acre farm. Got a entry level job as a carpenter. Within a year i had hired the master carpenter i was working with (after our boss was in a motorcycle accident and closed his business). Just got our first house (custom hom…

What does traditional mean?

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#413
My sympathies.

tldr; You (like many others) are having an existential crisis. The facts that previously underpinned your reality no longer seem true. Your challenge is to find some way to live authentically. What you've identified, a sense of belonging, is crucial part of living authentically for many people.

---

I'm 35, and though I have a growing family, I am also nostalgic for that time in my mid 20s where I had less money, but intimate friends were close at hand. Recently, I've been having a feeling that something is "over".

The best encapsulation of this feeling I've read is from the Witcher short story "The Bounds of Reason". "... a wish, as desire, a yearning. Faith that there are no limits to possibility"

The ignorance of youth is really ignorance of an unknown future stretches out ahead. As I've aged the limits of possibility made themselves apparent. That faith in limitlessness was broken, and that break caused an existential crisis.

The single piece of advice I have is to grapple directly with the nature of the human condition. There are lots of ways people deal with this: finding a purpose, finding a community (like a real one, not one based on a comercial product), finding god. Put simply, the

I've seen a lot of nice ideas: volunteering, relocating, exposing yourself to different kinds of people, finding projects, therapy. I've found those helpful. But that might not be enough.

A crisis is also an opportunity. This is a chance to reevaluate what your life means to you, and what you want to do with the time you have.

I wish you the best.

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#414
post #83

> short guys looking for girlfriends > All the "normal" people Lol thanks. I used to have self-confidence issues because I'm short. Spent a lot of time at university feeling sorry for myself, unable to make friends or see myself as worthy of a girlfriend. Eventually realised that it's mostly in my head. I got over my self-esteem issues, went out and spoke to a stranger (ikr isn't that crazy?!) and he became my best f…

as a short man myself I agree that simply changing location or target audience can get you a partner. However it's not about how you see yourself and how confident you are so much, people will subconsciously judge you anyway and have more affinity to taller people than you. Nothing you can do about that. Just accept some people will like you and most won't.

> some people will like you and most won't

No way dude. If most people dislike you there's something else wrong, probably the way you act.

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#415
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most people can't do it, and get weird about it. What? Definitely not my experience. > Its very expensive or you need to luck into a certain life style. Travel does not need to be expensive. Hostels are cheap. If you volunteer, you can even stay for free. Also many regions of the world are inexpensive. > No one is interested in seeing travel pics or talking about places ime. Again, not sure what kind of people you'…

Sure when I will travel I meet people interested in travel. I've gotten some cool info for futures trips from people. When I get back home, no one really cares. They're busy being broke or working high stress jobs. 40% of Americans never left the country. Of that how many do you think are just going on a cruise or a carribean resort? I'm pretty sure you live in a bubble. None of my friends are taking more then a trip…

Many Americans never leave the country because the US is already pretty vast. Put Texas on a map of Europe and traveling mostly straight (with some slight detours) from the north tip to the south tip can take you through the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy[1].

There's also oceans or large distances separating it from most other countries so going anywhere besides the Caribbean islands or Canada/Mexico is going to require an often not very cheap plane flight (probably $400/person at a minimum, likely more, and roughly 2.5x that if you're wanting to go to Asia/Australia).

Also, only about 37% of Americans have passports[2], and you can go on cruises without a passport (and used to be able to go to Canada/Mexico without one, but that's changed in the last decade), and the process can take 2-3 months and $165 in fees by itself (I just checked, I'm one of those people that still haven't gotten a passport yet...would have if the pandemic didn't happen in 2020, we were planning a trip to Canada that year), so that's a bit of a deterrent as well.

[1]: https://www.texasmonthly.com/the-daily-post/how-big-is-texas... [2]: https://today.yougov.com/topics/travel/articles-reports/2021...

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#416
Climate affects personality. People in warm climates are more sociable; Spain or Miami is better than Denmark or Minneapolis. Move somewhere warm with law & order (not SF), then do group fitness, etc. Would like to hear an update when you have one.

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181016-how-the-finnish-...

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#417
post #41
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So...people like you? you sound really judgemental man. I know it sounds bad, but I don't want to meet people like me. I really don't like myself right now :) I'm looking for a way out from this state, not a way to settle in. It's like you can't treat depression by hanging out with other depressed people, it'll make you worse. > Since you have no friends(so nothing to hold you where you are, right?), and apparently…

> you can't treat depression by hanging out with other depressed people I disagree, a sense of shared suffering can be really helpful in building close and meaningful friendships. Connecting with another miserable person who understood what I was going through - and plotting with them about what each of us could do to try to change things - was one of the key things in getting me through one of the most depressed per…

Not sure why this is downvoted. It is well documented that the most demanding activities lead to the strongest and most enduring relationships. War is the most extreme obvious example, but at college students who participate in demanding sports or band or those competitive business groups have far richer social lives in general than those who join casual clubs. In adulthood careers like medicine where people do gruelling shift work together results in again in more enduring and close bonds than in your usual 9 to 5.

It is perhaps an inconvenient truth but share suffering and struggle is the "secret" here. Why do you think childhood friendships are generally the closest ones a person will have? In part because of the intense earnest struggle to figure things out. Which is what brings people together far more effectively than shared happiness or some vague feeling of social dissatisfaction.

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an atheist or at best agnostic, but I've met and known many highly intelligent people who are also religious. It's not mutually exclusive.

So we have an idea that is false. Demonstrably false we can agree. Also, anecdotes aside for a moment overwhelmingly higher religious beliefs correlate with lower intelligence. So, back to the anecdote, why in the case of someone being intelligent by your judgement would they believe this story, with ample evidence easily accessible to refute it? - They've never considered it critically--ok that's possible - They've…

Thank you for posting this. I was reconsidering writing a response to that, but you phrased it very well.

An excellent eye opening article I have read about this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/N2pENnTPB75sfc9kb/outside-th... which discusses scientists believing in religion. The arguments also apply to any rational person who forms beliefs based on evidence which I would say is a necessary property to be intelligent. Hence it irks me when someone says "intelligent people believe in god too"

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#419
Your problem is that you're putting yourself above "short guys looking for girlfriends, unattractive/aging women looking for husbands".

You're one of them.

Of course, nothing would stop you from making friends with the cool people, but you have to do something cool to meet them.

Also don't get caught in the mentality that drinking together is some sort of pinnacle of human fun. I would rather read a book or bicycle.

Re: Ask HN: At a peak of my dev career, I hate my life

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fled to New Orleans from Portland after two and a half years of that shit and never looked back.

From a visitor’s perspective Portland seems cool and hip. What actually goes wrong when you live there?

New Orleans has one of the highest murder rates in the country. It's not a safe place.
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