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Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#681

Post by TigeriusKirk »

jart wrote: post #673
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading this made me realize I've written code that's no only older than a lot of people reading this, it's still being sold to new customers.

That's really impressive. What's the code? Something like that sounds like it could be a really inspirational success story.

It's not that inspirational in reality. I worked for a company that produced software for banks converting their systems over to Windows in the 90s. The resulting packages are still being sold to new financial institutions by the company that bought the company that bought the company that bought the company I worked for at the time. Heh. One of my old coworkers there still makes some decent money as a consultant supporting it.

I also worked on some ATM software at the same company, but it was pre-windows and I doubt it's running many places, much less being sold still.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#682

Post by aristofun »

Despite some advice here, I beg you - don’t get married and don’t get children out of boredom or to fix yourself.

Firstly, this will not fix you. I’ve been there.

Secondly, it will make another human being suffer and bear a part if your sh..t.

It is only your own responsibility to find your own meaning and your own happiness.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#683

Post by shannifin »

Hundreds of good comments on here already, but I'll add another anyway, fwiw. I'm in a similar situation. 36 years old, haven't achieved much, no family, don't even have much savings.

For me, though, what keeps me feeling excited about the future is problem-solving, especially in the machine learning field. There are tons of problems that still exist and need to be tackled, tons of products that I want to exist that don't. If I stay focused on "This solution does not exist yet and I want it to exist", worries about achievement and mortality get out of the way more easily. It's not about me, it's about the problem.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#684

Post by qwerty456127 »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #602

Try questioning everything you [mostly unconsciously] believe. This is how do you behave in particular age/status - why? This is what happens when you die - why? Stop believing anything (except that you should generally avoid hurting other people) and have fun. Life is just a role playing game with cool gfx, massive lore and unbalanced mechanics - beat the hell of fun out of it and stop believing you know what's ther…

By the way, the idea about science I expressed here triggered another one in me - perhaps we should start giving grants to scientists for exploring the theories/papers currently supposed to be true and working on disproving them. This seems an important work to improve overall quality of the entirety of scientific knowledge.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#685

Post by drran »

dahart wrote: post #669
drran wrote: post #640

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biking to work is not a skydiving. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35MHUtvIpP8

Obviously. I’m saying that your soviet paratrooper roll training isn’t going to save your head in a bike crash, I know because I’ve done a whole lot of both. Biking to work is the place where you’re most likely to be hit by a car, and thus not be able to roll and not be protected by a backpack. Hey I’m not telling you what to do, only pointing out that assuming you have control over physics in an accident is a pretty…

I'm from Europe (Ukraine). Yes, I'm totally aware about risk of death in a road incident. After each incident, our bicyclist association does protest near to city administration, demanding more and safer bike lanes.

Our plan to fix it is to make the city safer for cyclist. We are heavily inspired by success of Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boi0XEm9-4E . Situation is improved in recent years. Currently, half of my path to work is safe, while the other half is not.

Helmet is a good idea (I recommend to wear helmet after all), but it has some downsides. We can discuss upsides and downsides of helmet a lot, but I recommend using my OKR instead, when you recommend biking to newbies: «use helmet until you will fall 10 times at least». It's simple, easy to understand, easy to remember, actionable, and leaves no room for doubt.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#687

Post by tonguez »

urban_strike wrote: post #225
dr_faustus wrote: post #103

I was in similar spot with around 30. My advice: 1.) Start dating. It might be a drag and maybe embarrassing at times, but obviously not being a loser having saved up half a mil in 10 years, you will probably find someone. Don't buy into that Hollywood "soulmate" crap. More likely than not there is already someone you know or at max someone one graph edge away which will be a perfectly fine partner for the rest of yo…

> I have a hard time to see any relevance in a life without children anymore. In my view, having kids is a great way to take off the existential pressure of life being meaningless, by just having a default "do it for them" answer to every single question or hardship in life. And what then will give your child's life such a straightforward meaning? Well, just have kids of their own I guess, and their kids the same, al…

Having someone who is dependent on you definitely makes you important, whether that's kids or your dying grandmother or something else. But creating that dependency explicitly as a means to feel important is just weird.

"I have a hard time to see any relevance in a life without children anymore."

Consider the fact that Chinese slaves made everything you own, and are wearing. Isn't that worth caring about? Wouldn't it be "relevant" to try improve that situation?

In this person's mind, a person without kids who is trying to solve the problem of human slavery, is living an "irrelevant life". It goes to show you how stupid the average person is, including the average parent.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#688

Post by arisAlexis »

baxtr wrote: post #244
hughrr wrote: post #132

I’m in my late 40s. Just gone through 15 years of absolute shit with an ex partner and financial chaos. Decided I’d fix it in 2019. Three important things to concentrate on: 1. Health. If that’s off, fix it first. Everything depends on health. Sort out your diet, physical fitness and health and mental health follows. I’m fitter than all my peers and both fitter and healthier than I was in my 20s. Can run a half marat…

+1 on all of them. I would add reading. That has helped me a lot to calm down. Re health: I recently discovered a great blog with in-depth articles about how to lose weight: https://physiqonomics.com PS: Don't get distracted by the seemingly arrogant profile picture. His content is really good.

I took up reading during the quarantine and it changed my life

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#689

Post by arisAlexis »

eurekin wrote: post #476
dmurray wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have a caloric deficit as a long-term lifestyle choice: eventually you would waste away. But perhaps it's good advice anyway because most people could benefit from it in the short term.

After few years of training and being lead by a personal trainer and a dietician I'd add one thing: It's crucial to have a high BMR - basal metabolic rate, when going into a deficit. Any deficit will cause body to lower the BMR and, if it's going into Body is very adaptable and will just shut down any energy hungry "facilities": lower body temperature ("I'm cold all the time", "I always have cold last two fingers"),…

Actually there is a big school of thought that low basal rate makes you live longer and a high one makes you live fast and die.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#690

Post by unfocussed_mike »

kgin wrote: post #625
unfocussed_mike wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(wishy-washy, unverifiable emotional pseudo-psychology follows) What I mean is -- you do not need to have a partner and your own kids. There are all sorts of families (macro and micro) out there that can benefit from us. On the micro side: you can allow yourself to be included in your best friend's family, you can allow friends to become close enough that you know they'd be there if you were sick and vice versa. You…

This is a beautiful answer, thank you. It puts into words so much of what I’ve had at the back of my mind for awhile now.

Thank you. It sort of spilled out a bit, and I think it's more a message to myself than I realised; it is time to pay more attention to this again.
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