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I decided that I must live my life on my terms

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Re: I decided that I must live my life on my terms

#111

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

barrucadu wrote: post #21

My goal is a simple one: to just enjoy the life I have. I don't care about leaving behind a legacy, bettering the world, or becoming mind-bogglingly rich. But I do care that I never wake up in the morning and think "why am I doing this?" More concretely I'm working towards FIRE and would like to get a dog. After that, who knows? I'll decide when I get there.

I've always thought that the idea of wanting to leave behind a legacy was narcissistic.

99.99% of people are unremarkable and will be completely forgotten by everyone within 2 generations of their death. Acknowledge and accept it.

> More concretely I'm working towards FIRE

Same. Retire early, live the remainder of my life in leisure. Work on completing the massive backlog of games on Steam I've wanted to play but just don't have the time.

Re: I decided that I must live my life on my terms

#112

Post by uhtred »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #66
uhtred wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Such an insipid argument. If we entertain the idea of a Creator and try to make logical sense of the world I think we'd find pretty quickly that it isn't as simple as "make suffering impossible". What does that mean? What are the constraints? A few solutions in no particular order: Don't create the world in the first place, attractive only to nihilists. Make cruelty on the part of humans impossible, easy to do withou…

I'll entertain your idea that god can't / shouldn't stop humans being cruel because of free will blah blah. Ok, god was powerful enough to create the world, why did they feel the need to also create mosquitos? or cancer? Why do they use their power to make a Hollywood actor win an oscar (oh they didn't? That's not what the actor claims. Who knows their god better?) but not use it to stop a young child being hit by a car?

Re: I decided that I must live my life on my terms

#114

Post by Damogran6 »

I'm pretty happy having reached that point after burning out at a job I was laid off from. There were several times in my life where I thought "I need to make some changes or I'll never grow...and I think a lot of people talk themselves out of things that could make their life better (more income, more personal time, better boundaries from people that are harmful, insert your desire here)...

And while you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, I ALSO wonder if I was successful, because I was smart enough to be successful. I did well enough in school, I was good enough at networking, I was smart enough to recognize patterns.

I feel like it's not my place to say "You! You can do it! Go take life by the horns!"....because what if the person receiving that advice is a moron? Then I'd have guilt.

Re: I decided that I must live my life on my terms

#115

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

golergka wrote: post #36
barrucadu wrote: post #21

My goal is a simple one: to just enjoy the life I have. I don't care about leaving behind a legacy, bettering the world, or becoming mind-bogglingly rich. But I do care that I never wake up in the morning and think "why am I doing this?" More concretely I'm working towards FIRE and would like to get a dog. After that, who knows? I'll decide when I get there.

This was my conclusion as well. "Enjoying your life" may seem self-indulgent to some at first. But then you realise that a normal human being has morality, desire to help others and build something built-in, and in order to enjoy life to the fullest you have no choice but to do those things as well.

> "Enjoying your life" may seem self-indulgent to some at first.

It is, but I dispute the idea that "self-indulgent" is inherently bad, as long as you're not hurting anybody.

Re: I decided that I must live my life on my terms

#116

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ehnto wrote: post #57
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #33

> Basically, I want to grow old doing what I love, not feeling that I am working. That’s where I’m at, now. I was forced into that, but, after a few years, I’ll admit it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m not rich; and likely never will be, but I’m going to be fine. I was considering working for another ten years, and adding more to a pile, but it would have cost me my soul. This was made quite clear to m…

> Many companies were openly hostile and insulting; right out of the starting gate, and I found that I inevitably ran into at least one person, in subsequent interviews, that started the bullying. I'm not particularly old (30s) and I am noticing that maybe not the people, but the workplaces are becoming hostile and condescending. Perhaps software divas have earned us the kickback, but it's been enlightening in that i…

The issue that I have, is that I really like designing and developing software. It's not just a job; it's a vocation.

I have never been interested in making a ton of money, but I could make other people a lot of money, if they just treated me (and, even more importantly, my work) with simple, human respect.

That seems to be beyond most people, these days.

Re: I decided that I must live my life on my terms

#117

Post by gcheong »

memcg wrote: post #77
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #33

> Basically, I want to grow old doing what I love, not feeling that I am working. That’s where I’m at, now. I was forced into that, but, after a few years, I’ll admit it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m not rich; and likely never will be, but I’m going to be fine. I was considering working for another ten years, and adding more to a pile, but it would have cost me my soul. This was made quite clear to m…

After 25 years in electronics manufacturing ( 250,000 employees, site closed), looking for a job at 55, I just refused to jump thru hoops and put up with BS. That was 10 years ago and I have no regrets.

What does this mean practically speaking? I’m 55 and just starting to look again now after being out of the workplace for 4 yrs.

Re: I decided that I must live my life on my terms

#118

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

CyanLite4 wrote: post #20
pif wrote: post #3

The first one is gaining just enough money that I can ponder the meaning of life. The second one is pondering the meaning of life.

The hardest part of this type of journey is realizing you don’t need money to be happy or feel contentment. It may not make sense right now, but you may spend the next decade or so chasing money to get to a point of contentment only to realize that you’re chasing after money because you think it’s going to give you peace. The turn is when you figure out money doesn’t give you peace. Contentment, happiness are choices…

> The hardest part of this type of journey is realizing you don’t need money to be happy or feel contentment.

No, but you need to it to survive.

Invariably, I find the "You don't need money to be happy" crowd is nearly always people who have enough money that they don't have to worry about money.

"Being happy with what you have" only really works once a certain minimum is reached. If you never have more than one paycheck's worth of money in your account, trying to figure out how you can live off of $2/day for food, then you're going to have a hard time being happy with that.

Re: I decided that I must live my life on my terms

#119

Post by AnimalMuppet »

"Living life on your terms" isn't binary. It's fine to try to live life more on your terms. There are limits to how much you can do so, though.

"Doing what you love" may not pay the bills. You can find something that pays the bills that you love more than what you're doing now. For example, if your thing is ballet, you may not be able to make a living at it. But you may be able to fit more of it in your life than you do now.

It gets worse when you want multiple things. If I want my dream job and a relationship with this other person, depending on how demanding my dream job is, I may not be able to have both (or have all of both).

And then you can just be in the wrong place or time. People in Ukraine don't get to live life on their terms right now.

So we often don't get to live life on our terms. And yet, we often can choose to life life more on our terms than we currently are, especially in terms of jobs. And a job that you enjoy doing is much less of a drag than a job that you hate.

Re: I decided that I must live my life on my terms

#120

Post by Damogran6 »

memcg wrote: post #77
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #33

> Basically, I want to grow old doing what I love, not feeling that I am working. That’s where I’m at, now. I was forced into that, but, after a few years, I’ll admit it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I’m not rich; and likely never will be, but I’m going to be fine. I was considering working for another ten years, and adding more to a pile, but it would have cost me my soul. This was made quite clear to m…

After 25 years in electronics manufacturing ( 250,000 employees, site closed), looking for a job at 55, I just refused to jump thru hoops and put up with BS. That was 10 years ago and I have no regrets.

So what did you two end up doing?

I'm 52, and work is in a neat little compartment. It's not great, but it's not soul sucking, and has good PTO and a pension and financially everything's grand and on-track...but work and my career is no longer where I draw value. I could easily see finishing my career here, and I could also see having another job before retirement.

(And, I could see retiring ASAFP if I could get the financial and life expense curves to cross. :) )

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