Tell that to my very burnt out parent friends! YMMV
What they are really saying is "It was fun (going to the bar/playing video games/whatever) with you when we were young, but I'm not young anymore and have a family to spend time with, I wish you had one too so I could invite you to family oriented activities." but knowing that you won't understand they say they are too busy and tired.
I still like to do all those things as a parent! But I AM too busy and tired to do it impromptu.
I don't think you're boring but I do think your brain is feeling cheated for putting in all this work over and over and not getting the dopamine rewards for it afterwards (which in most cases is often praise or money). I think you need some small wins to keep your motivation going. I read this quote here on hacker news which was very eye opening for me at the time(1). This idealogy of using small wins while you're ch…
Messing around with OpenID connect for a web service template has proven to be a mistake for me in this regard. A template has no immediate utility, and OAuth2 and OpenID are nightmare protocols where dreams go to die.
> I lost my creativity and the sense of wonder I used to have in childhood. I am no longer curious because I am settled for the world as it is. I accept things the way they are instead of imagining how they could be. God that strikes close to home. I have genuinely pondered how 10-15 years ago when I didn’t know what I was doing, I had a million project ideas and just went for them with no real plan. Some of them pan…
Embrace it. One advantage of being old is that my younger self was completely incapable of planning. Then sing along with https://youtu.be/GibiNy4d4gc while watching all the youngsters make the same mistakes.
Tell that to my very burnt out parent friends! YMMV
I said it was interesting, not-boring, and introducing me to more new people than I’ve met since college. I didn’t say it was always easy, but that’s fine by me because it’s not actually soul-crushingly difficult (again, another misconception popular among young people without kids that turned out to be wrong). The older I get, the more I realize that my friends who optimize for minimal effort (no kids, reluctant to…
I may be like one of your boring unfulfilled friends, except I have a single hobby that makes me feel a sense of purpose, whereas very few other things in my life ever really have. On a rational level, it seems to me that having kids will add a sense of purpose to my life, given how many people share this perspective. At the same time, thinking about the time and effort I will be forced to take away from the thing that keeps me sane fills me with dread. It's not like there's a way back.
> I lost my creativity and the sense of wonder I used to have in childhood. I am no longer curious because I am settled for the world as it is. I accept things the way they are instead of imagining how they could be. I was starting to feel this way before I had kids, but having kids completely changed everything for the more interesting. It’s funny because it’s the exact opposite of what I was told would happen: The…
I am convinced everyone needs a certain amount of stress in their lives. Too little and you end up super-existential; too much and you end up feeling burnt out. It took me a long time to acclimate to having children. I probably had postpartum depression as a dad. Especially early on, kids are a big stressor, and having them should be a deliberate choice. It’s also the most impactful work you will ever do, and once yo…
No man is a solipsist when he has shit on his shoe.
> I lost my creativity and the sense of wonder I used to have in childhood. I am no longer curious because I am settled for the world as it is. I accept things the way they are instead of imagining how they could be. I was starting to feel this way before I had kids, but having kids completely changed everything for the more interesting. It’s funny because it’s the exact opposite of what I was told would happen: The…
It's funny because the exact opposite is true for me, and is the reason I won't be having kids. I recovered my creativity and wonder for life through just living life how I want to, rather than based on what I thought was normal or typical. Part of that was rejecting the societal expectation of having kids. Now I have a blast pursuing my interests and looking forward to living the rest of my life this way, without having to make compromises in time or resources for children.