Ask HN: Have you ever had a changed-your-life moment?

I had a religious experience decades ago. Stone cold sober. I only talk about it with my closest friends, because I don't want to be perceived as another nutter. But it keeps me up when I am feeling down, and holds out the promise of living a life on a proper path. My 0,02€, YMMV.

I went to university in 1997 to study Broadcast Engineering with every intention of going into the film industry. Some friends and I decided to make ourselves some webpages after reading about HTML in a magazine, and after a few late nights of not getting things to work I saw my first page load in Mosaic 2.0. I realised anyone in the world could access it. You can't get that feeling of connectedness from anything else. I completely changed my career goals and decided I wanted to build web stuff instead. I'm still doing it 25 years on.

Honestly my whole career has been a series of these.

Growing up no one in my family had a professional job. Most of them didn't even work. So while I knew that in theory I could get a CS degree and have a software career, it wasn't something I really felt in my bones. Even after I got the degree I did not feel confident that one of "us" could get a job like one of "them", especially when you're raised with that working class crab mentality.

Later on, it was getting my first self employed contract. I had dreamed about going solo, but always doubted I could pull off. Then it was getting my invoice paid by a director of an overseas company I had never met. Something I knew was possible but felt like utopian science fiction when I read it on HN.

So as cheesy as it sounds - my career has changed my life forever. The realisation that I didn't have to struggle to make ends meet, and that I was in the drivers seat of my own life.

In college I had a small freelancing business doing email marketing for real estate. I needed to use the photos from one of the real estate firm's websites that I worked with.

On a whim I setup a lunch with the freelance developer of this website.

A little nervous I showed up in a dress shirt and khakis. He showed up in ratty old white t-shirt with pit-stains, disheveled, and completely unwashed.

As we ate the expensive meal I was treating him to, I couldn't help think but the meeting was a waste of effort and money.

As we got up to leave, he mentioned a little website he made about mosquito ringtones that made $100 day and that was why he didn't care about our mutual real estate client. He just wanted to maximize his passive income.

It was that day I learned about affiliate marketing and SEO. As a finance/marketing guy it changed my life 100%. Taught myself WordPress, SEO, PPC, and everything in between.

Funny as I was dead set on becoming a ibanker.

My father passing away. Not because of COVID, it happened in 2019.

Somehow it triggered my awareness and focus on taking care of myself better. It made "death" very real for me, to the degree that it had never been up to that point.

I have been able to work out a lot more regularly motivated by "how to live longer and healthier", vs. "I want to have a jacked body to attract women".