31–40 of 352 posts
Blowing up your life is exactly that, a big frikin mistake.
I've made several decisions that later revealed themselves as life blowing. It's not worth it.
In youth it's easy to imagine that you have infinite tries to get it right. This is totally wrong. Decisions that set your life back years can only be overcome so many times, and never completely.
So, instead of blowing it up, add it up slowly year by year, increasing your traction and equity....
I don't entirely disagree, but the first thing that this article brought to mind is the old cliche "wherever you go, there you are". I'm 34, lots of ex girlfriends and lots of past cities. There's a fine line between breaking out of the status quo hamster wheel and running away from your baggage. Moving cities, or relationships, or jobs isn't worth as much if you aren't simultaneously working on yourself
Blowing up your life is exactly that, a big frikin mistake.
I've made several decisions that later revealed themselves as life blowing. It's not worth it.
In youth it's easy to imagine that you have infinite tries to get it right. This is totally wrong. Decisions that set your life back years can only be overcome so many times, and never completely.
So, instead of blowing it up, add it up slowly year by year, increasing your traction and equity....
Earlier quoted context omitted.
momentum going down is usually what makes people unhappy, blowing up your life up kicks momentum in a new direction
I disagree. Lost momentum is lost. Blowing up your life means you start from a low state, and have to start all over again. It absolutely can be positive. But it is not at all guaranteed. Sometime it all works out. And, sometimes, you throw away what seems to be “bad” in the moment, and find yourself much worse off with your new choice.
What's the saying?
"When you hit rock bottom there is no where to go but up."
I guess my whole point is that blowing up one's life isn't always blowing up a "good life" so to speak.
I don’t think it really counts as “blowing up your life” if you don’t go through a period (say, longer than a few months) of regret. You need to do enough damage that it hurts without a clear safety net. Otherwise what you did was “moving” or “quitting” or “breaking up”. I mostly agree with the premise though. Pass the dynamite, I think I might be due…
that's because the title is some contrarian clickbait substack blogspam
I don’t think it really counts as “blowing up your life” if you don’t go through a period (say, longer than a few months) of regret. You need to do enough damage that it hurts without a clear safety net. Otherwise what you did was “moving” or “quitting” or “breaking up”. I mostly agree with the premise though. Pass the dynamite, I think I might be due…
> "I don’t think it really counts as “blowing up your life”" that's because the title is some contrarian clickbait substack blogspam
> My existence really started getting good when I started blowing up my life more regularly, with a substantial eruption every couple of years. I quit my job and moved to Thailand without doing any research about the country, figuring that I could be a bartender again somewhere if it all went south. That ended up becoming the material for my first book. My current professional chapter began when I said “fuck it” to journalism when I couldn’t take the constant ethical compromises and the bullshit of pretending to care about the news cycle. After some flailing, I now make a lot more money and am a lot happier. Blowing up my first marriage was the most difficult one of all, but it was an obviously correct decision, for which my ex-wife later thanked me—we were locked in a pattern that was hurting both of us, and if one of us didn’t walk away, we would’ve eventually been one of those unhappy old couples who constantly radiate bitterness.
But the article has another thread running through it, that of a life of no commitment and of self-indulgence. This is especially obvious when read while imagining someone with children, but it likewise applies to spouses, families, communities, etc. Human beings are intrinsically social animals. Human beings need societies in order to flourish. All societies are defined by a common good, and that common good is prior to the private good. In fact, the private good exits for the sake of the common good. Self-indulgence might appeal to the hedonistic, selfish person celebrated by our culture, but it doesn't produce happy people in the true sense of the word. It leaves us alienated. This is a reason why we're seeing skyrocketing rates of mental illness and all sorts of identity politics. Nature, when frustrated, reacts in pathological ways. The return of the repressed.
Unfortunately, liberalism (the Lockean philosophical tradition, not liberal institutions) is a defining feature of the modern West, and the US in particular. The habits of mind that liberalism insinuates affect all of us and misshape our intuitions. But liberalism is in a period of increasing crisis. It is not going to last that much longer as it is unsustainable. Liberalism purports to offer a middle ground between radical individualism and collectivism, but all it really gives us is a "diabolical synthesis of the two, a bureaucratically managed libertinism" (Feser 2008).
A life of ostensible "self-fulfillment" is a road to misery and emptiness.
The flip side of blowing up your life regularly like this, is you are throwing away momentum you may have accumulated in your current life.