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In praise of blowing up your life

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Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#131

Post by Dave3of5 »

Kind of shit advice really. No real data just, "well it worked for me". How many people blow up their life and end up homeless? How many actually improve their situation? How many end up back with their parents? Nothing other than I think it's good and it worked for me.

Here another way to look at this advice:

Everyday I run across the road without looking. It's exhilarating! It makes me feel ALIVE! I know all you naysayers say that I should look before crossing the road. I just rip off the band aid and fucking yolo it. I haven't been ran over by a car yet!

Really stupid. My advice is don't listen to this advice. If you are getting itchy feet go on a fucking holiday for a few weeks.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#133

Post by [deleted] »

pizza wrote: post #126
monero-xmr wrote: post #56

Alternatively, never blow up your life! Live near your family and lifelong friends, establish hardcore roots with your community, always be surrounded by love. A road less taken by the educated elites, but a happy and fulfilling road nonetheless. The Onion’s take: https://www.theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfil...

Always wonder what people without roots are supposed to do. Where's the advice for them?

[deleted]

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#134

Post by treprinum »

eastbound wrote: post #61
monero-xmr wrote: post #56

Alternatively, never blow up your life! Live near your family and lifelong friends, establish hardcore roots with your community, always be surrounded by love. A road less taken by the educated elites, but a happy and fulfilling road nonetheless. The Onion’s take: https://www.theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfil...

Interesting topic. When you are socially underdeveloped, the strange sheep, the sightly bullied, the not-taken seriously, well it’s not so bad to go twice around the globe a few years and come back. There’s debate. I’ve lost a lot of social fabric. I’m workaholic because I don’t have enough friends. But I’m millionaire, own my startup, own my house, and I can get advice on how to manage at work, get a psychologist, e…

I traveled around the world for over a year because I wanted to experience more cultures - I found the same problems of humanity basically everywhere just in different shades. Anyway, a hack for you - if you want immediate respect, gain some muscles. It's possible your current presence is non-threatening and people subconsciously undervalue you due to the first impression.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#135

Post by superhuzza »

zerbinxx wrote: post #77
3np wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While moving from Pittsburgh to Paris to Hong Kong to Singapore to Berlin to Cape Town is more likely a waste of energy again and risks burning you (not mentioning the planet) out. It's a lot easier to turn the adventure-o-meter up than to turn it down.

Agreed. This brand of self-aggrandizing “I did it my way” advice adverts always exemplify a special brand of narcissism; the speaker is unaware that they aren’t the center of their own life. The truth is that “blowing up your life” isn’t usually good or laudable: if you regularly find yourself in situations where you think it’s best to hard reset you’re probably very confused about what you want and need and, ironica…

"the speaker is unaware that they aren’t the center of their own life"

What does this even mean? Of course you are the center of your own life. That's the human experience.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#136

Post by [deleted] »

ilyt wrote: post #106

I sense survivorship bias the size of the fucking mountain here. I do agree, as I have experienced it too, that it is easy to get stuck in "content with life enough", but trying to change it by basically throwing the dice with chance of fucking it up immensely should be last resort reserved for when you have no idea what you even want to do in life. It's perfectly possible to just look deep at what you want from life…

[deleted]

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#138

Post by badpun »

mejutoco wrote: post #127
badpun wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “People always tell you to follow your dream”. Perhaps in the US. It's the privilege of living in an extremely wealthy country - the risk of following your dream is not that high, since, if you fail, you'll probably still be able to eke a relatively comfortable living. It doesn't work that way in most other countries. In most places, having a stable job that allows you to afford an apartment or (gasp) a house!, IS…

Although the US is a wealthy country, I believe for most people "following your dream" there could be much harder than in Europe. Especially in terms of an unexpected healthcare problem at the wrong time. Of course some people are wealthy enough for this not to be a problem, and it is easier to get investors there. Still, I would not characterize it as risk-free in the US.

In a couple of small, wealthiest countries in Europe (Scandinavian countries, Switzerland), sure. But everywhere else, if you go for the dream and fail, you'll be barely making a living. Whereas in the US, you can fail and likely still land a $40k-50k job doing whatever. In Europe, managers in serious firms often don't make $50k.

Also, serious health problems before 40 are really rare.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#139

Post by [deleted] »

akprasad wrote: post #83
phnofive wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Onion's take ten years on is a bit different: https://www.theonion.com/women-explain-why-they-became-tradw...

I don't follow what relationship these two stories have with each other -- the first is on living in community and putting down roots, and the latter is on far-right cultural atavism.

[deleted]

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#140

Post by nickd2001 »

pizza wrote: post #126
monero-xmr wrote: post #56

Alternatively, never blow up your life! Live near your family and lifelong friends, establish hardcore roots with your community, always be surrounded by love. A road less taken by the educated elites, but a happy and fulfilling road nonetheless. The Onion’s take: https://www.theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfil...

Always wonder what people without roots are supposed to do. Where's the advice for them?

Do you mean by being uprooted to different places as a child? This happened to me but I put down new roots and made long-term friends as an adult. I'd think the advice for people lacking roots would be the same as for anyone who lacks friends and/or has lost connections? There are also people who lived in an area all their life but maybe friends moved away etc and they found themselves lonely. Seems to me an answer is get involved with things - volunteering, sports, arts, music etc, and for those religious faith, get involved with that, church or otherwise, as long as its a diverse inclusive tolerant supportive community.
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