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In praise of blowing up your life

sashachapin.substack.com

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Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#221

Post by scarface_74 »

svnt wrote: post #149
scarface_74 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my previous comment where I talked about blowing up my life. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966 I was in the perfect place to do it at 48. I had no dependents, a stable marriage and a wife who was excited to go along for the ride with me and I had built up assets to take chances. Now that I think about it, it really wasn’t that risky. Remote was a thing and I figured worse case, someone would hire me a…

Blowing up your life in the sense of the article would have involved leaving your wife. I imagine that or similar extreme changes is what the parent meant. A lot of people in this thread think selling all their furniture is a life explosion.

You’re absolutely right. I reconsidered what I wrote later.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36307059

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#222

Post by CPLX »

benjaminwootton wrote: post #202
Dowwie wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're paying half your rent to property managers?! Stop this insanity. There is no such thing as a rental pool, unless it's literally a pool that is rented. What service are you using?

I noticed that. 5-10% management fees / commission is normal even for holiday rentals.

Not for hotel style properties. The OP’s model is also super common.

Hotel nightly rates are generally much higher than the daily equivalent of monthly rent. You’d need more info to know which is a better deal.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#223

Post by engineeringwoke »

Dave3of5 wrote: post #131

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 na…

> 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.

You could also call this quite myopic. How do you know what is out there without trying it yourself? Sitting in your little world and poo poo'ing those who are willing to take a chance. Because yes, from their vantage point, OP is right.

There really is a world out there that few can find but it's worth looking for if you have good reasons to take a chance and put down new roots. Most don't make it because accepting any culture outside of the one of your birth is a very difficult task, and you will never have any true change until you accept a new culture: their customs, their values, their belief systems.

Because really there is quite a lot of variation in those things, and in all the travels I have had, I have only met a few who truly made it. And there is of course a loneliness that comes along with the change, at least for a while. That doesn't mean it isn't worth trying, and if you bit off more than you can chew, just go back home. You obviously need resources to do that, but it's not really as scary as you make it out to be.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#224

Post by twh270 »

max68 wrote: post #197
hcks wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time it’s hard to understand something before you experienced it yourself. Something like a limitation of written communication.

It seems fairly straightforward and real wisdom is learning from others mistakes

Not necessarily. "Inner wisdom", wisdom about yourself and who you are, usually can only come from your own experiences (both mistakes/failures and successes/victories).

You can learn a lot about yourself by "blowing up" your life. (And you don't have to go to the extremes the article describes.)

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#225

Post by CretinDesAlpes »

I have this game that I call "Coin of destiny", not sure where I heard this from or if it is widespread, but the idea is to flip a coin for dilemma when you can't decide. It also works in group. The hard part of the game is to take it seriously, in the sense that as soon as you decide to play, then the final decision is irrevocable and you must follow the destiny.

It's nice to see a link to some experiment/research about this process that seems positive - https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22487/w224...

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#226

Post by scarface_74 »

Dowwie wrote: post #181
scarface_74 wrote: post #112

I’ve mentioned the last year of my life on HN where my wife and I decided to get rid of everything we own that wouldn’t fit in four suitcases including our cars and we became “hybrid digital nomads”. We fly to different cities across the US and stay in midrange extended stay hotels and stay in our own “Condotel”[1] the other six months in Florida. What I haven’t talked about is what got us to this point. I grew up in…

You're paying half your rent to property managers?! Stop this insanity. There is no such thing as a rental pool, unless it's literally a pool that is rented. What service are you using?

It literally is 300-400 units in a resort “hotel” and they rent out your unit as part of a pool of units. They do all of the marketing, replenishment of supplies for the kitchen, maintenance, payments etc. The units are rented out by the night just like a hotel when you aren’t there.

But you don’t understand the other part. I’ve done the landlord thing before. I would rather get an anal probe with a cactus than ever be a landlord again. The entire purpose of it was never to make money. But to have a place to stay for six months, a legal residence in a state that didn’t charge taxes, and for it to pay for itself when we are not there.

When we leave every year, we pay a one time $110 cleaning fee and don’t think about the place again until we come back in six months. The income comes in the same account where the mortgage is paid automatically.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#227

Post by tmountain »

max68 wrote: post #197
hcks wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time it’s hard to understand something before you experienced it yourself. Something like a limitation of written communication.

It seems fairly straightforward and real wisdom is learning from others mistakes

It takes a while to get there… most people need to experience the pain of a few real mistakes of their own before they recognize the value of paying attention to other people’s.

The worst is seeing someone making a mistake, warning them, and then they do it anyway.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#228

Post by varjag »

hutzlibu wrote: post #210
varjag wrote: post #137

As someone who is getting older, I have this to say: don't take a life advice from a 20-something, no matter how well meaning they are.

Rather stick with old bitter people, who regret not being young anymore? Personally I can find wisdom in 2 year olds babbling, as well as 90 years old. It depends on the person and time. I discovered, that you can learn something from any person (even if it is, how not to do things). And age is not the determining factor.

Old people could be bitter and their life experiences may be limited, but they don't extrapolate life trajectory from 1 datapoint.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#229

Post by [deleted] »

CPLX wrote: post #222
benjaminwootton wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed that. 5-10% management fees / commission is normal even for holiday rentals.

Not for hotel style properties. The OP’s model is also super common. Hotel nightly rates are generally much higher than the daily equivalent of monthly rent. You’d need more info to know which is a better deal.

[deleted]

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#230

Post by marcosdumay »

hcks wrote: post #190
lm28469 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's as old as humanity > Do you suppose that you alone have had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. Seneca, 2000 years ago More people should read the classics, lots of wisdom you can speed run instead of…

At the same time it’s hard to understand something before you experienced it yourself. Something like a limitation of written communication.

Also, changing the people around you can solve a surprising large number of problems.

It's not so much that people can't understand it, it's that it's wrong enough times for people to think it can apply to them. (Kinda like playing on the lottery; you won't win, but you have plenty of evidence to think you will.)

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