I like the principle of this and have kind of done it myself previously, however I'm currently finding it's a _lot_ harder to consider blowing up your life when you have kids that are old enough to care. I think the resentment having your life blown up for you makes this considerably less appealing...
In praise of blowing up your life
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Re: In praise of blowing up your life
#262In my case, I blew up my life every couple of years for the past 10 years or so; changing jobs and country. It gave me a good sense of what's out there and how things work on a global scale but it's been a roller-coaster experience without any net gains in the long run. I'm like a bird floating in the updrafts to conserve energy but every time the wind changes suddenly, I have to start flapping my wings again and it…
Nothing to add, just an appreciation of the imagery of the analogy you used.
Re: In praise of blowing up your life
#263I'm a child of expats who became an expat. Lived in over a dozen countries. Contemplating another.
Don't blow up your life. Its rubbish.
Re: In praise of blowing up your life
#264Alternatively, 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...
Re: In praise of blowing up your life
#265I love articles like this. The writer seems to have no idea they're revealing severe psychological trauma to the readers, and despite it they try to pass it off as sage life advice. Like telling everyone you spit in the soup at work but it helps strengthen people's immune systems so everyone should be unsanitary.
I think you're being a bit hyperbolic, but I agree with your general sentiment. Talk to some older people who have lived a very satisfying life and ask them what the secret is. I don't think you'll find that it's tearing down their life every few years. That's what tends to happen when you make a bunch of bad decisions and go too far down one leg of the maze before realizing you're now lost.
I think happiness comes from listening carefully to your inner intuition. Some unconscious part of your mind already knows what path you should go down. The more you align your conscious experience with that part of your mind, the less you'll find the need to blow up your life to reset.
Re: In praise of blowing up your life
#266I’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…
Won't this get kinda boring after a little while? I guess I've been on enough business trips that constantly traveling to me seems stressful and boring. I liked looking forward to meeting coworkers though, so having some people like distant family or friends in these areas makes life more enjoyable. I guess I've also been somewhat forced/or I guess blessed to live in a different state for a while. You won't really ge…
I work during the week and my wife is a hobbyist fitness instructor and trains other instructors. She reaches out to people online before we go and goes to different gyms while I work and we do the normal “date night” things on the weekend finding interesting things to do in the city we are in. She makes friends everywhere and flies to conferences without me. I also travel for work (cloud consulting) occasionally.
Because $Life, we haven’t really traveled that much until last year.
The end game is to sell our house in Atlanta after our son moves out (he pays rent with two of his friends). Because I never want to be a traditional landlord again. I did that a decade ago, pay off our Condotel and it will be cash flow positive without a mortgage and then find some place to live the other six months. It will be another tax free state just to keep taxes simple. We are thinking about either Las Vegas or some place in Tennessee.
Packing and unpacking isn’t that bad once every three or four weeks. I have one suitcase that never gets unpacked except when I travel for work.
Re: In praise of blowing up your life
#267Came here to say something smart-assy about these dumb "life advice" articles written by 20-somethings.
Stayed to watch the pile-on in the comments.
ding Popcorn's ready.
Re: In praise of blowing up your life
#268It seems the only factor the author is encouraging the reader to take into account when deciding to blow up their life is themselves. There is zero altruism or kindness in this advice. It feels like a very beginning of the 2000 position. The generation that was first allowed to divorce and blow up everything. And it's very good that we got this liberty, much better for everyone involved than the previous status quo.…
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Re: In praise of blowing up your life
#269I’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…
I've done this on a smaller, temporary scale and it wasn't for me. You end up spending a lot of your time planning, packing, unpacking and generally working around all the things you never have to think about when you just live where you want to live and do some traveling. Our life became meaningless chores that just ate away at all the interesting things we could be doing or wanted to be doing.
We’ve figured most of those things out. We always travel on Sunday. We unpack our clothes. Do an instacart order. Find the laundry facilities, gym and pool at the hotel and find something to do on the weekends. My wife takes care of the washing and folding clothes and she hangs out during the week with people in one of her fitness organizations (she’s a hobbyists fitness instructor), she will organize a playlist and be a “special guest instructor”.
We usually stay at an extended stay with a full kitchen. Finding things to do is part of the fun. I book hotels ouf a year in advance since you don’t pay until check out.
Re: In praise of blowing up your life
#270Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think maybe it has to do with self confidence, or childhood trauma? I had a very unstable childhood and things quite often didn’t “just work out”. Adults in my life literally got stabbed and died when “interesting” new things happened. “Hi nice to meet you”, “oh he’s dead now”. “Time to go live in the women’s shelter! Hey now we live in a trailer in the middle of nowhere!” Change was scary and often not for the bet…
Sorry that happened to you as a child. I’m glad you’ve been able to find some stability in your life and are prioritizing what you value.
It’s just life. But I mean I definitely understand the other side of the coin. To me when things get really really bad it’s time for a really really big change.
It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that my ancestors who voluntarily got on a boat for weeks and came to the USA sight unseen had a similar wild hare. Maybe things were really bad in Denmark at the time or maybe they just really had wanderlust. No idea.
I think things we call “disorders” like manic depressive episodes partially serve this function and there’s potentially huge rewards for venturing off into the great unknown. Manic episodes are the rocket fuel to take big risks and potentially get big rewards. Obviously enough people hit the big rewards (by having more land, having lots of kids, getting rich) that it has an impact on our genetics and our personalities. But at the same time, the dead men at the bottom of the Mediterranean who were looking for adventure don’t tell us their tales of failure.