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In praise of blowing up your life

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Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#301

Post by projectazorian »

lm28469 wrote: post #172
marginalia_nu wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with trauma as an explanatory model is is that if you dig deep enough, pretty much anyone has had life experiences that may be characterized as traumatic. And even if you find someone who hasn't, they've clearly lead such a sheltered life that it's a sort of trauma on its own. Because of this, childhood trauma is a sort of universal explanation that will explain things even outside of psychology, everythi…

Surely divorcing your wife, randomly moving to Thailand and telling people they should do the same to get happier isn't a normal behavior. Call it what you want

I didn’t get the impression he divorced his wife and randomly moved to Thailand at the same time. That would perhaps be a little more extreme.

Also didn’t think he was encouraging others to move to Thailand with no research, it seems like he acknowledged it was a rash decision.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#303

Post by lm28469 »

moneywoes wrote: post #273
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…

Anything you’d recommend

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#304

Post by marssaxman »

resolutebat wrote: post #72
Wonnk13 wrote: post #6

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

"People travel to change themselves, but they only manage to change the scenery." (Not my quote, alas, and my memory has butchered it enough that I can't find the original.)

Encountering a foreign culture, with foreign ways of thinking and behaving, can stretch and change you by forcing you to encounter assumptions and habits you didn't even know you had.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#306

Post by varjag »

unethical_ban wrote: post #291
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.

This is the definition of ad hominem. I am in my mid-30s and highly resistant to change; the article resonates. I'm not ready to leave my job (I have two more years of RSUs to collect), but I am moving houses within my city solely for the change of scenery and pattern. I expect in the next few years, unless I meet someone life-changing, that I will leave my city or even take a multi-year sabbatical until I feel the u…

This was a categorical statement about 20-somethings and as such isn't ad hominem. I would still say that if their advice was just as eloquently stated opposite.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#307

Post by Glawen »

CretinDesAlpes wrote: post #233
Woeps wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody else who is getting older, I don't think life advice from any age should be taken at face value.

Elder people have a lot to say and some (not all) have a lot of wisdom. However I agree that whatever advice you take and follow, you will end up making mistake in other areas, so at the end of the day you have to live your own life, realise your own mistake and correct them.

Let's say it is interesting to hear their advice as they have more life experience. I would however not follow everything said as the context has probably changed, but I try to take out the useful information I could reuse

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#308

Post by amrocha »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #299
amrocha wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need connections to take a 6 month break? All you need is a bit of money, 2-4 months of your salary at most. Obviously if you have dependents it's harder to move physically, but not impossible, and quitting a job is totally doable.

Because a 6 month absence can be a deal breaker in a lot of circumstances where a job is on the line. Employers are going to choose the people with constant employment over the people who quit "just because."

Idk, I've taken more than one 6 month break in my career and I'm fine. If you've got the skills nobody cares. And besides, it's easy to fudge it in tech. Say you were working on a side project or a startup idea, or did some volunteer work for local non profits.

Lots of options.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#309

Post by projectazorian »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #192
lm28469 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely divorcing your wife, randomly moving to Thailand and telling people they should do the same to get happier isn't a normal behavior. Call it what you want

Normal, perhaps not. But at the same time, if you've been living your life according to what's considered normal and expected of you with no regard for your own wants and needs, then it may be healthy indeed.

Also, if you spend just a few days in Thailand talking to foreigners, you quickly realize that there are tens of thousands of people who moved to Thailand on a whim.

Many of them flame out in tragic (or tragicomic) fashion, some succeed and settle down, others move on to the next thing with some more life experience under their belt, like the author did.

His path is a typical one among young Westerners who move to Thailand. “Normal” is all relative.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#310

Post by badpun »

engineeringwoke wrote: post #215
zerbinxx wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But also to the contrary this is the exact line of thinking that causes the large majority of people to sleep walk through life, as the author says. It is a hard truth of life that the large majority of people (80+% I would say) do not take any real risks in their entire long life. You can obviously over-do it, and yes it probably feels good to follow the herd and stay in the "okay" relationship and the "okay" job wi…

"Taking a risk" by definition means things may improve for you, but they can also get worse. Most people aren't in that great of a position in the first place, they don't want to fall even lower. Esp. since the lows are really low and the highs aren't really as high, and have a diminishing returns quality to them. As Jordan Peterson put it "you can only be so happy, but you can be 100% dead".
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