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In praise of blowing up your life

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Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#331

Post by beaugunderson »

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…

My girlfriend is an oncology social worker and sees patients who lament that they waited until retirement to fulfill all their dreams of travel, etc. and then got cancer and realized there's a big chance they will never achieve almost any of them.

For this reason we decided not to wait to live life and moved onto an RV two years ago and have visited 20 states and two Canadian provinces while I work full time and she works part time, both remotely, often over Starlink (as I type this now from a small RV park in the Yukon).

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#332

Post by m463 »

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 seems real wisdom has a prerequisite: actually seeing/witnessing other people's mistakes.

It is hard to see other people's real mistakes, both clearly and with all the context.

I remember reading about one common parenting mistake: fighting with their spouse quietly away from their kids. Or maybe fighting happens, but resolving does not.

The idea is that kids can't learn how their parents fight, discuss and then resolve issues because they don't ever see everything start to finish.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#333

Post by brailsafe »

> 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.

Ironically, this seems like the most off-the-shelf thing to do if you're a little unstable, want a big change, and are probably NA or EU born; specifically Thailand, not that it's necessarily a bad thing depending on what your mission is.

There is some virtue in blowing up your life, I'd say at least once, because sometimes it's just necessary to get you out of your hometown or out of a stagnant relationship, a bad career or whatever. People need adventure more than they think. But you never escape suffering somehow, and you never escape needing to grow as a person.

I blew up my life initially for a job in a better city, which I ended up getting fired from and then ruining the relationship I had back home. However, now that I love my city and community, would I move for a job again? Fuck no, not unless my situation was dire, or I fully get priced out of my neighborhood (lol, rip Canada). If it was dire, it would probably be a worthwhile shot. But I'll also never move back to my hometown unless the same dire circumstances are present.

It would be foolish to continue arbitrarily blowing up your life though just for the sake of it. Sometimes you do need big change, but you need to be able to evaluate why you need that change and maybe what you hope will be different next time, at least some core things.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#334

Post by scarface_74 »

antisthenes wrote: post #330
scarface_74 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s even more nuanced. Airlines don’t make money on main cabin for the most part. They make money from business class https://www.zippia.com/advice/business-travel-statistics/ and selling miles to credit card companies. https://airlinegeeks.com/2021/12/17/here-s-why-airline-loyal... If main cabin dropped by half, they would still fly the routes.

> It’s even more nuanced. Airlines don’t make money on main cabin for the most part. They make money from business class No, it's not. Where they make their money is completely orthogonal to how demand for flights is generated. All passengers generate flight demand, so yes, they are just as responsible for CO2 emissions as the airline (you can argue about the proportions and degrees, but they still are) The airline i…

That’s just the thing, if main cabin demand went down, the airlines would just increase the prices of the price insensitive business travelers using other peoples money.

When I fly personally, I’m much more price sensitive than when I’m booking travel in the travel portal for my trillion dollar market cap employer who is flying me out to see a client to work on a deal. I’ve flown out with a couple of days notice plenty of times at prices I would never pay personally. If every single none business traveler stopped flying from SEA, I can guarantee you that they wouldn’t cut flights drastically.

There is a reason that the SEA airport has a special line for check in for Amazon and Microsoft.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#335

Post by JALTU »

antisthenes wrote: post #275
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…

Right, so the "secret" to blowing up your life is just to have massive savings, income and rental property, so that instead of owning your possessions, you can just rent them for 2x the cost of ownership while being a digital nomad. Got it. Just in case someone finds this "profound".

One more thing: no kids/empty nest! :-)

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#336

Post by whitepaint »

hayst4ck wrote: post #327
whitepaint wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Always be surrounded by love..." unless you are gay. Gay, trans, atheist, feminist, brown, an opioid addict, a questioner of authority, or otherwise different. Or a middle-aged white man. https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/

Middle aged white men can be almost any of those things I listed. It floors me that you aren't flagged. Not because you mentioned middle aged white men (which I am), but because I am talking about reasons people get kicked out of the usually conservative communities they grow up in. Being a middle aged white man is not one of those reasons. Middle aged white men can choose their community. Being an atheist I was kick…

You try to measure the levels of suffering based on sex, race and sexual orientation. That is why you will not be taken seriously by people who think.

https://www.google.com/search?q=gay+pride - that looks like there is no community for feminists, gay and trans?

You mentioning you being an atheist is just a cherry on top.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#337

Post by scarface_74 »

googlryas wrote: post #329
scarface_74 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my sibling reply. It didn’t take being “rich”. My budget is lower than it was when I was making $135K (the median college educated couple in the US makes that much) when I had my house built in 2016. The only thing different that I’m doing based on my income now is subsidizing the rent for my younger son instead of selling my old house and paying cash for the Condotel I bought. It was the same price in 2022 as wh…

It's not just about income, but also your assets. From your description, I don't think it is wrong to call you rich, or at least above average net worth and income. Also, you making $135k solo is a much better situation than you+partner making $135k combined as might happen with the median college couple. You doing it solo means your partner can put all their time into...well..whatever they want. I don't really see a…

Yes, I realize in the grand scheme of things, even $135K puts me in the top quintile of income. But this is HN full of tech people. In 2016, any average CRUD “full stack developer” could get that much in any major metropolitan area in the US with 5-7 years of experience. An FHA loan that we used to get our house built was 3.5% down or around $12K.

On the other side of tech compensation, that’s less than a returning intern I mentored got when they came back - and not as a software developer as a junior consultant at BigTech working remotely where we make 10% less than software devs at the same level

I still posit that it is more about priorities (and lack of dependents) for your average mid careers professionals.

There are people making less who choose the RV life or AirBnbs and cars.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#338

Post by erhaetherth »

scarface_74 wrote: post #269
shagymoe wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> you don’t pay until check out

surely that doesn't apply to extended stays? don't they want some money like... after 2 weeks or a month or something? what prevents people from sleep-and-dashing? i guess that's why they have a CC on file but they don't know if it'll go through.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#339

Post by erhaetherth »

hayst4ck wrote: post #121
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...

"One doesn't realize in early life that the price of freedom is loneliness. To be happy one must be tied." ~ CS Lewis I don't know the context of the quote and I know next to nothing about CS Lewis, but having blown my life up at one point and experienced freedom on a level few on this planet could achieve (health, money, time, and will) the quote rang very true for me. I think some people grow up in a community and…

Atheists are "different" now? Did not know. Maybe it depends on the state.

Re: In praise of blowing up your life

#340

Post by erhaetherth »

jstarfish wrote: post #313
sergioisidoro wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the suicide rate of those groups with middle aged white men (adjusted for the population size) is a bit silly. Some sources point to 40% of trans people having attempted suicide, and I don't think 40% of middle aged men have attempted suicide. In absolute numbers the suicide rate among men is an epidemic, but it's not fair to equate the two populations...

Comparing rate of suicide to frequency of suicide attempts is dishonest. Histrionics grossly inflate the "attempt" rate. The most-dramatic demographic (teenagers) only succeeds 15% of the time, with 12.4% of teenaged girls attempting (5.3% for boys). Anything qualifies! I've got one who "attempted" suicide as a fucking negotiation tactic-- literally, "give me what I want or I'll kill myself." She's not trans, just Ka…

Fwiw, sometimes they follow through.
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