Never waste a midlife crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#161

Post by chinchilla2020 » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:25 AM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #120

hirvi74 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd planned professionally at about 30 and then realized it wasn't what I wanted and had no idea what to do next. Oddly enough, I think this is what keeps me from being ambitious in a professional sense. I just feel like, based on everything I read, hear, and see, that we are all just donkeys chasing the metaphorical carrot tied to a stick. I swear, it's like the hedonistic treadmill is turned up a few notches too…

Thank you for being vulnerable (to the the extent that you were being) with this post. My two cents, I deeply agree that "everything has a cost" but I don't find that most unambitious people make a conscious trade off. Most unambitious people I know aren't doing anything with the time and energy they are "saving". They are just kinda passing/wasting it on things that don't satisfy them deeply. That's different than s…

> They are just kinda passing\wasting it on things that don't satisfy them deeply.

This notion that you should be grinding for some sort of passion or satisfaction isn't as real as people make it out to be. Some of the most depressed, broken people you meet are highly passionate professionals, celebrities, and artists who found deep satisfaction in their jobs.

When it comes down to it, mental health things are more complicated than chasing you 'passion', whatever that means.

In my experience the happiest and most stable people I know are financially secure. Not hard workers, not working on some magnum opus. Just plain well-off. One is a stay at home dad who hasn't worked a day since he married his wife at 24. Great guy. He isn't posting on hackernews about life hacks and bragging about the grind. He just golfs and raises his kids and winks when I make fun of him for it.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#162

Post by randito » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:34 AM UTC

moron4hire wrote: post #65

This is hustle porn. All of Kleon's books are hustle porn. A lot of, "you just gotta, like, do, man." Not a lot of whatever the hell that means for the millions of folks who exist in the long tail of every creative market, struggling day in and day out to try to escape the doldrums of their day jobs, but never making it. Year after year. YouTube video after YouTube video. New social media site after new social media…

Austin Kleon's books are not hustle porn to me. In fact, it comes across as the opposite. It feels like tips for being creative. Some of the advice is for unplugging, pursuing side projects, practicing procrastination -- things that do not sound like your typical "top 100 tips to succeed" tripe. The third book -- Show Your Work -- could be taken as hustle porn. But if you read it in context with the others, it doesn't seem that way. Just a way to get your work out there without being spammy. If it seems hustle porn, you might be missing the point.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#163

Post by ctrlp » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:35 AM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #149

ctrlp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Think about the life your typical therapist is leading What kind of life are they leading?

If they are performing according to the profession's own standards, then they spend their working days involved in other people's problems, delusions, traumas, grievances, morbidities, obsessions, suicides, etc, (not to mention various mental disorders). This probably accounts for high rates of burnout among them. But, ask yourself, what about the ones who don't burn out? What is it about them that allows them to do this sort of thing day after day? Is it the $300/h? Is it a strange fascination? Is it some mental disease of their own? Questions worth asking.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#164

Post by chinchilla2020 » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:35 AM UTC

johndhi wrote: post #43

This unfortunately falls into the same category in my mind as most advice: "you should ... X." My mind is sick of hearing the things I should do. I know I should be better and fitter and less wasteful but... I'm tired.

The reality of the sickness is our lifestyle. Humans are not wired to sit in a fluorescent office for 8 hours a day staying at a screen. Humans are designed to build physical tools and persistence hunt wild beasts on the plains of Africa and the Eurasian steppe.

Decades of sitting down and staring at a screen in that office is bound to start to deep into someone's mental health at some point.

No amount of therapy, vanity spending, grindset mentality, family support, or PTO can fully fix the mental wound that a deeply unnatural lifestyle inflicts on a person. Those are all bandaids on a gaping bullet wound that is most likely permanent.

Tired of hearing these hackernews biohackers and their silly blog-inspired solutions to life satisfaction. It's time to wake up and realize that there is no way to achieve the type of satisfaction they are claiming they can achieve in the modern world.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#165

Post by hattmall » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:36 AM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #87

rootusrootus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 36 year old middle aged man You're not quite middle aged yet :). And 33 is way too early for a midlife crisis, surely? Maybe it's just garden variety burnout and/or depression?

I’d say in my social circle most people hit a crisis of self around 30 years old, and most were out of the funk 2-3 years following. Most are doing well now as we hit 40, curios if is struck sooner for our generation.

I'm sorry to say I don't think it's struck yet! Not to say what you experienced wasn't real by any means, but I think it just sounds more like a different, but normal thing. The coming to terms with reality after your 20s. I think you'll see another round more characteristic of the mid-life crisis as you all enter your 50s.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#166

Post by hattmall » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:38 AM UTC

Lammy wrote: post #95

sharkweek wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say in my social circle most people hit a crisis of self around 30 years old, and most were out of the funk 2-3 years following. Most are doing well now as we hit 40, curios if is struck sooner for our generation.

> I’d say in my social circle most people hit a crisis of self around 30 years old https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_return e: downvote all you want but people wouldn't have attempted to find meaning for something like this if they hadn't experienced it first

I think people are down voting because Astrology but yeah it just seems like the coming to terms with reality of adulthood. Midlife crisis is later.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#167

Post by ThrowAway1922A » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:38 AM UTC

I am not quite old enough for a midlife crisis, but suffered a period of extreme burn out which was followed by some kind of crisis/breakdown and I am actively in the process of destroying my life and everything good I worked for.

I at this point both hope that I'm still here to experience a "midlife" crisis and that it isn't even half as bad as this has been.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#168

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:38 AM UTC

danielvaughn wrote: post #61

I turn 39 in a week, and I might be hitting something like a mid-life crisis. Though I'm successful by many metrics, there's so much I wanted to do by this point in my life that I've been feeling like a failure. For instance, there's been this side project that I first got the idea for in 2014 and have been actively working on since 2017, and I still haven't released it yet because I keep going back to the drawing bo…

[deleted]

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#169

Post by ctrlp » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:40 AM UTC

soligern wrote: post #158

ctrlp wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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Getting help from mental health professionals is just a way for that individual to foist their opinions onto you. Psychology is a highly subjective field whose studies have startlingly low reproducibility. You’re much better off finding someone in your circle that’s willing to listen to you and shares your values (though not everyone might have this available to them).

This is good advice. Sadly, many on HN are very pro "mental health professionals". I see the opposite advice proffered frequently. These "professionals" make things worse by pathologizing normal life. Their availability to function as ersatz "friends" discourages people from making the real kind, imho.

Re: Never waste a midlife crisis

#170

Post by Clubber » Tue, Jul 18, 2023, 4:43 AM UTC

heyoni wrote: post #147

Clubber wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It means you'll never be 18 or 23 or 30 or 35 again. The youth that you took for granted is gone forever and time will march with you until your death. Death may be maybe be 2 years from now or 40 years from now, fully knowing that you body will start failing. Even if you have 40 years, not all of them will be good years, especially the last ones. Once you are gone, that's it, all the time you spent improving yoursel…

So, not for naught? Seriously, we’re social creatures that live for others. You can have 40 good years serving the next generation, building wealth for them and sharing in their joys. I’m sensing this strange notion in older generations where they absolutely refuse to let go and insist on keeping their youth and the spotlight to no or some avail. Technology is getting better and making people hold on for longer but I…

>that life ain’t that great unless we’re out there crushing it all the time.

Where in the hell did you get that from? I wish I hadn't wasted 20+ years of my youth working so hard.

>I guess it fits nicely with the declining notion that having children isn’t worth it either.

Dunno where you got that from either. My kids are the best thing that happened to me. Are you projecting or something?