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Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
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Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#72[dead]
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#7340 is the new 30s and life really starts after 50. Until then you’re spinning your wheels trying to pay back loans, raise kids, work, save, and not fall victim to vices. Colonel Sanders started KFC in his 40s and didn’t come up with the signature recipe until he was 50. KFC as we know it didn’t exist until he was 65. Truth is, most successful business owners start in their mid 40s or around 40.
i was asking myself what is the point of succeeding if its so late in life. then i wondered what is the point of succeeding young? having a ten year period of not working when you otherwise would be? but business owners and other rich people work harder than most… so the only way to succeed is to not only succeed but make enough to stop working? i just dont understand what im chasing anymore. the only two clear objec…
Ask yourself what would you do with the time given? Would you be a better version of yourself? Because that’s what happens. Money amplifies you. If you’re an asshole, money is going to make you even more so. If you’re a provider, money will make you able to provide more.
Ask yourself some serious questions in the mirror. Why would you pursue early retirement and money? To get rich? For what purpose? You lack the vision right now to even see it through. Take a step back, focus on your immediate needs, stop chasing other peoples dreams and start dreaming of your own future - who would you be?
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#74He wrote his science fiction novel "Cat's Cradle" before Slaughterhouse-Five, and I consider this novel to be his best. It is essentially an intelligent parody of the madness of scientists who are eager to make a breakthrough discovery but also completely blind to ethics, and who can even endanger the whole planet. This is a very relevant issue to this day.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#75I think the people who need to hear this message are not in their late 40s, but are in their 20s thinking that they have to do it now or they never will. I see a lot of ageism on X from people who are clearly young and inexperienced, but when you actually get into the real world and how things are done you see the vast majority of real success happens later in life once you've been around a couple times. Experience,…
Something we definitely lose when we age is lack of judgement, and with it the ability to play and experiment. I miss that naïveté and over confidence from my twenties knowing I was allowed to screw up.
Is it really those things, or is it that as we get older we have something to lose? I could go live like I'm 20 again...reduce my spending to nothing, work all day on whatever I believe in...but that would cost me my family's comfort, and I rather like them.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
>40 is the new 30s and life really starts after 50. If you're poor, yes. I don't mean this in a derogaroty way.
What? What's the secret that you know which makes poor people have a better life after 50? I'd love to hear it and quit working so damn hard. Hell these days the middle class is getting their ass kicked at the grocery store. I can't even imagine how hard it would be if you cut my income by what it would take to get me to the poverty line. That amount won't even cover my rent.
You go it backwards.
Not-so-poor people enjoy their life since their 20s, because they're not worrying about all the other things that you wrote in your comment ...
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#77This piece seriously misrepresents Vonnegut's career just to make a dubious point. Sure, Slaughterhouse Five was Vonnegut's big financial breakthrough, but by that time he was a very well-known writer with several classics, including Player Piano and Harrison Bergeron, and a Guggenheim Fellow, and made a decent living from writing full time. Not glamorous for sure, but in line with most very good writerd. Far from de…
Also Kurt himself wrote he had always been trying to write about Dresden but failed to do, obviously until said novel. So this article is very spot on on that matter as well — maturity can achieve something that precociousness can’t. So your accusation is kinda missing the point.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#78This piece seriously misrepresents Vonnegut's career just to make a dubious point. Sure, Slaughterhouse Five was Vonnegut's big financial breakthrough, but by that time he was a very well-known writer with several classics, including Player Piano and Harrison Bergeron, and a Guggenheim Fellow, and made a decent living from writing full time. Not glamorous for sure, but in line with most very good writerd. Far from de…
I don't see how what you're saying is at odds with the author. At no point did they say Vonnegut was a failure before Slaughthouse Five. Only that he, like many others, didn't produce their opus until later in life. This isn't just limited to writing. There are examples in all fields if you look, both creative and commercial. This idea is definitely at odds with a lot of current SV rhetoric.
Your point, that many people don't produce their magnun opus until later in life, is definitely at odds with a lot of current SV rhetoric. And it's a good point.
If the article had tried to make your point, it would have been a much better article.
Instead, it made a different, much less true point, and had to contort Vonnegut's biography to make it.
"His career looked like a sequence of failures until it suddenly wasn't" is just not true of Vonnegut, not true of Galilei, not true of any of the other "examples in all fields" cites in the article. All of them are people who consistently produced great work from early on, well before their 40s, and then produced a magnum opus that really stood the test of time.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#79I know there is ageism in tech and that people think they need to do x(thing) by y(age) but as a 51 year old: let your values drive you and don’t spend all your money. My 40s on have been the best in terms of freedom, learning and execution. Yes, I felt all the same pressures in my 20s and 30s so my words mean little, but I am far happier and more fulfilled the last 11 years of my values and the things that bring me…
In general, young naive entrepreneurs are easier to exploit due to desperation in a sucker VC deal, and tax or school credits often subsidize youth labor costs in many places. No tech bro or VC wants experienced people around telling younger versions of themselves what to avoid. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpE_xMRiCLE
Not just "young naive entrepreneurs" but also "young naive workers".
In my 20's I worked a ton of 60 hours weeks that also included mandatory travel on Sundays without any comp time.
Never. Again.
Re: Remember: Kurt Vonnegut Was 47
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
i was asking myself what is the point of succeeding if its so late in life. then i wondered what is the point of succeeding young? having a ten year period of not working when you otherwise would be? but business owners and other rich people work harder than most… so the only way to succeed is to not only succeed but make enough to stop working? i just dont understand what im chasing anymore. the only two clear objec…
Ask yourself what would you do with the time given? Would you be a better version of yourself? Because that’s what happens. Money amplifies you. If you’re an asshole, money is going to make you even more so. If you’re a provider, money will make you able to provide more. Ask yourself some serious questions in the mirror. Why would you pursue early retirement and money? To get rich? For what purpose? You lack the visi…
im an asshole