Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

thecut.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 669 posts

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#221

Post by MRD85 »

amyjess wrote: post #144
yholio wrote: post #73

> And with men I date, I feel pressure to make something of the relationship too soon (move in, get married, “I have to have kids in a couple of years”; fun times!). All the while still trying to be the sexpot 25-year-old I thought I was until what seemed like a moment ago. It sounds like going from one end of the spectrum (aventuros, yolo) to the other (a family, fast), all while punching above their weight, so to s…

> When youth starts to fade away, reality kicks in - the highly desirable partners are not interested, and the average ones are already committed to long time partners who valued them in their own youth. You're forgetting about a) divorcees and b) men who have also gone down the same path.

Men don't have the same time pressure to start a family with many starting at 45+. The other thing is men often become more attractive to women as they age due to things like financial success while the same can't be said for women.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#222

Post by Domenic_S »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #145

This probably won't be popular, but what the hell. I feel like, if you strip away the outward trappings and dogma, this is what religion is good for. Not in a "believe in Jesus" or "trust in God" kind of way, but in a "how to orient your life" kind of way. Which is to say, the actually useful portion of religion generally teaches that your best life is probably not focused on you. It isn't about finding yourself, or…

Love this.

We don't want happiness out of life, we want meaning. And we have the most meaning when we're impacting other people. Impacting people can start small, like your wonderful examples, or be huge like starting a successful company. There are so many ways.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#223

Post by jf- »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #145

This probably won't be popular, but what the hell. I feel like, if you strip away the outward trappings and dogma, this is what religion is good for. Not in a "believe in Jesus" or "trust in God" kind of way, but in a "how to orient your life" kind of way. Which is to say, the actually useful portion of religion generally teaches that your best life is probably not focused on you. It isn't about finding yourself, or…

That’s more a value system, or maybe an ideology, than a religion. Though I’ll agree the two do more or less occupy the same cognitive space. There is no need for anything mystical to be involved.

Today we are experimenting with new phenomena that have never been available to humanity en mass. Effective birth control, gender equality, freedom from restrictive social norms, all of these are very new, and indeed evolutionarily novel. We have not yet learned a tradition of how to operate in this space, we are the pioneers, and unfortunately a lot of missteps befall the pioneers.

Eventually through trial and error, and a kind of evolutionary process, we’ll figure it out, and then that will get passed down as the new value system. Then we’ll have kids again more or less following in the footsteps of their parents, they’ll just be footsteps we wouldn’t necessarily expect.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#224

Post by pesmhey »

nostromo wrote: post #10

I think the parents of many 20 and 30-somethings played a role in so many young(ish) adults failing to launch. American parents could learn a thing or two about parenting from previous generations and from a lot of immigrant families: nobody owes you anything, plan for a rainy day, find a partner you love and commit to them, work hard, cherish friends and family even when it's difficult, etc. I think parenting has ov…

It’s tough, the balance between the two extremes that you’re talking about. Immigrants, and the previous generations, were a lot more preoccupied with survival than with self-actualization. Watching a movie like Office Space becomes interesting to view from the perspective of survival. It’s almost indulgent. This guy has a well-paying job, his biggest woe is that his manager is not likeable, and he’s unhappy? But when you live it, you understand.

For me, the balance has been most aptly described by the phrase: you can have anything you want, but you can’t have everything you want. You can travel, follow your bliss, whatever it takes to find some self-actualization (very important in the western world), but you pay a price. This way, you’re not completely discounting the value of ‘finding yourself’, but, like any major decision, you assess the ROI.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#225

Post by squish78 »

rb808 wrote: post #82

There was a nytimes article about a famous author giving advice to young authors about keep trying, you can do anything. Meanwhile he didn't say he lived off a large inheritance. I think in the arts world its often the only real way and its a problem that people are encouraged to follow their dreams.

"following your dreams is for people with rich parents"

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#226

Post by mymythisisthis »

40acres wrote: post #18

Everyone around us is fighting their own little war. I've felt similarly to the writer -- I moved out of my childhood home the day after graduating college and started work that Monday. I only moved 215 miles (NYC to Boston), but it felt a world away, especially considering most Americans live relatively close to where they grew up and 215 miles in Europe goes a long way. I've made and abandoned friends at almost eve…

I think that this the reality for the majority of people. We are the first generation, as a whole, that will not do as good as their parents. That the is the economic reality.

One major issue though is education. Giving a good technical education to people is fundamental. No matter how much a person falls, they have something that they can build on. They are never starting from scratch, as many people in this generation do, over and over again.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#228

Post by almost_usual »

nostromo wrote: post #10

I think the parents of many 20 and 30-somethings played a role in so many young(ish) adults failing to launch. American parents could learn a thing or two about parenting from previous generations and from a lot of immigrant families: nobody owes you anything, plan for a rainy day, find a partner you love and commit to them, work hard, cherish friends and family even when it's difficult, etc. I think parenting has ov…

>I think parenting has over-corrected from the overly didactic and stern parenting of previous generations to endless "follow your bliss" and "you can do anything" -- which is causing a lot of young people to spin their wheels for decades at a time, never growing up while their body is growing old. It's a shame to see.

It will likely be the last generation that has this opportunity. I don't imagine our children or their children living on a planet with much 'bliss' compared to their parents. Earth's trajectory is not looking good.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#229

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

rb808 wrote: post #82

There was a nytimes article about a famous author giving advice to young authors about keep trying, you can do anything. Meanwhile he didn't say he lived off a large inheritance. I think in the arts world its often the only real way and its a problem that people are encouraged to follow their dreams.

Eh, I think most failing artists would do well to learn a lot about business.

Very few people care about what's best. Yet so many artists strive to do the "best" something. Write the best story. Write the best song. Paint the greatest painting, and so on...

That's fine. But you've got to know very few people actually care about "best". They care about new, different, someone who's creating art just for them. The ones that actually do care about quality, they're hard to reach, and everyone has different tastes. So no matter how good your art is, a lot of that small group of people who cares about quality probably won't like it still. It's all subjective!

If you want to make a living as an artist, and you don't have an inheritance to live off, stop trying to win the artistic lottery. Start thinking of markets, how to differentiate yourself, how to create something you can sell, how to carve out a niche of people that will buy your art and pay for your living, how to grow that group of people, and over time, maybe you'll grow a big enough following that you can create the exact type of art you want to create.

Until then, create something you can sell or starve. Fantasies are for stories. Life isn't easy.

Re: ‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

#230

Post by paavoova »

gowld wrote: post #96
simonsarris wrote: post #11

"We should be more honest about the real tradeoffs between endless wanderlust/adventure-seeking and putting down real roots. The things that make for a great instagram feed or Bumble profile are very different from those of permanence that help us live well." (Friend's comment on article) Polly's reply is so shameless (including promoting her own book in the reply) that it's incredible just how badly it missed the po…

I don't see what's wrong with the quoted reply. Why is it so wrong to not settle down before 35? I have friends who were settled down, had kids, and divorced by 35; should we seek to emulate their experience over being single at 35? Of course not. Nor do I see what's wrong with responding to a question with a relevant and timely personal anecdote. > And there are some things, like travel and careerism, that will not…

Arguably, the sole purpose of life is to procreate. You can live a purely unfulfilled life and die the most miserable wretch possible, but if your children have children, and their children do as well, and so on, it doesn't matter - genetics doesn't care (barring some kind of recessive hereditary illness responsible for this original misery).

And perhaps this is why so many people get divorced, and even why there are so many bastard children and deadbeat fathers/parents: in some inherent way, such people have already fulfilled some unnamed biological goal and have no real incentive to pursue it further. Because a family, being a committed parent, is a societal abstraction that many need not bother with. Certainly you can see this in other animal species.

Post reply on HN