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

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

#241

Post by j45 »

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…

If we see religion as a dominant world viewpoint, it becomes less about one particular religious interpretation (or not), and more about the benefits of having a practice that helps you be better for yourself and others.

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

#242

Post by erobbins »

freehunter wrote: post #98
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 feel similarly with the differences between me and my family vs my wife and her family. I grew up not desperately poor, but with only just enough money to get by. In the late 90s we had a computer, a basic Windows 95 machine with dial-up and about 1/4 of the RAM/CPU that modern machines had, but we had one. That's about all we had for modern comforts, which I think forced me to be laser-focused on one activity. The…

I wasn't a "follow your heart" kid, but school came super easy to me and I never learned how to force myself to do things I don't want to do. It's a constant struggle.

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

#243

Post by jfk13 »

Domenic_S wrote: post #235
kakarot wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Religion, like drugs, can be useful and life-affirming, or it can be misused. Learning to code in high school is great, you should be proud of that!

> Religion, like drugs, can be useful and life-affirming, or it can be misused.

So can computers and programming, come to that.

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

#244

Post by camelNotation »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #193
camelNotation wrote: post #105

I married very young. My wife and I had very little, both were working jobs for close to minimum wage with no marketable skills between us. So we sat down and decided what we wanted. We both wanted kids, she wanted to stay home with them when they were young. We both wanted a house of our own. We both wanted to live somewhere with family and friends that we could rely on to help us lay down roots and build that home.…

> So we sat down and decided what we wanted. How did you know that's what you wanted? What gives you the authority to say that's the best path for everyone? Consider an analogy for me - you mentioned travel. Have you ever driven through the mountains? Hiked up a few? Even from the road, it's easy to look up and see spectacular peaks calling out your name, begging to be climbed. And coming from a flat, midwestern stat…

Sounds like your perspective involves an omniscient ideal that does not and can not exist. Tradition exists for this very reason. We pass on what works, we do what works, and we don't presume to know what is better. That is what makes human beings so good at learning - we have the ability to hyper imitate one another. I see you doing something successfully, I don't need to know the actual process behind it, I just need to do it the way you do it.

Gratitude for what you have is a critical component of the formula. You seem to lack that. I hope you find it. You won't last long without it.

I recommend church. It helps. You evolved to do that too.

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

#245

Post by Pica_soO »

Tade0 wrote: post #20
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…

Frankly I stopped reading the moment the book was mentioned. It feels off and insincere.

Yes, to be honest, it feels like it caught the author of the reply off guard and downed him/her into a existential crisis, and to fend that demon off - the protection spell of success, the mantra of self-promotion was cast.

Two lonely people meet in the public plaza, one walks home without its facade. But at least she is not as lonely as before. As lonely as the shining success story on the soap box. That pride in whatever-you-are-preach is so generic, so rehearsed, im sure, the author could have thrown this to a AA meeting or a junkie with the monkey on its back, without flinching.

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

#246

Post by wallace_f »

danso wrote: post #159
balls187 wrote: post #69

I think the issue isn't the "wasted life" but rather how one measures their life. If she was in a committed relationship, had offspring, a home with equity, savings, and a career, there is no guarantee that would bring her fulfillment. And even if you had that fulfillment, there is no guarantee it lasts. Life is hard, it's cruel and not at all fair. And the way to survive is learn that no matter how hard it hits, you…

Thanks for sharing. I had a close friend who was in a similar situation, and came to court to support him during the custody decision. It was so emotionally draining for me even as an outsider I can't begin to imagine actually being in that situation while trying to keep a career.

I had an experience with a woman who was banging on my door at night and threatening me. She had said she "already claimed me." I dont care about this woman and I dont have any ill will towards her but the whole thing was extroardinarily insane. Apparently she was working as a prostitute (someone else told me this and then showed me her ads on a website called backpage). After she threatened to physically hurt me, I eventually filed for a protection order. One witness said they would testify because they saw it. I asked my landlord for the video surveillance, but she said she would only provide it through subpoena. I couldnt find an affordable lawyer or figure out how to subpoena it before the court date. Later that witness renegged, saying they were threatened and said frankly 'I dont want you to get hurt, but who I really care about is myself and my family.' Others told me she had gone around saying her family was heavily involved in gang activity and she had told them to hurt me. She had posted strange things on FB about blood and violence, which some had shown me.

Nobody really wanted to help me beyond that, though. One lawyer I visited said "I cant help you," because she assumed I was the aggressor. I explained I wasn't and that I had proof, then said, 'yea I know most of the time it is probably is the guy who is the aggressor' and then she said "I knew you were a rampant sexist." What in God's name is this?

Nobody seemed seriously interested in putting things down to help me. Several other people seemed to end up hating me without ever even talking to me. It turned out my state had strict 2-party consent laws so whatever other evidence I could have possible have had was illegitimate. Many others privately told me they were sorry and that I should just 'move some new place and dont tell anyone.' Jesus Christ, I dont know, I didn't ask for this. Honestly, what the fuck. Sometimes the world seems insane.

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

#247

Post by camelNotation »

77pt77 wrote: post #205
camelNotation wrote: post #105

I married very young. My wife and I had very little, both were working jobs for close to minimum wage with no marketable skills between us. So we sat down and decided what we wanted. We both wanted kids, she wanted to stay home with them when they were young. We both wanted a house of our own. We both wanted to live somewhere with family and friends that we could rely on to help us lay down roots and build that home.…

> Life is so much better if you just do what you evolved to do. > Pair up, get a trade, build a home You have evolved to reproduce. Getting a trade, building a home are very recent constructs and certainly not what you "evolved to do"

Contributing to the resource needs of your social group and establishing a safe location to live and raise your young is exactly what you evolved to do. You aren't an amoeba, you're the most advanced mammal species on the planet. When you say "you evolved to reproduce" as if that doesn't include the other things I mentioned, you're kind of missing out on what gave you a survival advantage to begin with.

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

#248

Post by camelNotation »

curuinor wrote: post #212
camelNotation wrote: post #105

I married very young. My wife and I had very little, both were working jobs for close to minimum wage with no marketable skills between us. So we sat down and decided what we wanted. We both wanted kids, she wanted to stay home with them when they were young. We both wanted a house of our own. We both wanted to live somewhere with family and friends that we could rely on to help us lay down roots and build that home.…

we evolved to get a trade building and using computers and build a home?

You evolved to contribute to the resource needs of your social group and establish a safe location to live and raise your young. If selling vacuum cleaners door to door paid the most and I was good at it, I would have done that instead of computer science. The point was to have the resources I needed to build something meaningful, not to work on computers.

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

#249

Post by camelNotation »

prism19 wrote: post #209
camelNotation wrote: post #105

I married very young. My wife and I had very little, both were working jobs for close to minimum wage with no marketable skills between us. So we sat down and decided what we wanted. We both wanted kids, she wanted to stay home with them when they were young. We both wanted a house of our own. We both wanted to live somewhere with family and friends that we could rely on to help us lay down roots and build that home.…

> do what you evolved to do I agree you can't fight your nature and win. However, the counter argument would be: 1. Evolution is not concerned with your happiness, it's concerned with successful survival and reproduction - and keeping you just happy enough to do so. 2. Building a stable relationship and career in one place is quite counter to the thousands of years of itinerant hunter-gatherer, questionably-monogamou…

I said life is better, not happy. I am not happy all the time, but my life is extremely meaningful. I'm leaning in to what evolution expects from me because that is the only thing that makes any sense at all. What real, meaningful purpose do I accomplish by struggling against the things I am most suited to do?

I would also point out that thousands of years of itinerant hunting and gathering is not the same as evolving to be itinerant. We are a highly adaptive species and we can live many different ways - we often do - but that doesn't mean we are ideally suited to all of them. The vast majority of people, including those in under-industrialized nations, are not itinerant and of those that are, it's not often by choice. There are clear advantages to staying in place. The fact that most people, in their current evolved state, choose to remain where they are, is just as valid evidence that we are suited to be stationary as the existence of itinerant hunter gatherers in the past is evidence that we are suited to move around.

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

#250

Post by wlll »

ryanmercer wrote: post #210
wlll wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> friendless Do you get out much? I was friendless for a year until I went to the local Linux Users group. Now, almost all my friends (except one old school friend I re-connected with a year ago) are Ruby or Go user group people. I get to see them all twice a month, I invite some of them to my birthdays, we get beers after the meetups. If it weren't for these people I'd have no friends either. Oh, sure, no-one is goi…

>Do you get out much? I train at two gyms 4 days a week, aside from my coach saying hi to me and occasionally bye to me everyone talks to each other and I'm off to the side effectively invisible. I'm an SCAdian. Every few years I'll email the baron or baroness and the seneschal and say hey I'm going to come to fighter practice, haven't been around, could you introduce me to people. They do and without fail 5 minutes…

> When someone does engage me though, and starts talking about something that interests me, I'll talk their damn ear off.

I catch myself talking too much about stuff I'm interested in, it doesn't help. I have to rein myself in. Cut myself off, ask the other person a question. Also, I don't bring up computers or tech unless they did. Turns out it's a niche subject.

> I've had dates text me after the fact with shitty comments like I was so self obsessed and never once asked them any questions about themselves and I'm like, you brought up a topic and we had an ongoing DIALOGUE for 3 hours where we both said quite a bit...

Talking at great length about something you're interested in isn't fun for the other person, in general, even if they're interested in it too. Perhaps try this, ask them about what they like, then get them to talk about that. Ask followup questions. Remember the answers next time you see them as best you can.

"There's this place that serves your favourite pizza, do you want to go there" or "Hey, isn't that dog one of your favourite breeds?", or "How did you get on at the climbing gym the other day"??

Google "How to talk to people".

> I don't know, I just don't get people I guess.

I'm 40, it took me practice to get to the point I did, and I still have to work at it. It has been rewarding so far.

> I suspect a lot of it comes down to I'm simply not interested in what many people are.

Yes, me neither. I have (self diagnosed) aspergers and/or ADHD. I have to make a game of social stuff, though not to the point that I'm treating people like toys or subjects.

> I'm just like yeahhh no clue.

I just ask questions. Just simple ones, not argueing, or even discussion. Just exploratory. Even if it's something I don't care about. "So, what was it like at your college", "If you had your time agian would you choose the same place", "Do you stay in contact with people from that time?" etc.

It doesn't matter if you're not interested in the answers.

YMMV, good luck.

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