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Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#281
Find a hobby or a cause you care about and make it a priority. Learn piano, volunteer, etc. Whatever it is, you have to follow through and show up every day. Learn to cultivate passion rather than chase it.

Stop moving around. Pick a place you like and make it your home. It's impossible to cultivate a mature social circle and a meaningful life if you keep remixing every few years. Feeling connected to where you live is powerful.

Date and make new friends. This will be easier if you're showing up for your new passion everyday and you stopped moving around so often. We're social animals and having friends and family you can count on is critical.

See a therapist. Your feelings are valid, but at some point you've lost context. You have what most people never will, but have forgotten how to appreciate it.

Stop drinking and doing drugs and start exercising. A healthy body and mind are a prerequisite to feeling "well". This gets more and more true the older you get.

Ditch social media. Stop listening to the news. Stop watching TV and movies. All these things have been shown to make people sad and feel the kinds of feelings you're feeling. Read more books and go be in the sun more.

Find a job that isn't always at a desk and involves collaborating with other people. Find a job that involves building things you find meaningful, especially if you can find one that involves working with your hands or involves using your communication skills. Your job is what you spend most of your time doing, and if that's meaningless the rest of your life is going to feel so.

None of these things are going to happen overnight, but a good life is built on small incremental changes happening consistently, one after the other. The best time to plan a tree was 20 years ago, the next best time is right now.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#282
post #9

Put things in perspective. There are people in their 50s that still go to bars and continue until their 70s probably, stopping only because of physical inability. Anyway, that shouldn't be used as a measure is what I'm trying to say. Remember that anything that happens to you has happened to thousands and thousands of men in the past so don't put so much pressure on living. Also, try to see yourself more as an artist…

Also, WTF is wrong with bars? Bars are great. I can't remember what book it was, maybe something by Douglas Coupland (?) He talks about how there was probably some guy just like him in 200 AD, in the Roman Empire, going through exactly what he's going through now. Forgotten to history, all his thoughts. And he's just that guy all over again. Compared to beating the shit out of yourself for not being Mohammed or Gheng…

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Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#283
35 with 500k and you feel lost, I'm 47 single with 15k and I feel ok. This post blows my mind, it's not about money it's about mindset. You can do pretty much anything you want. Find a new hobby, Buy a boat learn to sail, climb mountains, do car racing. I don't know, you have everything, and at 35 you're still young. I wish I had 35 with 500k in savings.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will attest to this being quite poor advice. I think the OP is well aware that a cheap exotic vacation and a scooter are not going to fill the gap he feels.

It is not poor advice. Travel has always rebooted my outlook on life, the way I see things. It is essental.

On the other hand, locales like the one recommended are full of first-world young adults testing the theory that a change of location will fix what ails them with markedly mixed results.

Travel can be great, but travel is at best a sort of emotional palliative care for a person in the OPs situation as I understand it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#285
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t feel the amount of new things you see slows down considerably as you grow older? It’s not that you can’t find novel things any more if you go looking for them, but most everyday things hold no more (or less) excitement. I notice this especially much with my 3 year old son, for whom everything is fascinating. He’ll find out that sticking a bowl upside down in the water and turning it face up will make a lot…

> You don’t feel the amount of new things you see slows down considerably as you grow older? At 44 I have the opposite problem. The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. When I was younger I had the ego of a young person and thought I was always on the cusp of knowing it all. As I got older I realized I was simply unaware. It's a bit cliché, but I started approaching everything, even things I 'knew' with a b…

> The more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. When I was younger I had the ego of a young person and thought I was always on the cusp of knowing it all. As I got older I realized I was simply unaware.

This rings truer to me than anything else posted here. I feel exactly the same way right now, (in my late thirties) as if I suddenly realize I spent my life going deep rather than broad and that there’s a whole world of opportunities out there to be a beginner again, with the same enthusiasm as a much younger person (but now with resources!). The struggle of trying new things has completely changed my outlook.

My advice: try things you thought looked interesting but never thought you’d be good at.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#287
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm older than you. The code I write and the production systems I've brought online tend to stick around. It's because I pour my heart and soul into making them as beautiful and poetic as possible. Because I'm not just thinking about my paycheck. I'm thinking about the next guy who's going to be maintaining it, and how good his life is going to be, after I've moved on to a different project, and then the next guy. I…

It sounds like you haven't had the experience of being fired without notice, with one month of rent in savings. Companies literally don't care whether you die. Why would you pour your heart and soul into something so soulless? When I felt as you did, it ended up causing interpersonal conflicts when my vision of "good" didn't match my coworkers'. If you pour your heart and soul into something, and then everyone disagr…

Companies normally don't fire a crackerjack but that happened to me back in the 2000's during one of the more vulnerable parts of my life. The vice president who recruited me took a higher paying gig at a competitor. Then my manager went on a weeklong vacation. I showed up to work one day and found that my computer couldn't access the network. I asked the IT guy what happened and with a bead of sweat rolling down his forehead he was like, uhh talk to the new VP. Turns out first day on the job, he decided to can me. When my manager came back from vacation and learned what they'd done, he immediately tendered his resignation. Really unfortunate. But I checked and they're still using my code.

But it doesn't matter, because one goofball VP doesn't shake my faith in myself and the meaningfulness of the work that myself and my colleagues are doing. You might have lost faith but that doesn't mean other people should too. The GP wasn't just musing about his own life. He very explicitly said you and came across as saying your life doesn't matter if work is the thing that matters to you, because your work will never matter unless you're Gates. I don't accept that and I won't empathize with that conclusion. Because it's demoralizing and insulting to everyone who's working hard. If his truth was accepted as everyone's truth, then could you imagine how unpleasant the world would be? The simple fact is that your family matters and your work matters too. Regardless of whatever misfortune or doom and gloom you may have encountered on your journey.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#288
Turning 30 was a lot harder than turning 40 or 50. While what I experienced wasn't how I understand a typical midlife crisis manifests, but I usually refer to it as my early onset midlife crisis.

Both turning 40 and turning 50 was much easier. In fact, turning 50 hardly registered beyond "whoa, was that my 40s done with already? Okay".

I got out of my 30 year crisis by starting to challenge myself in other fields. I've always been eager to learn, but around 30 I realized that I should make an effort to understand things that are outside my chosen field and try to do them well. And I sometimes did. The failures I didn't obsess over. Let it go, move on. And it became somewhat addictive. I try new things every year. Some things stick, others are just interesting experiences.

I also noticed the importance of changing fields regularly. On average I tend to stay in a field for 5-6 years before going off to do something I usually don't know much about when I start. In fact, approaching a new field is in itself a skill that has great value.

I've had roles from developer in a startup to VP in a large company. Having experience from many fields, and from very different roles builds a kind of general, broad expertise that is very useful. It can also make you comfortable with situations that most people would find extremely challenging.

You have to build some form of psychological resilience. Learn to accept the things you can't do anything about, and focus on what you CAN do and what you have to do. Complain if you must, but make sure that it isn't your inner focus. Don't let feelings of hopelessness take root. You have the capacity for doing a lot more than you think, but hopelessness and self-pity can block your view of that.

Along the way I had kidney failure, 2 years of dialysis and eventually a kidney transplant in my early to mid 40s. This is where the psychological resilience I had developed since my 30s paid off. Sure, I was physically in such bad shape and one point I couldn't walk half a mile to the store without having to sit down and rest for 15 minutes twice along the way. I slept 14 hours per day and I nearly died a couple of times.

Years later, most of my memories from that period are about the things I did. Not my medical hardships. And I did accomplish a lot in those years.

(Observation: a lot of people who were just acquaintances stopped by and spent time with me when it looked like there was a good chance I was going to die. This taught me something important: you may not fully understand to whom you are important and how many people appreciate you. You have the chance to show them appreciation. No kidney failure needed :-)).

As for the social aspects, having been with my wife for 27 years now I know nothing about dating. Not that I ever did. Sorry. Can't help you there.

I'm dubious about the advice to get kids. It feels a bit immoral and self-serving to tell someone to create a life just to solve some problem you are having. I think one should treat human life with a bit more respect than that. It's not a pet and you should have kids for the right reasons.

If you try out new things (work, hobbies, interests) those are generally how you meet new people when you are an adult.

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#289

I am 46 and I feel the same. I fill in all the advice tick boxes. Excellent physical health. I work out frequently and have no ailments other than slightly autistic personality. Great job and well compensated for it. Great economy, own my own place. Have adult child that has moved out and is doing well. On paper, I am doing extremely well. Inside, I wake up every morning really sorry I am still alive. This pointless…

I am not your age, so perhaps don't have your perapective but if money isn't a big worry, do you plan to make any changes? A friend of mine at about your age took a break from his job and enrolled to the community college for courses to be a mechanic. He doesn't want to be one professionally but just wanted to learn. When I went through my divorce in my early 30s, I wanted to be social and did lot of meetups with people my age then, just trying to create more chances to meet new people, was surprised to see many people that were in a similar place in life and wanted similar things as me.

On the longer timeline, do retirement, grand kids, spending your saved up money on things you find interesting then excite you?

Re: Ask HN: How do you deal with getting old and feeling lost?

#290
You might be experiencing a mid-life crisis (assuming you are not undergoing depression). Fortunately, I found what I was experiencing by just openly talking about my feelings to my friends (and not spouse/girlfriend).

For me something snapped one day after age 35. I was relatively successful, married and I suddenly lost interest in my work or any kind of work. Even retired for 6-9 months, only to come out extremely bored - pledging that I would never ever take a retirement. It took me 3 more years to understand what was happening - I felt that at 38 too, and ideally it was still too early to experience a mid life crisis.

Some tips based on my experience:

1. Take very good care of your health. Regularly exercise (including at least some resistance training) and mostly healthy food. Measure health parameters. 2. Rule out any medical illness and/or deficiencies. Get a full body checkup done (including a detailed blood/urine tests). Do not cut corners here, but if not recommended, you could skip tests involving radiation. 3. For a month or two - take less stress (don't overperform or even try to overperform) and find periods of emptiness. After some time fill in those times with some activity that you love to do - doesn't matter how illogical it sounds. Let your intuition guide you. Make notes weekly. 4. On the work side, try to get into a management role. My situation was a little different, I was not an employee.

I do not know whether I am out of the woods(at early 40s), or just got used to the new reality. But I do feel quite better and may have made significant progress - only time will tell.

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