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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’

#321

Post by bpizzi »

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…

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

That could be starting point, imho.

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

#323

Post by TheBeardKing »

csomar wrote: post #283
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.…

> Pair up That could be challenging for many people for multiple reasons. Have you considered the possibility that you found (by luck) a rather exceptional partner and thus your model could not be replicated on the society at large.

Nah, the notion of holding out for "the one" is overrated and just makes you pass over plenty of acceptable candidates. Everyone has flaws and overlapping interests isn't really necessary either. Just find someone you find attractive, who's in your league, and who shares your values and work at it, you'll be fine. I hear the divorce rate of arranged marriages is pretty low.

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

#324

Post by deogeo »

csomar wrote: post #283
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.…

> Pair up That could be challenging for many people for multiple reasons. Have you considered the possibility that you found (by luck) a rather exceptional partner and thus your model could not be replicated on the society at large.

But pairing up has been replicated in many societies at large.

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

#325

Post by rolleiflex »

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…

I think we in the west ended up replacing religion with, not an absence of it, but with a religion of the Self — where you are the god, or the only one that matters anyway.

That obviously doesn’t mean a sincere belief in one’s own omniscience, more that the the aura of ‘importance’ bestowed upon things naturally emanate from the centre of the Universe, which is you.

Mind that humans are already pretty much hardwired to do this. Removing external factors of pressure and adding validation in the form of the mass market gospel of ‘find yourself’ just made this a lot more visible.

Funny enough, the people who end up going down to the deep end of this road of finding yourself often find that there is nothing to find, since all your life, you’ve spent it looking for yourself and you never added anything to it. It’s an empty box. You’re the pot at the end of the rainbow that you never thought you needed to put gold into.

From there, people usually split to a few branches. The more transcendentalist amongst us call it the Buddha, the folks with a more philosophical bent call it existential nausea.

The more practical, most of us, go ‘oh.’ and they move on with their lives. Which is probably the most healthy way, anyway.

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

#326

Post by Bamafan »

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…

>> "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."

All of this. Also, I'd bet more than a few of her friends in relationships with homes are jealous of her! They probably have a false impression of how exciting her life is.

Also, I am happy you were able to get out of your DV situation and can see your kids. Can't imagine what that must have been like.

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

#327

Post by jancsika »

> It’s okay to be in debt and worried.

Not in this case. With no family/child obligations, the short term goal-- and, depending on the size of the debt, midterm goal-- needs to be paying down the debt.

Just take the example of the measly two-nights-in-a-hotel savings. Without debt she could freely decide to save for a month or two and increase that number by one or two orders of magnitude (depending on current job's income). Ahhh.

With debt that savings cannot increase. No decisions are available to make.

Sorry to be flippant but getting out of debt is the only option here. Giving any other advice would be like talking chess strategy to someone eternally stuck playing tic-tac-toe.

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

#328

Post by J-dawg »

thwy12321 wrote: post #268
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…

This is the elephant in the room that most people don't want to discuss. Young women get confused, they are able to "short term date" men out of their league and so then balk at men who are their equals. I've seen a number of awkward marriage dynamics where the women was used to dating men of higher caliber than the man she married.

Of all the elephants in the room when it comes to modern tech-enabled dating, this is possibly the biggest and ugliest.

The thought of ending up as one of those husbands genuinely makes my skin crawl. Imagine the woman you adore secretly resenting you for not measuring up to those alpha dudes she met on Tinder and dated for a few weeks at a time.

I sometimes wonder if we’ll see total change in relationship dynamics in my lifetime. Perhaps even a return to a “harem” system, where women decide that sharing a very high-value man is preferable to having a low-value one all to herself.

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

#329

Post by harias »

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…

Thank you for sharing the other perspective. I am a sophomore in university and there is a lot to choose. Reading posts like yours make me even more confused. I just assumed that people generally have stuff figured out in their 20's. I don't have student loans to pay-off, no debts and can get placed in a big tech company (pursuing a CS degree at a top 10 college in my country) with relative ease. But for what? To optimize ads? Starting to think that I should join an NGO or use my technical skills to help humanity somehow.

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

#330

Post by astrocat »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #310
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 easy to blame other people. The fact of the matter is, my generation drinks the "quit your job, sell everything, and boat around the world to find yourself" kool-aid because they like it. Even here we'll get a few blog posts a month from a one-man-show who's just got their start-up off the ground -- or alternatively, the one that's just burst into flames. It's the same story. "I keep putting all my money into lo…

It's also easy to look down on others from a position of moral superiority. Yeah, it's the same story, but why is the behavior so wildly rampant now when it wasn't previously? I seriously push back on the position that "nobody romanticizes it" - the self-made entrepreneur, the kid who backpacked around Africa for two years then started a successful NGO and now gets to meet celebrities every day (this is completely made up) - the point is, our culture DOES romanticize this, and frames it all in the context of "they followed their passion!" or some other baloney like that.

I have two kids, and the ONE THING I try the hardest to teach them is personal responsibility. Yet I recognize that generally the term "personal responsibility" is kind of used as a gatekeeping term against the poor and the young. Whatever their problems are, they are self-imposed as they lack personal responsibility. Sympathy, compassion, charity not required.

Every generation of parents is a generation of first-time parents. The best we can do is learn from past generations. I don't see any harm in identifying causes and effects of generational shifts in parenting style in order to better correct for the next round.

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