331–340 of 499 posts
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Hiring someone to find hobbies defeats the purpose of hobbies. Why would you want to pursue something that someone else finds enticing rather than you discovering it yourself?
You hire such people to introduce you to ideas and projects. You try some stuff, see what sticks. It's something you can do when you have money and time but no ideas.
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He was in your spot at some point I've heard. Nothing is impossible.
Not for long; he was 25 when Google was founded, it was a billion dollar company not long after. He could've retired when Google went public in 2004.
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Would you mind me asking what age you were when you retired? I'm 28 and five years into my boring corpo career and need something to lust after lol
I'm not doing FIRE, I have children and just live below my means. I'm hoping to retire around 55 assuming the AI bubble doesn't nuke everyones portfolio.
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I took a four-year break from work (2009–2013) and moved to India. The reasons were simple: some family health issues required downtime (though probably not as much as I ended up taking), and I could afford to do this in India in a way I couldn’t in the US. This happened to coincide with the market bottom, but I wasn’t laid off—it was entirely voluntary. I didn’t experience an identity crisis for a single day. I didn…
I am 1,5 years into a break. Haven’t had time to feel bored yet. But I do look forward to a 9-5 job again, just for the structure it provides.
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>For some people, their work/job is just such a big part of their identity, that for them this is a problem. That's only 1/2 of the dynamic. People also like to assign an identity to others . For example, if I say, "I'm semi-retired." ... the follow-up question is always "Oh, so what did you do before that?" ... which is polite coded-speak for, "Did you inherit money or what work did you do for money that put you in…
It's also a low risk topic that can generate lots of follow up questions. It's regular small talk. Also, people here seem to downplay it, but doesn't it tell you a lot about a person what they do roughly half of their waking time? What they chose to do with their life? Sure, you're not your job or your career, but it's also a very normal part about getting to know someone and I'm not sure equating it to some way of g…
Having a natural ebb & flow to conversation is all true but that's not the issue. Let me restate it differently.
It's ok and natural to ask what people do/did for work. It's also natural to respond and share what was a significant aspect of their life.
The meta-observation is: others then like to compress whatever life narrative they hear into a "shorthand" or "identity" -- even if the recipient never intended it to be his/her identity. Several parent comments mention "their work being their identity is the problem". My point is that the identity we get tagged with is often outside of our control and we didn't create the problem of work being our identity.
My neighbors know me as the "ex-consultant". For that identity to change, I'd have to do something new that was significant enough to override that ... such as... get into another career, open a restaurant, become founder of a startup, etc.
How does one have "no identity related to their job"? Sometimes you can't unless one wants to be evasive about what one does to earn money.
If only we all had a time in life to do what we love, get paid, and face no paywalls. I call that "liberated work". If only at least retirement was like that.
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Dreams and hopes are powerful weapons of suppression. Everyone is a millionaire just down on their luck at the moment… In our advanced society, with incredible automation, we should _all_ have vastly more freedom and control over our time.
This is very true but the path to that seems to require a weird optimization where it is concentrated among a few before being being widespread. Technologic improvements should help. Help decouple time and money.
And when does this start being for everyone? We have had agricultural machines for ages, but I still have to pay an ever increasing part of my salary (and hence time here on earth) not to starve.
About a year ago I had an unpleasant and demoralizing experience at work, and thought "fuck it, I don't need to put up with this shit any more" and decided I'd had enough of work for now. In the spring and summer and early fall, it's easy to find enough things to do outside. Right now in the rainy, windy winter it's a bit more difficult. Today I went to the gym at 7am, then did a 2 hour indoor cycling workout at home…
This comment reminded me of a book I read recently - Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anne Lembke. She talks about how pleasure and pain and experienced by the same region of the brain and they need to be balanced. I'd highly recommend reading that book.
Sergey's challenge looks like is not in retiring early or with non-work. We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the a…