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Don't Waste the Good Days

seths.blog

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Re: Don't Waste the Good Days

#61

Post by thn-gap »

ryandrake wrote: post #41

I feel like there is wisdom in "Make hay while the sun shines." When you're young and unencumbered by responsibility and family, when your cognitive abilities are at their peak, when your energy is endless, when your body is strong and healthy, when your knees work, and your fingers can type without arthritis: that's the optimal time to work and earn. Min-max that salary and stay healthy. Due to compounding interest,…

My constant dilemma these days is whether to focus more of my young years in new experiences and fun, or if I'll regret it later because I should have invested in a more financial goal. Because the future where I'll see the consequences materialize is so far in the future, and because by then, I'll be too far from choosing another path.

After all, you only have one life.

Re: Don't Waste the Good Days

#62

Post by weird-eye-issue »

JCharante wrote: post #47
mrkentutbabi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you get the visa to stay in Bali for 8 years? Genuine question. What nationality are you?

Is it hard to stay there for that long? Most people just keep doing visa runs on 3 month tourist visas in SEA. The Bangkok visa run is a treasured pilgramage.

You can't visa run in Thailand anymore, it's been like that for several years now and especially not recently with covid. Immigration won't let you in arbitrarily if they see you doing visa runs "too much". Too much is at their discretion so you can't rely on it

Re: Don't Waste the Good Days

#63

Post by helloworld »

pl0x wrote: post #28

Seth Godin is one of those "thought leaders" who has no real life experience besides selling "thoughts". He has the world of time selling his books and has been wrong on most of his predictions.

Actually, back in the day, Seth Godin was an early -- and successful -- Internet entrepreneur:

https://www.wired.com/1998/10/yahoo-acquiring-yoyodyne/

Re: Don't Waste the Good Days

#65

Post by cortesoft »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #22

Pithy, but true. It's only half the story, though. Moderation and balance are the real key. Overwork is not good in the long term. But underwork can also be a problem, even when employers let it slide. Starting in my 30s, my friends who operated in the extremes of overwork or underwork started to diverge from everyone else. Overworked people were burnt out and had few friends and social connections left. Underworking…

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Re: Don't Waste the Good Days

#66

Post by bathtub365 »

derekp7 wrote: post #56
nightowl_games wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd have played fewer video games, traveled less, and relaxed on the beach less. This seems totally opposite of what old people say on their death bed. You sound so obsessed with money here. My guess is your probably very wealthy relative to the average peer and your too naive to realize it. You have to keep telling yourself this philosophy to justify not wind surfing in Bali. You think your gonna wind surf when yo…

The truth is, no matter what path you take in life, you can find yourself wishing that you took a different path.

I saw this posted elsewhere on HN and it really resonated with me.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

Sylvia Plath

Re: Don't Waste the Good Days

#67

Post by bebop »

shove wrote: post #9

Reminds me of one of my favorite poems (which expressed a similar idea far more eloquently imo) Telephone Booth (number 905 1/2) BY PEDRO PIETRI woke up this morning feeling excellent, picked up the telephone dialed the number of my equal opportunity employer to inform him I will not be into work today Are you feeling sick? the boss asked me No Sir I replied: I am feeling too good to report to work today, if I feel s…

Thank you so much for including Pedro Pietri’s poem! I have not heard that poem for 15+ years and it brought back some wonderful nostalgia from my teenage years!

Re: Don't Waste the Good Days

#68

Post by basedgod »

ryandrake wrote: post #41

I feel like there is wisdom in "Make hay while the sun shines." When you're young and unencumbered by responsibility and family, when your cognitive abilities are at their peak, when your energy is endless, when your body is strong and healthy, when your knees work, and your fingers can type without arthritis: that's the optimal time to work and earn. Min-max that salary and stay healthy. Due to compounding interest,…

yes let's spend our 20s and 30s hoarding money and never doing anything fun, then when we're older and tied down with spouses and kids and aging parents we have a gigantic pile of money we can use to go on slightly "better" vacations one week a year

I don't think there's a single dying person on the planet that wishes they experienced life less in favour of making stacks.

Re: Don't Waste the Good Days

#69

Post by tayo42 »

bathtub365 wrote: post #66
derekp7 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The truth is, no matter what path you take in life, you can find yourself wishing that you took a different path.

I saw this posted elsewhere on HN and it really resonated with me. “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and a…

every post here in this post is triggering an existential crisis for me. oh what to do...

Re: Don't Waste the Good Days

#70

Post by carpanddoem »

amznbyebyebye wrote: post #25

People look at me like I’m insane when I tell them I’m packing up and taking a year off. I’ve f’in had enough. And that’s me, the wife and our two kids- not quite school age. No I haven’t FIREd. No I’m probably passing up a raise and a promo (or maybe not). Super linear growth requires super linear decision making. You either follow the sheeple or decide enough is enough and make some drastic change. Im not getting t…

Congratulations, hope you have a great time! I took an adult gap year, and it was one of the best decisions of my life.

Life in an American suburb is a series of goalposts. Every few years, a new school. Then you go to college, find yourself, and discover that a career is more of the same: every few years, a new promotion/job/grant.

When I realized that, I figured that my joints and back would be at least as ageist as my future employers, and quit. Having watched a lot of Top Gear in school, I bought a dirt bike, modified an old pickup into a mini-RV, and went on a tour of the US' forests and national parks.

It was incredible. Exploring such an enormous and diverse area presents you with a lot of new perspectives. Of course, it was a terrible financial decision which I couldn't really afford, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

As I enter my 30s and start to see my peers get seriously hurt by activities like skiing and climbing, I find myself scaling back my "see the whole world" ambitions. Maybe I played things too safe, but I'm definitely glad that I didn't stay in my rut.

Anyways, it's nice to have a chance to contemplate your place in life and society while you're still spry enough to shurg off a few falls. Even my grandmother took an ill-advised teens-20s road trip across the iron curtain. A good walkabout should be a basic human right.

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