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> Being a middle class grown up is not inspiring. Work, code, moderate exercise (no more football), meetings, dinner, pay bond, repeat. Its been pretty much th

> Being a middle class grown up is not inspiring. Work, code, moderate exercise (no more football), meetings, dinner, pay bond, repeat. Its been pretty much the same for the last 15 years in my case. I'm only in my late 20s, and I have a friend group that I gather is unusually social, but I sense this type of malaise in my friends too. I don't understand it at all! I have personal projects in fields I'm no good at, I play and write music, I play intramural sports, I'm learning another language, I read voraciously, I periodically take sabbaticals to do extended travel... My problem is that there aren't enough hours in a year. I can't personally relate to the notion that life is unchallenging, and I would like to understand it. Sure, unlike in school, stimulation won't force itself on you ad mandatory, but that seems like a weak complaint. One of the only explanations I have for it is that working too much leaves people too mentally exhausted to do much else with their time. If I was stuck with 40 hrs/wk + 2 wks vacation a year I would be pretty miserable, and it occurs to me that this is something I had to recognize and take action on personally. And note that I'm not talking about lower-income folk, for whom "work less, make less" may be unrealistic. As you mentioned, we're talking about middle class or higher. I've heard that other industries can be far less flexible in terms of how accepting they are of unconventional schedules like time off on between work. Does that fully explain the mismatch you're describing between "I feel unstimulated and yet don't have stimulating hobbies while also having the extra resources to buy the extra time in which to do these hobbies"? Sorry if this is sort of rambling, but it's something I've been wondering about for at least a few years. I used to think I was odd for not being cut out for the de jure work schedule of the US (not even talking about extra work), but it seems far more universal, even if people won't admit it to themselves and thus do something about it.

mmsimanga 9y ago
Your rant is justified and I will take it as wake up call. I am 41, played rugby until I was 30. Now I have a bond, child and in Africa you can't exactly pick and chose your job. There is a post below that captures my sentiments, the cost of living is high. All manner of taxes, interest on bond repayments, utilities like cable, school fees. I cannot take any more time off work or take sabbaticals. Yes I diligently read every post on passive income. Wealth as in number of days you can survive without a salary the deciding factor in staying put. I have a good job and mostly like it but honestly I will not be waking up with same vigor I did in my youth. Final thought, the source of my anxiety right now is that it is 10pm and I need to go sleep to be fresh for my Monday morning project update meeting. A meeting where I will have to answer pointy haired boss (Dilbert) style questions. Edit: grammar
dnissley 9y ago
If I was stuck with 40 hrs/wk + 2 wks vacation a year I would be pretty miserable, and it occurs to me that this is something I had to recognize and take action on personally. Well don't keep us in suspense, what'd you do about this?
- Joe-Z 9y ago
  Can't speak for the OP, but what I did is I found me a job where I only work part-time. At the moment I'm working 30 hours / week, although I had it at 26 / week last year and found this to be optimal to be honest. I still get to do software engineering, which I love, but I also have enough time on my hands to... basically not feel stressed all the time. (I'm certainly not as active as my parent poster, but I try to be engaged in different activities as well). I figured this out very early on in my work-life after falling into depression after my first work year, which prompted me to re-adjust some things in my life. After I got myself back together I looked for a job to get into it again and have been with my current company almost 3 years now. EDIT: Oh, also where I'm from there's 5 mandatory vacation weeks per year, so that helps too. I still try to take all my overtime (which I do still accumulate! :)) in time- rather than money-compensation though.
- wutbrodo 9y ago
  The initial way that I solved it was periodic, extended sabbaticals (the first one was 15 mos, but that's obviously a little extreme: I like taking 4-6 mos off between jobs). Since then, I've moved to smaller companies that are more conducive to healthier work schedules. I gather that the marginal sale of an hour of labor isn't perfectly efficient, but fundamentally you are still selling hours of labor and there should be some point between 0 and 40 that an employer would want to buy for some value between 0 and $[full salary]. If you can imagine making 20% less without being horribly financially insecure, then trading that top 20% for something that you consider worth it should be doable. This is obviously more feasible with smaller companies, where the cost of managing custom employee contracts isn't infeasible and they're able to be more pragmatic about win-win situations. My current employer is getting someone of my skills for a steal, even if I'm not working a full 40, and I'm getting a work environment that's more than worth the lost salary. In my current job, I make about 35% less than I did in my last job (incl. expected value of equity). This is probably an outlier due to various details of my career. But it's illustrative of how much I'm willing to walk the talk, since I was very clear on the reasons for the switch and decided that they were worth the cost to me. I'm not suggesting that everyone has a magical dream job waiting for them at the perfect point on the salary/quality-of-life spectrum. I'm just saying that, at least among all the people I know, it's a lot more in your hands than a lot of people realize (with the caveat reiterated that some industries are just too slow and dumb collectively to treat workers as anything but inflexible cogs.

mmsimanga 9y ago

Your rant is justified and I will take it as wake up call. I am 41, played rugby until I was 30. Now I have a bond, child and in Africa you can't exactly pick and chose your job. There is a post below that captures my sentiments, the cost of living is high. All manner of taxes, interest on bond repayments, utilities like cable, school fees. I cannot take any more time off work or take sabbaticals. Yes I diligently read every post on passive income. Wealth as in number of days you can survive without a salary the deciding factor in staying put. I have a good job and mostly like it but honestly I will not be waking up with same vigor I did in my youth. Final thought, the source of my anxiety right now is that it is 10pm and I need to go sleep to be fresh for my Monday morning project update meeting. A meeting where I will have to answer pointy haired boss (Dilbert) style questions. Edit: grammar

dnissley 9y ago

If I was stuck with 40 hrs/wk + 2 wks vacation a year I would be pretty miserable, and it occurs to me that this is something I had to recognize and take action on personally. Well don't keep us in suspense, what'd you do about this?

Joe-Z 9y ago
Can't speak for the OP, but what I did is I found me a job where I only work part-time. At the moment I'm working 30 hours / week, although I had it at 26 / week last year and found this to be optimal to be honest. I still get to do software engineering, which I love, but I also have enough time on my hands to... basically not feel stressed all the time. (I'm certainly not as active as my parent poster, but I try to be engaged in different activities as well). I figured this out very early on in my work-life after falling into depression after my first work year, which prompted me to re-adjust some things in my life. After I got myself back together I looked for a job to get into it again and have been with my current company almost 3 years now. EDIT: Oh, also where I'm from there's 5 mandatory vacation weeks per year, so that helps too. I still try to take all my overtime (which I do still accumulate! :)) in time- rather than money-compensation though.
wutbrodo 9y ago
The initial way that I solved it was periodic, extended sabbaticals (the first one was 15 mos, but that's obviously a little extreme: I like taking 4-6 mos off between jobs). Since then, I've moved to smaller companies that are more conducive to healthier work schedules. I gather that the marginal sale of an hour of labor isn't perfectly efficient, but fundamentally you are still selling hours of labor and there should be some point between 0 and 40 that an employer would want to buy for some value between 0 and $[full salary]. If you can imagine making 20% less without being horribly financially insecure, then trading that top 20% for something that you consider worth it should be doable. This is obviously more feasible with smaller companies, where the cost of managing custom employee contracts isn't infeasible and they're able to be more pragmatic about win-win situations. My current employer is getting someone of my skills for a steal, even if I'm not working a full 40, and I'm getting a work environment that's more than worth the lost salary. In my current job, I make about 35% less than I did in my last job (incl. expected value of equity). This is probably an outlier due to various details of my career. But it's illustrative of how much I'm willing to walk the talk, since I was very clear on the reasons for the switch and decided that they were worth the cost to me. I'm not suggesting that everyone has a magical dream job waiting for them at the perfect point on the salary/quality-of-life spectrum. I'm just saying that, at least among all the people I know, it's a lot more in your hands than a lot of people realize (with the caveat reiterated that some industries are just too slow and dumb collectively to treat workers as anything but inflexible cogs.