6 ms·

Trying to get back on track in life

17 points by morpheos137 5y ago

I am really socially, vocationally, and intellectually alienated and I have been for a while (years). I don't feel that bad day to day but I do feel bad that it seems that life is passing me by. I am not working or earning anywhere near my potential or interacting with people as I should be. I was wondering if the community here, such as it is, has any tips for daily exercises or practices that can help me get back on track in a kaizen or incremental way a little bit every day. For example I am so alienated, I don't even know what goals I would like to pursue. I have been interested in technology and computers for years and have some experience with Unix SA, programming and networking but at a hobbyist than at a professional level. The cloud and countainers and all the programing fads and stuff are actually becoming off-putting to me. I see the space (CS / SE) as increasingly over saturated with bullshit. This puts me off from wanting to learn more and try to find work in the sector. Maybe something more applied like embedded or graphics processing or GIS mapping or numerical processing would be interesting but frankly I am beginning to find the cutting edge of most of what is talked about here on HN to be off putting. It seems like fantasy and free money is driving work rather than real innovation or utility. Anyway right now I am working a low skill "dead end" job not in computers or tech and am trying to figure out how to apply myself a little bit every day during the time when I am not working, to get into a better position in life. Maybe a good job in tech would be something to aim for. Maybe something outside of tech. I have a BA from a number of years ago... I have found therapy to be utterly useless for addressing real problems. I have a dysfunctional and semi-estranged family and extremely minimal social support outside of family. I live away from my parents who are older and checked out. 30s...going on 18 still waiting to "start" life...

premium-komodo 5y ago
Well, it's hard to evaluate a complex situation like yours, but I get the sense that you're doing a lot of outward searching for good things, e.g., searching for a good job, satisfying interactions with others, interesting topics that could be studied for a long time, etc. Let me suggest that you may be finding this search discouraging because you've gained perspective. I was obsessed with computers for 20 years, and I just can't see them the way I used to because I just don't think the big wins lie in some new web site or app or database or whatever. There's a good book called _The Path to Nibbana_ that describes a practice I've found helpful. It's about reducing craving. Reducing craving allows there to be contentment and equanimity, and a different kind of happiness than most people are used to in that it doesn't depend on anything. In any case, whatever you do, I hope you'll feel better.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  Kind of feel my day to day problem is that I am too content with circumstances where others would not be content. Sometimes "suffering" can motivate change. If you are content with everything why not just lie down and die? I don't mean you personally I mean in general. I respect mindfullness and Buddhist ideas but I think I am more naturally toward the equanimity side of spectrum (at least emotionally speaking) and this results in inertia which results in existential angst when I see years go by and I don't accomplish anything. I appreciate your heartfelt comment and I will check out the book. If I lived in 1221 I would probably be a monk or something...lol...maybe I can still be...I don't really have the religion though...kind of nice the idea of having a life with few worries that inertia today will lead to future pain.
  - bs_alumna 5y ago
    Ahimsa is the central idea of Buddhism. The idea is to avoid harm to others and to avoid harm to yourself. I would begin by introducing a healthy respect for living beings because currently, you're trapped in a self-harming cycle of pain, angst, and thoughts of death.
  - meiraleal 5y ago
    > If you are content with everything why not just lie down and die? Because life is about happiness? If you find what makes you happy every day, why die and have these great days going for waste? With this mindset, the bad days also don't become that bad, because you have the experience of the great days of the past.
  - rthomas6 5y ago
    What you are describing is not equanimity, because there is an attachment to not working/relaxing. When you ask why not just lie down and die if you are content with everything, you could just as easily ask why not work really hard if you are content with everything? Because if you really have equanimity, working hard would cause no less contentment and no less suffering. A big part of mindfulness is narrowing down your reality to only this moment, because that is really all that's real. The past isn't real and the future isn't real. It's not about accepting "your life" because that's not actually a real thing. Right now is all that is. All context is actually fully contained in this moment. So one can accept and be at peace with what is happening right now and see it for what it is, then, thus informed, make and follow a plan. But each moment has it own independent meaning and is an ending in itself. There is no final goal because it's always right now, so the rational approach is to always pay attention to what IS.
aww_dang 5y ago
Does running your own business appeal to you? Consider a position in hard-sell sales to give yourself a different perspective. A more aggressive approach might give you a better idea of how consumers think. You don't have to deal with the latest trends, resume driven development or corporate nonsense if you work for yourself. Web development is an open landscape for adventurers.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  Running a business may appeal to me. I am not sure if I am really wired to be a sales guy though. I am more of an introverted, analytic thinker. A few years ago I sold several tens of thousands of dollars of stuff on Ebay over the course of a year. Then I got out when it stopped being profitable. But starting a business from the ground up is a different ball game. I could probably learn the skills to be a competitive "Web-Dev" for local businesses. It is a really low capital requirements business to start. Basically 100% knowledge. The thing is, once a business has a website they don't need a new one too often. My local market may be pretty well saturated. I supposed that I could sell to the wider world. My niche would be minimalism. It really irks me how bloated the modern web is. Problem may be that most businesses think they need 5 mb of javascript to look professional. Maybe I could use CSS for professional looking, light weight pages.
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    You can sell Saas or create opportunities in other niches. Web-dev with clients seems like a headache. You'll be catering to their desire for the latest trends and buzzwords, returning you to some of your dislikes. As to minimalism, page speed is a ranking factor. Concerning introversion, challenging yourself with sales will help you out of that. Once you understand this process you might better appreciate the opportunities available. If you're looking for change, challenge yourself.
- beforeolives 5y ago
  I would anti-recommend running your own business to people with little direction and/or mental health problems. The stability of a regular job is incredibly valuable to someone like this.
op03 5y ago
Why have you found therapy useless? Our chimp mind is not well suited to do SELF analysis for various reasons. The danger here, while you are stuck in some hole, is that the ever imaginative chimp mind comes up with self analysis that is pure bullshit. Then things get more and more tricky. The hole gets deeper and deeper. You need people around you who can call out the bullshit and help you climb out of the hole you have wondered into. If you don't have an authority figure or someone you respect in your life who can do it then finding an experienced therapist will help. Even monks have authority figures around them who keep them on track.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
keiferski 5y ago
Try to get yourself into tech company that is working on interesting, future-oriented problems. Clean energy, robotics, medicine, biotech, self-driving cars, etc. These organizations always need a ton of administrative and non-technical staff. On a daily basis, I think starting small and incrementally improving is very underrated. It’s easy to look at a large ill-defined problem, feel intimidated, and not make any progress whatsoever. You have to break things down into smaller pieces. As an example: If your goal is to run a 5K, start by running 100 meters on day 1. That’s it. This will take a minute or two, at maximum. Add 100 meters every day...and in about a month and a half, you’ll be there. That’s not a long time. Whatever your professional or personal goals are, try and think about them from a similar perspective. It might be applying to one job (+1 everyday) or spending 5 minutes learning how to code (+5 minutes everyday.) If you share more about your skills or interests, I can try to offer more targeted advice.
quickthrower2 5y ago
On the tech side: My advice is try a few courses and go with the thing you love. The thing you get addicted to. Could be mobile dev, front end, hardware, building PCs, etc. There is a lot of work ahead for you to get what you want. Easiest way is to enjoy the ride. It’s ok if it’s not tech. Fixing up houses for example can be profitable and rewarding.
impendia 5y ago
One thing I have found invigorating when feeling down is showing up to something. Anything: tech meetups, hobby groups, group exercise classes... any event hosted in someone else's space, ideally at least somewhat unfamiliar to you. The pandemic may make this difficult for now; where I live, a lot of these events are suspended or only happening over Zoom. Still, this has often been something that has helped me get out of my own head. Best of luck to you.
giantg2 5y ago
I would just say tough it out. Who cares if you aren't living up to your potential? Most people don't. I'm tired of people always expecting more from me. "The cloud and countainers and all the programing fads and stuff are actually becoming off-putting to me. I see the space (CS / SE) as increasingly over saturated with bullshit. This puts me off from wanting to learn more and try to find work in the sector." Me too. Whenever I learn stuff, it just ends up being one time use, throw away. Why bother learning it?
- lst90 5y ago
  @OP: Yes. Here's another account of a person - me - eating life's lemons by grinding throughout life: - I, too, have a dysfunctional family (heavy physical and psychological abuse). (My father beat up my mother and us now estranged siblings until we were blue and crying. Additionally, our mother beat us up too and abused us psychologically. I am not only estranged to my siblings, I am also estranged to my other relatives. So, I have close to no social support like you.) - Yes, compared to my peers, I am fairly behind things. I am late to the "party" called life. I am studying CS and by the time I complete my degree, I will near my mid 30s. Prior to that, I worked in dead end jobs like you as well (not in tech, not with computers). No idea how my remaining life will fold out after I manage to graduate from school with a CS degree. I have to compete with the 22-year-old fresh graduates and my peers my age who are very likely well beyond my skill-level (due to more experience). Anyhow, the "domino comment" from muzani is helpful. Reminds me of a chapter from the book "Algorithms to Live By". @giantg2: Yeah, I feel the same. Most of the stuff coming up in tech are short-lived things. I noticed that especially in web development. That's why I focus on fundamental subjects: math, algorithms (including various rendering, deep learning algorithms). So I don't learn APIs that go obsolete (like in the case of OpenGL. C, C++, SDL, Python, JavaScript, Bash are enough for most of my purposes. I call this "essentialism" as I try to learn long-lasting things. E.g. a rendering algorithm I learned the other day will work no matter how many years will pass. Unlike frameworks/APIs that depreciate fast. I just need to encode that algorithm in a programming language that's it.) @ALL: PS: HN hates postings like mine, b/c it is not adding value to the community according to some HNers. I would like to therefore apologize to those HNers who feel that HN content should be only tech-focused and no "touchy-feely" subjects. HN has apparently a low tolerance for "touchy-feely" subjects. Or maybe I am missing something here. Not sure... My purpose with this comment was to tell OP that he/she is not alone with this.
muzani 5y ago
"I was wondering if the community here, such as it is, has any tips for daily exercises or practices that can help me get back on track in a kaizen or incremental way a little bit every day." I recommend the book The ONE Thing, Gary Keller: https://www.amazon.com/ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordinary-Results/dp/1885167776 https://www.amazon.com/ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordinary-... The short of it is exactly what you asked for - working incrementally on one small thing. The core of it is a domino effect, where a small thing pushes over a bigger domino. Most of the advice is on how to pick the next dominos. You pick a large epic goal, as a purpose, and a smaller one, which is your priority, and then line them up. A lot of people were made in a few years, so really, you just need about 10 years to achieve your dream whatever it is. It sounds like you have more skills than most people your age; don't compare yourself too harshly with HN in general.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  Thanks for the advice. I will be sure to check out the book.
runawaybottle 5y ago
Commit to doing Coursera courses and Leetcode. There are no easy answers here.

17 points by morpheos137 5y ago

premium-komodo 5y ago

Well, it's hard to evaluate a complex situation like yours, but I get the sense that you're doing a lot of outward searching for good things, e.g., searching for a good job, satisfying interactions with others, interesting topics that could be studied for a long time, etc. Let me suggest that you may be finding this search discouraging because you've gained perspective. I was obsessed with computers for 20 years, and I just can't see them the way I used to because I just don't think the big wins lie in some new web site or app or database or whatever. There's a good book called _The Path to Nibbana_ that describes a practice I've found helpful. It's about reducing craving. Reducing craving allows there to be contentment and equanimity, and a different kind of happiness than most people are used to in that it doesn't depend on anything. In any case, whatever you do, I hope you'll feel better.

morpheos137 5y ago
Kind of feel my day to day problem is that I am too content with circumstances where others would not be content. Sometimes "suffering" can motivate change. If you are content with everything why not just lie down and die? I don't mean you personally I mean in general. I respect mindfullness and Buddhist ideas but I think I am more naturally toward the equanimity side of spectrum (at least emotionally speaking) and this results in inertia which results in existential angst when I see years go by and I don't accomplish anything. I appreciate your heartfelt comment and I will check out the book. If I lived in 1221 I would probably be a monk or something...lol...maybe I can still be...I don't really have the religion though...kind of nice the idea of having a life with few worries that inertia today will lead to future pain.
- bs_alumna 5y ago
  Ahimsa is the central idea of Buddhism. The idea is to avoid harm to others and to avoid harm to yourself. I would begin by introducing a healthy respect for living beings because currently, you're trapped in a self-harming cycle of pain, angst, and thoughts of death.
- meiraleal 5y ago
  > If you are content with everything why not just lie down and die? Because life is about happiness? If you find what makes you happy every day, why die and have these great days going for waste? With this mindset, the bad days also don't become that bad, because you have the experience of the great days of the past.
- rthomas6 5y ago
  What you are describing is not equanimity, because there is an attachment to not working/relaxing. When you ask why not just lie down and die if you are content with everything, you could just as easily ask why not work really hard if you are content with everything? Because if you really have equanimity, working hard would cause no less contentment and no less suffering. A big part of mindfulness is narrowing down your reality to only this moment, because that is really all that's real. The past isn't real and the future isn't real. It's not about accepting "your life" because that's not actually a real thing. Right now is all that is. All context is actually fully contained in this moment. So one can accept and be at peace with what is happening right now and see it for what it is, then, thus informed, make and follow a plan. But each moment has it own independent meaning and is an ending in itself. There is no final goal because it's always right now, so the rational approach is to always pay attention to what IS.

aww_dang 5y ago

Does running your own business appeal to you? Consider a position in hard-sell sales to give yourself a different perspective. A more aggressive approach might give you a better idea of how consumers think. You don't have to deal with the latest trends, resume driven development or corporate nonsense if you work for yourself. Web development is an open landscape for adventurers.

morpheos137 5y ago
Running a business may appeal to me. I am not sure if I am really wired to be a sales guy though. I am more of an introverted, analytic thinker. A few years ago I sold several tens of thousands of dollars of stuff on Ebay over the course of a year. Then I got out when it stopped being profitable. But starting a business from the ground up is a different ball game. I could probably learn the skills to be a competitive "Web-Dev" for local businesses. It is a really low capital requirements business to start. Basically 100% knowledge. The thing is, once a business has a website they don't need a new one too often. My local market may be pretty well saturated. I supposed that I could sell to the wider world. My niche would be minimalism. It really irks me how bloated the modern web is. Problem may be that most businesses think they need 5 mb of javascript to look professional. Maybe I could use CSS for professional looking, light weight pages.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  You can sell Saas or create opportunities in other niches. Web-dev with clients seems like a headache. You'll be catering to their desire for the latest trends and buzzwords, returning you to some of your dislikes. As to minimalism, page speed is a ranking factor. Concerning introversion, challenging yourself with sales will help you out of that. Once you understand this process you might better appreciate the opportunities available. If you're looking for change, challenge yourself.
beforeolives 5y ago
I would anti-recommend running your own business to people with little direction and/or mental health problems. The stability of a regular job is incredibly valuable to someone like this.

op03 5y ago

Why have you found therapy useless? Our chimp mind is not well suited to do SELF analysis for various reasons. The danger here, while you are stuck in some hole, is that the ever imaginative chimp mind comes up with self analysis that is pure bullshit. Then things get more and more tricky. The hole gets deeper and deeper. You need people around you who can call out the bullshit and help you climb out of the hole you have wondered into. If you don't have an authority figure or someone you respect in your life who can do it then finding an experienced therapist will help. Even monks have authority figures around them who keep them on track.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

keiferski 5y ago

Try to get yourself into tech company that is working on interesting, future-oriented problems. Clean energy, robotics, medicine, biotech, self-driving cars, etc. These organizations always need a ton of administrative and non-technical staff. On a daily basis, I think starting small and incrementally improving is very underrated. It’s easy to look at a large ill-defined problem, feel intimidated, and not make any progress whatsoever. You have to break things down into smaller pieces. As an example: If your goal is to run a 5K, start by running 100 meters on day 1. That’s it. This will take a minute or two, at maximum. Add 100 meters every day...and in about a month and a half, you’ll be there. That’s not a long time. Whatever your professional or personal goals are, try and think about them from a similar perspective. It might be applying to one job (+1 everyday) or spending 5 minutes learning how to code (+5 minutes everyday.) If you share more about your skills or interests, I can try to offer more targeted advice.

quickthrower2 5y ago

On the tech side: My advice is try a few courses and go with the thing you love. The thing you get addicted to. Could be mobile dev, front end, hardware, building PCs, etc. There is a lot of work ahead for you to get what you want. Easiest way is to enjoy the ride. It’s ok if it’s not tech. Fixing up houses for example can be profitable and rewarding.

impendia 5y ago

One thing I have found invigorating when feeling down is showing up to something. Anything: tech meetups, hobby groups, group exercise classes... any event hosted in someone else's space, ideally at least somewhat unfamiliar to you. The pandemic may make this difficult for now; where I live, a lot of these events are suspended or only happening over Zoom. Still, this has often been something that has helped me get out of my own head. Best of luck to you.

giantg2 5y ago

I would just say tough it out. Who cares if you aren't living up to your potential? Most people don't. I'm tired of people always expecting more from me. "The cloud and countainers and all the programing fads and stuff are actually becoming off-putting to me. I see the space (CS / SE) as increasingly over saturated with bullshit. This puts me off from wanting to learn more and try to find work in the sector." Me too. Whenever I learn stuff, it just ends up being one time use, throw away. Why bother learning it?

lst90 5y ago
@OP: Yes. Here's another account of a person - me - eating life's lemons by grinding throughout life: - I, too, have a dysfunctional family (heavy physical and psychological abuse). (My father beat up my mother and us now estranged siblings until we were blue and crying. Additionally, our mother beat us up too and abused us psychologically. I am not only estranged to my siblings, I am also estranged to my other relatives. So, I have close to no social support like you.) - Yes, compared to my peers, I am fairly behind things. I am late to the "party" called life. I am studying CS and by the time I complete my degree, I will near my mid 30s. Prior to that, I worked in dead end jobs like you as well (not in tech, not with computers). No idea how my remaining life will fold out after I manage to graduate from school with a CS degree. I have to compete with the 22-year-old fresh graduates and my peers my age who are very likely well beyond my skill-level (due to more experience). Anyhow, the "domino comment" from muzani is helpful. Reminds me of a chapter from the book "Algorithms to Live By". @giantg2: Yeah, I feel the same. Most of the stuff coming up in tech are short-lived things. I noticed that especially in web development. That's why I focus on fundamental subjects: math, algorithms (including various rendering, deep learning algorithms). So I don't learn APIs that go obsolete (like in the case of OpenGL. C, C++, SDL, Python, JavaScript, Bash are enough for most of my purposes. I call this "essentialism" as I try to learn long-lasting things. E.g. a rendering algorithm I learned the other day will work no matter how many years will pass. Unlike frameworks/APIs that depreciate fast. I just need to encode that algorithm in a programming language that's it.) @ALL: PS: HN hates postings like mine, b/c it is not adding value to the community according to some HNers. I would like to therefore apologize to those HNers who feel that HN content should be only tech-focused and no "touchy-feely" subjects. HN has apparently a low tolerance for "touchy-feely" subjects. Or maybe I am missing something here. Not sure... My purpose with this comment was to tell OP that he/she is not alone with this.

muzani 5y ago

"I was wondering if the community here, such as it is, has any tips for daily exercises or practices that can help me get back on track in a kaizen or incremental way a little bit every day." I recommend the book The ONE Thing, Gary Keller: https://www.amazon.com/ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordinary-Results/dp/1885167776 https://www.amazon.com/ONE-Thing-Surprisingly-Extraordinary-... The short of it is exactly what you asked for - working incrementally on one small thing. The core of it is a domino effect, where a small thing pushes over a bigger domino. Most of the advice is on how to pick the next dominos. You pick a large epic goal, as a purpose, and a smaller one, which is your priority, and then line them up. A lot of people were made in a few years, so really, you just need about 10 years to achieve your dream whatever it is. It sounds like you have more skills than most people your age; don't compare yourself too harshly with HN in general.

morpheos137 5y ago
Thanks for the advice. I will be sure to check out the book.

runawaybottle 5y ago

Commit to doing Coursera courses and Leetcode. There are no easy answers here.