4 ms·

That doesn't sound great actually. Are you being sarcastic? It kinda reads like a cry of help.

by bartvk 5y ago

shrubby 5y ago
Yes. This sounds awful.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  This is life for most people in the world. I don't see how this is surprising to so many. Though, I assume people around here tend to work cushy tech jobs that involve staring at a computer all day and know nothing else.
  - shrubby 5y ago
    I've seen tech, education and logistics. And this hasn't been common in any of those. I'm living in Scandinavia but have seen other European colleagues leading a normal life as well.
nefitty 5y ago
My parents worked service jobs their entire lives. One of my main memories of my time as a child is my dad napping on weekends while my mom was at work, with me sitting watching TV. As I grew up and learned about "self-actualization" and heard exhortations imploring me to follow my passions, those values quickly crashed against my lived reality. I had a span of time as a teenager, before I ever worked, where I applied those values to my expectations of my parents and felt disappointed. It took me a while to understand why my parents didn't have hobbies, abandoned self-study courses, did little outside of maintenance tasks, etc. The first chunk of my working life put me in positions where physical exhaustion became real. Some people really don't have the space in their lives to engage in non-critical life activities. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any philosophers that have explored those types of lives. Are those types of people destined to grind until their last days? This seems especially important to understand as safety nets like Social Security become less reliable.
- bartvk 5y ago
  Yeah this is partly something I recognize. Until the age of 7 or so, my dad usually had left for work when we got up, and would get back home only after we'd gone to bed. When I was around 12, he no longer worked Saturdays, but he'd be tired and angry. Nowadays, I understand they were trying to build up a business (and more or less succeeded). I've had periods when I started a freelance business and worked too much, but now that I've got a daughter, family comes first. But maybe that's a luxury.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Is it perhaps a luxury afforded in part from prior investments (in the form of hard work to launch and nurture these past businesses)?
    - bartvk 5y ago
      I hadn’t thought about it like that, but that does actually have a bit of truth to it. Realistically though, I realized that I was doing dumb, badly paying projects and then decided I needed to get good, well paying clients :D So no successful serial entrepreneur story there, more like deciding to charge more and invest the remainder in the stock market :-)
- marttt 5y ago
  > Off the top of my head, I don't know of any philosophers that have explored those types of lives. "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work" by Matthew B. Crawford [1, 2] is one such book. The author holds a PhD in soft sciences, but works as a motorcycle mechanic. Having worked as a brush cutter and tree planter, I can fully confirm that e.g. physical work can be exhausting to the point that all you want to do at night is finish your household chores and then get to sleep. I'm definitely a bookworm, but I remember having much less interest in reading, abstract reasoning or even listening to music at that time. It is probably related to the day-long exposure to industrial noise that a brush cutter experiences. Your brain is tired. I've always found tradesmen interesting, but after that personal experience, I think I have a much better understanding for their occasional grumpiness and the "rough edges" they have. More often than not, they're probably just really tired. 1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6261332-shop-class-as-soulcraft https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6261332-shop-class-as-so... 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26925445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26925445
sandworm101 5y ago
>> Are you being sarcastic? At the moment, no. My shifts are 6am to midnight, six days a week. Day 7 is for laundry, exercise, phoning home and catching up on sleep. Lots of us have jobs that require long hours at least temporarily. For me (military) we will keep this pace until at least mid-January but this is a norm in many industries. Talk to anyone working on any sort of ship, resource extraction, farming, or remote locations. The hours are long, the rooms are small, but the pay is high. Time for reading is a privilege. Only those with "normal" jobs have the stability and time to associate rituals with reading.
- slibhb 5y ago
  Yeah, no time for reading, but plenty of time for posting on Hacker News
  - jlokier 5y ago
    They didn't say they have no time for reading. Anyone with a modern phone and a lunch break can post to HN from work. What they said was: > reading alone in a room on a couch is a rare indulgence
    - slibhb 5y ago
      The post I responded to contained this: > Time for reading is a privilege. Only those with "normal" jobs have the stability and time to associate rituals with reading. Virtually everyone has time to read, even if it's 5-10 minutes between shifts. Whatever time you spend reading or posting on HN could be spent reading a book, which is not to say that it should be, only that this "time for reading is a privilege" stuff is nonsense.
      - bridgetball 5y ago
        I agree. And it is obvious people read the article and are doing something that could be considered a ritual. Reading an article on your lunch break could be a ritual just as much as reading a book on a couch for hours on end every night. It was literally the point to share how and where people read, not just books, but submissions on here or other journalistic type materials.Most people do read something on a regular basis like a newspaper or spiritual writing at different times during the day. I am just curious as to what, where, and when people like to read.

That doesn't sound great actually. Are you being sarcastic? It kinda reads like a cry of help.

by bartvk 5y ago

That doesn't sound great actually. Are you being sarcastic? It kinda reads like a cry of help.

shrubby 5y ago

Yes. This sounds awful.

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
This is life for most people in the world. I don't see how this is surprising to so many. Though, I assume people around here tend to work cushy tech jobs that involve staring at a computer all day and know nothing else.
- shrubby 5y ago
  I've seen tech, education and logistics. And this hasn't been common in any of those. I'm living in Scandinavia but have seen other European colleagues leading a normal life as well.

nefitty 5y ago

My parents worked service jobs their entire lives. One of my main memories of my time as a child is my dad napping on weekends while my mom was at work, with me sitting watching TV. As I grew up and learned about "self-actualization" and heard exhortations imploring me to follow my passions, those values quickly crashed against my lived reality. I had a span of time as a teenager, before I ever worked, where I applied those values to my expectations of my parents and felt disappointed. It took me a while to understand why my parents didn't have hobbies, abandoned self-study courses, did little outside of maintenance tasks, etc. The first chunk of my working life put me in positions where physical exhaustion became real. Some people really don't have the space in their lives to engage in non-critical life activities. Off the top of my head, I don't know of any philosophers that have explored those types of lives. Are those types of people destined to grind until their last days? This seems especially important to understand as safety nets like Social Security become less reliable.

bartvk 5y ago
Yeah this is partly something I recognize. Until the age of 7 or so, my dad usually had left for work when we got up, and would get back home only after we'd gone to bed. When I was around 12, he no longer worked Saturdays, but he'd be tired and angry. Nowadays, I understand they were trying to build up a business (and more or less succeeded). I've had periods when I started a freelance business and worked too much, but now that I've got a daughter, family comes first. But maybe that's a luxury.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Is it perhaps a luxury afforded in part from prior investments (in the form of hard work to launch and nurture these past businesses)?
  - bartvk 5y ago
    I hadn’t thought about it like that, but that does actually have a bit of truth to it. Realistically though, I realized that I was doing dumb, badly paying projects and then decided I needed to get good, well paying clients :D So no successful serial entrepreneur story there, more like deciding to charge more and invest the remainder in the stock market :-)
marttt 5y ago
> Off the top of my head, I don't know of any philosophers that have explored those types of lives. "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work" by Matthew B. Crawford [1, 2] is one such book. The author holds a PhD in soft sciences, but works as a motorcycle mechanic. Having worked as a brush cutter and tree planter, I can fully confirm that e.g. physical work can be exhausting to the point that all you want to do at night is finish your household chores and then get to sleep. I'm definitely a bookworm, but I remember having much less interest in reading, abstract reasoning or even listening to music at that time. It is probably related to the day-long exposure to industrial noise that a brush cutter experiences. Your brain is tired. I've always found tradesmen interesting, but after that personal experience, I think I have a much better understanding for their occasional grumpiness and the "rough edges" they have. More often than not, they're probably just really tired. 1: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6261332-shop-class-as-soulcraft https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6261332-shop-class-as-so... 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26925445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26925445

sandworm101 5y ago

>> Are you being sarcastic? At the moment, no. My shifts are 6am to midnight, six days a week. Day 7 is for laundry, exercise, phoning home and catching up on sleep. Lots of us have jobs that require long hours at least temporarily. For me (military) we will keep this pace until at least mid-January but this is a norm in many industries. Talk to anyone working on any sort of ship, resource extraction, farming, or remote locations. The hours are long, the rooms are small, but the pay is high. Time for reading is a privilege. Only those with "normal" jobs have the stability and time to associate rituals with reading.

slibhb 5y ago
Yeah, no time for reading, but plenty of time for posting on Hacker News
- jlokier 5y ago
  They didn't say they have no time for reading. Anyone with a modern phone and a lunch break can post to HN from work. What they said was: > reading alone in a room on a couch is a rare indulgence
  - slibhb 5y ago
    The post I responded to contained this: > Time for reading is a privilege. Only those with "normal" jobs have the stability and time to associate rituals with reading. Virtually everyone has time to read, even if it's 5-10 minutes between shifts. Whatever time you spend reading or posting on HN could be spent reading a book, which is not to say that it should be, only that this "time for reading is a privilege" stuff is nonsense.
    - bridgetball 5y ago
      I agree. And it is obvious people read the article and are doing something that could be considered a ritual. Reading an article on your lunch break could be a ritual just as much as reading a book on a couch for hours on end every night. It was literally the point to share how and where people read, not just books, but submissions on here or other journalistic type materials.Most people do read something on a regular basis like a newspaper or spiritual writing at different times during the day. I am just curious as to what, where, and when people like to read.