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> I have acquaintances who blew up their personal lives in a search for that elusive "perfect life". Is this in the typical sense of spending beyond their mean

> I have acquaintances who blew up their personal lives in a search for that elusive "perfect life". Is this in the typical sense of spending beyond their means, or do you have other anecdotes? I am a highly compensated tech worker at a FAANG who overcame US immigration and other challenges to get here, and many people would trade their spot with mine. Yet, I am so unhappy and burned out by work that I don’t think about anything else than quitting and moving back to my parents’ countryside house and enjoying a life of peace and quiet with the savings I have amassed, with no work pressure and rat race, just long hikes in nature, naps, reading and programming for fun. I changed roles and companies and the feeling never went away. I think in January I’ll finally start therapy, I’ve been unhappy for so long that I’m worried this might just be “my ride” for the rest of my life, if I don’t do something about it. Despite this unhappiness, I’ve never been able to quit because of that inner voice: “are you out of your stupid mind?! You’re just 35 and are making 7 figures, stop whining you privileged fool and make hay while it lasts, people would risk their physical safety in a mine for that salary”. I’m wondering if this voice is the voice of reason while my wants are just another instance of “blowing up my life” because I see how happy other people are.

neon_electro 4y ago
From someone else who was well compensated in tech and burned out, wishing you the best.
- aliqot 4y ago
  Want to talk about it?
  - neon_electro 4y ago
    No thanks - I'm doing what I can with the support network I have. Appreciate the offer, wishing you the best as well.
TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
Happiness, joy, and contentment are perspectives. Learn the perspectives from people who can model it for you (online and in books). I would name names and such, but I’d be downvoted.
deebosong 4y ago
Sounds like you're doing the wise thing by starting therapy. Maybe you already know this but it might take a bit of trying out a few therapists/ counselors before you land on one that seems a good fit. As to the voice in your head and the wants you're identifying, it sounds like you don't necessarily want to quit, or that you even want an idyllic rustic lifestyle. But more so that you wanna address where the feeling of being burnt-out and stuck is coming from. Like... I'm just a rando/ stranger from the internet, so take what I say with a grain of salt (and why a counselor will be way better to talk to than me and others here on this forum), but it seems like you want escape/ relief from your current life (in the form of just feeling peace that kinda looks like spending time outdoors), but there's a real pressure and possibly fear of feeling like if you seek this kinda peace, you are sabotaging yourself in the form of undoing all that you worked hard for, which translates to money, career, etc. Just to give some perspective, it's possible to have a career while having a deep, settled feeling of peace in the core of who you are. This isn't easy. And it won't look the same for everyone. But it doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or thing. But I get the sense it's going to be a longer journey – if not life-long in some sense – to find and maintain this sense of deep peace. It's not necessarily like a pill you pop or a light switch you turn on that changes everything in an instant, but a slow discovery that dawns upon you. I don't mean to sound so woo-woo, but just wanted to provide some perspective.
- deanmoriarty 4y ago
  Thanks. All you say is accurate and the tension between doing the right thing vs sabotaging is real. I’ve been basically living all my adult life like a frugal college student so that I could amass millions of dollars to get out of the rat race. However, it seems like the burnout is getting so bad that I might not be able to continue with this accumulation strategy. At the core of it is (1) my inability to effectively deal with work pressure (2) a strong sense of impostor syndrome, which FAANG makes it even worse (3) my extremely introvert personality, being in a senior technical position at work I have to constantly interact with other people and I hate every minute of it, despite still doing it. My ideal life is one where I have enough passive income to keep me afloat in perpetuity (working on it), and spend my time trying to build low-pressure solo online businesses that allow me to cultivate programming at my own pace without having to talk to other people except my family. Even just writing it out sounds idyllic.
fwip 4y ago
Early retirement (including back with your parents) is a real option. You've worked very hard, and you deserve to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
buran77 4y ago
No, nothing like that. Actually they abandoned their partners and family because the life they were living didn't look like the ones in the dream pictures others posted. Having hundreds or thousands of Facebook "friends" meant seeing an endless stream of exotic vacation photos, fancy restaurant photos, grand gestures, and so on. Put together it somehow looked like that was how everyone else's day to day looked like, while the day to day of the people I'm talking about was just the regular-well-off life. Only a few vacations per year instead of every day, only a couple of restaurants per week, grand gestures only on special occasions instead of every few days. After a few years of "drifting", failing to find anything close to what they had before, I lost contact with those people so not sure where they ended up. I sometimes stumble on the blog of one of them and it looks like they're still searching, years and years later. So in some sense this was worse than spending too much. Money is fungible and you can make it up eventually, particularly if you have good people around you. Good people are not fungible and getting them back is a lot harder, sometimes next to impossible.
- SamPatt 4y ago
  Do you know that social media was the actual cause of their unhappiness? Plenty of people are in long term relationships they can't stand for way too long, or careers, etc. I'm sure social media often plays a role but some relationships / jobs are just bad regardless of whether or not the grass is Instagram Green or not.
  - buran77 4y ago
    Yes, those people made it exhaustingly explicit, first to their families, then as justification for friends and acquaintances, that they are disappointed in how their lives are by literally pointing out to imagined lives they saw on Facebook. Then we got to see them chasing that fantasy, failing, and feeling even more disappointed because now their support structures were left behind. Last I saw of some of those people they were really drifting through life carrying depression and disappointment for what they lost, and for what they couldn't find. I'm sure social media can create, maintain, or accentuate a lot of different types of "pathologies" because it was designed to do so.

neon_electro 4y ago

From someone else who was well compensated in tech and burned out, wishing you the best.

aliqot 4y ago
Want to talk about it?
- neon_electro 4y ago
  No thanks - I'm doing what I can with the support network I have. Appreciate the offer, wishing you the best as well.

TedDoesntTalk 4y ago

Happiness, joy, and contentment are perspectives. Learn the perspectives from people who can model it for you (online and in books). I would name names and such, but I’d be downvoted.

deebosong 4y ago

Sounds like you're doing the wise thing by starting therapy. Maybe you already know this but it might take a bit of trying out a few therapists/ counselors before you land on one that seems a good fit. As to the voice in your head and the wants you're identifying, it sounds like you don't necessarily want to quit, or that you even want an idyllic rustic lifestyle. But more so that you wanna address where the feeling of being burnt-out and stuck is coming from. Like... I'm just a rando/ stranger from the internet, so take what I say with a grain of salt (and why a counselor will be way better to talk to than me and others here on this forum), but it seems like you want escape/ relief from your current life (in the form of just feeling peace that kinda looks like spending time outdoors), but there's a real pressure and possibly fear of feeling like if you seek this kinda peace, you are sabotaging yourself in the form of undoing all that you worked hard for, which translates to money, career, etc. Just to give some perspective, it's possible to have a career while having a deep, settled feeling of peace in the core of who you are. This isn't easy. And it won't look the same for everyone. But it doesn't necessarily have to be an either-or thing. But I get the sense it's going to be a longer journey – if not life-long in some sense – to find and maintain this sense of deep peace. It's not necessarily like a pill you pop or a light switch you turn on that changes everything in an instant, but a slow discovery that dawns upon you. I don't mean to sound so woo-woo, but just wanted to provide some perspective.

deanmoriarty 4y ago
Thanks. All you say is accurate and the tension between doing the right thing vs sabotaging is real. I’ve been basically living all my adult life like a frugal college student so that I could amass millions of dollars to get out of the rat race. However, it seems like the burnout is getting so bad that I might not be able to continue with this accumulation strategy. At the core of it is (1) my inability to effectively deal with work pressure (2) a strong sense of impostor syndrome, which FAANG makes it even worse (3) my extremely introvert personality, being in a senior technical position at work I have to constantly interact with other people and I hate every minute of it, despite still doing it. My ideal life is one where I have enough passive income to keep me afloat in perpetuity (working on it), and spend my time trying to build low-pressure solo online businesses that allow me to cultivate programming at my own pace without having to talk to other people except my family. Even just writing it out sounds idyllic.

fwip 4y ago

Early retirement (including back with your parents) is a real option. You've worked very hard, and you deserve to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

buran77 4y ago

No, nothing like that. Actually they abandoned their partners and family because the life they were living didn't look like the ones in the dream pictures others posted. Having hundreds or thousands of Facebook "friends" meant seeing an endless stream of exotic vacation photos, fancy restaurant photos, grand gestures, and so on. Put together it somehow looked like that was how everyone else's day to day looked like, while the day to day of the people I'm talking about was just the regular-well-off life. Only a few vacations per year instead of every day, only a couple of restaurants per week, grand gestures only on special occasions instead of every few days. After a few years of "drifting", failing to find anything close to what they had before, I lost contact with those people so not sure where they ended up. I sometimes stumble on the blog of one of them and it looks like they're still searching, years and years later. So in some sense this was worse than spending too much. Money is fungible and you can make it up eventually, particularly if you have good people around you. Good people are not fungible and getting them back is a lot harder, sometimes next to impossible.

SamPatt 4y ago
Do you know that social media was the actual cause of their unhappiness? Plenty of people are in long term relationships they can't stand for way too long, or careers, etc. I'm sure social media often plays a role but some relationships / jobs are just bad regardless of whether or not the grass is Instagram Green or not.
- buran77 4y ago
  Yes, those people made it exhaustingly explicit, first to their families, then as justification for friends and acquaintances, that they are disappointed in how their lives are by literally pointing out to imagined lives they saw on Facebook. Then we got to see them chasing that fantasy, failing, and feeling even more disappointed because now their support structures were left behind. Last I saw of some of those people they were really drifting through life carrying depression and disappointment for what they lost, and for what they couldn't find. I'm sure social media can create, maintain, or accentuate a lot of different types of "pathologies" because it was designed to do so.