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In praise of blowing up your life

• greatNespresso 3y ago
  I am loving HN for that, there's always an article coming up on the front page that resonates with my current state of mind. Inspiring piece!
  • detourdog 3y ago
    I enjoy the randomness of that with being able to shout into the wind at an above average technical audience.
  • revskill 3y ago
    Thanks to the author instead ?
• narcraft 3y ago
  Just put in my two weeks notice Friday. Gotta blast!
  • collinvandyck76 3y ago
    strength. i put mine in three weeks ago. good luck!
• davidw 3y ago
  Probably not for everyone, but having some of this is good, I think. Something I would add: try and also have some stable points that you don't blow up. I have enjoyed moving to different countries and places, but am really, really fortunate to have married someone who will do that with me. She's a keeper! Having a few stable points of reference makes it easier to change other things. It gets harder with kids - you can't give up, let them down, or run around and desert them. But I think some novelty is healthy for them, too. Ours were quite successful when we moved from Europe to the US.
  • fantasticshower 3y ago
    People should take more advice from the artist, R. Astley.
• Gigachad 3y ago
  Moved to a bigger/better city this year. Was a bit of a daunting task as some friends and family advised against it and I had just bought my apartment a year ago. But it ended up being the best thing I ever did, completely changed everything about my life and I'm loving everything. I didn't go as extreme as the author and just jump in without any research, but I feel the benefits were the same without many risks. My life from 1-2 years ago is almost unrecognizable now, and I had no idea how much it sucked back then despite on paper seeming pretty good.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • mmkos 3y ago
    Could you elaborate on that? What was bad about your life before you moved and how did it change after the move?
  • roldie 3y ago
    I've been contemplating doing this for a while now. I'm definitely ready to move on from my current city. But what holds me back is, frankly, that I'm scared of not having any friends. I don't want to have to rebuild my social circles. It takes a lot of effort just maintaining my current friendships (as we all get older, get busy, drift apart, etc.), but at least they're there already. How did you handle this?
    • totallywrong 3y ago
      I usually start in a new place with the expat groups in FB, Meetup, etc. Any desirable location you might be considering is nearly guaranteed to have them. Go to a few events and meet people, there's usually locals too. Another great option is group clases like crossfit, salsa dancing, etc.
• Wonnk13 3y ago
  I don't entirely disagree, but the first thing that this article brought to mind is the old cliche "wherever you go, there you are". I'm 34, lots of ex girlfriends and lots of past cities. There's a fine line between breaking out of the status quo hamster wheel and running away from your baggage. Moving cities, or relationships, or jobs isn't worth as much if you aren't simultaneously working on yourself
  • willio58 3y ago
    >There's a fine line between breaking out of the status quo hamster wheel and running away from your baggage. Absolutely. I've had the urge to move from my hometown to escape baggage, mainly relationships. I've been close to pulling the trigger many times. But things got in the way and now I look back and I'm happy I didn't move. At least for that reason of escaping baggage. Odds are you'll have baggage anywhere you live if you live there long enough. Learning to grow and live with that baggage is part of being a human.
  • mattficke 3y ago
    In certain contexts this is called “doing a geographic”. Notorious trap for people who look solely for external causes of their discontent and ignore internal.
    • NovaDudely 3y ago
      It is fascinating to see old friends fall into this trap. Things seem great for the first few months but eventually the same old issues arise with time. There is a stereo type in Australia that the British complain about the country once here. A big part of this is believed to be that they leave their country to start over in a place that looks completely different, start a new job and meet new people only to find that they fall into all the same issues. Rather than realize the issues are just a part of the society, they can tend to blame the country instead. That said I used to work with someone from Nigeria, very smart fella, they had a lot of issues with the country but also understood why they left their country. All they said was "Different country, similar poison. Just pick your flavor." They fundamentally got the issue at hand.
    • 3y ago
• syndacks 3y ago
  Substack is the new Medium, this drivel as a prime example.
  • willio58 3y ago
    As long as Substack keeps the "Keep reading" button, I much prefer Substack.
• tulsidas 3y ago
  Smells like survival bias... but yes, go for it!
• zvmaz 3y ago
  I know that intellectual charity is a virtue one should practice, but I can't resist to think that the text is mainly in favor of very dangerous gambling with the added argument that "sometimes, you can win, like I did".
  • rm445 3y ago
    To be slightly more charitable, the argument is that big changes come off better than random chance would indicate, because the psychology of status-quo-bias/loss-avoidance makes people stick in bad situations too long. On balance I believe people who are impulsive catapult themselves into worse outcomes. This article could be dangerous advice for people with poor impulse control. I'd phrase the most workable advice as something like, 'If you are loss-averse and tend to stick at things, blowing up your life to do something new could be a good choice'.
• willio58 3y ago
  I want to do this so bad with a couple things in my life. But I know I won't because those things matter so much to me and I can't stomach putting those decisions up to chance, even if doing so would make me feel better 6 months out. Maybe I should try being a little more selfish!
• Scubabear68 3y ago
  The flip side of blowing up your life regularly like this, is you are throwing away momentum you may have accumulated in your current life.
  • valzam 3y ago
    This is particularly true when it comes to your place of residence. Moving constantly means you never "lock in" a level of expenses and will always have to earn more to keep up with inflation of housing prices (be it rent or purchase price). At least in Europe it is common to have indefinite rental contracts with a clause saying they can never raise the rent more than LOW_SINGLE_DIGIT% per year or even only for 10 years and not after.
    • fy20 3y ago
      That's only true in specific parts of Europe. Where I am renting is like the wild west. Last year a friend's landlord put up their rent by €100, after 2 months of their 1 year contract... But your point still stands, here you would typically buy a property when you get stable in life, locking in a monthly payment with a mortgage. Towards the end of the mortgage the payments will feel a lot more affordable due to inflation and / or a higher salary from career growth. If you keep moving to different places that's going to be complicated.
    • nmfisher 3y ago
      On the other hand, moving cities/countries/continents for a salary boost can compound over your career and be probably the best financial decision you'll ever make. I think it all comes down to what you want in life. Some people are happy with making their nest early and switching to cruise control. Others want to get out and experience as much of the world as they can. It's trite, but different strokes and all that.
  • dylkil 3y ago
    momentum going down is usually what makes people unhappy, blowing up your life up kicks momentum in a new direction
• revskill 3y ago
  Sure. The only way to improve yourself to next level is ... blowing up yourself, or, getting out of comfort zone. It's fine that you do not want to do it. But there's a tradeoff here, it's harder to upgrade yourself.
• PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  I blew up my life when I moved to Denmark for an MSc studies. I moved to a new country, amidst covid, without a social support system, without speaking the language, without having financial security. I was terrified of doing that … but it was around the time in 2020 when r/WSB was growing, and saw people “yolo ing” more money than I ever had. So I said yolo. I barely made it through; got super depressed due to isolation, lived on the brink of poverty, but some how (thanks GME) I survived. Though I did take a break for a semester. When I “returned home”, 2 years later, i found myself a stranger, a foreigner. All my friends had moved on, almost everything had changed, and so had I. Would I do it again? Absolutely. A bit differently; sure. But I’d do it again without hesitation. And then I did.. I moved to $currentlocation, barely any money, didn’t speak the language. All because I got a job at FAANG because I found an email from some recruiter in my junk folder and responded back. I finished my MSc, leading a project and aiming for promotion. In about a year or so, I will do it again; almost as if it is becoming a habit. It is very lonely, I am not going to lie about this, but it is also an adventure.
  • jamesmstone 3y ago
    Hey! I am about to move to (Copenhagen) Denmark in a few weeks from Australia. I am also going in not speaking the language. Any tips / suggestions?
    • PartiallyTyped 3y ago
      Get a metro card or a bike asap. Note that the bikers in Copenhagen are quite fast so you better brush up your skills. When you register your residency, your municipality is obliged to provide Danish lessons to you in some way. Take advantage of this. It’s a good way to meet new people. Be prepared for the weather. Besides darkness, Denmark also exports rain, so have something to wear at all times. Make sure that your curtains or blinds are actually good. In the summer months, the sun is shining for almost 18 hours, and even after sunset and before sunrise there’s quite a bit of light. The quality of your sleep will deteriorate if you are bombarded with sun and don’t get enough of it. If you are a student, know that life can be expensive, getting a student job will help and you will make some acquaintances. Don’t expect to mesh with the Danes quickly, the Danish society is very tight knit, but if you find yourself getting invited to hang out with a few people at an apt, it’s a good thing! It means you are becoming part of the group! Danes can be brutally honest, so be prepared for that. It’s not because they intend to be mean, it’s because such is their society. They don’t intend malice, but they provide constructive criticism and you will find them to be quite friendly! Get acquainted with the language asap; use anki cards and watch shows on Netflix to learn the sounds. As you get better, switch to audio description and you will improve your skills quite quickly. Hope I helped!
• klyrs 3y ago
  For a time, sure. But once you've got kids, there are drastic consequences to blowing up your life.
• MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  I guess, if you're well off, perpetually single and childless, and have the sort of connections that allow for taking a 6 month break for no reason.
  • amrocha 3y ago
    Why would you need connections to take a 6 month break? All you need is a bit of money, 2-4 months of your salary at most. Obviously if you have dependents it's harder to move physically, but not impossible, and quitting a job is totally doable.
    • MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      Because a 6 month absence can be a deal breaker in a lot of circumstances where a job is on the line. Employers are going to choose the people with constant employment over the people who quit "just because."
      • amrocha 3y ago
        Idk, I've taken more than one 6 month break in my career and I'm fine. If you've got the skills nobody cares. And besides, it's easy to fudge it in tech. Say you were working on a side project or a startup idea, or did some volunteer work for local non profits. Lots of options.
• npunt 3y ago
  Good advice if you're already confident a number of things you find troublesome about your life cannot be resolved, such as if you've already gone through therapy or tried more focused interventions that have not worked. Sometimes you have to leap to the new platform, and its hard to see just how bad your context was until you've left it. Question is what is the threshold for change, and are there 'blow up some things' changes that can be made prior to 'blow up everything'. Would love to see this in the form of a (How Much) Should I Blow My Life Up self assessment.
• jongjong 3y ago
  In my case, I blew up my life every couple of years for the past 10 years or so; changing jobs and country. It gave me a good sense of what's out there and how things work on a global scale but it's been a roller-coaster experience without any net gains in the long run. I'm like a bird floating in the updrafts to conserve energy but every time the wind changes suddenly, I have to start flapping my wings again and it feels harder each time.
  • namtab00 3y ago
    Nothing to add, just an appreciation of the imagery of the analogy you used.
• dougmwne 3y ago
  I agree with this post, but I don’t think he makes the most convincing argument. Risk taking is hugely important to growth and profit. All investments come with some level of risk and riskier investments, on average, provide a higher return. Continuing to do what you have been doing is the safe choice. Making incremental tweaks will result in incremental gains. When you make a big change, you take a big risk and you should be chasing the possibility of a big reward. If you “blow up your life” without a reason and without a goal, I doubt it’ll go that well. But if you leap at a big bold goal, you may find yourself achieving it!
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • badpun 3y ago
    > All investments come with some level of risk and riskier investments, on average, provide a higher return. Average outcome is computed by summing multiple potential outcomes, and diving by number of trials. It's completely meaningless in the context of big life decisions, because you don't get many trials - you get one or, at best, several. By illustration - let's say someone offers you to either take a guaranteed $1000, or a wager where you flip a coin and, if you win, you get $502k, but if you lose, you owe $500k. That wager has a expected value (i.e. average outcome) of $2k, which is greater than the guaranteed $1k you'd otherwise be getting. And yet, it's obviously a terrible choice, due to 50% chance of giving you debt that will cripple you for life.
• johnea 3y ago
  DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS GUY!!! Blowing up your life is exactly that, a big frikin mistake. I've made several decisions that later revealed themselves as life blowing. It's not worth it. In youth it's easy to imagine that you have infinite tries to get it right. This is totally wrong. Decisions that set your life back years can only be overcome so many times, and never completely. So, instead of blowing it up, add it up slowly year by year, increasing your traction and equity....
  • rramadass 3y ago
    Very right. This article is harmful; it is just a guy trying to justify his decisions to himself. Nobody should take his "advice" to their lives. Everybody's situation is unique and so before making any major decisions do a proper risk/cost/benefit analysis and only then follow through with the decision. In Life you have to live with the consequences whatever they maybe and there are very few opportunities to "rollback and do over" any fateful decision.
  • amrocha 3y ago
    DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS COMMENT!!! I've made big moves, with no plan, and more often than not it's been a good experience. Even the moves I regretted ended up teaching me more about myself. I'm sorry it hasn't worked out for you, but there's no guarantee it would have worked out if you had stayed put either.
• shove 3y ago
  I don’t think it really counts as “blowing up your life” if you don’t go through a period (say, longer than a few months) of regret. You need to do enough damage that it hurts without a clear safety net. Otherwise what you did was “moving” or “quitting” or “breaking up”. I mostly agree with the premise though. Pass the dynamite, I think I might be due…
  • ftxbro 3y ago
    > "I don’t think it really counts as “blowing up your life”" that's because the title is some contrarian clickbait substack blogspam
    • shove 3y ago
      I was going to say that too but I’ve been trying to blow up that part of my life
  • silversmith 3y ago
    Do you think it feels better on the other end because you are in a better place, or because it finally stops hurting?
    • shove 3y ago
      I’ve experienced both. We’re ultimately a lot more adaptable than we give ourselves credit for. We adapt to regret that never really went away but fades in terms of not being a point of daily focus. We adapt to the new place and call it “better” even when sometimes it isn’t.
• applecore 3y ago
  Before you take Sasha Chapin's advice to blow up your life seriously, ask yourself whether you envy the life he's living. > My existence really started getting good when I started blowing up my life more regularly, with a substantial eruption every couple of years. I quit my job and moved to Thailand without doing any research about the country, figuring that I could be a bartender again somewhere if it all went south. That ended up becoming the material for my first book. My current professional chapter began when I said “fuck it” to journalism when I couldn’t take the constant ethical compromises and the bullshit of pretending to care about the news cycle. After some flailing, I now make a lot more money and am a lot happier. Blowing up my first marriage was the most difficult one of all, but it was an obviously correct decision, for which my ex-wife later thanked me—we were locked in a pattern that was hurting both of us, and if one of us didn’t walk away, we would’ve eventually been one of those unhappy old couples who constantly radiate bitterness.
  • bbor 3y ago
    ...because he switched careers and had a divorce? Not exactly a sign of a failed life, IMO. As a software engineer I feel damn lucky that I chose a career that I really like AND pays well; most people can't say the same. As for the divorce, you could get rich in a day if you knew how to reliably spot one of those coming early in a relationship.
    • lmm 3y ago
      > As for the divorce, you could get rich in a day if you knew how to reliably spot one of those coming early in a relationship. Who would ever listen to you though?
• lo_zamoyski 3y ago
  "Blowing up" pathological patterns and habits makes sense for some interpretation of "blowing up". If you're in with a bad crowd that creates constant near occasions of sin that you easily succumb to, cutting ties and cleaning house is very good. But the article has another thread running through it, that of a life of no commitment and of self-indulgence. This is especially obvious when read while imagining someone with children, but it likewise applies to spouses, families, communities, etc. Human beings are intrinsically social animals. Human beings need societies in order to flourish. All societies are defined by a common good, and that common good is prior to the private good. In fact, the private good exits for the sake of the common good. Self-indulgence might appeal to the hedonistic, selfish person celebrated by our culture, but it doesn't produce happy people in the true sense of the word. It leaves us alienated. This is a reason why we're seeing skyrocketing rates of mental illness and all sorts of identity politics. Nature, when frustrated, reacts in pathological ways. The return of the repressed. Unfortunately, liberalism (the Lockean philosophical tradition, not liberal institutions) is a defining feature of the modern West, and the US in particular. The habits of mind that liberalism insinuates affect all of us and misshape our intuitions. But liberalism is in a period of increasing crisis. It is not going to last that much longer as it is unsustainable. Liberalism purports to offer a middle ground between radical individualism and collectivism, but all it really gives us is a "diabolical synthesis of the two, a bureaucratically managed libertinism" (Feser 2008). A life of ostensible "self-fulfillment" is a road to misery and emptiness.
• listenallyall 3y ago
  Reading this story, you're subjected to the winner's bias. There's another guy out there somewhere who also threw away his career, wife and home, but never replaced it all, never found whatever he assumed was out there, and never wrote a blog patting himself on the back and spewing life advice.
  • amrocha 3y ago
    The point is that life compounds, and it can be nearly impossible to salvage a bad situation. For example, it's a lot harder to save a bad marriage than it is to try again, and avoid your previous mistakes. Does this mean that you should never try? No, but you shouldn't stay in a bad situation over fear of blowing it up either. If you try something, that's a chance at making something new work. If you stay in the same situation, it's harder to apply your learnings.
• doxeddaily 3y ago
  If ya ain't got nothin, you ain't got nothin to lose. But if life is working well this is pretty bad advice.
• lightyrs 3y ago
  I propose that this fellow does not have any children or other dependents.
  • draven 3y ago
    My thought exactly, the author basically has to avoid any long-term project like raising a child. That's fine when you're in your twenties I guess.
• throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
  I love articles like this. The writer seems to have no idea they're revealing severe psychological trauma to the readers, and despite it they try to pass it off as sage life advice. Like telling everyone you spit in the soup at work but it helps strengthen people's immune systems so everyone should be unsanitary.
  • switch007 3y ago
    Ditto for most of Insta. All those travel pics and nonstop selfies
  • arisAlexis 3y ago
    What is your diagnosis
  • sledgehammers 3y ago
    This is just my empirical evidence - let me know if you disagree and have contrary information - but psychological traumas like this are increasing everywhere I look. In my local community, local country, globally, it's the same story basically: burnout, a need for a life blowup. I think it's clearly a growing trend, the old world just isn't working. Thoughts?
    • projectazorian 3y ago
      If you’re posting here, good chance you’re in a generational cohort that is entering prime midlife crisis years.
      • sledgehammers 3y ago
        Good point. What's a little quater/midlife crisis in addition to all the other major crises going on the world simultaneously? Haha. :)
  • projectazorian 3y ago
    Severe trauma? Really? Didn’t see any mention of violence, sexual assault, prison time, or the like. These seem like totally prosaic life choices that more or less worked out fine for him in the end. Maybe the language is a bit overwrought but that could just be to punch things up for the reader.
• aetherspawn 3y ago
  If you want your life to be a long road of craters, sure, blow up your life constantly. You'll see the craters of your own life blown up. And around those, the craters of your partners' life, and the craters of your kids' lives too (anxiety, commitment, daddy issues). Hell to it! yolo! (/sarcasm)
• tycho-newman 3y ago
  Do not take life advice from someone with the blind confidence of a mediocre white man.
  • oofnik 3y ago
    What does race have to do with any of this?
    • tycho-newman 3y ago
      It affects your life outcomes in significant ways! It especially affects the kinds of mistakes you are allowed to make.
    • 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
      this article does give me some privilege vibes. not everyone can just move to thailand, become bartender and write a book about. that's a very specific trajectory.
      • amrocha 3y ago
        I see where you're coming from, but that doesn't match my experience. Plenty of non white people immigrate to different countries to try their luck at a better life. Maybe the difference is what standard you compare yourself to? - Black dude from the US: I can't move to Thailand, what would happen if I fail - Black dude from Rwanda: I might as well move to Thailand, maybe I'll have better luck over there
        • 5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
          > maybe I'll have better luck over there It's more privilege in the sense of having the luxury to take risks as opposed to the desperation of seeking a better life. The second guys life is already kind of "blown up", while the author is more like entitled boredom.
          • 3y ago
• emmanueloga_ 3y ago
  Just for fun, I replaced "blowing up your life" with "rewriting your app in Rust": Rewriting your application: whether you do it or a volcano [destroys the existing code base], it’s effective. How about a coin toss? Participants in a survey who made major codebase rewrites (to Rust) based on the result of a coin toss were much happier, six months out, than those who didn’t. That six-month figure is important. Rewriting your application doesn’t necessarily feel great right afterward. You always wonder at least once if you’ve made a terrible mistake. You look around at your new scenery, and you say to yourself, wait, this isn’t life, I remember what life was before [ownership], it was that thing I left behind. But this feeling of disequilibrium can motivate you to find a better equilibrium, and six months is probably about how long it takes for a motivated person to stabilize their trajectory and begin to understand Rust's ownership rules.
  • mettamage 3y ago
    Haha, it's a great blog post about change in general. I think you could replace it with quite a lot that is about change.
• maCDzP 3y ago
  I can recommend the book Quit. It explores the same ideas but it’s a bit more level headed. It gives a framework for knowing when to quit. I just skimmed the article but I got the feeling the author always is in favor of quitting.
• tlarkworthy 3y ago
  I have a theory that this is the Monty hall problem effect in practice [1]. When you blow up your life you are opening an unknown door... But after you have narrowed your options, so the outcomes are likely to be better than your status quo. [1] https://link.medium.com/N6HaHXgyAAb https://link.medium.com/N6HaHXgyAAb
  • vjk800 3y ago
    With an almost infinite number of doors though, and with all of them containing something that might or might not be the prize depending on your point of view. And your opinion of what counts as a prize changing after every opening of a door. So maybe this analogy doesn't really work...
    • tlarkworthy 3y ago
      I don't think it really affects anything if the prize is decided after opening the door. The analogy only really fails if your internal value system values predictability... Which for some people is true. But for others who have a vague feeling of dissatisfaction then the chances are that the unknown door picked from a shortlist of options will yield better results than staying put with the option given to you via external factors
  • dizhn 3y ago
    I think the difference is in the Monty Hall problem a 3rd party who knows one of the options to be a dud, reveals it to be so. In real life you're still just as likely to pick the dud. (One of many)
    • tlarkworthy 3y ago
      No your life experiences narrow the choices. You don't randomly emigrate. While the reasoning is wonky, there is , in reality, only a small pool of choices under consideration. Life is the 3rd party that reveals duds.
      • 3y ago
• monero-xmr 3y ago
  Alternatively, never blow up your life! Live near your family and lifelong friends, establish hardcore roots with your community, always be surrounded by love. A road less taken by the educated elites, but a happy and fulfilling road nonetheless. The Onion’s take: https://www.theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfilling-life-still-liv-1819575312 https://www.theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfil...
  • eastbound 3y ago
    Interesting topic. When you are socially underdeveloped, the strange sheep, the sightly bullied, the not-taken seriously, well it’s not so bad to go twice around the globe a few years and come back. There’s debate. I’ve lost a lot of social fabric. I’m workaholic because I don’t have enough friends. But I’m millionaire, own my startup, own my house, and I can get advice on how to manage at work, get a psychologist, etc. It’s not ideal, and ideally people would have recognized talent at home and/or just included me because I was a living person, but they didn’t seem to have this ethics. Travelling the world taught me what was necessary to give me the social chances that everyone had at home. Now I have weight. I’m not sure I’d have anyone’s respect without money and travels. So: When home is broken anyway, do follow some dream, yours or not, travelling wasn’t even a dream for me, it will make you a broken soul with broken social fabric, but with more experience.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • noisy_boy 3y ago
      > When you are socially underdeveloped, the strange sheep, the sightly bullied, the not-taken seriously, well it’s not so bad to go twice around the globe a few years and come back. Being someone who has the odd combination of seeing problems everywhere and yet willing to take risks, it was great for me to do so and break out of my cycle/neighbourhood/city and do things nobody in my family (and extended family) bothered to do. Some things spectacularly failed and left scars that will last a lifetime but taking those risks brought me to places/experiences and gave me a life radically different from my peers in my school/family/background. Its not radical as in taking war time photos as a profession and volunteering for UN between projects, but, sufficiently different from what most people back home are doing. The trick is to take risks that you have thought about and are convinced about; so even when they don't work out, you are not cursing yourself that you did something you were not 100% willing to do.
• surfsvammel 3y ago
  I spent years examining (also together with my psychologist) the question: “People always tell you to follow your dream”. But often following one’s dream comes at a cost, or at least comes with some risk. Yet, the advice to “follow your dream” is a blanket advice, it supposedly trumps everything else. I ended up deciding to not follow my dream, at that point in life, and I am happy I didn’t. I won’t be telling my kids to “follow your dream”. Think about it real good before blowing up your life.
  • badpun 3y ago
    > “People always tell you to follow your dream”. Perhaps in the US. It's the privilege of living in an extremely wealthy country - the risk of following your dream is not that high, since, if you fail, you'll probably still be able to eke a relatively comfortable living. It doesn't work that way in most other countries. In most places, having a stable job that allows you to afford an apartment or (gasp) a house!, IS the dream, whereas in the US it's almost seen as failure due to lack of ambition. However, seeing that living expenses in the US (mainly housing) are going way up, perhaps the era of following your dreams will end there (US) as well?
    • mejutoco 3y ago
      Although the US is a wealthy country, I believe for most people "following your dream" there could be much harder than in Europe. Especially in terms of an unexpected healthcare problem at the wrong time. Of course some people are wealthy enough for this not to be a problem, and it is easier to get investors there. Still, I would not characterize it as risk-free in the US.
      • badpun 3y ago
        In a couple of small, wealthiest countries in Europe (Scandinavian countries, Switzerland), sure. But everywhere else, if you go for the dream and fail, you'll be barely making a living. Whereas in the US, you can fail and likely still land a $40k-50k job doing whatever. In Europe, managers in serious firms often don't make $50k. Also, serious health problems before 40 are really rare.
• novia 3y ago
  I followed the link to the volcano study, and it said the opposite of what the author said that it said. The adults who were displaced had worse outcomes than the other adults who were not, but the children of those adults did better, and their offspring, and so on.
• jmbwell 3y ago
  Change can bring happiness. I don’t know about blowing things up, but finding something that’s under your own control and doing something with it can help get out of ruts or create adventure. Work/relationship/city sucks? Change it. Can’t or won’t? Find something else you can and will change. You might be looking for fulfillment in the wrong places. Make the choice to try some new things. It will keep you young. Flip side: re-evaluate what you have. We are wired for novelty. Familiarity breeds contempt, as they say. That doesn’t mean where we are and what we have is bad. It could be that you’d have been blown away at half your age to meet who you are today. Anyway these are platitudes but they’re so well-trod because everyone faces this in some form or another. People blow up their lives and have all kinds of adventures, sure. But you don’t have to blow up your life to create adventures. Just, the next chance you get to do something you’ve never done before, go for it.
• renewiltord 3y ago
  If I'm being honest, a lot of people in this TPOT community fail at the things that normal people just absolutely master naturally. Like, this guy, if I recall was all about sensitivity and understanding and all that shit and then got married and divorced for exactly the things that, had he succeeded at the things he talked so much about, he wouldn't have had any trouble with. Ultimately, it's better if you don't learn how to read from the illiterate. The reality of life is that the people who talk the most about basic things are often those who have found greatest difficulty with them. Sometimes this is because they are thinking about them at a deep level. Other times, perhaps more often, it's because they are unable to penetrate the shallowest of surfaces. You'll see this with all of these TPOT and TPOT-adjacent posters: they will claim to be renegades and say the most mundane things, claim to be empaths and find themselves unable to understand or be understood, claim to be makers and doers unlike those who only say and yet produce nothing of significance but blog posts. This isn't to disparage them, but perhaps there is a reason blowing up their lives leads to happiness. And perhaps that is the tool they should use. I would, perhaps, even recommend that everyone in TPOT should use that tool for the betterment of their selves. Not because it's a good tool in general but, sometimes, the local maximum you found is actually an anthill at the bottom of a well, and the rest of humanity is standing at ground level, and God and Nature have conspired to hand you only two tools: a heavy metal plate with dynamite at the bottom, and bones and flesh strong enough to withstand the upward acceleration.
• laeri 3y ago
  This is part survivorship bias in my opinion and probably not very good life advice. You can and should only do this if you have enough money to sustain at least one year without income. His example is very risky as no income was guaranteed, if you can continue to work in another place why not. It is true that people get accustomed and complacent to their life situation, jobs, etc. And a change in country or job can shake them out of it. However, success and progress in a lot of things require constand effort over time and this is usually easier if you have a consistent routine. Completely changing your life requires you to find a new routine somewhere else which sets you back at least a month in my experience. I say this from experience as I quit my job and am working on my own project in another country. It is challenging to do only work and experience less docial interaction as your social network is still in the old place.
  • scarface_74 3y ago
    I was tempted to delete my previous comment about how I “blew up my life” because I realized that I really wasn’t as bold as I thought I was. I kept my above average paying job working at BigTech where I was able to work remotely. I only officially moved one state away where I stay half the year while traveling the other half, and I had assets to fall back on. I didn’t sell my other house, I rented out to my son and two of his friends we had known forever. I had assets. I didn’t “burn the boats”. But I’m going to let it stand. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
    • laeri 3y ago
      "Blowing up your life" can mean completely different things for different people. And your experience reflects a good way to do it I think. No need to burn the boats in my opinion. We are in a quite privileged position to do this as we both have some assets to afford it. In case I run out of money I still have some support network at home and should relatively easy get a new job in theory. In practice it will need some work and will be probably be stressful to look for a new place and work at the same time. Some people that are pushed to move due to less opportunities in their home country and immigrate to another place have probably much more stress. They completely change their life for a better future.
• ZoomZoomZoom 3y ago
  Blowing up your life with your own hands may leave you unprepared or resorceless to react to your life being blown up by external factors. If that doesn't ever happen, congratulations, you're in a lucky minority. This is a wrong advice that will always sound like a profound wisdom if it works for you, or emerge as a protective rationalisation if it doesn't quite.
  • engineeringwoke 3y ago
    Don't do it without a parachute of course, but as long as you have a monetary cushion, what do you have to lose? Move to a country with good healthcare, don't own a car, what hardship could possibly happen otherwise? Outside of extreme tail risk situations that could happen to anyone at anytime, I don't buy it.
• alchador 3y ago
  Post TL;DR: Blowing up your life can be a good idea for those who are relatively sane and feel stuck in a job, city, or relationship. People tend to resist change due to status quo bias, but breaking free from familiar pain can lead to personal growth and alignment with desires. Making major life changes, whether by choice or through external disruptions, can result in improved outcomes and happiness. While it may feel uncomfortable initially, the disequilibrium can motivate positive change, typically stabilizing within six months. There are no guarantees, but taking risks and embracing change can lead to a better life.
• Simon_O_Rourke 3y ago
  "pretending to care about the news cycle"... yes, of course multi-billion dollar multimedia organizations will hold the presses for you while you concoct some puff-piece story to be ready for 4am to corner the insomniac news market. As my former-Marine uncle put it "losers always have a thousand excuses". Not saying this author is a loser, but the whole piece comes off as a whinging self-excuse with the whole tone being "I could easily have been great if I was bothered".
• vsnf 3y ago
  So much of the article and the comments are focused on "blowing up your life" as a result of negative situations. Here's a sample of some of the negative verbiage seen here: "Baggage", "socially underdeveloped", "chore", "needs improving", "psychological trauma". Sure, sometimes people are actually in a rut and want to do something drastic to reset their life. But what about people who made a change just because? Is it incomprehensible that some people have the spirit of adventure in them and take life altering courses of actions just for the sake of it?
  • arisAlexis 3y ago
    Exactly, the adventurers of the previous centuries are long gone exactly because of societal upbringing.
  • PartiallyTyped 3y ago
    Yolo and all that. To be honest… it is quite fun!
• Dalewyn 3y ago
  In lieu of all the nearly hundred comments arguing life should be carried forth this way or that way or another, here's my two cents instead: You Only Live Once. To the extent you don't bother or harm your fellow peers, go as calm or as wild as your heart desires. So long as you have agency in where your life takes you, you at least won't regret anything. YOLO.
• ilyt 3y ago
  I sense survivorship bias the size of the fucking mountain here. I do agree, as I have experienced it too, that it is easy to get stuck in "content with life enough", but trying to change it by basically throwing the dice with chance of fucking it up immensely should be last resort reserved for when you have no idea what you even want to do in life. It's perfectly possible to just look deep at what you want from life and come up with some plan to get there. There will be plenty hardships and learning opportunities in any such plan that's even slightly ambitious.
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• scarface_74 3y ago
  I’ve mentioned the last year of my life on HN where my wife and I decided to get rid of everything we own that wouldn’t fit in four suitcases including our cars and we became “hybrid digital nomads”. We fly to different cities across the US and stay in midrange extended stay hotels and stay in our own “Condotel”[1] the other six months in Florida. What I haven’t talked about is what got us to this point. I grew up in a small town in southwest GA, moved to metro Atlanta in 1996 and stayed there until last year. We had a house built in 2016 in the northern burbs and thought we had our “forever home”. All the time from 1996 -2020 I bumped around between 7 jobs as a journeymen “enterprise dev”. My wife had lived in metro Atlanta all of her life. We got married in 2012 (both on our second marriage). Everything changed in 2020. Our youngest son (my stepson) graduated from high school, Covid happened (didn’t fatally affect anyone in our inner or outer circle) and I fell into a remote job at BigTech. When things got back to normal around 2021, we both realized that life is short and we wanted a change. That’s what caused us to blow up our life and we are both happier now that we really can’t acquire “stuff”. When we left our condo in March to start our six month trip, we put it in the rental pool, it gets professional managed like a hotel room and we get half the rent to cover our mortgage. We don’t own a car. We take Uber for six months once we hit a city and we have a Sixt subscription and we rent a car by the month when we are at home.
  • Dowwie 3y ago
    You're paying half your rent to property managers?! Stop this insanity. There is no such thing as a rental pool, unless it's literally a pool that is rented. What service are you using?
    • bloat 3y ago
      "Rental revenue is shared with the management company, and owners typically pay no upfront fees for management, which includes the marketing and reservation of the units.[citation needed] Typical monthly fees for units in the rental pool include FF&E (Furniture, Fixtures and Equipment) reserve and resort fee(s). Although the revenue splits between owner and management company do vary from project to project, most hover around 50 percent." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condo_hotel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condo_hotel
• creakingstairs 3y ago
  This kind of sounds like me. My life has been blown up voluntarily and otherwise. These include multiple immigrations, career changes and most recently quitting my well paying job with nothing lined up. Not all of them worked out. But I don’t think I regret any of them. Though I think this was much easier because I was not married. Nowadays I do have to think about people nearby when I try to blow up my life. Also, I’ve found myself starting to yearn for some stability after all these years of change. It would be nice to put my roots down and join or cultivate nice communities.
• Dave3of5 3y ago
  Kind of shit advice really. No real data just, "well it worked for me". How many people blow up their life and end up homeless? How many actually improve their situation? How many end up back with their parents? Nothing other than I think it's good and it worked for me. Here another way to look at this advice: Everyday I run across the road without looking. It's exhilarating! It makes me feel ALIVE! I know all you naysayers say that I should look before crossing the road. I just rip off the band aid and fucking yolo it. I haven't been ran over by a car yet! Really stupid. My advice is don't listen to this advice. If you are getting itchy feet go on a fucking holiday for a few weeks.
  • engineeringwoke 3y ago
    > Really stupid. My advice is don't listen to this advice. If you are getting itchy feet go on a fucking holiday for a few weeks. You could also call this quite myopic. How do you know what is out there without trying it yourself? Sitting in your little world and poo poo'ing those who are willing to take a chance. Because yes, from their vantage point, OP is right. There really is a world out there that few can find but it's worth looking for if you have good reasons to take a chance and put down new roots. Most don't make it because accepting any culture outside of the one of your birth is a very difficult task, and you will never have any true change until you accept a new culture: their customs, their values, their belief systems. Because really there is quite a lot of variation in those things, and in all the travels I have had, I have only met a few who truly made it. And there is of course a loneliness that comes along with the change, at least for a while. That doesn't mean it isn't worth trying, and if you bit off more than you can chew, just go back home. You obviously need resources to do that, but it's not really as scary as you make it out to be.
• m463 3y ago
  I think the idea is to reset your stats, not your character level.
• varjag 3y ago
  As someone who is getting older, I have this to say: don't take a life advice from a 20-something, no matter how well meaning they are.
  • elliotwagner 3y ago
    This hahah
  • Woeps 3y ago
    As somebody else who is getting older, I don't think life advice from any age should be taken at face value.
    • CretinDesAlpes 3y ago
      Elder people have a lot to say and some (not all) have a lot of wisdom. However I agree that whatever advice you take and follow, you will end up making mistake in other areas, so at the end of the day you have to live your own life, realise your own mistake and correct them.
      • Glawen 3y ago
        Let's say it is interesting to hear their advice as they have more life experience. I would however not follow everything said as the context has probably changed, but I try to take out the useful information I could reuse
    • antisthenes 3y ago
      People need to filter their role models better, that's for sure.
  • Glawen 3y ago
    Wise advice, listen to this :) Reminds me of a colleague in her 20s giving advices on how to raise children, without having on her own. I promptly put her on my ignore list. Parenting advices are the worst type, I never listen to them. Each family and child is different, you cannot attribute any result to anything, and we all have differing values.
• nailer 3y ago
  I blew up my life in 2016. Under constant stress I pushed everyone else away in order to think. This didn’t help the stress. To a certain extent I fucked up my life.
• licebmi__at__ 3y ago
  I knew since I was 8-9 years old that I had to run away from things that reminded me of my home. So moving out first from my hometown and then from my country was something that I has planned for a long time, and nothing that I regret even if it meant leaving all the personal growth I had. My wife on the other hand decided to stay with me for the trip, and she still has emotional ups and downs with regarding of leaving her career behind, even if she’s working on getting her career back, she’s starting from zero.
• spoonjim 3y ago
  "Blowing up your life" is what you do in a desperate search for meaning-making when you haven't taken the much more durable and constructive path to meaning-making of having children
• spoonjim 3y ago
  Before you take this guy's advice think about whether you want to be a single childless man going to tend bar in Thailand in a desperate attempt to make his life interesting to him
• cafard 3y ago
  Or there's Cavafy's less optimistic take: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51295/the-city-56d22eef2f768 https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51295/the-city-56d22e...
  • uwagar 3y ago
    that was depressing man.
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• ZunarJ5 3y ago
  Good god, I wish I had this luxury. I feel like I'm always seeking stability and dodging explosives.
• mmkos 3y ago
  My life blew up involuntarily a year ago when my relationship broke down. I wanted to do all sorts of things at the time - sell the (unfinished) house, change my job, move to a different city etc. I read some articles on how to deal with it and one thing addressed the point of moving - you are you no matter where you are. Banal, I know. Since then I took a slightly different path and I've been working on my life steadily. I'm taking care of my physical health, I've been doing work on the house and I try to socialise more. I think I still want to move eventually (as I don't have family/many friends in the city anyway), but I'm happy I didn't do it straight away. I think there's a big risk in blowing up your life and trying to change everything at once, it might be overwhelming.
  • borroka 3y ago
    "you are you no matter where you are. Banal, I know." -- I agree that it is banal, in the sense that it is a common and popular message, but I also think it is wrong. The environment, the context, all have a profound effect on people. When I played a certain sport competitively, towards the end of their career they would come and play with us former high-level professionals. Almost invariably, and it was the same for other people on other teams, they would start playing the way they used to play (well), but very soon they were seen approaching the average performance of their team members. The athletic director thought that their presence might "pull up" the attitude, performance and skills of their teammates, but the opposite always happened: the gravitational pull of lazy, unskilled and less professional teammates was too strong to resist. The same happens in many other contexts. I used to work in a dynamic company full of brilliant innovators (FAANG). Now I work in a legacy technology company full of lazy, semi-incompetent, ball-dropping, half-asleep colleagues, and I am delivering 20 percent of what I could and used to deliver. There is no tide lifting all boats. "But if you really wanted to...," says those who believe in the inevitability of the affirmation of spirit. But this is a myopic view of life; we are largely shaped by the context in which we live, in which we work, by the people we spend time with, at least as much as by our personality.
• ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  > There’s no guarantee that blowing up your life turns out well. ahem... agreed. In fact, I have seen this many times, and most have not turned out well. But some have turned out quite well. A lot of times, we have no idea what's good for us, and when we get what we want, we find that the fox wasn't worth the chase. In my case, I was forced into my current situation, and it has turned out well. I was laid off my previous career, as a manager/engineer at a very well-known camera manufacturer, and discovered, to my anger and dismay, that the current tech industry actively hates people over 50. Not a fun time. But it forced me to take stock, and I realized that I actually have plenty to retire on, and there really wasn't a need for me to be desperately seeking work. I then lowered my requirements, since I didn't need the money. I would have been happy to work at risky startups, for equity. I have a pretty vast array of experience and skills that would have been almost ideal for a startup. Still wasn't enough. I'm still old. Damn. Well, I guess I'm retired, then, whether I like it or not. Turns out, I like it. I can afford the tools I need, and I still work (more than I ever did). I just don't make money at it, and the folks I'm working with, though young, appreciate me and my work. They know the value they are getting, and the gray hair doesn't fill them with fear. Surprisingly, I'm actually pretty good at working in a team. May have something to do with having worked on high-functioning teams for my entire career. TL;DR: I was afraid to take the plunge, and needed to be pushed. In my case, it's worked, but I was very fortunate. A lot of others, in the same case, would have been absolutely clobbered. I have a friend that is a chef. He got pushed out for being old (actually won an age-discrimination suit). He used his winnings to set up a catering business, and now makes way more than he ever did, as a wage slave. He's really, really good at what he does. That's the thing that a lot of ageists don't seem to understand. That gray often caps a great deal of competence and ability. It isn't just about "culture." Getting Stuff Done requires Discipline, Competence, Tenacity, Skill, Intelligence, and Ability. Many older folks have these, in spades. > "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." - Hunter S. Thompson
• CretinDesAlpes 3y ago
  I have this game that I call "Coin of destiny", not sure where I heard this from or if it is widespread, but the idea is to flip a coin for dilemma when you can't decide. It also works in group. The hard part of the game is to take it seriously, in the sense that as soon as you decide to play, then the final decision is irrevocable and you must follow the destiny. It's nice to see a link to some experiment/research about this process that seems positive - https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22487/w22487.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22487/w224...
  • sasvari 3y ago
    you might enjoy the book _The Dice Man_ [0], then. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man
    • CretinDesAlpes 3y ago
      > The book tells the story of a psychiatrist who makes daily decisions based on the casting of a diсe. Ahah, that sounds crazy/extreme, thanks for mentioning
• satellite2 3y ago
  It seems the only factor the author is encouraging the reader to take into account when deciding to blow up their life is themselves. There is zero altruism or kindness in this advice. It feels like a very beginning of the 2000 position. The generation that was first allowed to divorce and blow up everything. And it's very good that we got this liberty, much better for everyone involved than the previous status quo. But it's still a failed experiment with a lot of collateral damage and hurt people. The job of our generation is to find how to build our life in a more stable way, this time with kindness to avoid falling back to the conservative and violent approaches of the past. So the selfish advice feels really outdated and out of place.
  • scarface_74 3y ago
    My responsibility is only to myself and my wife. I help out my now grown (step)sons who I love as my own kids because I can. But they weren’t my “responsibility” once they got grown. My parents are still healthy and self sufficient at 80 and 82. If they weren’t, I would definitely take care of them as the only child.
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• francoismassot 3y ago
  > Disruptions can work even if you didn’t initiate them yourself. How about a coin toss? Participants in a survey conducted by Steven Levitt who made major life changes they’d been mulling over—proposing marriage, moving—based on the result of a coin toss were much happier, six months out, than those who didn’t. I'm so skeptical on such a study.. Obtaining solid results on this kind of survey is so hard or even impossible... I'm happy for this guy but I have no idea if what he says will work for someone else. The only good thing I see in this article is that... it's possible to blow things up for the best, and that's great.
• lushdog 3y ago
  Not quite blowing it up but we bought a used RV that sits in a campground year round. I stay in it during the summer 4 days a week. I’ve learned how to be relaxed again and have worked through a few layers of anxiety.
• bjpirt 3y ago
  I like the principle of this and have kind of done it myself previously, however I'm currently finding it's a _lot_ harder to consider blowing up your life when you have kids that are old enough to care. I think the resentment having your life blown up for you makes this considerably less appealing...
• maurits 3y ago
  I'm a child of expats who became an expat. Lived in over a dozen countries. Contemplating another. Don't blow up your life. Its rubbish.
• oldandboring 3y ago
  Came here to say something smart-assy about these dumb "life advice" articles written by 20-somethings. Stayed to watch the pile-on in the comments. ding Popcorn's ready.
• badtension 3y ago
  I blew up my life by quitting my job in January 2020 to find some new opportunities in the following months. Then the pandemic hit, my weekly training ended, extreme back and head pain came back, I wasn't able to fix myself up for a long time. Split with my gf, changed places to something that gave me extreme anxiety and a lot of gray hairs. Held off depression for a long time. Now I slowly get back into healthier lifestyle and try to piece myself back together to something what once was. It's very easy to write something like that especially after everything worked out well. Keep in mind there are many types of people and some of them will always land on top (I'd say those with the best networking skills, which I have zero). I just want to stress something that is often missed. If you are feeling good in current status quo just think what kind of person you are, what skills you have, what is easy and what is hard. Don't change your life drastically until you get to know yourself well. You can't "power through" everything that happens and there's a level of suffering that makes it all not worth it in the end.
• PascLeRasc 3y ago
  Before taking advice from these comments, please think about Nonsurvivor Bias. Do you think someone who blew up their life and had it go incredibly well is spending their morning on Hacker News? Is that how your ideal summer day would be, when Golden Gate Park is right there?
• thenoblesunfish 3y ago
  I think that for this audience, the assumption of status quo bias is questionable. I am relatively sane, I think, and I could use more "stay the course, play the long game" advice than "blow up your life" advice. To paraphrase a review for a book I've forgotten the name of, "quitting is boring" (because it's too easy).
• aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > The neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga has suggested that “When you get up in the morning, you think about status. You think about where you are in relation to your peers.” This is far off from my own experience. :-( > Left to your own devices, with no task demanding your immediate concentration, you tend to spend a good deal of time thinking about other people—your judgments of them; their evaluations of you. Honestly, in such situations I typically rather tend to think about mathematics or programming problems (or at least something somewhat similar to this). --- Yes, I am somewhat of the lone wolf archetype - which is in my opinion not uncommon among programmers.
• totallywrong 3y ago
  This is the advice of someone who has lived the lifestyle for a short time and is on the honeymoon phase, which is when you're ready to tell everyone they're wasting their lifes if they don't do the same. I'm 15+ years in and would be very wary of giving advice like this. It can work, and I wouldn't trade what I've lived for anything, but it can also be extremely taxing for your mental strength. I've read in the comments a quote to the effect of "freedom is very lonely" and it can't be more true. I've lived in many places and had all kinds of relationships and it's extremely hard to make anything last, for a myriad of reasons. I think it takes a particular personality type to do this, for me I always had the urge and left very young. I still have all my friends and family back home and visit yearly which brings me great joy, though I seem to be unable to stay there for extended periods. On the other hand, I've finally found a place I love where I'm settling down, and I consider myself very lucky to have been able to choose where I want to be. So there are also great rewards for those who are committed.
• henryaj 3y ago
  Related: https://www.raptitude.com/2012/07/most-lives-are-lived-by-default/ https://www.raptitude.com/2012/07/most-lives-are-lived-by-de...
• thyselius 3y ago
  This essay seems inspired by this amazing episode of Hidden Brain, i strongly suggest take a listen if you find this subject interesting https://podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?i=1000611353846 https://podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908...
• uwagar 3y ago
  theres one blow-up certainly coming for us all: death. and it can come any minute. there is a joy in embracing that and boldly go for a blow-up. change is micro blow-up...
• brailsafe 3y ago
  > I quit my job and moved to Thailand without doing any research about the country, figuring that I could be a bartender again somewhere if it all went south. Ironically, this seems like the most off-the-shelf thing to do if you're a little unstable, want a big change, and are probably NA or EU born; specifically Thailand, not that it's necessarily a bad thing depending on what your mission is. There is some virtue in blowing up your life, I'd say at least once, because sometimes it's just necessary to get you out of your hometown or out of a stagnant relationship, a bad career or whatever. People need adventure more than they think. But you never escape suffering somehow, and you never escape needing to grow as a person. I blew up my life initially for a job in a better city, which I ended up getting fired from and then ruining the relationship I had back home. However, now that I love my city and community, would I move for a job again? Fuck no, not unless my situation was dire, or I fully get priced out of my neighborhood (lol, rip Canada). If it was dire, it would probably be a worthwhile shot. But I'll also never move back to my hometown unless the same dire circumstances are present. It would be foolish to continue arbitrarily blowing up your life though just for the sake of it. Sometimes you do need big change, but you need to be able to evaluate why you need that change and maybe what you hope will be different next time, at least some core things.