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Alternatively, never blow up your life! Live near your family and lifelong friends, establish hardcore roots with your community, always be surrounded by love.

• 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
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  • 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.
  • saiya-jin 3y ago
    Travelling will make you a broken soul? Then we must have been doing a very different kind of travelling around the world, for me it was the exact opposite. Literally the most enlighting experiences in my life, tons of personal growth. And you meet tons of people even if you don't want to, do some cool extreme shit with them which can form bonds much stronger than years of just sitting next to each other in some cubicle/open space.
  • hzay 3y ago
    > it will make you a broken soul with broken social fabric, but with more experience. I didn't expect this :( Why are you this way? Reading your comment until that point, I thought you'd figured life out.
    • eastbound 3y ago
      Haha you expected a fairy tale. Real life is harder and never clean-cut. But the good news is when a man embraces difficulty, isn’t it?
    • projectazorian 3y ago
      He does now have all the tools at his disposal to fix it. It’s not so bad.
  • ilyt 3y ago
    > 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. What an egotistical thing to say. You're not entitled to have people waste time trying to "be friends with you" just because you're financially successful > I’m workaholic because I don’t have enough friends. You don't make friends and are workaholic because of it.
    • eastbound 3y ago
      You see, I’ve proven that I’m a good person in many occasions, despite naysayers. Now if we all must collude to make women in tech succeed, then surely we can include me at an improv group.
      • ilyt 3y ago
        Sorry I can't differentiate whether that was sarcasm or more self-ego stroking
    • mtizim 3y ago
      What awful things to say.
      • ilyt 3y ago
        What other response would you expect to someone complaining that people don't like him despise him having money ?
        • hutzlibu 3y ago
          He said people did not like him, because he was different. Did not recognized his talents. Considered him worthless. With him building up a succesful startup he clearly proofed he has talents. But it sounds like he would have traded some of that working time to get money, to spend time with friends instead. But he seems burned from his childhood experiences.
    • jdsleppy 3y ago
  • ensocode 3y ago
    Completely agree with your perspective. Life is about making choices, and sometimes breaking out requires sacrificing certain aspects of our lives to gain momentum. When you dare to think and act differently, you become the odd one out, and your community may not accept you. But if you do break out and succeed, you reap the rewards you deserve, such as wealth and a home. However, it's often impossible to go back to the roots you left behind without even realizing it during the breakout. Personal growth happens along the way, even if others fail to see or understand it. Ultimately, it's crucial to trust your instincts and listen to your gut when deciding whether to break out or not. Thank you for this interesting discussion - inspiring.
  • treprinum 3y ago
    I traveled around the world for over a year because I wanted to experience more cultures - I found the same problems of humanity basically everywhere just in different shades. Anyway, a hack for you - if you want immediate respect, gain some muscles. It's possible your current presence is non-threatening and people subconsciously undervalue you due to the first impression.
    • moneywoes 3y ago
      Do you recommended test for this purpose?
  • loa_in_ 3y ago
    Are you sure you're not trading your willingness to make more genuine human connections for the convenience of a psychologist?
    • eastbound 3y ago
      Ouch, that… is a good point. I really needed one at some point because I had an infinite-loop on negativity, but I need to try to emancipate from that.
• phnofive 3y ago
  The Onion's take ten years on is a bit different: https://www.theonion.com/women-explain-why-they-became-tradwives-1850184658/ https://www.theonion.com/women-explain-why-they-became-tradw...
  • akprasad 3y ago
    I don't follow what relationship these two stories have with each other -- the first is on living in community and putting down roots, and the latter is on far-right cultural atavism.
    • Gareth321 3y ago
      It depends if one interprets "trad wife" to mean "far-right cultural atavism" or "traditional wife." I try to listen to those who subscribe to the movement, and they report the latter, every time. It seems those who interpret it as "far-right cultural atavism" refuse to actually listen to the women who find meaning in the lifestyle. Inasmuch, I see these articles strongly linked, and I find the juxtaposition really interesting.
      • akprasad 3y ago
        The Onion clearly takes the former reading in their piece. I mean, it's barely subtext: - "I wanted to live all my internalized misogyny" - "Replenishing the white race is a full time job in itself" - "A feminist cut me off in traffic once" - "I believe in choosing a marital structure from an arbitrary point in human history and pretending it represents some kind of inviolable rule.” But if you find value in juxtaposing these two, more power to you.
        • Taikonerd 3y ago
          I used to like The Onion before they got super preachy...
      • debok 3y ago
        "Trad wife" AKA people subscribing to traditional Christian ideas of marriage are very much "far-right cultural activists" from the feminist perspective. Traditional Christian ideas about marriage (i.e. stay-at-home mom, breadwinner husband, the wife willingly submitting to her husband's authority, the husband willingly sacrificing his own ambitions for the good of his family, etc.) are very much not in line with feminism. While these people won't call themselves "far right cultural activists" they do have to reject feminism in order to have a consistent worldview, and feminists would definitely call them something along the lines of far-right. I do agree that far-right is a misnomer, "religious right" or "socially conservative" might be a better fit. My point is that "far-right cultural atavism" and "traditional wife" are the same thing from different perspectives.
• librish 3y ago
  This is a great path, but I think it's easy to overestimate how many people are able to take it happily. It's making a lot of assumptions: - You have a good relationship with your family - You have good friends who also didn't move away - You are genuinely happy with the work you get to do in a town with more limited career choices - Your location (area and population density) plus salary can support your hobbies
  • ilyt 3y ago
    It's probably easier now than 10 years ago with remote work opportunities. But yes, that is a lot of stars that need to align
  • ljlolel 3y ago
    Also notably that onion article was published over 10 years ago in 2013. At least by 2020 (before remote work) that seemed impossible to fulfill given the increasingly competitive global capitalist system creating massive uncertainty (and causing taking pills and overdose) to everyone especially rural and those back home
• hayst4ck 3y ago
  "One doesn't realize in early life that the price of freedom is loneliness. To be happy one must be tied." ~ CS Lewis I don't know the context of the quote and I know next to nothing about CS Lewis, but having blown my life up at one point and experienced freedom on a level few on this planet could achieve (health, money, time, and will) the quote rang very true for me. I think some people grow up in a community and are rooted within that community, but those people are also subject to that community and there is no guarantee that that "community that surrounds you with love" is a good community. "Always be surrounded by love..." unless you are gay. Gay, trans, atheist, feminist, brown, an opioid addict, a questioner of authority, or otherwise different.
  • whitepaint 3y ago
    > "Always be surrounded by love..." unless you are gay. Gay, trans, atheist, feminist, brown, an opioid addict, a questioner of authority, or otherwise different. Or a middle-aged white man. https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/ https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
    • 4ggr0 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • ViscountPenguin 3y ago
        Given what we know demographically about middle age white males (that they're relatively richer, more powerful e.t.c. than their peers) you can make some useful inferences about what doesn't work to decrease suicide risk. While there are probably many reasons for this a personal theory of mine (without any firm backing) is that Borderline Personality disorder is underdiagnosed in males. People with BPD are at a significantly higher risk of suicide, but very effective treatments exist namely dialectical behavioural therapy: a collection of emotional management and mindfulness exercises designed by a psychologists with BPD. The diagnostic criteria for BPD however, are heavily weighed towards symptoms associated with female socialisation. Even the treatment materials assume a female patient, which while not making them less effective is probably a hard sell to males in a sexist society.
• pizza 3y ago
  Always wonder what people without roots are supposed to do. Where's the advice for them?
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  • nickd2001 3y ago
    Do you mean by being uprooted to different places as a child? This happened to me but I put down new roots and made long-term friends as an adult. I'd think the advice for people lacking roots would be the same as for anyone who lacks friends and/or has lost connections? There are also people who lived in an area all their life but maybe friends moved away etc and they found themselves lonely. Seems to me an answer is get involved with things - volunteering, sports, arts, music etc, and for those religious faith, get involved with that, church or otherwise, as long as its a diverse inclusive tolerant supportive community.
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  • debok 3y ago
    While it might be hard to grow roots, it is not impossible. IMO, you should start doing serious work on growing roots when you are in your late 20s. Growing roots include: - Getting married - Having kids - Settling down to live in one place - Finding out how you can participate in the local community, and the actively participate You will find that people are remarkably open to people who willingly contribute to other's well-being. This is how friends are made, this is how roots are grown. Edit: formatting
    • brabel 3y ago
      I "blew my life up" twice. Both times I was looking to start over and settle, i.e. grow roots, but in a different place. It failed both times. People are incredibly difficult to accept outsiders within their circle. I did get married, but wife wants no kids :( ... which makes the marriage a little... fragile. Without close family/friends holding me here (I am and feel like a complete stranger here, 10 years on, and my wife is not local either), it seems I could just go at any time. However, blowing my life up a third time seems futile. It may work for some people, but after failing twice, doing it a third time seems stupid.
• fantasticshower 3y ago
  Thank you for sharing that article. I had a good laugh reading it. It's essentially the life I'm trying to live, except I work remotely and earn a "city wage" while living in my rural home town.
• badcppdev 3y ago
  I think that the elites have established social networks. I think that's almost in the definition of elite. Are the terms "elite" and "elites" a term with hidden meaning in the US? Is it a republican dogwhistle for democrats?
• flippinburgers 3y ago
  I have to agree. For those people who have loving families that they can work with - realizing that EVERYONE has differences of opinion - staying near family is the single best thing you can do. You can have kids. Those kids can be around your parents and siblings and other relatives. Honestly it is true living. All else gravitates towards being too self centered.
  • jebarker 3y ago
    I moved continents 12 years ago. I'm now happily married with a kid and have a life I love in my new home country. But I've only recently recognized the price I've paid in moving so far from my parents and siblings and what my daughter will miss out on because of it too.
• jefftk 3y ago
  Agreed: https://www.jefftk.com/p/lifelong-investments https://www.jefftk.com/p/lifelong-investments