8 ms·

Same here. Live in a beautiful city, cool friends, lovely girlfriend. Plenty of things exist here of which I can objectively say they're awesome, and in many th

• hoboon 12y ago
  >cool friends, lovely girlfriend. I don't have any of those.
  • IkmoIkmo 12y ago
    I don't quite know what to say... although I nearly wouldn't have, either. My girlfriend fell in love just as I was slipping into this new shut-in life. She had to adjust to me not really wanting to go to a cafe, movie, restaurant, park, museum, party, friends etc. It's the reason I wanted to break up and told her it's not going to work out like this. But she refused and stayed with me, we moved in together and it's been years now. But it hasn't been the same like 2 years earlier when I was a typical boyfriend, interested in participating in all facets of life and doing all of the above mentioned things and enjoying them, too. It's quite strange how it went and I'd still be okay with her finding someone else. I mean don't get me wrong I absolutely adore her but it's just how it is, something irrational. Same with friends, I've not instigated contact in 2 years now with any of my friends. I still have 3 who hit me up and I go see either of em a few times a month because they want to. But I'd also be okay if they stopped calling. Same with family. I hate to say it. I'd definitely still check in on them if they stopped calling, the only people really, but there's no real desire to hang out or talk, I'd just be really curious and concerned about how they're doing but not more than that. So it's really because of them, not me. Wish it was all like 3 years ago. Now I couldn't even get excited for a free holiday trip. Hell I used to love that. Traveled Europe, Africa, Asia and North America by the time I was 20. Now I don't even want to walk in the park when it's nice outside, and I literally live next to a park. Crazy how a brain can change for no discernible reason. When did things start to change for you, has it always been like this?
    • ars 12y ago
      Does she see these messages you are writing? It's a bit of an odd suggestions, but consider having kids. Kids have a way of needing things, that just transcends all the meaningless excuses you have for not getting anything done. Make it a point that it's YOU that takes them to school, or shopping or whatever. Or if shopping is too confusing to do alone make a point that the whole family goes. That it's you that makes lunches, and checks if they did homework. As infants make it a point that you dress them for bed, even if your SO picks the clothing. The instinct to take care of kids is wired really really deep in your brain, way below any surface problems. It will easily override them if you let it.
      • IkmoIkmo 12y ago
        > Does she see these messages you are writing? Nope, unless she tries to find it. HN is in my favorites and it auto-logins. But she's really not the type for that. I think it'd be pretty painful to read although she knows the bulk of it. > It's a bit of an odd suggestions, but consider having kids. Still 24, so that'd be really early for us, not something I'd love to have so early in my life (although I can imagine how nice it'd be to still be 44 with an adult kid!). Beyond that though it's also not something I'd feel is appropriate. It's definitely true that if I'd have kids right now I'd probably solve the symptoms of whatever problem I have, completely agree with you there. I'm that type of person, as most people are, to my girlfriend for example. If she needs me I'll be there, if she has stuff planned for a birthday, or is going to graduate or needs a running partner for motivation, I'll suddenly be up for going out with her. And it's certainly true that people have had kids for less. But this issue is not something I'd ever want to use as a reason to have kids in and of itself, despite any of that.
        • ars 12y ago
          > I think it'd be pretty painful to read although she knows the bulk of it. Personally I think she should, but of course I don't really know anything about her. > Still 24, so that'd be really early for us I don't think 24 is especially young. Maybe a drop younger than typical, but you seem to have good earning potential, and someone you love. What more do you need? It has advantages too - you have more energy when young, and kids take a lot of work. (Also don't forget you never know how long it will actually take.) > But this issue is not something I'd ever want to use as a reason to have kids It's not written permanently on them you know. Helping their parents is probably the best reason to have kids. "Why did you have me Dad?" "Because you make me happy." What matters is how you raise them, not why they were born.
  • wutbrodo 12y ago
    Have you tried Meetup? I screwed up my work-life balance towards the very end of college so I graduated both rusty at meeting people and in a situation that many people find hard (making friends in a new city post-college, particularly when all my coworkers lived 40 miles away from me, were older than me, and I didn't have a car). My gf at the time suggested Meetup, and though I initially dismissed it as "embarrassing" ("Jesus I need to use a service to find friends? How pathetic"), I eventually tried it out and made some really good friends pretty immediately (as well as a much larger circle of friendly acquaintances who I still see semi-regularly). Though perhaps that was specific to my problem, since at the time (and now) I was always bursting with new things to do but was lacking people to do them with.
• bkjelden 12y ago
  I think we're afraid of being wrong. We live in a society where access to information is greater than it ever has been in history, and everything we may take an interest in doing has been done before, and someone has already pointed out all of the flaws and how it's wrong. We see that first and focus in on it, and we let it destroy something that a previous generation would've seen as imperfect yet beautiful.
  • IkmoIkmo 12y ago
    Can definitely relate to that. I'd rather think that there's something temporarily wrong with my brain chemistry, something that'll get sorted out after a few years pass and new habits and a new rhythm, a new balance of social, work, rest, exercise etc become part of my life. On the other hand I'm afraid that it's a generational thing. A child of the financial recession (nearing 25yo, economy's not quite booming in Europe), of digital work (I'm able to pay the bills programming from home in my own little company without having to leave the house much), of an age with unprecedented access to information (everything you mentioned, knowing exactly how great the world is and how insignificant anything you do is). As if my particular blend of person in this particular age in this particular economy is just begging to become a shut-in. I didn't quite ride a wave of easy employment that led to company life playing a big social, professional and personal (confidence etc) role in my life, having graduated during a recession. Wasn't forced outside and into the lives of others due to the digital age allowing me to make a living from home. Anyway it's all a bit depressing, I try not to spend too much time explaining why. It feels like giving up, or finding an excuse. One thing a friend told me a while ago stuck with me though... on how the notion that life is malleable (this sort of variation on the American dream. That if you just work and try hard enough, you can become anything and do anything), meant as an uplifting and motivating cultural idea, not to mention an idea that homogenizes everyone: everyone is capable, everyone is unique and special and important and powerful... I think perhaps is the reason of so much depression and anxiety and uncertainty in young people today. Because it's simply not true that anyone can become the next Steve Jobs, yet because of this notion that life is completely malleable, if you're not awesome then there must be some unique character flaw you're suffering from, it's your fault. Anyway again I don't like to get caught up on this frame of mind too much as it just gets me absolutely nowhere, but it's definitely interesting to discuss every now and then.
• mooreds 12y ago
  I don't know what exactly you've tried, and back seat driving on HN about such a tough topic is probably a bad idea, but... Have you tried joining a volunteer organization? I'm a member of a couple, and it's hard to overstate how much it has helped me get out. Helping other people is such a rush. It's not all roses and sunshine, but might be worth a try if you haven't gone down that path. Either a dedicated non profit like a mentorship program or a volunteer organization like the Rotarians (I'm a member of the Odd Fellows, myself) would love to have even an hour of your time a week.
  • JohnBooty 12y ago
    Yes! Volunteering is great. You meet really good people doing it. Because people who volunteer tend to be people with big hearts, of course.
    • sthreet 12y ago
      Having done a small amount of required volunteering for school I would disagree. Of course, I live in the middle of nowhere, and it was mostly my classmates volunteering with me who are also required to volunteer for so many hours.
      • mooreds 12y ago
        I think the volunteering experience is, like so many other things, dependent on who else is participating as well as what you are doing. I hope you explore/are able to explore other opportunities in the future that resonate more profoundly with you.
        • sthreet 12y ago
          Maybe. I lost my signed sheet. So I have to do like 20 hours again. You wouldn't happen to know a good place to find things to volunteer for in general?
          • JohnBooty 12y ago
• DickingAround 12y ago
  <IHaveNoIdeaWhatImTalkingAbout> Do you feel guilty doing 'fun' things or is nothing fun? I have the guilt side of it. E.g. "Sure, I could go jet-skiing for a few hours but I should be productive." Is that it?
  • IkmoIkmo 12y ago
    Ah no not at all, work isn't really a big driver for me at the moment so I tend not to feel guilty about it. I do feel I should do something more ambitious. So my brother for example keeps telling me to just get a job at a coffeeshop, go out and meet new people through work again. My bills are such that I easily could, but in that case I'd feel like I'd be wasting my time and should be doing something productive. I don't have anything against menial work but I'm sure I'd regret it in 6 years if I'm 30 and feel like I missed the boat on another career. So I currently do basic programming from home which pays the bills just fine but I'd like something new. I'm not really a programmer though, just have a tech interest and did it on the side as a hobby, and grew that into a business. But it's definitely not professional software engineering. More like how your nephew can build you an ecommerce shop online with some plugins and basic scripting and could make a living out of that, but no ecommerce company would ever hire him to build products, only I know a bit more than your typical techie-nephew but not quite enough to work as an engineer. My uni background is in business & management which is absolute shit in terms of skills/knowledge. It's very much an experience-based industry. Business fundamentals is something you can do in a 2 month course, not a 4 year undergrad program. And so as a recent graduate you spent too much time learning too little, and have 0 experience. It'd definitely be fun to be a project manager, trying to blend the engineering and the business side of things as I feel I have a good enough intuition for both. But that's a role you get in your 30s with experience, not as a recent grad. Positions that are available to me are mostly sales. So a buddy of mine does ERP sales. And it's just not me, cold-calling people, having people shit in my ear 99/100 times and and preparing 1 hot lead for someone up top who rakes it in the next day for years, and then become that person. But the labor market for non-engineering things is just really brutal for recent grads. There are still jobs but everything requires a few years of experience at least. Let me know if you have any ideas haha, I'm at a loss, business school is one big joke in terms of employment. It's like it's the 80s and I just spent a few years mastering the typewriter. Anyway got off on a tangent there. So no, no guilt on doing something 'fun'. I also wouldn't quite say that nothing is fun. If you'd teleport me onto a jetski right now, I'd have a blast. And to borrow from another comment, somehow I'm much more inclined to download a shooter game than to go to a shooting range even if it was free and around the corner, despite the fact the range would be a bigger thrill. I can't explain it, it sounds ridiculous. Same with friends, I enjoy hanging out with them every two weeks when someone keeps asking to hang out and I give in and we set a date, it's always, without fail, a fun evening. But I'm completely fine not arranging that myself for months. I wish I desired to do the things I end up enjoying once I do them. That desire isn't really there. It's like being a guy not attracted to girls at all, not feeling any emotion or sexual interest in a gorgeous willing girl across the street, as if you were gay. But once you do get around to visit the girl for whatever reason, it's genuinely fun. Again I can't explain how or why, just how it is/feels. Pains me to say it's a bit like that with my girlfriend, too. Absolutely love and adore her, pretty girl, too, sex is great and it's all there, but I've barely got any desire for it. I'd say it's a chemical thing, like a particular thing in my brain just doesn't fire because of it. But, and this is almost like a sad doctor's joke... I have no interest in going to the doctor to get it fixed. Kind of hilarious. Despite wanting for things to go back to 5 years ago (in terms of my mental state), I don't really care enough to pursue a solution. Anyway hope that covers your question ;)
• JohnBooty 12y ago
  > It's pretty ridiculous and something very strongly tells me it's the wrong way to live life Maybe? It's hard to tell. At least for some of us, I think the "something" telling you to get out and have fun is just society in general (and media in particular) telling us that we're supposed to be out doing "exciting" things with beautiful, interesting people.
  • IkmoIkmo 12y ago
    Definitely. if I somehow tragically were to lose my parents and brother, and lost touch with friends and all who wouldn't check my Linkedin, i.e. nobody to check if I'm a success or failure or to judge me... I wouldn't mind as much to live the life I do now. So there's definitely a sense of community pressure. I wrote about it in another comment briefly; this notion that life is malleable and you can be anything and do anything is really depressing. Because it almost implies that if you're not Steve Jobs, you're really doing something wrong. While the notion that life is malleable is supposed to be uplifting and motivating, it can also be depressing. Yet the thought is absolutely pervasive in our culture. Hell to take Jobs as an example, his well known speech on everything around us is designed, and you can design things, too, so empowering [0]... can to some people be interpreted as 'I didn't design anything nor have any good ideas on new designs, I'm an idiot'. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZyUlHtxoBs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZyUlHtxoBs
• MaulingMonkey 12y ago
  This is still me, in so many things. On an intellectual level, there are things I want to do that I know I would enjoy, and that would make my life better. On an emotional level, I simply lack the motivation to start engaging in them. What's helping me is the concept of precommitment. I have a simple system. It started as a simple weekly wager with a coworker: Every Friday, have a plan for your weekend. Complete that plan during your weekend. Failure in either part costs you a coffee, failure in both costs you lunch. Those plans can be whatever you want. Ranging from taking care of basic life chores, to working on projects, to getting exercise, and to whatever else might seem a priority. This doesn't fix the lack of intrinsic motivation to get started per se, but does add another, extrinsic, motivation. More wanting to save face than worrying about the hit to our wallets - both of us willing to tease each other and ourselves for being too meek in our planning when we succeed, or for being too ambitious or lazy when we fail. (Edit: Also out of a sense of competition.) I'm still searching for intrinsic motivation, but at least as a stopgap, extrinsic motivation through precommitment is doing wonders for my life. Given that it took me a decade or so to figure out this much, I'll more than happily take it.
  • mattlutze 12y ago
    I've moved a lot in the last decade, and this is one of those predicaments I end up in the first months before I build a new social circle in the new city. I've found that my social life thrives if I can find a group with a few flaky social butterflies, who my general predictability can balance well against. When they get some random activity in their head, they have someone to go do it with and I have that impetus to go do something outside my default patterns. It might be helpful to look at the friends and colleagues around you and see if you might need to go hunt for a little extra flavor in that mixing pot.
• glogla 12y ago
  I read an article (or maybe comment somewhere?) once - and sadly, my search-engine-fu is not strong enough today, so I can't link it - that talked about two kinds of depression, two kinds of "beasts". Once was called black I think. It's the one people think of, when you say depression, and how movies portray it too: sadness, despair and the feeling that everything is bad, and everything ever will be bad. The other one, however, is supposed to be more tricky. It's gray. It doesn't make you feel sadness or despair or any other thing. It makes everything gray. It makes you numb, it makes you not care about anything at all. The world doesn't do it for you anymore, and if it were to drown, you would not care. The former is like being hurt. The latter is like being dead. The former is hell, the latter is great endless emptiness. ... I'm not sure how accurate it is, especially considering how people find it easy to see themselves in text that could be about anyone - see horoscopes and stuff, but I think it's important to know, that depression doesn't have to look like person is sad or anything. I think what you are describing sounds a lot like "grey" depression.
  • IkmoIkmo 12y ago
    Yeah so I think I'm depressed but it's nothing like in the movies. No alcohol, no smoking, no crying, no suicidal thoughts (other than intellectual), no real sadness or despair (there's some disappointment but it's again more intellectual than emotional) and I don't really consider anything 'bad' in my life. In fact objectively most things are great. I get 3 nice meals every day, live in a nice apartment next to the park with a cool gf. Family's part of my life, as are some good friends I can rely on. Work my own hours and it pays the bills. At the same time it's completely empty. Going outside or making career moves or traveling or going dancing or eating out or whatever, just doesn't do it for me anymore. I feel pretty empty about most things, and I'd be mostly comfortable losing touch with say my friends. I tend to leave my house, in total (whether it's groceries or seeing friends) maybe 40 times a year and I tend to wake up and spend an hour in bed lying there without any reason to get out of bed, and then finally do because it's so boring to just lay there a whole day. So yeah definitely 'gray' for me, while the 'black' thing just absolutely doesn't resonate.
    • keshuv 12y ago
• archagon 12y ago
  I don't know if it's the same as you, but whenever I consider doing some "activity", I immediately fast-forward through it in my mind and think, "OK, so it'll be fun for, like, an hour. Then what?" More than anything, deep down, I feel like I crave the unknown and the unfamiliar; but as I grow older and learn more about the world, the things in my proximity that still have this property have all but disappeared. For this reason, I've found what I desire in my life — as a fellow "spectator" — is to drastically change my surroundings instead of focusing on specific (and ultimately inconsequential) things to do. Not, "I want to ride a jet ski", but "I want to live on an island", or "I want to take a ship across the ocean". Right now, I've been traveling around Europe for most of a year, and even though I've still been largely living the shut-in life, I appreciate having seen so many new cities, tasted so many new foods, bumbled my way through so many new languages, and gained so much life experience. The only problem is that you can't really develop a circle of friends when you're moving from place to place every few weeks. I've been thinking that maybe if I could find a nice, tech-minded "shut-in" community in a warm location, I could live like that for a few years. Do some gardening. Raise some chickens. Maybe visit the closest city every few weeks, if I feel like it. I think that would be a pretty good life. But I guess that's the hardest part: finding that little locus of the unknown in the first place.
  • kaitai 12y ago
    I have found over the last few years that making things -- preferably making beautiful & functional things -- is what makes me happy, more than just "specific (and ultimately inconsequential) things to do".
    • archagon 12y ago
      What sorts of things do you make? My "curse" is that as a programmer, all the beautiful and functional things I know how to make require me to sit in front of a glowing screen all day! Maybe I should take up woodworking or something.
      • kaitai 12y ago
        Food :) (everyone loves that!) Beer (great way to meet people -- everyone wants to swap beer). Textiles, beadwork, crappy art. I really am thinking of woodworking -- I would like to make a really nice chair. Or a salad bowl.