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> I disagree with the sentiment that optimize your life for happiness will solve it I agree. I don't know how to say this without sounding completely pretentio

> I disagree with the sentiment that optimize your life for happiness will solve it I agree. I don't know how to say this without sounding completely pretentious, but it's kind of hard to talk about your innermost desires without any ego, so I guess here goes. All my life, in the back of my mind, I have had the ultimate goal of creating things that were better than anything else out there. Art? Games? Software? Music? It didn't — doesn't — really matter, as long as they would persist in history and influence other people. (Software is what I've chosen as my medium for the moment, but I expect it will change throughout my life.) While my day-to-day goals are obviously less lofty, this is the driving force behind my life and my career. For me, to be happy with limited success and a more laid-back pace would be a kind of personal death. Thank you for the long post. Some really great advice and observations, and I can relate to a lot of it for sure. "No one runs full speed for their whole life" is a great observation: many of the most prominent creators in the world only produced their best work during a fairly short span of time, and then languished shortly after. Maybe it's OK for that moment to come a little later. It can just be hard when it feels like everyone around you is hitting that peak at a younger age. In regards to writing your worries down, I'm reminded of a recent This American Life story where they talked to a guy who created a website that would send you e-mails "from" your anxieties throughout the day[1]. Maybe it's worth a shot! [1]: http://anxietybox.com http://anxietybox.com (currently broken)

lentil_soup 12y ago
"It can just be hard when it feels like everyone around you is hitting that peak at a younger age" Just wanted to mention that that is simply not true. "Everyone around you" will probably not reach any sort of peak in their entire life and I bet for a lot of them, from their point of view, YOU are the one that reached that peak. It's also curious that you say that "to be happy with limited success and a more laid-back pace would be a kind of personal death". So, even though you'd be happy that would be a personal death?. Think about that for a second and why you phrased it that way. As for the original post, I was at some point where you are (to the point of panic attacks and worse) and I know it's not a nice place to be, but believe me it gets better, way better!. For me the answer wasn't to just try harder to "make it", it was realizing that all those ideas I had of what I wanted to be, success, etc were just wrong. I would even say now my definition of success is actually the inverse of what it was.
imron 12y ago
You have clearly stated though that what makes you happy would be to create things that "would persist in history and influence other people". For some reason you then define something that would make you unhappy as 'happy' "For me, to be happy with limited success and a more laid-back pace would be a kind of personal death." You mentioned you can't be happy with that, so it doesn't make sense to define that as happiness. Optimising for happiness is going to be different for each person, and from your post, it seems it you should be optimising for creating things that will persist in history and influence people, because that is what you have mentioned will make you happy.
visakanv 12y ago
> as long as they would persist in history and influence other people. This used to be my main motivator– the idea that you can transcend death through legacy– until I learned about the heat death of the Universe. Turns out that nothing actually persists indefinitely. The Universe itself will eventually die out. Optimizing for legacy at the expense of living well day to day can be a miserable existence. It's as valid a path as any other, but you'll want to really look in the mirror and say "I choose to struggle and suffer and be frustrated and anxious in pursuit of this legacy (that will eventually fade into nothingness anyway), out of all the other options available to me." Anyway, it also sounds like you're framing the problem too tightly here– it's not like your only options are great, painful success and limited success. It's possible to work on something you care about AND sleep well at night. Indeed I think the way to a good life and a good death can and should be broken down into living good days, weeks, months, years. Also there's the whole thing about how... people don't create great things by TRYING to create great things, they tend to create great things by following their curiosity and then allowing an opportunity to consume them completely. The best way to achieve greatness, in a paradoxical sense, is to stop worrying about it and focus goddamn hard on a problem you desperately want solved, over everything else.

lentil_soup 12y ago

"It can just be hard when it feels like everyone around you is hitting that peak at a younger age" Just wanted to mention that that is simply not true. "Everyone around you" will probably not reach any sort of peak in their entire life and I bet for a lot of them, from their point of view, YOU are the one that reached that peak. It's also curious that you say that "to be happy with limited success and a more laid-back pace would be a kind of personal death". So, even though you'd be happy that would be a personal death?. Think about that for a second and why you phrased it that way. As for the original post, I was at some point where you are (to the point of panic attacks and worse) and I know it's not a nice place to be, but believe me it gets better, way better!. For me the answer wasn't to just try harder to "make it", it was realizing that all those ideas I had of what I wanted to be, success, etc were just wrong. I would even say now my definition of success is actually the inverse of what it was.

imron 12y ago

You have clearly stated though that what makes you happy would be to create things that "would persist in history and influence other people". For some reason you then define something that would make you unhappy as 'happy' "For me, to be happy with limited success and a more laid-back pace would be a kind of personal death." You mentioned you can't be happy with that, so it doesn't make sense to define that as happiness. Optimising for happiness is going to be different for each person, and from your post, it seems it you should be optimising for creating things that will persist in history and influence people, because that is what you have mentioned will make you happy.

visakanv 12y ago

> as long as they would persist in history and influence other people. This used to be my main motivator– the idea that you can transcend death through legacy– until I learned about the heat death of the Universe. Turns out that nothing actually persists indefinitely. The Universe itself will eventually die out. Optimizing for legacy at the expense of living well day to day can be a miserable existence. It's as valid a path as any other, but you'll want to really look in the mirror and say "I choose to struggle and suffer and be frustrated and anxious in pursuit of this legacy (that will eventually fade into nothingness anyway), out of all the other options available to me." Anyway, it also sounds like you're framing the problem too tightly here– it's not like your only options are great, painful success and limited success. It's possible to work on something you care about AND sleep well at night. Indeed I think the way to a good life and a good death can and should be broken down into living good days, weeks, months, years. Also there's the whole thing about how... people don't create great things by TRYING to create great things, they tend to create great things by following their curiosity and then allowing an opportunity to consume them completely. The best way to achieve greatness, in a paradoxical sense, is to stop worrying about it and focus goddamn hard on a problem you desperately want solved, over everything else.