If those things don’t make you happy then don’t do them.
Those people have bought into the grind culture and will probably get burnt out
Because they’re growing up, and you’re not.
The only person not growing up is you, you judgmental freak.
We don’t do it for the purpose of increasing responsibility. I mean , I didn’t, maybe other people do. I just really wanted a couple little mini monsters following me around.
When I was like 30, I was out hiking and I saw some guy with three little kids, the kids were hopping from rock to rock, and the littlest one ran up past the siblings to hold the dad’s hand. It was super cute. My parents were kinda uninterested and afk, so I haven’t seen a lot of examples of dads just having fun with their kids.
That little family was inspiring, in the sense that it opened my mind to a new way of thinking, but also in the sense of taking in breath, it felt like I had been holding my breath and finally stopped. I realized I didn’t necessarily have to be like them, I could use their bad/mediocre parenting as a “what not to do” list, and still do some of the things that they did that were good. I could go hiking with my kids, I could teach them how to build a campsite out of nothing, or how to build a server, or how to put your thumb on the end of a house so it sprays really far.
Sure it’s more responsibility but it’s also really fun.
And, tbh, all the nice things in life are even nicer if you can share it with people. That goes double for kids, because they don’t know how shitty the world is. You just gotta make sure they understand and appreciate the fun stuff and don’t get spoiled.
I had a buddy, and we talked in great detail about this. I chase challenges, and am always looking for the next big puzzle to muddle my way through. He chased freedom. He just wanted to be who he was and spend his time how he wanted.
My point is people are motivated by different things. Find your thing and pursue it. Don’t worry what anyone else is doing. You don’t answer to them, and they’re not any happier than you.
Living your authenticity is fulfilling.
The caveat is don’t conflate freedom/motivation with being a dick. Live the life that you want to live, but if that involves disparaging certain demographics for ethically and/or morally wrong reasons, then maybe live a better life than the one you really want to live. This doesn’t apply to most people, but there are some out there that should read it and take it to heart.
Yeah I’m a bit of both. When I’m working, I always want the next challenge. When I’m at home, I’m quite content to just cease to exist
You may be a perfectionist who’s so afraid of failure that it currently (rationally or irrationally) outweighs the motivation to succeed by a significant margin. You’d like to do some bigger things in life but you self-sabotage by distracting yourself because the thought of actually doing things is way too scary / stressful.
Armchair therapist much? To me the examples given in the post specifically aren’t about success, they’re about the things people that do not directly count as success but that do require you to devote at least part of your life to it.
Different people find joys in different things (some people get more out of charity than they put in)… and different people have a different capacity for stress and energy.
The ability to “strive” is a learned skill that needs to be honed over years. It’s not really natural to most people — it’s easy to fall into a low-energy state and want to stay there because it’s comfortable. It takes practice and energy putting yourself out there and putting an effort into making more of your life.
If you’re happy with who you are and what you’re doing, then I’m not going to neg on your life. But are you going to spend the next ~50 years just gliding along, and not creating or building any value for yourself in this world (and that doesn’t have to be monetary value — building a family, and building up your community through volunteer works build value as well)? When you’re in the twilight of your life, do you want to look back and find you did nothing of significance with your life?
Maybe that doesn’t bother you. That’s fine. Just so long as 15 years from now you’re not some bitter middle-aged person complaining about people in the upper-middle class who get to do things you don’t get to do and who have more money and nice things that you do.
But none of that would be for me. So I put in the work, learned how to strive for the life I wanted, and got a graduate degree, built a beautiful family, got that management job (and the pay that goes with it), and spend my spare time volunteering (currently) with three different organizations. It’s a busy life and take a lot of time and energy — but it allows me to have people around me who love me, with the money to do and own nice things together, and to give back to my community to make it a better place. And when my time eventually comes, I’ll have hopefully left this world a little better off for the effort.
Meh. Your value as a human isn’t tied to your accomplishments (be it having a family or getting a high paying job) or productivity.
This whole thing of “striving as a honed skill” sounds like hustling culture and capitalist brainwashing. In fact, I would say it takes more skill to actually be content with your life and not feel the constant need to strive to be someone better or do something more.
You seem to think that unless you’ve done something, you’re worthless.
It seems that according to your view, a homeless person without a family is completely worthless.
That’s a pretty unfair characterization. He called out multiple times how it’s fine for the other guy if that’s what he wants, but that it’s not his own specific wants. And his central thesis is fine: coasting is fine as long as you’re going to be ok with where you coast to. If you want to be somewhere else then coasting is not fine - but it’s up to you where you want to go.
I pretty specifically called out striving to create things like family or helping improve your community through volunteer works — which isn’t “capitalism” at all.
Each of us can always be someone better and do something more. That isn’t a bad thing.
You end by trying to put words in my mouth. I never said anything about the worth of anyone over anyone else. Striving for the betterment of oneself, one’s loved ones, and one’s community is a good thing — but the antithesis of that isn’t that doing none of those things makes you worthless. That’s something you came up with, not me.
Maybe that doesn’t bother you. That’s fine. Just so long as 15 years from now you’re not some bitter middle-aged person complaining about people in the upper-middle class who get to do things you don’t get to do and who have more money and nice things that you do.
Statistically speaking, single people with no kids usually have more disposable income.
Mate, I’d definitely prefer loose leaf tea but can’t be arsed with the extra hassle
There are dozens of us
Dozens!
I think so anyway. I haven’t checked.
As long as you feel you want to avoid responsibilities, please do so in a responsible way. Use condoms every time, and don’t get involved with a person who wants children. Be a good support-player at work so your manager doesn’t have to be a bitch (they still might, in which case support your coworkers). And contribute in low-effort ways like donating an occasional pint of blood if you’re eligible, or offering to put someone else’s cart away at the grocery store. Just being a decent person is enough.
I’m 55 , child free, divorced & dating, and my last earthly responsibility is to make sure my cat has a beautiful life and that I outlive her so she isn’t alone and scared.
I have refused to rescue other animals, I refuse to have children, I will never remarry, I own my sailboat (home) outright, I own my 2002 Toyota Echo (with almost a quarter of a million miles) outright. My monthly bills are around $400/m excluding food. When I sell the car and ditch my cell plan my bills will be under $200/m. I’ve done all of this to minimize the effect of ‘things I have to do and don’t want to’. And it’s beautiful. I’m as much a master of my own life as I have ever been.
Last year I left my position and I have no intentions of ever being a FTE ever again. Contract work, that I have negotiated is fine, but I’ll never be someone’s ‘property’ again.
I live on a small boat, I drive an old car, I shop at Goodwill & used lots (of clothing) on eBay. I’ll never have the hot girlfriend, the fancy car, the tailored suits again. It was and still is the best trading I’ve ever done.
Don’t get caught up in who you are ‘supposed to be’, be who you are. If you discover things about yourself you aren’t fond of, change it and/or seek the guidance of a professional to assist you.
There’s nothing wrong with you. It’s perfectly ok to live a life others don’t understand.
[edit] The part I left out is I felt similarly at 30. I climbed the corporate ladder because I was supposed to and because my peers and friends were doing the same. I wasted 15 or so years doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Don’t do the same. Enjoy who you are, fix the things you don’t enjoy, AND NEVER EVER NEVER LIVE YOUR LIFE BY COMPARISON.
An important detail from your story is how much money you started with and gained during your corporate life. Living the way you do now can absolutely be a privilege even if it is simpler. Your core message about being yourself and not what society or specific people want you to be is still good, also assuming what you want to be is ethical in nature.
I started off with several thousand in the hole in 2015 and became debt free in 2021. I took a position in 2019 I was qualified to do 20 years prior because I wanted less stress and more time to myself for $68k/year and I stayed at that position for 4 years. I paid $11,800 cash for my sailboat (29 feet) and $1000 cash for my car. I currently have less than $20k in cash and savings.
All of the big money I had was wasted on the right car, the right clothes, the right watch, the right girl, the right condo. All of it of course was a waste, at least for me. I lived like an average American, wracking up debt so I could ’ live the life '.
[edit] I am a highschool drop out, having only made it though 10th grade. No college, no tradeschool, I self taught how to use a computer (1994) and moved forward from that. I hold no degrees, no certifications. I ended up in System Engineering and Infosec.
Now I repair laptops and phones for people who live in the water, and sometimes do manual labor in a boatyard.
If that doesn’t clear it up please let me know what I’m missing in details.
Whaaaa life is hard and you have to figure out cash flow.
No, no I don’t. I worked yesterday for 4 hours and that made my bills for the next month. How much cash management do you think a cat with $400 of bills a month needs to do?
Actually less than that now, because I switched from $3200/y insurance with Giecko to $800/y with progressive.
So go be pissy and dismissive in the mirror, but being snarky at me because I figured out a better deal is just childish.
You literally did, so that wasn’t aimed at you.
I apologize.
I’ll add to that.
If you DM me and say ‘Hey do you think you could help me figure out something like you have?’ I would actually try to help you.
Take a different tack bro, you’ll be happier
Because they’re lost or miserable or searching for purpose and keep trying to find it in external things like career advancement or kids or partners or something.
Because for many people maturing into an adult means taking on and fulfilling responsibilities. It gives many people meaning and satisfaction, often not at the individual moment, but over the course of a life.
Others don’t feel that way.
A third category think they don’t feel that way, but realize too late that they do.
interesting how you only see the third category going one way
Interesting that it bothered you enough to comment on it.
I’ve worked in hospice care in the past. I’m sure there are people that regret taking on responsibility in their life, but the most desperate people I encountered were the ones that realized that they are at the end of their life and realized that they will never have the opportunity to “finally” take on challenges and/or responsibility.
Imagine a panic attack that doesn’t go away because the time you have left is measured in days, weeks, or maybe months, you know it, and there is nothing you can do to address a lifetime of regret, which intensifies the panic.
Usually the best that can be done at that point is “comfort care,” which is drugs. And I would just see them cry, fade, cry, fade, cry, fade, and then die alone. It’s horrifying to see, and it sticks with you.
Life isn’t a movie or game, and no one is the main character.
Yeah, experiencing that is a horror I wouldn’t wish on anyone. That’s a true nightmare.
I don’t think having kids of my own is in my future, I hope I can live my life with enough intent and purpose to avoid this date. Thank you both for this thread, it’s gotten me thinking.
IDK why people become managers, either, when the pay often isn’t reflected in the increased responsibility. Plenty of jobs I had, the managers got paid the same minimum wage as everyone below them, while having to do a lot more work. I have no problem with the responsibility, as long as I’m properly compensated for it.
Not too disagree with you, or argue, but in my field your experience is not how it is here. You have to go into management of you want to make more money, and while the work is different, I’m not sure it’s harder
In my experience, at first managing is always harder than doing it yourself, because you’re usually put in charge of managing people who do what you used to do.
Have you ever been in a situation where you’ve had to do something at work, but you were hamstrung by your tools or timelines? Like, oh man this would be way easier in Python but you are only approved for MS office, so you have to struggle through some VBA. Or man, I could whip this together super fast in Ruby but for some reason this has to be in plain JavaScript. Or maybe you could make this really well, but not in the two day turnaround they need. All that is frustrating, but you usually find a way to perform given these imperfect scenarios.
Now, imagine VBA has feelings. You can’t even really complain about VBA, because it’s not malicious. It’s just bad at its job. So now instead of quickly coding a workaround in a new language (but you learn fast so not the end of the world), you have to help someone get there and do it on their own. And you can’t just do it for them because you have 4 VBAs. Oh, and by the way, JavaScript is malicious. It’s actively trying to avoid work, or maybe trying to make VBA look bad. So now you have to convince JavaScript that it’s in its best interest to work. Sometimes its a carrot, sometimes a stick, but you’re responsible for getting functionality out, and it’s more functionality than you could possibly create on your own.
That’s what managing people is like. A deep desire to do it yourself because it will be better and faster, but you don’t have time, and also you need these people to be better. So you have to learn to teach instead of do, and support emotionally and intellectually and motivate instead of just bitching to your manager when someone else isn’t getting their work done and it’s affecting your work - now you’re responsible for getting their work to be good. It’s really hard, and some people who were amazing achievers and doers can’t hack it when they have to help other people achieve and do. It’s why you have so many bad manager stories. The skillsets are nearly completely different.
The nice part though is when you get good enough at managing that you start managing people that do things you can’t do, or do things better than you ever could. Suddenly there’s some whiz kid straight out of college who knows more about data science from their degree than you did your whole career actuallydoing it, and all they really need help with is applying it. Then you start helping with vision and the “why” of things. “Yes, you could do it that way, but remember our actual end goal is X, so that’s all we really care about.” Or you help people work together to make a cohesive whole. That’s when managing gets really rewarding. It can still be harder than doing, or it might be easier if you’re a big picture thinker, but it gets different eventually.
Here have my virtual 🏅🏅🏅🏅
Some people become managers because they like having control over people.
And those are the people you need to avoid being managed by.
For me I knew being a manager would be much harder, but my passion is mentoring others and watching them grow.
In my industry, the difference between manager and new hire is double.
For other industries, it’s a big sadder. When I worked in a restaurant in college, the manager made $2 more. They also got some perks that I didn’t. And I absolutely did not want their job.
So I can totally understand that perspective.
But, being a manager for a year or two gives you that title that when you jump jobs, it’s def a salary bump.
At least for me, it’s because it was the only way to get a raise in my position.
This is only true of “team lead” type managers.
Get more skills and experience. Get promoted. Produce more value. Get paid more. Repeat.
I think our culture teaches many of us that a good life means excelling and success in all facets of life. If you win everything, surely you would be happy!
IMO the trick is to realize that you have a budget for your attention and energy. Figure out what matters to you, not what you are supposed to care about. Figure out what future you will be glad you did.
For me, this involved leaning into some responsibilities that bring me joy (family, pets, learning for its own sake, hobbies, etc). It meant not putting as much mental energy into things that I’m supposed to be very concerned about because life reasons, but which are neutral to negative on my actual mental state (get into management, focus on learning job-related or money-making things, size of house/cars/yard, etc).
Don’t get me wrong, I love my job and I work with great people. But at the same time, for a couple years now, I’ve spent more time thinking about upgrades to the pond in my back yard than my career development. And I wouldn’t be writing this if I wasn’t better for it.
Standard disclaimer: we are all different. Somebody who gets genuine fulfillment from hammering away at their career is not necessarily a bad thing.
