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- Hacker News
- I've felt worthless for a long time. Sucked at school, suck at university, jobless. But something about the things I do has given me comfort. Trying to make music, trying to draw. And just doing the things another version of me would look at and think "that's nice"
I've also been a social outcast for a while now. But putting my creative works out there makes me feel like I'm building the tools to appreciate myself and be appreciated by others. And knowing I can be appreciated, even if I'm not, is enough to give me a sense of self worth.
- That's awesome! Love that stubborn boldness.by grigri907
- Reframing the thing you’re doing as “trying to do the thing” struck me as something kinda powerful. You’ve got to suck at something before you don’t.
I’ve found that if I start something new, say learning to carve wood, I might compare myself to others in an unhealthy way, not improve as fast as I want to, or something else, and sorta psych myself out of it. I wonder if changing the framing from “doing” to “trying” would help
by nusl - My situation is similar. I'm exhausted from life, and I don't even have a disability I got scammed and lost all the money I had saved up. AI reduced my workload, and because of the war, factory expansions were canceled, so for a while I had no work at all.
I've worked 96-hour weeks for six months at a time. Even working nonstop, I can't save any money. I don't have enough to buy a house, and I'm exhausted. I've done so many different kinds of work, but no matter how much I work, the money just doesn't accumulate. It's not that I haven't tried.
Good jobs are only in big cities, and to live in a big city, you have to pay rent. If I pay rent, my salary doesn't accumulate. I can't even think about getting married.
I really gave it my all, but I don't know anymore. Why is my life like this? By the time I paid off my student loans, I was already in my mid-30s, and I still can't even think about marriage.
I just work and try hard, but the money doesn't add up. It feels like my life has gone wrong. I used to laugh at people who gambled or traded coins, but now I feel like a fool for working so diligently
by jdw64 - This lacks relevant details.by lostmsu
- You gotta start prioritizing 'the soul' over what you think you're supposed to be doing. "Can't even think about marriage?" I bet marriage will take you further than you think. Maybe. But you gotta try. Try coming at it from a different angle. The answer doesn't leap off the page when you tick enough boxes. The answer becomes apparent when you take it.by butlike
- "But I am trying to believe there is more to a human life than how efficiently it converts energy into labor."
There absolutely is. Labor can be fullfilling and give joy, but for most people it is just an easy tool on how to survive and hopefully have some comfort as well. Do not ever feel ashamed of your labor and even more, do not ever feel ashamed of not doing labor if you don't want to. You have one life in this universe. Make it a nice one.
by b3lvedere - They may not feel ashamed, but they'll still feel dead when they have no food and shelter.by inigyou
- > Much of modern Western culture, particularly in the United States, was shaped by what sociologist Max Weber called the Protestant work ethic: the belief that hard work, discipline, frugality, and productivity were signs of virtue.
I hail from a culture that's decidedly Catholic, but at the same time shares this mindset.
To me it has more to do with farming and the culture around it.
On a farm you have to earn your keep and there's no space for "freeloaders". You work all day, every day and don't complain.
Attitudes are very different in places where there was a significant urban class in the renaissance era already.
by Tade0 - > Max Weber called the Protestant work ethic
...hmm. Not sure that this is quite state-of-the art in sociology today. Crediting a particular strand of a particular religion as the locus of a virtue that confers a clear fitness advantage in and of itself, and without recourse to any outside explanation, seems a bit off.
by gyulai - Well, everyone saw the freeloader class in Catholic countries too - clergy.by KptMarchewa
- Yeah, but also on a farm, it's pretty clear what the work is. In our new, much more abstract society, people spend years and years finding what the work is. (Startup founders call it "finding PMF"). In this kind of environment we can't just exile all the people who haven't found work yet - we kind of have to support everyone who's doing something that might become work or might lead to something that becomes work. And that's almost everything. There are even people who play video games for an internet audience as their day job. In other cases, even if you know what the work is, you might have to spend years and years training for it, like doctors.by inigyou
- It's simple, what is written here should be part of basic education for every human being/worker.
For all who mis-interprent the post and focus only on the anti capitalistic view of it, don't worry your body will tell you soon!
Keep an eye for the signals, gut and digestive issues, back stuck and oain, sleeping problems, light sensitivity and irritability. When this will start remember that the problem is probably your work or your working environment not you! And you should react to it!
This article should be eye opening, and support for disabilities should be always there. The abandonment of human beings is the biggest failure of societes.
by giov4 - Fortunately, just about all of those are the result of slow poisoning via industrialized food sources. And can be remedied via diet. It's not fun wanting chili fries and having to eat eggs and home-made yogurt instead. But it's working in my case and I have the labs to prove it.by CodeWriter23
- If you read this article and feel worried about your financial situation if you become disabled, you might look into long-term disability insurance (LTD).
It's a policy where, if you become disabled to the point where you can't work, it pays out $X per month, every year until you're 65. And if you're partly disabled and have to cut back your hours, some policies compensate you for those lost wages.
These LTD policies are expensive, but they DO give you peace of mind about this possibility.
by Taikonerd - Except mental health conditions in these plans seem limited to 2 years. For all the talk of mental health is health, this seems to run directly counter to that.
- don't forget the legal costs insurance to pay the lawyer making the LTD insurance actually pay and a second legal costs insurance to pay the lawyer suing the primary LCI as they will likely claim that case isn't covered by their policy.by raffael_de
- Wouldn't it be marvelous if these were mandatory and paid by state with huge scale benefits ?by bestouff
- > I’m 38 years old and I just had to ask my mom if I could borrow money [...] potentially spending the next 50 years without stable income
Without stable income it might be more like 20 years. (I wish you personally a long and bountiful life!)
I'm in a similar boat. As a 3rd child in a somewhat poor family, I do not have any inheritance and actually need to help my mom financially (though it's not a burden). My wife is also from a rural area and her inheritance is barely worth 5 (hypothetical) figures. We never got or will get anything given to us for free. We are in our 40s and we completely gave up on having children (though it was not overall a financially-motivated choice) or property (this one certainly is). Live day to day while I can work, and die without regrets when I cannot anymore. Thanks to AI that happens probably sooner than later.
by mstaoru - If you live your life in stress it makes it strange. Breathe less, stress less.by nevertoolate
- > Everytime you meet someone new and they ask “What do you do?” they’re not asking about your passions, hobbies, or the mundane human tasks that take up most of your time; but how you make money, how you turn yourself into income.
1. That's your assumption. They could really ask out of interest. They couldn't care less if that's your main source of income.
2. In some cultures this question will never be asked.
3. If they do ask and judge; what does that matter? If you dislike such personalities, avoid them.
- in what cultures do you think it will never be asked?by sriacha
- One thing I love about living in Berlin is that you can meet a dozen stranger and spend hours with them, and no one remembers to ask that question.by nicbou
- My answer: "Whatever it takes"by CodeWriter23
- A lot were taught to follow their passions too, so they can have the presumption that what you do for a living == your passion.by jolmg
- > What do you do?
The first question when you meet someone is often to measure your status.
In New Zealand, different cities had different questions. Auckland: where do you live (using suburb as a proxy for status), Christchurch: what school did you go to (status used to be highly linked to your high school), Wellington: what do you do (a lot of people move to Wellington to work and it has a very wide variety of professional and government jobs).
It depends somewhat on context since often status is implied by the situation you've met someone. I've even had people straight up ask: how much do you earn.
by robocat - I've found I ask that question often, but for me it's because I'm interested in learning about new stuff, so if they work with something I'm not familiar with I'd find it interesting to talk about that.
However if I sense they're just in it for the paycheck then I try to ask about hobbies or similar.
by magicalhippo - The idea that "hard work, discipline, frugality" are Calvinist and Protestant inventions may be the most preposterous thing I've read today. As if the rest of the world or previous eras valued self-indulgence and wasteful lavishness.
Or that an unproductive member of society wasn't always scorned or at least viewed negatively by those having to produce.
- It was a strategic invention that has only ever applied to the plebs, the plutocrats have always been exempt from it.by eschaton
- by dd8601fn