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- Hacker News
- people dont hire ambitious young women because theyre afraid theyll fall in love with them???
- Really nice read!
I would have loved to know more about how the business ended. It could have flown naturally with the rest of the story. Same for D’s journey!
Even if most comments felt like there was envy at Felix’s life I think that’s because we only see the negative aspects of Jacob’s life and only the nice ones of Felix’s. Deep down I know that Felix is a bit lonely on a treadmill trying to keep up an entrepreneurial journey and that he might wake up at 45.
by elias_t - These are another "Jacob" and another "Felix", not the ones in the post, but there are so many similarities and such a terrible lesson learned that it needs to be written.
The Felix I know is still happy; still going out in the long summer days or camping during the winters, playing minecraft sometimes, discovering that life has yet so much to give. Felix has so many ideas in his head that any given day it's a miracle he finds the strength of spirit to prioritize and keep the focus. People at work like Felix because he only compromises on the right things and never throws anybody under a bus so that he can run because they called from the school.
Felix dances in the mornings, and takes catnaps, and tries to keep away the sadness. Sadness not of his life, but because his Jacob died a month ago the most terrible dead possible, that Jacob caught after his immune system was reduced to shreds by regular sleeplessness caused by his kid's iterative flus, family stress, excess alcohol (caused by immediate and extended family stress), and the never ending procession of viruses the kid kept bringing home. For all that saying that family is so that you don't die alone, Jacob never wanted his family for that he could die surrounded by them, and Felix is pretty sure Jacob would have preferred to die alone rather than suffer so much and give so much suffering to those he loved.
Felix thinks often of the urn of ashes that is all that is left of Jacob, and about how the family Jacob loved has been left with no choice but to forget and to keep going, one feet in front of another, after the husband that did everything was eaten alive by a metastasis. Felix knows in his bones that he will find the time to compose and sing a song for Jacob. It'll probably be called "Sex toys are underrated."
by dsign - I decided to go ahead and click through, since this looks like it's just an expired certificate. It's a really great piece of creative nonfiction that evoked all sorts of emotions, some of which even managed to be positive.
And I'm going to go with my gut and not give my thoughts on love, and instead simply reflect on the fact that in the early days, there was no "swipe culture" -- you got shown the girl of your dreams, on paper. (In reality, there's looks, social class, and of course, the foundations of geopolitics.)
by firefax - I have two kids. They are very very different in their needs, sleep patterns, self security, and have been since their first days. Parenting is mostly hard for anyone getting serious about it, but i can vary tremendously from you kid personnality, the support system you have, etc... I suspect some parents (usually fathers) don't know it because they do not put in the works (and then give some advices on boundaries). Still, some have "easy" kids in the sense that they are not demanding a lot from the parent, and that can be fine or the sign of a troubled personnality. I completely understand the author here, as this has been also my experience - parenting is unbeleivably hard but _also_ beautiful and _also_ an experience that should change you to the core and make you grow. To me, however hard it can be, it beats the alternative. But I could unserstand that only once I've been through abandonning my former self govern by individualist values and goals to become a new person taking care of someone else, however hard and painful it might have been.by olup
- >failing at online dating
I think people fall into the trap of thinking things are too good to be true (so they must not be true). This results in abandoned relationships that would have been better than 99% of those from pre-online-dating times.
This has been true for me, anyway. Every time I've entered the online dating scene, I've invariably realized 3 months later that one or two of the women I turned down for second dates were great matches.
- I don't get why the sleep deprivation continues. Seems like eliminating that would make a big difference. I have a six year old son, and since he was four it was perfectly fine for him to do his own thing for a little while if I needed a bit of extra sleep. I could see why you'd resent kids if they were constantly needy, didn't sleep, and you didn't actually enjoy their company. But for kids with typical development, this resentment maybe means that the parents aren't setting the right boundaries past age 3.by neerajsi
- For anyone reading this story as a cautionary tale on having children, you should know that this is not my lived experience of parenting (or the described experience of many of my peers). The way he describes it is the exact opposite of my experience:
> "if you feed me a BIG tablespoon of shit every day and then switch to just a little teaspoon daily, I won’t suddenly start liking the taste of shit."
I genuinely love time spent with my child. I had a similar experience to him and Felix in my 20s and am glad I did, but I'd never want to go back there. That was right for me then and I deeply feel that parenting (alongside a software engineering career I love) is the most joyful, rewarding place to be in my 30s.
by apodolny