[egroat]

> when I was 20 or so

Ok. "20 or so" describes me. And things aren't going so well.

Out of uni, and life feels pretty empty. Family has fallen apart, friends are friends of convenience, work is very intense - perhaps too much - and everything is going into keeping going. The brave face, making sure I eat, making sure I run, cycle, climb.

The dreams I had even six months ago, feeling ever more impossible. The lure of things I found rewarding in the past - computer games, novels, reddit, hacker news, debating - proving substanceless, insufficient.

The games and the websites are addictive.

> is this how I want to be spending my time?

No. But the truth is I do not know how else to spend my time.

I feel like I should find another job. Move to a different city or country. But I don't know how to do these things. I do not know if these things will help. I have a feeling the problem is me.

So when I am trapped in an empty bed, in a house of people who 'get on', in a city that is ok. I read the novels, I play the games, and I click the links. I try and forget I am here, living in bullshit.

[m0nty]

I'm a bit reluctant to post this, because nobody here is going to be able to fix your situation for you, but a few thoughts. As someone pushing 50 this year, if I had your freedom to just do anything, I'd be off in a heartbeat. Off to another part of the country or a different country entirely. Making that 5,000-mile bike-trip or just walking off somewhere with a back-pack and some camping gear. You might say "it's not that simple", but maybe it could be if you thought about it for a while?

Remember that wasting time at 20 seems OK, wasting it at 30 will make you nervous, and if you're still doing it at 40, you'll wonder where all the time went. It really happens surprisingly fast - at 29, you feel young, but a short decade later, you'll fret about being "too old" (which is an illusion, but it takes a while to know that). Don't worry that you'll mess up your career or anything else by taking some time to do something adventurous. Pretty much whatever you do, you'll look back and thank yourself for stepping out rather than hunkering down.

BTW, as for "work is very intense" - it probably isn't worth it. I burnt out once after a few years of very intense, very committed work. I wasn't better off at the end of it and nobody says "thank you", not sincerely anyway. And after you leave, the waters close around you and it will be like you were never there. So if you're not enjoying it, maybe it's the kind of bullshit you can do without?

[cconroy]

`I burnt out once after a few years of very intense, very committed work. I wasn't better off at the end of it and nobody says "thank you", not sincerely anyway. And after you leave, the waters close around you and it will be like you were never there.`

Wow that imagery is powerfully sad. Corporate culture and its structural constraints makes monsters of all of us.

[m0nty]

> Wow that imagery is powerfully sad

I didn't mean it to be ;) I'm an optimist at heart, honestly, and I'm not sitting here feeling I've wasted my life or anything. But there are some things I wouldn't do again if I had my time again, and working hard for unappreciative, self-centred people is one of them.

[jacquesm]

> working hard for unappreciative, self-centred people is one of them.

That's a bit of a luxury, you don't always have that choice but on the whole I agree with the idea. I'd re-phrase it to don't work for assholes if you can avoid it. I'm fortunate enough now that this is a rare occurrence but even now every now and then a deal goes by that is financially too sweet to let go and I still take them. Last year this happened once, the previous 3 years not at all. So unless you're totally secure in your finances keep that door open a crack.

[m0nty]

It's interesting you say this, I currently have four weeks to run on a very well-paying contract which I chose to terminate. The money's been nice, and so are the people I work with, but I have enough in the bank now where I can take a chance on doing something different without risking financial hardship. Let's just say that, after two heart surgeries last year, I don't mind taking the risk that my plans fall over and I end up going back to an IT gig sometime in the indeterminate future :) In the meantime, I'm just enjoying the sense of possibility and freedom.

[jacquesm]

That's a reasonable middle ground. But it does show clearly that those 'annoying but high paying jobs' have a place in the armory.

Good to see you on this side of the line after two heart surgeries.

[tdsamardzhiev]

Great insight, thanks for sharing. Godspeed to you!

[aswanson]

Upvoted. Thanks for saving me from typing a few paragraphs, you hit my sentiment spot on, esp, re: options from 20-40. It sounds like he/she needs to sever a few anchors (job, location) and just do something that reignites some life fire. It damn sure is not going to get easier as time passes. Worse, he/she may become less sensitive to the obviously dysfunctional situation and just live a life of learned helplessness.

[ibejoeb]

>Don't worry that you'll mess up your career or anything else by taking some time to do something adventurous

If I could go back and tell myself something, or if I had kids to advise, this is the essence of it.

Once you've got your basic needs met, anything you do to enrich your character is going to make you a more compelling person. Don't squander your 20s and 30s. Take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, because it's a lot harder to cultivate new opportunities from scratch.

GP, if you can actually afford to pick up and try something new, you really ought to do it. It's so easy nowadays: pick a city and spend two weeks at an Airbnb. If you like it, stay longer, and if not, go back or go somewhere else.

[jacquesm]

You're not trapped, you're as free as can be from where I'm looking at you. When I was your age I quit my very secure job at a bank to go on all kinds of weird adventures, working free-lance, going hungry for weeks, suddenly flush with cash from a payment, got my driving license, started to go on ever longer and ever more unplanned trips. In short, I embraced risk in all kinds of ways and found that - to my surprise - the people that tried to hold me back from doing this were wrong. Tomorrow always took care of itself somehow, as long as you have skills you'll have a place somewhere and some food in your stomach and every time you move to a new viewpoint you become slightly richer (but maybe not in a material sense, but that's fine until that need arrives).

Finally, when I was 27 and my first child arrived that phase ended, then it very much mattered if there was money on the table and life suddenly changed from being relatively free to being quite structured with a very high penalty on any inability to provide. I made a pretty conscious decision to stop following just what interested me but to chase the buck and with the knowledge gained in the preceding years that was quite easy.

Go see the world while the current phase lasts, sooner or later life will really trap you (compared to your situation atm) and then you're on the hook for many years before you will have some of this freedom back again. By then your body will be one that you can't compare to today (and I'm saying that as a reasonably fit person of 50+), your time will be spoken for at some regular interval and so on.

The right time to strike out into the world is now, don't worry overly about how you'll finance any or all of this, a few hundred in savings would be enough to broaden your horizon tremendously and that alone will give you an advantage over those that are rooted to their hometown.

This, by the way is what fuels my 'journeyman' projects that I try to do each year now, they're a link back to my past, basically not a new thing but a continuation. It's been incredibly rewarding to meet all these new people and to help them to achieve their dreams and contribute a little bit to solving their problems even if not a single cent ever changed hands. I very much look forward to doing another round of these this coming summer.

[kamaal]

>>But the truth is I do not know how else to spend my time.

I am going to make a bold claim here. I hear this very often among people in the west. I here the same among people in India(I'm from India) who come from families who are rich, well supplied with resources. Perhaps its the saturation that a person reaches a point after a person reaches and experiences a sufficient degree of sufficiency.

>>I have a feeling the problem is me.

It is hard to convince your mind to prepare for a grand struggle, challenge or a mission- when none exists. The west(especially US) is already reached the pinnacle of what a developed nation could look like. Schools are free, Country wide road network is nothing like anywhere, Cities with opportunities all over the place, Infrastructure is simply amazing, you can take water out of any tap in the country and it will be clean, you have social security ... the list is endless.

On top of all this if your family is even from lower middle class, you are generally well provided for.

Your mind doesn't identify with any struggle or even acknowledge that one exists. This can for sure cause 'Why am I here' crisis. Like I said I see this same among a lot of friends in India, especially among people from rich families.

[jacquesm]

It's just a matter of perspective, really. There are problems to be solved aplenty in the 'rich' countries (where the wealth is anything but equally spread). This takes time and other resources and when you're young those problems can seem overwhelming.

So the right response is to change your viewpoint to one where the problems you are confronted with match your abilities to solve them, in order to get better at this so that you can solve larger problems later on (and it helps that while you're doing this you also make contact with other people who will in turn become your real-life network).

This can take a while, but that's fine. Living in India or the West would not change much in this respect but for someone that grew up in the West to go to India would likely change their perspective on life and values tremendously, just like the reverse would happen if someone from India moved to the West for a while. They'd come back a different person, and would mature a large amount in a relatively short time.

[webwright]

"The dreams I had even six months ago, feeling ever more impossible."

Which dreams? Are the people who have achieved dreams like those that much more capable of you? One of my realizations is just how much less important intelligence is to drive. If you want something, oftentimes the difference is doing the work. Make sure it's a meaningful dream (e.g. not "get rich" which impacts happiness surprisingly little).

"I feel like I should find another job. Move to a different city or country. But I don't know how to do these things."

Are you more or less capable than the millions of people who find new jobs or move? You sound smart and educated. "Don't know how" seems like a pretty soft excuse. Everything has an "undo" button. Get a new job and it sucks? Well, you tried and learned some interesting things about yourself and the world-- go find another one. Move to a different city and find out that you don't love it? Well, you got to explore a cool place that wasn't for you, and maybe you met some interesting people. Move back or move to a new city.

[iamcasen]

Are you me? My life seemed to slowly "fall apart" after college, and after I began working in the full time world. From the outside in, I am a wonderful success. I have a great job, enough money to be comfortable. I travel, I hike, I golf.

But I can't help but feel like it's all wrong. Work hard for what? So you can amass enough money for when you're too old to work? That whole way of life seems counter to the "life is short" argument. Because of that, I find myself needing to constantly move on, ever searching for something truly fulfilling. Work seemed to fulfill me for 4 years or so, but I feel like I've achieved what I set out to achieve, and now it is hollow.

[galfarragem]

Listen this, it might help: https://sivers.org/ml

[egroat]

Thank you

In many ways this is a solidification of a lot of what I have been thinking

[prawn]

Travel. It will only get harder to coordinate with a partner and children in the future.

Take leave or negotiate unpaid leave if you have to. Try just a weekend at first.

If you think you can't afford to travel, find travel you can afford. That might be domestic, camping, sleeping in the back of a car on a road trip, going to less-in-demand national parks. See and do something new.