[joshxyz]

Hmmm wanna send me some money?

I don't have money, and I may not be as miserable and unhappy as you, but I also dream of making a contribution. At the top of my head I've been wanting to do the following:

- Guide local undergrads in learning web dev. Giving them access to quality learning materials means a lot, let alone letting them access free linux servers (there are $5 cheap ones at hetzner / digitalocean / vultr but I was thinking if I could maximize those by using firecracker vm's which was used by fly.io)

- Create a local startup community platform. Our local community have a sub-par index of the local startup ecosystem and its resources, could use a lot of organization.

My work doesn't pay a lot, I don't have inheritance, I still struggle on bills. But I guess any man in my position would welcome some free beer and cigs money, hahaha.

Realtalk: if you're sitting on your hard-earned money, I don't see any reason to feel bad about it. If you're sitting on inherited money, maybe it's your parents' fault for giving you too much of a safety net. If you can't manage your resources efficiently, maybe the challenge is finding that person that could execute those well for you.

Lord Kelvin once said, "if we can't measure it, we can't improve it". What are your metrics for your impact-focused pursuits? At those two examples I've given above, my metrics are 1.) amount of undergrad developers we get to help each quarter, and 2.) amount of new local startup founder / employee we see each quarter. What are your metrics bro?

And what drugs are you on, uppers, downers, psychedelics, deluriants?.. Reminds me of that Alan Watts guy who said "If you get the message, hang up the phone.". Ain't saying they're good nor bad, but what's your end game with that? Maybe try dropping them for a while to get some clarity? Haha, ball is on your court

[obviouslyfake]

> Guide local undergrads in learning web dev

How is this useful for society? It's only useful for consulting companies, so they could sell their labour as a product at extreme markups

> What are your metrics for your impact-focused pursuits?

The amount of people benefitting from my work

> And what drugs are you on

Antidepressants

[joshxyz]

> How is this useful for society? It's only useful for consulting companies, so they could sell their labour as a product at extreme markups

Right, that's one way to see it.

Another way I see it is they get to learn some practical skills that let them build / create / craft things with their own hands with the limited resources they have. Could be used for earning money, if not, simply for creating stuff for people to see and experience (some people call it "art").

Another part of it is it opens doors for them, different avenues like being exposed to talking to other developers, to clients, being a problem solver, being a negotiator, learning transferable skills that they can take from one industry to another.

There's no certainty of course, all of these is a gamble on which of these could be fruitful in the next 3 / 5 / 10 years, and it might not even the kind of gamble that makes you tick and makes you feel alive, in which case you're free to explore other options out there.

> The amount of people benefiting from my work

Yea but that's vague as hell, any kid could say that.

> Antidepressants

Rest easy my brother, maybe it's all downhill from this point onwards. Maybe the stars have aligned in you just being a statistic of people who died because they can't sort themselves out because life has gotten too comfy.

Kidding of course, the go-to HN advice of course is get a goddamn therapist, preferably someone that really moves you forward, and at the same time really take some action on your end because as newton or einstein said: objects at rest stay in rest, objects at motion goes through the motions ahaha