[honkycat]

I'm not obsessed about "working for my passion" or anything like that. I have a good life outside of work, supported by my high paying programmer job.

I did a lot of job-hopping the past few years looking for the right place to work, and I finally found it. I look for companies that respect work-life balance, don't want me to work too hard, and have excellent engineering culture that values high quality work and has managed to retain their senior employees. I deliver great work, they make money off of the code I ship, everybody is happy. I can crunch every once in a while but we all understand that it sucks and isn't a long-term strategy.

My father was a funeral director & coroner. He would NEVER claim he "loves what he does", but he used his career to build a life for him and his family. I look at my career the same way.

What do I ACTUALLY want to do? Develop video games, make music, write fiction. But nobody is shelling out for that, and even if they are, I'm not good enough at it to compete. I know if I pursued any of my passions, I would have to work much harder for much less pay, and be treated much more poorly by my employer. I know my limits and I know that I cannot thrive in a situation like that, I've done it before, no thanks.

Part of growing older is mourning the person you could have been. If I had a time machine, I would have stayed in better shape, practiced guitar more, invested my time more wisely. But I can't, and honestly my life has turned out pretty great by trusting my instincts.

[d23]

“Part of growing older is mourning the person you could have been.”

One of the wisest and most succinct things I’ve read on this site.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

- Sylvia Plath

[digianarchist]

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost is also an excellent poem.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-ta...

[11thEarlOfMar]

Be careful with this one. If you could transport yourself back in time to each of the key decisions you made as a younger you, you would likely realize that in most cases, you made the best decision you could with the information and resources you had at the time.

Learn from it, and then apply what you can for the benefit of older you. Regret is pernicious.

[Aeolun]

I don’t think I would do anything different just based on all the happy things that came about doing them this way.

But you can still mourn all the things you didn’t do because of the choices you made.

Same way that I’m sad I cannot drink both the banana and apple shake at the same time.

[unixhero]

Yeah, I don't buy it either. But you said it more eloquently than what I could.

[redisman]

I really enjoyed this podcast about all the “yous” you could have been, Ladder to the top of the wrong wall

https://m.soundcloud.com/uncomplication/the-ladder-to-the-to...

[RHSman2]

It is so negative though.

Live in the now and make the now the way you want it to be.

[manuko83]

"Live in the now and make the now the way you want it to be."

Sometimes (most of the times for the "normal" person), this is impossible, contradictory, conflicting...His approach to the subject is realistic, effective...Does it sound good? definitely no...That's life..

You can look at it in a positive way though...work with the resources you have to get the best from them...maybe not the life you want, but the best one you can get from your current reality.

[redisman]

I pursued video games as a professional programmer and all it did was kill my enjoyment of games in general. I couldn’t really get my creativity out either because you’re a cog in a 10-100+ person team and often you work on projects you probably wouldn’t play if you weren’t paid for it.

I still dream about FIRE and working as a 1-3 person studio working on silly creative little games for the joy of it.

[Bekwnn]

On the flip side, I work at a 100+ person studio and have enjoyed great work life balance the entire 4 years I've been working there, including a major release. It hasn't killed my passion or made me like video games any less.

I also work on a game I like and have played it a fair bit without being paid to do so.

It is hard to break into games, and harder still to find work on game projects you want to work on, but it is possible. Lots of people do.

[matthewfcarlson]

Same. I’m still way too early in career but I would love to get a few friends and crank out a couple short games.

[nfw2]

Is there a reason you can’t pursue FIRE now?

[redisman]

Money + kids

[Barrin92]

>If I had a time machine, I would have stayed in better shape, practiced guitar more, invested my time more wisely. But I can't

In another response you're saying you are 32. you are little more than one(!) decade into your adult and professional life. Christoph Waltz barely was making a living acting until he was 50 years old. With the exception of maybe being a soccer world class athlete you can pretty much still do anything you want.

An older guy I used to work with in China who was sent to some labor farm for half a decade and who only went on to study in his thirties told me when this discussion came up one time "don't worry, if you're younger than 45 you can just start over, everyone here has done it five times"

[rizzaxc]

and Christoph Waltz is the first guy to tell you to never "do what you love". Acting is just a career for him

[ChrisMarshallNY]

I'm happy to be where I am. I've had to go through everything that I did, to become the person that I am, now. That includes lots of mistakes and bad judgment, embarrassment, wasted money and time, etc.

I have said, that, if I could go back to being 20, I would want the body, but not the mind that went with it.

I've usually been forced to take the paths I've taken. Pretty much every big advance in my life has been heralded by fecal matter impacting an air circulation device. Being forced into early retirement, by SV’s notorious ageism, is an example. It really pissed me off, but now that I’ve been out of the rat race for a few years, I am kicking myself for not doing it sooner.

If my life would have gone the way I wanted, it would have sucked like a supermassive, galaxy-core, black hole.

[tunesmith]

As someone a little older, what is interesting is that it comes back around again. By which I mean, at first you start out desiring this joy you don't know how to access, and then later you feel mournful about what could have been... but honestly for me I found a third phase later, of realizing those abilities/passions/joys were always with me all along anyway. In school I was torn between music and creative writing - I chose to major in music. I've always been good at logic, though. I started out completely certain I'd only go into programming long enough to get out of college debt, and then quit and commit to music. I was distraught for a while, unable to come with a plan to support myself with music, so I never stopped programming. Over time (a long time), I put together my first cd, a seven-song EP of jazz/pop piano/singing that I am still very proud of, and I think it is really good representation of the best I could do at that time. But I was still attached to my younger ideas of success, so when it received pretty much zero sales beyond family and friends, that really upset me for a while, and I got discouraged abut music. Kept programming; this is when I was freelancing. Years pass, slowly started getting back into music, improving at jazz, having music friends over at the living room and medium size grand piano my career paid for. That's fun. Found some time during COVID to restart the creative writing website I had first started twenty-five years ago. It still works, and I enjoy upgrading it to modern tech, and through the site have started writing more with friends. And then I wrote a novel in November, figured out how to typeset it and ordered myself a 6x9 trade paperback of it for Christmas. I'm proud of it. Don't even care to try publishing it. Still programming. I guess over the years, I've just realized that I freaking love programming. Breaking things down, turning complicated problems into simple solutions. And not am I only able to continue doing that, and get paid, but I still know how to play piano, can still sing, and this year discovered I can even write a novel. It's all... just pretty damn cool over all, and many of my earlier regrets and "what could've beens" have just mostly fallen away. I guess it just took thirty years or so to figure out how to get out of my own damn way.

(For OP, you can still go do 20 pushups, learn a simple guitar song to the point of self-enjoyment, write a small video game that makes you and your family laugh.)

[marapuru]

Thanks for this excellent comment. It reminds me of a letter I wrote my dad last year for his birthday. It was called: "The summit isn't necessary", where I thanked him for his words on enjoying life for yourself by simply enjoying it and not comparing to others or overreaching to _win_.

[falafelite]

Thanks for writing this. I’ve been feeling mournful about “giving up” and returning to a “normal” software engineering job, but the things in quotes here are a matter of perspective. Ain’t nothing wrong with doing good work and using the fruits of it to enjoy your life. Thanks for sharing your perspective.

[Dopameaner]

Out of curiosity, how old are you if I may ask? I just entered 30, but I do share some of my regrets and life perspectives from this post. Thanks for sharing your perspective!

[d23]

I’m really early thirties and it resonates with me. I’ve been successful, but it’s hard not to look at any of the other paths I could have taken and wonder “what if.” Or, more precisely: what now?

[honkycat]

I am 32

[hermitsings]

What a beautiful and realistic reply.