[sudoit]

Same in my case. I quit my first software job because it made me feel so meaningless and depressed. I was immediately happier. I quit my second job because they overworked me. Same result.

I have less money now, but I don’t care. I’m much happier being where I am now.

People underestimate just how much work life affects your entire life.

[gymbeaux]

You spend most of your life at work (at least in the US). 24 hours in a day. 8 of them spent working. 1 hour for lunch. ~2 hours getting ready for work/sleep each day. 8 hours for sleep... that leaves you with ~5 hours per day, but you also have to do chores around the house, maybe pickup/dropoff kiddos, commute (if you don't work from home), and cook dinner and clean up afterwards. If you have 2 hours a day to yourself to pursue your interests/dreams, you are "fucked".

[scruple]

Even if you do manage to find 2 hours to yourself, it's typically at the end of the day and you're utterly, completely exhausted. I've found that, with young kids in the mix, the best thing I can do with my hour-ish at the end of a long day is read, or draw, or just spend some quiet time with my spouse. Anything else requires mental energy that I simply don't have. Even the video games that I play at the end of the average day need to be fairly brainless or else I'm not enjoying my time.

[gymbeaux]

I don't even have a wife and kids yet, but I already find many of the video games I enjoyed as a teenager to be too demanding. Fallout New Vegas was an awesome game, and I remember spending virtually my entire summer vacation one year playing through Fallout 3. I gave New Vegas another go recently and it just feels like work. It sucks. Like I just want to get through the game so it will be done.

[sgtnoodle]

Indeed, I resemble that remark. I've been on paternity leave for the last couple months with kid 2. I have 10 minute slivers of down time throughout the day, and I can sacrifice sleep for a few hours of focus at night. I've been playing through L.A. Noire just to cross it off my bucket list, and I shamelessly refer to walkthroughs on every case. It's an alternative to watching a TV show in the evening.

Typically when I play a game I like to explore every nook and cranny, trying to find secrets and glitches and stuff. Lately it just gives me anxiety to start a new game when I know it will be on deck for years. I've been playing through Tomb Raider since 2019 and I'm not finished yet... I think I need to consciously change my play style and expectations, and just barrel through main story lines.

I went over to a younger coworker's apartment last night to play video games, which is a very rare activity for me. Left 4 Dead was a lot of fun a decade ago. He loaded up whatever the latest call of duty zombie horde shooting game is, and it was more stressful than fun. I have an interesting anecdote about stress and Tomb Raider. In 2020 my heart AV nerves all stopped working. My effective heart rate got down to 20-30bpm, and wouldn't increase with demand. A few days before I ended up in the hospital, I tried playing Tomb Raider just to see what would happen. After about 5 minutes my peripheral vision started to black out and I felt like I was having a panic attack!

[gymbeaux]

I will say for CoD specifically, since the original Nazi Zombies mode was introduced in the original World at War ("CoD 5") in 2008, the franchise has made the Zombies mode INCREDIBLY complicated. Long gone are the days of holding down a room until you and your friends are overrun. Nowadays you have to solve puzzles, do various "chores" to access things like the Pack a Punch station... It's lost all its charm.

LA Noire and other games like it (e.g. Red Dead Redemption, Destroy All Humans!) seem to have the opposite problem, where I seem to remember the game being more engaging and challenging (in a fun way) than it is now. I guess that's a result of growing up and getting "smarter".

We haven't even touched on the micro-transactions/pay-to-win stuff...

As for the panic attack- I read an interesting book recently called The Body Keeps the Score. It's about PTSD and how, even today under the DSM V, it and similar conditions aren't getting the attention they deserve. While reading this book, I realized that my "fascination" with Dead By Daylight (similar to Left 4 Dead) might be rooted in adrenaline/stress hormones rather than pleasure hormones. Indeed, I had (have) several "hobbies" that my brain seems to be interested in for the stress they cause (like stock trading, holy fuck). The book poses that my subconscious thirst for stressful activity is actually a coping mechanism that is derived from my dysfunctional attachment style to my parents and my subsequent childhood experiences. In other words, stress and worry are all I've ever known. I'm in therapy and taking an SSRI for this now, and I'm significantly better than I was, mentally.

[sgtnoodle]

Yeah, in the zombie game there were brightly colored vending machines, random gun dispensers you had to pay for with points, and dropped power ups. It was a lot going on.

Speaking of Red Dead Redemption, I am working toward being able to robustly stream games from my desktop computer to the living room TV. I'm hoping to try playing through Red Dead Redemption 2 once it's all set up and working. It's non-trivial, as I will soon be relocating my desktop to a detached guest house. I think the reason I am drawn to Rockstar Games is because of their level of immersion despite the relative lack of gameplay complexity. I like that the only customization in L.A. Noire is picking an outfit, and if you want a bigger gun you have to open a car trunk in the middle of a shoot-out.

I am certainly nostalgic for the games I played in my youth. StarCraft, EverQuest, Starsiege Tribes, Medal of Honor and Battlefield 2, Freelancer, the list goes on. My old friend came into town a couple years ago, and we had a small LAN party for old time sake. We spent an hour just getting StarCraft to run reliably on everyone's computers. It was just as fun as ever.

That does sound interesting, I'll have to check out that book. My wife copes with a vaguely similar sounding past. I think her "Left 4 Dead" is watching shows like Criminal Minds. Glad to hear the therapy and SSRI are helping you. It's tough.

I recently started trading individual stocks for fun, but with a relatively small principal that won't stress me out. I see so many "news" articles telling me which stocks to buy, and I've always assumed they're manipulating me into being a sucker. So, I've been blindly taking the free advice to see what happens. I'm only down about 10% right now. Also, my investment in SHIB coin is due to take off like a rocket at any moment!

[piva00]

Completely resonates with me, my time became more precious the older I got, playing a game for 20-40h with quests that feel like work, even worse, menial work (go here, gather that, bring it back) is just utterly unsatisfying and unfulfilling.

That also made me notice that, even though I played quite a few single-player games when I was younger, most of my fun with games was on multiplayer/competitive games, it could be a grind to get better but there was a practice and I could feel myself leveling up my skills and playing them better, some up to competitive levels. That's always been more satisfying to me.

Newer high budget single-player games (feels like in the past 10-15 years) also feel much more like an interactive movie than a proper game, I don't want to be clicking to interact with a movie, I like mechanics and figuring out the metagame, I realised that watching something unfold with some interactive action in-between is not really my kind of gaming.

For the last 10 years I've basically stopped playing videogames, my gaming nowadays is mostly getting together with some friends and playing tabletop, it's social, it's fun and you always get to see a different persona of the people you know.

[pcthrowaway]

This resonates with me completely. I was an avid gamer in the first half of my life.

Then adulthood came and I just don't have time to enjoy games. I do watch a ton of TV shows and movies because they're easy to start up, put down, or even watch while doing something else that doesn't require full attention.

I do occasionally do a Let's Play of a game that looks promising, ideally one with little commentary, where the player focuses on the story elements rather than completion (prioritizes talking to characters over a speed run, or 100% quests completed, all collectables collected, etc).

Those are unfortunately hard to find (though I'd highly recommend the Cinematic Playthrough of Last of Us for anyone interested in experiencing the medium at its absolute best).

The nice thing about a Let's Play is that you get the story elements of the game, and can 2X speed through slow dialogue, skip action sequences as soon as they become monotonous, etc. You don't get to explore at your own whim unfortunately, but I've found it a good middle ground for being able to experience (and talk about) excellent games, while investing 10-20% the time actually playing it would take (not to mention it's free). It does tend to be more enjoyable with games that are fairly linear, rather than something like Fallout where there are thousands of ways to explore the game and align your character.

Other than that, I enjoy playing board games with friends.

[deniscepko2]

Oh I can relate to this as well, but I think its not just being mentally tired. Me personally I want to get through the story, I do not have time to explore the world to get to the next chapter. And I feel a lot of games nowadays have this goal of rewarding exploration at least thats what I get from youtube reviews of the games. So like you for me eventually the game just becomes more work after work

[wreath]

> You spend most of your life at work (at least in the US)

Where else in the world people dont spens most of their lives at work?

[bumby]

>Where else in the world people dont spens most of their lives at work?

I've worked in some manufacturing domains where unions negotiated the ability to essentially opt-out of large amounts of the work year. There were people who would take off Nov-Feb to essentially focus on families during the holidays, hunting, etc.

I think, to a certain extent, the fact that we're highly productive yet have an expectation to work constantly is a measure of our value systems. (Obviously, highly context and culturally dependent.)

[gymbeaux]

In MOST other first-world countries, the working class has the RIGHT to elect to work less than 40 hours/5 days per week (in exchange for a proportional reduction in salary). In some cases, you must be a parent to be eligible for this.. but yeah, in places like New Zealand and The Netherlands, if you don't want to work 5 days a week, you don't have to.

[refurb]

That doesn’t seem to contradict “people spend their majority of lives working”

[gymbeaux]

Fair enough, but unless the other guy was just being tongue-in-cheek, I took the spirit of his question to be more like "where in the world is it different from the US?"

[mythhouse]

> In MOST other first-world countries, the working class has the RIGHT to elect to work less than 40 hours/5 days per week (in exchange for a proportional reduction in salary)

I work for a large swedish company in USA. None of my coworkers in sweden work less than 40 hrs, like not even one.

So is having that choice really relevant and does it really make it different than USA.

[gymbeaux]

I'm not familiar with the laws of Sweden, but a quick Google search suggests there is a law on the books limiting the workweek to 40 hours. Even if that is only marginally-heeded, it's leaps and bounds ahead of the United States.

If Swedish residents can work fewer than 40 hours at their discretion, why is it you think most in your circle do not take advantage of this?

Qualtrics released the results of a survey recently stating that 92% of Americans are in favor of a 4-day workweek (that's not necessarily 32-hours)[1]

[1]https://www.qualtrics.com/blog/four-day-work-week/

[mythhouse]

> If Swedish residents can work fewer than 40 hours at their discretion, why is it you think most in your circle do not take advantage of this?

Maybe because they want the money and working 40hrs isn't so bad? But i really have no idea.

That survey isn't directly related to your original point about working less than 40hrs.

If you are claming that its much different in other countries mere existence of some law isn't enough, it would be a stronger point if you had quoted how many people are actually taking a paycut in those countries in exchange for a day off.

Also sounds like you haven't really looked into laws of MOST first world countries ( whatever that means) yet you made that claim without any proof.

[codeOnMaster]

What do you mean by “fucked”? If you don’t enjoy your job, you’re fucked? Seems like you’re saying you’re fucked unless you work less hours.

[gymbeaux]

Yeah, you're fucked unless you work fewer hours. By "fucked" I mean "doomed to a relatively-miserable existence". I don't care if you have a FETISH for writing code, you do not want to do it ~40 hours/week.

We need a four-day (32-hour) workweek. Give me a 20% pay cut, I don't care. Most of us here make well over $100k/year. What we need is TIME.

[dinosaurdynasty]

And in the US it is rare to be able to get health insurance without working full time. Good luck with that.

[gymbeaux]

This is, of course, by design. ACA made it a bit more realistic for part-time/self-employed people to get health insurance, however if you have to get your insurance through the ACA marketplace (healthcare.gov), you ARE paying more for it than if you were a FTE drone.

[bumby]

>People underestimate just how much work life affects your entire life.

It would be interesting to see how cultural aspects affect this. In the West, it seems like so much of our life/identity is focused on our job. "What do you do for a living?" is one of the most common opening questions upon meeting someone. I wonder if the impact of work life on one's happiness more muted elsewhere.