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by GuiA 4865 days ago
This article reminds me of a book I recently read: "The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter" by Meg Jay– I highly recommend it to anyone in their 20s.

Some portions of it apply more to the 20-something working at Starbucks while waiting for his band to make it big, and the HN crowd won't relate much to that, but there's plenty of other solid advice that I definitely related to.

I'm not usually big on the self-help books, but here it's a psychologist talking about examples she's had of patients dealing with their personal/professional/love life and how they addressed those things. It's a quick read- recommended.

2 comments

I think a lot of startup folks are very much like the barista waiting for the record label to discover him and his buddies' musical talents. It's a good analogy actually.
Except 4x the average income.
Mostly... but I know a lot that would do better to take the barista job :-/ </gallows-humor>

    > working at Starbucks while waiting for his band to 
    > make it big, and the HN crowd won't relate much to that
Replace "band making it big" with any other dream and replace "working at Starbucks" with any other routine and you've described most of our lives, accompanied by that chilling, familiar fear that it won't work out in the end.
To an extent, your interpretation is correct.

But it's not really what's meant by that here (and I think you know it :) )– there are some (many?) 20-somethings out there who work as <low maintenance menial job>, because "I can always worry about a career when I'm 30" and "I'm just going to do this for a couple years while I find my thing".

I personally know people like this, and you probably do as well– that's the kind of attitude that was referred to in my original sentence.