[seiji]

("If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?")

I wonder that of myself all the time. I don't have any medical problems other than the tragedy of living inside my own fucked up head.

I find the cheap ways of getting rich untenable (abusing users, SEO affiliate ad crap, stealing personal information, facebook viral shitfests), and the hard ways are too much for my unconnected self to tackle alone (remaking credit card processing, remaking flight finding, anything requiring network effects to get off the ground).

But, for now, I'm not homeless and I have a view of Manhattan from my window. It could be worse.

[mattgreenrocks]

So did I.

I felt that if I wasn't 'great,' then I was squandering my life, and that I always had to hustle more. I'd internalized a bunch of toxic messages (some from well-intentioned family), lived in a fast-paced area that focuses on power (DC), had impostor syndrome, and was a nerd when growing up. It was easy to think that once I reclaimed my 'rightful' place, that life would be as it should be.

It should be little surprise that I was well on my way to predicating my identity on my career. I placed enormous pressure on myself to succeed, and rapidly started viewing many facets of life as inherently zero-sum. I became reductionistic in many areas, and my interests narrowed, as I pursued only things that I was good at.

It was all an enormous lie. I'd bought wholesale into a weird, Nietzsche-Darwinian belief system where I had to become the ubermensch before I could allow myself to be human. I had to become someone so I could see myself as someone worthwhile. I had to achieve so I could rest. I had to be the best, lest I become undesirable.

In short, I believed I was not worth loving until I'd received a certain amount of external validation. I'm still being broken of this, but the break/repair/rebuild cycle is much better than the desperate grasping. Fuck status. We think we have to waste our lives accumulating it, when it's really borne out of fear of the future.

[AndrewKemendo]

Very interesting writeup because I see shades of that in my own personality. So how are you overcoming this?

[mattgreenrocks]

This is probably a life-long pursuit, but in the short-term:

1. My wife is very supportive of my ambitions while not letting me be consumed by them. The vulnerability and accountability are key here.

2. Regular time doing wholly non-constructive things: video games, reading, guitar, etc. This took some time to acclimate to, but now I can play a game or the like and lose track of time, as well as not feel guilty.

3. Killed my Twitter account, which was sort of the symbol of my personal brand. Not sure what I'm going to do there.

4. Pulled back from open source work for now, as it got too close into the realm of 'being someone' in a particular community.

5. Meditation and prayer is huge. Admitting I have a problem is still hard but there's a huge relief that comes from being honest with yourself.

6. I work at a lifestyle company, which is fairly unheard of on the East Coast. This helps a bunch with being flexible about when and where I work.

I still make time to do side projects and such, but the effort is mainly directed towards learning and fun over developing my personal brand. I'm still strategic about it, as I'd love to do more Clojure in the future, esp. professionally.

Hope this helps.

[AndrewKemendo]

Thanks for the writeup.

2. Regular time doing wholly non-constructive things:

So how did you get started doing that? I have a reeeaaly hard time with that one, to the point that I even see time with the family as non-constructive. It feels like time spent doing anything that is not pushing one of my goals forward is actively stopping forward momentum (including posting comments on the internets) so I end up getting frustrated at having wasted time and get depressed that I haven't done anything. Its a tough cycle.

[mattgreenrocks]

I know the feeling. I have a few things I'd like to work on myself.

But the bit about your family? Sounds like a red flag to me.

Do things for yourself on a regular basis. Make time to exercise and spend with quality people. Talk about this issue. It's very tough to fix by yourself; you effectively been mentally rooted for now. Understand it will take time to fix, and the process of recovering will feel strange. I'm convinced half of it is showing up and resisting the temptation to do just one more thing.

Optimize for happiness, and trust productivity will flow out of that.