Stop existing to work. Instead create the memories now. Go have fun now. In the US the retirement age is going up to 70. One of the reasons is specifically because people are getting more good years, so of course the bar had to be moved. Enjoying retirement is a con.
That’s great advice in a society where most people don’t need several jobs to survive.
I know of some people who have radically redefined survive. From Van Life to learning a language and going to developing countries where it’s easier to earn money and have fun. I’m not saying that’s a good fit for you or that we should all be doing it but at some point putting 90 hours in just to keep the apartment and child care paid for is going to break. So something needs to happen to relieve that first or else you’re just going to die young and stressed.
People need to face the reality that currently for a lot of people it’s just not possible to escape the reality of living in financial distress and on the edge of homelessness their whole lives. Just because you know of some lucky people who were able to escape it doesn’t mean that it’s possible for everyone. It’s really demeaning to tell people to ‘work harder’ or ‘change it up’ ‘you’ll get there!’. Because you’re implying that it’s their fault if it doesn’t get better.
The only way to change this reality is to change the system we live in, and to stop letting rich people rule our economies and thus our lives.
At the root of it yes. I’m not trying to blame people who keep their nose to grind wheel for whatever reason, and there are legitimate reasons to do so. I’m just saying that when the system is this broken we should be throwing the box away. We don’t owe the elites shit. I legitimately looked into the price of living in camp grounds at one point before we were able to bring in more money. It’s a 2 week limit in each spot but the “rent” is far lower.
going to developing countries where it’s easier to earn money and have fun.
Curious, what countries exactly are you thinking of?
I’ve heard of people who are really into surfing going to Mexico. Most countries South of Central America fill the same function for people who just like doing outdoors stuff. We’re not talking about France or something.
Fun requires being alive, requires money, requires work, demands time. Getting fun can get complicated. There isn’t a true answer to this conundrum as far as I know—not an inspiring one, at least. Makes me think about what human life is supposed to look like.
Makes me think about what human life is supposed to look like.
I also spent most of my energy working, but I do get some time to occasionally do things I like but those also take some energy. If I imagine my perfect life I probably wouldn’t have the energy to live it. But still, I can’t help thinking I should do much more and I feel bad…
Go have fun now.
That doesn’t look like anything to me.
is the increases to fra still due to reagan’s changes to the system in the early 80s?
I honestly don’t know where the blame lies for the financial situation but the age increase legislation was much more recent, like Obama years.
When you die, they will put two dates on your tombstone. The day you were born and the day you died. And, in between will be a little dash. That dash represents everything that mattered about your life. All your achievements and failures, all your joy and all your pain. All roll up in just a little dash. Make the most of it before that second date is written.
Remind me to start writing a diary in clay tablets, I’m gonna own the rest of graveyard and future archaeologists!
It worked for our boy Ea-Nasir.
Make sure those tablets get baked by a fire when your city is pillaged and burned. Raw clay doesn’t stand up well to water.
Bold of you to assume everyone gets a tombstone, some are gonna end up in a mass graves after being mass murdered by their government.
I had workaholic parents who expected “retirement” to finally be the time to enjoy life. So they grinded, 60 hour work weeks for decades. They made a ton of money but by the time they made it to retirement they destroyed their bodies.
My mom has extremely severe chronic hip pain and cannot sit down. Due to constantly working in an office her muscles were severely atrophied and she cannot find the motivation to get back in shape. She spends the vast majority of her time in bed, completely exhausted.
My father suffered chronic stress and once passed out at work. He struggles with high blood pressure and went partially blind. He is still working due to decisions I can’t share here.
The grind culture is such an alluring chopping block. A meat grinder… some people go in, apply for a thousand internships, work three jobs, but not all of them go out. Is it a weak vs. strong separator? Am I weak?
I hope not. I’m just an archer, not a tank, I’d like to think.
I’m sorry your dad still has to work, and about their injuries.
Accept the fact that nothing matters, obviously.
Nietzsche: Duh!
Nothing matters and all you have are the stories and the memories
And this feeling is why I started picking up music again after I stopped playing/recording for nearly 12 years. I’ve worked too hard and focused so much on being successful when I’ve forgotten what makes me truly happy.
Word. All of these efficiencies and inefficiencies… humanness is distinct from it
It’s hard to come to terms with sometimes. Looking at a staff with 3 bars, or a short riff, then thinking man, did I review my finances for the month? But the time isn’t wasted. The pastime isn’t a reward. It’s as important as the work.
But you don’t have to be a monk to balance again :)
Everyone wants to be happy. Be the least asshole possible.
This is why hedonism is a good thing.
You just can’t be so hedonistic that you can’t keep being one next year, and the year after. Or in a way that screws someone over.
A lot of people use “hedonism” as an excuse to destroy themselves with drug addictions and act egoistically in their relationships with others, causing a lot of pain and suffering.
Ok?
Did I not pretty explicitly allude to the need to not over-indulge?
Ah sorry, my bad. I misunderstood it as “it is not possible” rather than “you must not do so”. You are right, it is what you already said.
Yeah. I’m basically saying that being happy right now is a good thing, as long as it doesn’t come at the expense of someone else, or your future.
So many people live miserable lives thinking it’ll make them even happier later, completely ignoring that life should be worth it right now.
That’s a pretty big question, with a couple of different interpretations. If you are asking how I handle thinking about the passage of time, the easiest answer is to make it tomorrow’s problem. This is probably not the healthiest answer; but it doesn’t pay to stress over inevitabilities, so I just do my best to put them out of my mind.
If you are asking the best way to utilize your time, my recommendation is to start focusing on yourself immediately. It’s very easy to prioritize work by staying late or overworking yourself to make your bosses happy, but no amount of overwork will ever satiate your company; it will only serve to drain the life from your body. It’s very important to set firm boundaries with your job. I, personally, will not even look at my work phone or computer the minute I leave the office (on Mon-WFH days) and have a hard stop every day at 5PM unless agreed upon well in advance. You lose so much time and energy to your job that just standing firm on your boundaries can be a huge QoL boost.
Please also do your best to cultivate a creative outlet as a hobby. A lot of people don’t think they are/can be creative, but anyone can be creative if they find the right outlet. It could be art, sewing, crochet, music, writing, or even creative programming. The important thing is to find a way to explore your feelings and do something productive with them. In my experience, I am often the most vivacious are when I am making art in one form or another; I highly recommend it.
Thank you for this. This comment is just a little push but now I see – I’ve already forgotten how long I’d gone without writing a note onto a staff. How long I’ve spent on just “things that will pay me or pay off.”
I will do this immediately.
I wholeheartedly agree with all your points! You are not your job (even if you love your job)! Set clear boundaries, have hobbies, friends, take walks in nature, do some sports/pottery/gardening/whatever, try different things, til you find some you enjoy.
Let go and let life slip through your hand like sand
I don’t like sand. It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
just like life
Ani, have you always been such a whiny bitch?
Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
All we are is dust in the wind.
Accept that good actions will not give an immediate or always measurable result for you to observe.
You are a social being. What matters most is often not what increases you in status, but what increases others in wellbeing or allows you to appreciate the beauty in lifem
On your death bed you will not wish to have worked more, but probably to have spent more time with people dear to you or that you had spent more time for actions that nudge society a tiny bit more towards your values.
Capitalism especially todays consumerism is built around manipulating you to identify yourself with superficial status. Breaking free of that will open yourself to value your time and actions as meaningful as they become meaningful, even if there is no number or title attachable to it.
Capitalism also exploits the inherent nature of humans to please and feel validated by others through work. However, the system initially stems from the idea that individuality is sovereign and the cornerstone of successful being and society as a whole. However, no one notices or questions this paradox. Capitalism promotes individualism, and yet if you are not immersed in the grind, hustle and productivity culture, you are deemed lazy and unproductive by society. In other words, even in a system that touts individuality, the worth of someone is still tied to impressing society at large. At the end of the day, you’re not pleasing yourself or your colleagues, you are pleasing those at the top who are earning more than you ever will.
I made a vow to myself long ago, because this world’s warped ideals tend to creep up on you when you’re not looking.
I often recite that vow any time someone dear to me apologizes for something like “taking up [my] time.”
I tell them that I vowed to myself that I woud never, ever, regret time spent in good company. Even if it might have been a little inconvenient for whatever reason. We were put here to love thy neighbor, not to hustle and hoard.
Simple as that. It’s kept me from losing the picture so far.
I notice a lot of comments here saying “Hey go live your life now! Pick up that guitar or paintbrush or dancing shoes or whatever! Live for you!” And I agree. I often struggle with these existential thoughts.
But something they might leave out is that it’s HARD.
Following your own path can be unpredictable, and meandering, and you need to know who to trust and lean on them, and let them lean on you.
It can be a one-move-to-the-next kind of existing without that facade of “predictability” a society-prescribed life will get you. The good news is that stability is a myth anyway, so why not see it for what it really is?
I was treading water in a soul-destroying job for almost a decade when I finally saw the opportunity to strike out for myself, and I ran for it. My wife was promoted to a position that paid more and she didn’t hate it, so we discussed it and I quit, and took on more household duties and put my efforts towards finally becoming a 3D artist.
It’s been like a year+ and I still haven’t “made it” yet! It’s scary! But I’ve gotten some gigs! I’m still slow, and not as wildly creative as I’d like to be, but I do random labor on the side and try to keep my costs as low as possible. But she’s happier with how not-depressed I am, and I’ve made so much progress more than I ever would have otherwise.
Are we even able to start saving for retirement? Not even close! But I’m betting on myself and in the process I get a lot more time well-spent with the person I love.
No, not everyone is gonna have these opportunities or privileges, I know. But keep looking, talk to people, DO THE WORK instead of just talking about it. Help people! Let people help you! There will be some foothold for you somewhere.
And if you gotta pull some shifts at a coffee shop to keep the lights on there’s no shame in that! And you’re gonna have people who think you’re crazy and try to pull you back into the pot with the other cranky crabs because you’re there reminding them that they could’ve done something with their lives too.
My point is, taking charge of your life instead of asking permission from various gatekeepers is HARD. You might follow your dreams and find out you suck at it. The dream might even change at some point.
But it’s worth doing. Because what’s the alternative?
Lord knows if the worst were to happen, your boss will be filling your job before your body is cold. So where is your effort, energy, discipline, talents, love, best spent?
As Bruce Lee once said: “Do not pray for an easy life. Pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
I’d add, “one worth living.”
Yeah… it’s hard.
The status quo, even if its dredged from a lake, is so comfortably uncomfortable. You resolve to change, but do futilities. You resolve to change, but your leg is caught and you return by week two (aka the New Years’ Resolutions number).
And to leap out and be instantly different is to play as something that doesn’t have the safe façade of being a system gear. Then you’re an oxbow lake, rather than in the river, and you wonder if everyone else is “floating by” already while you erode the soil that kept you streamlined down the main.
And then comes the “Should I have stayed? Was I being arrogant, spoilt enough to give up what I had?”
Idk what the moral of my comment is. I don’t want to say “I’ll discover it in a few years” either (,>ࡇ<,). Hopefully the mystery box is truer to my self than the alternative
https://i.imgur.com/LMlTKLM.jpeg
Kaiji expressed the sentiment as well though imo a smidge better
Wasn’t this a villain speech? I don’t fully remember it but I feel like it might mean something different with the context
It was a villain speech, but sometimes the bad guys have a point. Remember the villain from the first James Cameron Avatar movie? He had this speech, which, gotta be real, he’s not wrong.
I have to say I totally disagree with the idea but this is really good writing.
They have a point, but ultimately it’s still a biased rationalization. The idea that life is impermanent and you can’t defer doing what you care about with it is true, but it does bug me when this is posted that it’s also an imagined, hostile caricature from the perspective of a character who sees people (in particular people who have found themselves in debt slavery to his organized crime group) as just worthless losers. That’s its focus, as a putdown from that perspective; portraying a man who works a low paying job, can’t get women, commits the sins of gambling and drinking. Unstated but implied is that this is about a failure of achievement that is at its core financial, that positions himself above them both by being rich and doing fucked up things that are by his logic “meaningful”.
The OP comic is kind of an interesting contrast to that, making a similar point, but about a woman with a successful career, where that success might not hold much meaning.
If I may add, to some people, connecting to nature is their “real life”, while building empires and going on adventurous journeys is but a struggle they have to endure.
For work-life balance on the basis of the comic, by refusing to do any kind of overtime on a regular basis, and making sure any time it happens I’m compensated for it. I’m also fortunate enough to earn enough that I was able to reduce my working hours to have Fridays free. Having half of the year free gives me the opportunity to actually do some living.
Now for the more general question, I mostly try to not think about it, because it tends to throw me into a FOMO driven frenzy where I do things to cross them from a checklist and end up not really enjoying anything. For the most part, I found I’m much happier trying to live in the moment even if I’m not very good at it.
Been meaning to contact my teachers. Telling myself after I finish community college, after I get into the uni I want, and after I get my internship. I have now done those things and have not contacted my teachers out of fear of disappointment.
No harm in messaging them just to say thank you.
If you’ve just stepped out of uni into an internship you still have a lot to go, but getting through college, uni and into an internship is an achievement in itself. They won’t be disappointed, they will probably be proud that the work they did encouraged you to stay in education for as long as you did!
I’m still in uni with an internship
I always wanted to contact my French teacher and tell him I’m now married to a French woman, and how I found the love of my life because of the language he taught me… Well, I waited too long.
I honestly stopped caring about time as we use it (I’d need to think for a minute if someone asked me what day it is) since the Pandemic. Never had much use for time other than scheduling, but the Pandemic seems to have completely cut me off from it.
Now, I just exist. Que sera, sera.
Im Glad im not the only one that fell into the void outside of time.
Life really does feel a lot different once you stop counting minutes. I’m honestly very grateful for this paradigm shift!
That’s fantastic for you but most of us don’t have the privilege.
Granted, not something which works for everyone. But I don’t think such a shift in mentality is a privilege necessarily.
I mean, the whole point of my perspective now is that it really doesn’t matter what day, or month, or year it is, all that matters is what happens. Why count the time which passes and try to guess the time that’s left, when in spite of having the perfect organism in terms of physiological functions and immunity, one could still get smeared by a bus like paint on a canvas tomorrow.
I will concede that the fact that I do not fear death whatsoever also helps immensely. Literally no pressure, just flinging my best guess at it and dealing with whatever happens as a result.
Oh I get it, I’m also a hedonistic nihilist. I used to live the way you described, in a squat. I’m happier now in the house I rent with my wife and our cats. We have running water and the electricity doesn’t come from an extension cord to the neighbor’s!
But it came at the huge price of working and traveling for work all the fucking time. I’m still right there with you though. I don’t care if I’m struck down minutes after posting this. Hope it’s quick.
First off, I am genuinely happy to hear that you’ve managed to find some stability and that you have loving souls around you! I wish you and everyone you love nothing but the best! 🤗
Second, as related to my hedonistic nihilism… well… not quite:))
I have started to accept a bit of hedonism in my life for mental health reasons in the past years (I’ve been raised as a tool, not as a human being), but I’m not nihilistic. I don’t stress out about how long I have and the magnitude of my actions anymore, sure, but I am passionate about what there is. I love life (maybe even too much at times), I love my passions and interests, I love the wonders of existence, and I believe it’s ultimately awesome that we’re here to see the unfolding of the Universe. I also hate how bad we’ve made things for ourselves and the amount of injustice and inequality makes me sadder and angrier than I’ve ever been. And I will keep trying until I die to contribute whatever I can to shifting humanity
backon a reasonable and empathetic trajectory.I’ve been doing the 9-to-5 ever since I got out of Uni and managed to build a liveable career out of failing upward (I take full advantage of my intuition). I managed to squeeze into the housing market before prices started exploding here as well and own my own hole in the ground (we’re about 20 years behind America in terms of socio-economic trajectory, but we’re starting to speedrun the degradation, it seems), haven’t taken a proper vacation since 2011 (more than a week and actually going somewhere other than my living room), etc., etc.
I used to worry about everything, I used to carry the pressure of being a good little worker ant, of being the best specimen possible, keeping my mouth shut and working my ass off. And all I got for it is high blood pressure, profound loneliness, Meniere’s disease and teeth which I’ve chewed half to shit, and I’m barely in my mid 30s. Had my first (and only, so far) heart attack at 26.
The lockdowns gave me the context I needed to snap out of it. Had the privilege of working from home (QA guy) and spent the entire lockdown pretty much alone in my apartment. And I kept thinking about things, and realised the pain I caused myself for basically no damned reason, just because we’re forced to play this stupid little game of Capitalism since the moment we’re squeezed out into the world. I actually sort of died back then. At least a part of me did, the part which held any and all concern for trying to fit into the system. Then I could finally see my core values again, the things which were important to me. And keeping track of time really wasn’t on that list, to the point where I stopped celebrating or even caring about my birthday, or New Year’s.
Now I just try to live by my principles. I’ll give it my best shot at being myself and following my values, but I won’t have a psychotic break at the end if I don’t manage to be the uber-me, nor do I care that life will kill me sooner or later. Nearly did that myself through trying to live it by the terms set by society. It’s impossible to unsee the Absurd once it smacks you in the face.
Edit: some corrections.
