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I felt similarly a couple years ago. I felt overlooked in every aspect of my life. I didn't feel valued at work. So what was the point? I didn't feel like my friends really listened to me. I was always there for me... But they were only there for my cheery facade. I felt the need to disconnect from everything to "find myself" I guess. I ended up leaving my long term boyfriend. I was in no position to be in a relationship. I had to reevaluate my life. I dropped all my friends. Some old friends and long term boyfriend were the only ones who checked up on me. So, I reconnected with them. I was finally able to talk about what I was going through a bit. I left my job. That was the biggest root of my problem. I didn't feel valued at work, all of my coworkers were out of state, I felt unneeded and unnecessary for 40hrs a day. I wasn't eating well. And didn't go outside much.
Once I left my job, I had the time to pursue other hobbies and get out of the cycle of thinking about my uselessness all evening. I started going on walks, going to the gym, and eating a balanced diet.
I have some proving questions for you. Have you explored the possibility of switching industries? Is there a degree or certificate you can pursue to help you get a better, more fulfilling job? Also, are there any hobbies you've been meaning to get to , but do not see yourself having the time for?
Honestly i have no idea what i want to do in life. I've got some hobbies like weightlifting but i think i would really hate it if i had to monetize it.
I would rather do something i don't like as a job because i wouldn't have much expectations of it, i wouldn't feel pressured to enjoy it. I don't know if that makes any sense ?
I’ve been told to find a job that you’re okay with and don’t hate, and that came from someone who makes 7 figures and works at Apple. He got his degree in Geology and somehow ended up there. His point was even with how much money he makes he doesn’t always enjoy his job but it enables him to live a fulfilling life and that’s what’s important.
There are avenues to work in data/tech that don't make the world worse. At least for data, NGOs and governments and non-profits even always need data people. You won't make as much money but I doubt you would find it soulless.
Like I have a friend with a computer science background who now works for a non-profit that uses a lot of data and tech to inform voters about elections and work to help election officials run better elections.
There's also something emerging called digital platform cooperatives. These offer an alternative to capitalist platforms that offer a service. Like think of Uber. That's capitalist because it's a privately owned company traded on the stock market and has shareholders. On the other hand, a platform cooperative might offer a similar service to Uber, but it's collectively owned and run democratically, theoretically allowing for better working conditions, among other things.
Tech can have a very positive impact on the world, so if you decide to go that way, look for companies whose mission you believe in and work toward a better world. There's an entire aspect to climate tech, including data analysts and the like. There's so many ways you could approach a tech career. Just gotta look around.
Not entirely, but what other good white collar jobs will there be in the next couple years.
With a tech salary I can at least afford to drown my regrets in booze or some other vice
Consider working for non-profit organizations (environmental conservation is very important and spending time in nature is so good for mental health) or self-employment/starting your own small business.
I think you're spot on. Turning a hobby into a job is a great way to ruin a hobby. My criteria is to find a job that gives a good sense of purpose and still pays well. Pursuing money too much is its own problem, of course. But you never want to be in a position where you have to compromise your morals and values in order to get by.
My story is that I went into game development right out of college because I loved making games in my free time as a teenager. 7 years in the industry, and I got burnt out and hate it. I did a major career switch into HVAC, and I feel much better overall.
The work itself is grueling, but when it's done, I feel great at the end of the day. I very directly use my body, solve mechanical problems, and most importantly, I make someone's day much better. Everyone is happy after their broken AC works again on a hot summer day.
Compared to the endless projects I worked on that got canceled and felt slimy to work on even if they got finished in game dev, I'll take HVAC any day. I'm a year in, and the best part is I'm starting to feel the passion for game dev again. But this time, I'm keeping it as a hobby so I can work on what I love instead of constant stress to put food on the table.
I was regularly feeling like how you do in the picture near the end. This switch definitely directly addressed it. I'm not saying you have to get into a trade. That just happened to be a good fit for me, and I had a lucky opportunity. But you should find something that better aligns with your morals and values. Combine that with the other standard advice of a good diet, exercise, and rest, and I think you'll be feeling much better within a few months.
This isn’t necessarily a bad idea. I had a similar issue, were I grew up with the idea that my job needs to be a major part of my identity and something I devote my life to. Something that defines my place in society and helps people to take me serious.
After 15 years of up and downs, I can confidently say that for me, this just isn’t true. Sure, my job is part of my identity, but only a small one. I have a wife and kids, I have hobbies and those are much more important to me than any particular job I’m currently doing. I pick jobs that are optimal in the amount of time I have to put into them and money I get out of them. I optimize for a healthy environment over potential income and find meaning in my work by helping those around me to achieve their goals.
It’s really hard to figure out what’s important to you and the only way I’ve found to do that, is to try a bunch of things. So, if you feel stuck, try and mix it up. You already did that with your social life, maybe it’s time to do that with your work life as well.
I think “finding something you enjoy” is a lot different from monetizing hobbies. For example, if you’re creative and have strong attention to detail, you could go into basically any field that has you working as a craftsman. If you have strong interpersonal communication skills, you could go into basically any position that has you managing people. If you’re good at remembering lots of different pieces of information, you could go into coordinating logistics. It takes a bit of exploration to find where you shine, but I think it’s often less about the field you’re in and more about the role you’re playing.
[https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5mosJDLnyU/?igsh=MWVjbmlqcTNqa2lodQ==](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5mosJDLnyU/?igsh=MWVjbmlqcTNqa2lodQ==)
This is the best description of what I found
If you live in or near a major metro area and you like driving you might consider doing food delivery. It doesn't pay a whole lot but there's no boss and no schedule. Depending on how little you are able to spend it can cover all or most of your cost of living while giving you freedom and peace of mind to explore options and plan your next move.
I'm not OP but I don't really know how to answer these questions for myself and that concerns me. I've explored switching industries but no idea how to pick one. I have no idea what a more fulfilling job looks like. I definitely don't qualify for a job that pays better without taking a degree program/certificate course, but have no idea how to choose because I don't feel capable of passing any such course (failed out of post-secondary 3 times in my early 20s, and I've only gotten dumber with age). I have no hobbies other than video games, not even ones that I've thought about trying but haven't yet (just ones that I tried and didn't enjoy). Except for maybe a couple that are just way too expensive to ever explore.
I can relate to this, I’m at the point where I’m pretty much disconnected from everyone. Got a new number and went off grid. I spent a few months reading and rewatching downloaded shows. I feel a lot better now though, a little lonely but tbh I could live like this if I didn’t have to worry about money. I play video games when I can, workout, sleep a lot, pet dogs whenever I can. Probably got another year and a half before my money runs out, I guess I’ll see how I feel then but now I’m living my childhood dream of being free, it’s not extremely exciting but it’s very peaceful. I guess the fact that I make comments like this on Reddit once in awhile shows a certain level of loneliness, but I still prefer it to the somewhat anxious relationships people have out of custom.
I'm going through what u just mentioned now. Having a burn out, quit my job.. spiraled way down because I'm exhausting my savings from not working in 1.5 years, dropped my friends and families ( nah they're not supportive), just connect with 1 or 2 friends that's not judgemental and willing to just listen.
Got a new job now out of desperation, didn't like it but still going at it day by day.
I did tried switching industry but I guess the time is bad for the workforce and switching roles in current industry can't be done atm.
I guess looking back I enjoy meeting old friends and just do silly chats but rn everyone had their own family n life and I felt left out.
Welcome to the future. Where you have everything you want as long as you do everything they tell you to. So when you have burnouts and unanswered questions, or even the need to just sit still for a while, you won't be able to, because you'll have to pay rent and bills and shit. All that to the ones that are now buying it all.
I think this is more about not having enough freedom outside of work and having work be meaningful to you.
It would be pretty depressing to put so much time into pursuing things that you want to do and have it all taken away because it's not enough to support yourself.
You would want to contribute to society and whatnot with things like art, scientific research, etc. and spend a lot of time improving yourself to become competent in those things. You might even have laready done that. But these professions tend to have horrible income because of various reasons. It's also possible that there isn't enough demand in the industry to even have a chance to start and test things out.
I'm graduating from master's next year and I'm working on my research and making my portfolio rn, but chances are I'll barely go to software engineering despite trying a lot to do something different.
I might get downvoted to hell for this but I don't think it's helpful to just bash on this post without trying to emphasize with it a little. I was hoping there to be multiple threads delving deeper into this topic and have more variety in insight but I guess that's not happening here. Kind of a downer.
Because they had to do it, and obviously they aren't happy. Now even a thought of someone having it easy triggers them, a classic I have it hard so must you.
>I have it hard, so must you
That shit is so incredibly toxic for society, and I see it literally everywhere. Even my dad, who generally is a pretty fair and reasonable person, hates the idea of student loan forgiveness because of same. I had to pay mine off, how is that fair that they get theirs forgiven?
Idk Dad, was yours 100k dollars? Was yours even 50k? Maybe 25k at most? These poor freaking kids are getting screwed with debt they may never be able to pay off! It has to start sometime, somewhere, why not here and now..
The problem w student loan forgiveness is it’s bandaid for a broken education system
By all means forgive the debt- but higher education needs to be more affordable too.
A lot of the frustration of it comes from how it's always presented as being forgiven with tax payers money. Of course tax payers who paid off their debt will feel robbed.
The obvious solution to me that I NEVER hear about is a massive class action law suit against the colleges themselves. They're the ones who took all the kids money. It's them that should give it back. Go after them for false advertisement. "Why yes, if you take out this massive loan and get a degree, you'll get a well paying job guaranteed! Oh, no we'll paying jobs out there? Too bad, no refunds."
It’s complete crap. And the more you delve into it, the more you realize you’re not paying for professors and opportunites (they don’t get paid that much) but an increasing body of luxuries and administrators that I think most of us would or would have opted out of if offered.
And you’re right.
Funny enough it seems like the way to actually opt out is to either
A) go off the grid which is its own bag of worms
B) go FIRE, make a lot of money early then choose to opt out later
I got lucky, slipped into a gov job doing IT after doing it for private sector for a few years right out of high school.
I make enough to be comfortable in a nice enough town, but I'll never be rich haha. Only debt I have is my car payment since I rent.
There are other ways, but society seems to skip over them. Being a tradey is another path that can give you a comfortable life without much debt.
Pension OP tbh, that and the TSP together means yeah I should definitely be able to retire at a decent age, especially is social security doesn't disappear.
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We encourage discussion and disagreement in the subreddit. At the same time, you must offer compassion while being honest about your perspective. It takes more words but hurts fewer people.
Because this post just screams spoiled and entitled. I’m sorry but you have to work to survive. You can’t just do nothing and expect food, shelter, and life’s basic necessities to just be provided for you by other people. Somewhere along the way before you got your meal, someone did something to contribute to conjuring this into existence.
I never said i was against working, in fact i've been working for years already. The thing i hate is how "work" is defined and structured in this capitalistic society. It's way too rigid and lacks flexibility.
With all the advancements and all the technology we have today productivity has skyrocketed, why do we still have to work 5 days x 8 hours a week minimum ? Why couldn't we reduce that to 4 days for the same pay instead ?
But nah of course that won't happend cause the shareholders, CEO's and politicians all want to see profits and imaginary lines on some graph go up and who cares if the ordinary folks are overworked, underpaid and depressed because of it.
You know so people could actually live their lives a bit instead of locking them in some office/factory/building all the time. Maybe they have hobbies they want to try, a loved one they need to take care of ?
As someone who works in marketing, we typically know more about how people think than they do.
Today companies will use that knowledge to extract money from people who don’t have the psychological defense mechanisms to combat their constant bombardment of “external solutions.”
Its one that can be overcome, but it’s not a fair fight.
They were basically just telling OP to suck it up because you can’t sit around and do nothing and expect the world to just provide food, shelter, etc to you. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.
I mean thats correct tho, could have phrased it nicer in whats clearly a vent post but they got a point. World doesnt work like that for the average person
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My gooodnesss did you trigger some folks here, yikes. Obviously ignore them.
There's so many ways to arrive at this point. I think what a lot of them have in common is a kind of long-running grief about how your life has gone up to this point, plus a lack of hope of it ever improving. That feeling that you just want to curl up and chill, that's a kind of slow, comfortable death.
Freud believed we have an instinct to live and an instinct to die, and our life ends when our death instinct is finally allowed to win. Sleep, he said, was a compromise between the two. You can feel death trying to creep in when you have that paralyzing and draining sad feeling where you just don't want to move ever again.
The opposite of that feeling is a desire to go outside of yourself and connect with others, to build and create things bigger than you. A home, a family, a community, on outwards. This is our natural state until the very end of our lives, when we fall off a cliff deep in our 80s or 90s. The rest of the time, we're living. (And yes, definitely throughout our 70s; I've met some vibrant 78 year olds.)
Because it's our natural state, you can view this problem as "there are things in the way of me being who I am." Probably some mixture of unprocessed emotions/memories and cognitive distortions. That means you can process your way out of it through self-understanding and self-compassion, and making posts like the one you've made here to ask for help with your thinking. Or, a good therapist. As you integrate difficult truths about yourself and your life, you'll be left with a version of you that wants to live. This was my strategy for therapy/recovery, and it worked very well for me.
Spirituality helps as a starting point. Alan Watts' book *Still the Mind* was very useful for me; I reread it every year or so and get a little more from it each time.
While there were many issues with Freud’s work that is definitely one of the things he was definitely onto. Even if many things ended up being proven wrong or corrected. I am at least grateful he opened up a door we desperately needed.
Totally. About a third of his work is indispensable. Another third should be immediately tossed into a garage bin, and the rest just needed some refining by his successors. You really gotta take a nuanced view with him.
I really wish everyone who feels this way would get the freedom and rest they need. I can assure you if you had enough comfort and resources, after a while you'd feel the urge to explore the world again and make your life interesting and full of purpose. It shouldn't be forced. I really wish that to everyone.
This is the best comment on the entire thread, honestly. All the “no one likes it but we all have to do it anyway” are entirely missing the point. It completely invalidates the root of those feelings.
Thanks. I feel this way partly because I've had the privilege of attaining a place of stability and this has been my experience. It must be so hard to be a younger person (I'm 39) these days. (At least I assume that OP is younger than me, not sure why.)
I’m 32 and I agree with you! Unfortunately, I’ve had the opposite experience (having more stability in the past and having less now), but it has really impacted my functioning and outlook in a negative way, despite “knowing better.” What keeps me going is the understanding that I’ll be able to feel more like myself again and show back up to my life when I’m able to get out of this situation of chronic stress. In the meantime, it’s a very understandable feeling.
At least if you'd experienced freedom and stability as an adult, you know what to look for if you've lost it. I feel especially bad for people who don't even have the space to feel that it's possible.
Hey OP, I’m not sure if this post implies that the pic’s statement is what you are currently feeling.
But if yes, I’m really sorry that there are people making mean comments. I would feel really hurt if I was the poster.
Nevertheless, what they said has some truth.
“Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” — Westley from “Princess Bride”
It’s okay to voice what you feel as long as you don’t let your uncomfortable feelings cause you to impulsively make poor decisions. You have the driver’s seat but yeah I know it ain’t easy to go for the hard but good choice. Also, don’t forget healthy coping mechanisms and therapy.
And no, I don’t have it all together. I’m a college student who’s and a chronic procrastinator since the early days of lockdown trying to get through the misfortunes I caused on myself bit by bit.
Even the one of the most devoted evangelists once said he rather stay at his home watching old movies than evangelizing, yet he went to evangelize anyway because it’s for the higher good of the people’s souls. Hope this would encourage you, OP.
Yes that's how i'm feeling at the moment, it's just some random meme i found and i related to, so i wanted to share it to see if anyone else was thinking the same.
And btw it's not just the "work" part that bothers me, i'm just fed up about pretty much everything. Everything feels pointless to do.
So… I felt this this for the majority of the last 3 years. Still do sometimes.
The way I see it: you’re right, a lot of it is bullshit. Most of society feels like theatre sometimes (if not most). We all play pretend to some degree.
However: What ‘participating in society’ allows you to do is to create funds and time for things that truly matter; to you. Maybe even help people or be somewhat fulfilled along the way.
Someone recently told me: “I don’t live to work, I work to live”.
But I’ve come to realize there’s a third option: you don’t need work to live and define life’s meaning for yourself.
But you do need work to finance food, a place for yourself where you can go on that discovery, and hobbies and other things. A place where you can chill, withdraw, heck even figure out your purpose if you dig deep enough.
As for ‘conforming to societal standards’: here’s where I think you could use some counseling (because I’m not qualified) to learn about acceptance of yourself and learning that you don’t necessarily need to conform to anything- well except for a little bit of politeness and common courtesy. But that ain’t so hard.
Life is fucking hard. I haven’t figured shit out myself (after a long and dark depression followed by burnout and moving back to my parents to recover)
But I do know there’s a way forward. Not everyone cares about the same things equally. So figure out what does matter (even if its just a bit) and find something you’re good at- see if there’s ‘job’ potential there. Lastly, don’t look for something you wanna do for the rest of your life- that’s WAY too much pressure ❤️
Good luck 🙏🏼
I personally think we should question such thoughts. They "sound good" on a first hearing, but I have found from experience that the more you pick them apart, the more you'll find out that they're deceitful thoughts, very vague statements about life that only muddies your waters and blinds you to reality, and they're rooted in discomfort, pain, trauma, or whatever else is ailing you.
First, what makes you *not* want to work? Wouldn't you like to find areas you're *good* at, and *do them for others as a service in exchange for money*? That is what work is about. Sure, you don't always get to have a "dream job", and even if you did, you'd still deal with problems, which work is about solving. Also, if you want resources in exchange for nothing, those resources would have to be given or taken from somebody else. Maybe you'd like to be in the position of living off somebody else, but would you like someone else living off *you*? Probably not.
Second, what are the "societal standards" you're being "forced" to conform? Working a 9-5 job? Having to eat healthily and work out to stay in shape? Living soberly and not seek your own pleasure at every corner? I have found that you don't *have* to conform to anything, you can do what you want, but actions have consequences, and if you don't take care of your body, or whatever else you got, you can't expect it to be in mint condition and work properly. You can't neglect your relationships and expect everyone to want to be there for you whenever you call. You can't put a minimum amount of effort into things and expect to be rewarded richly for it. If we don't make good choices, we won't get good results.
Third, what part of life makes you say it's ALL bullshit? Sure, some parts are, there's injustice and sickness and death and whatnot, but you'll find that not everything is bullshit. Pinpointing what you're calling bullshit will help in making a plan of action to deal with the situation. Also, not getting what one wants when one wants the way one wants is not "bullshit".
And last but not least, consider what is making you so tired. Being on a hamster wheel will tire you out, and you won't be getting anywhere. Sometimes, we only got ourselves to blame for being tired out.
Of course, not everyone gets dealt the same cards, and there are too many things outside our control. But I found that playing devil's advocate, to analyze the thoughts described in the picture, will give you better chances at doing the best you can out of what we got, not only for yourself, but for those around you as well.
Reading OP's message I recognized as a justification discourse created to protect the self. And I say that all while I am probably affected by something similar. I think that the worst is knowing its there, knowing you can work against it, and still fall into the same mental trap.
Totally. I'm in the process of recovering from that sort of mindset (though it's not *exactly* the same, but it sure rhymes). Giving into it for so long has been so utterly costly.
~~YOU TOOK 15 YEARS FROM ME SONNY, AND NOW I'M GONNA MAKE YOU PAY~~
u said r right but i am tired of this shit now working n failing n also thinking about work during breaks i just do not want to work like the op said i m just also i have no interests as to pursue also i do not wanna contribute anything to society and after failing so much i am just hating my studies
also i come from a upper middle class family so we do not have any issue of basic necessities n neither i have aspirations for anything like big house,cars,etc.
Man, I dunno, shit is complicated. Like, most everybody feels this way, it's just not culturally acceptable to feel that. You've got a lot of grinders who think money and flash and status are the most important things in the world, partly because they spend way too much time on Instagram, and partly because the world is on fire and the prospect of feeding yourself for the next 30 years is terrifying. As an old (38 yo), i remember there used to be subcultures that you could drop into that felt the same way you do: work is bullshit, life is more than your job, we work because we have to and we fuck around/do art/drink and break shit/whatever the rest of the time. It was normal. It's not normal now. Grasping for bullshit is the norm, and there are no subcultures, really, anymore, at least not ones not tainted by alt right morons. Our culture is very homogeneous, and if you don't fit the template, things are hard. It's always been like that, but it feels like there are less templates now. Couple that with comparing yourself to literally the rest of the world on social media, with expressing yourself through art beginning to boil down to who types the best sentences, with no cultures of doing stuff outside because everyone is doing the cult-of-personality thing on Twitch and YouTube, with stories being told in seconds instead of pages, with social media being a cavalcade of parlor tricks and sound bites, with everybody liking the exact same shit, a parade of media that everybody latches onto for 3 days before moving on to the next thing. There is one watering hole we all drink from: the internet, and it's curated by people who only give a shit about money, replaces a million disparate third spaces where people could congregate and learn how to live from each other, and gives us an extremely narrow image of what an acceptable human looks like.
I think here stands the assumption that happiness and suffering are mutually exclusive, which is not necessarily true. The world works with the logic you give it. Happiness and suffering are born within you. And it sounds like absolute nonsense, but : maybe it’s possible to live a life of constant suffering and enjoy it.
You cant possibly expect someone to enjoy rape, murder bullying and torture. Suffering alongside of happiness being within us IS the crux of the antinatalism. It's not a defeating argument.
I do not try to defeat anyones argument, my words are there simply for you to give them a meaning. I personally think that running away from suffering is childish. Things are how they are, roses have thorns, fertile soil parasites. Humans have rape and murder and betrayal. The bad things and the good things are just things, that happen on their own accord. Denying any one of choosing whether or not they think the world is beautiful or flawed is also childish, but I can’t say I don’t understand it, because I’m also human. I’m also childish.
Okay there's a lot to unpack here!
It's good that you're not trying to defeat any arguments it's just that your previous comment has been repeated at ad nauseam.
>my words are there simply for you to give them a meaning
So are mine! Lol
Look, in order to understand "antinatalism" position
U have to understand this:
The absence of suffering is good, but the absence of pleasure is not bad.
It's not just that the world isn't perfect it's freaking unjust and unforgiving. And if you are being childish about it and also optimistic, not for you but for an unborn individual(bc living humans have a bias towards life) , then i truly envy you. Creating a baby is selfish in and of itself, and i am aware that no one gives a damn about that which just proves the point.
I personally don’t believe that good things and bad things have an inherent value.
But to stand on the same playing field, I would think that the absence of bad things is just as bad as the absence of good things, making nonexistence a net negative.
Pain has made me who I am even more so than joy. Suffering has made me understand. Unfairness has made me value fairness where I found it.
huh, who said that we only want good things and discard the bad things?
I have an issue with the system itself. the very fact that in order for good things to exist there must be a bad thing is inherently fucked up. you can't do anything about it but you can spare someone else from unnecessary pain for personal gain. humans should not be a tool to reach a goal. humans should be the goal
It's understandable that you don't want kids yourself but why call yourself an "antinatalist"? That sounds like you don't want anyone to have children. Does this mean that you want the human species to die off?
What we "want" is of no consequence. IF the human species die out it doesn't matter bc it doesn't effect us since we won't be there to see it. And antinatalism isn't about ending the human race per se it's about ending the suffering. And not be responsible for existence and suffering of someone else. So yes maybe if 100% of humans go antinatalistic yea humans will die out as a result but history showed us that antinatalism just makes the world worse. Why? Bc wise, cautious and compassionate people have little to no offspring while morons, uneducated and fanatic people will have more offspring i mean just look at the eastern world! We'll just end up having a world full of fools and religious fanaticism
Since antinatalism seems to be coming from a place of caring, I find it hard to believe that antinatalists actually don't care what comes after they die. With humans gone, not only human suffering dies but all concepts and standards die with them, including beauty, truth, happiness, love. We are the source. We're making lots of mistakes but we're the only ones who can be also custodians of this planet. The only species capable of loving life itself. It's not a small thing.
And sure, the world isn't perfect but I'm sure that at least some of the generalizations you're just accepting simply aren't true.
>standards die with them, including beauty, truth, happiness, love. We are the source.
Yes but only if we exist! If we aren't here, no-one suffers from lack of goodness or badness! Think of it this way, we inherently think that it's a good thing that there's no suffering on the moon, but we don't think that it's a bad thing that there is no good on the moon. Why? I'll let you decide. And while on the topic of preserving goodness, yeah no shit the planet would be a better place for everyone if the humans didn't exist have you seen the other sentients? Plus no one is thinking about "saving/preserving the human race" while they're pounding /getting pounded all night. Come on you don't actually think that! See, that just makes for a weak argument. Since antinatalism or whatever you want to call it is not shouting "let's end the human race" so going for that right off the bat is just not accurate and is exhausting.
>at least some of the generalizations you're just accepting simply aren't true.
Sure, I'm a human and like all humans i have biases and things that are not accurate. Maybe religion is one of them but i highly doubt it since i saw first hand what religion can do, specially Islam. Making sex a crime that's punishable by stoning while in the marriages making babies like rabbits with worst standards for parenting. We all heard of Asian parents, i happened to have the honor of being the child of a middle eastern couples! The west imo don't get what level threat Islam and religion in general poses.
There's a Zen Koan this reminds me of:
When Mu-chou was asked, "We dress and eat every day, and how do we escape from having to put on clothes and eat food?" Mu-chou answered, "We dress; we eat." "I don't understand," said the monk. "If you don't understand, put on your clothes and eat your food."
Accept that you made a decision to work a job that you may not enjoy for the expressed purpose of giving yourself enough money to continue surviving.
This isn't a bad thing, at the time with the options ahead of you, this was the best one in your eyes.
You need several things to have a healthy life, and one of those things is money (yes you can argue this and I'm sure people have figured out how to not need money, but 99% of people need some kind of income). It's unfortunate that for alot of people, acquiring money eats up so much time that you can't be healthy in other ways, physically, mentally, emotionally, but those were the cards you were dealt.
So to answer your question, what you can do is look at the cards you have now. Maybe you can get a better job, maybe you don't have to do thankless work for a corporate drone just to get a paycheck, or maybe you could be getting paid more and work less hours.
Or if changing jobs isn't an option, maybe there's something you can do with your current leftover time to improve your quality of life. Maybe you can eat healthier or go to therapy. Maybe you can spend more time with friends and family. Maybe you can start that creative hobby you've been putting off because "it's not the right time".
Make a list of your values and what you want out of life and pursue that list. It won’t ever be perfect but the pursuit will give you validation and the act of checking those boxes will be rewarding. This is something that you will have to make a routine. Weekly or monthly works best for me. There is a difference between something taking effort and being hard take time to understand the difference and acknowledge that some of your goals will be one or both.
It doesn't matter how much it improves or how hard i try i still want to die. I dont want money. I want to help people i dont want to kill, but i have to eat. Everyone says im good and the kindest person they met, yet im still a failure, and im alone no matter what. Even if i do something right, it doesn't matter since it gotta get done anyway. Im just the tool. When you get punished for being anything other feeling happy and accepted, all im left with nothing
You can find things outside of work that make the free time you have more enjoyable. That's why a lot of people go clubbing on weekends. or socialize, or whatever you want to fill in here.
You can also find something you like enough to make work not gruesome or painfully boring.
Other than that there's not too much to be done, if you don't work you don't eat and don't survive. That's the human experience.
While I agree with the sentiment. There are flaws and nuances that usually go unaddressed. While it may have been much more physically demanding in the past working at least felt like you were contributing to society even when it was really bad. Now I can say about 50% or more of jobs could straight up be automated and eliminated because of how pointless or redundant they are. Also when working overtime or longer hours was more beneficial now it’s almost mandatory just to live. We are being forced to work in pointless/meaningless unfulfilling jobs for longer hours just to make the people who I would argue have less humanity then the rest of us feel good or make them more money than they know what to do with. If they do know what to do with it, it usually is to keep supporting the system or their twisted disillusioned world view making this existence worse for everyone else. Our system does need to change. That much is painfully clear.
yeah, I kind of agree with you there. But I didn't want to get too gloomy. The world is shit and life is shit and there's nothing we can do about it, generations will have to pass for something to change and we probably won't see it.
Find a job where you fit the culture better. My boss does not give a shit that I'm late 3 or more days per week, because I get some stuff done late at night when it is more efficient. so the fact that I am a late person, does not matter.
I do work that interests me, so it doesn't feel like I'm wasting 8 hours of my life every day. I realized that my career was actually interesting to me, when I was laid off for 6 months. I found that after the first couple weeks, I was starting to create projects at home to do similar things that I do for my job. Simply because I was missing the puzzle aspect of my job.
I also found a good hobby, it takes up a significant amount of my outside of work time. Like most hobbies it costs money, which means that my job supports the aspects of my life that I love the most. Its much easier to convince myself to get off my ass and get work done, when I can put that work into the frame of I gotta go to work today and tomorrow if I want to be able to afford to go to the show I really want to go to on friday.
There are things to do other than work that make the work worth doing… Being an adult that has responsibilities is worth doing because it enables you to do the things you enjoy. Join us. Contribute to humanity.
That doesn’t apply here… you can work for yourself. You can paint fucking rocks for a living for all I care. If it enables you to sustain your life then it’s worth doing. But you can’t just do nothing because “I don’t want to!”.
I appreciate your willingness to engage in this important discussion. I definitely see your point, you can’t just give up and do nothing and then lament when life doesn’t hand you everything. I get that and agree.
I’m just saying that I don’t personally interpret OP as saying “I don’t want to”. As an autistic person, I’ve found it extremely difficult to maintain work, even when I desperately want to do so. I’ve trained and acquired experience in a field that I’m interested in, but even then it’s very difficult to maintain a job for more than a year or two due to social difficulties. Just getting out of bed and interfacing with the world is exhausting on a level that I don’t think many neurotypical people fully understand.
I often fantasize about the end of the world or living 100 years ago. Yes, those times were extremely hard in other ways, but the freedom to live self-sufficiently without the pressure to conform to societal norms is a dream to me that seems impossible today given the price of land, low wages compared to years past, etc.
Anyway, sorry about the novel. I appreciate your outlook and I’m not here to fight or say you’re wrong, just to offer a different perspective and promote understanding.
I think societal norms were even harder to go against 100 years ago. People have a ton of creative freedom these days, but yeah if you have back to the land fantasies it's gonna be a hard go, i did it for a while and came to the conclusion that you need to be pretty well off going in or it's just as miserable as working for someone else. I wish we had universal basic income. Make the money generated from AI go toward it lol.
You bring up a great point, it’s not like there was any understanding of disabilities or differences 100 years ago. Maybe going off-grid like Into the Wild would be a better metaphor. And yeah, I’m aware of how well it worked out for Chris McCandless 😅
Learning to live in a society that just wasn’t built for you is destined to be a constant challenge. Doesn’t mean the answer is “give up and waste away”, but it also doesn’t mean there will be some simple magical solution that just works for everyone like “get over it and go socialize in your off time”.
It’s a constant struggle, and maybe that’s the answer in itself. It’s all meaningless in the end, so find your own individualized meaning in the struggle to fit into a meaningless world. “Imagine Sisyphus happy”, as Camus summed it up. I haven’t found a way to put that into practice yet, but I’m going to keep trying.
100% I think there is something to that. After I had kids my life became hard in ways I never imagined. But throwing yourself against a challenge time and time again and watching yourself change and become better and stronger, even when you fail, gives a kind of timeless purpose. The path is the goal, as they say.
You're suggesting to start a business like it was easy. "Hey just leave your regular job and risk all the money you got to be your own boss, you've got 1% chance of making it but it's worth it trust me"
Cynicism is understandable but it's also incredibly narrowing. Why be curious about individuals if you already "know" everything about them? It's also a great way to preclude yourself from learning the opposite, on the off chance it was sometimes true.
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Live your life the way you were built, don't fall into what all of these people tell you life's about because most people don't understand it, it amazes me that our society is in the shape it's in given how bad it is for our health
I can feel the same way
One way to think about this is that you have a severe budget deficit in rest.
Why this is varies for everyone.
Another is that resting or not being productive have been stigmatized or questioned for you. This has accidently happened to me: whenever i tried to rest i were just completely unable to relax mentally, and were on edgevery often.
I would have to be validated or told it was fine to rest to actually be able to rest.
Indirect solution for that is finding friends with which its ok to just rest, be lazy, and nap or cuddle.
That way you dont have to solve both the rest problem and low confidence problem
I see both sides of this. On the one hand, we see that houses are less affordable than ever, jobs don’t pay as well as they did before, and there is overall less prosperity now than our parents had, so that can really make you want to check out and feel hopeless. On the other hand, this isn’t the first time in human history that people have had to struggle through harder economic times and if people just checked out and far up, nothing would have ever improved. In the late 1800s, where people worked horrible abusive hours for basically no pay lead to the rise of labor unions and establishing a minimum wage and 40 hour work week. If people had just given up in the late 1800s, nothing would have ever gotten better.
If you want my honest opinion this feels like what someone would say when they’re depressed or overwhelmed. It sounds like an easy solution to life’s “chaos”, but there are thousands of jobs to choose from, there are lots of options for making enough money to live even if it takes months or years to reach a stable income, and honestly we don’t have to conform to “societal expectations”, people can say or expect whatever the hell they want but we DONT have to do everything other people do. I don’t HAVE to dress like them or talk like them, if they judge me that’s their problem.
We have to take control of our own decisions and also break free of what other people think. Having to work is not the problem, having to do stuff and solve problems isn’t the issue, the issue is wanting for things to be easy and for life to go smoothly, and that’s just never going to happen. We can pick our battles carefully so that we don’t have to solve every single problem that arises but at the same time we do have to make an effort to have decent lives and focus on what we can control instead of being overwhelmed by everything.
Same. Currently trying to save some money so I can take a break from working even for a couple of months. You're probably burnt out and need some time to recover.
Saving is actually proving to be difficult since everything got so expensive so at times, you cant help but feel trapped lol.
For extra security, probably part time work would be a compromise. But yea when I save enough, I'm planning to use that time to build healthier habits and get back to some hobbies.
If you can take a break, do so.Then use the time to better your mood or self.
Only seeking pleasure is a bottomless pit that will only make you feel empty and without purpose. We are made to work. Not necessarily work for money but work towards your goals.
- we can't avoid work unfortunately
- if you don't enjoy it, you should look to change fields, but you still have to do it
- make life as easy as it can be for you, because there is no point in working too hard for this shallow world
- get busy in life so you have less thoughts of wasting time
Reminds me of a top comment from another thread about people who don't have big aspirations in life.
> My big dream is to be a lazy bum, which is ironically a big dream because I need to sustain myself without working.
How about looking at it as a societal thing. Are you not identifying with yourself or are you feeling you aren’t measuring up to others expectations. Live for and not for others or their expectations. You don’t have to be better than anybody… just be your best self.
Bit late to the party but I do wanna share this.
I felt like this about 6-8 years ago. How I solved it was by joining a monastery. Changed my life. I left after two years. If you wanna know more, ama.
Dr k videos are all about getting your shit together, yet the community festers on passive complaining.
It's not necessarily wrong to complain, it's the "my whole life is ruined and there's no solution" vibe of passive complaining that's destructive.
From a mentality standpoint, Dr K eloquently provides everything one can need for free multiple times over. With the right mentality one can better their health and wealth, to a point that alleviates suffering, enough for a good mentality to thrive.
You need to first understand that for you to “chill” and not die off, you have to work. Work is just using labour to push off the need for more labour a bit into the future. Work will always have to be done, in a way.
Get an education so that you can find some work that you actually enjoy. I wake up every morning and can hardly wait to get to work, because I enjoy my job immensely. Try to see the job as the useful thing it is for society, the purpose it gives you and the challenges it presents that lead you to become a greater person.
I’m a teacher (in Europe though, so on top of loving my job, it does also help that I get paid really well and have life-long tenure).
What I mentioned goes for all jobs, though. Yes, not everyone can find their dream job (maybe it is a super niche thing, or it doesn’t exist, or similar). But everyone can try to do their best and try to see the value of what they do. There is a strong narrative that you have to hate your job, that your job is just something you have to endure to not die financially. I don’t believe that at all. You spend ~8 hours a day at your average job. If you always go into it with extremely negative thoughts, how will you ever have a positive experience?
Some jobs are pretty bad (bad conditions, bad pay, terrible bosses, horrible colleagues, etc.),
and those jobs deserve you quitting, especially if you don’t see the value in them (according to your very own values).
Some jobs are just straight up difficult (I assume a job like sewer worker is not for those with a weak stomach, for example), but very necessary, and they often tend to be well paid. You need to look for the positives.
I used to work in international trading. If I had stayed there, I could be earning twice (or more) than what I do today. But I just did not enjoy the day-to-day, sitting in front of Emails and the telephone all day long, and so I had to get out and do something else. I went to university to become a teacher. So I made a choice to quit a well-paying job for ~6.5 years of earning next to nothing. Those were some tough days, but I would always do it again.
lately i feel like you DO want to work. just not what we call "work" today. I realized this when i make a spreadsheet for a game that i like. the things i do for that game is no different than actual work.
You can always go and camp out in a forest for the rest of your life. Live the life of a hunter gatherer. If you don't wanna conform to society then you won't get the benefits too. Only if the government starts following communism will you be free from work. But that means even more conforming to society, especially the government. So best not to think like that.
I am having the whole campaign to achieve this. I realized I am not cut out for "normal" life when I got diagnosed with ASD&ADHD at 42. I decided to build a company, make some money and retire. But first I had to make capital and pay off debt. I am year three of my plan. I am still on track. Changed career to IT, so I make a lot of money in 9/5. Debt is growing smaller. Thinking about starting a side hustle, probably coaching. You can do it.
I kind of just accepted that getting to work is a part of life and that I may not like it but the structure and routine might be good for me. I'm only 19 and I've never had a job so maybe I'll feel different when I'm working. I feel so useless right now because I don't have a job.
I felt similarly when I was 19, but now (at 32) I feel more like OP. It’s very easy to get burnt out working, especially as the years go by and you realize all you really do in life is work, recover from work, and prepare for work with a few leisure activities sprinkled in whenever you’re not too exhausted from work to enjoy them. It gets depressing.
I used to be miserable in a job years ago. There was a woman there who was a real hardass, she had no friends and whenever anyone made the slightest mistake she was going for the throat immediately. There was a company event for the customers and it was mandatory for me to go, and this woman just got to my side and took me to the bar for drinks. Instead of gaining points with the customers she wanted to talk to me. She told me about her life and apparently she loved to travel with her husband. And by travel I mean things like going on a trip to see all the volcanoes in Italy. So basically cool shit. She didn't need people's friendship from her work, she needed them to do a good job so they don't sabotage her work and livelihood.
The point is. At the end of the day your job can be a tool to get the necessary finances to support the things you love. You need a job that's easily done (for me it's admin work as my thinking was that if I can grind in a game for 10 hours i can do boring ass work in an office) and it needs to provide the money for your desired lifestyle. Not everyone gets to do something we enjoy, and if you don't know what to do with your life, choose something that doesn't drain you and makes you absolutely miserable, until one day you'll find something you actually want to do.
I’m in a position where I don’t have to and it’s just as bad, if not worse. Everything lacks inherent meaning and even your hobbies seem to lack any meaning. You being to realize that nothing can bring you fulfillment. It is that we need to feel like we can reach fulfillment and content so we have to sort of make ourselves believe beyond reason that the things we do are meaningful
The difficult truth or the matter is that society is organized in such a way that the average person doesn't have the breadth of skills needed to thrive away from it. Think of all the things you'd have to do for yourself that others have specialized to do 10x better than you have the time to learn to do for yourself. Think of all the technology that you would be cut off from without earning a fungible representation of your contribution.
I don't say that in defense of capitalism, but to illustrate that most people don't and can't "just chill". Even if you ran away into the forest or something, you'd likely be dead or back home within a month, and if you're one of the few that have the necessary skills to survive on your own, you're not writing this post.
Not wanting to work is normal, you're not alone, but reality demands that you do for the most part, so find something that you don't mind at the very least, and understand that this is the price we all pay for the availability of resources and services afforded to us by industrialized society. For bonus points, if you're passionate about this, then work in your spare time to make the changes to society that you want to see.
Thats what I thought myself at the time and I still prefer being independantly minded. But if you think about it, what is wrong with these societal norms objectively?
Going to work? That provides room for finance, socialising etc
Find out what you value in your life, and try slowly aligning the things in your life with that. Are you studying? Don't make it about what society views as good or what your parents expectations are. Make it about you instead. Align it with your own goals on life. But those goals need to be born out of what YOU believe matters. Not what the world thinks you "should" do.
Find out what's important to you in life. It won't come instantly, it's a process of self-discovery and exploration. Try new things and explore new ideas, and you will eventually come to understand what your values are. To find these things you need to expand your horizons. Always think critically about things, and you will find your truth. That's what my experience is.
Honestly for me it was about finding something I wanna do or passionate about and doing it , I dropped of uni but at the time i was really into fitness so i thought it would be cool to do that as a course, It's about asking what do you want from life or how do you want to change things.
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I would first challenge the idea that somehow society is what is forcing you to work. Society is the only reason some of us can chill, whether it’s the retired elderly, the well off, the incredibly disabled, or the every day person on their vacation or weekends. Without society we’d be fending for ourselves constantly until we died. Without society “chilling” would amount to just resting to conserve energy between getting food, and would be very boring without things like video games and tv that are only possible in a society.
Now maybe you don’t want to conform to a very specific role within society, that maybe your parents are pushing. A lot of people in the previous generation followed the route of getting an college degree, working a 9 to 5, earning vacation and saving for retirement, and are just about now able to chill full time but have had pockets of being able to chill throughout the years. By definition of being your parents this was eaten up also by bringing parents, which is practically a full time job onto itself.
There are ways to get around this lifestyle, but it means sacrificing things. You could live collectively with a bunch of likeminded people your age working part time jobs and pooling resources, but then you’d never have a home to yourself and constantly have to consider the wants and needs of those other people. You can find jobs that let you feel like you’re on vacation (traveling jobs, laid back jobs, exciting jobs) but they won’t pay as well, require a lot of experience up front, and/or will begin to feel just as much as a slog as the 9 to 5 without the benefits of a more traditional job. You can choose not to have children and that will reduce your financial burden but a lot of people find children to be the most fulfilling part of life not to mention how they can support you in old age.
No matter what you choose it’s best not to personify society as some cruel person who refuses to let you chill. Instead recognize that life requires work and that participation in society can be what helps you momentarily escape work and makes your rest time more enjoyable. From there you can decide how you want to contribute, and keep in mind that you may not be able to work as hard in your old age.
Rule #1: Temper your authenticity with compassion
We encourage discussion and disagreement in the subreddit. At the same time, you must offer compassion while being honest about your perspective. It takes more words but hurts fewer people.
Rule #1: Temper your authenticity with compassion
We encourage discussion and disagreement in the subreddit. At the same time, you must offer compassion while being honest about your perspective. It takes more words but hurts fewer people.
Rule #1: Temper your authenticity with compassion
We encourage discussion and disagreement in the subreddit. At the same time, you must offer compassion while being honest about your perspective. It takes more words but hurts fewer people.
Yeah wouldn’t it be nice to have been born into a billionaire family and just never have to do anything ever and have everything handed to us without never needing to work for a thing? It’s a cute little fantasy when young. As you get older you realize that life is overwhelmingly most likely never going to be a reality and that we should learn to love our fate because otherwise you’re just setting yourself up for a miserable life. You are in control of your life and you get what you make of it. It’s okay to not know what to do now but over time you will learn what you like and don’t like and what you know you can tolerate, enjoy, and do every day. Life isn’t going to be a highlight reel full of dopamine hits constantly. There’ll be times things will just feel like a grind. That’s how it is most the time. Set your life up in a way you can enjoy the little things. There’s no formula for this. Nobody’s going to do the work for you. Life is a journey and it lasts your whole life. If this is perceived as a “suck it up and get over it” statement then I’m sorry my point is completely above your head. This is just a blunt delivery and I don’t care. You are the one responsible for your happiness. It’s okay to not know what you’re doing right now as that is 100% the norm with young people. Just keep plugging away with the hopes of a better future and over time it’ll happen. A great lawn does not come overnight.
wow lol, very empathetic of you. that kind of thinking is so devoid of humanity. we are heading towards another labor reform. could you imagine if you said that to the youth of previous labor reforms? nobody wants to slave away, making some dude rich while you get pennies. there is no "growing up" for that.
ok, because of a typo in a meme, everything they're feeling is invalidated, and they could never produce change. get over yourself. you know like half of America is illiterate and still vote, right? those people make change (good or bad) every day... lol.
ETA: why are you upset at OP anyways? your previous comments indicate you hate the wealth disparity (which affects labor) as well. you must understand OP's point then? what's with the aggression, dude?
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Do you really believe that verbally beating down on others like this is helpful or productive?
"no work or effort" as if the OP hasn't been burned out for having already put in probably years of work?
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I felt similarly a couple years ago. I felt overlooked in every aspect of my life. I didn't feel valued at work. So what was the point? I didn't feel like my friends really listened to me. I was always there for me... But they were only there for my cheery facade. I felt the need to disconnect from everything to "find myself" I guess. I ended up leaving my long term boyfriend. I was in no position to be in a relationship. I had to reevaluate my life. I dropped all my friends. Some old friends and long term boyfriend were the only ones who checked up on me. So, I reconnected with them. I was finally able to talk about what I was going through a bit. I left my job. That was the biggest root of my problem. I didn't feel valued at work, all of my coworkers were out of state, I felt unneeded and unnecessary for 40hrs a day. I wasn't eating well. And didn't go outside much. Once I left my job, I had the time to pursue other hobbies and get out of the cycle of thinking about my uselessness all evening. I started going on walks, going to the gym, and eating a balanced diet. I have some proving questions for you. Have you explored the possibility of switching industries? Is there a degree or certificate you can pursue to help you get a better, more fulfilling job? Also, are there any hobbies you've been meaning to get to , but do not see yourself having the time for?
Honestly i have no idea what i want to do in life. I've got some hobbies like weightlifting but i think i would really hate it if i had to monetize it. I would rather do something i don't like as a job because i wouldn't have much expectations of it, i wouldn't feel pressured to enjoy it. I don't know if that makes any sense ?
I’ve been told to find a job that you’re okay with and don’t hate, and that came from someone who makes 7 figures and works at Apple. He got his degree in Geology and somehow ended up there. His point was even with how much money he makes he doesn’t always enjoy his job but it enables him to live a fulfilling life and that’s what’s important.
I keep trying to look into data stuff, but I can't shake the feeling I'm just going to get paid 6 figures to make the world worse
feel this in my soul
You absolutely will. The tech industry is demonic.
There are avenues to work in data/tech that don't make the world worse. At least for data, NGOs and governments and non-profits even always need data people. You won't make as much money but I doubt you would find it soulless. Like I have a friend with a computer science background who now works for a non-profit that uses a lot of data and tech to inform voters about elections and work to help election officials run better elections. There's also something emerging called digital platform cooperatives. These offer an alternative to capitalist platforms that offer a service. Like think of Uber. That's capitalist because it's a privately owned company traded on the stock market and has shareholders. On the other hand, a platform cooperative might offer a similar service to Uber, but it's collectively owned and run democratically, theoretically allowing for better working conditions, among other things. Tech can have a very positive impact on the world, so if you decide to go that way, look for companies whose mission you believe in and work toward a better world. There's an entire aspect to climate tech, including data analysts and the like. There's so many ways you could approach a tech career. Just gotta look around.
[удалено]
Not entirely, but what other good white collar jobs will there be in the next couple years. With a tech salary I can at least afford to drown my regrets in booze or some other vice
Consider working for non-profit organizations (environmental conservation is very important and spending time in nature is so good for mental health) or self-employment/starting your own small business.
I think you're spot on. Turning a hobby into a job is a great way to ruin a hobby. My criteria is to find a job that gives a good sense of purpose and still pays well. Pursuing money too much is its own problem, of course. But you never want to be in a position where you have to compromise your morals and values in order to get by. My story is that I went into game development right out of college because I loved making games in my free time as a teenager. 7 years in the industry, and I got burnt out and hate it. I did a major career switch into HVAC, and I feel much better overall. The work itself is grueling, but when it's done, I feel great at the end of the day. I very directly use my body, solve mechanical problems, and most importantly, I make someone's day much better. Everyone is happy after their broken AC works again on a hot summer day. Compared to the endless projects I worked on that got canceled and felt slimy to work on even if they got finished in game dev, I'll take HVAC any day. I'm a year in, and the best part is I'm starting to feel the passion for game dev again. But this time, I'm keeping it as a hobby so I can work on what I love instead of constant stress to put food on the table. I was regularly feeling like how you do in the picture near the end. This switch definitely directly addressed it. I'm not saying you have to get into a trade. That just happened to be a good fit for me, and I had a lucky opportunity. But you should find something that better aligns with your morals and values. Combine that with the other standard advice of a good diet, exercise, and rest, and I think you'll be feeling much better within a few months.
This isn’t necessarily a bad idea. I had a similar issue, were I grew up with the idea that my job needs to be a major part of my identity and something I devote my life to. Something that defines my place in society and helps people to take me serious. After 15 years of up and downs, I can confidently say that for me, this just isn’t true. Sure, my job is part of my identity, but only a small one. I have a wife and kids, I have hobbies and those are much more important to me than any particular job I’m currently doing. I pick jobs that are optimal in the amount of time I have to put into them and money I get out of them. I optimize for a healthy environment over potential income and find meaning in my work by helping those around me to achieve their goals. It’s really hard to figure out what’s important to you and the only way I’ve found to do that, is to try a bunch of things. So, if you feel stuck, try and mix it up. You already did that with your social life, maybe it’s time to do that with your work life as well.
I think “finding something you enjoy” is a lot different from monetizing hobbies. For example, if you’re creative and have strong attention to detail, you could go into basically any field that has you working as a craftsman. If you have strong interpersonal communication skills, you could go into basically any position that has you managing people. If you’re good at remembering lots of different pieces of information, you could go into coordinating logistics. It takes a bit of exploration to find where you shine, but I think it’s often less about the field you’re in and more about the role you’re playing.
[https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5mosJDLnyU/?igsh=MWVjbmlqcTNqa2lodQ==](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5mosJDLnyU/?igsh=MWVjbmlqcTNqa2lodQ==) This is the best description of what I found
If you live in or near a major metro area and you like driving you might consider doing food delivery. It doesn't pay a whole lot but there's no boss and no schedule. Depending on how little you are able to spend it can cover all or most of your cost of living while giving you freedom and peace of mind to explore options and plan your next move.
I'm not OP but I don't really know how to answer these questions for myself and that concerns me. I've explored switching industries but no idea how to pick one. I have no idea what a more fulfilling job looks like. I definitely don't qualify for a job that pays better without taking a degree program/certificate course, but have no idea how to choose because I don't feel capable of passing any such course (failed out of post-secondary 3 times in my early 20s, and I've only gotten dumber with age). I have no hobbies other than video games, not even ones that I've thought about trying but haven't yet (just ones that I tried and didn't enjoy). Except for maybe a couple that are just way too expensive to ever explore.
I can relate to this, I’m at the point where I’m pretty much disconnected from everyone. Got a new number and went off grid. I spent a few months reading and rewatching downloaded shows. I feel a lot better now though, a little lonely but tbh I could live like this if I didn’t have to worry about money. I play video games when I can, workout, sleep a lot, pet dogs whenever I can. Probably got another year and a half before my money runs out, I guess I’ll see how I feel then but now I’m living my childhood dream of being free, it’s not extremely exciting but it’s very peaceful. I guess the fact that I make comments like this on Reddit once in awhile shows a certain level of loneliness, but I still prefer it to the somewhat anxious relationships people have out of custom.
I'm going through what u just mentioned now. Having a burn out, quit my job.. spiraled way down because I'm exhausting my savings from not working in 1.5 years, dropped my friends and families ( nah they're not supportive), just connect with 1 or 2 friends that's not judgemental and willing to just listen. Got a new job now out of desperation, didn't like it but still going at it day by day. I did tried switching industry but I guess the time is bad for the workforce and switching roles in current industry can't be done atm. I guess looking back I enjoy meeting old friends and just do silly chats but rn everyone had their own family n life and I felt left out.
How are you people talking about quitting ur job like it's actually doable?? How do you pay rent? How do you get food? How do you live without a job?
It sounds like these people have savings they’re just using up.
Damn imagine being lucky enough to have savings. All of my pay goes to bills 😭😭😭
Welcome to the future. Where you have everything you want as long as you do everything they tell you to. So when you have burnouts and unanswered questions, or even the need to just sit still for a while, you won't be able to, because you'll have to pay rent and bills and shit. All that to the ones that are now buying it all.
>40hrs a day Damn what a grind
I think this is more about not having enough freedom outside of work and having work be meaningful to you. It would be pretty depressing to put so much time into pursuing things that you want to do and have it all taken away because it's not enough to support yourself. You would want to contribute to society and whatnot with things like art, scientific research, etc. and spend a lot of time improving yourself to become competent in those things. You might even have laready done that. But these professions tend to have horrible income because of various reasons. It's also possible that there isn't enough demand in the industry to even have a chance to start and test things out. I'm graduating from master's next year and I'm working on my research and making my portfolio rn, but chances are I'll barely go to software engineering despite trying a lot to do something different. I might get downvoted to hell for this but I don't think it's helpful to just bash on this post without trying to emphasize with it a little. I was hoping there to be multiple threads delving deeper into this topic and have more variety in insight but I guess that's not happening here. Kind of a downer.
A very small amount of people find fulfillment in their jobs.
Why are half the comments here so mean? Sheesh.
Because they had to do it, and obviously they aren't happy. Now even a thought of someone having it easy triggers them, a classic I have it hard so must you.
>I have it hard, so must you That shit is so incredibly toxic for society, and I see it literally everywhere. Even my dad, who generally is a pretty fair and reasonable person, hates the idea of student loan forgiveness because of same. I had to pay mine off, how is that fair that they get theirs forgiven? Idk Dad, was yours 100k dollars? Was yours even 50k? Maybe 25k at most? These poor freaking kids are getting screwed with debt they may never be able to pay off! It has to start sometime, somewhere, why not here and now..
The problem w student loan forgiveness is it’s bandaid for a broken education system By all means forgive the debt- but higher education needs to be more affordable too.
A lot of the frustration of it comes from how it's always presented as being forgiven with tax payers money. Of course tax payers who paid off their debt will feel robbed. The obvious solution to me that I NEVER hear about is a massive class action law suit against the colleges themselves. They're the ones who took all the kids money. It's them that should give it back. Go after them for false advertisement. "Why yes, if you take out this massive loan and get a degree, you'll get a well paying job guaranteed! Oh, no we'll paying jobs out there? Too bad, no refunds."
It’s complete crap. And the more you delve into it, the more you realize you’re not paying for professors and opportunites (they don’t get paid that much) but an increasing body of luxuries and administrators that I think most of us would or would have opted out of if offered.
Scott Galloway has a great TED talk on this.
Complete agree, I wasn't delving into the whole issue here, that's a whole thread it's own.
And you’re right. Funny enough it seems like the way to actually opt out is to either A) go off the grid which is its own bag of worms B) go FIRE, make a lot of money early then choose to opt out later
I got lucky, slipped into a gov job doing IT after doing it for private sector for a few years right out of high school. I make enough to be comfortable in a nice enough town, but I'll never be rich haha. Only debt I have is my car payment since I rent. There are other ways, but society seems to skip over them. Being a tradey is another path that can give you a comfortable life without much debt.
Also I wonder how many people we think are ‘rich’ are in million dollars of debt
Government job? Hey man that means pension….can be worth a several million dollar retirement account
Pension OP tbh, that and the TSP together means yeah I should definitely be able to retire at a decent age, especially is social security doesn't disappear.
Glad I'm not the only one who thought it was off. Loving the upvotes on both our comments.
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Somehow i always manage to trigger people unintentionally 🤣
Because you can’t avoid difficulty in life. You can only choose.
The same message can be delivered sensitively.
Because this post just screams spoiled and entitled. I’m sorry but you have to work to survive. You can’t just do nothing and expect food, shelter, and life’s basic necessities to just be provided for you by other people. Somewhere along the way before you got your meal, someone did something to contribute to conjuring this into existence.
I never said i was against working, in fact i've been working for years already. The thing i hate is how "work" is defined and structured in this capitalistic society. It's way too rigid and lacks flexibility. With all the advancements and all the technology we have today productivity has skyrocketed, why do we still have to work 5 days x 8 hours a week minimum ? Why couldn't we reduce that to 4 days for the same pay instead ? But nah of course that won't happend cause the shareholders, CEO's and politicians all want to see profits and imaginary lines on some graph go up and who cares if the ordinary folks are overworked, underpaid and depressed because of it. You know so people could actually live their lives a bit instead of locking them in some office/factory/building all the time. Maybe they have hobbies they want to try, a loved one they need to take care of ?
Nobody's defending entitlement. Working in capitalistic hell is still, well, hell. No need to be insensitive about it.
As someone who works in marketing, we typically know more about how people think than they do. Today companies will use that knowledge to extract money from people who don’t have the psychological defense mechanisms to combat their constant bombardment of “external solutions.” Its one that can be overcome, but it’s not a fair fight.
Aw mods why did you remove all the mean comments, I wanted to see what all the talk is about
They were basically just telling OP to suck it up because you can’t sit around and do nothing and expect the world to just provide food, shelter, etc to you. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.
Which by the way, i never said i was against any kind of work anyway ?
I mean thats correct tho, could have phrased it nicer in whats clearly a vent post but they got a point. World doesnt work like that for the average person
I see, thank you for summing it up
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My gooodnesss did you trigger some folks here, yikes. Obviously ignore them. There's so many ways to arrive at this point. I think what a lot of them have in common is a kind of long-running grief about how your life has gone up to this point, plus a lack of hope of it ever improving. That feeling that you just want to curl up and chill, that's a kind of slow, comfortable death. Freud believed we have an instinct to live and an instinct to die, and our life ends when our death instinct is finally allowed to win. Sleep, he said, was a compromise between the two. You can feel death trying to creep in when you have that paralyzing and draining sad feeling where you just don't want to move ever again. The opposite of that feeling is a desire to go outside of yourself and connect with others, to build and create things bigger than you. A home, a family, a community, on outwards. This is our natural state until the very end of our lives, when we fall off a cliff deep in our 80s or 90s. The rest of the time, we're living. (And yes, definitely throughout our 70s; I've met some vibrant 78 year olds.) Because it's our natural state, you can view this problem as "there are things in the way of me being who I am." Probably some mixture of unprocessed emotions/memories and cognitive distortions. That means you can process your way out of it through self-understanding and self-compassion, and making posts like the one you've made here to ask for help with your thinking. Or, a good therapist. As you integrate difficult truths about yourself and your life, you'll be left with a version of you that wants to live. This was my strategy for therapy/recovery, and it worked very well for me. Spirituality helps as a starting point. Alan Watts' book *Still the Mind* was very useful for me; I reread it every year or so and get a little more from it each time.
While there were many issues with Freud’s work that is definitely one of the things he was definitely onto. Even if many things ended up being proven wrong or corrected. I am at least grateful he opened up a door we desperately needed.
Totally. About a third of his work is indispensable. Another third should be immediately tossed into a garage bin, and the rest just needed some refining by his successors. You really gotta take a nuanced view with him.
Right ? I tought this was healthygamer not toxicgamer
I really wish everyone who feels this way would get the freedom and rest they need. I can assure you if you had enough comfort and resources, after a while you'd feel the urge to explore the world again and make your life interesting and full of purpose. It shouldn't be forced. I really wish that to everyone.
This is the best comment on the entire thread, honestly. All the “no one likes it but we all have to do it anyway” are entirely missing the point. It completely invalidates the root of those feelings.
Thanks. I feel this way partly because I've had the privilege of attaining a place of stability and this has been my experience. It must be so hard to be a younger person (I'm 39) these days. (At least I assume that OP is younger than me, not sure why.)
I’m 32 and I agree with you! Unfortunately, I’ve had the opposite experience (having more stability in the past and having less now), but it has really impacted my functioning and outlook in a negative way, despite “knowing better.” What keeps me going is the understanding that I’ll be able to feel more like myself again and show back up to my life when I’m able to get out of this situation of chronic stress. In the meantime, it’s a very understandable feeling.
At least if you'd experienced freedom and stability as an adult, you know what to look for if you've lost it. I feel especially bad for people who don't even have the space to feel that it's possible.
Hey OP, I’m not sure if this post implies that the pic’s statement is what you are currently feeling. But if yes, I’m really sorry that there are people making mean comments. I would feel really hurt if I was the poster. Nevertheless, what they said has some truth. “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” — Westley from “Princess Bride” It’s okay to voice what you feel as long as you don’t let your uncomfortable feelings cause you to impulsively make poor decisions. You have the driver’s seat but yeah I know it ain’t easy to go for the hard but good choice. Also, don’t forget healthy coping mechanisms and therapy. And no, I don’t have it all together. I’m a college student who’s and a chronic procrastinator since the early days of lockdown trying to get through the misfortunes I caused on myself bit by bit. Even the one of the most devoted evangelists once said he rather stay at his home watching old movies than evangelizing, yet he went to evangelize anyway because it’s for the higher good of the people’s souls. Hope this would encourage you, OP.
Yes that's how i'm feeling at the moment, it's just some random meme i found and i related to, so i wanted to share it to see if anyone else was thinking the same. And btw it's not just the "work" part that bothers me, i'm just fed up about pretty much everything. Everything feels pointless to do.
I'm sorry to hear that. I wish you the best.
exactly also the concept of higher good,contributing to society,practice spirituality seems pointless
So… I felt this this for the majority of the last 3 years. Still do sometimes. The way I see it: you’re right, a lot of it is bullshit. Most of society feels like theatre sometimes (if not most). We all play pretend to some degree. However: What ‘participating in society’ allows you to do is to create funds and time for things that truly matter; to you. Maybe even help people or be somewhat fulfilled along the way. Someone recently told me: “I don’t live to work, I work to live”. But I’ve come to realize there’s a third option: you don’t need work to live and define life’s meaning for yourself. But you do need work to finance food, a place for yourself where you can go on that discovery, and hobbies and other things. A place where you can chill, withdraw, heck even figure out your purpose if you dig deep enough. As for ‘conforming to societal standards’: here’s where I think you could use some counseling (because I’m not qualified) to learn about acceptance of yourself and learning that you don’t necessarily need to conform to anything- well except for a little bit of politeness and common courtesy. But that ain’t so hard. Life is fucking hard. I haven’t figured shit out myself (after a long and dark depression followed by burnout and moving back to my parents to recover) But I do know there’s a way forward. Not everyone cares about the same things equally. So figure out what does matter (even if its just a bit) and find something you’re good at- see if there’s ‘job’ potential there. Lastly, don’t look for something you wanna do for the rest of your life- that’s WAY too much pressure ❤️ Good luck 🙏🏼
The bootlickers are out in force!
I personally think we should question such thoughts. They "sound good" on a first hearing, but I have found from experience that the more you pick them apart, the more you'll find out that they're deceitful thoughts, very vague statements about life that only muddies your waters and blinds you to reality, and they're rooted in discomfort, pain, trauma, or whatever else is ailing you. First, what makes you *not* want to work? Wouldn't you like to find areas you're *good* at, and *do them for others as a service in exchange for money*? That is what work is about. Sure, you don't always get to have a "dream job", and even if you did, you'd still deal with problems, which work is about solving. Also, if you want resources in exchange for nothing, those resources would have to be given or taken from somebody else. Maybe you'd like to be in the position of living off somebody else, but would you like someone else living off *you*? Probably not. Second, what are the "societal standards" you're being "forced" to conform? Working a 9-5 job? Having to eat healthily and work out to stay in shape? Living soberly and not seek your own pleasure at every corner? I have found that you don't *have* to conform to anything, you can do what you want, but actions have consequences, and if you don't take care of your body, or whatever else you got, you can't expect it to be in mint condition and work properly. You can't neglect your relationships and expect everyone to want to be there for you whenever you call. You can't put a minimum amount of effort into things and expect to be rewarded richly for it. If we don't make good choices, we won't get good results. Third, what part of life makes you say it's ALL bullshit? Sure, some parts are, there's injustice and sickness and death and whatnot, but you'll find that not everything is bullshit. Pinpointing what you're calling bullshit will help in making a plan of action to deal with the situation. Also, not getting what one wants when one wants the way one wants is not "bullshit". And last but not least, consider what is making you so tired. Being on a hamster wheel will tire you out, and you won't be getting anywhere. Sometimes, we only got ourselves to blame for being tired out. Of course, not everyone gets dealt the same cards, and there are too many things outside our control. But I found that playing devil's advocate, to analyze the thoughts described in the picture, will give you better chances at doing the best you can out of what we got, not only for yourself, but for those around you as well.
Reading OP's message I recognized as a justification discourse created to protect the self. And I say that all while I am probably affected by something similar. I think that the worst is knowing its there, knowing you can work against it, and still fall into the same mental trap.
Totally. I'm in the process of recovering from that sort of mindset (though it's not *exactly* the same, but it sure rhymes). Giving into it for so long has been so utterly costly. ~~YOU TOOK 15 YEARS FROM ME SONNY, AND NOW I'M GONNA MAKE YOU PAY~~
u said r right but i am tired of this shit now working n failing n also thinking about work during breaks i just do not want to work like the op said i m just also i have no interests as to pursue also i do not wanna contribute anything to society and after failing so much i am just hating my studies also i come from a upper middle class family so we do not have any issue of basic necessities n neither i have aspirations for anything like big house,cars,etc.
We have to do this bro, even if we don't like it. But having hobbies and healthy habits outside of work can make this tough process a bit easier
Man, I dunno, shit is complicated. Like, most everybody feels this way, it's just not culturally acceptable to feel that. You've got a lot of grinders who think money and flash and status are the most important things in the world, partly because they spend way too much time on Instagram, and partly because the world is on fire and the prospect of feeding yourself for the next 30 years is terrifying. As an old (38 yo), i remember there used to be subcultures that you could drop into that felt the same way you do: work is bullshit, life is more than your job, we work because we have to and we fuck around/do art/drink and break shit/whatever the rest of the time. It was normal. It's not normal now. Grasping for bullshit is the norm, and there are no subcultures, really, anymore, at least not ones not tainted by alt right morons. Our culture is very homogeneous, and if you don't fit the template, things are hard. It's always been like that, but it feels like there are less templates now. Couple that with comparing yourself to literally the rest of the world on social media, with expressing yourself through art beginning to boil down to who types the best sentences, with no cultures of doing stuff outside because everyone is doing the cult-of-personality thing on Twitch and YouTube, with stories being told in seconds instead of pages, with social media being a cavalcade of parlor tricks and sound bites, with everybody liking the exact same shit, a parade of media that everybody latches onto for 3 days before moving on to the next thing. There is one watering hole we all drink from: the internet, and it's curated by people who only give a shit about money, replaces a million disparate third spaces where people could congregate and learn how to live from each other, and gives us an extremely narrow image of what an acceptable human looks like.
This is why I don't want to have kids. Don't want them to go through the same bullshit. Be a political pawn or an agent of the apocalypse.
Same, that's why i became an antinalist a long time ago.
Yeah, honestly it’s hard to believe that people are actually happy.
I think here stands the assumption that happiness and suffering are mutually exclusive, which is not necessarily true. The world works with the logic you give it. Happiness and suffering are born within you. And it sounds like absolute nonsense, but : maybe it’s possible to live a life of constant suffering and enjoy it.
You cant possibly expect someone to enjoy rape, murder bullying and torture. Suffering alongside of happiness being within us IS the crux of the antinatalism. It's not a defeating argument.
I do not try to defeat anyones argument, my words are there simply for you to give them a meaning. I personally think that running away from suffering is childish. Things are how they are, roses have thorns, fertile soil parasites. Humans have rape and murder and betrayal. The bad things and the good things are just things, that happen on their own accord. Denying any one of choosing whether or not they think the world is beautiful or flawed is also childish, but I can’t say I don’t understand it, because I’m also human. I’m also childish.
Okay there's a lot to unpack here! It's good that you're not trying to defeat any arguments it's just that your previous comment has been repeated at ad nauseam. >my words are there simply for you to give them a meaning So are mine! Lol Look, in order to understand "antinatalism" position U have to understand this: The absence of suffering is good, but the absence of pleasure is not bad. It's not just that the world isn't perfect it's freaking unjust and unforgiving. And if you are being childish about it and also optimistic, not for you but for an unborn individual(bc living humans have a bias towards life) , then i truly envy you. Creating a baby is selfish in and of itself, and i am aware that no one gives a damn about that which just proves the point.
I personally don’t believe that good things and bad things have an inherent value. But to stand on the same playing field, I would think that the absence of bad things is just as bad as the absence of good things, making nonexistence a net negative. Pain has made me who I am even more so than joy. Suffering has made me understand. Unfairness has made me value fairness where I found it.
huh, who said that we only want good things and discard the bad things? I have an issue with the system itself. the very fact that in order for good things to exist there must be a bad thing is inherently fucked up. you can't do anything about it but you can spare someone else from unnecessary pain for personal gain. humans should not be a tool to reach a goal. humans should be the goal
It's understandable that you don't want kids yourself but why call yourself an "antinatalist"? That sounds like you don't want anyone to have children. Does this mean that you want the human species to die off?
What we "want" is of no consequence. IF the human species die out it doesn't matter bc it doesn't effect us since we won't be there to see it. And antinatalism isn't about ending the human race per se it's about ending the suffering. And not be responsible for existence and suffering of someone else. So yes maybe if 100% of humans go antinatalistic yea humans will die out as a result but history showed us that antinatalism just makes the world worse. Why? Bc wise, cautious and compassionate people have little to no offspring while morons, uneducated and fanatic people will have more offspring i mean just look at the eastern world! We'll just end up having a world full of fools and religious fanaticism
Since antinatalism seems to be coming from a place of caring, I find it hard to believe that antinatalists actually don't care what comes after they die. With humans gone, not only human suffering dies but all concepts and standards die with them, including beauty, truth, happiness, love. We are the source. We're making lots of mistakes but we're the only ones who can be also custodians of this planet. The only species capable of loving life itself. It's not a small thing. And sure, the world isn't perfect but I'm sure that at least some of the generalizations you're just accepting simply aren't true.
>standards die with them, including beauty, truth, happiness, love. We are the source. Yes but only if we exist! If we aren't here, no-one suffers from lack of goodness or badness! Think of it this way, we inherently think that it's a good thing that there's no suffering on the moon, but we don't think that it's a bad thing that there is no good on the moon. Why? I'll let you decide. And while on the topic of preserving goodness, yeah no shit the planet would be a better place for everyone if the humans didn't exist have you seen the other sentients? Plus no one is thinking about "saving/preserving the human race" while they're pounding /getting pounded all night. Come on you don't actually think that! See, that just makes for a weak argument. Since antinatalism or whatever you want to call it is not shouting "let's end the human race" so going for that right off the bat is just not accurate and is exhausting. >at least some of the generalizations you're just accepting simply aren't true. Sure, I'm a human and like all humans i have biases and things that are not accurate. Maybe religion is one of them but i highly doubt it since i saw first hand what religion can do, specially Islam. Making sex a crime that's punishable by stoning while in the marriages making babies like rabbits with worst standards for parenting. We all heard of Asian parents, i happened to have the honor of being the child of a middle eastern couples! The west imo don't get what level threat Islam and religion in general poses.
There's a Zen Koan this reminds me of: When Mu-chou was asked, "We dress and eat every day, and how do we escape from having to put on clothes and eat food?" Mu-chou answered, "We dress; we eat." "I don't understand," said the monk. "If you don't understand, put on your clothes and eat your food."
Accept that you made a decision to work a job that you may not enjoy for the expressed purpose of giving yourself enough money to continue surviving. This isn't a bad thing, at the time with the options ahead of you, this was the best one in your eyes. You need several things to have a healthy life, and one of those things is money (yes you can argue this and I'm sure people have figured out how to not need money, but 99% of people need some kind of income). It's unfortunate that for alot of people, acquiring money eats up so much time that you can't be healthy in other ways, physically, mentally, emotionally, but those were the cards you were dealt. So to answer your question, what you can do is look at the cards you have now. Maybe you can get a better job, maybe you don't have to do thankless work for a corporate drone just to get a paycheck, or maybe you could be getting paid more and work less hours. Or if changing jobs isn't an option, maybe there's something you can do with your current leftover time to improve your quality of life. Maybe you can eat healthier or go to therapy. Maybe you can spend more time with friends and family. Maybe you can start that creative hobby you've been putting off because "it's not the right time".
Make a list of your values and what you want out of life and pursue that list. It won’t ever be perfect but the pursuit will give you validation and the act of checking those boxes will be rewarding. This is something that you will have to make a routine. Weekly or monthly works best for me. There is a difference between something taking effort and being hard take time to understand the difference and acknowledge that some of your goals will be one or both.
It doesn't matter how much it improves or how hard i try i still want to die. I dont want money. I want to help people i dont want to kill, but i have to eat. Everyone says im good and the kindest person they met, yet im still a failure, and im alone no matter what. Even if i do something right, it doesn't matter since it gotta get done anyway. Im just the tool. When you get punished for being anything other feeling happy and accepted, all im left with nothing
You can find things outside of work that make the free time you have more enjoyable. That's why a lot of people go clubbing on weekends. or socialize, or whatever you want to fill in here. You can also find something you like enough to make work not gruesome or painfully boring. Other than that there's not too much to be done, if you don't work you don't eat and don't survive. That's the human experience.
While I agree with the sentiment. There are flaws and nuances that usually go unaddressed. While it may have been much more physically demanding in the past working at least felt like you were contributing to society even when it was really bad. Now I can say about 50% or more of jobs could straight up be automated and eliminated because of how pointless or redundant they are. Also when working overtime or longer hours was more beneficial now it’s almost mandatory just to live. We are being forced to work in pointless/meaningless unfulfilling jobs for longer hours just to make the people who I would argue have less humanity then the rest of us feel good or make them more money than they know what to do with. If they do know what to do with it, it usually is to keep supporting the system or their twisted disillusioned world view making this existence worse for everyone else. Our system does need to change. That much is painfully clear.
yeah, I kind of agree with you there. But I didn't want to get too gloomy. The world is shit and life is shit and there's nothing we can do about it, generations will have to pass for something to change and we probably won't see it.
Find a job where you fit the culture better. My boss does not give a shit that I'm late 3 or more days per week, because I get some stuff done late at night when it is more efficient. so the fact that I am a late person, does not matter. I do work that interests me, so it doesn't feel like I'm wasting 8 hours of my life every day. I realized that my career was actually interesting to me, when I was laid off for 6 months. I found that after the first couple weeks, I was starting to create projects at home to do similar things that I do for my job. Simply because I was missing the puzzle aspect of my job. I also found a good hobby, it takes up a significant amount of my outside of work time. Like most hobbies it costs money, which means that my job supports the aspects of my life that I love the most. Its much easier to convince myself to get off my ass and get work done, when I can put that work into the frame of I gotta go to work today and tomorrow if I want to be able to afford to go to the show I really want to go to on friday.
There are things to do other than work that make the work worth doing… Being an adult that has responsibilities is worth doing because it enables you to do the things you enjoy. Join us. Contribute to humanity.
Contribute to humanity? Most people just make more people and don't contribute anything else, they just work meaningless jobs to get money.
To get money *for other people, most of whom are already billionaires.
That doesn’t apply here… you can work for yourself. You can paint fucking rocks for a living for all I care. If it enables you to sustain your life then it’s worth doing. But you can’t just do nothing because “I don’t want to!”.
I appreciate your willingness to engage in this important discussion. I definitely see your point, you can’t just give up and do nothing and then lament when life doesn’t hand you everything. I get that and agree. I’m just saying that I don’t personally interpret OP as saying “I don’t want to”. As an autistic person, I’ve found it extremely difficult to maintain work, even when I desperately want to do so. I’ve trained and acquired experience in a field that I’m interested in, but even then it’s very difficult to maintain a job for more than a year or two due to social difficulties. Just getting out of bed and interfacing with the world is exhausting on a level that I don’t think many neurotypical people fully understand. I often fantasize about the end of the world or living 100 years ago. Yes, those times were extremely hard in other ways, but the freedom to live self-sufficiently without the pressure to conform to societal norms is a dream to me that seems impossible today given the price of land, low wages compared to years past, etc. Anyway, sorry about the novel. I appreciate your outlook and I’m not here to fight or say you’re wrong, just to offer a different perspective and promote understanding.
I think societal norms were even harder to go against 100 years ago. People have a ton of creative freedom these days, but yeah if you have back to the land fantasies it's gonna be a hard go, i did it for a while and came to the conclusion that you need to be pretty well off going in or it's just as miserable as working for someone else. I wish we had universal basic income. Make the money generated from AI go toward it lol.
You bring up a great point, it’s not like there was any understanding of disabilities or differences 100 years ago. Maybe going off-grid like Into the Wild would be a better metaphor. And yeah, I’m aware of how well it worked out for Chris McCandless 😅 Learning to live in a society that just wasn’t built for you is destined to be a constant challenge. Doesn’t mean the answer is “give up and waste away”, but it also doesn’t mean there will be some simple magical solution that just works for everyone like “get over it and go socialize in your off time”. It’s a constant struggle, and maybe that’s the answer in itself. It’s all meaningless in the end, so find your own individualized meaning in the struggle to fit into a meaningless world. “Imagine Sisyphus happy”, as Camus summed it up. I haven’t found a way to put that into practice yet, but I’m going to keep trying.
100% I think there is something to that. After I had kids my life became hard in ways I never imagined. But throwing yourself against a challenge time and time again and watching yourself change and become better and stronger, even when you fail, gives a kind of timeless purpose. The path is the goal, as they say.
You're suggesting to start a business like it was easy. "Hey just leave your regular job and risk all the money you got to be your own boss, you've got 1% chance of making it but it's worth it trust me"
Cynicism is understandable but it's also incredibly narrowing. Why be curious about individuals if you already "know" everything about them? It's also a great way to preclude yourself from learning the opposite, on the off chance it was sometimes true.
So the answer is do nothing because “I don’t wanna!”. Well I’m sorry kid but sometimes we do things we don’t want to do because of the bigger picture.
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this.
Live your life the way you were built, don't fall into what all of these people tell you life's about because most people don't understand it, it amazes me that our society is in the shape it's in given how bad it is for our health
I can feel the same way One way to think about this is that you have a severe budget deficit in rest. Why this is varies for everyone. Another is that resting or not being productive have been stigmatized or questioned for you. This has accidently happened to me: whenever i tried to rest i were just completely unable to relax mentally, and were on edgevery often. I would have to be validated or told it was fine to rest to actually be able to rest. Indirect solution for that is finding friends with which its ok to just rest, be lazy, and nap or cuddle. That way you dont have to solve both the rest problem and low confidence problem
I see both sides of this. On the one hand, we see that houses are less affordable than ever, jobs don’t pay as well as they did before, and there is overall less prosperity now than our parents had, so that can really make you want to check out and feel hopeless. On the other hand, this isn’t the first time in human history that people have had to struggle through harder economic times and if people just checked out and far up, nothing would have ever improved. In the late 1800s, where people worked horrible abusive hours for basically no pay lead to the rise of labor unions and establishing a minimum wage and 40 hour work week. If people had just given up in the late 1800s, nothing would have ever gotten better.
If you want my honest opinion this feels like what someone would say when they’re depressed or overwhelmed. It sounds like an easy solution to life’s “chaos”, but there are thousands of jobs to choose from, there are lots of options for making enough money to live even if it takes months or years to reach a stable income, and honestly we don’t have to conform to “societal expectations”, people can say or expect whatever the hell they want but we DONT have to do everything other people do. I don’t HAVE to dress like them or talk like them, if they judge me that’s their problem. We have to take control of our own decisions and also break free of what other people think. Having to work is not the problem, having to do stuff and solve problems isn’t the issue, the issue is wanting for things to be easy and for life to go smoothly, and that’s just never going to happen. We can pick our battles carefully so that we don’t have to solve every single problem that arises but at the same time we do have to make an effort to have decent lives and focus on what we can control instead of being overwhelmed by everything.
Same. Currently trying to save some money so I can take a break from working even for a couple of months. You're probably burnt out and need some time to recover. Saving is actually proving to be difficult since everything got so expensive so at times, you cant help but feel trapped lol. For extra security, probably part time work would be a compromise. But yea when I save enough, I'm planning to use that time to build healthier habits and get back to some hobbies. If you can take a break, do so.Then use the time to better your mood or self.
Thankyou for posting this. This is what I feel right now and I didnt know how to frame it
Give up on capitalism and industry and return to monkey
Only seeking pleasure is a bottomless pit that will only make you feel empty and without purpose. We are made to work. Not necessarily work for money but work towards your goals.
Fact is I'll feel like this my whole life because I'm a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world.
I feel this Being autistic amd trans kind of makes it so that nobody wants me around even at work so I would rather just rot in bed 🙃
Work at happy job
- we can't avoid work unfortunately - if you don't enjoy it, you should look to change fields, but you still have to do it - make life as easy as it can be for you, because there is no point in working too hard for this shallow world - get busy in life so you have less thoughts of wasting time
Reminds me of a top comment from another thread about people who don't have big aspirations in life. > My big dream is to be a lazy bum, which is ironically a big dream because I need to sustain myself without working.
How about looking at it as a societal thing. Are you not identifying with yourself or are you feeling you aren’t measuring up to others expectations. Live for and not for others or their expectations. You don’t have to be better than anybody… just be your best self.
That has been me my whole life. She even has the same hair!
Bit late to the party but I do wanna share this. I felt like this about 6-8 years ago. How I solved it was by joining a monastery. Changed my life. I left after two years. If you wanna know more, ama.
Life is not only Kama. It’s also Dharma, Artha and Moksha.
It is also about ligma.
Might I recommend the book “Your Money or Your Life”.
Dr k videos are all about getting your shit together, yet the community festers on passive complaining. It's not necessarily wrong to complain, it's the "my whole life is ruined and there's no solution" vibe of passive complaining that's destructive. From a mentality standpoint, Dr K eloquently provides everything one can need for free multiple times over. With the right mentality one can better their health and wealth, to a point that alleviates suffering, enough for a good mentality to thrive.
Look into karma yoga
:/
You need to first understand that for you to “chill” and not die off, you have to work. Work is just using labour to push off the need for more labour a bit into the future. Work will always have to be done, in a way. Get an education so that you can find some work that you actually enjoy. I wake up every morning and can hardly wait to get to work, because I enjoy my job immensely. Try to see the job as the useful thing it is for society, the purpose it gives you and the challenges it presents that lead you to become a greater person.
What’s your job?
I’m a teacher (in Europe though, so on top of loving my job, it does also help that I get paid really well and have life-long tenure). What I mentioned goes for all jobs, though. Yes, not everyone can find their dream job (maybe it is a super niche thing, or it doesn’t exist, or similar). But everyone can try to do their best and try to see the value of what they do. There is a strong narrative that you have to hate your job, that your job is just something you have to endure to not die financially. I don’t believe that at all. You spend ~8 hours a day at your average job. If you always go into it with extremely negative thoughts, how will you ever have a positive experience? Some jobs are pretty bad (bad conditions, bad pay, terrible bosses, horrible colleagues, etc.), and those jobs deserve you quitting, especially if you don’t see the value in them (according to your very own values). Some jobs are just straight up difficult (I assume a job like sewer worker is not for those with a weak stomach, for example), but very necessary, and they often tend to be well paid. You need to look for the positives. I used to work in international trading. If I had stayed there, I could be earning twice (or more) than what I do today. But I just did not enjoy the day-to-day, sitting in front of Emails and the telephone all day long, and so I had to get out and do something else. I went to university to become a teacher. So I made a choice to quit a well-paying job for ~6.5 years of earning next to nothing. Those were some tough days, but I would always do it again.
lately i feel like you DO want to work. just not what we call "work" today. I realized this when i make a spreadsheet for a game that i like. the things i do for that game is no different than actual work.
You can always go and camp out in a forest for the rest of your life. Live the life of a hunter gatherer. If you don't wanna conform to society then you won't get the benefits too. Only if the government starts following communism will you be free from work. But that means even more conforming to society, especially the government. So best not to think like that.
I am having the whole campaign to achieve this. I realized I am not cut out for "normal" life when I got diagnosed with ASD&ADHD at 42. I decided to build a company, make some money and retire. But first I had to make capital and pay off debt. I am year three of my plan. I am still on track. Changed career to IT, so I make a lot of money in 9/5. Debt is growing smaller. Thinking about starting a side hustle, probably coaching. You can do it.
I bounce between this and wanting to cure cancer and sacrifice my life towards the greater good, maybe I’m bipolar idk
I kind of just accepted that getting to work is a part of life and that I may not like it but the structure and routine might be good for me. I'm only 19 and I've never had a job so maybe I'll feel different when I'm working. I feel so useless right now because I don't have a job.
I felt similarly when I was 19, but now (at 32) I feel more like OP. It’s very easy to get burnt out working, especially as the years go by and you realize all you really do in life is work, recover from work, and prepare for work with a few leisure activities sprinkled in whenever you’re not too exhausted from work to enjoy them. It gets depressing.
I used to be miserable in a job years ago. There was a woman there who was a real hardass, she had no friends and whenever anyone made the slightest mistake she was going for the throat immediately. There was a company event for the customers and it was mandatory for me to go, and this woman just got to my side and took me to the bar for drinks. Instead of gaining points with the customers she wanted to talk to me. She told me about her life and apparently she loved to travel with her husband. And by travel I mean things like going on a trip to see all the volcanoes in Italy. So basically cool shit. She didn't need people's friendship from her work, she needed them to do a good job so they don't sabotage her work and livelihood. The point is. At the end of the day your job can be a tool to get the necessary finances to support the things you love. You need a job that's easily done (for me it's admin work as my thinking was that if I can grind in a game for 10 hours i can do boring ass work in an office) and it needs to provide the money for your desired lifestyle. Not everyone gets to do something we enjoy, and if you don't know what to do with your life, choose something that doesn't drain you and makes you absolutely miserable, until one day you'll find something you actually want to do.
I’m in a position where I don’t have to and it’s just as bad, if not worse. Everything lacks inherent meaning and even your hobbies seem to lack any meaning. You being to realize that nothing can bring you fulfillment. It is that we need to feel like we can reach fulfillment and content so we have to sort of make ourselves believe beyond reason that the things we do are meaningful
The difficult truth or the matter is that society is organized in such a way that the average person doesn't have the breadth of skills needed to thrive away from it. Think of all the things you'd have to do for yourself that others have specialized to do 10x better than you have the time to learn to do for yourself. Think of all the technology that you would be cut off from without earning a fungible representation of your contribution. I don't say that in defense of capitalism, but to illustrate that most people don't and can't "just chill". Even if you ran away into the forest or something, you'd likely be dead or back home within a month, and if you're one of the few that have the necessary skills to survive on your own, you're not writing this post. Not wanting to work is normal, you're not alone, but reality demands that you do for the most part, so find something that you don't mind at the very least, and understand that this is the price we all pay for the availability of resources and services afforded to us by industrialized society. For bonus points, if you're passionate about this, then work in your spare time to make the changes to society that you want to see.
Thats what I thought myself at the time and I still prefer being independantly minded. But if you think about it, what is wrong with these societal norms objectively? Going to work? That provides room for finance, socialising etc
Find out what you value in your life, and try slowly aligning the things in your life with that. Are you studying? Don't make it about what society views as good or what your parents expectations are. Make it about you instead. Align it with your own goals on life. But those goals need to be born out of what YOU believe matters. Not what the world thinks you "should" do. Find out what's important to you in life. It won't come instantly, it's a process of self-discovery and exploration. Try new things and explore new ideas, and you will eventually come to understand what your values are. To find these things you need to expand your horizons. Always think critically about things, and you will find your truth. That's what my experience is.
Honestly for me it was about finding something I wanna do or passionate about and doing it , I dropped of uni but at the time i was really into fitness so i thought it would be cool to do that as a course, It's about asking what do you want from life or how do you want to change things.
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You're being mean. "Do not invalidate other users’ thoughts, opinions, or feelings."
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I swear this is how we were supposed to live our lives instead of the surviving bullshit society forces us in.
I would first challenge the idea that somehow society is what is forcing you to work. Society is the only reason some of us can chill, whether it’s the retired elderly, the well off, the incredibly disabled, or the every day person on their vacation or weekends. Without society we’d be fending for ourselves constantly until we died. Without society “chilling” would amount to just resting to conserve energy between getting food, and would be very boring without things like video games and tv that are only possible in a society. Now maybe you don’t want to conform to a very specific role within society, that maybe your parents are pushing. A lot of people in the previous generation followed the route of getting an college degree, working a 9 to 5, earning vacation and saving for retirement, and are just about now able to chill full time but have had pockets of being able to chill throughout the years. By definition of being your parents this was eaten up also by bringing parents, which is practically a full time job onto itself. There are ways to get around this lifestyle, but it means sacrificing things. You could live collectively with a bunch of likeminded people your age working part time jobs and pooling resources, but then you’d never have a home to yourself and constantly have to consider the wants and needs of those other people. You can find jobs that let you feel like you’re on vacation (traveling jobs, laid back jobs, exciting jobs) but they won’t pay as well, require a lot of experience up front, and/or will begin to feel just as much as a slog as the 9 to 5 without the benefits of a more traditional job. You can choose not to have children and that will reduce your financial burden but a lot of people find children to be the most fulfilling part of life not to mention how they can support you in old age. No matter what you choose it’s best not to personify society as some cruel person who refuses to let you chill. Instead recognize that life requires work and that participation in society can be what helps you momentarily escape work and makes your rest time more enjoyable. From there you can decide how you want to contribute, and keep in mind that you may not be able to work as hard in your old age.
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fuck the society, its why we are in this mess in a first place. Only good thing it has given me is trauma and will to die
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To be honest I can understand why some people think I was angry but I reality I wasnt. I literally did that for my self.
Rule #1: Temper your authenticity with compassion We encourage discussion and disagreement in the subreddit. At the same time, you must offer compassion while being honest about your perspective. It takes more words but hurts fewer people.
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Rule #1: Temper your authenticity with compassion We encourage discussion and disagreement in the subreddit. At the same time, you must offer compassion while being honest about your perspective. It takes more words but hurts fewer people.
Gotta find a side hustle and make it a main hustle and chase our dreams. Maximize your own existence and create an actionable plan for the future.
Look into undoing your defeatist attitude. Everyone has to work, except people who earned it, or had a parent who earned it and didn't squander it
Yeah wouldn’t it be nice to have been born into a billionaire family and just never have to do anything ever and have everything handed to us without never needing to work for a thing? It’s a cute little fantasy when young. As you get older you realize that life is overwhelmingly most likely never going to be a reality and that we should learn to love our fate because otherwise you’re just setting yourself up for a miserable life. You are in control of your life and you get what you make of it. It’s okay to not know what to do now but over time you will learn what you like and don’t like and what you know you can tolerate, enjoy, and do every day. Life isn’t going to be a highlight reel full of dopamine hits constantly. There’ll be times things will just feel like a grind. That’s how it is most the time. Set your life up in a way you can enjoy the little things. There’s no formula for this. Nobody’s going to do the work for you. Life is a journey and it lasts your whole life. If this is perceived as a “suck it up and get over it” statement then I’m sorry my point is completely above your head. This is just a blunt delivery and I don’t care. You are the one responsible for your happiness. It’s okay to not know what you’re doing right now as that is 100% the norm with young people. Just keep plugging away with the hopes of a better future and over time it’ll happen. A great lawn does not come overnight.
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wow lol, very empathetic of you. that kind of thinking is so devoid of humanity. we are heading towards another labor reform. could you imagine if you said that to the youth of previous labor reforms? nobody wants to slave away, making some dude rich while you get pennies. there is no "growing up" for that.
This person is not an agent for change. They are "tried".
ok, because of a typo in a meme, everything they're feeling is invalidated, and they could never produce change. get over yourself. you know like half of America is illiterate and still vote, right? those people make change (good or bad) every day... lol. ETA: why are you upset at OP anyways? your previous comments indicate you hate the wealth disparity (which affects labor) as well. you must understand OP's point then? what's with the aggression, dude?
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Do you really believe that verbally beating down on others like this is helpful or productive? "no work or effort" as if the OP hasn't been burned out for having already put in probably years of work?
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Rule #1: Temper your authenticity with compassion We encourage discussion and disagreement in the subreddit. At the same time, you must offer compassion while being honest about your perspective. It takes more words but hurts fewer people.