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Comment by aaronsw | Hacker News Reader

In the short-term, my life was much worse. I spent a lot of really painful time struggling to come to grips with my situation.

After that was over, things went pretty much back to normal. There's now a low-level fear all the time of losing all the money (something PG's written about recently) and I'm constantly worried I've invested it badly. I didn't make any dramatic life changes so people don't really treat me differently.

The biggest thing is that it provides a sort of mental backup -- when I'm feeling bad about myself or about to do something risky, I can tell myself not to worry.

My sense is that it bears out what the happiness research says: dispositional factors are much more important than situational ones. PG was an abnormally happy person before he got rich and he's still abnormally happy. I was pretty miserable before and I'm still miserable. (The reasons are more complicated but the result is I prefer my misery.)

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Did you tend to worry a lot before you had the money? You mention the misery is consistent. Is worry part of that.

I think coming into money is pretty much like losing a limb or experiencing a tragedy. After a certain period of time, the person who has experienced the tragedy goes back to where they were, mentally, before the tragedy. Same with lots of money, eventually they return to their norm.

Lots of money brings lots of freedom, which can bring a lot of instability/chaos. You lose all the structure that you had from the constraints of working for a living. If the instability (and resultant stress) is too much, going back to "the way you were" could be a relief.

There's a lot of truth to this, but the worry about investing it wrong is definitely new. There wasn't anything I really worried about that way before the money. Maybe if I had a family to support, it'd be different, and I would have constantly worried about having to take care of them. pg talks about always being worried about being broke; I don't recall ever worrying about that. If anyone ever asked me, I guess I would have said that I could always just move back in with my parents.

I didn't know you had a huge exit. Or are you talking about money you've made from being a semi-famous hacker now?

>(The reasons are more complicated but the result is I prefer my misery.)

Either way, that problem might be solved by a good Psychologist, that you probably should be able to afford. :-)

I didn't know you had a huge exit.

Aaron's company Infogami merged with reddit before it got acquired by Condé Nast.

Ah. Cool. I've ran into him here and there in cyberspace and a had a few good discussions, always knew he was brilliant, just didn't know how successful he was. :)

I am sorry to hear that. I read your blog, however, and it seems that you are doing something rather useful with your time. So it is probably not that bad. When you are truly miserable you cannot get anything done.

Yeah, I'm exaggerating. I think that the term happiness really refers to two different things. The first (call it happiness0) is how good you feel on a moment-to-moment basis. This is what I was referring to above (pg is always grinning and bouncing; I'm huddled in the corner furiously typing--again, I'm exaggerating). But happiness1 is how you feel looking back on what you've done. And when it comes to that, I feel like the happiest1 person alive. I certainly wouldn't give that up to get more happiness0.

I thought that money would allow me to increase my happiness1 by letting me choose what to work on. But it turns out all the things I've chosen to work on pay just fine, so in practice it hasn't really been a big deal. I think this ties in with something pg says above. Basically: if there's something you really want to do, just go do it -- don't wait for the money to roll in first.

Somehow your post reminded me of "The Heart" a poem by Stephen Crane:

In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it.

I said, "Is it good, friend?" "It is bitter - bitter," he answered; "But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart."

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