Comment by nolok | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nolok | Hacker News Reader

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I can 100% relate.

And sadly getting the people around you to understand is not easy at all.

How do you tell the people around you that telling you you're good/talented/gifted, and acting like you are by default, is hurting you. That when there is any kind of challenge to do, "yeah it's hard but I'm sure nolok can do it" being the go to expected comment has long term effects.

Even in my current adult situation, my friends answer when we talk about it goes something like "oh yeah poor you, not having to kill yourself working all week because you can do it in a few hours, and then being forced to relax and not do work stuff for days ! I would cry for you, if I didn't have to go back to work for my daily 6 hours shift for half your salary."

And I can't even say I don't get why they don't understand it, I totally do, but it hurts nonetheless. The only ones who truly know how much it gets to me are my girlfriend and close family (parents, brother, ...), and after a while you feel like you're complaining about nothing while others have real issues.

> after a while you feel like you're complaining about nothing while others have real issues

That's probably why I tend to vent out here instead of to my family.

We're not rich. One of my siblings is finishing their medical studies, and struggling with the fact that in our area, it's mostly a thankless job for shit pay. The other one is on a path that probably won't bring much riches either. My SO works twice as hard as I do for half the pay. I just can't talk about my job to those closest to me, because from the point of view of general society, I'm the lucky one who has a well-paying job sitting in front of computer all day, with plenty of time to goof around.

I try to help them all as much as I can, both materially and in terms of finding access to education and better opportunities. But it doesn't make me feel any less guilty that I happened to luck into a good job by the virtue of my teenage hobby turning out to be a great career choice.

Here, at least, there are other people who can relate. The jobs I've experienced are boring and soul-suckingly pointless. It's hard to find a meaningful one, when most of the industry is just about making rich people richer. Also, I suspect that learning how to program in my teenage years hurt me in terms of job satisfaction as well - the novelty of making computers do things has long worn off, so (unlike some people I work with) I don't get happy and excited that I can use the new bloated framework X and finally get to use generic types like a boss, or whatevs.

Except I suppose the same is true for most people in most other jobs. But they are too busy making ends meet to complain about the job being bullshit.

Feeling guilt over a sense of complaining about nothing has been a recurring theme for me. It is almost impossible to get people to understand problems that don't impede traditional 'success'.

I didnt know I had this problem until I read you. Thanks for putting into words something I felt but I didnt know how to describe it. Thanks. Any advice on how to solve it or feel better or anything?

I think there are a lot of different reasons someone might feel that way, but for me learning about proper studying techniques helped a lot. I'm fine with people having high expectations of me, I think it's when I feel that I can't live up to them that there's pressure that others will "shrug" off as if it's easy. With real tangible study techniques and not just vague general cleverness I feel like I can meet those challenges head on, like I have an actual plan to stand on. The Learning How To Learn course is a good start on this, but I've found a lot of different things on youtube. https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Another thing was I felt like people were shrugging off my hard work because I made it look easy and there's 3 things for that -- A.) realize people are focused on their own life, they aren't going to understand everything going on in yours and B.) Stop being silent about your hard work. Even if it's just to some of your close friends, having some people realize you work hard too is nice. C.) Talk to people (like here on HN) with the same problem as you. I'm in some entrepreneur groups on Facebook and it is SO nice to have like minded people with similar problems to talk to or read about.

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