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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

> “Once you’ve done something that feels like you’re born to do it, it’s hard to find anything that’s that good of a fit,” Twigg says today. “Anything else that feels that way.”

If she has a mental health issue, she should seek care. But if you take the above quote at face value (and likely out of context), then I would give her this advice to start building her life:

"Flipping Burgers in not beneath your dignity" - Charles J. Sykes

An entire generation has been romanticized that if you "do what you love" you'll end up a billionaire. The complete opposite is true. It requires doing thing you dislike, discipline, financial management, and focus on the correct things.

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> An entire generation has been romanticized that if you "do what you love" you'll end up a billionaire. The complete opposite is true.

The implication that flipping burgers will make you a billionaire is patently absurd. You should never feel ashamed about your work, but menial work in $current_year actually leads to poverty and hunger because it doesn't pay a living wage. An "entire generation" doesn't have illusions about how the world works. The 2008 recession was more than sufficient to dispel that. They just want food and shelter.

That's a ridiculous exaggeration of my words. Flipping burgers will put a roof over your head, buy you some food, and give you a small amount of savings. From there you move up. Better education, better job, more savings.

You said (paraphrased) "doing what you love will not make you a billionaire. The opposite is true. You should go flip burgers." This can either mean "doing what you love will make you poor. And also you should flip burgers" or "doing things you don't like will make you a billionaire." It's possible I misunderstood what you were saying, but whichever point you were trying to make, it's a patronizing extension of the typical boomer "millennials are entitled" refrain.

> Flipping burgers will put a roof over your head, buy you some food, and give you a small amount of savings.

None of these are true. I'm not sure when the last time you worked an entry level job like this was, but they haven't paid anything close to a living wage in a very long time.

That's still an extreme exaggeration of my words. Your argument is pointless.

> they haven't paid anything close to a living wage in a very long time

That is definitely not true. One can eat a grocery store for a few bucks a week. You can rent a place for $250-$500/mo in the vast majority of cities in the country, excluding the cities where millennials are flocking to; take Topeka, Kansas, or Fayetteville, Arkansas, or any number of small cities scattered across the USA.

Like I said in my initial comment, it's totally possible to pull yourself out of the situation, but one must forgo the flashy lifestyle of living in Seattle and the like.

> An entire generation has been romanticized that if you "do what you love" you'll end up a billionaire.

She's 56, so... which generation is that?

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