For the longest time I’ve felt burned out or depressed and I thought it was from doing too much of my job (swe). Instead I’ve realized that I haven’t had goals pulling me, or motivating me to do the things I do on the daily. Instead I’ve been running from the fear of failure; be that in making it through college, or somehow losing my job. It turns out that fear is an effective, but terrible “motivator”. It also turns out that it’s hard to be happy when you’re running away from something instead of towards something.
This thread first started for me when I saw the hn discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23932795 and then further became more clear to me after some deep discussions with my friend and his showing me this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7RgtMGL7CA.
The thing is I’ve had goals, but nothing that I could use as a means for helping to pull me through life. Goals like staying fit, or reaching FIRE are good goals, but in themselves it’s hard to derive a sense of meaning.
Making goals for yourself that allow you to tell a story about the things you’re doing can help with motivation; at least I think that’s the trick as I haven’t been doing that. This is the part I’m learning about right now and need to figure out to change the way I’m going through life.
Is this the lecture you speak of?
It's why plenty of smart people don't make lots of money, why dumb people at times can strike it big, and an interesting mental fringe to find a way out of the rat race / salary man ladder.
My best result so far:
If I were to start over, I would get a cheaper, simpler Breville machine and put the difference into a nicer grinder. But this isn't compelling enough for me to actually start over.
I set up a sort of glovebox/laminar flow hood with a HEPA filter, sterilized nutrified agar/plugs in canning jars, and cloned some shiitake and lions mane. I also made some 4"x4" glass slides for spore prints and inoculated some logs.
There are a lot of interesting fungi out there. Many have interesting and surprising properties. And they're delicious.
Then I learned that I feel fine with being rubbish at metalwork, but that I actually want to get better at woodwork. Now I am enjoying the process of failing, learning and improving.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particles_of_the_Kagoshima_dia...
It's probably not the most interesting thing per sē that I learned in the hole year, but simply what I remembered because I leanred it recently.
I've also gotten into woodcarving by making figurines of animals.
Making things is fun and relaxing.
Example of similar keyboard: https://github.com/abstracthat/dactyl-manuform