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I'm sorry that you celebrated your birthday alone. That's not fun.

Don't beat yourself up because you think that someone younger and richer can solve the problems that you are solving more effectively. The reality is that someone younger and richer is not interested in solving the problems that you are actually solving. Elon is working on space, but he's not working on helping the homeless.

The world is bigger than it seems and your impact on it is beyond what you can see. Don't worry that you aren't Elon Musk. Your post, thus your existence, reminded me to get back to looking into emergency mesh networks. (I looked at your submissions and comments.) One of my clients is a clinic in a place that is expecting a natural disaster and will likely lose communications when that disaster happens. Your work on LoRa and ESP32s may end up saving the lives of people you've never known.

Thanks, let me know if I can help with it. I'm happy to do custom work for stuff like that.

> It dawned on me that an Elon Musk or even a Mitch McConnell could have dealt with it with one phone call. What's the use of me?

You have done for those people what folks like Musk and McConnell did not and probably would not do for them. And you did it more efficiently than the people you helped could. Without your efforts, they'd probably still be homeless. You might be comparing your efforts to the wrong side of the scale. At least to the people you helped, you were far more important and useful than Musk or McConnell were.

It sucks that your dad usurped the recognition. There's probably more to that story that we haven't been privy to, though.

> I made a bunch of PPE last year, at my expense. My dad got a civic award for it.

If you go into consulting, this will pretty much define your life.

How do you mean about consulting? I do engineering consulting and small scale production. In my culture that sort of thing is common, I'm just a little salty about it because I did the work and someone else got the experience of the reward. Same with the NY maker faire awards 10 years ago. I did the work, I stayed home because my roommate had the flu and needed someone to look after her + I didn't want to accidentally get a bunch of people sick in case I caught it, someone else got to go on stage, receive the reward, get an interview in the new york times, etc. My experience was to get a little blue ribbon in the mail, looking at it, and then mailing it to my mom.

It says something positive about your character that you helped those two people out, then missed out on the recognition experience because you were helping someone else out. The people who matter know it was you who helped them.

> How do you mean about consulting?

You described it how I meant it. It happens to everyone in consulting every time you end up sub-contracting, unless you're a Musk or McConnell with a high level of name recognition.

It's a waste of self-worth to wallow around lamenting a lack of public credit and/or fame. By asking "Why Do I Exist?" you are not giving yourself credit for what you've actually done.

Those two people, and your roommate, aren't thinking "Gee, I wish I got someone rich and famous to help me more efficiently!"

I just figured people would know me by my work, and I make a point of "signing" it, just... it doesn't go out very far. And yeah, I'm feeling kinda low on self-worth. The thing about giving oneself credit is, is it useful if the credit you give yourself doesn't match the credit others give you? (Regardless of who is right objectively). Doesn't that just increase the amount of cognitive dissonance in the world?

The people I mentioned are currently mildly worried about my mental well being. I'm not. I just don't see the point in continuing to do stuff like this; maybe I'd be happier being a fisherman or a cobbler, is all.

> maybe I'd be happier being a fisherman or a cobbler

To be fair, they do things that benefit others, too. Lil Nas X and Captain Highliner are already getting all the credit for shoes and fish, though.

Try not to paint everyone with the same brush stroke. Your use of the word "others" ignores the fact that the people you impact are the ones that count, and yet you're allowing yourself to get hung up on not getting patted on the head by people outside that loop. Are you doing these things for the other person, or for you?

Also: If people you know personally are questioning your mental condition, it's usually a good time to get a second opinion. Talk to your GP. There can be changes that occur over time that you may not notice, out of daily familiarity, but are stark to people who don't see you daily. You've mentioned it enough that it seems you are also concerned, even while passing it off.

I think everyone likes headpats, ask the nearest dog/cat/bunny for verification :) I'm doing things for the thing that needs done, mostly. But yeah the glory is more important to me than the money. It used to feel good, now it doesn't. Guess assuefaction happens with everything and the dopamine pump dries up with everything. I've talked to a therapist a couple of weeks ago.

And yeah, that's a thing about a society that has fully globalized. There's only room for one set of glory hounds. Kids who want to get into building stuff are inspired by Colin Furze, not by the guy down the street who makes wheelchair ramps out of pallets.

> Kids who want to get into building stuff are inspired by Colin Furze, not by the guy down the street who makes wheelchair ramps out of pallets.

That's pretty dystopian. Kids have to be exposed to causes before they can possibly develop compassion for them. That puts it square in the parent's department.

I guess if you need to be that glory hound, you'll have to do it the old fashioned way: by earning it through your works. Whining extensively about it won't get you very much glory. Completely the opposite, likely.

That's the thing. I'm 40. I've done work in a number of fields, and I was hoping that it'd be speaking for itself by now, but I don't see a whole lot of evidence that it has done that.

And yes, it is dystopian. It's also what I observe. As for me being a glory hound, I'm fully aware that it's not a virtue, but I'm motivated more by notoriety than by, say, riches or patriotism.

Whining extensively seems to work pretty well for a narrow category of people, although they tend to do it on Twitter, not HN, admittedly.

What happened with my dad is that I'm in California, he is in Italy, I managed to do a bunch of stuff to help keep the hospital in our hometown in Italy open at the very start of the pandemic, and since I don't feel safe flying back to Italy even now, the award was given to my dad. Since it's the same family, everyone over there felt that it was fine. The family vs. individual balance is different between Italy and California.

Ah, but you are part of the world. You need yourself in the world, otherwise you are bust.

I'm not sure if I do. Trying to figure it out.

How fast would Usain Bolt run if there were no other runners in the race?

Even if you have no chance of winning, you are still making a difference.

So the point of me is to be filler for the real players? I don't know if that's a good reason to live.

Without you the world is a lesser place. What more reason do you need?

That's the thing though. Rationally, if without me the world is in fact a better place, should I not go away? It seems to me that it would be a better place.

I'd say you'd have to launch at least one highly successful payment service first then move on to those other things.

There's a lot of those now though. I remember doing e-gold stuff in the early 2000s, not much came of it.

>It dawned on me that an Elon Musk or even a Mitch McConnell could have dealt with it with one phone call.

But did they?

No. No, they didn't. They might have, perhaps, if they were there and had seen it. But they didn't, because they weren't there. You were.

I'm trying to decide whether to keep being there, or whether to go away (IDK, sell my house buy a sailboat and just stay away from land from there on out)

I think the takeaway here is that you can choose to go away if you have the option and the privilege to do so. No one will hold it against you and those who do will be gone around the same time you will, give or take a few years. But you don't leave things in more capable hands. The people you idolize exist and are doing what they're doing irrespective of you. Their motivations are their own, however. There's no guarantee that they are willing to or interested in solving the problems you want to solve or see solved. There's no guarantee they even view them as problems. On this ship I think we can do with all hands on deck, but that is me being optimistic and looking for reasons to hold on just as much as you.

I do not idolize Elon Musk and I definitely do not idolize Mitch McConnel. I acknowledge that they have vastly more power than I do. In Musk's case, specifically, he has been doing most of the stuff I've been doing, only better (I doubt he writes intentionally cheesy sci-fi, or designs free board games). I don't think I can cope with that.

You can't be a better Elon Musk than Elon Musk. Don't try.

But Elon Musk can't be a better you than you are, either. OK, there's some overlap. Be you anyway - all of you, the parts that overlap and the parts that don't. You can't do what Musk is doing in rockets? OK. Don't give up in despair. Especially don't give up on all of you because someone is doing what a part of you wanted to do. Take that part of you and find a worthwhile place to use it.

OK, but objectively, he's succeeding at being a better me than I am.

No, he really isn't. Last I checked you're not into exporting a million slaves to mars and then blockading the earth with space junk. I hope?

Tempting, but I don't think I'm sufficiently ruthless to actually go thru with it. I think me going overboard on generosity in the past has shown that.

Anyway, I clearly don't have the right skill set :)

There's enough things to do for it not to be a hindrance, imo.

How do you mean? Who/what is "it" in your sentence?

"It" being the things Elon or whoever else is doing better than you at the moment. There is a finite set of things they can do, and an even smaller subset that they are interested in doing, and an EVEN smaller subset of that that they would end up doing in their lifetimes. The set of problems that humanity is facing seems much larger to me, and I would assume it's just a matter of either putting your weight behind something you care about as you have been doing, because every worthy cause can do with as much support as it gets, or you find something more niche that others haven't thrown their weight behind for example.

Thank you! I tried to help with OSMS last year. It felt unsatisfying. I'd turn stuff in, send out new designs, and people would thank Gui. Gui's a good guy but this made me like him less, although I'm rational enough to know that it's not his fault.

Not as far as I know, which is puzzling.

Don't be puzzled. They have finite time. They have finite information. You're placing them on too high a pedestal, higher than they deserve. They aren't God; they're just people with some fame.

And even God doesn't usually just fix things. He uses people to do the fixing. Even the biggest fix - salvation - was wrapped in flesh.

I don't think you'd like my theology, but just in case you do, have you read Left Beyond?

https://www.deviantart.com/spiritplumber/art/Left-Beyond-Add...

I have not. Summary?

Summary: The Rapture happens in 1996, as described by the Left Behind novels. As has been made fun in Fred Clark's extensive liveblogging/review of those novels, the Antichrist hires some hypercompetent person to run the new world order's FCC / cable / internet company.

This is the story of that person and, most importantly, of that organization. They have 7 years in which to figure out how to cancel the Apocalypse even as it happens all around them. Beating up God is hard, especially if God has control of the narrative...

It's hard, but it's been done. Here's a story about Jacob literally having fisticuffs with God in a dark alley, and kicking His butt. After, Jacob freaks out realizing he met God face to face, beat Him up, and got rewarded instead of disappeared.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2032%3A...

According to the ending, Jacob's only injury is a really big thing:

"Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendon attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob’s hip was touched near the tendon."

It would be interesting to see if that is still true. And a theory of what Jacob did to make God call "Give!"

Yep. I actually use that in my story: armor and weapons turn out to be essentially useless against Angels, so the agency has to start a martial arts program.

There are exceptions, such as Terry Pratchett's meteoric-iron sword (taken to have Captain Carrot's characteristic of "being the least magical sword you could think of"); retrieving it is in itself a subplot. :)

You can find the whole thing (stories and RPG worldbooks) here: https://www.deviantart.com/spiritplumber/art/Left-Beyond-Add...

Interesting premise for a novel. But you tied this to your theology. Do you believe that?

I'm a Deist, personally.

I do however believe that IF a Devil or a God or a Thanos were to show up and try to kill most of humanity (Which... if it's an actual divine being, incidentally would mean that I'm wrong about being a Deist, but I can live with that!) it would be a moral imperative to prevent them from doing so.

In that sense Avengers Endgame is a better Rapture movie than the Left Behind movies...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn7KTOLbyfQ&t=1s

To some degree, I think God agrees with you. That's what the cross means - God trying to prevent sin from killing humanity, at an incredible cost. (I note that I'm writing this on Good Friday.)

But as you were charitable and suspected that I wouldn't like your theology, I recognize that you probably won't like mine, either...

I was raised Catholic and Evangelical, became an Atheist as soon as I could get out, and became a Deist after working with cosmologists a little. The only theology I actively dislike is Calvinism and its offshoots (Presuppositionalism and so on), mainly because they effectively paint God as playing a single-player game with humanity as the NPCs.

Elon might be able to send people to Mars, but will he prepare soup for my daughter? No way he won't, unless he gets some millions in bitcoin for it. But that wouldn't be too efficient either.

I like cooking for people, haven't had much occasion to do so this past year....