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Comment by gavinray | Hacker News Reader

That's so bleak.

I think I'd sooner go back to drugs and homelessness than face the thought of waking up every day to give the majority of my waking hours to something I don't care about. For almost the rest of my life.

Or even worse, something I disliked/working for trash people.

I used to have panic attacks thinking about this when I worked mundane, dead-end jobs.

Pardon my language but: the fuck is the point even?

At least if you're high, in a park reading a book or papers on the internet you're enjoying life.

I'm being genuine and not trying to be antagonistic, I'm not sure I understand why you bother to work at all?

If you don't find anything in the world interesting, what gives you the will to live and not commit suicide?

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Here's another viewpoint: just because there's no job that I I would enjoy doing doesn't mean that I don't enjoy anything. There are so many things that I enjoy doing, but no company is going to pay me 100K a year to just do whatever I want.

Furthermore, what I enjoy changes radically from month to month. Earlier this month I was enthralled by geology and thought about how awesome it would be to be a geologist. Now, something else has captured my attention and I rarely think about geology. Soon, I'll move on to something else.

So, at best, a job can keep my interest for maybe 2 to 3 months, I'm burned out within a year and I can usually manage to stay for about two years total before my productivity abruptly drops to near zero. To me a job is solely a means to obtain money and time off so that I can go do what I actually enjoy.

To me, you're just as much as an enigma. How could you possibly enjoy doing the same thing for a long period of time? What do you do when you are consumed by the euphoria that comes when you finally find something new that finally scratches that insatiable itch inside of you? The indescribable joy and obsession that makes everything that's come before seem empty and jejune by comparison?

Though I have been diagnosed with pretty severe ADHD, so that probably explains a lot of it.

No issues, I get what you’re saying. Funny though, although it’s mostly a “rose colored glasses” sort of thing, I think fondly on my time working shit dead end jobs because I was at least working towards something better whereas now I have to constantly question whether I’ve peaked.

> Pardon my language but: the fuck is the point even?

When you find out let me know. Some people seem to get lucky enough to have all sorts of other, non work things to keep them going, family, etc. so I suppose if you have that it’s motivation.

> I'm not sure I understand why you bother to work at all?

Because the alternative is throwing away both my past and any potential for the future, even if it looks grim. As stupid as it is, I’ve thought about though, if not at least because it would give me a blank slate and something to work towards again. Though the few fleeting moments of content was I find are generally at times I wouldn’t be there if I wasn’t wageslaving the rest of the time.

> If you don't find anything in the world interesting, what gives you the will to live and not commit suicide?

There’s plenty of things I find interesting, just nothing that anyone would ever pay me to do. Maybe they aren’t commercially viable, maybe they’re not really career related things, or maybe I’m not smart/wealthy/educated enough to take them on.

Damn that's really sad actually =/

I and my partner don't have family either really. We have living families, but not the way most people consider family I think.

  > There’s plenty of things I find interesting, just nothing that anyone would ever pay me to do. Maybe they aren’t commercially viable, maybe they’re not really career related things, or maybe I’m not smart/wealthy/educated enough to take them on.

This hits close to home for me. I got lucky with my interests/hobbies, but your scenario is identical to my partners.

6 years of a wildlife biology + animal behavior degree and she says she can't find a job doing what she wants.

I'm convinced it's possible, but that it would take a lot of hunting people down, knocking on doors, networking, emailing random people, basically taking every measure and avenue available.

I could also be wrong though, who knows.

But, she doesn't want me to do that and has something else she's doing so I go "Okey, if that's what you want."

I have no idea what it is you like to do, but if there's any earthly way for you to do it for a living, or make your living off of something tangential IMO you should quit tech and do that.

I'm sure you have pursued that at this point though.

Money can be exchanged for goods and services.

In addition, work doesn't need to consume the majority of waking hours. If you have a high-paying job at a company with a nice culture you can spend ~4 hours a day or less working, with the rest of the time spent reading articles on the internet, browsing hacker news, occasionally replying to Slack messages etc.

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