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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

This is a long time favorite post of mine. Kelly Cordes is rad.

As alluded to at the end of this, the real bastard about the fun scale is that if you live in type II fun long enough, the things you do for type II fun become type I fun.

... and that's how people wind up thinking ultras are a great idea, kids!

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Agreed. I started backpacking with my brother a few years ago and it was miserable the first few times because there were so many things that we were anxious about, we bad with, or just didn't know to do. For example, we bought heavy waterproof gear and learned quickly there is no avoiding getting wet, so might as well trade in the waterproofing for fast-drying. Now we can open up a little and have a little fun in the rain. Same with coffee. We used to lug gear around to make piping hot coffee, now we heat up a little water and mix in a little instant and we get 75% of the benefit with very little overhead.

Well see you were just optimizing for the wrong things. You thought avoiding wet was the thing to optimize for, but now, with experience, you find other things are more important to you and you aim at optimizing those. What things are wrong and right vary by person and by purpose (and probably by time, too).

Where do you bucket: "wow this is so miserable, lol, this is great" while doing the thing?

I wrote out and deleted a comment about this being a subset of Type II but maybe it's just a damaged person's Type I...

that sounds like just the normal fact that i summarize as "the first half-mile always sucks", which appears to be true for any sort of fun.

My body being in pain and my brain enjoying working the body are not at odds with each other.

In my experience trying to become an ultra runner, its not that I enjoy the pain. I enjoy the workout. I enjoy the run while my body is in pain, not that I enjoy the pain itself.

When I tell people I swim, they're always like, "Oh wow! That is so good for you." But they don't understand, I'm not fast or a strong swimmer or anything. It's cold, I struggle with my form, I'm slow, I can't kick turn, I'm constantly gasping for breath. Swimming is getting in the pool and convincing my lizard brain that I'm drowning for an hour. But when I get out the endorphins are fantastic, like every cell of my body is so relieved to be alive.

At same time, the struggle to overcome that lizard brain response to hard physical work is itself enjoyable in a way. It wasn't when I started working out but after years it has become an acquired taste. If you'll forgive a little hyperbole, it's the moment when I look my own mortality in eye and say, "you might win eventually, but not today."

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