I thought I’d have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35 (2020)

I think this is the secret to living well. Find the humor, find the positives, be jolly even in difficult circumstances because life is short, so why not laugh as much as possible? https://moviewise.substack.com/p/facing-lifes-difficulties

I just want to mention that in Williams original narratives he is far from being sarcastic/playing wits or suggesting life meaninglessness. Instead, it is in the sense of indifference (neither positive nor negative).

If you plan to read his novels, I suggest reading both Stoner and Augustus and explore their interlacing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierk...

Observation destroyed that deist clockwork universe. There's no comedy in the catastrophic death of 100,000 people, in one man starving in the midst of plenty. We can do better, we can care for and feed and respect one another, as well as the worms. That's meaning we're empowered to create. Not for laughs but smiles. However humble, that is by far the more interesting experiment. And then when our moving finger moves on, no 'Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line.'

The point of hobbies is not "getting good at them". It's enjoying them for their own sake. Otherwise they turn into ... work.

> I'm just a blip in the universe and when I'm gone it will be unchanged, the same as if I had never existed.

Yes. The Universe doesn't expect or have any special plans for you.

But hey, that is not that bad. Consider the opposite. The Whole universe having a plan for you. The whole infinite Cosmos. Just thinking about you and having a plan for you.

I don't know about you. But it would give me a panic attack.

It's ok that the Universe doesn't have a plan for you. This frees you to assign your life whatever meaning you want - and to change it at any point! You can also feel gratified about fulfilling your self-assigned potential or feel extremely disapointed if you did not. Or, change them again. Some hold that the secret to happiness is having the right expectations about oneself.

> And now what?

Therapy worked for me.

Then you hit your 40s and you realize that since you're going to die anyway, why waste the time and die bored and mediocre? So you start appreciating things and choosing to do stuff that interests you, whatever that is.

YMMV obviously and N=1. But unless you have a terminal disease "I've hit 30 and my life is basically over" is just BS you're telling yourself.

Live for others.

You (and I) are incredibly fortunate. We have our basic needs taken care of. We have more than that. There are many, many, people in the world who have problems that you can help solve. That could be - spending time with a lonely elderly person, volunteering with the homeless, building a website for a charity that can't afford to pay for a great one, building a startup that solves a problem for people... teach someone a skill. It can be anything.

Live to help other people. They need you. If you don't get much out of it - don't worry, they will. So if you're not particularly bothered about what you do, go help them. The world is full of important problems and people that need help, there's a vast number of things to work on that will make a difference to other people.

I felt the same way in my 30s. The thing that changed it for me was when my father passed away, my mother was diagnosed with dementia, and the pandemic. I started to realize that life is really short and it made me think a lot about what it all meant. I think you've also come to realize that there really is no point, so you can either be depressed about it and not do anything or you can just do things that bring you enjoyment. Some people find enjoyment in help others and volunteering (I don't) and will say that's the meaning of life. Other's will say finding enjoyment in the process of something is the meaning of life (I don't). I think it's different for everyone and part of life is defining the game. Everyone wants validation that their rules of life are the right rules.

I'm in my late 40s now and I just focus on whatever I want to do that I enjoy - hanging out with friends, spending time with my family, not stressing too much about work, entertaining myself with my hobbies.

On hobbies - I'll pick up hobbies just to try them out now. I have no expectations any longer. If it sticks, it sticks, if it doesn't, I don't care that much. I've come to realize I just really like to try new things, and learning the depth doesn't interest me. If i'm inspired to pick it up again, I do. There's probably some self-help/hustle porn out there that dissuades this, but I enjoy it.

Thats the point! There is no single point except to exist and from that to try to exist peacefully with your fellow people.

You are right, we are here briefly. No different than a flower blooming for a time. Whats the point to blooming just to die? Thats the point.

As alan watts said... the journey itself is the point.

It essentially covers the life of an assistant lit professor born in 1891 that ended up not living up to his expectations in all areas of life and how he handles them internally. It really helped me draw meaning from my life again while I see friends have their money making them money and fly upwards in their careers and build their families.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel)

I’ve decided to try to just chill out, and enjoy life as much as I can. Stop striving for crazy goals, and accept life for what it is - a lot of working, sleeping, spending time with family, occasionally traveling.

I do what I need to do to make that enjoyable, and stop worrying about making it better / more money / more prestige / etc. This is counter to the American ethos but I found that focussing on things mostly outside of my reach / luck sphere, was mostly just making me unhappy and rarely moving the needle in wealth or fulfillment. Focus on what you can, and forget the rest. Finding peace with this is easier said than done.

Our culture biases towards certain life meanings (get rich! be famous! do high class things! be higher status than others! belong to the cool in-group!), and our primitive impulses are very attracted to those meanings. But as we accomplish those things, they don't end up feeling super meaningful or fulfilling.

We will all be forgotten, the universe doesn't care about our lives. But we are the universe made self-aware! How awesome is this? Yeah, we need to balance a lot of the human concerns because we're embodied in these meat suits that have certain needs. But there's so much to think about/discover/appreciate about it all while we can!

You can argue those goals are just external influences that got imprinted in you in a period of your life in which you were prone to start dreaming.

Still, why not follow the goals you feel you should pursue?

Do what makes you happy, do what you can look back and say "that was cool", write a book you would read with your life actions.

Let me add, "spending time with friends" to me means "find a job where I like the people and want the hangout with them" so that I don't have some 8-10hrs a day of something I want to avoid. Those have been the best times in my life where going to work was fun because it was like hanging out with friends. Friends I would see outside of work as well. That work was also on small teams (< 30 people), on small projects where I had a lot of influence, to the point that the project felt like something I was helping to create and had some pride in how it turned out. In other words, not just a cog in a machine.

the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is right now. To continue with the QOTDs: today you're the oldest you've ever been and the youngest you'll ever be, get started.

Be careful. You might regret this, or at least wished you'd done otherwise.

Some years ago I bought a guitar. Worked at it initially - got distracted - and then put it aside. I now realize had I continued to pick it up everyday (or so) for say 20 to 30 mins I'd be able to play well enough by now. Perhaps not Hendrix or Page but enough to enjoy myself :)

What's the point?

The joy you brinb into the world. For yourself, and for others.

Pretty much anything else is overrated.

I focus on hobbies. What works for me is to keep the hobbies to myself - don't let it become competitive relative to others. That's a trap you'll never win, as you'll always be comparing to the best and not to any kind of average or typical performance.

Here's a number of concrete examples. I like Rubik's cube puzzles, but what I do with them is get new puzzles of different shapes and figure out ways to solve them. I deliberately don't get involved in speed-cubing or such competitions.

I like juggling, but I don't try to do any shows or competitions or anything; what I do is invent and learning new patterns and tricks for myself.

I learned to sew, to make costumes for conventions; but what I do is walk around to interact with and entertain people; I don't try to compete in shows or for prizes or anything.

I play board games, pinball, sports like bowling and ultimate frisbee; but always on a very casual recreational level and not in any kind of organized league or competition. What's important with these isn't the activity itself, it's the human interaction.

You can find a lot of value in hobbies like these in a range of 20 to 200 hours invested rather than 2000. The key is to find self-satisfaction in bettering your own skills; don't try to compare to the self-selected best lifelong obsessives.

Personally I think desire can be distilled down to basic things, and we just devise abstractions to satisfy them. If it's no longer clear how x or y would bring any satisfaction, then you won't long for it. Or some other desire is in conflict and you need to resolve it. I think we also become more risk-averse when times are generally good/stable, and excuses are a good defense mechanism.

Given the implied restlessness of your question, maybe you need to mull further on what it is you think is lacking. You mentioned career: maybe money isn't the deciding factor as to whether you should advance. You mentioned hobbies: sinking hundreds of hours by habitually sticking to them is what makes something a hobby, so do you like them or not? You mentioned starting a company: what is alluring about this? What does it satisfy?

Maybe it's easier to answer: do you feel stagnant and bored?

I know this was not the point of your comment, but trust me that one can pass FAANG interviews without grinding Leetcode.

If you're seriously considering a job search, I would recommend going through jobsearch.dev

As far as the point, well, philosophy is fun. Why is there something when there could be nothing? Why does the universe even exist? What's the point of planets? What's the point of life on planets? What's the point of human evolution? Maybe there are no discrete points, aka a continuum, and it's all pointless. Or maybe there are discrete points, indivisible subatomic particles. Or maybe we're all in a simulation?

For some the point is to continue the evolutionary process by breeding and spawning, like the salmon in the rivers do. For others the point is to amass as much wealth and power as possible so that they can be at the top of the human social hierarchy and enjoy alpha monkey status. Some invent supernatural beings and imagine life without end in an afterlife paradise. For others, the point is to push their minds and bodies to their limits by creating art, studying science, exploring the natural world, inventing technologies and so on.

Probably the saddest crowd is those for whom the point of life has become little more than buying the useless garbage the advertisers tell them to buy. It's not healthy for the mind and it's not healthy for the body, and it's leading to environmental catastrophe. Many people are miserable because they can't buy all the products they're told they're supposed to buy in order to acquire the patina of success (the antidote is to adopt an indifferent attitude towards advertising and its psychological manipulation strategies).

Running/exercise is one with so many levels you can only truly compete with yourself to improve (and you’ll feel good).

Music is one that is sooo difficult. You suck for a long time, but can make incremental improvements.

I came out of that haze realizing that the point of it, at least for me, is to spend time doing things I enjoy and spend time with people I love.

Making a mark on the world? Not my main focus. Making the lives of the people I care about better? Very important.

You can try to have good memories with your family and friends. Sure, everyone will be gone after a few years and nobody will ever remember you. But you are here now, might as well have fun.

I had the advantage of having no vision, no plans, when I graduated high school. All my friends headed off to college, but I had no money, had no idea what I would even study, even though I scored just shy of 1500 on the SAT. Learning always came easy for me, it still does.

So having no plan, after high school, I left my job as a farm hand and became a motorcycle mechanic. Found my two major strengths there, thinking through abstract problems as logically as possible, and a certain base understanding of electrical and electronics. A result of that was I got stuck with all the quirky electrical faults, and most of the transmission work. I enjoyed both. Should I go to school for electical or mechanical engineering? EE won that decision process, and I headed off to school at 25. Not having much money, I settled on two years first, to nail down an Associates degree, then move on from there.

Got great grades, got a great job offer, went to work. Took additional courses, but never earned a higher degree. Blundered along through a few failed relationships (an early relationship with someone that was bad for me, left scars, and it took a while to figure out how relationships were supposed to work).

Finally met someone I could relate to at age 35. Okay? 35. I still was renting. I couldn't even afford my own apartment until I was 30. So at 35 I met the love of my life. A year later, we bought a house together. Two years later we married. Two years after that, we had our first kid. Age 40 for me.

So my 30s, my life had really only just begun.

So I have been coding in embedded systems now for 38 years. My kids are all grown and out of the house. I never worked at a FAANG. I am not rich, but the women I met, fell in love with, and married, had similar financial goals, so we have saved enough money to retire by time I turn 68. Very small house, we drive cars into the ground (never less than twelve years, my car is now 16 years old). So we have money to do the things we want. Travel and skiing being two of the top things. We raised three kids. Put them through college with no debt (not Ivy league, but no one needs Ivy League for the first four years, that is some heavy vanity BS right there)

Your career is not the end point of your Dreams, enjoyment is. Your hobbies should be something you enjoy that don't break the bank. You should constrain your costs on anything the doesn't deeply matter to you so that you can afford the things that do.

I will leave you with one huge final important note.

The things you 'do' in life are much more important than the things you have. Do not focus on 'having'. Focus on 'doing'.

I am a relatively old man now. I am still working because of two things, both related to me doing everything late in life. I started my career late, and I had kids late. I don't mind that I am going to work until I am 68 or maybe 70 years old. I am doing things, and I am enjoying the things I do.

this feeling demands deep personal reflection and / or extended authentic conversation with someone who knows you well -- nothing a text forum will be able to give you so do not be discouraged if you read a hundred posts of advice and none of them do anything for you.

If you want to explore more of the philosophy of this kind of feeling then I have a recommendation. There is a popular podcast called "Philosophize This!" by Stephen West that actually went into a multi-episode dive on "The Creation of Meaning" recently. It starts on Episode 157. The podcast is a casual conversation-style lecture format. The first episode is 25 minutes long.

>Yet we focus on these artificial goals set by childish dreams, society or life events.

In my experience goals are used to resolve unmet needs. Children are very needy and have lots of goals. If you need more money, you set a goal to get it.

Is it possible that you have no goals and see no point in anything you do because you have nowhere to go but down? You are safe. You are fed. You did it. Maybe it is time to kick your feet up and enjoy.

I think this is your problem: you see artificial goals as a bad thing.

https://thriveglobal.com/stories/relationships-happiness-wel...

I still dream of those things, except getting married. TBH 30s isn't that late - things get far more difficult if/when you have kids.

And so over the years i have moved up, realized some goals. Manage a department, lead a team or two, still get to work in weeds etc, but have direct influence on budget, organizational decisions etc (at least to this point). And i make a solid salary and frankly the I could do much of this in a much more efficient fashion, and many of my decisions these days are more based in "am I setting a good example".

That said, it can still be hard to maintain that focus. During this "great resignation" i have faced an internal battle with the realization i CAN earn more, but whether that will come as a cost of being sacrificial to the other ancillary benefits..

Frankly it can be hard to rectify and sometimes i feel my spouse takes advantage of it. For example its known (at least internally) that family trumps work in almost every instance. That I will not miss my kids...halloween, gradauation, whatever for some on call BS. But that has come to also mean that I get leaned on when a kid is sick, or theres some scheduling thing. And sure i can make it work. Heck I can probably even get away with it without much political cost, but that's sometimes not the point.

I also fight with considering offers or "advice" that i should jump ship and move to xyz. I could double salary etc. But does that mean i double benefits if i pay more for insurance or get less days off or am expected to be plugged in or more responsive?

Finally, I still have that internal drive. Lately i constantly find myself still trying to map out the next "steps". Do I move further into management? Its not as rewarding for me but the people I have managed seem to have established a pattern of loyalty and trust despite the environment. And the possibility of again having more "freedom" and the ability to drive organization direction and choices would be really nice. I'm in a spot where i have some say, and even some influence, but would more be better? How do i get there, or recognize an open door or oppurtunity.

Frankly i find much of it exhausting, just like i have come to find people and politics pretty exhausting lately.

https://youtu.be/ERbvKrH-GC4

The idea they touch on in the podcast is that this optimism helps people do great things. If you realized the thing you want is decades away, you might not even try. If you (incorrectly) think you are on the cusp of achieving some monumental goal then you may strive for it and, throughout those decades, you may keep believing you are on the cusp and keep striving until you finally reach your goal.

This is connected to the idea of "Depressive realism" - which is the idea that depressed people are often more realistic about the world. Perhaps, to be productive, it helps to have a somewhat delusional belief or confidence in your own abilities.

I was reading Vaclav Smil's latest book and he does all these calculations about how much energy we have available to us now compared to 200 years ago. And how much less physical labor we have to do to put food on the table and how many more material goods we have available to us now - in my grandparents' day, about 80 years ago, they had maybe one pair of pants sewn together, one shirt that was washed once every two weeks, shoes had holes in them, of course.

Their job was picking tomatoes. Were they living a worse life than the one I had the opportunity to experience? Certainly yes, from a material point of view. From the point of view of internal feelings, the individual variability in life satisfaction within a cohort is greater than the variability in average life satisfaction between cohorts of different generations. They lived their lives, comparing themselves to people living in the same neighborhood, certainly not to people living in generations yet to come.

In the immortal words of Lorenzo de Medici: "Whoever wants to be happy, let him be so! Because of tomorrow there is no certainty". And sometimes, let me add, there is no certainty of this afternoon either.

Let's say you live in the modern Western world, which is more familiar to me. Modern life has endless opportunities for fun, which includes, for some, finding that meaning of life that is so hard to grasp. You can dump your partner, in case you get tired of them, and people would understand - a hundred years ago, such alleged selfishness would have been tolerated at best. Maybe it is the answer, how many I have seen spending decades of the one and only life they will ever have with significant others they barely tolerate, when not hate. You have access to an unlimited number of learning opportunities. We know that agency is supremely important for life satisfaction. You can learn to draw, write, do martial arts, sing, write a screenplay, cook delicious seafood. Assuming you have some disposable income, you can take a flight to some places that until a few decades ago had no sign of civilization. Can you imagine? You can be hypnotized, take some psychedelics, eat and drink as much as you want. Find something new in you and outside of you.

What is the point of it all, you may ask. I can only answer that I haven't become rich or world famous, I don't have world-class skills, but in the fifth decade of my life, I'm having a great time living an exciting life - because I do things that excite me -, which includes some overall minor contribution to society (I don't fool myself thinking I am giving a larger than negligible contribution to society), and which I enjoy sharing with others, but only if they have the right attitude. And for me, that's the point of it all.

I always try to keep this Alan Watts quote in mind: “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

If you set your bar too low, you will never surprise yourself with doing what your previous self deemed impossible, but what your current self managed to do.

Most people I meet can do a lot more, by my assessment, than they think they are capable of. Their own thinking then hinders them from trying, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The trick is to keep a positive-curious attitude about it "let's see if I can" rather than obsessing about others and comparing. Comparing is superficial (people who want to boast do it a lot), and never apples-to-apples, as no-one has the same starting point (parent connections, wealth, genetic disposition/talent etc.).

I've always found your technical talks, blog write-ups, and mailing list posts to be interesting and educating. And thank you for all the work you did, and do, in the various FOSS communities — that's already a significant impact for the better.

PS: It was a pleasure to interact with you at a few Linux Foundation events. I still remember the Edinburgh speaker event (2018, IIRC) where you've regaled us with some interesting "security incident" stories :-).

There's nothing that's stopping you from creating that first personal project, which other people eventually care about.

this is probably the best advice i've read so far. Think about how, when faced with a hard technical problem, an SME is a treasure trove of answers. A good therapist is an SME in this problem space.

What's external and what's internal?

Where do your desires come from? Your hopes?

Some people think they are the masters of their mind, that what they feel come from them, but what about the influence of their parents, their friends, the movies they watch, the books they read, advertising, music, social media?

We swim in a cultural ocean where things that seem on the inside might have actually come from the outside.

That's if there's even an actual distinction between inside and outside in the first place.

"Get a win, then get another win."

Is winning the point? What if someone doesn't care about winning?

I am 26 and this is has been the hardest thing for me to come to terms with over the past few years.

I thought I'd be happier with a high paying job. So I got a job that pays at the 99.9th percentile for my age. Didn't really make me happier. Then I thought my unhappiness was because of my weight. So I lost 90lbs. Hardest thing I've ever done. But it didn't make me happy. Today a voice in my head is telling me "you'll be happier if you get muscular," "you'll be happier if you get in a relationship." I plan to do all of those things, but I realize they probably won't make me happy.

What has helped somewhat with fulfillment was placing a fundamentally greater value on myself. Reflecting on my accomplishments has made this a bit easier. And I do value myself a lot more today than I did two years ago - my confidence is higher, even if not as high I hoped it would be...

I can't help but feel a bit lost. My accomplishments did not provide me the concrete, grounding, pervading feeling of achievement I hoped they would find. I wasn't happy after them. Instead, there was... nothing, and now I feel like I'm kind of just floating without direction when it comes to "finding happiness."

I also cannot relate. My parents drilled into us the ideas of discipline, hard work and an absolute refusal to quit. I’m not super successful. I’m not a CEO. But I’ve accomplished more in my life so far than I thought I would.

Or perhaps my expectations are too low…

Time is the bottleneck and not motivation or whatever. It's finite and we run out of it before we even realize it pursuing ephemeral things.

Reading this makes me feel better about my current trajectory. Mid 40s male.

Me now (35) would love to tell that to me (15), too. All the grey hairs for nothing.

One reason why I don't like using salary as a comparison is it doesn't reflect people's life circumstances, except at the extremes. It's just easy to measure.

And good luck with the roof!

That said, with the latter point, me and my girlfriend have long-term goals of moving someplace bigger and more out of the way, which is a nice goal to have. Staying at my current employer would have been stable, but ultimately stagnant and ungratifying.

That's certainly better than the one the author is using. Current day me would still fail though - I've made no progress and my opportunities/abilities are slipping away.

The expectation of performance was artificially inflated which leads to difficulty dealing with failure and constant feelings of dissatisfaction.

I just figured it was an evolutionary (sort of Darwinian) march to where we are now. Throw enough stuff at the wall and you'll quickly find what sticks.

But to be sure, when I saw I was wasting away flipping through the 100 or so cable TV channels (around about the year 1999 or so) I cut the cord.

Of course, the web was not nearly as intoxicating then. I have the new cord around my neck now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/01/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas... https://runforsomething.net/

I think the real problem is the pool of people they can compare themselves to is so much larger. No matter what your interests, vocation or career it's easy to find someone on social media who appears to be an order of magnitude better than you are.

One thing that changed for me last year was that I finally got the passion to get through that list of random topics I wanted to get through without the pretense of trying to prove anything to anyone. It really did work, even though the feeling towards those pretenses still linger a bit.

Here on HN, there was once something that stuck along with me, on an article about how people found success in one-person companies. One said that he did what he needed to do and then just find what could be sold from that. It's a simple statement, but what it says lacks that pretense of finding the truth in something, like finding success in other people or even unattainable quality of work.

When I was in my 30s, I felt like some colleagues had a bit more luck even for what they wanted to do: joining the right company, getting to work on the right projects. Maybe they slid into them or maybe they struggled to get the best projects. The fact is that I don't know. I never asked but it doesn't matter because I think that very few things from people are insightful enough anyway.

Let's say we're successful slackers inst

I grew up under the threat that the USSR would nuke the U.S. and 70's culture was beginning to wake up to problems of oil shortages (embargoes), over-population, pollution. I am not sure I perceived the world as a stable, predictable thing even then.

But the Boomers had the rug pulled out from under them when the Summer of Love rolled in and suddenly the gender roles and marriage contracts of their parents generation "Ozzie and Harriet" lifestyle were shattered. Women entered the workplace, the decline of the blue-collar living wage, automation...

And I suppose the generation before began with the Great Depression followed up by the rise of fascism and WWII...

Being an "overachiever" means : benefiting from the work of others (food, clothes, transports, ...) for roughly 23 years (time it takes to complete a master degree), then contributing to society for roughly 7 years (until the "successful company is built) by working extremely and then benefiting from the work of other for 60 more years (assuming death at 90) once financial independence is reached.

This is absolutely not sustainable for society as a whole, if more people managed to do that, mankind would not be better off. The fact that you have been able to complete your last goal, and that you are still contributing to society in a meaningful way, hopefully for many years to come is a much better outcome for everyone than if these self imposed goals had been reached. And the fact that you are content with your achievements so far a reflection of that.

You are absolutely succeeding at life, and you actually have overachieved those goals.

Some people your age are managers or CEOs but most people are not, and there's nothing wrong with that. If that is your goal, keep pushing towards it in spite of your issues, but you should also consider focusing less on career and more on just enjoying life.

Folks like you who are passionate and have an innate strong work ethic are worth their weight in gold, and need to be nurtured and protected from burnout by their managers and peers.

I've been on both sides of this equation. As a consultant with my own business I've done stints of 80+ hour work weeks, wrestled RSI and flirted with the edge of burnout. I've also managed teams with superstars sprinkled in who take on visceral ownership of a project, working to the goal not the clock and doing whatever needs to be done to achieve success. Some here will criticize that as an artifact of poor management / corporate culture, but in my experience different people have different priorities in life and some come with a very strong professional drive and crave the opportunity to outperform. There's an incredible multiplier effect that can raise the productivity of the whole team. But if they're underappreciated, taken for granted, or blindly loaded up with ever-increasing responsibilities as you described it's disastrous. I liken it to using a rare, hand-crafted sports car to haul manure then leaving it out in the rain to rust.

I've learned how crucial it is to stay keyed in to the pulse of your team. Communication is key (simple questions like "How's your workload?", and paying attention if someone who's usually cheerful seems agitated or irritable). At times I've had to force reports to take a few days off in between cycles to regenerate and make sure they stay fresh.

Have also spent some years volunteering in emergency services, and watching ordinary humans placed in high-pressure situations you gain an appreciation for mental health and not being cavalier about it.

I hope your activities playing with those new technologies you mentioned rekindles that spark of wonder which first led you into tech, and you land a career with an employer who knows how to take care of their people. Look forward not back, you've still got years of professional opportunity ahead of you if that's where your desires lay.

Economic pressure. Look at the housing market and the dystopian reality of our political processes, social divide, etc. -- TONS of people feel like they need to become free by means of economic accomplishments. This is even more so the case in countries without universal healthcare etc.

It's coming down to Maslow. If you work in tech, chances are you're smart enough to have and smell opportunities. People who don't have that opportunity because they are occupied with family or day-to-day-jobs can be content with less, just because there is no material dream to pursuit, or because they have other intrinsic goals (art, social connections [...]). The rat race we're forced into drives people mad, and we can't really blame the people. It takes a lot of mental progress to dig yourself out of that. Highly (!) intelligent people, think the top 1% of the chart, may be otherwise occupied, for example by the drive to contribute to scientific progress, but the top ~10-2% (I'm just throwing numbers here) feel trapped in material pressure and forced to "make it", where "it" isn't an actual target other than economic freedom.

This sort of thinking comes from place when you see that to achieve anything ahead in your life you need different skill set than you got and also most of time influence over people. I myself am victim of this thinking, it seems rational but it is demotivating.

What I found comforting in this thought chain is there may be limited possibilities that really can happen for me but can I find the best one of them, if I could that would still make me a Elon for so many people around me.

I think this kind of determinism is not only wrong, but damaging, should you choose to believe it, especially when it's used as a failure coping mechanism, because then it ultimately leads to forfeit, which removes any chance you may have had.

>He is successful. Therefore, it must be the case that he is able to bend The Laws Of The Universe. It is certainly not the case that Good Fortune and social effects were the major factors in his success.

Even if it were true, I'm not sure why one would want to believe that. At least fool yourself into believing either: (1) you're also special, and success can also come to you through your own "specialness" (2) no one is special, and success comes from tenacity and luck. What do you lose from believing either of these two things?

I believe that there are many Elon Musks in the world but due to various circumstances (born in the wrong place at the wrong time, bad luck, terrible parents) they never get the chance to shine.

Yeah, and I don't want it. Even he admitted it's not good being himself.

I don't think it's an appropriate or useful point of comaprison.

Regardless, it's perfectly possible to succeed at having a happy and fulfilling life without being financially independent. #2 can be achieved if one moves out of the more attractive areas where housing is often far cheaper than in the more hip areas. It may have consequences like an increased commute, or a lower salary, but again, having enough money to never having work isn't going to happen for most of us.

2. and 3. are totally independent from each other, both are made easier by No. 1 so.

Just a general advice, if I may dare, stop putting those things in order, relax and let some things in live just happen. And enjoy the journey as much as possible.

Obviously, that advice only works if you are living in a stable environment. If you don't priorities are going to be topped by, worst case, living to see the next day.

Also mid 30s is so young, you still have at least a decade to find a significant other and build a family if that's what you want.

It's closer to the truth that we're probably just not supposed to live this way.