Comment by jesuscript | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jesuscript | Hacker News Reader

You’ll just have to get over it and do the best you can. HN cannot keep giving posts like this soft advice, especially when so many of you are no where in the realm of teenage years anymore. Even if you were in your early 20s, I’d advise you to not sit around and analyze “the feels”. Everyone’s gotta grow up at some point.

Do your best to be a bit more resolute. Everyone is anxious in life about something.

I can tell you for a fact there is someone your age or younger with a family and mortgage and a career change to think about. There’s probably someone your exact age whose entire career got derailed for any number of factors, wondering if they’ll get another go at it. But here you are wondering if your brain will stop working in a few years, or if you will ever get to write a movie.

You can write your movie right now. It’ll suck, but so what? Write another one. You’ll bomb all your upcoming interviews. Go to more.

From the immortal bard Arnold Schwarzenegger:

“Stop whining”.

> I can tell you for a fact there is someone your age or younger with a family and mortgage and a career change to think about. There’s probably someone your exact age whose entire career got derailed for any number of factors, wondering if they’ll get another go at it. But here you are wondering if your brain will stop working in a few years, or if you will ever get to write a movie.

Feels a bit counter-intuitive to tell people "your feelings are invalid because others have it worse".

It’s not invalid. That particular counter argument you reused has been overused. We live in a relative world. Sometimes you do have to realize your perspective is off when you over internalize and take a narrow view of just your own predicament.

When you over emphasize your own situation without considering what the average situation is like, you exit reality based thinking and enter fantasy world. In fantasy world you operate with fantasy expectations, and since it is a fantastical expectation, when you don’t achieve it in the real world you enter misery.

One must stay grounded, and finding just where the ground is from the air requires you to look beyond your own cockpit. Check the measurements, find the horizon line, look for buildings and yes, other people on the ground.

I can certainly agree that OP shouldn't "waste" time pondering on those feelings because they're unlikely to go away. I've changed career in my late 30s as well and getting a late (re)start in life is very daunting and any lengthy dwelling takes a real toll on your mental health.

Though a bit in the face, this comment has made me appreciate all the things I have in this moment. Good advice, will take a deep breath and will plough through.

I’m only saying it like this because I’ve been through this neurotic phase. It’s a soul leech. At one point I overthought so much that I literally laid in bed in fear for days. It took awhile to snap out of it and realize what a pointless exercise it is. I literally had to tell the voice in my head “shut the living fuck up”.

That voice in my head ran me for many years and one of the ways of turning it off is to literally press the off button on it.

You can certainly find out why that voice exists, it’s a combination of internal and external factors. Regardless, it doesn’t deserve as much time as most of us give it. We all try to rehabilitate that voice, but what we all end up learning is that it’s a one dimensional character in your head. It was never meant to be “saved” (my argument against trying to use therapy to change that voice). It’s best to not give the voice a voice.

So when I’m telling you to stop whining, it’s me talking to that voice you have in your head. You didn’t write this post, that voice did. And I don’t respect that voice in me, or in anyone else and have no problem talking down to it.

I mean, that’s the way it treats you right? That’s the way it treated me. So treat it the same.

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