Excuses

I don't understand the deep amount of insight I'll gain from a rant by a man doing his best to berate his "friend" over failing at certain things in life and talking about how he deserved to get kicked out in a manner that seems to be oddly reminiscent of mean girls?

This isn't just limited to this post, but it is scattered through every thread I read these days. They tend to talk about stuff like harems and 4 out of 10 replies are just mean... There's no other word for it. It's almost as if most of the commenters these days don't have any insightful things to say, so they've turned commenting into a game of pulling other people down and proving them wrong instead of trying to add to a conversation and reaching an understanding. (that always used to happen to some extent, but now it's there in almost every thread I read and it's disturbing)

I miss the real HN. :-(

What I noticed was that in all cases, there was a fear of trying and failing underlying my inaction. I was worried that if I played out and didn't live up to professional standards I would develop a bad reputation quickly. I was worried that I would produce a service that some people would start relying on but that wouldn't produce enough revenue to justify maintaining it. It was a lot easier to tell myself that I would be successful when I put the effort in than to actually test that hypothesis.

So I made a conscious decision to err on the side of action in all things. I chose to wake up at 8:00 every day even though I love being able to sleep in; it puts me into a working state of mind. I chose to install LeechBlock in Firefox, which will make it so I can't even post in this thread by the time you're reading this. Between 9 and 5 every day, I'm doing only things that advance me towards my goals. (And eating.) And I refuse to allow myself excuses. If I imagined a friend asking me why I haven't done something that is an essential step in my process and I would feel embarrassed by the answer, I do it ASAP.

I've been at this a week now. I've already accomplished several things I ought to have done months ago. Hopefully I'm building habits that I can maintain indefinitely.

Great line - talk is cheap, but it takes years to become an "overnight success". You have to want it badly enough.

Incidentally, there are good excuses and bad excuses. Bad excuses are essentially lies. A good excuse, or really, an excuse, excuses. If one has an excuse, one is excused and rightfully escapes criticism or blame.

For the record, two of us travelled on a budget of less than $4,000 a month. Actual net costs were about $2,700[1] a month, and this is over 4 years, so not a short term number. This included the USA and Europe which are not exactly cheap.

If you've got some websites or apps making $2k a month, you can travel the world. And you can just go to nicer countries as your income goes up. Be aware, though that it is distracting to travel full time.

IF you're young, there's no reason not to- you can start an internet startup while on the road, and if you fail, you'll at least have one hell of an adventure. I can tell you this-- being able to tell a interviewer about a multi-month trip traveling is like catnip on job interviews. Everyone wants to do it, and you doing it makes you stand out compared to other candidates.

And if you're at all successful, you won't ever need that job interview. You don't have to come home. (or you may find "home" is somewhere else.)

Damn, do I need to start a blog.

[1] This is spread over time, so, 6 months living in the UK is a lot cheaper each month than the one month where we flew across the Atlantic. We budget an expensive flight every 6 months or so, and take local or cheap transportation in-between.