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Comment by ventana | Hacker News Reader

Just nitpicking on the "quarter of my life" point: being in my forties, I spent 3 of the 4 quarters of my life (so far) in 3 very different places in the world. The 4th quarter is a rounding error of those three. I don't think the fact of spending a quarter of one's life in one place actually says anything other than the fact that this place is livable enough.

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Can you elaborate? I don't quite grasp what you mean. Do you mean that the first three quarters of your life were more formative/adventurous and the last quarter was more driven by inertia and routine? I can relate if so, just not sure if that's what you mean.

In my forty something years of life so far, a quarter is a little more than 10 years. I lived the first quarter + ε in one place during my childhood, then moved to a different city for the college and lived there for another quarter + ε, and I'm spending a quarter + ε in a completely different country. The sum of these three ε cover the remaining quarter.

The fact that I spent a quarter of my life in three different places does not mean I'm forced to stay in any of these places for the rest of my life. I might as well move with my family and live in another place for some extended period of time.

Just say thirds.

Are they different ε or the same?

TBH, if using quarter here is just shorthand for "a decade", so it might be easier just to say plainly "I spent over a decade in each of A, B and C".

Sure, I was just nitpicking on the phrase of the original comment that apparently put some extra weight on the fact that it was a quarter of life.

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