How I Fired myself: about loss, mistakes and getting your shit together

I'm happy for you. When you take something on like this it is a great asset to have someone for emotional support. After your girlfriend dropped the bomb this must have been harder to come by, which could explain why you were fooling around trying to fill a void.

You can still surround yourself with smart people while freelancing. It is just a little harder to do. You also appear to be scarred by the experience which is why you never want to do it again. Good luck with the new job.

I wrote a post titled "How I Fired Myself" a month ago. It really resonated with the community, and I'm glad to see someone else take up the mantle. I think it's healthy to air-out these kind of dark moments. You have my sympathies for what happened, and I'm excited that things are looking up.

Original post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5292591

For me the reverse happened, back in 2009ish, lose the job then lose the girlfriend because you're not as spendy as before. I dodged a bullet on that one. In hindsight it was the best thing to happen to me. But while I was going through it, it was like the world was ending.

Now that I'm older and wiser, I've got my shit together, I don't see employment or love/girlfriends as a source of validation that you belong here and are appreciated.

When things get rough, I envision myself as a tiny bud on the tip of a branch on a tree. When life is created, it's not new, it's just a new branch and a new sprout, and when life ends, it's just the older buds making way for the new ones.

So love, and employment is a process by which the tree sustains itself. But the tree represents the entire DNA meta organism found on earth, from the bacteria, through the beetles, on up to us. Death and life are illusions, employment is simply a process, like photosynthesis, to expand the size of the tree. The reason I think this way:

1. Reproduction, having love, girlfriends, wives and kids is not necessary. The other branches of "you" will create plenty.

2. Having a good job, vs a sucky one, is in the grand scheme of things not all that important. You are one bud on a gigantic tree. You think if you can make the next huge thing, then you'll be more important. Not really, it's the cooperation between all the units that cause increases in the sentience of the whole.

The meaning of life is to expand the growth and prosperity of the tree (all dna based life), and eventually transcend biology and get off this rock so we can fill the universe with our proud waves. You either contribute a macroscopic amount to that goal, or take away from it. Look at yourself from the edge of our galaxy and tell me again how your situation warrants an emotional blog post.