Honestly convincing my dad is the hard part, he’s still pulling for me to be a tech wiz set for life with a developer job, but I haven’t written an original project since before the plague hit, and I haven’t had much real hope of beating the HR bot resume roulette wheel since before even that.
Now I’m wondering if I should try back for an IT cert in my management training or just lean into having been good enough at arithmetic and go for a cert in accounting to focus less on career ambitions and more on just having food on the table and putting my dream energy into something else outside of work hours.
I’m 30 but I haven’t given up yet. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.
I was going to build some kind of long lasting software that improves everyone’s lives.
I’ve built some genuinely impactful stuff. Some of my work has saved lives.
But that long term worthwhile project hasn’t materialized. Everything I’ve built is now either tossed out and forgotten, or has long overstayed it’s welcome.
I take it as a zen lesson about the ephemeral nature of all things. All we are is dust in the wind - including the stuff we make.
Now I mostly make whatever someone is willing to pay for, and just however well they’re willing to pay for.
I do make a few handy little things on the side, but I’m no longer burdened with my past delusions of grandeur.
10/10. Would give up the dream again.
On the film set, I look at each lighting setup as a mandala. We meticulously craft the look only to quickly brush it away in an instant.
That’s beautiful. A film set is a particularly good analogy - whatever we want to remember from it must be thoughtfully captured by skilled artists and technicians, before the set, itself, is gone.
I disagree. Humans are temporary. Physical things are temporary. But concepts are made until destroyed.
Nations built by people thousands of years ago still stand.
I"ve never met Abraham Lincoln. I don’t know anyone who has met Abraham Lincoln. Yet for his personal role in destroying the concept of slavery, he will always be remembered.
If your software can save lives, I guarantee the people whos lives you saved didn’t forget you.
You can still use your powers for good, and become a hero. Which is more important than being paid.
If your software can save lives, I guarantee the people whos lives you saved didn’t forget you.
I appreciate that thought. I don’t believe it. But I appreciate it.
A lot (if not all) of the lives my work saved don’t know anything about the part I played, or even that my software had anything to do with it.
I’m okay with that. I know that there’s families out there that are more whole today, thanks to my work. That’s more valuable to me than any footnote in a history book.
Someday those families will be just as dead as if I had done nothing. But I did do something. Millions of extra moments happened with family members who could have died.
Beautiful things that are eventually forgetten are still beautiful things. To me, that’s enough.
I’ve been on the other side of this, too.
I have no way to thank all the people whose medical engineering work extended my grandfather’s life by decades. I don’t know any of their names.
But, I hope they know I people like me revere their efforts as sacred. (I’ve made some effort on that front, but I know I’ll never thank everyone who deserves my thanks.)
I feel this. So many projects I have built for companies, to their specs, that they considered a success, only to have them simply be thrown away years later rather than improved. So many projects I have built for myself only to have them eclipsed by VC driven companies with larger feature sets and deeper pockets. Unfortunately I have yet to reach your level of zen.
My dream was to work as a game developer. This was nearly 20 years ago. I actually got an offer in that field at one point, and the salary was like $20k less than what I was already being paid. I was the main bread-winner in what was a (mostly) single-income household at that time, with my partner pursuing her PhD. Gave up the dream, and I’m glad I did based on what I later learned about that industry. If I went into the game industry I’d be making far less money and have far less free time to do the things I enjoy, like playing the games other people make.
Well, good news is unions are coming to the industry now, might be worth keeping an ear if you ever find yourself interested in the next few years!
Any job that people dream about will always pay a lot less than a comparable job with less perceived glamour.
The dream factor pulls people in, so you need less monetary incentive to meet your demand for workers.
I’m happy it finally ended. I’ve been able to move on to a completely different life that I actually like much better. Not everything works out and that’s ok. We all think we know what our “dream” is until it’s a nightmare.
Removed by mod
I think you’re supposed to tell us.
I’m still in the process of letting mine die (hope is a stubborn thing), but sometimes you need to accept your lot in life. Not everyone gets to do everything they want to.
now, I just don’t know what else to dream for instead. As it is, I’m just existing and waiting to die.
Wanted to be a heart surgeon when I was a kid. Gave up on that in high school when the anxiety hit and I started shaking any time I was even slightly stressed. Figured that wasn’t the career path for me.
I’m doing really well. Married, setting up to take over the family business with my partner. I still love heart-related medical stuff and read/watch things to scratch the itch.
Still anxious, still very shaky. I made the right choice.
Are you a cardiologist now? Anything you can say to scare nicotine addicts from smoking or vaping lol?
Smokers and vapers already know they facts. It’s going to kill them much earlier that they would otherwise die. Every second for a smoker is 4 seconds for everyone else, or something along those lines. I don’t believe that knowledge will help people break their habit and kick the addiction. You need some kind of actual life change, or personal wake up call to quit.
I’m manufacturing heart & lung support devices for a living. Look up the symptoms for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). It’s now the 4th most common cause of death worldwide (after cancer, strokes and coronary issues).
Basically, your lung dies a little bit over time, and loses its potential to remove CO2 from your blood. The biggest problem is the creeping progress. If you’re not running marathons regularly, you wouldn’t even notice if your lung capacity drops by 20%. 30, you’re a bit short of breath when climbing stairs. Most people would assume they are just unfit.
But once you hit 40% and notice something’s wrong, it’s almost too late. Mind you, that can take 10-15 years, and usually only starts in your 30s, so you’ll be 40-50 before noticeable symptoms begin.
But then the decline is increasing exponentially. You have trouble breathing - try sucking air through a wet tablecloth. That’s how strenuous breathing will be (no joke, try it!!!). Additionally, the amount of CO2 in your blood will change its pH value, making your blood slightly acidic. The acidity kills your kidneys and affects your liver, and also decreases the elasticity of your blood vessels, increasing the risk of organ damage even more, contributes to formation of brain aneurysms, and also increases the risk of strokes.
Think that’s all? Once your lung capacity is below 50%, you’ll need mechanical ventilation - permanently. So they’ll cut a hole into your airways and install one of those nifty adapters to hook you up to an oxygen bottle. Kinky, right? Comes with the downside of not being able to speak. And you’ll have to drag 30lbs of equipment behind you wherever you go… On top of being in a weakened state that hardly permits you to carry 10lbs.
Consequently, you’ll spend 95% of your remaining time on earth in bed, getting sores everywhere, needing help to take a shit for the rest of your life, all the while you can’t communicate properly, feel like being continuously choked, and hurting all over.
Fun times ahead? Smoking/vaping is the leading cause of COPD. You probably just didn’t hear about it because it’s not an imminent killer. Cancer or stroke have better PR.
Oh, and there’s no cure. You can’t restore dead tissue. With lots of luck and care you can stop the progress where you’re at. But you’ll never, ever, recover a single percent of lung capacity unless you get a transplant (and elderly smokers usually don’t make the cut…). And even if you did, transplant recipients often have a shortened lifespan due to complications resulting from the immunosuppressive medicine they have to take for the rest of their lives.
Good luck.
I do not have the knowledge to doubt your points here, but there are countless people who smoke and do not end up on artificial breathing apparatus in their later years.
I do not like being around smokers and understand it is not good for you, but your text here sounds very extreme.
Not everyone who smokes gets COPD. Just like not everyone gets lung cancer.
It’s just that you don’t know beforehand if you’ll end up as one of the lucky ones totally unaffected, so why gamble with your life?
Friends of my parents, both smokers, had this. One died last year. Made it to 87 but only because he was rich. Rough last few years. His wife is doing better but still shaky.
mf overqualified
So then get into robotic surgery. It takes all of the shakes out.
If that is the only reason you gave up then I’d say you fucked up.
I got convinced to “be realistic” and accept a shitty life because achieving greatness is impossible. I regret it every day, being in an environment I don’t belong to, faking it because I need to survive somehow. The worst thing is once you stop “surfing the wave” (of your own thing whatever it is) it’s almost impossible to recover and get back on the track.
I never found “the dream” qnd honestly
I dont know if i regret that more
I wanted to be a big shot IT guy with my own company. Started doing a bunch of plastic surgeon offices and hanging out with celebrities. I hated driving to the city at 6am and staying till 11pm, didn’t really enjoy the work, and just ended up in the socialite party crowd.
I left when the question “Do you want to go to the bathroom?” was ambiguous beteeen cocaine or a sexual advance. Neither of which ever appealed to me.
I disconnected from the field which included cutting orthodontal work half way through that I had exchanged for my expertise.
Drank heavily and even alone for a few months in the comedown and no longer drink at all.
Bouncers in the city will remember your name and let you into just about any club when they see you with a big name they want to get back. I remember walking into one place and it filled with Victoria’s Secret models out of nowhere. Got to hang with some playboy photographers and handle some hip-hop star interviews.
Some of the people I couldn’t figure out how they made their money ended up being nothing but glorified drug dealers, but their IT and SEO was top notch.
Don’t regret it, but don’t wish for it back.
My dream was to live in a log cabin in the wilderness somewhere in Canada.
I’ve then spent one year living that lifestyle, as a hunting and hiking guide in Northern BC.
After that I gave up that dream, or rather I realized all the downsides of it in the real world.Now I work as an IT sysadmin in Southern Germany, and am pretty happy with my life.
I might be you in reverse.
Your childhood dream was to work as an IT Sysadmin in Southern Germany?
I’m not getting a Nobel. It’s mostly a political prize.
I’m not getting a second house in the Northern Hemisphere, somewhere around the Alps, so I’d get two autumns + winters per year. It sounds fancy but eventually it would become a chore.
I’m not marrying and having children. I simply don’t see the point any more; I don’t even care about romantic relationships any more.
I’m not going to make “the final” reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European, the one that will solve all issues with the current ones. It’s fun to do some “backyard science” here and there, but other people are better skilled at this than I am.
I wanted to be a filmmaker but was forced to choose a different path when my grandfather (who had set up a small college fund for me) refused to pay for school unless I chose something more practical. I caved and majored in journalism (my mom was a photojournalist before I was born) but was so heartbroken I dropped out in my first year. I tried a second time to go to school but I couldn’t stay engaged after learning the thing I had been working towards since middle school was no longer an option.
I ended up going to work in tech instead. In my late 20’s I thought I would figure out making short films on my own wrote a script, bought some gear, but when I looked at how bad I was at social media and how much I wanted someone to see my work, I thought the odds were against it.
A few years ago some unrelated mental health issues made it impossible for me to work and I am writing a script for an audio drama which is hopefully cheaper to produce and a zine about Utopia while I recover.
Bailing on my dream wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Most of my problems and regrets are related to the undiagnosed and untreated mental illness that destroyed my already struggling career a few years ago. Not making the elder millennial version of Point Break sucks, but maybe if the audio drama works I can parley that success into a streaming series (Archive 81 style).
Can’t give up the dream if you never had one.
You can share my dream of 3 cat girl girlfriends (they love you).
