Hey man, right there with you. This was going to be a productive day in a variety of ways and instead I watched baseball and read a hundred pages of Robert Heinlein. I'm in a weird headspace lately. If I ever had any ambition, it's gone. I need a future, right? Because I don't care about getting one... Anyway I think this deserves more badges than the axe-throwing video, although that was cool.
While I feel like I'm in a similar place to both you and BE, I'm still very ambitious and have a ton of goals and dreams to achieve. The funny thing is they do nothing to motivate me. I know that I have all these things to do to achieve X, X being a glorious and rewarding and happy and proud place to be but I find myself doing everything else but the steps required to get there.
I sympathize, but with a word of caution -- the older you get, and I'm far from old, the less likely it is that reality will align with your goals. I realized this almost too late (perhaps too late) to do many things that I now see I would have loved to do. This happens in some degree to, I'm convinced, almost everyone. Many don't get anywhere near as close as I have to certain goals, and I remind myself of that whenever self-pity is tempting. Even knowing that, it's so hard to follow through on certain courses of action. The human mind is such a strange, ill-programmed thing. By virtue of our genes, it wants us wholeheartedly to be something we are no longer. That clash between instinct and understanding is at the center of the human condition. Sometimes I wish I was a cheetah or an antelope. Theirs is a simple if limited existence and future. Then I remember that I want to die on Mars.
Amen to this. Maybe you're the same way, maybe you're not, but I am constantly at odds with myself on opinions, courses of actions, what I want from life and myself. It's a struggle to define that. I'd say reading Heinlein is still productive, it's not like you were sitting around doing absolutely nothing. I care about getting a future, but the problem is finding something I want to do for 8 hours a day 5 days a week. That's terrifying, isn't it? Not sure if you've encountered this, but I've met so many people who just work their job for the paycheck and hate getting up for work in the morning. That seems like a terrible existence. Cards win tonight?That clash between instinct and understanding is at the center of the human condition.
Cards won today. The saving grace of my September. Incredible team. There's nothing I want to do 40 hours a week. There shouldn't be anything anyone wants to do 40 hours a week. That's the damn problem. Our society lacks adequate alternatives.
It must be nice to have a team that doesn't continuously disappoint. The Jeter retirement train has been a travesty. I will wholeheartedly agree with _refugee_ on sleep, but that's about the only thing worth doing 40 hours or more a week.
I do think that many progressive companies are starting to recognize this and are giving more "flexible" work environments, which isn't a solution but it's nowhere near as horrible as it could be. I consider that my father worked on a lathe 50 hours a week when I was growing up and thank my lucky stars that he never allowed me to follow in his footsteps. -I tried.There's nothing I want to do 40 hours a week. There shouldn't be anything anyone wants to do 40 hours a week.
-The contrarian in me sat here trying to think of something to combat that statement with. You know, music, playing with my kids etc. but the truth is, I would not want to do anything that much. All things in moderation, even those things that bring us joy.
Uh, duh guys, it's sleep. When I figured out that even on a ROUGH week of sleep I generally put about 40 hours in I decided that, if I have to be defined by something I do 40 hours/week for the rest of my life, I'm going with "sleeper."here's nothing I want to do 40 hours a week. There shouldn't be anything anyone wants to do 40 hours a week.
-The contrarian in me sat here trying to think of something to combat that statement with.
I certainly don't want to sleep 40 hours a week and if I could healthily get away with it I would sleep much less. I like not being dead for a third of my life.
Yeah, I also enjoy breathing at least 40 hours a week but just sort of thought that answer was assumed as well...
Lathes are very cool, I used to get to use one (or something similar) in shop class -- a maximum of five hours a week. Which was just about how I liked it. I'm writing my senior thesis on issues pertaining to this at the moment (or ha! should have been but I read sci fi all day). The problem is that the flexibility often comes within the framework of a tacit worship of that 40 number -- which is entirely arbitrary, of course -- rather than a reverence for productivity, which is the only thing that matters. The phrase my research revolves around is "the fetish of full employment" which is the best sentence I've ever read within the context of economics. Ideas like that make our society real scary to be "entering" at 21-22. I dig this thread. EDIT: I'd be surprised if anyone on hubski can think of something they honestly would like to do 40 hours a week, if they had utter free choice. I'm sure there are some outliers, but I can't think of anything personally. I even get tired of thinking sometimes.I do think that many progressive companies are starting to recognize this and are giving more "flexible" work environments, which isn't a solution but it's nowhere near as horrible as it could be.
I suppose it's assumed that we work 40 plus hours a week remotely, but nobody polices this. We have tangible goals and we either reach them, or we don't. If you don't, you don't make $. Some people can likely reach these goals in 25 hour weeks, others may take 50+. It has to do with proficiency, ability and in many cases geography. I like working towards a goal and not a time clock. Makes WAY more sense.
Oh god why. I want to die in fresh air and, I don't know, in the presence of a tree or something.Then I remember that I want to die on Mars.
For only one generation in human history will it be truly novel to come into the universe on one celestial body and leave it on another. If we're lucky, it will be ours. Little else compares, in my opinion.