The thread for flipping shits (and tables)

I can say some people are perfectly happy to live to work, and some people are perfectly happy to work to live. Of course, not everyone is happy. There is a great deal to be said for sticking with an unpleasant state of affairs for a higher cause, yes, but evaluating whether it costs more to stay or to go can be very tough: We pay a price for anything we do, but we also pay a price for anything we don’t do.

Either way, making these kinds of calls for yourself is a big part of what maturity—of having your act together—is. It’s hard not knowing what you’re about, and it’s hard knowing what you’re about but getting stopped every step of the way.

I’ve been pondering (and reading up) on such things quite a bit over the past few years myself because I’ve been stuck in my personal hell. In material terms it would seem to many people that it’s a very nice situation, with a broad knowledge of things and a degree in a hot field, but that’s a part and parcel of the problem. It is costing me very little to stay, but it is also profiting me nothing, and knowing that the true cost is anything else I could have been doing, it’s like I’ve been paying for it with my soul. But ah, this is not about me and my long history of (in retrospect) attention-seeking behavior (that manifested in ways few people would interpret as such).

Perhaps to spin this more reassuringly: lots of people don’t have this figured out, neither on a practical level nor on a rational one. If they do, it’s usually not at a young age; Hunter S. Thompson seems to be the notable exception.

Also one of the countless things I wish I knew 10–15 years ago, but was never told (many people seem to need the opposite lesson at those ages anyhow, plus who knows whether I’d act on it?): if you are young, or just really unestablished and have nothing, it is in some ways safer to take more risks if the rewards are worth it; hitting rock bottom and bouncing back is no big deal at that stage. This is a door less open to people with mouths to feed, less health, (hopefully) higher pay commensurate with more experience and knowledge, and/or retirement savings to lose, and people are far less sympathetic—fair or not, and I’d say not—if you’re taking the risks at age 3x deemed more of a 2x-year-old’s game just because you weren’t back then.

Hope that helps, but then again I’m still nobody and also not who I thought I was in the first place so what do I really know eh.