With the unmitigated disaster of 2020, I’m “probably not ok,” but I am not in any danger to myself or others. Quite the opposite - I’m optimistic that things are moving in the right direction. I mean, it can’t get worse:
- Shutdown my consulting Business in February because I didn’t feel comfortable with being around new people constantly with a t-cell deficient immune system.
- My boyfriend abruptly stopped his antidepressant and quietly completed suicide in his apartment alone. No indication anything was off. It’s been tough to manage such a loss alone during a pandemic where social distancing is important.
- I am left with his orange tabby cat; and with the unrelenting frustration in trying to reason with people who never lost their lover to suicide, with multiple “it’s not your fault” conversations. I’m conflicted in that these people are the ones who are standing with me, but I can’t hear this logic again.
- Just a few days ago, six months later, I acknowledged what would’ve been his 33rd birthday and also our anniversary. I couldn’t find anything to actually celebrate or anyone to celebrate it with because of COVID. Still waiting for a good time to even have a proper memorial.
- My roommate couple friends moved back home to the Midwest. As the master tenant, I’m responsible for the difference in rent, nobody is moving to SF really; but may have a roommate come October.
- My best friend in San Francisco died of cancer late March.
- We were supposed to have dinner the last week of February,
- and all of us were supposed to celebrate my April birthday together at a Honey Dijon show;
- and go to the Maceo Plex day party on Treasure Island in May. Yep, as both of them are gone and both of those events will never happen, that calendar event was a rough thing to forget to cancel.
On the bright side, I had time to crash course my way into sharpening my CS skills for flavor of the week programming languages, turned half my garage into a wood shop; created an IoT paradise at home or “who needs an Alexa when Jenkins will do,” been building the tabby a “catio” so he’ll get some outside time, started getting into the fun world of circuit board reworking out of a BIOS Flashing disaster, and enjoying the work of cooking all my meals.
I’m not too stressed about work. I have decided I’m not going back into the self employment hustle; and I’m patient enough to wait for the right next opportunity. Low expectations yield pleasant surprises.
I’m so sorry. I’ve known two people who’ve committed suicide, but neither anywhere near as close as this. I wish you solace in whatever form you find it and I’m sorry that you’re having to navigate this in a world largely without hugs.
Wow, so sorry to hear about all your losses. That sounds horrendous to go through -- congratulations, at least, on making it through, and finding some good things to do!
Sad, indeed, that we have no training on how to deal with grief in general, and how to help people go through it, specifically.
I’m not sure what to say as I haven’t experienced such tragic loss in a short time. If you’re looking for someone to talk to, I’d be more than happy to chat and talk about all sorts of random things.
Other than that, please hang in there, when you’re at the lowest, it only gets better. As you said, low expectations yield pleasant surprises.
Really sorry about the people you lost, that really sucks.
Also gutted that you missed Maceo Plex and Honey Dijon - I've had plans to see Bicep and a bunch of others cancelled/moved, it's understandable why but still so frustrating! Check out Maceo if you ever get the chance again post-COVID, he's really good live.
Single dad - with two boys who delight and terrorise in equal measure. Working in an industry in constant flux, trying to make the right moves and play to my skills. Knowing all along that I am not the best at what I do by a long mile. I've had two years that have often felt horrendous, and that's putting it lightly. I am approaching 40, and have taken a turn for the worse in terms of lock down weight...
Weirdly corona has brought together my family, has made me see I am really lucky to have the job I have and made me desperate to work harder at social relationships.
So that's my story, and I am here for anyone who might benefit from a similar perspective :)
Also single dad with 2 young kids in the UK. Got divorced last year, so this year has been a challenge for the same reasons you mentioned! Grateful to have work and spend lots of time with the kids although they are back at school now. I'm 44 so my skills are even more out of date!
The first year and a half is the worse for separation with children, at least for me. Trying to be involved in the same capacity, whilst maintaining a job and rebuilding your own life is a lot of work. I was constantly exhausted, often forgetting to eat and drink and barely functioning. There were some friends and family that really came through for me during those first 18 months.
In terms of skills, like I say you just have to work with what you have. Don't imagine you have to be the best at something, but be solid. Let your experience make you dependable and steady - focus on consistency and being the 'calm one'. That's really come through for me in recent years.
Thanks for the reply. I've been looking after the kids 3 days a week plus half of weekends and holidays for 2 years now. Sleep was a problem for a bit but the kids are 5 and 6 now and sleep well. I didn't eat much last year and exercised a lot so was in great shape, but now I'm happier this year I'm eating and drinking more!
Work is ok. I realise it's a means to an end supporting the family and do what I need to do and try to be kind to people around me. I owe a few close friends for helping me be where I'm at now.
Sounds like a similar deal. I was 'allowed' to take the boys for my first holiday with them in years the other week and it was complete bliss. Blackpool beach has never felt so special...
One thing I've been meaning to ask someone in the same position - how do your friends with kids treat you now? Especially those that knew you with your ex? I often feel like they're almost jealous of my position of getting a few days 'to yourself'. It's hard that I feel they're less likely to hear me, or relate... Does that happen with you?
I'm on Twitter with the same name so feel free to reach out. Good to keep a single dad's club going.
We have a 50% kind of deal so holidays aren't a major problem although I was told not to take the children overseas. Not a problem this year! I've enjoyed a week in Wales this year and a week in Scotland last year. Can be a bit awkward just with the 3 of us as their mum has a bigger extended family but we still enjoyed ourselves.
I get that a bit. I'm often the only dad in the playground with a sea of mums and a few have said they'd love to have time to themselves. It's important, I think that's why I'm single but I'm not sure. I think it's just important to relate to people equally on a gut level and be kind when you can. It would be nice to have sympathy sometimes but it doesn't really help that much. Things are good right now, but they could easily be better or worse!
Unfortunately I'm not on Twitter but good luck with your journey. Good to talk.
I think it's definitely a wisdom/experience/age thing. I know now that my ability to not run at 60 miles an hour as soon as something turns or a new opportunity arrises is as much a blessing as a curse.
Same things, though no kids. Super lucky to be remote and working a decent job, and reconnecting with a lot of family and friends via text/skype, but also trying to hold on in a rocky industry and not sure of the next steps.
It's a tough existence on your own right now, but in other ways it's easier because everyone is in the same boat. We are more remote, but also more understanding that connecting with people means so much to us...
Digression that might be interesting for the HN crowd: The healthcheck for Apache ZooKeeper is simply sending it `ruok` and receiving `imok` if it's healthy:
Something I am struggling with recently is less am I ok, but more do we as humans deserve to be ok? When I look at the freeways full of cars, streets lined with overflowing garbage cans, homeless encampments, grocery stores with row after row of cheap meat under fluorescent light. Am I supposed to feel ok? It many times feels as though we are a virus decimating our host environment.
The constant flood of bad news combined with an inability to be away from the computer ( work), the inability to go outside (California fires) and the inability to go to a different indoor location (coronavirus) has maybe leant power to this very cynical viewpoint.
I guess we do not have the power, we are not responsible for the way the world is, and we do not have to bear the guilt for it.
I guess the one thing that holds me back from acting more selflessly than I do is that we don't appreciate the efforts of goodwill of others, and we reward selfishness.
I pay 45% of my income in taxes? The message is "pay your fair share". Pick up a piece of trash and put it in the garbage can? More litter will replace it when you walk by it the next time. Work extra hard to make sure a project is completed? "You're a great team player."
Contrast that with what happens when you act selfishly.
Negotiate salary aggressively? Receive a 20 - 50% pay bump. Buy cheap meat instead of humanely raised or organic? Save hundreds on your monthly grocery bills. Get Starbucks every day? No one directly minds about the waste you created.
These is one of the biggest cultural issues we should address imo. And we're already seeing the negative humanitarian impacts of selfishness with respect to the Covid epidemic. If the virus required greater awareness, empathy and care then we would have been wiped out.
This comment is referring to American culture, if it wasn't evident already
My favorite example of this comes from my ~10 years working at grocery stores before I made it into the tech industry. An older lady would come in and just clean us out of our cheap ground beef. This was at trader joe's, we sold 1 pound plastic wrapped cubes for $2.99. She would come in and buy ~20 every week. I finally asked her what she was doing with all this ground beef and she explained how it was for her two big dogs and laughed about how spoiled they were.
She was totally oblivious about her actions and their implications, completely content with her lifestyle, probably even felt good about how healthy her dogs were. Viewed through a different lens she is abhorrent, single-handedly undoing the work of 20 vegetarians all because her dogs are too good for regular dog food.
I don't want this to sound like an attack but what's the issue? Heaven forbid someone feeds their pets the food they're supposed to eat instead of some hyper-processed and unregulated sawdust pellets.
Well if you assume that beef is bad and cheap beef is especially terrible for both the environment and the cattle themselves then it isn't a huge stretch to see why someone pouring 20X the amount a human would eat into 2 dogs every week could be viewed as immoral.
It's like more people driving hybrid/electric cars cause gas prices to go down, in response to this other people can now buy bigger gas guzzling cars. Economics rewards immoral behavior.
Governments spend a lot of money on agricultural subventions, especially on meat and milk production. So from the perspective how the taxpayer money is spent, these specific pets probably got more financial support than several poor families combined.
Of course, this is mostly a problem of the system being designed so that it is trivial to abuse it. But currently, the system is what it is, and the lady's behavior is what it is.
I am not an expert, but the dog food cookbook I have cooked from didn’t prescribe 100% meat, it had you combine meat, grains, vegetables, and oils (and eggs? I can’t remember).
And there are more sustainable meats than beef which are just as healthy for dogs.
Also using parts of the animal other than the prime cuts is good for an overall more sustainable plan. (And probably good for the health of the animal too)
There was a Friends episode years ago where Pheobe basically argued that acting selflessly was a selfish act because people only did it to feel better about themselves.
I usually buy humanely raised chicken these days (the more expensive of the two they have in my supermarket), and notice that it tastes better. So from that point of view being selfish in wanting the tastiest chicken is a better option than the other.
Negotiate a higher salary and you might move up a tax band, paying more in taxes, which is generally for the greater good. If you really want to do good in the world, being rich is going to be one of the easiest ways to manage it. Bill Gates will be my probably controversial evidence of that.
Maybe it's just a matter of perspective. Doing things to be selfless or altruistic has nothing to do with external validation, reward, or appreciation, in my experience of it. Appreciation and reward have little effect because people generally appreciate the wrong things so why care? (e.g. just look at the ridiculous low brow unenlightened worship in pop culture). Saying "I make a good amount of money" makes people get all excited and happy for you, but doesnt me feel much at all, actually dwelling on it makes me feel hollow. Contrast to "I might be leaving the world a little bit better than it was when I found it" and that fills me right up, and it's fine if people roll their eyes, don't get it, or don't care.
Fewer and fewer people value sharing and selflessness and teach it to their kids, and more and more are teaching that the world is a giant capitalist slugfest and you need to take what you can. When I was a kid my parents (like a lot of us) taught me to share and play fair and give others their turns. Not so much of this is in vogue anymore.
I'll never forget once taking my kid to the park before corona and observing this directly. A little kid (4 or 5 or so) was crying to his mom within earshot. He was upset that he got off the swingset and then some other kid got on it. This could have been a teachable moment, but instead the mom said something to the effect of "You have to stay on it and keep it for yourself! Next time you want to take a break, call me over and I'll sit on the swing until you're ready to play on it again."
This whole attitude is everywhere now. You see it in politics, you see it at work, you see it in the grocery store.
You have to find your own internal motivation. Ultimately, it does not matter who you are. Even if you think of yourself as a good person, it is not worth anything unless you let your actions define you. It is up to you to decide if you want to be that selfish person, with all the benefits you mention that come with that. Or you can decide to do what you know is right and really be the person you want to be. Think "do I really want to be the person that..." before you act.
Of course we deserve to be OK. Every species* deserves to be OK and every species fights to be OK. We have a lot of work to do to make sure we don't ruin our "host," but the fact that we are aware of the problem already--to me--says a lot about our desire to give up some comforts for a greater good. I think as a species we're always just doing the best we think we (collectively) can do at any given time. Some individuals will do better than others, but I think on average we are improving.
Please don't take this is as contrarian trolling, but as a catalyst for reflection: what makes that statement true? What is the foundation for us deserving to be OK?
What's the foundation for us not deserving to be OK? Equally not trolling. I frankly find the notion of deserving in this case to have very little meaning. Life I don't think has these moral absolutes, can you make it okay for yourself? If so then congrats you get to be okay regardless of somebody's subjective thought on the matter.
From an evolutionary perspective, you are technically right. We've evolved to reproduce and to support traits that aid in reproduction. From that perspective, it doesn't matter if we as individuals are okay or not.
However, we evolved from social, tribal apes. As an individual, I want to optimize my own happiness and contentness because it feels good. Humans have mirror neurons that cause me to feel the emotions I see in others. Because of that, I have an incentive not only to fight for my own comfort and happiness, but the happiness of others.
What's interesting is that our mirror neurons can extend past humans. I have the capacity to feel for other animals. That gives me an incentive to either care for their happiness or never think of them whatsoever.
There doesn't have to be a 'logical' basis for values. You can just declare them, and go from there, and as long as you don't end up with contradictions you're fine. If you do get to contradictions, then work it out there, whatever.
I would just leave morality out of it. The universe exists, with or without us, just as Earth has and will. All you can do is live your life in the world you find yourself in and make the most of it before you, and the rest of us, are eventually gone.
For me that means living my life, doing what I can to be kind and make others happy because that's what I enjoy doing. Nothing I do will really matter though, in the long run. But that's OK. Why does it have to matter?
there's a lot of bad in the world, but also keep in mind the Steven Pinker argument that we have progressed a lot compared to human history as well.
as for dealing with it - personally i embrace the idea of "keep your circle of concern as small as possible to your circle of influence". practically, it works out to "stop giving a crap" which i know is not responsible en masse. i guess the only thing to do if you feel like you must do something in your lifetime is to run for office.
It sounds like you’re making excuses for the world as it is. The OP is right though.
These aren’t things we have to live with just because Steven Pinker said the world is better off now than before... We are in control of our environment to a certain extent and have the capability of transforming it into something other than an isle of cheap meats under florescent lighting. We are capable of ending systemic violence and homelessness, since they are things we collectively allow to exist each day. We can get rid of cars and build more beautiful cities!
Well, we're trying, aren't we? Do we give up because we aren't perfect yet and instead start trying to end the species? I'm not sure the objective of fatalist arguments.
"We don't deserve to be ok" ?like, it's nearly impossible to get anything done when not ok (aka depressed). Fatalism will hurt efforts, not help, based on personal experience.
Yes, but most of those problems have other, less wasteful solutions. We don’t have to live sprawled out far away from our workplaces, and we don’t each and every one need to move our own 1500 kg vehicle to get somewhere in urban areas.
The notion of vehicles ro travel distances is not the problem. Engineering said vehicles as mechanically inefficient depreciating status symbols is the problem.
It certainly is. Even if the cars were cheap and electrical, they would still be noisy (road noise), dangerous (mostly to pedestrians and bicyclists) and use up ridiculous amount of real estate for streets and parking that should be used for better things.
Even though it might be true that we have progressed a lot, our impact has increased exponentially, to the point where 20 million completely irresponsible humans don't have anywhere near the potentially catastrophic effect of 7 billion relatively enlightened humans (with nukes & fossil fuels).
I do feel we might 'just make it' if we can organize culturally as well as technologically, but it looks like it's going to be a nailbiter.
I certainly don't interpret "keep your circle of concern as small as possible to your circle of influence" as "stop giving a crap". I actually means that you for example should decrease the amount of meat you eat and try to find other means of transportation than car if possible.
Each and everyone of us influence the environment in many ways. And even if your influence is small, the total is the sum of all our contributions. If everyone of us just think "it doesn't matter what I do", then we are truly screwed. If most of us instead think "I'm at least doing my part", then we have come a long way already.
> I certainly don't interpret "keep your circle of concern as small as possible to your circle of influence" as "stop giving a crap". I actually means that you for example should decrease the amount of meat you eat and try to find other means of transportation than car if possible.
Exactly—before trying to solve the world's problems (and getting frustrated because you can't), try to solve the problems closer to home (and get motivated because, if you keep your focus small enough, you can).
I don't agree with Pinker. World is better if only world=only humans. Only a selfish species would say that or one who wants to feel good. For every other species it's too bad.
> Only a selfish species would say that or one who wants to feel good.
But probably we can agree that, even if it would be better to make the world better for all of its inhabitants, including non-humans, at least it would be a good start on the process to try to work on reducing the collective misery of humans.
Much like accessibility changes benefit everyone, a lot of the changes that will make life better for all humankind will also make life better for all the planet's inhabitants. (For example, one component of reducing misery even if we focus only on humans is reducing the disruptions due to climate change.)
> I guess we do not have the power, we are not responsible for the way the world is, and we do not have to bear the guilt for it.
We are all responsible, and we all have a tiny bit of power we can use. If we abdicate that, yes, we have to bear the guilt for it. That doesn't mean we have to fix it, but we do have to do something to make a fix more likely, even in the small.
If that's depressing, I find solace in Rabbi Tarfon: "It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it". Knowing it is not my duty to finish it makes it more bearable to only be able to act in the small.
Edit: I do not mean to fault you for how you think about the situation, and I'm not sure if this came sufficiently across - I merely mean to point out a different mindset that might help deal with the feeling of powerlessness.
I am cynical about this because I view our current society as a kind of giant prisoners dilemma. If you sacrifice to make things better it is just allowing for others to behave worse for longer. If I take short showers to conserve water, it just opens the road for other people to use more. Until we hit a giant drought that forces people to confront the consequences they will continue watering giant lawns. Apply that to whatever area of life you want.
Sometimes, not always. If I improve my temperament, or if I help get someone an education, or if I help get an unjust law changed, or I raise awareness on some issue, these actions don't cause someone to get meaner, someone to lose their education, someone to make a bad law, or someone to hide an issue.
For environmental issues, I see your point. I hope that actions on conservation don't get 100% canceled out. Even if they're 90% canceled out it still buys us a little more time.
The duality of mankind in play. We’re capable of immense good, but the flip side of that is that we’re capable of immense evil. Good and evil as we understand it are human concepts, nature largely doesn’t give a crap about good and evil.
I choose to try to make the in-the-moment experience of those around me more pleasant. When you think about it, that’s all that really exists at any given moment, everything else is stored in our mind or hasn’t happened yet. At least from the human perspective, anyway. The now is the most important moment of our entire existence.
I feel the same way. Humanity is going to reap what it has sown. I think we do not deserve to be OK. Warning, my very cynical viewpoint below.
We've destroyed or are destroying (not exhaustive by any means): flying insect populations by 75%, wild animal populations, coral reefs, numerous fisheries, both poles of the Earth, rain forests...
Climate change is not going to stop or be stopped. Check page 8 of this PDF for a 2050 scenario of climate change: https://52a87f3e-7945-4bb1-abbf-9aa66cd4e93e.filesusr.com/ug... Climate change will probably be a causative factor in future wildfires and pandemics. Get used to this lifestyle.
However, the biological imperative to reproduce is too strong. We will not stop until we have consumed all resources and some external factor limits our population. Could be famine (due to climate change), could be disease (due to climate change), could be war (due to climate change). It won't be because people decide to.
What I've personally decided to do is to not have children and try to enjoy watching the world be destroyed from a front-row seat. What we are seeing and will see is unprecedented. I cannot stop it, and neither can you. I believe it cannot be stopped. I take comfort knowing I won't continue the cycle of suffering by raising the next generation of wage slaves.
I haven't even touched on politics, class inequality, race inequality, sex inequality, whatever the hell Trump represents about the USA, the potential rise of fascism, alt-right propaganda machines, antifa bogymen, wealth inequality, business conglomeration, excessive executive pay, stale working wages, US health insurance, many without any sick leave, very high housing prices, homelessness, poor mental health care... it just keeps going.
Like I said, I'm very cynical and quite bearish on humanity as a whole. :)
If you don't believe in humanity anymore, heh, you're going to get nihilistic. I think that people deserve what they earn.
> ...an inability to be away from the computer (work)...
If you are somehow feeling oppressed by having a job that you can conduct through your computer, then it's time to consider just how lucky you are, and meditate on that each morning.
I don't mean this as a dig, it is my genuine advice, I've seen it work well for myself and others.
> inability to go to a different indoor location (coronavirus)
Go somewhere which prioritizes human rights over futile attempts to control infectious disease, there are plenty of states with an intact freedom of association, where you can be indoors with other people if you are so inclined (though you may choose to keep it a bit limited).
I came to the flyover west of the country this month, and it's been great. I still have all of my mask-wearing and physical distancing habits, but they're mine now (and apparently more popular here than back in Ontario).
> I guess we do not have the power, we are not responsible for the way the world is, and we do not have to bear the guilt for it.
You are richer than the vast majority of people in the world, you have more power than you can admit to yourself; you are responsible for the way the world is, and guilty of all of its sins.
Like so many other products, services and initiatives, this website would greatly benefit from a prominently placed, buzzword-free, ELI5 explanation of what it actually does.
Finally I found this in one of the subpages that explains some of it:
> Got a feeling that someone you know or care about it isn’t behaving as they normally would? Perhaps they seem out of sorts? More agitated or withdrawn? Or they’re just not themselves. Trust that gut instinct and act on it. Learn more about the signs and when it's time to ask R U OK? here.
It's probably more easily understood in Australia where there's press and some corporate efforts to publicise it. Gives people an excuse to check in on friends who either need support or just want to vent to someone who understands.
The founder was prompted by the suicide of his father and then his own mental health battles.
Exactly, R U OK day is now a pretty big thing here, and I would say almost everyone now knows what the day is about. It's got pretty good buy in by the general public which is nice.
Someone on the Melbourne subreddit even baked R U OK cookies and was giving them away to strangers passing by their house. Hopefully made someone's day better.
I don't know, it seems like yet another superficial gimmick taking the place of real relationships. Giving out cookies on the street isn't getting to know someone and helping with their troubles.
The awareness has meant that I've asked people about how they're going in a non-trivial sense when I otherwise would not have. I suspect RUOK is most effective amongst friends rather than strangers in the street, and that cookies build awareness and encourage people to ask their friends, thus having some impact.
It's a worrying time being a Chinese person. On the one hand, I don't support CCP (hence the throw away); I find the dictatorship very troubling. Furthermore, the growing patriotism and nationalism makes me anxious about the next generation of Chinese.
On the other hand, many people outside tend to treat Chinese people and CCP as a whole, and denounce and dismiss everything we do. More and more people suggest severe measures against Chinese products, even when no evidence of foul play is found. Simply the potential of being malicious is enough to warrant doubts, scrutiny, and dismissal. If this trend continues, I don't know how to live in the west anymore. I can't imagine one day submitting a code change, and my code has to be reviewed by a specialized security expert, because my family lives in China.
Personally, I find no place to stand. The future looks to me like I'm going to be on an island of ideology, where the other Chinese despise me for not being loyal, and the westerners suspect me of being secretly loyal to CCP.
In the big picture, it feels like another cold war is coming, and, that has a crushing weight on me. All I ever wanted is a simple life, stable income, no need for luxury stuff; but if the cold war were to actually start, I don't see how I can build that life.
Hell, even an actual war might be looming, during which I and my family have a significant chance to die, given the existence of nuclear weapon, the effectiveness of the modern army, and the stubbornness of governments. And I just really don't want to die like that; it's so meaningless to die in a war.
I guess I just wrote this post to vent a little. It's something that I have absolutely no control (or even impact) over, but it looms over my shoulder every minute of every day. Every endeavor and achievement of mine pales in face of a global conflict, so I'm exceedingly demotivated to do anything these days. It feels like nothing matters, and everything is going to crumble anyway.
Apologies for bringing so much negativity. I hope everyone else is having a good day.
I kind of think there’s a lack of understanding amongst Americans regarding the Chinese people.
Ever since American CEOs decided to sell out the American worker with decades of offshoring manufacturing to China and our transition to a service economy, It’s been easy to channel the resentment away from the Americans responsible, and place blame on China. If China does things we don’t like, well, American Greed legitimized the relationship with the West in the first place.
None of that is the fault of the Chinese people; but our powers that be seemed to place the blame and hatred there. The fact is we’ve been pushed into a constant cycle of deteriorating civil decorum and mutual respect for each other. The coronavirus pandemic only exacerbates things.
I think if anything could help the bridge the divide, it would be to convince Americans that China is not full of people who lack the notion to think for themselves, and that people are not uniformly aligned on all issues. Individualism of thought is not a unique characteristic of the West.
I feel your anxiety as a chinese expat/immigrant/diaspora. However it's worth reminding that a lot of these feeling might come from online sensationalism or social media amplification. Real life is a bit different and you are more likely to deal with rational people. I've been living in a few European countries for more than a decade and fortunate enough to have acquainted folks from all walks of life in many cultures. The general public is surprisingly kind, knowledgeable, and tolerant towards sensitive or even ideological issues. I think communication is key and understanding can build many bridges. More bridges will eventually become a plane.
The world is a strange place right now and I often wonder if the people of generations past felt equally out of place in the various turmoils of their time.
Disinformation, willful ignorance and mass manipulation by anyone that can control the discourse of online communities is taking over the web that I grew up using and loved.
I fear all countries are slowly trying to become more isolationist at the expense of the rest of the world and the global community.
I have may friends with ties to China and they are like you, they don't support the CCP, but having family over there still means they feel like their hands are tied behind their backs.
I hope you find a way to fight for what you believe in and that you and your family stay safe throughout.
> The world is a strange place right now and I often wonder if the people of generations past felt equally out of place in the various turmoils of their time.
I think they did.. Not going too far back, I've heard tales from within the music sphere about much of the wanton drink/drug/smoke/sex culture and its general tie to the persistent feeling that the world was on the brink of nuclear war and collapse, and the lack of any feeling of control or ability to navigate it. Sadly, some didn't survive that, but they didn't presume they would anyway—just figured that something else would get them first.
Some grew older and maybe more wise and calm. Others grew older and more cynical and some of those are responsible or at least benefiting from our current set of turmoils.
I live in Europe. China is often hard to understand and seen as a monolithic block. In Poland if something doesn't make any sense it's common to say "it's Chinese to me". The language, especially the characters, is probably the biggest barrier. I vaguely know that China contains a bunch of peoples and languages, regions with distinct cultures. But very little beyond that.
People fear what they don't understand. I think you could make a difference if you made it easier for outsiders to learn about China and Chinese. You don't need to start a blog or a youtube channel. Just point out some existing ones which give foreigners a decent idea about China. Or maybe some movies which illustrate (aspects of) China pretty well and are still accessible to typical Westerners. No, it won't work for people on the street. I don't have a solution for that.
> I vaguely know that China contains a bunch of peoples and languages, regions with distinct cultures. But very little beyond that.
I know this is fairly off topic but I found Prisoners of Geography [1] a very accessible introduction to geopolitics. (Of course it only represents one point of view, so looking at some other sources would be advisable.) It has one chapter for each large country or continent, including one for China. I'm tempted to put a one-sentence summary of that chapter here based on my half-remembered interpretation of it, but I think that would do more harm than good!
I'm not surprised at all - it turns out Polish is one of the hardest languages to master. Norman Davies, a British historian fascinated by Central/Eastern Europe with a particular interest in Poland makes a couple of errors per several minutes of speech. Typically with noun genders.
Throwaway_ruok, try to stay positive and take care of your family and friends. It's better to worry about things we have a great deal of influence over than those which we do not.
Thanks for a nice, honest post. I feel similar in some ways though I'm in the EU (well, I'm a brit and what we're due to drop out soon enough so even more worrying).
I have much the same aims as you, a decent, calm life with no luxuries, well I don't care for them. All I can usefully add is, where it's possible to have say in your governance, you need to invest the time and get involved because it doesn't come for free. I grant as a Chinese person you may not have that option, for those of us who do, we need to.
The world seems to be going slightly mad at the moment and while I expect us to get over it, it's an uncomfortable time on several fronts.
I have a few Chinese colleagues and a couple more Australian colleagues of Chinese background. I have been a little worried about how the first group are handling the strain lately. I hope they are OK. My feeling is anyone with an Australian accent is a local, anyone who I can communicate with easily can be a friend and anyone who I can communicate with can be a valued colleague.
Nationstates, ideologies and those who profit off their miasma are all bastards, but there are still actual people out there and you're one of them. If it all amounts to nothing --- it has still been great hurtling through the cosmos on a wet rock screaming in terror with you brother.
Remember, if you are in the US at least, and someone tells you they aren't ok, and you recommend a crisis line, and they mention anything regarding suicide, they are very likely going to be extracted from their living situation by force and end up incarcerated at very high expense to themselves.
If their life was going poorly before that, it sure won't be better after.
edit: as another poster mentioned, the record of this could follow you around for life as well.
Also having your name officially recorded for this cause in a database can have negative impacts on the rest of your life, as this Canadian woman found:
First of all, that's not much better. "Don't talk about mental health publicly or there will be consequences" is not something we should be OK with.
Second, from the article itself:
> Richardson told CBC News that border guards referenced her 2012 hospitalization, and not her book, in denying her entry into the U.S.
Third, this result is not unique to people who have spoken out:
> The Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office has received reports from more than a dozen Canadians who have been denied entry into the U.S. because their records reveal they have a mental illness.
> It’s important to note that police officers, by virtue of their role as emergency responders, are the first to arrive at the scene of a mental health crisis. They respond to the person experiencing a mental health crisis and often escort the individual to the hospital emergency department or other health care facility for medical assessment. This is the moment when the mental health police record is generated.
It's probably worth mentioning that if the police are involved during a mental health crisis there is a strong likelihood of physical violence even if you are not a minority.
> The call resolution data further revealed that transports to hospitals were more frequent than arrests (44.9% versus 5.8% respectively)
Officers reported far more cases of arrest-worthy behavior/actions that they chose not to act on. The authors concluded:
> Our analysis of a sample of mental health call resolutions in the Chicago Police Department reveal that police are disinclined to use legal action, and considerably more inclined to transport individuals for hospital psychiatric assessments. Moreover, police routinely resort to on-scene call resolutions involving an array of informal tactics.
Appreciate your push for more concrete sources, I don't have any. There are four points that led to my comment:
[1]: Police violence in the news in the United States. How common it is is very debatable, the worst news bubbles to the top and catches the media's attention. For every police shooting there are probably 100+ stops with no shooting. Hopefully the increased media attention has led to concrete studies that will either prove or invalidate my point.
[2]: The very recent shooting of a 13 year old with autism whose mother called the police (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/08/linden-camer...). This is one event, its my opinion that it is representative of many police encounters with the mentally disabled.
[3]: Living in two cities (Eugene OR, and San Francisco) with high rates of homelessness, vagrants, and transients, and observing the success of non-police based services versus police-based services interacting with the homeless.
[4]: Internet comments from people who I believe are EMTs, crisis counselors, and teachers, on stories like [2], sharing similar experiences, sharing their own de-escalation training, and calling out terrible process and active escalation by police in mental health situations.
EDIT:
[5]: For your own source is this violence/non-violence rate based on police reporting, or do they interview other non-police participants?
Thanks for such a thoughtful response. On #5, it appears to be based on police reports, interviews, and corresponding docs (arrests, hospital admissions). The arrests and hospital visit counts seem objective and the authors don't appear to have an agenda.
I don't have any particular expertise or strong opinions about this topic. My interest is that the threshold/evidence requirement for telling people to avoid a certain resource should be set pretty high.
Separately, the data confirms your #1: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpp15.pdf (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23467379). The numerator is absolutely massive -- 53 million people per year. Roughly half of those are traffic stops, but even excluding those, it's still big. Citizens were asked the level of escalation of their most recent police-initiated contact or traffic accident and 0.3% said that a gun was pointed (page 17). That 0.3% is from citizens, not police, so it's probably an upper bound. For comparison, about 3% of people's most recent contact included any use of force, mostly handcuffs (1.8%) and push/grab/hit/kick (0.7%).
> [1]: Police violence in the news in the United States. How common it is is very debatable, the worst news bubbles to the top and catches the media's attention. For every police shooting there are probably 100+ stops with no shooting. Hopefully the increased media attention has led to concrete studies that will either prove or invalidate my point.
Without diving deeply into the data, I know that such collections efforts are occasionally prone to issues where different departments record similar events in drastically different ways. So there are known shortcomings in the data set, but there is data. I'm reasonably sure researchers have worked with this data.
> [3]: Living in two cities (Eugene OR, and San Francisco) with high rates of homelessness, vagrants, and transients, and observing the success of non-police based services versus police-based services interacting with the homeless.
I have no doubts whatsoever about the success of kind, compassionate, and humanitarian services in Eugene. However it seems to me to be contra-factual to describe SF's services to community members experiencing being unsheltered as at all a success except by the metric of quantity of money spent. Police-based or no seems minimally impactful.
I think the obvious point is that if the police are involved there is a small but non-zero chance of physical violence or arrest, and if they are not involved, there is a zero chance.
It's depressing that The Onion headlines are becomming more and more milder version of reality. There was a skit a while ago about wounded people fleeing ambulances to escape debt hell, what we have here is arguably worse.
I had an ambulance called for me years ago when I passed out in public (nothing serious) and it was fairly difficult to convince the EMT's that I didn't want to nor needed to go to the hospital.
Mostly I knew I didn't need to go so it was time but yes money was a large factor as well. I had no idea what the bill would look like. I tried to get away so they wouldn't try to charge me just for coming out.
I've been a victim of this very thing, and can certainly second this.
My friend was trying to be helpful, but I lost 2 weeks of my life and felt dehumanized during and after it.
I don't blame them, because it's very counter-intuitive, but
TLDR - be careful when contacting any sort of government authorities, because they often have far more consequences than you're considering in the moment.
I cannot believe America is like this. TIL. As a non-American, I was thinking of moving there one day. These days, the reasons to not want to (which have nothing to do with politics) are racking up.
(i don’t live in the US) this is insane. What’s the rational for extracting people from their environment by force? And worse, what’s the rational for recording the person who gave the advise and punishing them for it? I genuinely don’t understand.
I recall hearing that in Eastern Bloc countries, telling the wrong story to the wrong person could get you 'disappeared'.
The (possibly apocryphal) story that sticks with me is of the young child who told their teacher that their parents didn't have a photo of Lenin in their house. The parents were taken away in the middle of the night, and the child went to live with their grandparents.
When I hear about how easy it is for innocent, law-abiding people in the US to be incarcerated, it reminds me of these stories.
Who cares if it costs money, or if you have a record? I get why these are worries in today's world, but neither of these matter when your life is on the line.
If you have a record for this, wear it like armor (Tyrion quote). You had the strength to do something good for yourself, and a record to prove it.
Also, if you "recommend a crisis line" to a friend, you are a shit friend. Go play frisbee with them and stop outsourcing responsibility.
Do you have any data to support that incarcerating someone via forceful removal of them from their home and creating a financial burden on them is an effective suicide prevention measure? It certainly doesn't feel self evident that is and it seems quite possible that it would have the opposite effect.
Personal experience, if that counts as supporting data to you.
I spent a couple weeks in a mental hospital and was able to interact with a lot of amazing people who were dealing with all kinds of personal struggles. Not everyone was involuntarily committed, but many were, and for varying reasons. One guy was having a hard time dealing with the loss of his father and was involuntarily committed by his doctor. He left in a much better state than he arrived in after being there for only two days. Many people had similar outcomes.
If you only look at the uncomfortable nature of being removed from your home, or the dollars it costs you, sure, "No! This just equals more bad!" makes sense as an argument. But you can say the same thing about going on a vacation. The emotional benefit makes both the financial burden, and discomfort negligible in the big picture.
It is better to take care of emotional distress voluntarily, if you are able to do so, but if we are simply asking if it is effective as an extreme measure, yes it is, for many people.
I’m doing ok-ish. I’m waiting to start a new job but I’m afraid maybe some of my past mistakes might have an impact on the ultimate decision. I’m in a really tight financial bind (on top of it all, the only family car broke down yesterday). This new job would be life-changing in terms of financial security and my future career. Taking a cue from this site, I think I will take action by reaching out tomorrow to the recruiter I’m working with.
All we can do is keep our chins up and try to keep moving forward!
This reminds me of an interesting difference in language semantics when I moved from the UK to the Bay area. In the UK it's normal to say "alright?" as if to say hello. I found people would respond "why wouldn't I be?" or something along those lines as if they looked like they weren't OK. It interests me as I find in the UK we are less likely to talk about feelings than in the US.
also works in at least french, german, and spanish.
(I think the big dividing line between cultures is whether it's surprising or not to answer with full sentences how one is doing upon being asked "alright?")
Unusually it's targeted more at men. The idea is that you need to ask the question multiple times as men are allegedly more likely to say "yeah, I'm fine" the first time, so you need to ask a second time to apparently ensure a truthful response.
I think any time is fine to ask "Are you OK?" In Chinese, 你好嗎？is as common as hello.
The reply indicates the level of trust they have in you.
If they say "Yes, of course!" then there's nothing to worry out. "Fine" means they're not fine, but they don't trust you enough to tell you why. If they actually tell you what's really on their heart, you now know that this person thinks of you as a trustworthy friend!
No, I'm not, but I'm working on it and I will be. It's been interesting today, seeing people at work walking around together, using work-sponsored coffee vouchers specifically to have a coffee with a colleague today, my face clearly says 'I am not okay', yet only two people have spoken to me at all today, some have clearly avoided me.
If you can, be brave and try and talk to people. Even a chance encounter at work, in a cafe, or in the park can make you feel good. I've recently discovered the more you express kindness and empathy or even a basic interaction with others it makes you feel good. It may seem obvious to some, it's quite selfish in a way, but hopefully a win-win.
Thank you, champion, but no. I've got people to talk with, and I am using that. Not everybody does though, and it disappoints me to see so many people missing that point.
Good stuff. Even though a lot of people just don't want to talk to anyone when they're depressed, it doesn't hurt to remind them that there are always people willing to listen.
I tried a bunch of times to help a supervisor that was an alcoholic. He wouldn't even talk about it. Helped his family when he was in the hospital with pancreatitis. Offered everything I could. He never did get help, lost his job, lost his family, ended up dead in the street a couple of years later. Still makes me sad.
Funny how four letters can take one in so many tangential directions. For some of us old farts, it's also a memorable KMFDM song from 1999: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEC1qpfLY1E
The top comment (2020年在看的) jibes with my Grand Unified Theory of youtube comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24406562 but no one seems to have been complaining that the kids listen to noise these days in the few pages of comments I translated, so that part may need revision.
Edit: thanks est! this meme gives me a valid roman search term for youku.
Having also learned in passing about various historical soaps and that phone mounted ring lighting is a thing, so far the funniest "areyouok" to me has been the one chock full of inscrutable foreigners wearing their culture's traditional outfits to perform folkloric rituals that ethnographers say date back to the Warring Ranchers period:
I wish this would be a completely normal thing to do. I think if we were more genuinely compassionate and cared more about each other’s lives then this world would be a better place.
Sadly, I think the problem is not even a lack of compassion, but the fact that many people don't have anyone they trust, and there's a lack of shared spaces where they could belong and eventually connect with others that could help them. Everyone needs connection (well, let's leave schizoids aside for today), and connection requires people being together in the first place. And only then starts the hard part, as a lot of people is pretty particular about connection, trust and openess towards others, but where do we expect to go if we are already failing at getting people together in the first place.
While I'm happy about visibilizing mental health problems, I feel pretty similarly to many other issues that we try to visibilize: that's only step zero, and no one seems to bother to talk about step one afterwards. While it's possible to help specific individuals, we are not getting closer to the root of the structural problems impairing our societies.
No. I don't think I am depressed. I just don't want life. I was given a life without my consent, atleast give me option to exit without pain. People have children for selfish reasons, their life has no meaning, bored, what will they do in life, so have children, life becomes less painful. Now those children will have to do the same, it's a cycle. There is no meaning to be honest. People talks nice things but ultimately ignores that there are lot of suffering in whole world because people are seilfish and wants to have baby. They never think that those babies don't remain baby & then thay suffer.
Of course there are some good times, but for most days there are lots of stress. Every morning I have to work everyday in a job I don't like, even the commute is stress. Then I will become old, have some desease. Why do I need this? Just to live and to wait till the day I die. What if I don't want any of this, bring the day closer, so I don't have to do this longer. Don't worry I don't have the courage to do the thing. I am just ranting. The elites will not let me have the easy way out option untill I serve all I can and get old. They are priviledged and they decide all.
I went on holiday to Spain once, bought an inflatable dinghy and paddled with a friend for a long time around the coast until we got to a beach. On the beach was a naked man. After we had convinced him to get some pants on (mickey mouse boxer shorts) he told us his story.
Basically he'd gone on holiday exactly like us once, found this beach, and just thought, "fuck it" and stayed. Fuck the job, fuck the family, fuck the friends, everything. He lived in a cave near the beach, the locals gave him food and he did the odd job when he could be arsed.
Ever since I've thought, "if it ever gets so bad I want to kill myself, I'm just going to get up and go back to that beach."
That simple thought alone has got me through some rough times.
As we paddled away from the beach other people started coming out of other caves to come and watch us leave.
There are several options to exit without pain. I found one on the internet, and have prepared it. It was inexpensive and the components are not particularly suspicious. It's ready to go when I am.
Somehow that makes me appreciate life more. Being able to leave at will makes staying sweeter. I can let go of much of the stress by knowing that it is voluntary and temporary, which lets me focus on the simple pleasures. Of which there are many.
I'm not ready to go, partly because I am ready to go.
I strongly suggest you throw those supplies in the trash. You can re obtain them if really needed. As it is, you are one bad day from taking an action that (based on populato statistical evidence) you will most likely immediately regret but cannot undo.
Possibly true in the case of someone dealing with bipolar disorder or acute depression. Not so much for someone with decades-long depression or chronic physical pain.
The freeing bit in that is the sense of agency and control. We are very very attached to those things because in the construction blueprints of our minds we anchor a sense of self and a sense of happiness unconditionally with control and agency. Most people don't realize just how much they actually do this because they consider themselves healthy so it's out of their mind, but for people at the edge these words take on a very clear, material shape.
The other person who replied to you is right about the fact that you are but one oscillation away from doing something you probably wouldn't do the next day though, so while I understand your approach I would advise you to build into it a couple safeguards that ensure a reasonable amount of time passes where you can look at yourself and persistently decide to check out.
If you do need to make it available to yourself, just build a way for the process to take time before you can "pull the trigger". Filter out the high-frequency noise.
Anecdotally, I'd say even something on the order of weeks/months. And do this while you're in a decent place mentally, so that you can be kind to the version of you that goes through tougher times.
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The bigger picture, when doing this, is working towards realizing that you can gradually release the grip on this need for control through various things: at first, through practical things like having proven to yourself that you could get there already once therefore you can always do it again. But gradually, by being able to digest the flow of your emotions as they are, and figuring out how to put an increasing amount of tools, communication and basically distance between you and your end.
> figuring out how to put an increasing amount ... distance between you and your end.
I disagree. Death should be held close, to give value to life:
"Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, an arm's length behind us. Death is the only wise adviser that a warrior has. Whenever he feels that everything is going wrong and he's about to be annihilated, he can turn to his death and ask if that is so. His death will tell him that he is wrong, that nothing really matters outside its touch. His death will tell him, I haven't touched you yet." -- Carlos Castenada
Death is always close. You can always throw yourself under a train, or a car can hit you while crossing the road. Heart attack. Robbery. Whatever it is.
Keeping some distance between you and a designed act to end yourself comfortably is helpful because when you're in a state of despair you do need to take some perspective before impulsively acting.
Impulses are powerful and very often not something we actually wanted to do in hindsight, and this extends beyond an on/off switch for life (for example into sexuality, or aggressive behaviour).
There's a difference between being present in the flow of the moment and embracing chaos. "Loving-kindness" towards yourself is part of that difference.
Please dont ever suggest people end it all by throwing themselves under a car, train truck or anything else controlled by somebody. Nobody should ever have to live with the fact they were driving a vehicle that somebody used to end it all. Why distroy two lives. Pretty selfish making somebody live with the consequences of your decision.
I did not suggest it, I'm merely stating the truth. You CAN do that, therefore the point of the person I was replying to isn't the one they were trying to make, which allowed me to shift the description of that point towards what it actually is about and deserved to be addressed.
Your message is just empty posturing here - it won't prevent people who are suffering from thinking what I wrote (spoiler alert: they already did long before I wrote it), and it doesn't address their pain either.
If you want people to not throw themselves in front of traffic, reach out to them and actually embrace that they have pain on their terms - not yours.
I don't agree. Society does not allow others to leave when they wish peacefully, so if that happens they will have have to live with the consequences. You can't have it both ways.
Meaning is a human concept. Life has no meaning unless you define it yourself. For some people, having children and becoming part of something bigger, a family, is what gives meaning to their lives. Belonging and being part of a group, whether it's family or something else, is almost a universal need for humans, and therefore, a common requisite for meaningfulness in one's life.
While I feel similarly to you sometimes, and I will never have children because I can't accept the risk of them suffering as much as I did, and there are already lots of kids in orphanages who can't be unborn so I'd rather try to help them instead, there's a ton of people who is happy to be alive and believes their kids will be too. And in many cases they are right, so I guess we should try to not project meaningless into other people's lives.
So, try to define meaningfulness for your own life. If the world we live in is a problem, you don't need to change it completely, sometimes finding a small corner suitable for you just works. If there are other problems deeper within yourself, therapists can be helpful. They might not change your life, but they are likely to change at least something in the way you see your life. If there's no meaning in your life, you might as well get creative and try to invent it. Might even be more interesting than your day job.
Yup, that's a depression. Stuck in a gray cloud of meaningless and dull pain. Neither bright sunshine, nor black night. And you are a smart person and probably convinced yourself by logical reasoning that's how life is supposed to be. Look for professional help. When my car is broken I accept the fact that there are people who are better at fixing cars than me.
Okay. But what if reality is bad kind of like the cinema Matrix. Someone see the truth get sad but society tells they are mentally sick. Those who are inside matrix are regarded as normal and that's how everyone should be. People are not supposed to see the truth and only that keeps them happy.
I'm not talking about the computer simulation here but the life itself.
I've taken solace that someday my time will come where I will no longer feel or consciously exist (death). So I've decided to work on gratitude first and all other life pursuits secondarily. Life is like a rollercoaster, there will always be ups and downs, until the ride is over. I get someone wanting things to end if they experience physical pain or disease with no escape, but like others have mentioned you're experiencing mental pain and there are options to work on that. How you feel matters, and you're not wrong in many of your perceptions, but you still deserve to feel better and find things that add joy to your life.
Also, I discovered this in a previous thread and it has been helpful in finding a way to navigate this seemingly very dystopian existence we humans choose to perpetuate: https://youtu.be/A9LI1Dv0DEg
Maybe you're right. But is anyone who is in this position supposed to feel optimistic? And sometimes it is just a certain brain chemistry but sometimes the circumstances are just crappy
I felt that way for a long time and then started to not care, because it is... boring? These points remain true, life is still pointless, but not giving a fuck is a thing in itself. "Fuck that". Not a key to survival, not a happy state, not even worth gaining, just a distinct category you may find yourself in someday.
The idea that life is ultimately without meaning is strange to me. It often comes together with an argument presupposing that only that wich is eternal can have meaning. Which is just begging the question. It also makes the concept of meaning kinda... pointless?
If you instead start from the fact that life is limited and from there get the idea that only that which happens to the living can have any meaning, you end up some other place entirely.
But both views are just circular from what you put in the concept of meaning I guess.
> No. I don't think I am depressed. I just don't want life.
I'm sorry to hear you're going through this. In case you haven't tried professional support, it might help. In my experience they're pretty good at finding the cause of issues, which is a step towards improving it.
I can relate to feeling that way but this clearly is depression. I have felt like this more or less my whole life so that’s my reality but after talking to quite a few people I have learned that many of them don’t feel that way. They enjoy life and for them it has deep meaning.
People with mental health problems will be negative and tricky to deal with. If you can't help, just stay away, but please refrain from criticising, don't make it even harder for them.
> Although depressed individuals are thought to have a negative cognitive bias [...] depressive realism argues not only that this negativity may reflect a more accurate appraisal of the world but also that non-depressed individuals' appraisals are positively biased.
Makes sense. Unless you have some kind of solid evidence to suggest that things will go well, there's no basis for being positive. At most you could argue that being positive can increase motivation, confidence, etc. But you have to weigh that against the risk for disappointment, discouragement, etc in the long run if you encounter repeated failure or disillusionment. And motivation aside, being realistic can be more helpful than being positive for some people.
This may actually be true, but to what point. Choosing to ignore the shitty things that are happening in your world is a pretty good survival tactic. After all there is a pretty reasonable chance that the shitty thing won't directly impact you, giving you a chance to actually improve your situation.
I had a few people from Australia calling me here in the US yesterday (which was the 10th in Australia) for exactly this. It's nice. Had a good chat and caught up on things over there and here.
If it's any consolation, I'm from Northern California and moved to Europe.
After a few years my wife and I thought "let's go back to California" so I could try a startup. After a year we went back to the EU because ultimately we realized there was no way we wanted to have a family in America.
In the EU, even people who don't work in tech can have real vacations (most people in the US can't, really) and access healthcare to a reasonable standard.
During recent elections, I didn't go to bed fearing that the country wouldn't be a democracy in the morning (helps we're not in Poland or Hungary)
And frankly, I like that when I chat with the person behind the counter at the chip shop I don't have to be quite so embarrassed at my riches compared to them. In the states I felt awkward as hell basically saying "yeah we're heading to (some exotic locale) for a few weeks, got any travel coming up?" to people who had no PTO and nowhere near the income needed to do similar and, most worryingly, little prospect of change (class mobility in the US is lower than Europe). I'm not saying that inequality isn't a problem in Europe but it rots your psyche just a bit less here.
Also, if the devs are cheap and the social safety net strong, it's a lot less risky to start your own company.
I'm really sorry. It's painful to see what's happening to Poland and Hungary with regards to democracy. My old boss was from Poland and he talked about it a lot. Though he did end up returning since he wanted to be near family, and Polish housing costs are far lower. I'd still love to visit.
If you're living in Europe then that's something that you just need to accept, the pay is nowhere near anywhere the pay in the US, I think in my country it caps at something like 60k$ per year and that's if you're really good at what you're doing.
I recently came to the same conclusion, but also realised that there is a lot more to it than just pay. Generalising here but switching for a similar role in the US will mean:
* No more free healthcare
* Much less PTO
* _Significantly_ less parental leave for you and your partner
* Less pension/401k contributions (typically)
* Generally longer hours and a more intense working culture
* Probably a higher cost of living
Depending on your new salary you may find that these downsides are offset by more cash in hand, which is great, but it is definitely not a one way street.
Also no social safety nets, assuming you're moving from somewhere with safety nets. Where I live, I always know that if things get too bad I will always have enough to eat, and the ability to get medical care.
Even within one country, where you live can make a huge difference in terms of how much rent you pay, whether you can get by without a car, etc.
If you get paid a lot but most of it goes directly to your landlord, you're not really any better off than someone who makes a bit less but keeps more of it.
The architecture, politics, arts, demographics, culture, and small talk are different too. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how you feel about each of these things, and what you make of your experience. If you have children, note that the education system is different too.
While this is true, you also need to be aware of the pay ranges available in your country. A few years ago I felt underpaid, people younger than me were earning more, self-employed people that took two weeks to come up with a screen with some text and a button that didn't work showed up to the office in a Maserati, things like that.
My then-employer did compensate though; I got a double pay raise because of performance, and another raise on top (for a lot of people in the company) because they realized they were behind on market rates.
But now I feel like I'm at the top end; there will be some growth but nothing dramatic. To gain more, I need to either shift to a managerial role (and I suspect that if I stick with this job I'll slowly grow into that while the company grows), work for more desperate companies (but that'll increase my commute), US startups with bases in my country (but that'll involve US working culture and timezones), or go self-employed.
No one is going to pay you more unless they think you're valuable and you're departure is a credible possibility.
I know it's a lot of work, but the best strategy is to interview for jobs consistently and regularly, regardless of whether you are happy with your current job. Shop around your offers, get companies to fight over you. Use all the leverage you have. You don't get more money without demanding it.
Power and money are never given, they are only taken.
At my 2nd full-time job, starting as a junior in a team, I got a higher starting salary than what I was comfortable asking at the interview, plus got a yearly 10% salary increase for the next 5+ years. When I left the company I still got invited to the Christmas party, even though I was no longer working for them. Also, the local managing director grew out from being a developer 15+ years prior (in the same company), and new all his 300+ employees by name. There are always exceptions to a rule.
Paradoxically, the BEST time to job hunt and negotiate is when you're in a job you really like.
This sucks, of course, for all sorts of reasons, but it's amazing how much "Actually I really like my current job, so you'd need to pay (some big number) to get me to move" will sway people more than "well I think market rate is about X"
This is good knowledge. You probably can't say you know directly. But build a case for asking for more and you now know an upper limit (you can even go a bit higher). Try to find a local salary survey, that can be very helpful. Good Luck :)
It's even worse when your friends tell you that you're underpaid and should seek new employment when you are struggling to find open jobs or get past the HR people.
I was really underpaid for the first 5 years of my career. But I tried not to worry about it too much because I was making enough to pay the bills, and generally enjoyed the work and the people.
It turned out that those relationships I built in those first 5 years were very valuable. I haven't applied for a single job since then, and instead have relied on referrals from colleagues at previous companies - which completely changes the interview process and gives you a much better bargaining position negotiating for a job.
Of course I think people should always be on the lookout for new opportunities, and take them when they come along. But I think even more importantly if you are looking to grow your career is to make sure you are doing a good job at your current gig, making a good impression on people, and continuing to challenge yourself and expand your skills. If you can do that, then hopefully the opportunities will find you instead of the other way around.
That hasn't been my experience, but the point is that if you can't convince someone to pay you more for similar work, then you're not underpaid. It's not about value, or how hard you work, or whatever. It's about how much money you can convince someone to pay you. That's the only thing that matters.
With the unmitigated disaster of 2020, I’m “probably not ok,” but I am not in any danger to myself or others. Quite the opposite - I’m optimistic that things are moving in the right direction. I mean, it can’t get worse:
- Shutdown my consulting Business in February because I didn’t feel comfortable with being around new people constantly with a t-cell deficient immune system. - My boyfriend abruptly stopped his antidepressant and quietly completed suicide in his apartment alone. No indication anything was off. It’s been tough to manage such a loss alone during a pandemic where social distancing is important. - I am left with his orange tabby cat; and with the unrelenting frustration in trying to reason with people who never lost their lover to suicide, with multiple “it’s not your fault” conversations. I’m conflicted in that these people are the ones who are standing with me, but I can’t hear this logic again. - Just a few days ago, six months later, I acknowledged what would’ve been his 33rd birthday and also our anniversary. I couldn’t find anything to actually celebrate or anyone to celebrate it with because of COVID. Still waiting for a good time to even have a proper memorial. - My roommate couple friends moved back home to the Midwest. As the master tenant, I’m responsible for the difference in rent, nobody is moving to SF really; but may have a roommate come October. - My best friend in San Francisco died of cancer late March. - We were supposed to have dinner the last week of February, - and all of us were supposed to celebrate my April birthday together at a Honey Dijon show; - and go to the Maceo Plex day party on Treasure Island in May. Yep, as both of them are gone and both of those events will never happen, that calendar event was a rough thing to forget to cancel.
On the bright side, I had time to crash course my way into sharpening my CS skills for flavor of the week programming languages, turned half my garage into a wood shop; created an IoT paradise at home or “who needs an Alexa when Jenkins will do,” been building the tabby a “catio” so he’ll get some outside time, started getting into the fun world of circuit board reworking out of a BIOS Flashing disaster, and enjoying the work of cooking all my meals.
I’m not too stressed about work. I have decided I’m not going back into the self employment hustle; and I’m patient enough to wait for the right next opportunity. Low expectations yield pleasant surprises.