Make your life as close to what you want it to be in the present as you can personally achieve, and make plans. Focus on what you want to accomplish this day, week, month, year, 5 years, decade, and by the time you retire. Adjust as necessary if you go off track, whether faster or slower.
Time will pass. Harness it.
It’s never too early to do that thing you always wanted to do. Sure, you only get 5000 weeks at most, but that’s plenty if you make good use of them.
Where do I get a career I can retire from to complain about?
And this feeling is why I started picking up music again after I stopped playing/recording for nearly 12 years. I’ve worked too hard and focused so much on being successful when I’ve forgotten what makes me truly happy.
Word. All of these efficiencies and inefficiencies… humanness is distinct from it
It’s hard to come to terms with sometimes. Looking at a staff with 3 bars, or a short riff, then thinking man, did I review my finances for the month? But the time isn’t wasted. The pastime isn’t a reward. It’s as important as the work.
But you don’t have to be a monk to balance again :)
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That’s a pretty big question, with a couple of different interpretations. If you are asking how I handle thinking about the passage of time, the easiest answer is to make it tomorrow’s problem. This is probably not the healthiest answer; but it doesn’t pay to stress over inevitabilities, so I just do my best to put them out of my mind.
If you are asking the best way to utilize your time, my recommendation is to start focusing on yourself immediately. It’s very easy to prioritize work by staying late or overworking yourself to make your bosses happy, but no amount of overwork will ever satiate your company; it will only serve to drain the life from your body. It’s very important to set firm boundaries with your job. I, personally, will not even look at my work phone or computer the minute I leave the office (on Mon-WFH days) and have a hard stop every day at 5PM unless agreed upon well in advance. You lose so much time and energy to your job that just standing firm on your boundaries can be a huge QoL boost.
Please also do your best to cultivate a creative outlet as a hobby. A lot of people don’t think they are/can be creative, but anyone can be creative if they find the right outlet. It could be art, sewing, crochet, music, writing, or even creative programming. The important thing is to find a way to explore your feelings and do something productive with them. In my experience, I am often the most vivacious are when I am making art in one form or another; I highly recommend it.
I wholeheartedly agree with all your points! You are not your job (even if you love your job)! Set clear boundaries, have hobbies, friends, take walks in nature, do some sports/pottery/gardening/whatever, try different things, til you find some you enjoy.
Thank you for this. This comment is just a little push but now I see – I’ve already forgotten how long I’d gone without writing a note onto a staff. How long I’ve spent on just “things that will pay me or pay off.”
I will do this immediately.
I did this with having no kids.
“Ohh I’m not in a position to create a good life for an offspring.”
“Ohh now I’m over 40 no kids for me, I guess it’s better anyway. The climate catastrophe is real the World is on fire.”I’m over 40 and want kids. Unfortunately I’m a male so I don’t get to reproduce until someone else decides to carry my child for me.
Here’s the secret no one tells you and you have to learn for yourself. There is never a good time to have kids. Either you want them or you don’t. If you want them you make it work. I have 3 and would have happily had 20. As soon as you have one your life is fucked anyways lol.
“My kids will live the life I wish I had”
This is literally a scene from Kaiji.
Let go and let life slip through your hand like sand
Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives.
All we are is dust in the wind.
I don’t like sand. It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere.
just like life
Ani, have you always been such a whiny bitch?
For work-life balance on the basis of the comic, by refusing to do any kind of overtime on a regular basis, and making sure any time it happens I’m compensated for it. I’m also fortunate enough to earn enough that I was able to reduce my working hours to have Fridays free. Having half of the year free gives me the opportunity to actually do some living.
Now for the more general question, I mostly try to not think about it, because it tends to throw me into a FOMO driven frenzy where I do things to cross them from a checklist and end up not really enjoying anything. For the most part, I found I’m much happier trying to live in the moment even if I’m not very good at it.
Ignore it til it screams at me from within
skill issue. i would simply refrain from aging. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2bo_u_YmW8
I had workaholic parents who expected “retirement” to finally be the time to enjoy life. So they grinded, 60 hour work weeks for decades. They made a ton of money but by the time they made it to retirement they destroyed their bodies.
My mom has extremely severe chronic hip pain and cannot sit down. Due to constantly working in an office her muscles were severely atrophied and she cannot find the motivation to get back in shape. She spends the vast majority of her time in bed, completely exhausted.
My father suffered chronic stress and once passed out at work. He struggles with high blood pressure and went partially blind. He is still working due to decisions I can’t share here.
The grind culture is such an alluring chopping block. A meat grinder… some people go in, apply for a thousand internships, work three jobs, but not all of them go out. Is it a weak vs. strong separator? Am I weak?
I hope not. I’m just an archer, not a tank, I’d like to think.
I’m sorry your dad still has to work, and about their injuries.
I honestly stopped caring about time as we use it (I’d need to think for a minute if someone asked me what day it is) since the Pandemic. Never had much use for time other than scheduling, but the Pandemic seems to have completely cut me off from it.
Now, I just exist. Que sera, sera.
That’s fantastic for you but most of us don’t have the privilege.
Granted, not something which works for everyone. But I don’t think such a shift in mentality is a privilege necessarily.
I mean, the whole point of my perspective now is that it really doesn’t matter what day, or month, or year it is, all that matters is what happens. Why count the time which passes and try to guess the time that’s left, when in spite of having the perfect organism in terms of physiological functions and immunity, one could still get smeared by a bus like paint on a canvas tomorrow.
I will concede that the fact that I do not fear death whatsoever also helps immensely. Literally no pressure, just flinging my best guess at it and dealing with whatever happens as a result.
Oh I get it, I’m also a hedonistic nihilist. I used to live the way you described, in a squat. I’m happier now in the house I rent with my wife and our cats. We have running water and the electricity doesn’t come from an extension cord to the neighbor’s!
But it came at the huge price of working and traveling for work all the fucking time. I’m still right there with you though. I don’t care if I’m struck down minutes after posting this. Hope it’s quick.
First off, I am genuinely happy to hear that you’ve managed to find some stability and that you have loving souls around you! I wish you and everyone you love nothing but the best! 🤗
Second, as related to my hedonistic nihilism… well… not quite:))
I have started to accept a bit of hedonism in my life for mental health reasons in the past years (I’ve been raised as a tool, not as a human being), but I’m not nihilistic. I don’t stress out about how long I have and the magnitude of my actions anymore, sure, but I am passionate about what there is. I love life (maybe even too much at times), I love my passions and interests, I love the wonders of existence, and I believe it’s ultimately awesome that we’re here to see the unfolding of the Universe. I also hate how bad we’ve made things for ourselves and the amount of injustice and inequality makes me sadder and angrier than I’ve ever been. And I will keep trying until I die to contribute whatever I can to shifting humanity
backon a reasonable and empathetic trajectory.I’ve been doing the 9-to-5 ever since I got out of Uni and managed to build a liveable career out of failing upward (I take full advantage of my intuition). I managed to squeeze into the housing market before prices started exploding here as well and own my own hole in the ground (we’re about 20 years behind America in terms of socio-economic trajectory, but we’re starting to speedrun the degradation, it seems), haven’t taken a proper vacation since 2011 (more than a week and actually going somewhere other than my living room), etc., etc.
I used to worry about everything, I used to carry the pressure of being a good little worker ant, of being the best specimen possible, keeping my mouth shut and working my ass off. And all I got for it is high blood pressure, profound loneliness, Meniere’s disease and teeth which I’ve chewed half to shit, and I’m barely in my mid 30s. Had my first (and only, so far) heart attack at 26.
The lockdowns gave me the context I needed to snap out of it. Had the privilege of working from home (QA guy) and spent the entire lockdown pretty much alone in my apartment. And I kept thinking about things, and realised the pain I caused myself for basically no damned reason, just because we’re forced to play this stupid little game of Capitalism since the moment we’re squeezed out into the world. I actually sort of died back then. At least a part of me did, the part which held any and all concern for trying to fit into the system. Then I could finally see my core values again, the things which were important to me. And keeping track of time really wasn’t on that list, to the point where I stopped celebrating or even caring about my birthday, or New Year’s.
Now I just try to live by my principles. I’ll give it my best shot at being myself and following my values, but I won’t have a psychotic break at the end if I don’t manage to be the uber-me, nor do I care that life will kill me sooner or later. Nearly did that myself through trying to live it by the terms set by society. It’s impossible to unsee the Absurd once it smacks you in the face.
Edit: some corrections.
Im Glad im not the only one that fell into the void outside of time.
Life really does feel a lot different once you stop counting minutes. I’m honestly very grateful for this paradigm shift!
