We're all about the same age on here, more-or-less. So how do we deal with getting older?
Now I don't mean back when we got to the age where we truly stopped caring or when we grew into just a habit of just having some tea on a Friday night. We've had that conversation. But what comes after that, is there a new lesson to learn or is it all flabby middles and cognitive decline without any benefit?
For me it's definitely about keeping busy. I've always had sort of active hobbies, like working on cars and wandering about taking photos, and I hope to be able to do the latter well into my old age.
But I realise now I need to start looking after my body better. I'm not exactly in peak physical condition now, so I'd like to work towards that as an insurance that I can still go on adventures in my twilight years in relative ease compared to people like my grandparents who smoke, drank, ate and vegetated themselves into a corner. I think my grandad realised when he was around 70 he'd run himself into the ground and his retirement couldn't be much more than sitting around the house bored and uncomfortable. I'm trying my best to avoid that and knowing that makes me a lot less afraid of my advancing age.
Otherlads have already touched on the importance of staying active, physically and mentally. Aside from that, my answer is a bit different.
Things have got much better for me than when I was younger, and I am immune to nostalgia. It's partly through luck, partly through good choices, but mostly through having a really shit starting point and then working my way out.
I was probably severely depressed in my teens, but not through any pathology, moreso a reaction to the real world going on around me. There just was not any plausibly achievable life that seemed worth living to me. The lowest point was probably around ages 17 - 23. No agency, no purpose, no meaning, no hope, and with all the escapist crutches that come along with that, like alcohol. It was only at 24 I really committed to getting the things I wanted from life, or to die trying.
I've mostly succeeded, or am well on my way to succeeding. My twenties were better than my teens, and my thirties are better than my twenties.
I'm not worried about getting older because I'm really trying to build something, and even if I fail it will have been a good fight.
The bad life styles of my friends who sit on their arses just painting 40k claims another victim. As another one gets to the point of where because they didn't walk enough when they could that now walking for them causes them damage.
Go out now and be wild. Live like there is no tomorrow. From what I can tell it is objectively healthier than just staying inside.
That whole decline in neuroplasticity as you get older really fucks with you, huh?
I feel like I am set in my ways these days, with little interest in learning about or trying new things, but at the same time I am thoroughly fed up with everything I already know and do. It's like all my current interests are (metaphorically speaking) books I've read over and over, films I've seen too many times. I've squeezed all the juice there is to get out of them. So I fall into the routine of starting something, being bored with it, resigning to some shitposting and YouTube, being bored with that, then going to bed.
I know I need a change but I don't know what, and even if I did, I can't really muster the effort.
>That whole decline in neuroplasticity as you get older really fucks with you, huh?
Some of it is age related, but I think a lot of it also has to do with most of us becoming set in our ways as we age. Think about it. There were probably far more constantly new developments and things you had to figure out in your life in your 20s than there are now, where you just go to work every day any pay off your mortgage as you've done for 15 years. Your life in middle age is much more ever-repeating routine than back then. I posit that a decline of neuroplasticity isn't inevitable, but it's often a function of your surroundings no longer providing challenging stimuli for your thinking capabilities.
There have been experiments where middle aged people were observed and had their brains scanned while learning to knit or play an instrument, which were new skills to them that they didn't know before. What they found was that brain activity in areas that light up when you are learning things was not siginificantly lower than in younger test subjects. And the conclusion of those experiments was more or less the same. That the potential for neuroplaticity never really goes away, and just isn't used by most people as they get a bit older.
Does anybody ever give themselves a once-over and think, when did I become such a massive, sopping wet pussy?
By which I mean, I was filled with utter rage as a younger man. Staying up at night, reading a book a week to get a handle on the world, starting fights, listening to loud music, pushing my body to exhaustion, drinking too much just to get the feelings to stop, vomiting, then doing it again.
Now I am flabby. I am middle-aged. I am corporate. I got out. I own a house. I'm trying to improve the world, but in my own little piecemeal and socially acceptable way. I am self-interested. I get more emotional about being mildly inconvenienced than when other people are obliterated by bombs. I am a fucking fanny.
It's not always a good measure to ask what your 15-year-old self would think of you now, because after all, what would that obnoxious turd know? But I can't help but think he would have rightly scoped me out about this. He'd have correctly seen that I am soft, passionless, ineffectual, non-threatening, domesticated.
>By which I mean, I was filled with utter rage as a younger man. Staying up at night, reading a book a week to get a handle on the world, starting fights, listening to loud music, pushing my body to exhaustion, drinking too much just to get the feelings to stop, vomiting, then doing it again.
It's just part of growing up.
Before adult life and middle age then saps all your energy.
It's easy being an angry young man with loads of pent up energy in your 20s. In middle age, the key ingredient you're missing for it is energy itself.
There's loads of angry people in middle age too, mind, but they tend to be the most insufferable cunts imaginabe (and far worse than any 20something lad with a grudge). One of my old bosses was like that, where it was like, his whole purpose in life was causing everybody else's existence to be as dreary and miserable as his own.
I've found that as you age, some battles are just no longer worth fighting against yourself and the world. It's like, alright, fine, the world is massively unfair and you're not getting your fair share. So what. Are you going to spend the rest of your life whining or sulking about it, or will you make up your mind to just go with it and roll with the punches. Much of life becomes easier when you stop resisting just because you think you're special.
Not every fight we fought when we're younger was worth it. And what has happened as you've grown older is that you've learned to value the system and your part in it. You aren't just a passive observer, you are part of it and therefore you have taken an ownership in its proper functionality. Society isn't some nebulous thing and it is only as good as we choose to make it.
That said I miss my rage too sometimes .I think people have mistaken my kindness in mid life for weakness as I have learned to favour the diplomatic approach. So it shocks them when I reach the point of clear ultimatum of violence that I won't waiver from. I would rather people had enough insight to recognise my quite assurance as more confident than the loud displays of the insecure, but that is really more down to them than it is me isn't it.
Really I've been around the sun enough times to see scenarios play out enough to go 'what does it matter?' let people who feel they need to prove something have their moment.
I had a moment a few years back on the side of a mountain where I gave reassurances to my less experienced climbing partner over taking either the risky or the safe route, and I told them I've climbed bigger and more dangerous mountains dozens of times I have nothing to prove I'm just here for the pleasure, whatever your comfort zone is, is fine with me. And I think that's part of it, you don't have anything to prove why would you fight all the time. Having a secure ego means not having to demonstrate your power. Merely exercising it when necessary. Embrace stocism in your midlife.
Yeah, I think a lot of that adolescent rage comes from having lots of ambition but very little agency. Your ambition naturally dwindles with age, but (if you've done things right) you should have gained lots of opportunity to make meaningful decisions and take charge of your life. If you're a teenager and you're desperately frustrated at being stuck in a dreary small town, that deserves sympathy; if you're 40 and you're still in that position, you've really got no-one else to blame. I used to rage at the capitalist system for my shit job and awful boss, but now I'm skilled enough and confident enough to just leave and work somewhere that doesn't make me miserable.
Sadly, I think that's a large part of the reason for the high suicide rate amongst middle-aged men. If you've come to terms with the fact that you're mostly responsible for your circumstances and you still hate your life, well...
>And what has happened as you've grown older is that you've learned to value the system and your part in it. You aren't just a passive observer, you are part of it and therefore you have taken an ownership in its proper functionality.
That greatly depends. Some would just call it Stockholm syndrome, where you've gotten so used to your cubicle you can't imagine a life outside it. Some would just say you've been bought off and sold out, because it turns out your principles were open to a lot of re-evaluation when you get that nice payrise and Friday afternoons off golfing instead of staying late. Some would perhaps say this is the inevitable perspective of someone born into a position of privilege, who was never really at odds with the system to begin with; it was really just spoiled teenage rebellion.
For me, my anger at the injustices and unfairness of the system have never gone away. I keep my head down and get on with it because even as a young man I knew it just isn't worth the hassle of getting tangled up in the various institutions that are much more powerful than you and much more likely to fuck your prospects up even further. From my background, even achieving a quiet and modest "normal" life was a success story all of its own. But the bullshit never ends, does it, and that's what keeps my rage smouldering.
I can control my temper better than I used to, I can keep my head through stress much more capably, and confront things much more calmly when they arise, but the rage does keep smouldering neveertheless. Just knowing that you have done your part, you have done your bit and played by all the rules to the best of your knowledge, and yet there are still so many ways you can fall foul of some predatory chancer, some parasite company that cashes in on some legal loophole or other, or some arsehole bureaucrat who has the power to make your life miserable without even knowing you exist at the stroke of a pen. It grinds you down. But if you were to give up that would mean they won.
Otherlad is right that maturity is about picking your battles, and to an extent, simply looking after number one. If you were to live with the kind of visceral heartfelt passion at every injustice that a young person has, you would be a burnt out husk of bitterness and hatred by your early 30s at latest. You make peace that some things are simply out of your hands, but you do what you can to get one over on The Man and enjoy the time you have either way, keep the company of like minded people, find yourself a niche and a role where you can be at least relatively content.
I remember writing in one of the other /emo/ threads about how I see a great deal of people's existential anguish being down to perceived self-actualisation. Not everyone can have their dream job and do what they truly feel they would be great at and happy with, but I see it as no less of a victory of self-actualisation to carve out a humble but respectable living, within a system that makes doing so such a seemingly unachievable goal. Forget money, forget prestige, if you can simply wake up for work on a morning without thinking "fuck me I wish I didn't have to do this" then you have something millions of people never will.
>Sadly, I think that's a large part of the reason for the high suicide rate amongst middle-aged men. If you've come to terms with the fact that you're mostly responsible for your circumstances and you still hate your life, well...
Some of it is just adequate self conditioning. There are many ways that somebody who's living a completely ordinary life, where most people would think they've got their shit together, can put themselves down and keep thinking of themselves as a failure. Maybe somebody you know has a better job, more money, a bigger house, a hotter wife or partner. Next to them, maybe you feel small.
On the other hand, you can condition yourself to think, fuck it, it's my life, and that's ok. I'm ok. I've been doing well. Or at least just well enough.
It's about happiness. And that's something that higher status often can't buy.
>Forget money, forget prestige, if you can simply wake up for work on a morning without thinking "fuck me I wish I didn't have to do this" then you have something millions of people never will.
>>33547 You strike me as someone who has never truly engaged themselves in the world around them, just complained it could be better Like you've never understood you could have a constructive positive impact on others and shape things for the better, and your very existence is having an impact. To you the system is a collection of invisible intangible bogey men equivalent of
The patriarchy or the Jews. These are, [some would say] the oversimplifications of someone who's developement is arrested as being a passenger in life. Who do you think the system is? The system is you and me. and frankly the cruelty within it comes from people like you who are too disengaged to try have a positive impact. When I encounter a Draconian rule it is regularly not the rule that is the problem it is the person enforcing that rule. The "I was only following orders" jobsworth. Being socially passive I see as, for lack of a better term, as a disease.
All society is to you apparently is a system where labour goes in and your monetary reward comes out and someone has more than you, try to humanise it. Are you part of a community or do you just live around strangers?
Forgive the presumptions of my interpretation of your statements but that injustice and unfairness you spoke of that you imagine to be a product of the system is anything but. That is the nature imposing itself. Life wasn't perfect and then we built something to make it awful. Existence was awful injust and unfair and we've built a system to make it better to make it more just and more fair and it objectively gets better all the time. You have a naive understanding where you criticise the system for not being perfect because you have no appreciation of how awful it was and how hard it was to get to this point. You are a child who doesn't remember the before time so you have no appreciation of it, any one can see the world isn't perfect, but we can strive to make it more so.
That isn't to say I don't think society has problems and issues. I just think we have to appreciate what we have. Modern Britain on the scale of human existence is a utopia limited only by the extent of practicality and our competiting ideals. Butter was the height of decadence for most of human history I travel faster than anyone who lived before the 19th century ever could have to buy it for a nominal price. Put it another way I am quite sure my mindset alone makes me more emotionally secure and happy than Elon Musk is capable of.
Hm... No, I don't think mine is the naive understanding, lad. /emo/ is not the place for a cunt off about lukewarm big society conservatism though, we shall have to agree to differ if it's all the same to you.
> Modern Britain on the scale of human existence is a utopia limited only by the extent of practicality and our competiting ideals. Butter was the height of decadence for most of human history I travel faster than anyone who lived before the 19th century ever could have to buy it for a nominal price. Put it another way I am quite sure my mindset alone makes me more emotionally secure and happy than Elon Musk is capable of.
True. Just think that a few hundred years ago, not even palaces and castles of the aristocracy had indoor plumbing and central heating. I did a guided tour of Aydon Castle in Northumberland a few years ago, and they told us that medieval castles were very draughty places in autumn and winter, with people spending their time huddled around a few spartan fireplaces, and no running water, meaning taking a hot bath was a time consuming affair where you had to have a servant get your water from a well in buckets, one by one, which was then heated over a wood fire and poured into your tub. Even the most run down council flat nowadays has indoor plumbing with working showers and toilets and 24/7 central heating. Also, many people were serfs in medieval times who were depending on the good will of their lord for the quality of their food. Many foods were simply unattainable. Compare that to our ability to whip up a Sunday roast for the whole family with all the trimmings for 20 to 30 quid from Lidl.
One of my exes was from a family of Welsh coal miners. For generations, they worked in the mines all their lives pretty much from the end of childhood. They never complained. And nowadays we've got people moaning about dead-end jobs and lacklustre career opportunties or possibilities for self-actualisation. You're either way still sitting in a heated office with steady employment, with food on your table at home every night. Get a fucking sense of perspective now and then.
Does it occur to you that if everyone was simply content with their lot that we'd all still be medieval serfs? Wanting better for yourself and your offspring is the driving force that makes us keep improving things.
The confidence of your assumption that people are moaning about nothing is what gives away you've led a sheltered life. You don't realise that very nasty things can and do happen to people, even in our utopian space ship wonderland of hot water and central heating (when people can afford it).
You should try some of that perspective you mention out.
>Does it occur to you that if everyone was simply content with their lot that we'd all still be medieval serfs?
The point I was arguing was that we've come this far in our modern world. Yes, not everything is perfect, and many people would like their lives to be better in one way or another. And you're right that that has been the driving force behind centuries of human and societal development.
But even with that, it can't hurt to sometimes think about all the things we have accomplished as humans now take for granted. And I think the inability to do that is what makes many people unhappy. The things they complain about are really often small, in the greater scheme of things.
> You don't realise that very nasty things can and do happen to people
I do though.
And even if you're skint and unemployed, you've still got your council flat with central heating. Which your council's household support fund will pay for if you absolutely can't.
I have a certain level of belief that the reason Britain conquered half the world is that our weather is fucking awful, so we were driven to get away from it.
Content is absolutely the enemy of invention. But wouldn't it be better to be filled with joy and to not be a whiney ruminating bitch who will never be happy? If there is no end game you have devoted your life to being miserable and complainimg. That to me is tragic. We aren't medieval serfs we live the lives of medieval emperors I want my offspring to live my quality of life that is enough.
>The confidence of your assumption that people are moaning about nothing is what gives away you've led a sheltered life. You don't realise that very nasty things can and do happen to people, even in our utopian space ship wonderland of hot water and central heating (when people can afford it)
Your logic makes no sense, why shouldn't we therefore be greatful for what we have. My life hasn't been free of abuse or horrors on a personal level but now that I've escaped that I can find peace, and wish my quality of life upon everyone else. I suspect you just want to be resentful. You'd march right into those Buddhist temples and mexican fisherman huts and tell them all to get off their arses and start being miserable.
>I have a certain level of belief that the reason Britain conquered half the world is that our weather is fucking awful, so we were driven to get away from it.
Not really. It all started in Spain. The Spanish King and his court got into financial troubles because of their lavish spending, so they thought they'd go and steal gold and other natural resources from indigenous peoples in the Americas to balance their budget. Which then for a time ended up making Spain the richest country in Europe. Other countries like France, the Netherlands and England then saw just how much wealth the Spanish were able to extract from the Americas, and wanted in on it too.
It's worth noting that the British colonies weren't the air conditioned all-inclusive tourist paradise they are today. In Britain, you were miserable under the damp rainy weather, but in places like India, the Caribbean and Australia, you were miserable because of the heat and humidity and the mosquitoes and malaria. On top of indigenous people here and there trying to defend their land and kill you.
I think the issue here is you seem not to have read the latter couple of paragraphs of my original post, which came around to a much more stoic/whatever you call it "make the best of your lot" conclusion.
>>33552 >One of my exes was from a family of Welsh coal miners. For generations, they worked in the mines all their lives pretty much from the end of childhood. They never complained.
To bring this thread back into /emo/ territory, not complaining is not the same thing as being happy.
I also think you're buying into a myth of progress, here. There has been progress in plenty of areas, and I like being able to take a hot shower as much as anyone, but hygiene isn't the same thing as having a place in society, having meaning in your work, having accessible outdoor spaces or a living environment you like, having more days off. I pick these examples because some historical societies have actually done better than us moderns at them.
>not complaining is not the same thing as being happy.
No, it isn't, but many people aren't happy exactly because they give too little thought to how far we've come. Or even how far they've come individually. If you've got a steady job and a roof over your head, then you're already doing better than that lot who spend the day every day in the park getting shitfaced with their mates. As part of what some euphemistically call the public drinking community.
If you want better for yourself than your dead end desk job, then by all means strive for it. Find ways to make it happen. Just don't axiomatically count on it bringing you more happiness. There could in fact end up being different things for you to be unhappy about all over again.
>>33561 Just to jump in here, it is my firm belief that one absolutely vital component of personal happiness is the sense that things are getting better. Chinese people probably love their 18-hour days putting mercury into thermometers, because there are skyscrapers and high-speed trains popping up all over the place, and stitching belts in Chongqing now is so much nicer than the same job was even just five years ago. Objectively, it is worse than what we have here, but who knows what tomorrow might bring? Meanwhile, in this country, we know exactly what tomorrow will bring - exactly the same as today, but the Mars bars will be slightly smaller and the £1 crisps will cost £1.20.
Between 2012 and 2022, the average salary in Shenzhen increased from £6300 to £17,600. I'd be quite optimistic if my salary had increased by 280% in a decade.
Inflation averaged about 2.5% over that period. Rents and property prices in tier 1 cities have gone pretty wild, which is why unskilled internal migrant workers tend to live in dormitories. They spend a few years in a Tier 1 city like Shenzhen or Tianjin, save as much money as they can, then either go back to their villages or move to a smaller and cheaper city. It's basically what the Bulgmanians do when they come over here, only they're all Chinese and there's about 300 million of them.
>>33564 >Does it necessarily follow that standard of living has improved, as opposed to inflation, higher cost of living, etc?
Blimey, they really got you good, didn't they?
>>33564 There are various other things you can measure, like PPP (purchasing power parity, I think?) and just general economic growth, which will answer that question for you. I am confident that yes, things really have got that much better in China, but I haven’t looked up the numbers myself because I enjoy answering questions but I frankly know fuck all about economics.
To get back a bit to the original topic of this thread, one thing about being middle aged that sometimes rears its ugly head for me is to think of past decisions that had some degree of gravity or that were more or less momentous, and maybe resulted in lost opportunities that I could have seized if I'd decided differently.
That means career choices, both in a general way and more detailed decisions I made along the way, as well as thinking that I could have been with other romantic partners than the ones I ended up with, and how that could have influenced and affected my life as it is today.
I guess the biggest challenge in middle age is then to accept both your good and your bad past decisions, and take them as being just as much a part of your life and your personal history as everything else. In that sense, maybe being young is about making the right decisions while you're still spoiled for choice, and then as you get older standing by those decisions and living with the consequences. If that makes any sense.
I don't think I was ready yet for hitting a stage in life where the hideous, hollow, creteans they show getting excited about value for money, cleaning power, freshness and supermarket deals in ads are around my age.
It's probably the right call to top myself before it gets any bleaker.
I appreciate the total war reference. Alright I won't kill myself, but if you end up killing yourself instead and leaving me now, I'll be as disappointed as someone who relied on other leading brands stain removal power.
>>33664 I have wishes and goals, but absolutely no idea of how to manifest them, which it turns out is exactly the same as having no ambitions whatsoever.
I had a general outline of what I wanted my 40s to look like. Which is probably always good to have, because failure to plan is a plan for failure, and all that. But I've always been somebody who has decided a lot of things, beyond that, relatively spontaneously. Which didn't mean no planning, but a bit of room to adjust course if an opportunity presented itself to do things differently.
It's possible to age gracefully but it requires a focus on your metabolism and health, as well as realising that you're not a machine that just gets old and breaks down. Aging is an accumulation of stress, so learning to manage stress and having control over your response to it is very powerful. Your body knows how to heal itself and feel good, but the world is very stressful with many things poisoning you.
Cholesterol rises with stress, and at a certain age, the mainstream provides statins to lower your cholesterol. Statins ruin your ability to synthesise vitamin K, and deplete CoQ10 (an enzyme essential to energy production). Likewise, you're told to eat less sugar because it 'causes diabetes', without anyone mentioning that polyunsaturated fats ruin the body's ability to use sugar (and that diabetes is a metabolic condition). The reason so many men now have large 'beer bellies' and stick legs is cortisol (so stress) driven weight gain.
For context here, stress is a thing that occurs in response to a stressor. Your body has a specific response to it regardless of where it comes from. If you skip a meal, if you have an argument, if you hate your wife, these things are all stresses and your body doesn't really care — it may as well be a bear chasing you. These exhaust you unless you intervene to recover.
On the one hand, you have people that directly and indirectly try to conserve as much energy as possible which manifests as lethargy and 'that's just how it is'. On the other, you have health nuts that feel good largely because they run on stress hormones and die in their mid-50s 'despite running 10 miles a day'.
The answer lies in fixing your metabolism and lowering stress, which requires understanding some heterodox ideas. Sugar is good for you, polyunsaturated fats are bad for you. Go and have fish and chips fried in dripping, or eat a tub of vanilla ice cream.
The data clearly shows that statins significantly reduce the risk of premature death from all causes. Every "heterodox" counterargument I've seen has relied on cherry-picking of data or mere innuendo.
I have a plan to be financially comfortable and possibly even retired by my mid 50s, and while this goal isn't impossible, I tend to oscillate between worrying I'm sacrificing my present happiness and comfort to achieve a goal I might not even live to see, and feeling guilty that I'm not doing enough to meet the goal and will regret it later.
I am utterly terrified of having to work when I am too old to do so in comfort and ease. I think a lot about how all it would take is for me to make one mistake that could snowball and wipe out my security for the future, and I already know if I'm having to work to pay my bills when I'm 60 plus I'll probably want to die.
I also lie awake at night bitterly thinking about the many people who will never have to worry about this because their parents did alright for themselves.
>>33667 >>33668 Why is this seed oil bollocks so prevalent on the internet, is Big Squirrel really so powerful?
1. Yes stress is bad for you. Although it depends on the kind and more of a moderation exercise. Get a good night kip, eat a varied diet and remember to laugh. Good luck with that if you have kids.
2. Diabetes is a metabolic condition. Obviously taking a load of sugar over a sustained period raises insulin resistance for the same reason my tolerance for alcohol will rise if I have a drink every time some bro-science is posted on the internet. But it's also a major contributing factor not a magic process.
3. Statins don’t ‘ruin your ability to synthesise vitamin K’ and polyunsaturated fats includes omega-3 which I don’t think needs defending. Omega-6 (where people get the ‘inflammation’ talk from) should be moderated but you’ll die without it and the way you moderate it is to increase consumption of omega-3 and maybe not eating crisps everyday.
>>33669 >I also lie awake at night bitterly thinking about the many people who will never have to worry about this because their parents did alright for themselves.
The older I get the more I think that my own life is really about trying to give what I can for the next generation. I'm resigned to the fact that I'll be pushing a trolly in my 70s while anyone born this century is only going to have it even rougher so I'd better try to help them.
This is probably the real reason those readers of The Times are so upset about taxing private education - in the back of their minds they know that their lives are fucked and they can't imagine a better future so they're trying to do damage mitigation by getting into the clubhouse. Little Samantha won't be down the mines, she'll be living a more comfortable life of collaboration and who knows, maybe she'll even marry up.
Health permitting, I plan on working into my 70s, at least part-time. My granddad retired at 64, lived until he was 99 and was bored out of his mind for 35 years. I think he would have been happier if he'd have kept his hand in. A lot of people are desperate to retire, but don't know what to do with themselves once they do.
I think work is a very different experience when you've paid off your mortgage and you know there's a pension waiting for you; just knowing that you could jack it all in takes a lot of the pressure off. I know that work was much more stressful for me when I'd just used up all my savings to buy a house, and much less stressful once I'd built my savings back up and I wasn't living month-to-month.
I'd like to teach in FE, if that's an option open to me. I think there's something quite dignified about an old bloke passing on his experience to a new generation.
Personally I have a lot of hobbies I plan to get stuck into, including some I could monetise if I wanted to or felt like I needed more motivation or focus.
I enjoy working (provided I find my job interesting, which currently I do) but I'm absolutely fucking fed up of working for feckless corporations. I know what you mean about it being different when you don't have to be there, but personally I would still not want to be exploited by these cunts any more than I already have.
My ideal life would be building a business around flipping or restoring cars, but it would only be feasible once I have a pension as a safety net.
I'm lucky enough to have a job I rather like and as an only child, I know in the back of my mind I can be relatively secure in the knowledge I'll have at least a bit of money coming my way by the time my parents pass away. But even then, work is only ever something I have to do, at best it's something I don't mind.
If I suddenly had the means to retire tomorrow, I wouldn't even spend half a picosecond considering it. I probably wouldn't even tell my employer. I'd just sack it off and never show up again. The things I would really enjoy spending my time doing are productive but not in demand skills. The curse of being a creative at heart, forced to put those dreams away and grind away in the real world.
I suppose not everyone has valuable hobbies that aren't work, most people's hobbies are just fun little distractions to pass Sunday afternoons, so without their work, they would feel a bit listless. But I can't help always having that slightly condescending and smug opinion, deep down, that people who can only conceive of life beyond work as sitting on their arse, watching telly, and generally being bored have something terminally defective with their imagination.
Anyway, I have never been one to plan, other than in the most vague and general terms. You need to have an idea of where your destination is, but if you obsess over it you only cause yourself more stress, I think. Take it one day at a time. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Things do tend to fall into place. But again, maybe that's me just being to much of a hippy free thinker, always preferring to improvise over having a recipe.
The thing that annoys me is when you meet those people who had their entire life path laid out for them. Their mum and dad basically told them "concentrate on these things, choose this and that subject, go to this uni, apply to this place..." and they never had to work it out for themselves. Those people are the true definition of privileged.
>But I can't help always having that slightly condescending and smug opinion, deep down, that people who can only conceive of life beyond work as sitting on their arse, watching telly, and generally being bored have something terminally defective with their imagination
My suspicion is that people like this do indeed have an imagination, they've just either been conditioned to supress it or never talk about it. They learned early on that the best social outcome was to just talk about football and whatever was on telly last night. I can see it in people, how quickly, almost aggressively they shut down a question about hobbies or creative endeavours.
>The thing that annoys me is when you meet those people who had their entire life path laid out for them. Their mum and dad basically told them "concentrate on these things, choose this and that subject, go to this uni, apply to this place..." and they never had to work it out for themselves. Those people are the true definition of privileged.
My mum was supportive but never gave me any direction. I'm not saying I would have necessarily listened to her, but all I've needed my whole life is someone to push me and it's taken me 30 years to figure out how to be that motivator for myself.
Anyway, I distinctly remember reading a college prospectus about doing a fully funded commercial pilot course. I told my mum about it and she said "that's a bit of a pipe dream though isn't it" and that stuck with me. I never even bothered to look into it further.
She's not an unreasonable woman, and I wasn't a particularly impressionable teenager, I'm sure I could have ignored her and gone for it anyway, or explained to her it was a free ride to a lucrative career and worst case I just fail out and do something else, but the way she said it just stopped me in my tracks.
I've since learned that being a pilot is incredibly boring and all pilots are cunts, but nonetheless if she had just chosen different words on that day I might well have been sorted for life.
You wouldn't. The airline industries perks have been absolutely gutted while the cost of learning to fly AND getting the prerequisite flight time for commercial aircraft is ruinous. It's very much a passion industry with long hours, being away from home and a host of health issues within the workforce that the airlines don't give a shit about. From what I hear the military is better where you mostly fly weekend round-trips but the pay is even worse.
I did flying lessons when I was younger but even back then the guy teaching me was Spanish and that was because of how comparatively easy and cheap it is to get a licence done in Spain. A schoolmate was much more focused on it but he just ended up joining the Paras which I guess was close enough for him.
What your mum should've done was tell you to invest all your time and effort into shady cryptocurrency and getting the jiggle physics right on 3D futas of Fortnight characters.
I don't know if you missed the part where I said it was fully sponsored. This was in the mid 2000s. They needed people back then, airlines were willing to pay for your training.
You can still make 100 grand a year as a short haul captain to this day so I'm not sure where you're coming from. You do need to spend your own money to learn now, and plenty of airlines you're bonded to pay for your type rating and such too, but the investment is still worth it if you genuinely like flying.
>I've since learned that being a pilot is incredibly boring and all pilots are cunts
I've been thinking about this lately on my long trips up and down the motorway, when my conscious brain is completely elsewhere and my sensory nervous system is operating the vehicle practically autonomously, how this must basically be kind of what it's like as a pilot or train driver. Only without even having to engage your conscious attention slightly every so often to overtake a lorry. For 12 hours at a time instead of two or three. With about 300 people in the back who will all die if you fuck up.
It must take a very particular kind of person to do something so uneventful for such a long time, but where the stakes are so high you still have to be paying complete attention the whole time. No wonder it self selects for turbo-autists.
But yeah I definitely understand your point about how a seemingly small thing like that can have a big knock-on effect for your life. I rant about inequality enough but I've often said, that's the biggest difference between a posho private school and a normal pleb comprehensive. My school didn't fail me educationally, in fact they were quite good about it. I'm pretty bright. Where they failed was in how they gave you nothing in terms of inspiration or direction, and subconsciously implanted you with the assumption "there's no point".
I don't blame my parents, because they did the best they could, they were as supportive as can reasonably be expected; but from the kind of background they both had, they simply didn't have the knowledge for themselves, in order to pass it on to me. That's the edge a middle class kid has.
>It must take a very particular kind of person to do something so uneventful for such a long time, but where the stakes are so high you still have to be paying complete attention the whole time. No wonder it self selects for turbo-autists.
Planes really do basically fly themselves now too, so there is a lot of just sitting around, but like you say you can't actually do anything to distract from the boredom (I do however know a lot of pilots will watch videos on their ipad, even though they're definitely not supposed to). That's basically why there's still a requirement for two pilots. Yes one may become incapacitated, but it's really more a protection against the more common risk of complacency or distraction.
Pilots earn their money when things go bad, and though I think it's a dull boring job I don't want to take that away from them - they have a vast knowledge and are particularly calm and methodical. This of course makes them boring, and the ones who aren't boring are frustrated and are unpleasant to deal with, or just constantly want to talk about their days in the RAF.
I work for a short haul carrier, and although that means you get to go home every night (diverts and other delays notwithstanding), you don't get any of the perks of seeing the world or shagging cabin crew in the hotel like long haulers do.
I also think a lot about having to spend that long day next to someone you might not even know that well. Some of the older captains just sit in stony silence for 8 hours. It must be painful. But the I suppose you can always talk about planes.
>I also think a lot about having to spend that long day next to someone you might not even know that well. Some of the older captains just sit in stony silence for 8 hours. It must be painful.
That makes me cringe just to think about.
There's this funny dynamic that tickles my sperg side, whenever I bump into another driver from my company at a service station or Maccies. We never know each other's names and we barely talk to each other at the depot, but when you're out in the wild it's basically rude not to wave and park next to them to make small talk about where your route went and so on.
>>33681 >when you're out in the wild it's basically rude not to wave and park next to them
A mate of mine was a bus driver. I said I'd rather wank them off that wave to every other incoming bus driver on the other side of the road.
