I am actually ridiculously good at keeping myself entertained. I could stay in the basement forever…
Edit : Post left unedited below. Sorry i wrote this after waking up and misread. I still hope it helps. That “long time” is going to feel short before you know it. 60 years is a blink.
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If everything is equally boring, go lift weights. Not to get stronger, just for the experience of suffering. Suffering is novel, unique, different from boredom. You may grow to enjoy the suffering, many do. Because after the suffering, the world glows like a lightbulb because your body is so relieved the suffering is over. (Plus chemical brain stuff I won’t get into.)
Another boring activity, mental health diagnosis and treatment.
May as well right? Since everything is boring, you would have no preference for one task over another.
Unless shitpost means “I want to complain don’t help me,” in which case I will have to avoid this community in the future.
You’re young, try everything once. Sorry if I missed the joke, wish you the best.
Plus exercise is well known to increase dopamine in your system helping you feel good
I’m probably the opposite and I HATE it. I have virtually no free time. And once I finally get it I can’t decide what to do with it because I get bored of anything after ~30 mins. And yet it still feels like I don’t get enough free time, smh.
The list of things I’m going to finish would take me until the heat death of the universe. The last atomic fragments would be reaching homeostatic equilibrium, and I’ll be sitting on my phone checking to see how cheap I can order a replacement part for a broken PS2 so I can finally play Psychonauts the way it was meant to be played.
Feels relatable… too relatable.
It’s like Netflix. Overwhelmed by choice but yet not enough time to have a strong emotional connection to what it is you are doing.
So you just scroll.
I get it from a job that snipes me out of fun moments that’s 24/7 breathing down my back. Oh what you give up to stay alive.
But I also just do the fun stuff anyways. Or the stuff I said I would do. Because I agreed with myself to do it.
Better to have more time than less. I got maybe 10-15 left and interests just keep piling on
Yeah the older I get the more shit I want to do, there surely isn’t enough time for it all.
Oddly enough the older I get the more I feel like I’ve done it all.
I’m 36 years old. Society insists that by now I should be in the middle of a career. I’ve had three careers; I was let go as an auto mechanic during the 2008 recession, my job as a flight instructor ended due to problems internal to the company, let’s leave it at that, and the prototyping shop I was project manager of most recently folded during the pandemic. I’m loathe to start over again.
Society also insists that I should be a husband and father by now. I never wanted children, and both of my ex-fiancees are mostly why I am now a bachelor in my mid-30’s. I need an ex wife like I need a hole in my head and that’s all any attempt at starting a “family” would bring.
Meanwhile, I’ve driven across the United States from coast to coast, I’ve flown the length of the Appalachians solo, I’ve built houses, furniture, electronics, race cars, airplanes, all manner of ridiculous objects (I managed a prototyping shop, after all), I’ve played concerts, I have artwork hanging in a gallery, I’ve seen the aurora borealis, two solar eclipses, comet Hale Bopp and once with the help of an unnecessarily powerful and lightly loaded airplane, I took off at dusk and watched the sun rise in the west.
I survived two shootings, a riot, ten hurricanes, that goddamn tornado and a global pandemic.
And even among all that I still watched a lot of TV, saw a lot of movies and played a lot of video games. Accoutrements of old hobbies gather dust because I’ve…finished them.
So what now?
As someone my mid 60’s, you’ve been around enough to have learned some things. Start thinking about what you will leave behind on the day you die. What is it that you can do to leave a mark on this world? It doesn’t need to be large and grandiose. Even if you only affect one person for the better, it’s a win.
I went from being a farmer to a toolmaker to a ME. And like you, I discovered that while I was accomplished in those fields, it meant very little in the grand scheme. So I became a volunteer firefighter, which lead to me eventuality becoming medic. When I became too old for that, I looked around and found a need in my local school for me to teach. I discovered community service was what I could leave a legacy in.
And when I do finally pass beyond this vale of tears, I will leave behind a legacy that will live on through the people I comforted though the worst moments of their lives. And also the hopeful seeds I have tried to plant in the future generation. It was never meant to be great or fancy. Just a few simple efforts for me to be satisfied with.
What will you leave behind?
I am 50 years old. I thought by becoming a research engineer I could improve the world like others before me who created things like radio, indoor plumbing, and textile factories. I published over a hundred research papers, but I learned that no one reads research papers anymore, and publication has become a complete waste of time. I learned that politics and money trump engineering considerations 100% of the time, and that the sole purpose of technology now seems to draw money from investors’ wallets. I wanted to be a great teacher, but engineers are not paid to do that because it doesn’t make money, so now I just make open source projects that I hope can be used to be examples to learn from. But I don’t think I’ll be remembered, as it seems technology nowadays is largely used as a means of swindling people out of their money so they can buy stuff they don’t need and makes them miserable.
Meh, I want to leave nothing behind. Live like I die, and no one is allowed in on it. A death just for me.
I want to leave no mark. May my flesh rot and become the earth, may my bones crumble to dust and become fertilizer, may my grave be unmarked and unknown except for the plants that feed upon me.
Legacy is for the ego and mine doesn’t exist. The world is a mess and it doesn’t need me tugging futilely on the wisps of strings I can barely reach, hoping to unravel a knot that others keep tying.
I’m glad you found joy, I am tired of people, and have nothing left to share.
That’s awesome and a great mentality and focus, bravo.
Man, fuck society’s outdated edicts - as long as you’re able to feed yourself, you’re doing amazing in my book.
What now? A lot of options still on the table, but here’s something to think about: one element of the whole fatherhood thing is passing down the knowledge you’ve gathered from all of this for your child’s benefit/enrichment. But you aren’t going to have kids, which is fine. So - are there any other means to share your knowledge/experience with the next generation? Preferably in meatspace?
I’m a certificated flight instructor.
How old are you?
61
What was your career in? If you don’t mind me asking.
Last job was thermoformer operator/setup/specialist. 8 years in 120F+ heat. Now am not doing anything cept house maintenance
Nice. Is that like plastics for packaging.
Yep
Oof
Dont feel bad. We all have to travel a similar road in life. I felt the same way you do when i was your age.
Psh why are you under cutting your potential life span so much, you probably have much more than 10 years left!
Cant say. All the males in my family have died by 70 or shortly after. Im a traditionslist eh? Heh
Fair enough, but hey I’m rooting for you man. I think you’re gonna make it to 85+!
Were they unfit and overweight?
Because if they were, you could really do something about it.
I’m 45 and suffer crippling, life long mental illness. Eventually you get used to counting the days. It’s tiring but at least I don’t want to step in front of a train.
I have. Trains hurt anyways so be glad you don’t want to.
60 more years? What are you, 10? :-P
Unironically the average lifespan for humans is just over 80 years.
So if you start working when you’re 15 and work until retirement age which in America is 66 you’ll have less than 20 years to just enjoy being alive.
And by then you’ll probably have some kind of condition that will make existing harder like back pain or arthritis or the myriad of other possible ailments.
We’re literally giving our prime to corporate overlords who use our work to live the life we should all have as a baseline.
You could get a fully work-from-home job, what ever that could be.
You could order your food delivered home.
You could buy a pullup bar or a bench and adjustable dumbbells and you could take care of your strength.
You could buy a treadmill or an indoor trainer and you could take care of your fitness.
I mean, if you really wanted to you could pretty much stay at home for a very long time.
It could be worse. Think of spending your years on a futile effort, one which you sacrificed your youth and health to try to achieve, and having to look back on that.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
Cheer up, maybe your shift will be over much sooner than that!
Ghostmane was so much cooler in 1934. Time does a number.
wrong comment
Wrong post?
Lost lemmings?
We have 2-10 years left before we all die due to climate change. If we look at someone’s age in relation to when they die, rather than when they were born, we are all about the same age. This is our retirement, our golden years. Good luck
I’m not gonna be dead in ten years. Climate change is real and a HUGE issue, but I don’t think we only have ten years left.
That’s your call to make. Go ahead and spend your remaining years how you want.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/02/climate/james-hansen-global-warming-report.html
https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/features/z1304_00250.html
And these are just the overall predictions. I don’t have enough time to link all of the climate disasters that have already happened. Pay attention, look outside. We will be lucky if we get 10 solid years.
You’re like the guys who spent up large because they thought the world would end in 2012 when the Mayan calendar ran out.
It didn’t, and now they’re saddled with debt
Can you define science or empirical evidence? Do you not understand how modern day scientific predictions are different than ancient Mayan ones? That you conflate this is disingenuous at best. Especially since I’ve given you a few decent sources already and a simple search will pull up hundreds more.
Again, you do you. I’m not wasting the last few years of my life wage slaving and hoping the government and the wealthy will figure out a solution for us common folk when they are building bunkers and exacerbating income inequality. They’ve known since the 70s about this issue. As it currently stands, in present day reality, according to all data we have and all the scientific experts, and all currently in use solutions, we are dead and the planet is dead. It was a good time. ✌️ We ran out of time. The last option we have is putting a blanket in the sky or in space to deflect a percentage of UV but we don’t know the impact that would have either, and it would only buy us some time (scientists have floated the idea of putting sulfur in the sky). Not nearly enough time. We need decades.
How nice it must be to have someone paying for all your food and shelter and survival. So you can just sit there and waste away. How nice for you. How’s that doing for your personal character development?
Deep
Go watch TV boomer. The adults are talking.
