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PaperclipPerfector  9d ago (text post)   2002 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 12, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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We all hate our jobs. That's why they have to pay us to do them. If we loved our jobs, we would do them for free.

From "Would You Like Another Plate of This?" by Mike Darwin, as quoted on "On the Unpopularity of Cryonics: Life Sucks, but at Least Then You Die" by Gwern Branwen:

Then there are the other people you must necessarily interact with. Several of the people you work with are complete monsters, in fact, they despise you and they go out of their way to make your job and your hours at work more difficult. And the customers! Most are OK, but some are horrible – encounters with them leave you shaking, and sometimes fearful for your job. Speaking of which, there is always some degree of apprehension present that you might lose your job; you might screw up, the economy may take a nosedive… In any event, your survival is critically dependent upon your job. Others whom you work with are better compensated, and those that own the enterprise you work for are getting rich from it, and that rankles. But, beyond these concerns, this isn’t what you really wanted to do with your life and your time. When you were fifteen, you wanted to _______________, to travel, to see the world, and to meet interesting people and do interesting things. Instead, here you are. And every day you are a little older and a little more run-down. The clock is ticking. When you looked in mirror this morning, you had to face it yet again; you aren’t young anymore and you aren’t going to get any younger.

...

Most people lack autonomy in their daily lives. Next to life itself, freedom is the most precious value; and most people’s lives are functionally devoid of it. Many cryonicists fail to see this, because they are self employed, are in jobs that offer them compensating satisfaction, or that they don’t perceive as “work” (e.g., they are not watching the clock just waiting for the torture to be over for another day).

...

The vast majority of people over 30 don’t feel well a significant fraction of the time. They have colds, flu, osteoarthritis, and most importantly, they are poorly conditioned as a result of jobs that enforce immobility and make them sedentary. As a result, they are tired and drained from their work and home responsibilities at the end of each day, and worst of all, they spend that part of the day when they feel the best and are most alert, doing what other people tell them to do – not what they want to do.

For that reason, I have always gravitated towards jobs that require as little work as possible and leave me free to use the internet or listen to podcasts: night auditor, security guard, delivery driver, etc. I even tried teaching once for the three months of vacation, but I couldn't control the kids.

The pay is awful, but I get by with the Early Retirement Extreme mindset of spending as little as possible (e.g. I don't have health insurance and go to a community health center if I absolutely must). The status hit is worse; my family is disappointed in me and no Western woman is going to be impressed with my job. C'est la vie.

The pay is awful, but I get by with the Early Retirement Extreme mindset of spending as little as possible (e.g. I don't have health insurance and go to a community health center if I absolutely must). The status hit is worse; my family is disappointed in me and no Western woman is going to be impressed with my job. C'est la vie.

Live the dream, random collection of letters I found on the Internet called erwgv3g34! Don't let them grind you down! If I hadn't insisted on having a huge family, you know I'd be knocking on your door on Sunday afternoon asking you if I could have your recycling to take down to the center so I could buy beer!

If we loved our jobs, we would do them for free.

Counterexample, and more general counterassertions.

I love my job. I would not do it for free.

Why? Because I have a finite amount of time available, and there are other things I love more than my job. (Obvious example: owning a roof over my head. Less obvious example: doing only the parts of my job that I enjoy the most.)

Loving other things more than X does not imply I do not love X.
Not wanting X and only X to the exclusion of literally everything else does not imply I do not love X.

Didn’t Cormac McCarthy follow the same mindset? Thought he got himself a wife.

I did read a story of him building his own house, which I suppose points to frugality. But AFAIK he just wanted to write above all else, thus earned little and had little to spend.

But whoever knows more, let me know.

Something like that:

In 1969, the couple moved to Louisville, Tennessee, and purchased a dairy barn,[28] which McCarthy renovated, doing the stonework himself.[27] According to DeLisle, the couple lived in "total poverty", bathing in a lake. DeLisle claimed, "Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books. And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week."[12] While living in the barn, he wrote his next book, Child of God (1973).[29] Like Outer Dark before it, Child of God was set in southern Appalachia. In 1976, McCarthy separated from Anne DeLisle and moved to El Paso, Texas.[30]

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