My job got relocated to a different city and I told them I had zero interest in moving and will take the severance package.
I think I am going to take a shot at being a power linemen. I am currently an accountant, and working a desk job is boring. Air conditioning is nice, but I work two days a week and then have to find ways to not brainrot until Friday. I could quite easily get another accounting job, there are many positions open, but I am not convinced it would be much better. Seems like a golden opportunity to switch careers.
That's a genius anecdote, on how you forget all your failures. So many of these motivational speakers want to tell you failure's no big deal but forget to let us know they really know what they're talking about.
The Update was more educational (and entertaining) than the body of the original post. Yeah, spinning failures into successes is largely an act of self delusion.
I would add a corollary to this post if I may, that further confirms it.
TL;DR in case the gamma-like wall of text below bothers you: Even the bad choices you make don't weigh on you nearly as much as you might think. Or even shorter version: Scars heal and chicks dig them.
After reading this I contemplated for a couple of minutes what regrets I had in life, and honestly I struggled to find more than a few, knowing this is not normal at age 54 unless you're some sort of self-unaware raging narcissist (which despite appearances I am not) I thought, wait a minute, what about all the bad choices I made... and voilà suddenly all was clear.
Being as Vox might be a little more cautious/wiser than myself, I think I can honestly say that the times I did not jump at a chance are really very, very few. Which of course means I strayed deeply into that area of life commonly known as the place where "fools rush in" and "angels fear to tread".
It's not exactly due to blithering stupidity, for the most part, it's due to terminal curiosity and a sense that: "hey, how bad can it be, I mean I survived...(fill in long list of stup...err..."curiousity based errors") ".
The point being I have made some idiot...er-hem... "curiosity induced unwise choices" made worse by my general sense that my overall competence will likely get me through. And some of these errors were not small or without life-altering consequences.
I am divorced twice over just as one example. I started brand new shifts in life/residence/work multiple times over, not always for good reasons and there are a few things I probably need to leave details of posthumously, but the reality is that even those events that seriously caused damage (mostly of the non-physical kind, though there are a few non-major/non-crippling but permanent injuries there too) did not ultimately cause me so much harm that I regret the "less than wise" decision. That's not due to pride either, but rather, the curious fact that while I have never agreed with the Nitzchean concept that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," because it is pretty retarded, what you survive more often than you'd expect tends to have consequences that are really quite positive down the line. For example, if I hadn't had my first divorce I wouldn't have had the second wife and if I hadn't had her I wouldn't have had my eldest daughter and despite the absolute shitshow that second divorce was, if that utter clusterfuck hadn't happened I would not have found Christ, and without the next shower of shit after the second divorce, I wouldn't have ended up with my current wife and another 3 (so far) kids. And on and on it goes.
The point is that while I realise from the shell-shocked looks of horror on most people's faces when they find out about 15% of what my life has been like, and while living as I do, rushing at trains face-first and so on, is certainly not for everyone (or even most sane people probably) as long as you are able to keep getting back up, life has a way of turning out alright.
And now I am yet again just starting again in a completely new situation, trying to make a farm financially viable, which is a lot harder than anyone imagines, and I'm nowhere near there yet, but... things are slowly shifting... and I am confident that down the line, I will probably think "well, yes, that was like diving off a cliff in the dark on the hope that there is seawater deep enough at the end, but look, I wouldn't be in this cool and comfortable snow drift that saved my life now, watching the stars above in a moment of bliss. Oh, right, better move my ass before I freeze to death..." and so it goes.
I wonder if those folks who were the inspiration for your update will ever be able to figure out that their insatiable need to redefine a failure as a success is part of the problem. That very need is what so often keeps them from taking the shot in the 1st place?
Because for a product it's easier to not personalize it. With their own lives, it would take looking inward, towards the place where the Bene Gesserit dare not look.
I dunno. A high delta makes at least $150k per year, full bennies, 6 weeks vacation, and gets off work at 3pm. How is this hilarious to you? Please explain.
I appreciate this message. It doesn't matter if you're too tired, hungry, running late running late for another appointment, you forgot to brush your teeth, she is wearing headphones or whatever. You are where you are and you would be wise to make the most of beneficial circumstances when you come across them. Where I live in suburban midwestern USA, it can be weeks until I find myself in the same 100ft radius of a 10/10 woman again.
SK, I think you're missing the point. You won't regret being shot down by a 10/10. Such a result is a near 100% probability for most men. What you'll regret, is the opportunity you missed with a interested tier-2 woman because you were busy fruitlessly chasing Heather.
I gotta really second this post - I am in my 60s and have never really had problems attracting chiks but I had some big approach anxiety when I was younger that was way unnecessary in hindsight - so many girls giving IoIs and I was too chickenshit to do much. I recently got a text with a photo of me and an ex-GF from 40 years ago - she sent it. I was actually pretty shocked at how I looked, far better than I remember - other than being short, a literal chad compared to current standards of 'attractiveness'. I will never know what coulda woulda shoulda happened if I hadn't been such a shithead dumbass and just walked over to some of these girls and said 'Hey'.
Those are the biggest mistakes of my life I think. What I did not do. Not what I did.
And second - the age thing. When I hit my 50s all the shit that I used to get away with ignoring came to me with a vengeance - weird shit started happening with my body in myriad ways. Its all the bad decisions, injuries, shitty food, too much substances and so forth coming back to request that their bills be paid. Three things I have found to be very important in dealing with this. One, for anyone over 40 you should be getting your testosterone levels checked every few years. My test was at the level of an 80 year old when I was in my late 30s - it can happen a lot younger than u think. or feel for that matter - I never had ED type problems from that, instead I had exercise recovery issues. I could work my ass off running or doing weights and get negative improvement. You do not need to take shots for that, there are creams and gels you put on like sunscreen. almost no side effects, and if you do your research it can end up costing less than a dollar a day to get it straightened out.
Second. When you have some issue you should be looking under EVERY rock and grain of sand, willing to try lots of whacky things to find a 'cure'. I woke up this AM and like a lot of days could barely move - pain in my lower back for months now. If I went and sat on the sofa I would be f'd for the entire day. You know what cures me ? 10 mins on a treadmill, half of it walking backwards to get the pressure off my back muscles. How did I discover this ? Because I was WILLING TO try damn near anything to feel decent again. Experiment experiment experiment. And stay as far away from pharma and doctors as u can. All they really want is your cash.
And finally, third. Pick an outrageous fitness goal or level and go after it with a vengeance. Much like Vox's point about the girls u never approached, choosing to be chickenshit about your fitness after u reach 50 is literally a death sentence. 99 percent of people take all the drugs and surgeries their doc recommends and can't figure out why they just get sicker every year. When I hit all my problems the very first thing I did was start a lifting program because I never really understood how all that worked and why it was important. I was always a great cardio guy just never got the point of weight lifting - UNTIL I found myself becoming apprehensive about going down stairs for the first time. Thats a weakness issue and a balance and agility problem. Holding a bar with weights on it, lifting and trying to balance it and move it - those are the same skills need to cruise down a set of stairs without thinking twice about it. THATS WHY WEIGHTS ARE IMPORTANT. And the older u are, the more important weight lifting becomes. I highly recommend Pavel's Grease the Groove method. Go google it - very little effort, big results quickly.
I personally picked a crazy goal of being one of the fastest middle distance runners in the world for my age group. I always loved hockey and running and I already have too many hockey injuries. But running as a retired guy is much more productive than when I was young. The tech has improved immeasurably - the shoes are way more preventative of injuries and the training methods (threshold training especially) is producing bumper crops of super fast young men. And that training works for any age.
The thing about a crazy goal is it motivates u to do things u never believed you could do when u were younger - and it matters NOT if u succeed or fail because even if u only reach halfways to where you dream of being, its still going to be lightyears ahead of your fatass lazyboy carbstuffing dumbshit peers.
Don't be a dumbshit fatass. It's not conducive to longevity or a happy retirement.
I hear you dude. Very important to fight against being an out of shape slob.
I need to train in a lot of different ways. Never tried a program like crossfit, at least yet. But I’ve found my time in the gym helps me get good at very specific tasks - like slowly lifting heavy weights. But it takes some effort for my gains there to translate anywhere else. I take regular walks, but recently tried some sprint intervals on the path.
This takes effort! Like I have to consciously will the different muscle groups to work together to achieve a sprint. For example when I start my legs moving, my hips just do not cooperate.
Hoping that it will feel more natural if I keep at it. Never a problem when I was young, all I had to do was hit go.
Sitting still when a choice is to be made is the worst. You will never make a perfectly reeasoned, perfectly timed choice. You are are competing with others under the same constraints.
Taking the risks matters. No regrets is a good way to live. Failures are never that bad. Regrets will haunt you.
100% I tell my boys to stretch and take risks early, while young. It gets a lot harder later because failure affects the family. It can still be done, but the consequences are harder.
Definitely can take risks more frequently when young. At an older age, course corrections from failure take a lot longer to recover from due to all dependencies acquired over years.
It's a strong logical argument that your responsibilities and assets-to-lose keep increasing, the cost of risks increases, so the frequency to manage risks slows down. When young and dependency free, you can change directions often without much loss even if you lose everything invested.
My job got relocated to a different city and I told them I had zero interest in moving and will take the severance package.
I think I am going to take a shot at being a power linemen. I am currently an accountant, and working a desk job is boring. Air conditioning is nice, but I work two days a week and then have to find ways to not brainrot until Friday. I could quite easily get another accounting job, there are many positions open, but I am not convinced it would be much better. Seems like a golden opportunity to switch careers.
That's a genius anecdote, on how you forget all your failures. So many of these motivational speakers want to tell you failure's no big deal but forget to let us know they really know what they're talking about.
The Update was more educational (and entertaining) than the body of the original post. Yeah, spinning failures into successes is largely an act of self delusion.
110% same experience.
Oh, I get it now.
Theres a difference between 'I didn't fail because I learned something.'
And 'I learned from my failure.'
Fail Fast. Move on to next thing.
I would add a corollary to this post if I may, that further confirms it.
TL;DR in case the gamma-like wall of text below bothers you: Even the bad choices you make don't weigh on you nearly as much as you might think. Or even shorter version: Scars heal and chicks dig them.
After reading this I contemplated for a couple of minutes what regrets I had in life, and honestly I struggled to find more than a few, knowing this is not normal at age 54 unless you're some sort of self-unaware raging narcissist (which despite appearances I am not) I thought, wait a minute, what about all the bad choices I made... and voilà suddenly all was clear.
Being as Vox might be a little more cautious/wiser than myself, I think I can honestly say that the times I did not jump at a chance are really very, very few. Which of course means I strayed deeply into that area of life commonly known as the place where "fools rush in" and "angels fear to tread".
It's not exactly due to blithering stupidity, for the most part, it's due to terminal curiosity and a sense that: "hey, how bad can it be, I mean I survived...(fill in long list of stup...err..."curiousity based errors") ".
The point being I have made some idiot...er-hem... "curiosity induced unwise choices" made worse by my general sense that my overall competence will likely get me through. And some of these errors were not small or without life-altering consequences.
I am divorced twice over just as one example. I started brand new shifts in life/residence/work multiple times over, not always for good reasons and there are a few things I probably need to leave details of posthumously, but the reality is that even those events that seriously caused damage (mostly of the non-physical kind, though there are a few non-major/non-crippling but permanent injuries there too) did not ultimately cause me so much harm that I regret the "less than wise" decision. That's not due to pride either, but rather, the curious fact that while I have never agreed with the Nitzchean concept that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," because it is pretty retarded, what you survive more often than you'd expect tends to have consequences that are really quite positive down the line. For example, if I hadn't had my first divorce I wouldn't have had the second wife and if I hadn't had her I wouldn't have had my eldest daughter and despite the absolute shitshow that second divorce was, if that utter clusterfuck hadn't happened I would not have found Christ, and without the next shower of shit after the second divorce, I wouldn't have ended up with my current wife and another 3 (so far) kids. And on and on it goes.
The point is that while I realise from the shell-shocked looks of horror on most people's faces when they find out about 15% of what my life has been like, and while living as I do, rushing at trains face-first and so on, is certainly not for everyone (or even most sane people probably) as long as you are able to keep getting back up, life has a way of turning out alright.
And now I am yet again just starting again in a completely new situation, trying to make a farm financially viable, which is a lot harder than anyone imagines, and I'm nowhere near there yet, but... things are slowly shifting... and I am confident that down the line, I will probably think "well, yes, that was like diving off a cliff in the dark on the hope that there is seawater deep enough at the end, but look, I wouldn't be in this cool and comfortable snow drift that saved my life now, watching the stars above in a moment of bliss. Oh, right, better move my ass before I freeze to death..." and so it goes.
I wonder if those folks who were the inspiration for your update will ever be able to figure out that their insatiable need to redefine a failure as a success is part of the problem. That very need is what so often keeps them from taking the shot in the 1st place?
I find it hilarious that many delta's and gamma's in tech push for "fail fast" yet cannot seem to make the mental jump to their own lives.
Because for a product it's easier to not personalize it. With their own lives, it would take looking inward, towards the place where the Bene Gesserit dare not look.
I dunno. A high delta makes at least $150k per year, full bennies, 6 weeks vacation, and gets off work at 3pm. How is this hilarious to you? Please explain.
Or hanging with bros.
People are encouraged to redefine failure and focus on the "learnings" in the corporate world.
They are never happy with saying I took a risk and it just didn't pay off.
Often my only "learning" was to try again. Which I was going to do anyway.
You can learn from patterns of failure but I have found focusing too much on learning from specific instances doesn't work.
Failure is never complete. It is a lesson. About judgement, perception, education, ability. Learning the why of the failure leads to self improvement.
I appreciate this message. It doesn't matter if you're too tired, hungry, running late running late for another appointment, you forgot to brush your teeth, she is wearing headphones or whatever. You are where you are and you would be wise to make the most of beneficial circumstances when you come across them. Where I live in suburban midwestern USA, it can be weeks until I find myself in the same 100ft radius of a 10/10 woman again.
SK, I think you're missing the point. You won't regret being shot down by a 10/10. Such a result is a near 100% probability for most men. What you'll regret, is the opportunity you missed with a interested tier-2 woman because you were busy fruitlessly chasing Heather.
No, I think you're retarded. The point of the article is that the only way to guarantee you miss a shot is to not take the shot at all.
Maybe you're right. Good luck.
I gotta really second this post - I am in my 60s and have never really had problems attracting chiks but I had some big approach anxiety when I was younger that was way unnecessary in hindsight - so many girls giving IoIs and I was too chickenshit to do much. I recently got a text with a photo of me and an ex-GF from 40 years ago - she sent it. I was actually pretty shocked at how I looked, far better than I remember - other than being short, a literal chad compared to current standards of 'attractiveness'. I will never know what coulda woulda shoulda happened if I hadn't been such a shithead dumbass and just walked over to some of these girls and said 'Hey'.
Those are the biggest mistakes of my life I think. What I did not do. Not what I did.
And second - the age thing. When I hit my 50s all the shit that I used to get away with ignoring came to me with a vengeance - weird shit started happening with my body in myriad ways. Its all the bad decisions, injuries, shitty food, too much substances and so forth coming back to request that their bills be paid. Three things I have found to be very important in dealing with this. One, for anyone over 40 you should be getting your testosterone levels checked every few years. My test was at the level of an 80 year old when I was in my late 30s - it can happen a lot younger than u think. or feel for that matter - I never had ED type problems from that, instead I had exercise recovery issues. I could work my ass off running or doing weights and get negative improvement. You do not need to take shots for that, there are creams and gels you put on like sunscreen. almost no side effects, and if you do your research it can end up costing less than a dollar a day to get it straightened out.
Second. When you have some issue you should be looking under EVERY rock and grain of sand, willing to try lots of whacky things to find a 'cure'. I woke up this AM and like a lot of days could barely move - pain in my lower back for months now. If I went and sat on the sofa I would be f'd for the entire day. You know what cures me ? 10 mins on a treadmill, half of it walking backwards to get the pressure off my back muscles. How did I discover this ? Because I was WILLING TO try damn near anything to feel decent again. Experiment experiment experiment. And stay as far away from pharma and doctors as u can. All they really want is your cash.
And finally, third. Pick an outrageous fitness goal or level and go after it with a vengeance. Much like Vox's point about the girls u never approached, choosing to be chickenshit about your fitness after u reach 50 is literally a death sentence. 99 percent of people take all the drugs and surgeries their doc recommends and can't figure out why they just get sicker every year. When I hit all my problems the very first thing I did was start a lifting program because I never really understood how all that worked and why it was important. I was always a great cardio guy just never got the point of weight lifting - UNTIL I found myself becoming apprehensive about going down stairs for the first time. Thats a weakness issue and a balance and agility problem. Holding a bar with weights on it, lifting and trying to balance it and move it - those are the same skills need to cruise down a set of stairs without thinking twice about it. THATS WHY WEIGHTS ARE IMPORTANT. And the older u are, the more important weight lifting becomes. I highly recommend Pavel's Grease the Groove method. Go google it - very little effort, big results quickly.
I personally picked a crazy goal of being one of the fastest middle distance runners in the world for my age group. I always loved hockey and running and I already have too many hockey injuries. But running as a retired guy is much more productive than when I was young. The tech has improved immeasurably - the shoes are way more preventative of injuries and the training methods (threshold training especially) is producing bumper crops of super fast young men. And that training works for any age.
The thing about a crazy goal is it motivates u to do things u never believed you could do when u were younger - and it matters NOT if u succeed or fail because even if u only reach halfways to where you dream of being, its still going to be lightyears ahead of your fatass lazyboy carbstuffing dumbshit peers.
Don't be a dumbshit fatass. It's not conducive to longevity or a happy retirement.
I hear you dude. Very important to fight against being an out of shape slob.
I need to train in a lot of different ways. Never tried a program like crossfit, at least yet. But I’ve found my time in the gym helps me get good at very specific tasks - like slowly lifting heavy weights. But it takes some effort for my gains there to translate anywhere else. I take regular walks, but recently tried some sprint intervals on the path.
This takes effort! Like I have to consciously will the different muscle groups to work together to achieve a sprint. For example when I start my legs moving, my hips just do not cooperate.
Hoping that it will feel more natural if I keep at it. Never a problem when I was young, all I had to do was hit go.
Hey Vox! I’m 40 and I can tell you I feel so much more higher IQ than kids in college. I love debating them in YouTube videos.
My wife’s boyfriend also agrees that I am way more alpha than most guys our age.
You're smart as a whip and cute as a button, Benjy!
Sitting still when a choice is to be made is the worst. You will never make a perfectly reeasoned, perfectly timed choice. You are are competing with others under the same constraints.
Taking the risks matters. No regrets is a good way to live. Failures are never that bad. Regrets will haunt you.
Remember what RUSH said: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice."
"Moderation is not a substantive belief." One of my favorites of all time.
100% I tell my boys to stretch and take risks early, while young. It gets a lot harder later because failure affects the family. It can still be done, but the consequences are harder.
Definitely can take risks more frequently when young. At an older age, course corrections from failure take a lot longer to recover from due to all dependencies acquired over years.
It's a strong logical argument that your responsibilities and assets-to-lose keep increasing, the cost of risks increases, so the frequency to manage risks slows down. When young and dependency free, you can change directions often without much loss even if you lose everything invested.