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Comment by beat | Hacker News Reader

I actually do think like that. It's a way of coping positively with the reality of the panic attacks. Recognizing that they're just a physical reaction to the stress of doing something that is both difficult and important is a way of not letting them govern my thinking.

What's different is depression. I don't know of a way to make myself feel positive about the bouts of depression. Then again, I've dealt with depression all my life. It seems independent of my founder life. Panic attacks, on the other hand, are very much a product of my founder life.

Treating panic attacks (which generally only occur at night, waking me up from sleep) as a natural result of the work is just a coping mechanism. It may not be the best one, or even a good one, but it works well enough for me.

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My first company officer at the Academy was a Marine captain who openly admitted he over-worked his first company of Marines and ran the entire group into the ground. He said he learned from that to not expect so much of others. Nevertheless, if you, I, we, found ourselves in a high-demand, high-stress situation, the best advice he could offer was to "Revel in the suckiness."

I have tried to live by that for the last 20 years but it's hard to remember it's "just the suckiness" at 3 am for the Nth night in a row.

I think it's important to modify that advice with a heavy dose of reality testing: if it's really that important, where are the other people? Does it really need to be this hard? Are the others out of touch or is it me? In short, what environmental modifiers can I affect, and what environmental cues can I calibrate on?

In my experience, whatever reason you are working for what you're working for, what you do to get there matters, because those are the skills you are building. If you are having bi-weekly panic attacks then you're as likely to drop dead in your early 50s than enjoy the fruit of your labor. Is what you are doing more important than your life? It may be, but I would hope you're making that calculation. Living your whole life building up health debt is the same as building a system with technical debt - it WILL come calling someday.

I'm already in my early 50s (today is my 51st birthday). One of the things I've learned after a couple of years of trying to build a startup is that I love working on my startup. I'd put twenty years into a career in enterprise IT, and it made me miserable. I realized that it's not the work itself I don't like - it's working for others, working on things I think are stupid and pointless and doomed.

The problem is this means for now, I'm working two jobs, and I'm heading for a rough transition to working just one and the financial implications of that. That's a lot of stress.

On the other hand, doing a job I have come to despise until I'm too old to do it anymore, instead of doing something that matters to me, that makes me feel meaningful and accomplished... that's a whole different kind of stress. That's the kind that grinds you down and wears you to a nub. Once you hit a certain age, perspective really starts to set in. I look around at people in their 40s and 50s, and they're broken. They think their best years and best opportunities are all behind them. I look at mine, and they're ahead of me. That keeps me alive.

I think there'll always be groups of people like that. In my 20s there were big groups of people who's "best years" were in high school. Now approaching 30 and finding a lot of people bemoaning how good life was in their 20s when they were in college or traveling the world. For me life has gotten better and easier as I've gotten older, so far. Most of my enjoyment comes out of exploring and finding new places and getting to know people. I take any work I do seriously and try to do things that I think will matter and make a difference but I also realize I'm a small fish in a very big pond. I still have ambition and I'll always strive to be my best, but there is always the possibility of my health failing or other circumstances. I intend to be flexible with whatever life throws at me. I hope I'll be able to share your perspective when I'm your age!

That's awesome. Completely different perspective that what I have heard so far, thanks.

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