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Comment by readthenotes1 | Hacker News Reader

"get back on the horse"

no, you are the horse.

i don't understand people who get bored in retirement. 7 years in and no hint of it. My dad's been retired for 12 years and he's the same.

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for me it's a challenge to keep my personal projects focused and structured

a job helps with prioritization, as there's a driver towards a common goal and schedule

of course it can also be infuriating and frustrating.

I took time off from January to about July of last year, but by April or May I was starting to get stressed out by aimlessness. But also financial fears, and a fear of falling way behind the market in terms of tech stack and relevancy.

Also, in software development projects especially having multiple contributors can really help. i tend to stall on personal projects after some time with work (UI work especially) i simply don't want to do.

EDIT: What I'd ideally like is a job ... but built around one my personal projects/interests. How great would it be to have a product manager, a UX person, other developers, etc focused on refining something I was passionate enough to start building myself? Which I guess is one way that people end up heading down the technical cofounder path, but that is a whole... thing.

So far I've had some bad luck when my employer's interests intersected too closely with my own, because there's always the frustration that I'm putting aside my own creative ownership for someone else's who just happens to have the $$.

This feeling of aimlessness resonates well...I mean maybe I am just a sheep that needs to be herded. Maybe it is social media showing people doing these crazy achievements which make mine feel minimal. Probably it is a mix of many things.

yeah... unfortunately github itself has become social media.

between jobs i spent a lot of time putting stuff up there. mostly personal interest and none of it complete. but found myself turning it into a bit of a portfolio. which.... i dunno, it's sad. because i do those things for personal intellectual interest, but the job market penetrates so much that even that stuff gets captured.

i hold out hope for once i can retire, and once kids are out of the house, have no mortgage, etc. then I'll be able to focus clearly enough on my personal projects hopefully in that context i'll make much better progress

I do a lot of photography and for a brief moment I found myself taking pictures mostly because I wanted to put it on IG, I caught myself and now take less pictures, but do it for what I think is arguably a better reason...which is just creating for the sake of creating!

For me it is solely a financial motivator. I've not had any reason to expect that jobs will keep my skills marketable or allow me to develop true knowledge in a relevant tech stack. Being away from them is the only reason I've been able to really foster much of anything. Yes, there is part of working for a larger organization that can put me in a position to use more resources in the pursuit but I've yet to find a position that truly made good use of my skillset and allowed me to grow. As it is most of my jobs have been a lost opportunity cost. I'd much rather work on something where I can develop myself alongside it.

Those thoughts resonate a lot with me, thats how I thought of writing this article. 1) the drive towards a common goal 2) a group accomplishes more 3) ideally would want a job (time you are compensated for) that intersects with your interests. Building solo products appeals to me apart from consulting. But the "solo" in it is a bit tricky haha.

If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together, something, something :)

You get used to it. If you work your whole life, having vacations or time off work is seen as unproductive time, and that you lack something in your life. People who have been working outside for most of their life, will find retirement not so fun, empty of goals and without the discipline that work brung to their life. More or less, they're less capable of feeling fine with spare time. This is my dad after 4-5 years of retirement (sum it up that in the 3rd world we are living, retirment is aprox 150usd per month, and going vacations to another continent is maybe half or more of your life savings)

I’m 4 years in and I am getting bored. How do you fill your time? (Honestly, include video games for example)

Do you stick to a routine?

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve very much enjoyed traveling, climbing, games, people, etc. But I miss programming and I find that I’m not motivated enough to finish things without knowing someone will use it. Hence my current desire to find a super flexible hourly client.

Get creative. I envy you.

I think there's definitely a difference between working in some capacity and working full time. The research they've done on unemployed people says that 1 day per week of work is enough for them to gain all the mental health benfits of work.

https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/news/20190619/how-much-w...

reading, time with friends, phone game, binge watching (usually while reading), vacations, budgeting/tracking (no fat FIRE for me), cooking, cleaning, exercise, Duolingo, etc. (i literally fired a maid, cook, and yardman to retire).

i reimplemented part of the tax code in Excel so i could do what-if analysis (didn't take that long with TurboTax as QC), did a letter Frequency analysis for wordle, and a few other very small projects just for me.

I have nursed a delusional aunt and a friend recovering from hip surgery, and hosted another relative while he tried for sobriety (yes, that takes time).

I really don't know how I fill my time, but I do. In a sense, I enjoy my life and serve as slack for friends & family

I think the difference is that I was 1 year into my career...after 40+ years I can see this being different.

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