Mixed feelings about it, though appreciate you sharing. Retired at 38 also sounds way too young, not as in "good job dude" but as in you have so much life ahead of you.
I struggle to relate to that for some reason, for me work brings a bit of meaning to life and it's not just about paying the bills.
We are also social creatures, working is a good way to remain social.
I guess maybe he will now "pick and choose" his jobs? Though sounds like he had already been doing this prior ... unless those jobs were toxic to him and he did it for the cash or other motivations, but in his blog he says he loved startups. (It also says he build companies for fun, that to me isn't the same as "retired")
Anyways, the way I see that is more like someone boasting about financial freedom but still actively working. Is that how people define "retirement" these days?
Is my understanding of retirement wrong?
Your interpretation of retirement is probably more strict than most people’s, but even if it wasn’t, how can it be hard to imagine connecting with a community outside your coworkers and customers? That you don’t have to be employed and monetizing your labor to create anything worth sharing?
Even if you would be miserable without some form of external validation how can it be difficult to imagine that others are capable of simply enjoying the limited time they have to be alive, spending it on things that matter more to them than polishing a deck on SaaS sales metrics? How can it be unclear that the reality of work for the vast, vast majority of humans on earth is a brutally costly and undesirable experience? People die in low-paying jobs they took to survive roughly every other minute.
Good for you that you dig what you’re doing though, I hope you never have to see the alternative.
What you're talking about feels very different to me, this idea of having to work to survive or the idea of an artist that wants to express themselves but ends up selling his art to pay the bills, I find those to be different societal constructs and it doesn't really feel like something I would call "work" either.
If my definition of retirement is different than most, than maybe so is my definition of "work".
I am definitely grateful, and I do value what I have! It wasn't always like this.