Hacker News Reader

Comment by stevebmark | Hacker News Reader

Seeing things like this, and others in the thread, honestly depresses me. I've wasted months of my life building in Minecraft, huge structures that I can do nothing but look at, alone. Months where I lost social interaction and self maintenance. Nothing good ever comes of these worlds, and they are self destructive to their creators.

Minecraft, Reddit, Imgur, Facebook, all things you will eventually have to block from your life if you want to achieve anything real. Don't let it consume you. The only winning move is not to play.

View on HN

I know this sounds harsh, but you seem to lack self control which I can emphatize with. After all, I've spent nights where "one more thing" has kept me up till early in the morning.

I don't have the end all be all advice on the topic, but you might just need some people looking out for you. If you choose to play, play on a small server where you know people, and people know that you are struggling to pace yourself. If you're feeling guilty about playing, don't. Building huge structures you aren't proud of doesn't do you any good. If you're playing compulsively, but you're not enjoying it, it might help to shut it out entirely. Deinstall your client, give your account to a friend, block imgur, reddit and facebook, and forget they ever existed.

Sometimes that doesn't solve your problem though, it only creates a void in your life. Empty time is horrid, and we try to fill it up no matter what. Unless you make a conscious effort to fill that void with things you do enjoy, you'll just end up filling it with whatever is convenient. If you don't know what those things are, you might need to do some testing and sampling. Maybe it's contemporary dance or building miniature railways or helping people learn to code that you'll stumble across and start to really enjoy.

Also, if you, in the process of doing that, stumble across something you absolutely love, but tell yourself that it isn't productive or important, you've got problems with who you think you should be. You might be telling yourself you'll be happy if you're the guy in the 10,000$ suit sitting in his blacked out tesla, whilst you just stumbled over the fact you might be happier if you're the guy that's sitting in his basement watching tiny trains go on laps.

If you think that that will make your parents or friends or whoever you care about think of you less, what business do they have of deciding what makes you happy? They shouldn't have a stake in whether you're gay or straight, who you fall in love with, whether you want children or not, and certainly not in whether you get to lead a fulfilled life or not.

Anyways, I'm just drawing this from similar struggles I've been having, and maybe some of these points will help you crack out of whatever problem you're having. Honestly, I can't either say that I have implemented everything I'm preaching here, but it seems like a step in the right direction for me.

Another technique is to make empty time less horrid, which in turn reduces the need to immediately fill it, which in turn allows you to choose better activities instead of scrambling for what is the quickest and easiest distraction.

Empty time doesn't have to be a void in your life. If you can't sit alone and do nothing for an hour without a lot of anguish, that indicates some internal turmoil. Eliminating the feeling of emptiness during empty time is freeing, because in my experience it lowers the bar for your own contentment. While living, instead of worrying about meeting your needs for present gratification AND productivity of an action, you usually only have to think about the second, because you know you'll be fine, and even happy, regardless of the "fun" of the action you choose, as long as the action seems rewarding in the long run.

This is easier said than done, but I've found some success in being content in the present through reading up on both mindfulness practices and Stoicism. A lot of people have found success through mindfulness meditation specifically (so check that out), but I've found it more useful for me to mindfully and meditatively carry out mundane tasks, such as dishes, instead of sitting meditation.

I'm certainly plagued by some internal turmoil, and I feel free to admit that. I'm at an uncertain period in my life, and I do not know whether I will be sucessful at achieving any of my goals. My past record has been littered by public failures, and successes noone close to me wants to recognize.

I've failed at getting 3 businesses started, my academic track record is meager at best, and whilst I consider myself intelligent, I do not know whether I'll be able to perform as expected in college, which is what I'm looking at right now. I have trouble moderating myself, and even though I've spent the last couple of years working on my skillset, I'm not sure whether that will cut it for what I want to do in life.

I'm struggling with the amount of social expectations that I'm being handed. For one I have friends who expect me to do great things, and they are on track to do great things. I also expect myself to do great things. They're all in college now, I'm not. One kid I helped with bio homework back when I was in 9th grade and he was in 11th grade now studies Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. There's another former classmate at NYU who I'm helping with physics and programming problems, and he looks up to me as an example. Can't say that about myself.

But then, if you look at the way I've been performing, you'd expect me to fail in a spectacular manner. C student from the get go, then after changing schools oscialating wildly from getting straight As and straight Fs. Only student in the entire school that managed to get on academic probation with a GPA of 3.19. Then I got kicked out of that school as well. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of the school I managed to graduate from either.

Then college right now. I'm not sure which school I'll even get into. Ideally, I'll get into a respectable school abroad, perform well, finally get to use the skills I've been honing for years, make some money, transfer to one of the schools I was told I should be in, that I could be in if my life wasn't such a mess. That's a long shot though.

Then there's the less than rosy but equally possible probability that I'll ascend astronomically for the first semester and crash and burn within semester 2. Get kicked out second year, no job, no degree. My health in the gutter because I overworked myself and couldn't quite cope with the workload.

It's quite the conflicting, uncertain situation to be in, and I don't think I'll be any less anxious about it before I figure out how well each of the bridges I've got to cross hold up. They look shoddy, but you never know. I don't think meditation will help me with that.

Something that can really help with this is getting out of the mindset of identifying yourself by your achievements. You talked about stoicism and being in the present, but it sounds like you're very preoccupied and anxious over how others will percieve your potential success/failure.

One of the aspects of experiencing the present moment is cutting away that ego - realising that ego isn't actually part of conscioussness, it's just something you're choosing to cling onto and identify with.

That doesn't mean that you can't pursue goals and achievement - just that you're not tying them to your happiness. To quote Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle (which you may want to consider reading):

"Does it matter whether we achieve our outer purpose, whether we succeed or fail in the world? // It matters to you as long as you haven't realised your inner purpose. After that, the outer purpose is just a game that you may continue to play simply because you enjoy it. It is also possible to fail completely in your outer purpose and at the same time totally succeed in your inner purpose. Or the other way round, which is actually more common: outer riches and inner poverty, or to 'gain the world and lose your soul'. Ultimately, of course, every outer purpose is doomed to 'fail' sooner or later, simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence of all things. The sooner you realise that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better. When you have seen the limitations of your outer purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it should make you happy, and you make it subservient to your inner purpose."

If nothing else I found this helpful so thanks for typing it

Hello, I logged in just for this comment.

I really must thank you for your comment, it has made me come to the realisation with what I have been doing with my lives.

I'm saying this out of sincerity, that your comment has had the most profound effect ive had in the last couple of years of reading comments.

It's been the final kick in the backside, so to speak. I just blocked reddit on my hosts file.

Also your comment is now my wallpaper. Really I must thank you again, for if I never saw this who knows how deep I'd fall.

Or maybe do things in moderation? A little HN is great, a little Facebook is great, unwinding during lunch on Reddit is great for a laugh... but if you let things consume your life it's like watching TV for days on end.

Minecraft is tricky because it gives that long-term feeling of accomplishment (the same you get by creating a real-world artwork, or developing a software project), but it's not immediately obvious to some how untransferrable that time investment is to any real value or skills.

Hi, you make you a good point but it feels like most things are designed to keep you coming back, so it makes it hard.

imagine all the sand castles gone. the hugeness of our architectural history erased and will be erased by time - you are just human - imagine all the great waves someone catches but no one is on the beach to see and the other surfers are to busy - you would be alone then. it is true that the hours are gone but what do you make of your now? we are all alone with our accomplishments we are together when we hope. Thanks for your hope

I'll have to disagree here. When I was on the West Coast, I kept in touch with a lot of my friends on the East Coast by building things together on my Minecraft server.

The goal is to turn your passion for something like that into something productive.

Reddit? A redditor thought image sharing could be better and built imgur.

Minecraft? Well, I'm still only a volunteer but I'm part of the www.shotbow.net team and we make some really awesome games essentially treating Minecraft like an engine - no mods needed!

Minecraft is a very capable multi-player game. Why not open up and share? I've spent a lot of time building in Minecraft alone, but also more time building with others.

No regrets. It's been fun, though like anything, all about balance.

Minecraft is like one of those desktop zen gardens to me. When I have some downtime (waiting for a patch to install) I can open it up and build my world. Yeah its not saving the world, but not everything can be.

Depends on what you like, I guess. Some people find playing video games worthless why others would rather do this than innovate/participate in OSS/etc. It's all about how you perceive it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com