Comments so far seem to be focusing on the social media aspect of this piece, what struck me was the acknowledgement that he has a limited number of productive years left, and the Longfellow quote. In my mid 40's, I also have come to feel the weight of years passed, without achieving professional goals (ie starting a succesful software based company).
This feeling of unfinished business really set in after the birth of our second child. I had always claimed to be one of the best developers around, yet, I could not master myself to be truly productive when working of personal projects. Overcoming my self imposed limits is where I'm at now. Has anyone else experienced this?
I just turned 40, parent of a young child, and I know what you mean. I think the below article, a cover story in The Atlantic, is really insightful and I found it helped adjust my thinking.
There are going to be things that I wanted to do, that I won't do in my life. Some may never have happened no matter what, like winning the Super Bowl or becoming an astronaut. But some of them will be things that I could very plausibly have actually done--but instead I did other things. The challenge of happiness is acknowledging that I made those choices for reasons that seemed good at the time, and anyway I can't go back and change the past. To be happy, I have to accept that it's possible to be happy, even knowing that I gave some things up for other things.
Essentially I'm working on believing that goals and happiness are separate things, each of which can be achieved independently of the other.
> Long ago, when I was 30 and he was 66, the late Donald Richie, the greatest writer I have known, told me: “Midlife crisis begins sometime in your 40s, when you look at your life and think, Is this all? And it ends about 10 years later, when you look at your life again and think, Actually, this is pretty good.” In my 50s, thinking back, his words strike me as exactly right. To no one’s surprise as much as my own, I have begun to feel again the sense of adventure that I recall from my 20s and 30s. I wake up thinking about the day ahead rather than the five decades past. Gratitude has returned.
Maybe my situation is a little less common, but I keep waiting for a mid-life crisis. I'm 45, have achieved a lot more so far than I ever expected to (I never expected myself to amount to much).
What I have become, is two things - more aware of time, and how limited it is. Second, selfish with my time. I do what I want to do, and no longer do what my girlfriend or anyone else wants me to do, unless it aligns with what I want to do.
Not having kids is the best lifehack I've ever heard.
What's remarkable to me is how content both those with and those without children seem to be with their respective choices. (I know, a massive generalization, from purely anecdotal evidence.)
It's because the abstract idea of a child is very different from the concrete reality of your specific child. I went through the same kind of thinking in my 20s; it's very hard to realize the huge gap between the idea of children and your actual children without visiting the other side.
You know… Before you have a kid, everyone tells you, "it's the best thing you'll ever do." And as soon as you get the baby back from the hospital, those same people are like, "Don't worry, it gets better." I'm like, "What the fuck was all that before?" - Quote from While We’re Young.
This is why I try very hard not to comment on people's decision not to have children. I think the vast majority of them would likely feel differently once they had them and would find it rewarding in ways an early 20 something cannot imagine.
On the other hand, some of them might not and I sure as hell don't want them having kids. How miserable for everyone involved.
I work in Finance, which is littered with the apparently-still-living corpses of people who have made a ton of money at the expense of family life, and now have nothing worthwhile to spend it on.
Hmmm ... I know many people who are old enough that it's too late to change and who regret or at least doubt not having kids, and none who regret having them. Does anyone ever say, 'my life would have been so much better if I didn't have Billy/Marie'?
I'm a foster parent. I definitely know people who regret having kids.
Furthermore, just on the basis of the number of single mothers I know, I would posit that at least one man you know has kids, regretted it, left the mother and just hasn't volunteered that information to you.
[edit] Also, my wife was adopted when her parents were in their 40s, so it's probably not too late to raise a kid.
> Does anyone ever say, 'my life would have been so much better if I didn't have Billy/Marie'?
The hard part is that parenthood changes people in ways that go beyond life experience. There are actual, measurable physiological changes that happen to parents. In many ways, children are like a drug to their parents. Just like addicts will sacrifice much of their lives to their habits, so too will parents sacrifice much of their lives to their children.
So asking your question is like asking whether a drug addicts wants another hit. That person will undoubtedly want one, but the person that person was before their addiction might look at the reality of the situation and decide they didn't want to start the habit in the first place. Likewise, someone not 'under the influence' of their parenthood might look on the situation differently.
But, in both cases, it's impossible for someone to understand both sides of the choice simultaneously.
There is definitely some kind of sampling biased here. I can't imagine rational people regrets having kids will ever say that out loud without being burned at stakes.
Besides, regrets tend to come in the form of "wish I've done something" (this applies to both sides), as can be seen even in earlier comments of this chain. Regret of having kids is likely to manifest in the form of wishing to have done more/ different things.
Lot's of interesting theory, but it would be too bad if anyone let that overcome what for very many is by far the most important, happiest thing in their lives.
I absolutely love my child and I would never say that I regret becoming a parent. I wanted to be a parent, and now I am, and it's amazing.
But to follow on my other comment above, I also have a pretty clear idea that I gave up some things to become a parent. And I think people who skip having a kid, and then feel doubts later in life about that decision, are really just feeling the other side of that coin.
I have heard more than I can count express regret at having children. Though it is usually in the form of regretting the timing (too young) with a caveat that the regret does not diminish their love.
I would say that it's one thing to regret that you could not do something, and another to regret that you had children. It's a matter of opportunity cost. If I have two events I'd like to attend that are at the same time I can regret not attending one whilst enjoying the one I did attend.
> What's remarkable to me is how content both those with and those without children seem to be with their respective choices.
I don't find this surprising at all. Generally speaking, people make these choices because they know in their heart that it is what they want for themselves.
But then there are moments when I see my son's or daughter's face and am in utter awe at their amazing beauty and realize a kind of happiness I can never imagine having from anything else.
When I sum it all up, I think that I am better and happier with them in my life than I would be if I didn't have them.
I believe there’s a study that shows educated people are having less or no children. Draw your own conclusions, but I don’t see any positives for society.
You're 45 and had a kid when you were 42. Congrats, man! Here I am, at 35, still child-less, and I was wondering if I had missed that train... I know this is personal, and feel free to ignore me, but....is your girlfriend significantly younger than you? Just wondering because I know it's hard for women to conceive past 35 or so.
Had my first kid last year, at 45. My wife is 35. I love that little guy more than anything else I've ever loved. Every day I look forward to coming home and seeing his big smile.
Yes, if your wife/girlfriend is around 35, the window is starting to close, but more and more women are having kids well into their 30's and early 40's.
I had my first at 41, second at 43. Those where my 'mid life crises' babies, best thing ever (I made PEOPLE!). My wife just turned 40. We met 5 years ago. We were both older, and wanted children. Conceiving was a bit of a challenge, we had to work at it. Plus neither of us had children before, so neither of us knew if we were even able. Worked out for us in the end, we were very fortunate.
I'm experiencing those same emotions in foresight.
I'm young---I'm 26, and I have a wife and two young children (2 and 4). I'm at that age where I could have gotten involved in so much, personally and professionally---and still could. And I know that this will be a bit setback for things I'd like to do in the future. But time with my family is more important, and we also bought a house that needs a lot of work.
And I fully expect to be feeling exactly as you are describing. And I'm trying to come to terms with that today, while I'm still young: focus on what I can be happy for today, recognize how my decisions affect my future, how I might adjust my plans, and recognize that the decisions I made (or didn't) have desirable consequences that I wouldn't change if I had the option to go back and do it again.
Mike, I'm going to say that you can continuously improve and upgrade your career, you can't say the same about your wife and kids. So, it's more important to date and look for a wife early, while with your professional career you have all the time you need.
From your name, I'm going to guess you're Jewish, so you would have had even harder of a search, if you wanted to marry someone Jewish, than if you did not have this additional filter. So, don't worry... you've succeeded in choosing your wife, starting a family, and now you have plenty of time to keep improving in your career. Consider the opportunity cost of doing the reverse - career first, then kids.
You'll be happy with your life choice when you're able to get to know your kids as adults and they (hopefully) grow up enough to realize that they don't know everything.
Very buddhist, at its core. Once you remove attachment to things, events, results, milestones, etc., you can start digging into what really sets the stage for actual, repeatable, "happiness."
When I had my first daughter, unplanned, when I was 23, I didn't quite understand the gravity of what had happened. I'm only 36. I'm in the best shape of my life (although RA is constantly trying to steal that away) and my daughter is excelling at a ton of activities. It's a ton of fun to watch her grow. We have recently adopted a newborn, and I'm looking forward to starting the experience again while multitasking a much older child at the same time.
I have a work from home job with a low stress company, doing complicated, but not overwhelming or ground breaking, work. I live in a small city with a decent cost of living. I get paid decently... One of the big three offered me a significant amount more than what I am making now, and felt comfortable rejecting the offer.
My goals have been simplified down to making sure that I do right by my children. Watching them succeed is #1. Me not being there because I'm trying to run a business or getting overworked by one of the big three is not going to do her any favors. I make more than enough to pay for lessons for whatever she wants to do, and still be able to make sure my wife and I can retire. I would rather sit down with her and discuss life and its myriad positives and negatives than chase money. Or play video games with her, or an instrument, or make sure I make her parent teacher conference.
It took a bit of meditation to actually convince myself that the money and recognition pipe dream just didn't have the same value as her success, and it really helped me understand my father who was a welder, putting so much focus into my siblings to try to make sure we succeed -- why he sold his business and took a job where he would have a steady income in exchange for the joy he took working long hours, but having complete control over his work. And he did take joy in it, I totally get it. I now understand the sacrifice. When he sees his children attaining success, he is overjoyed.
My children are my monument. Their grand adventure is mine.
> My goals have been simplified down to making sure that I do right by my children
You know, I don't have kids and I'm not you, so I truly have no opinion about that. It's your call and I'm sure you've made it carefully and are doing what's right for you and your life.
However, I just want to say that when this attitude is repeated over and over, with a whole population of people using their children as their contribution to society, and then the children make the grandchildren their contribution to society, and it repeats generation after generation, you can end up with essentially a bunch of families who are taking care of themselves, and sort of punting social responsibility down the line perpetually to later generations.
When I look out at the world I see a lot of people trying to make sure their kids are better off than they were... which is great. It's like bubbles in a glass of water that are all slowly rising. But it also seems like with everyone looking upward, we stop noticing that down below there are people whose bubbles are sinking down. Or maybe you're actually closer to that reality and you're fighting like hell not to fall below that line. And again, I would never question that choice.
But as a group what it adds up to is that there are families that are just trapped below that line. And we can focus on helping our kids rise, and they can help our grandkids rise, but at some point I think as a group we need to look beyond our families and realize that there are kids—and grown ups–out there who aren't our blood but are just as deserving of our support.
And I do see people make that choice, to really try to support someone beyond their immediate family, and it's amazing. But sometimes I worry that the attitude you describe is a little too easily accepted.
I think it's an opinion that is easily stated, but not easily done. It's easy to have kids and say they are your pride and joy, but not take it seriously. It's a very serious burden IF you are serious about raising kids properly. It requires study for each area of life that they enter, careful attention to their needs while trying to develop independence. It's very hard and utterly horrifying. Seeing other parents yell at teachers when their students are falling behind represents to me how dire the situation is, and I see that too often, and I read about it too often. I see it in my own extended family, where a history of neglect and lack of discipline have produced people that are essentially useless in society. But they all still say that their children are their pride and joy. I don't believe they know what it means to take parenting seriously.
Yes, I agree with you, it's very easy to be a hypocrite about this statement. There exists a serious moral bankruptcy in many areas of modern US society that allow people to be hypocrites, to take what they say at face value and just accept it (TV Evangelistic preachers with private jets???).
I like to believe I am taking the job seriously. Having a baby is basically 'Congratulations, you had sex'. Raising a child ranges from tossing a baby in a dumpster to making sure that they are the temporal and financial focus in your lives, and probably further.
You're not quite understanding me. I have no idea whether you're a great parent. As you say it's hard, but plenty of people do a good job. I'm just saying, even if you succeed at raising a kid who becomes a great parent, and they raise another kid who becomes a great parent, it's kind of like a little bubble of healthy people helping each other.
I respect your choice but I find the arguments behind it somewhat logically inconsistent. How do you define "success" for your children? Presumably if you feel that you have made the right choice their goals should be similar to yours (not money and recognition but success of their children). At which point it gets rather circular. And if you want them to have grand adventure in their lives why not have it yourself first?
I will try to give them the knowledge and tools necessary to succeed. Doing so is time consuming and expensive. The actual tools necessary for success (IMHO), like the arts, are not given any priority in our schools. It could be that they follow the same path I did. It could be that they become musicians or engineers or whatever. It doesn't matter as long as I supply what is necessary for them to take whatever path they might want to.
Success is happiness. I want their adventure to be easier than mine, with more tools, mentally and otherwise, than I had. I have that opportunity and it's awesome.
I don't think that I necessarily want to defend my parenting experience as something for everyone, but it's definitely the primary source of joy in my life, for all the difficulties it brings.
Oddly enough, it was the movie Click that really showed me the way. How weird is it that it would be an Adam Sandler movie that would be a primary driver in my life philosophy?
I feel the same way. I'm also in my 40s, and most of my life goals have passed me by. I spent some time and life energy on a doomed startup in my 20s, spent my 30s recovering from the fallout, and now - working as a freelancing nomad programmer - my options for starting something significant suddenly seem very limited.
The question is indeed, as you hinted, if those limits are largely self-imposed or not. There are certainly some external penalties, but what really keeps me up at night is the fact that past performance is a huge indicator for future performance. If I want to set out to accomplish anything of scale, I feel I have to delude myself into ignoring the nagging feeling that if nothing ever came out of anything I did in the last 20 years, it's more than likely the next (and also last) 20 years will be very similar.
Don't know if this helps, but - that prediction strategy doesn't work if your passion's for a hits-driven / inverse-square-law business.
Lots of authors, for example, write for +-20 years before writing the book that breaks them out - some of them even have HN accounts :) The calculus is similar for starting businesses, films (although the odds there are even more terrible), etc.
And experience accumulated reduces failure chance. I recall there's a statistic that most successful businesses are started by people your age, not people in their 20s.
I feel that same way. But then again I'm in the Marine Corps. My last 20 years seems to have been for nothing considering what it going on over in Iraq right now.
assume "last 20" was on active duty? if so, seems like you and i joined the corps at about the same time. i didn't re-up after 4, but agonized over that decision for the last six months of my tour. in the end, obvious to me that "another four" might as well be 20, and i was too immature to make that decision. (sgt in echo 2/5, btw)
> There are certainly some external penalties, but what really keeps me up at night is the fact that past performance is a huge indicator for future performance.
It keeps me up at night too. But fuck that thought. If it's true, then I may as well go and kill myself now, and spare world the carbon I'll waste living. Faith in man's capacity for improvement is what's keeping me functioning.
I struggled with similar emotions for a few years after turning 40 but lately I'm content to enjoy life and new experiences and continue to hone my skills as a programmer. I'm writing the best code of my life, traveling around the world, and taking everything one day at a time. I'm a lot happier since I outgrew the idea that I need to erect some kind of monument to myself in order to validate my existence.
>since I outgrew the idea that I need to erect some kind of monument to myself in order to validate my existence.
I know you're generalizing but I don't think vanity "monuments" is accurate of most techies' aspirations.
People just want FU money: comfort, security, and freedom. The "starting a succesful software based company" is a reasonable shorthand for FU money for techies because if programmers are going to get rich, they're not going to do it by striking oil in their backyard or acting as leads in Star Wars films. If people don't have fu money by the time they're 40-something, they question their current job, their previous life choices, and their future possibilities. People can get bummed out and even question their abilities -- aka wondering why they procrastinate and can't focus (e.g. "Damnit! I'm too distracted with social media!")
I think most programmers would be absolutely fine with being "not so famous" like Chris Hughes[1] with a net worth of $450 million instead of the more well-known Zuckerberg with $40 billion. Zuckerberg's face is on all the magazine covers but most programmers would be ok with no publicity and $450 million.
I don't think the percentage of techies with the ego to be the next Larry Ellison or Steve Jobs is that high. Maybe I'm wrong.
Don't get me wrong. I would be thrilled to have 7-9 figures in the bank. But pursuing that kind of payout means playing very long odds of making nothing versus making a very comfortable salary working for somebody else. It's a decision we all have to make for ourselves but I had my turn at bat in the startup lottery and I'm not interested in playing again.
Seven figures is trivial if you're making software developer money and not living in a crazy HCOL area like SF or Manhattan. Live below your means and don't take on stupid debt. Invest what you can, ideally >= 50% of take home (after tax and health insurance, before retirement deductions).
To quote Neal: “Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.”
What do you when you are 40+ and filled with regret of roads not taken?
It seems if you have developed your calling/skill to a sufficient level by 40+ like Stephenson already did at 30 , then you can dedicate yourself to polishing that skill.
However, I am acutely aware that at 40+ I am not going to be mastering anything NEW any more. Maybe improve a little bit on something I already know but that is about it.
Trivial example: I started learning German along with my daughter at the same time, she is so far ahead of me it is not even funny, even though she spends less time than me on practice.
Slightly more complicated example: in programming I am coasting on the basics I learned at ages 15-17, I am not acquiring any new unconscious mastery in programming.
Depressing example: I spent a year on 750words in daily practice and my skill level did not improve.
I am just not convinced that my 20s spent gaming/consuming was the right one for me when the other road of deliberate practice in something useful like programming or science was just as valid and ultimately more satisfying.
In my un-informed opinion the difference between your daughter learning a new language and you is that your mind is full of thoughts. "Gotta pay those bills tonight", "gotta plan that vacation", "Gotta solve that problem at work", "gotta stop and get groceries"....
At least that's my experience. My mind gets more and more busy with racing thoughts the older I get. It's hard to put that aside because the older we are the more responsibilities we generally have (and or worries)
That's the long way of saying age has nothing to do with your daughter doing better at language. Rather it's that her mind has far less distractions.
ps: yes I know there is research on this topic but I have not personally found it compelling
35. Just got married. Would rather spend time with my new wife, building a home that we both love together, etc.
But companies want me to be REALLY EXCITED like I could always get in my 20s. I just can't get that excited anymore; it takes too much extra energy that I'd rather conserve for doing real work that matters to me.
35 here as well. I still get excited...as long as it's exciting dammit. When I was 24, just being allowed to work on something and get paid for it, was enough for me to feel gratitude! Now? You want me to support some idiot's shit-code and not be given opportunity to truly fix it/improve it? Find some sucker in his 20's to do that, I'm out.
I found myself in a similar position a few years ago, looking for a new job after a startup had floundered, and felt really stressed about jumping into a new organization with false enthusiasm. I didn't want to lead any company on, but was really deflated from my prior experience.
Thankfully, I found an amazing consulting firm constructed of around 15-20 folks with a similar history that really valued work-life balance and carefully chose its clients based on respecting those boundaries. We did really great work, within those boundaries. As a starting point for a search for that kind of company, I would recommend weworkremotely.com (where I found that firm), because they're generally companies willing to make convenience/control tradeoffs (such as working with remote employees) in order to get stuff done.
I am in my mid 40s as well and I agree, however for me the main stressor these days is that I feel that while I do have many productive years left (looking objectively I am a lot stronger in my skillset now than I was 10 and 20 years ago) I am not sure how that will map with job availability as time goes on, with the constant thought in the back of my mind of the age discrimination existing in our field.
Thinking about my father at my age he would constantly tell me I was lucky to be allowed to go to school rather than being pulled out and being put to work in the fields when I was 14 like he was; after WW2 there was a lot of poverty in some areas of Europe, meaning, he had to go hunting/fishing to be able to get something to eat poverty, or going in the fields after they were harvested hoping to score some ears of corn poverty.
On the other hand his generation benefited by the later years, when he ended up making a really good living first being a musician (in the 60s it was definitely feasible, not like now where I see bands being paid less than I was in my 20s for bar gigs) and then being a blue collar worker, at my age he was working in a very low stress factory job for a solid middle class salary, and he was able to retire with full benefits at 53 due to having had to start working so early.
In our generation we've been lucky a lot of us were able to go to school rather than have to work in the fields, but the lack of pensions and general different economic trajectory in our lifetime is definitely making me long for the guarantees his generation was able to have in terms of retirement. It's a lot easier to suffer privations when you are younger and healthy and strong than when you are old and are affected with all that old age brings.
I have read plenty of times the U-shaped-midlife-crisis articles and I really hope that they are true, because honestly I am not seeing how there can be an uptick of the U without a sense of financial stability, which seems hard to have in the 50s and 60s given that pensions are not on the plate for us, and savings are vulnerable to market vagaries as well as medical expenses.
Add to this the normal what-ifs about how we'd be able to retire NOW (or at least have enough saved up not to worry about retirement) if we had invested in stock X vs stock Y, or joined startup X vs startup Y, or bought house X vs renting apartment Y, and it's hard to remain positive at times
I really wonder about how prevalent age discrimination is and more importantly - is it sometimes actually deserved?
We recently hired a super sharp guy in his late 40's. Guy is brilliant. His age is completely irrelevant.
I also worked with a guy in his late 40's and early 50's who thought that the pinnacle of innovation and best development practices is to write all your business logic in Oracle PLSQL. Also, he'd never heard of HTTP even though he used a browser every day.
I mean I'm sorry but...it's not that the guy was old, but his ideas definitely were. We're an industry that is always moving. If you're not learning new things, you're stagnating. And if you're stagnant, you're screwed, eventually.
But you can be stagnant at 25 just as easily. I know people my age (I'm 35) who never moved past Visual Basic and think a REST-ful API is an API that likes to take naps maybe.
I guess my point is - age discrimination probably does exist, but I'm willing to bet it's because the ideas the person being discriminated against are old. I really haven't experienced any kind of bad attitude towards women, or "minorities", or older people. If you can get your shit done, you're golden.
>> to write all your business logic in Oracle PLSQL.
I've noticed this (all logic in the db) is common among those developing financial applications. Also .net ms sql server seems to favor it as well. Maybe because they overlap. It's not an inherently bad thing to put business logic in the db; auditing and logging can be simpler, and change control can be more tightly enforced. Be aware that as a developer, it's really common to eschew things not in your code, and check your prejudices. Are they well founded?
there are always exceptions, you might have been willing to give a chance to the late 40s worker, but that does not mean everybody does.
It would be like saying "gender discrimination probably does exist, but I am willing to bet it's because the person does not fit within the broculture that they are not hired"
If you have never experience discrimination you have been very lucky, but it does not mean it does not exist, and all the many articles about it would not have been written if it was not something that's going on.
Oh yes! I'm 49, and the weight of potential unfulfilled weighs heavy. I guess that's classic mid life crisis territory. In reaction I've never been so focused and impatient with time wasters and wasting. I'm bootstrapping in my spare time - see my profile for more details.
Right in the middle of this with 50 coming up this summer. I stayed at home and home schooled my daughters full time and consulted part time.
With a divorce 5 years ago in the rear view mirror, years of being rather non-traditional and pursuing a fairly spiritual/self-awareness focused path for most of my life I can feel pretty foolish at times. Things I didn't pursue as far as career and personal interests mostly bring up those uncomfortable feelings.
otoh - relationships with my daughters are improving as the oldest heads off to college. And there's understanding connection with self and others that has come from all that inner work. Those two things feel like gold to me.
It's the me that recognizes retiring may be for other people for rather pragmatic reasons that is the most troubled by the situation. Feeling a little late to starting a long deferred career in info security is just something my ego will have to get over.
I do take some comfort in my grandfather having lived to 98. We'll have to see how much opportunity there is for people in there 80s in 30 years. My guess is maybe quite a bit. Gotta stay healthy to be able to do it though!
I am right there with you. I am in my 40s, and have a solid career as a corporate & solo dev. and I have started feeling that weight as well. You might just be describing a "modern" mid life crisis. Self reflection without the need to buy an impractical car.
He died at 103, still working (composing). Not many composers get stuff they wrote in their 60s and 70's described as their "middle period".
Pierre Boulez just died at 90, still working (until very recently).
If you're from a privileged background (and let's be honest; most developers are) there's no reason why you can't pause at 40 or 50 and decide what to do next with no fear of burnout or senility. Some people just get bored of programming, or decide that it's just more fun playing with their kids or whatever. You can always pick up a laptop and start a new project in a new language. You'll never be able to play with your favourite daughter as a five year old again.
I too had a revelation after my second child and took a different turn in my career. And I enjoyed the Longfellow quote too.
I think I never knew what busy was before kids.
Can't really help with the productivity issues, other than to counsel compassion for yourself and urge you to remember it is a marathon. I always think of career effort as spinning a flywheel (any effort really).
Authors you might like to check out that talk about habits and productivity:
I can smell that fear enough to frustrate my appetite for self-satisfaction and I am 28. Your mention of self-imposed limits makes me think more clearly about where that anxiety comes from and remember the roller coaster click-clack excitement of my pre-illness-self. I work so much harder for other people than myself, and trick myself into thinking it is all for my own benefit. I wish I did not care what other people think.
I feel almost like you. I am 38, I am a technical guy although I am more of a "jack of all trades" rather than very strong in one particular domain.
I just started a new exciting job as a CTO for a young startup. I hope this will be my last job before going on my own.
I started businesses a dozen years ago, and a side business more recently, but I am convinced that now I know much more about launching a new company and I feel I want to do it within a few years.
And yet, I fear that a few years will go by, and then I will either try and fail, or just even give up on the idea.
This might get long-winded. I should note that, I too have a family and the first digit of my age is a 4. Allow me to tell a story...
Around WWDC 2014, I started working on a game for iOS. I wrote it in Swift, at a time when the language was still in beta (i.e., Xcode 6 Beta 1; you couldn't deploy Swift apps to the App Store at that time).
Even though the game was essentially an 80s-inspired space shooter, I became singularly-focused. I just knew that this was going to be my "make or break" moment. I pounded through all of the struggles of working with a language that was still being developed.
It was rough. I'd never even owned an Apple product before, so everything was foreign to me. I'd retire to bed at a reasonable hour, but be "eyes wide open" at 2:00am or 3:00am, literally waking up from a dream that's an answer to a problem in the code. The urgency kicks in... I'd try to fall back asleep, but it was always futile, so I'd throw myself in the shower, get dressed and light the fuse.
This feeling was exacerbated near launch, because you're literally a few hundred meters from the summit, but you're exhausted, delirious, hungry, thirsty, sleep-deprived, and everything else. The wind and the cold is cutting through your gear, making it feel as if you are wearing nothing but your small-clothes. Your visor is completely frozen over, and nightfall is looming, but you still have to summon everything from within you to bring it, because there is no one who can bring it but you. No one is going to summit for you. No one is going to slide their stacks "all in" but you.
Even the people around you won't understand the mental suffering that you are silently muscling through; you, torn between two worlds as you push and strain to your personal limits. You measure the day's progress in centimeters rather than meters. You will either summit, or freeze to death on the mountain in your boots; the summit in sight, but just out of reach. Which-ever event happens, you feel alone, either way, because no one is carrying the sheer weight of The Vision than you. It is all you. It has only ever been you. There is no one to save you.
It turned out that there were too many days of this... and it was my "break" moment: I ended up in the hospital in the winter of 2014, physically exhausted. Completely spent. I recovered after 4 days of IV.
I went on to launch the game in early 2015. It didn't launch me into super-stardom like I had believed that it would, but I did finish and I learned an incredible amount about game development... and, as it turns out, about life and myself, which included a number of things, but two of them in particular might help you at this time:
1. Balance - Everything must be balanced. The Middle Way, if you will. This is absolutely vital. Work on your projects for the sake of working on them, not to drive yourself to some goal, because in reality, you have little to no control over what will result. So, learn to love the process. Also, live in balance by bringing exercise into your life, eating right, meditating, etc.
2. Comparison - Comparison must be silenced. It is truly a source of suffering. There is great danger even in seemingly harmless comparisons, such as, "I'm in my 40s, and I haven't achieved X, Y and Z." This is quite harmful to personal growth and production. The reality is that comparison is the ultimate puzzle: it has no solution. That is to say, it will never end. The mind will always set up more to achieve, more to do, more to conquer. And then, even when you have achieved, the mind will say, "Well, what's next? So and so has done Y... sure, you did X, but what about Y? You haven't done that." We can carry these weights of comparison to the bitter end, and let them drag us down like a stone into an icy, freezing river, where we will drown to death in our own self-pity and sorrow. Alternatively, we can free ourselves by deciding to care only about what is important for us, and on how we can bring our light into the world. This will allow us to break the chains that we have allowed to bind us. This is our choice, and it is up to us.
I hope this helps you. I wish you every success. Evolving yourself is a never-ending process. Be gentle with yourself. Set your goals, go for them, but live in Balance.
I leave you with this quote, which speaks powerfully to me:
"To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other." - Carlos Castaneda
Thank you for sharing that! I'm in my late 20s but it seems like I'm rapidly sliding into middle-age without having made an awesome game or startup or whatnot...this post reassures me that not having accomplished what, say, John Carmack had by my age doesn't mean that I'm a failure. It's something I've been wrestling with lately; not to the point of being deeply depressed about it but it's been nagging me nonetheless.
Having personal projects is hard. Especially when you have a family. Depending on the size of those personal projects, they may be unrealistic to achieve given certain time-frames.
Starting a successful software company is hard. Building one that sustains you and grows 10% ARR is hard, building one that grows 5% MRR is much much harder. Starting a software company--unless you stumble upon it--is NOT a side project.
The Longfellow poem resonated with me as well, but what I've come to realize is that the source of my happiness has shifted. Rather than focusing on the things that make ME happy, I prefer--and like--to focus on the things that make members of my family happy. This in turn, brings me (more) happiness.
Being my own boss was something I wanted to focus on. I'm VERY fortunate to be able to live in the SF Bay Area and have a spouse that earns enough so I can work on running my own business. There is no way my company would be where it is now if it were a side project. It required full-time(+plus) dedication to get it up and running, and now rolling.
I do look back and realize there are (literal) mountains I have not climbed or cars I have not bought, but if my kids can have happier and better lives, that's what I want more than anything else, and taking steps to that end bring me contentment.
I'm about to turn 41, and have achieved most of my life goals. Except that I keep finding more, greater goals as I complete old ones.
It seems to me that goal reaching is a skill like any other, to be practiced with discipline and diligence. Many goals will be missed (I'm 1 for 8 in business so far), but when you're striving it's never boring!
Ha, funny I was looking for which comment to reply to and looks like I found it. I'm 47 and just started my first freelance gig after the startup I was with got bought by big blue.
Just finished my second day in an 'open layout' office of 20 somethings as a front-end lead (react/redux) after working remotely from home with a small team of 'seasoned' pros for the last couple of years.
I'm sure there were some raised eyebrows when I showed up but that seems to have passed now mostly because they see I know what I'm doing. I've had a few moments of reflection wondering what the hell am I doing here but I love software development and made a conscious choice not to take the management route.
Had my first of 2 kids @ 40 and find when I start slipping into a regrets of what I haven't accomplished I see them and am reminded of my real purpose these days.
I still feel young on the inside but sometimes look in the mirror and have to acknowledge I'm not 20 something anymore and that's a bummer. But I was walking to work this morning pondering all of this and walked passed someone sleeping on the street and checked myself.
I remember the first time I saw Doug Crockford and had a profound realization that you don't have to outgrow programming. Seems silly now but not at the time.
My dad is 77 and can still kick my ass on a squash court so I try to focus on what is still possible instead of reflecting on what I haven't done.
I'm still in my early thirties and while I already occasionally look at the early-twenties crowd with a sense of longing, I quickly snap out of that when I remember how much of a drama-filled rollercoaster it was, and how much of that drama seems so trivial now.
From my (perhaps still rather young) perspective, both the best and worst thing about getting older is that I don't care as much about things.
The good part is that I stopped caring so much about having lots of friends, doing crazy things, partying/drugs, a fight with my partner, having a partner, pleasing/angering my parents, etc. But the bad part is that if I'm not careful, I end up not caring about anything. I forget to make sure I pick enough 'things' to care about, and before I know it I spent months just 'existing'.
But even just 'existing' sometimes feels preferable to me to the extreme ups and downs of (my) youth.
I'm curious, excited and a bit anxious about finding out how things will progress as I get older though...
First: Don't worry about. Starting unsuccessful software companies is very useful to other entrepreneurs, as it proves to them that they should not follow those footsteps and allocate their resources to more fruitful endeavours.
Second: About your final question, I run a decently successful business despite not being near the top of the totem pole in terms of technical knowledge. I have met plenty of smart people who just don't have it in them, typically they easily get lost in the details. People with some academic smarts backed by a healthy dose of street smarts appear to fare better. I feel one has to always set some type of goal (it does not even have to be clear, but there has to be a goal) to get going. As well that allows you to quickly gauge the opportunities you unexpectedly run by. That's how I roll anyways. Good luck.
This feeling of unfinished business really set in after the birth of our second child. I had always claimed to be one of the best developers around, yet, I could not master myself to be truly productive when working of personal projects. Overcoming my self imposed limits is where I'm at now. Has anyone else experienced this?