@sirus's stupid comic
If you judge your own life based on how you relate to others, as if it were some competition to be "won" or "lost," then you're very very likely dooming yourself to "failure." Only so many people can end up on top after all, and the odds are very much stacked against you. If only those on top have had "successful" lives, then we're dooming absolutely everyone else to a failed life, regardless of how hard they worked, how smart they are, what they did, who they are, etc etc.
So I reject the notion that being stuck in a dead-end job is "failure," at least intrinsically. It's only a failure if your life goal is a high paying job (and might I add that that isn't the most fulfilling way to spend one's life). Also, $35,000 a year puts one way WAY above the global average (~10,000 median, ~3000 mean iirc), so if we're still stuck in comparison mode you can comfort yourself that you're "better" than much of the world's population.
So allow me to say: suck it up and realize there's more to life than career success or notoriety. Way more. You don't have to end up in the history books. You don't have to "make your mark" on the world. Your life's success or failure depends on whether you accomplished the goals you set out to do, not what other people expect of you. What others define as "worthy" life goals are not applicable to you, at all, unless you let them be.
What I know of Salmongod's life brings me to the conclusion that he's spent it quite wisely and respectably, for example, despite not having monetary success and being stuck in a crappy job.
I think the comic does a good job of describing how easy it is to get distracted and allow yourself to fall into a daily routine of trivialities that will doom you to a life of unfulfillment, when you know you could have done more. It's not necessarily about getting a good job or something, but about wasting your own talents. It's so easy to let day by day pass, thinking that you still have plenty of future ahead of you to pursue your goals. Then you look back...
But going all out serious business all day every day on long-term goals is also a good way to just kill yourself. Balance is the obvious ideal, but what kind of balance do you strike when a
minimum of 10-12 hours of every day are locked into keeping up with a full time job and whatever other obligations? It doesn't leave much...
The first verse of my favorite song says it best:
With one foot still in the past
And the other far ahead
In between the times go fast
Chase your life while living it
The moral here is just don't waste opportunity. Anytime you find that life is easy or you just have lots of time - for the love of god use it to advance yourself while you can.
You're absolutely right on the monetary success thing being very relative, though. It really shocked me to learn last year that I make more than the median income in the U.S.. I only know a single person who has really "made it" into a successful life. Everyone else I know has either settled into work that's roughly equal to or worse than mine (though most of them aren't supporting families so the income is easily sufficient for them), or is begging me to alert them when my office has positions open. I even have friends who have had to financially support their parents for long stretches after they were laid off. So as much as I hate my job and it's slowly killing me... I'm still doing relatively well. Depressing but true.
My sad today was twofold: I went to comiccon wearing a Dwarf Fortress mask I made myself, and no-one recognised it. "Some generic pixel character?"
Wear it to Gencon, and I will give props in person
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9785674 times)