"Comparison is the thief of joy," as they say, but it's not as simple as knowing that and being immediately freed from its clutches.

I looked up a former friend from high school today and found she's now super successful with her own startup doing cool science shit that might actually improve people's lives. When I look at my own life and what I've done in the same time it feels so insignificant, worthless even.

Normally I'm content to just chug along my path and try my best to better the world, but I've got some wounds surrounding this friend and our falling out (largely due to my own insecurities and inability to reconcile my unrequited crush on her :cringe: ) that never healed. Even thinking about her makes me feel so wretched, and all the more hateful towards myself for feeling that way, for being so weak and ill-accomplished. Is there anything to do but just try to block it out of my mind? I wish I could tear out and burn the piece of me that cares about this.

Edit: Thank you to everyone who's responded to this. Talking about it has helped me feel a lot better and think about some goals for how I want my life to go and what I want to prioritize moving forward. Who knew internet strangers could be so helpful?

  • Speaker [e/em/eir]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Remember that careers are decades long, and a lot of really cool shit is the result of decades of not making much progress. I come from a math background and work in tech, and there's a lot of :brainworms: about people peaking in their late 20s, like if you don't make some huge breakthrough right out of school, you're just spent. This, of course, is

    1. Obviously nonsense based on all the 70 year olds doing wacky work in their fields
    2. Exactly the mindset capital wishes to cultivate to create maximally pliable cogs to rip through their spyware startups and graduate programs to burn through grunt work with youthful enthusiasm and a lack of responsibilities (e.g., family)

    HOT TAKE EDIT: This latter point is also the defining feature of Western leftist organizing, and a significant hindrance to building any serious power base. "Professional" organizers and their professionalized orgs are in large part imitations of corporate structures and reproduce the same corrosive effects, because colonybrains have difficulty conceiving of any other form of organization other than "LLC but woke". The systematization of dissent and corporatization of resistance are the wedges necessary for elite capture of that same dissent.

    Extra edit: the other reason that capital in particular loves to chew up youths is that most of them haven't developed any significant theory of ethics due to lack of exposure. It's much easier to make the Bitcoin-that-rats-you-out-to-your-boss Helmet with an army of 25 year old programmers who have never read Sartre/Foucault/Marx/etc. or recognized the exploitation of an employer before than with people who have had to seriously grapple with the reality of work under capitalism (even if they don't recognize it, per se).