alt Hacker NewsAbout a year ago I had an unpleasant and demoralizing experience at work, and thought "fuck it, I don't need to put up with this shit any more" and decided I'd had enough of work for now. In the spring and summer and early fall, it's easy to find enough things to do outside. Right now in the rainy, windy winter it's a bit more difficult. Today I went to the gym at 7am, then did a 2 hour indoor cycling workout at home, then went for a short plunge in the lake (41 F). Then an hour in the hot tub.
It's pretty cool doing whatever I want for now, but I don't think I can do this for another 40 years. I feel like there's something missing - the sense of accomplishment whenever I finish a task. Also, sitting around doing nothing feels so much better when it's either before work or after work.
So maybe at the end of summer 2026 I'll wait for recruiter emails and start responding to some of them. I'm done with applying to 100 jobs to get one response. Maybe I'll try a startup job to experience working in a place that doesn't have a 50-page document describing level expectations.
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I highly advise traveling - went a similar experience - had some savings that could last for a few years (much longer if I stretched them)
So just decided to get a motorbike license and go check out Asia.
Ended up finding a partner (totally unexpected) selling everything, moving abroad, marrying them and now expecting a child (planned), all in a manner of 3 years.
Has been quite the joyful and interesting experience, all after I had the deeply depressing feeling of having “solved life” at my nice position in the EU.
There are so many places in the world where you can feel you are actually doing great service to the community, on a shoestring budget and feel happy and fulfilled.
> Also, sitting around doing nothing feels so much better when it's either before work or after work.
This comment reminded me of a book I read recently - Dopamine Nation by Dr. Anne Lembke. She talks about how pleasure and pain and experienced by the same region of the brain and they need to be balanced. I'd highly recommend reading that book.
I haven't worked in about 7 years. Only recently I started helping out a friend with a software project semi-regularily. And it wasn't really out of boredom. It's just that the project has some cool stuff, people on the team are cool and he's a friend. I passed 7 years with gaming, internet, talks, walks and mixtures of any subset of those. Only occasionally doing some coding just for fun or out of curiosity or to occasionally help someone. AI is a big game changer for me now. So much more fun to be had with coding.
I don't think I un-retired but I'm performing some commercialy valuable tasks for someone.
Mind me asking general location and how much savings? Wouldn’t mind doing similar at some point