

Ask HN: When did you take greater control over your life? - jackchristopher

Share your story about the time you took greater control over your life.
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yannis
One of my own 'AHA' moments was when I discovered that you can't. Yes you can
never take control over your life. You need to relax and go with the flow. We
all think that we are controlling our lives, but consider this, suppose time
is a river and your life can be represented by you sitting on a small boat.
You can puddle a bit and control a little bit of where you are (akin for
example to choosing a career or job).

However, the flow of the river determines the overall direction! Now, for the
interesting part. Now and then other people get on your boat. A girlfriend, a
child a wife! As you go along the river, people come and go.

Another interesting part is what I call 'crossroads', they also appear almost
randomly. Situations where a 'do this' or 'do that' can influence the journey.
You will probably get about four in life. Most of the times when this happens
you will not know is happening. For example you went on holiday to Costa Rica
and ended up meeting a girl in the Airplane, should you eventually marry this
girl it can influence the rest of your life.

Money and success can give you a temporary dejavu of control. You can have a
great business, you control your time, your health is tops and out of nowhere
your boat hits a rock, or somebody came in the boat and drilled a hole.

This is advice from a 'baby boom hacker' they exist on HN too! :). Married
same day as Charles and Diana! So far the score is on my side! Had a lot of
bumpy rides, married three times, 5 kids, a number of businesses, went bust
twice, lived through two wars (Cyprus and Gulf), lived through the bad years
in South Africa, worked in five countries.

Control? We can't even determine the outcome of a program with certainty!

~~~
jackchristopher
Thanks for the feedback. I understand where you're coming from.

If I could simplify your view: Stuff happens, deal with it. I don't mean to
ignore the nuance. But to generalize it further: the universe is stuff
happening that you can't control. You can _think_ you're controlling it but
you aren't.

That's a metaphysical view I can't rule out. But I was thinking about control
in the sense that, I have more control over a car once a learned stick shift.
Or humans have greater control of over the Earth resources than since our
hunter-gatherers days; we know how take sand to silicon.

But I never meant to suggest (with the original car metaphor either) that I'm
completely in control of life. I did mean, and I do think, that I can get
_greater_ control over life. In the same way I can chop down I tree and turn
it into a table. I just need the skill. Though, it's hard to learn.

~~~
yannis
Yes it is a bit of a metaphysical view and by no means I am advocating a
fatalistic view, where one should just sit and wait for things to happen. You
can 'control' your immediate environment to an extend but not much more. To
'control your life' in the real sense it is impossible. Life is mostly a
'random walk' a bit like the stock market going in a certain direction but to
find sense out of the noise is very hard. Are you here to-day on HN because
your DNA makes you? Are you interested in CS because you had a teacher (parent
etc) that influenced you (even subtly) at school? What would have happened if
he was not there? So what is my suggestion? Just drive your boat, enjoy the
trip and don't let it rust in port!

'Or humans have greater control of over the Earth resources than since our
hunter-gatherers days; we know how to take sand to silicon'... this is for
another post :), just watch the videos on the Taiwan typhoons! We can only
control a very tiny part of that fractal, but maybe you right as people we may
be able to give it a bit of colour! Just in case you wondering I call myself
an Agnostic Atheist Christian Buddhist!

------
leif
Five years ago. Incidentally, almost exactly five years before "Ask HN random
crap" started getting old.

~~~
bkrausz
Incidentally HN is less than 3 years old, meaning that it was never not old
:-P.

~~~
hc
uh, no.

------
nostrademons
Ask HN: Have you stopped beating your wife yet? ;-)

FWIW, I do drive a stick shift, and I've always driven a stick shift (so,
close to 10 years now...) I learned to drive on one. I think my stall-count
was 5 on the first day and 37 on the second day, and I only got the car moving
about twice on the second day...

~~~
jackchristopher
EDIT: The original thread title was: When did you switch to stick shift?

The title was metaphorical. I meant to get people to share their coming of age
stories; when they decided to take more control over their life: switch from
automatic to stick shift, so to speak.

Well, when did you?

~~~
nostrademons
Even metaphorically, I'm not sure the question makes a whole lot of sense. My
whole life has been a series of progressively more independent and
progressively more important choices. I chose to go to a charter school
instead of my public high school when I was 14. I chose not to go to college
when I got out at 19, instead working at a tech startup. A year later, I
reversed my choice. I chose to study abroad for a semester in New Zealand my
junior year. I chose to switch my major from physics to CS in my last
semester. I chose not to immediately get a job upon graduation, instead
finishing up a volunteer project I'd been working on all through college. I
chose to work in a financial software startup for a couple years, and then
chose to quit and found my own company when the opportunity came up with a
friend. I chose to abandon it when it became apparent we weren't going to
succeed, and get a job at a big company.

There's no single point where I "switched on" and said "Okay, now I'm going to
take charge of my life." That's the stuff of movies - most of the time when
people try it in real life, they go right back to the routines they had
before.

~~~
jackchristopher
Thanks for the feedback. I should've been more specific. But I felt asking a
specific question while easier to understand, excludes people by definition.
Like if I asked, why did you decided to startup? That excludes employees. So I
asked "take greater control". But I never said "get complete control".

I meant share a story about a time when you were prompted to become more
independent; like why you became an entrepreneur, consultant or employee for
instance. Or if you left home, why? What happened? Why the choice of more
independence? Frustration? Drive to do good? Forced by circumstances?

Maybe I'll ask again but differently next time. I didn't think asking for the
full story was trivial.

------
jacquesm
When my kid was born. That was a pretty good wake up call. I was 28 at the
time and up to that point just taking whatever gig that I could get. Lots of
money one part of the year, dirt poor another, it didn't really matter.

The extra responsibility helped me to focus quite nicely.

------
bayareaguy
I'm alive twenty five but I've still got no control.

------
pasbesoin
I painted myself into a black hole of frustration. The situation was bound to
fall apart, and it did about a year ago. Unfortunately, not at my initiative.

I am hoping that this is the time when I take control. Better late than never.

(In some ways, I've always taken control. In never being satisfied with the --
usually inefficient and boring and mistake-laden -- status quo. However,
trying to introduce changes from the bottom up, or even just follow your own
road, has limited effectiveness in some organizations.

That's just the way they are. You could say it was my fault for not getting
out sooner, but then I was dealing with a lot of stuff on multiple fronts.)

