
One year later - exolymph
https://eev.ee/blog/2016/06/12/one-year-later/
======
arkadiyt
Fun read - after finishing that I went back and read the post from a year ago
("I quit the tech industry") that the author is now providing an update on. In
it they wrote the following:

"I spent much of April and May increasingly grumpy and withdrawn and on edge.
Weekends and evenings have become even less useful, instead being clogged by a
sense of paralyzing dread that I’m wasting fleeting time if I’m not doing ten
amazing things at once. I’ve foregone trivial maintenance like cleaning junk
off my desk because I don’t feel like I have 20 minutes to spare. I stay up
hours later than I mean to, not even doing anything, just trying to put off
sleeping — because the next thing I experience will be waking up and going
back to work.

(I hate dread. What a completely useless emotion. Let’s just stop doing
anything, and feel bad about something that hasn’t happened yet, and also feel
bad about not doing anything because we’re too busy feeling bad. This will
definitely improve anything in any way.)"

I suppose I always knew in the abstract that others felt this way, but reading
it from someone else like this was comforting.

~~~
somestag
I wonder if _dread_ is the right word for it. I've always associated feelings
of dread with knowing (or fearing) something is going to happen that will be
terrible. You can certainly dread going to your job, but that weird state of
limbo--where you do absolutely nothing because you simultaneously are avoiding
something but also are feeling guilty for avoiding it--always felt like a
different animal to me. Then again, I've never had a good word to describe it,
so who knows.

~~~
dino-neil
That describes it quite well.

That empty feeling where you have so much to do, but you end up just ticking
over without any ambition or drive.

How do I fix?

~~~
nsomaru
In Indian metaphysics, this state of mind is called "rajas", which arises from
a mind frenzied by self centred desires. It is characterised by desire ridden
action which lacks a goal beyond the elevation of the actor.

It is compared and contrasted with tamas (lethargy/sloth) and satva
(equanimity and poise).

You should check out the Vedanta Treatise[0] if you're interested further.

Disclaimer: studied Vedanta under the author in India.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Vedanta-Treatise-Eternities-
Parthasar...](https://www.amazon.com/Vedanta-Treatise-Eternities-
Parthasarathy-ebook/dp/B00I8D4ZFM)

~~~
nikhil417
What was that experience of studying Vedanta like? I'm currently in India
trying to learn more about Indian philosophy and spirituality and I don't know
where to start.

~~~
nsomaru
I spent 3 years at the Vedanta Academy[0]. The experience was life changing,
mostly ineffable.

If you pushed me, I'd say that it provided me with a solid set of first
principles from which value judgements could be made. It seems like I was
'living randomly' before.

If you're interested, check out this talk[1] by the author. Then if you'd like
to visit the Academy you could shoot a mail to visitinfo@vedantaworld.org

[0] www.vedantaworld.org

[1]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSX7WIdt2E](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HxSX7WIdt2E)

------
lewisjoe
>I spent much of April and May increasingly grumpy and withdrawn and on edge.
Weekends and evenings have become even less useful, instead being clogged by a
sense of paralyzing dread that I’m wasting fleeting time if I’m not doing ten
amazing things at once. I’ve foregone trivial maintenance like cleaning junk
off my desk because I don’t feel like I have 20 minutes to spare. I stay up
hours later than I mean to, not even doing anything, just trying to put off
sleeping — because the next thing I experience will be waking up and going
back to work.

I'm sorry the author wasn't able to get things done while in the `dread`. I've
got an alternative perspective.

I like working on multiple stuff. I see the day job as one of the several
projects I work on.

I've worked on projects, squeezing my brain through the longest span it can,
on one single project and also the exact opposite - juggling focus spans
between a few projects, when one gets too vague.

I'd say the latter worked best for me in terms of

#1. Getting stuff done.

#2. The satisfaction of being productive.

Time management is the key.

#1. Wake up early and start the day early. This would make your daytime
extensive enough to accommodate several slots.

#2. Remember Parkinson's law. Put extra concentration while on the day job, so
that you can wrap up early. Don't do this with dread. Consider the job as
working on one of several projects, with a larger team, than those of your
other projects. This has helped me overcome the feeling of helplessness.

#3. Side projects need not be hackathons. One meaningful commit, made everyday
will take it a long way. Read [http://ejohn.org/blog/write-code-every-
day/](http://ejohn.org/blog/write-code-every-day/). So stop worrying about not
doing much on a specific day. On the contrast, worry if you haven't been
consistent in committing code everyday.

~~~
nathan_f77
> Wake up early and start the day early

This isn't important if you're a night person. We all sleep roughly 8 hours,
it doesn't matter what time you wake up or what time you go to sleep. I find
the night to be very peaceful, and I get a lot done.

------
brian-armstrong
This was a really cool read. I had seen some eev.ee tweets before but I didn't
know that they had a year away from a desk job.

I did something similar. I left my job last year and built
[https://github.com/quiet](https://github.com/quiet) which was an incredibly
fun project (end plug). I can empathize with eev.ee's fear of building
something nobody uses :)

I'd love to see more stories about people quitting and doing something
somewhat unconventional.

~~~
rpazyaquian
I remember Quiet! It's really cool, +1 to that :)

------
porker
I feel the way she does. My highlight from this post:

"At worst, no one ever uses it, and I have nothing to show for the time. Even
at best, well… let’s just say the way programmers react to technical work is
very different from the way everyone else reacts to creative work."

~~~
greenshackle2
>the way programmers react to technical work is very different from the way
everyone else reacts to creative work.

That's not specific to programmers. I bet technical experts in other fields
react similarly to works in their fields. I mean, ask any science PhD if they
feel _their_ work is appreciated.

It's not a programming thing, it's a laymen vs experts thing. Laymen are easy
to impress. I can practice juggling for an afternoon and impress my friends.
Circus professionals will be _less impressed_.

If you want to optimize for recognition from your laymen friends, there's a
sweet spot where your work is both legible to laymen and advanced enough that
it looks like magic. Games fall in that category. (Consumer software generally
does.)

But if you go too far past that, or pick an arcane sub-field, your work is
only legible at all to other experts, who understand how magic works, and who
think they could have done it twice better in half the time.

tl;dr if you want to impress people, build _really nice bikesheds_ , not
highly optimized, cost efficient electric turbines.

------
NegatioN
Really enjoyed the article. It touches on some key points for me, like not
having enough time (oh what a special snowflake I am).

I enjoy life the most when I am not beholden to anyone else's schedule, and
can take the time to notice the small good/bad things happening to me every
day without getting stressed (this is after all what fills most of my life,
and forcibly suppressing it, saying only productive time counts, adds a lot of
tension) . I feel like this is very taxing and difficult to do after a long
day at the office, but I know my quality of life would greatly increase if I
could either see life in this way, or have more time available to fall into
this rhythm.

------
repomies691
Not really "quitting tech" as in working on some different industry, but more
like story about how the guy stopped working as an employee/in a traditional
job. He cashed his stock options from Yelp and lives on that, but still is
working on many projects that I would call tech (games etc).

~~~
debt
"quitting tech" usually means severing ties with the valley.

working in tech anywhere else in the world is nowhere near what it's like
working in tech in the valley.

~~~
diggan
Never having worked "in tech" (as in the valley) but in tech outside, I feel
like it's not very interesting reading about someone who working in the valley
not working in the valley anymore.

It would be many times more interesting reading about someone actually
quitting tech as in moving away from the technology sector (not the silicon
valley one, the anywhere else one)

------
escherize
I persuaded Eevee to live stream while making some DOOM maps. It was very fun
to watch.

Thanks Eevee! :)

~~~
barbs
That sounds interesting. Are the recorded videos up anywhere?

------
ensiferum
I've come already a long time ago to the conclusion that writing libraries (as
opposed to writing applications) is a task best reserved for those who are:

a) too stupid to understand how crap their library interface/implementations
are

b) super smart and can get it right the first time

c) people with endless time to work on their libs (and then recode their apps
that dependend on their libs)

These days I'm trying very hard to avoid the compulsive disorder of library
writing and just write applications.

------
andrewchambers
It might seem highly critical, but the things he worked on seemed rather dull
to me. I suppose if i did the same what i would choose to do may be dull to
others too.

~~~
draw_down
If I were to quit my job, the things I would turn my attention to would be
insufferably, oppressively boring to almost everyone.

~~~
andrewchambers
I would probably try to do a startup. I guess that isn't quite the same as
quitting though, just replacing.

------
sigi45
Can't identify with that person at all.

Some adult guy preferring to draw pokemon avatars and doing some small things
without value over more or less challenging things.

I prefer working on stuff which make sense in some way and i don't get much
enjoyment out of little strange things i do/did. I deleted also a lot of stuff
because they were bad/worthless. Blog articles, images, 2 small games, small
code repositories.

But at the end everyone decides for themselves what meaning they give there
lives.

A normal/good paying job is a least for me quite relevant: Family, nice house
and having enough money when i retire. Sounds boring, probably is but i gave
up my illusion of becoming a great indie game developer or <other dream>.

I'm good in my job after all.

~~~
Sohakes
Apples and oranges I guess. I'm good at my job, but I would rather quit to
draw avatars, make games, and doing things that could change something without
the prerequisite of making money. "Value" is a deeply personal thing, isn't
it?

I really identify with that person.

~~~
sigi45
I do believe that a lot of people would prefer that but as long as we are in a
socity were we need money, we don't do it and we can't.

But besides that, i do also believe that those people creating the good stuff,
are not the avg person just doing it for fun. A lot of people can draw, take
really good pictures, make movies and games but most of it is not good enough.

I'm sure that i'm not one of those and it gives me at least pleasure to build
something substantial like a house.

~~~
acedinlowball
You seem to have pretty strong opinions about how other people should live
their lives.

How is that working out for you?

------
fiatjaf
Basically the author didn't earn any money aside from the money from Patreon?

Earning money on Patreon doesn't mean you're doing good things, but only that
you know how to sell your own image as a brand. Am I correct?

~~~
Thimothy
The Dwarf Fortress authors set up their Patreon[1] a while ago, haven't
updated it much since, and is giving them 4K per month, so... I guess that if
you want to throw some money regularly at some project it's one of your best
options, regardless of the author's ability to sell the brand.

[1]: [https://www.patreon.com/bay12games](https://www.patreon.com/bay12games)

~~~
pherq
That's well within what they were making in donations per month prior to using
Patreon, though. They already had the support, they just added another
interface.

~~~
Thimothy
Yeah, and they were doing that well before automatic online monthly payments
were a thing!! People actually took some minutes every month to send them
money.

But, to the point, it's not like you could accuse the Zach bros of "selling
their own image as a brand". They just have this thing they are making, a
healthy relationship with the community (but nothing histrionic like your
average youtuber), and people just gives them money because they want them to
continue making that thing.

------
hnnsj
I don't want to sound like a douchebag, but isn't the post basically saying
that short-term gratification and procrastination feels nicer, so that's what
he focused on? Not that I am any better, but that's not something I'm proud
of.

------
maxt
Classic case of Career FOMO [https://rachsmith.com/2016/career-
fomo](https://rachsmith.com/2016/career-fomo)

~~~
bovermyer
Maybe, but I feel like that's abstracting it a little too far. There's nuance
in both articles that a simple grass-is-greener mentality evaluation misses.
For example, the author states feeling a prolonged sense of dread/exhaustion
with regards to work. That's not a fear of missing out. That's an error state.
Something is wrong, and needs to be addressed.

------
lisper
I nominate this for the most useless headline ever to make the HN front page.
Should have been: "One-year followup after quitting my job" or something like
that.

------
crayon765
What is this blog about exactly? I don't wanna read his whole life's story. I
do like the name of the website though.

~~~
gfaure
Also, it's her life story.

~~~
peteretep
Really? The only gendered reference I can find on the site is from 2012 and
self-describes as a dude.

~~~
bshimmin
On Twitter it says "she/etc" (but perhaps it really doesn't matter):
[https://twitter.com/eevee](https://twitter.com/eevee)

~~~
peteretep
I'm sure it doesn't matter, I just had a mental-model that eevee was a he, and
hadn't seen anything to counter that!

