It's possible that you've got cause and effect the wrong way round: consider maybe that your self worth is derived mostly from your extracurricular activities because you're failing at work. You put almost no effort in, achieve very little, are almost entirely disengaged, but, since you're a normal human, being a loser doesn't fit your self-image so you look to find meaning elsewhere in areas where you are engaged, connected, even passionate. It's a coping strategy.
Finding meaning at work doesn't mean you no longer get to derive self worth from your family or your hobbies, rather it just enlarges the pie of your self worth.
The advice given in the comment you're replying to is to find a job or career where you will be able to apply yourself. It really isn't bad advice. You should work more because you cannot exist without working, and what you're doing now is damaging yourself psychologically.
Now I'm not trying to be mean here. I was in your shoes VERY recently. I suspect you've got yourself to a point where a couple years of pandemic stress and working from home has disconnected you from your colleagues and your company and you no longer want to reconnect. Whatever mission you are working towards was probably never all that engaging for you, but take away the human connection and that's been laid all too bare. And I expect you're worried about this ending, and having to go back to a grey office and a shit commute and losing the freedom that you think you have today. You don't want to "lean in" (as awful managers would say) because you recognize the mission as unfulfilling, but you can't separate yourself entirely because you need the money. It's not healthy.
It could be time to take a risk and move. You know you can work remotely, there are jobs out there. There are better missions, companies with values that perhaps align closer to your own. That's scary, but finding a new gig where you'll have to work will not erase all the progress you've made in your hobbies and domestic life; those are things which make you more rounded, and they're yours forever. You can keep up with all that - because, after all, you're mostly just wasting time on the internet today.
I say all this as someone who's struggled with your situation in the past and made a move recently to tacke it. It was frightening for me. I will say that I am considerably happier when my days are full of work, and it hasn't got in the way of any of my side projects or interests, which are numerous and very consuming. If anything, it is more energizing.
> consider maybe that your self worth is derived mostly from your extracurricular activities because you're failing at work.
You say that like it's a bad thing. I would much rather my self worth be derived from the things that I choose to do, versus something I have to do in order to survive.
This doesn't have to be either/or. Once upon a time, your "work" would've been weaving baskets or gathering berries or whatever, and you would get immediate satisfaction from seeing how you are improving your own life and the lives of those around you. Nowadays, for a lot of us, the connection between doing work and improving the world is very tenuous, maybe non-existent; but it doesn't follow that it never existed or that it's gone for good. I know a lot of people who genuinely get a sense of accomplishment from their job, including people who do stuff that seems pretty pointless (a lot of the software industry, honestly) in the grand scheme of things.
The bottom line is, you have to find a way to get satisfaction from somewhere to be mentally healthy, and if have to work anyway, getting some satisfaction out of it is preferable to not getting any.
It doesn't have to be either/or, but in practice for most people in the world, it is.
Even in tech, we don't always get to work on what we want, or what we'd find most fulfilling. Often the best we can do is put up with bullshit 75% of the time while we try to carve out some meaning in the other 25%.
Sure, "well find another job". Often easier said than done, and there are no guarantees that the new job will be more fulfilling.
I know a lot of people who get satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment from their jobs. I also know a lot of people who don't. I also know a lot of people in a weird middle state: they derive that sense of accomplishment, but they have to deal with so much bureaucracy/politics/bullshit, that it erases most or all of the good feelings they get from that accomplishment.
> The bottom line is, you have to find a way to get satisfaction from somewhere to be mentally healthy, and if have to work anyway, getting some satisfaction out of it is preferable to not getting any.
Absolutely! But I think you overestimate the number of people who are truly able to do that (HN is definitely a skewed population in that regard). And there's nothing wrong with just punching the clock, and deriving happiness outside of work.
You are describing a concept known as alienation in leftist discourse.
> Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realized human being, as an economic entity this worker is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie—who own the means of production—in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value in the course of business competition among industrialists.
They're not mutually exclusive, as I said in my comment. They are additive, and, especially without a commute, deep involvement in one doesn't preclude the same in the other.
No, they're not mutually exclusive, but the level of control you have over your extracurriculars is orders of magnitude higher than the level of control you have over your job.
If you so choose, you can set up your life so your non-work time is damn near close to 100% happy and fulfilling (and if you find something lacking, you have the ability to change it). I doubt there is a person alive who can claim their work time is 100% happy and fulfilling and that they have control over it.
It's possible that you've got cause and effect the wrong way round: consider maybe that your self worth is derived mostly from your extracurricular activities because you're failing at work. You put almost no effort in, achieve very little, are almost entirely disengaged, but, since you're a normal human, being a loser doesn't fit your self-image so you look to find meaning elsewhere in areas where you are engaged, connected, even passionate. It's a coping strategy.
Finding meaning at work doesn't mean you no longer get to derive self worth from your family or your hobbies, rather it just enlarges the pie of your self worth.
The advice given in the comment you're replying to is to find a job or career where you will be able to apply yourself. It really isn't bad advice. You should work more because you cannot exist without working, and what you're doing now is damaging yourself psychologically.
Now I'm not trying to be mean here. I was in your shoes VERY recently. I suspect you've got yourself to a point where a couple years of pandemic stress and working from home has disconnected you from your colleagues and your company and you no longer want to reconnect. Whatever mission you are working towards was probably never all that engaging for you, but take away the human connection and that's been laid all too bare. And I expect you're worried about this ending, and having to go back to a grey office and a shit commute and losing the freedom that you think you have today. You don't want to "lean in" (as awful managers would say) because you recognize the mission as unfulfilling, but you can't separate yourself entirely because you need the money. It's not healthy.
It could be time to take a risk and move. You know you can work remotely, there are jobs out there. There are better missions, companies with values that perhaps align closer to your own. That's scary, but finding a new gig where you'll have to work will not erase all the progress you've made in your hobbies and domestic life; those are things which make you more rounded, and they're yours forever. You can keep up with all that - because, after all, you're mostly just wasting time on the internet today.
I say all this as someone who's struggled with your situation in the past and made a move recently to tacke it. It was frightening for me. I will say that I am considerably happier when my days are full of work, and it hasn't got in the way of any of my side projects or interests, which are numerous and very consuming. If anything, it is more energizing.