We had a high performing co-worker who was scared witless after a lay-off episode and this was not because he was worried about lacking money or loss of prestige., but because he could not come to terms with the simple fact of facing the 9 am on a Monday morning with absolutely no expectations. It freaked so much to not feel the hustle and the adrenaline rush of experiencing the blues Monday morning!?

Another colleague used to drive up to the parking lot of their previous employer, post lay-off., so that he could feel normal., and he did this for well over 6 - 8 months. Pack bags, wave to his wife and family, drive up in his Porsche to the parking lot and I guess feel normal !?

I didn’t experience an identity crisis for a single day. I didn’t feel insecure or anxious about not working. The only real friction came from my family.

One big difference was social life. In India, I was constantly meeting people—connections were easy and organic. In the US, maintaining a daytime social life felt much harder. Everyone is on a treadmill—insurance, income, careers—often not by choice. I know there are ways to build community here, but in India it just happened naturally.

My extended family struggled more than I did. Once it became clear the break wasn’t temporary, there was a kind of quiet depression around it. I initially framed it as “taking a breather” by doing an executive MBA, but the break never really ended.

What eventually brought me back wasn’t overt pressure, but practical limits: my spouse’s mental health, and the constraints of India’s education system for our partially disabled, special-ed child. Those realities mattered more than any career concern.

The primary reason for this is the built environment we live in here in the United States. It's very difficult to organically build connections when you have to drive a car somewhere to have basic social interactions. Even some of the items you mention, like insurance and income are very much informed by the requirement to have a car to participate in society.

One simple reason I think is overall US is very rich so people just can have anything they need on their own and sharing small things which lead to more interaction is simply not needed.

We have neighbors - sometimes we need someone to grab a package, or we make too much food and we share, &c. or we run into each other walking to a restaurant or through the park. But this isn't the norm. We live in a neighborhood built before the introduction of cars, so homes are built a little bit closer together, but not too close, and we have mixed-use developments and a good level of density to support restaurants and other amenities.

You can't have spontaneous interactions like that easily in the United States because we build too much sprawl, visiting people or showing up to a bar requires a drive, and in the end you wind up just staying at home participating in surrogate activities like social media.

It really comes down solely to cars and car-only infrastructure that degrades our social interactions to an extreme extent.

-edit-

I do want to mention, at least when I was a kid/teenager I recall we used to show up to people's houses uninvited/unannounced too. But we did not talk to our neighbors. That was a weird thing. There are some cultural things here. But also even if we wanted to visit someone, well, gotta hop in the car. Maybe stop and get gas, and the next thing you know, eh it's too much effort. Might as way stay home. That's kind of how that works. The car-only model that is implemented in most of America, particularly the cities not so much rural areas, is a leading cause of cultural and social malaise I believe in the West.

My neighbor knows the whole street. She knows the garbage men. It’s because she wants to. When I run into her outside, she chats. She walks her dog and chats with dog owners and anyone else she sees.

Easy relationships are available at the grocery store, post office, etc. I’ve been seeing some of the same people working at Costco for years. I don’t know them. It’s not the built environment. I’d need to take effort to build a relationship with them. My neighbor would. I’m simply not so inclined.

Hardship can force it more often, perhaps, but that is accidental and secondary.

In all the times I've traveled on forms of "mass transit" (airplanes, subways, trains) the only time I've ever really talked to someone was at the seat-together dining on a long-distance train. Otherwise you can sit next to someone for 20+ hours and never say much more than "excuse me" if you need to use the restroom.

(Another counter to this is kids, if you have kids and there are kids anywhere within screaming distance, they will find each other and immediately be best friends. Parents get dragged along - https://www.bluey.tv/watch/season-2/cafe/ )

There's no reason to have a human interaction, so why would you bother getting to know the cashier? You're never going to build a relationship with the cashier precisely because of the environmental structure.

Contrast that with walking down the street to a local store that one of your neighbors owns. I bet you would already have a relationship unless you chose not to. Why? Because you'd also see them at your kids birthday party, or you'd see them at the bark down the street, or out on a walk.

There's a corporate supermarket owned by a Dutch multinational not far from me. I see some of the same employees there every week. One of them loves people and recognizes me. I could stand around and chat with him if I wanted. But I don't want to.

I made this choice. Someone who wants to build relationships chats with people. Folks like that chat with people at the grocery store, on the airplane, waiting in line, etc. Often it leads to nothing, occasionally it leads to something. But the point is, they practice it. I don't. The built environment is not stopping it. Not being in a "local store that one of your neighbors owns" has nothing to do with it either. Plenty of relationships are built in corporate chains.

Socialization isn't a choice one makes, it's supposed to be organic. The fact that you have to choose and make decisions around interacting with other people proves my point.

That's a very interesting observation!

I have a theory that reducing "friction" is actually a net negative after a certain point, and US society is way past that point. But everybody keeps doing it, because they're myopically focused on little problems and don't see the big picture or down have a full understanding of all the alternatives.

People need external constraints, because those are the things that keep certain internal drives under control.

It's like when food was scarce it made sense to gorge yourself on calorie rich things and avoid physical effort unless absolutely necessary. Now that food is abundant and it's actually possible to nearly completely eliminate physical activity, we have an obesity epidemic, because those drives no longer hit external limits and are now out of control.

I guess for Sergey Brin it's a little different, he will always be "Founder of Google" even if he leaves Google.

But that "work as identity" may still be a problem. For a lot of us, what we do is who we are, and so not having any work to do is like not having an identity.

A few times I've quit a FAANG job with no plan for after other than to wander, and both times the lack of professional competition meant not just coasting horizontally but that I was actually lowering myself somehow. Hard to explain, and I don't fully understand it.

I also noticed most people, especially women, determine your value by your 'right now'. While intentionally unemployed I'd answer truthfully and with a smile, 'I'm unemployed!' which visibly confused people.

when i’m working i find retired people boring

when im taking 6+ month break i find the nervous energy of employed people annoying

ultimately, comfort comes from being around like minded people

then again seeking comfort rings hollow to me, even though it’s quite enjoyable in the moment.

Much less true in other places (e.g. Midwest), where community / taking care of others is valued.

The proper term is "Funemployed"

Risking a stereotype. In my experience from traveling the world it's a tell-tale sign for being from a culture heavily influenced by the Protestant work ethic. Introduce yourself like that in Spain, Italy, or Brazil and you'll get strange looks.

On the flip side, I've found that people who do not define themselves through their work primarily often do so through family. My younger self is certainly guilty of giving someone a strange look when within the first five minutes of meeting them, they told me whose cousin they were.

Do people introduce themselves like that in informal contexts in the USA? If so that's indeed a bit weird, and more a topic you would start talking about for small talk or if someone asked about it.

For many people, what they do for work is by far their biggest interest.

Many people have few to zero hobbies. They fill their days with work and then distraction.

I've also lived on a small island where on first meeting, two locals will work out how they're related. I guess similar to the cousin thing.

In the city I currently live in, it's fairly normal for locals to ask where another local went to school within 5 mins of meeting them, because that establishes an identity here.

> Hi, I'm Marcus

> What do you do Marcus

> I'm on a break now, but I used to be a director of IT

Is this really difficult? Seems really easy, and I was never a director of anything. Maybe that's the problem.

It's also not really weird for a job to become such a big part of your identity, when people spend most of their time at work or at home thinking about their work.

Definitely one of his more interesting qualities.

That's only 1/2 of the dynamic. People also like to assign an identity to others.

For example, if I say, "I'm semi-retired." ... the follow-up question is always "Oh, so what did you do before that?" ... which is polite coded-speak for, "Did you inherit money or what work did you do for money that put you in the position to do that?"

People are naturally curious about your rough level of success, wealth, expertise, etc. Having a "no identity" stance isn't really a satisfactory answer for many listeners. They want to know more.

EDIT to replies: I do understand the harmless "small talk" aspect. I should've added more to re-emphasize the "people assigning identity" aspect.

Once I reply to the followup question with "Oh, I used to do consulting for finance" what then happens is others then introduce me as "And this is jasode -- he was a consultant for X". My ex-consultant life that I last did over 15 years ago is now part of a tagline/subheading associated with my name even though I never intended it.

The point is other people have this irresistible urge to "fill in the blank" with an identity -- especially an identity that is tied to how one earned money. I'm not complaining about this and it's just an observation of what humans naturally do.

Having a natural ebb & flow to conversation is all true but that's not the issue. Let me restate it differently.

It's ok and natural to ask what people do/did for work. It's also natural to respond and share what was a significant aspect of their life.

The meta-observation is: others then like to compress whatever life narrative they hear into a "shorthand" or "identity" -- even if the recipient never intended it to be his/her identity. Several parent comments mention "their work being their identity is the problem". My point is that the identity we get tagged with is often outside of our control and we didn't create the problem of work being our identity.

My neighbors know me as the "ex-consultant". For that identity to change, I'd have to do something new that was significant enough to override that ... such as... get into another career, open a restaurant, become founder of a startup, etc.

How does one have "no identity related to their job"? Sometimes you can't unless one wants to be evasive about what one does to earn money.

The obvious answer is to have some other identifier that supersedes the job. Do you have some other interest or hobby that you spend your time doing? That you talk about all the time?

People get associated with their job because it’s probably the thing they spend the most time on and it’s also a common topic of conversation. If every time someone asked you about your job you said, “it’s good” and steered the conversation into a story about your latest epic ski trip, you’d probably be the “guy who skis” instead of the “ex-consultant”.

The fact that you’re neighbors with these people changes things. Maybe it’s a wedge into a Socratic discussion about how work isn’t and has never been your identity, where you come to some new and better mutual understanding.

But yeah it’s challenging. If people are so accustomed to viewing about themselves and others thru the conventional status/hierarchical lens… sometimes they can’t understand that it’s a lens and not reality.

In modern life, yes. I wonder if it was such a low risk topic as we moved towards the past? For example the fear of the stranger is something that is very common in past writing across a number of cultures. If you met a stranger and they said they were a soldier it would have different ramifications than if they said they were a baker. Also in smaller social groups that required the work of everyone to survive it was a way of measuring the resources available in said group.

I am probing for topics of mutual interest, or topics that make other people passionate, to learn more about them generally.

In some people, this is completely orthogonal to their careers, but most of the time, there is an overlap. Like, I haven't yet met a railway engineer who wasn't a raging railway nerd at the same time.

I definitely find this more true in some cultures. e.g. silicon valley, it seems people want to know where you're at on the "hierarchy". Many parts of Asia too, you get treated differently if you're a low level worker, regular worker, executive etc.

You're right, it is easy to say. But there's an identity and professional pride and all sorts of stuff wrapped up in the job title that isn't so easy to let go of.

It also leads on to questions like "and what are you doing now?" which get to "I'm lazing around doing nothing because my mental health took a hammering while I was IT Director", and so on. It's all so much easier and tidier with the job title.

I found that outside of CA, this is asked a lot less often. In CA people ask that so they can mentally rank you as worth their time or not. Elsewhere, people ask you how your weekend went, or how your family is. One of the awesome parts of moving to Austin was not hearing that as the first question as much.

I moved to California a few years ago from the Least Coast (insert shaka, surfer, wave emojis here) and had multiple other out-of-towners in the same situation as me say the exact opposite at a party. They all were adamant that they had yet to hear "what do you do [for a living]?" since they'd moved as they did ad nauseum when they lived on the other side of the country.

I've not noticed either way. My pet theory is that people hear this frequently if their social and professional lives bleed into each other which they do if one lives in a town dominated by a specific industry or profession. Those moving westward during COVID and remote work suddenly had to contend with this much less.

Wealth signaling still seems to me to be done primarily by conspicuous consumption and expensive hobbies.

Getting asked what I do for a living is totally fine. It’s on my website, the whole world can find out if they bother to search. I’ll save you a search.

The point is people are different. Not everyone wants to share their private interests with you, especially if you just met. What you consider interesting conversation, well, for some of us it’s just intrusive. I also don’t care what you like to do 99% of the time. I’ve been socially forced to sit through way too many of these “interesting conversations”.

If you’re at my home for dinner, I hope anyone that still feels this way does answer “the details of my private life are none of your business” when I’m trying to get to know them as a friend, so I know never to waste another good meal on them.

Can also describe my job as 'endlessly deliberate over the placement of pixels'

"I mostly breathe. It's a bore but you gotta do it"

"I meant for a living"

"Same"

I identify more with myself as a child than I ever did with my work.

Why would I identify with someone else’s goals that I’m being paid to help achieve?

"Whatever I feel like"

Tech bros would mock Finance bros who would open a conversation with anyone who would listen with "Hi, I'm Marcus, I work at Goldman Sachs" and yet here we are now ...

"Hi, I'm Marcus, I work at Google"

I will say in Sergey Brin’s case, he had the unique opportunity to go back to work with the best and brightest without any friction, and nobody could tell him “hey maybe your credentials don’t quite stack up high enough for this department yeah?”

But for the rest of us, there’s FOSS, there’s computer repair, home automation, day trading a small fraction of your wealth, volunteer work at hospitals and libraries, gig work apps like taskrabbit…

If you are bored after being away from work for even a month, I’m not sure I could be friends with you.

Tying your identity to the place where you're helpful and where that help is appreciated and acknowledged isn't mental illness.

Do you think it is healthy behavior to go to a parking lot at 0900 every day and do nothing because you mentally cannot face the idea of not going to an office?

That's just your take. We don't know where he sat in the team, so we can assume the idea that he wasn't appreciated by his teammates as incorrect. He didn't make the cut based on unknown metrics from upper management, but they have their own reasons for doing things.

Getting in to the parking lot of the old office sounds way healthier than not making it out of bed at all.

Instead he chose to sit alone in a parking lot so he could feel "normal". Feeling compelled to do a specific action (excluding things like breathing) just to feel normal has a name, and that name is "addiction". It is not usually considered a good thing.

At minimum I think it would be healthier to tie part of your identify to an aspect of your career you enjoy rather than a specific employer itself.

Missing your ex and lying around depressed in bed is less unhealthy than getting into the car and sitting outside their house.

I’m not actually sure what you don’t get.

I’m all for not living a lower level grind and riding a dirt bike. Most jobs simply aren’t interesting.

Their point is that the sheer allure for many people of that level of influence is powerful and makes other options likely less appealing.

It aligns with a common design principle: constraints often make a problem space easier to navigate. I suspect life is similar. Having limited time creates a "specialness" that is easily lost when you suddenly have an infinite amount of time at your disposal.

I wonder if that'd still be the case should he drive a Ford Focus.

I think that kind of thing strikes many people. Sometimes like with Socrates and his daimonion which restrained him from risk and other times like with one of my favourite lines in all literature where Ahab of Moby Dick remarks:

> What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me?

I find so much of this relatable in my own way, billions absent. It's good to see there are others who feel this way. Community from afar.

I remember seeing an interview (Dwarkesh?) with Sholto Douglas who had been working at Google at the time (now at Anthropic) who said he would work late there and the only other person was Sergey Brin, apparently wanting to be part of (or following) the development/training process.

We know they lied about video metrics; everyone has to pivot to video to stay competitive (with fradulent metrics)

Given the suspicion of fake accounts and further ad fraud how much have companies felt they have to follow trends rather than come up with sort of, their own organic business models

Doesn't mean soft power isn't important, because most of the time there isn't such a hard conflict. Well, hopefully.

And "Don't Be Evil" was a long time ago in a Google far, far away.

OTOH deep fake gepolitical commentators are all over the place, and it is allowed (sometimes Youtube shows a label, sometimes the channel itself describes itself as a "fan channel" of the commentator, and not the real deal. Sometimes e.g. for Shorts you can see in the info whether things are AI generated).

Let's say you have Facebook, which is notorious for banning people yet never seems to ban the things people report that should be banned. That's a real life example, but take any hypothetical company

If someone posts x bad thing and doesn't get banned, do we immediately take our torches and storm the premeses to protest? Maybe, maybe not; "look, scale is hard" (and sometimes calls to remove things outright get politicized, as seen in the last few years, so sometimes it's a tricky line)

That would be... not fine, but more fine than it is now. The lack of fairness in the bidirectionality ensures that you, Joe Schmoe, get a month ban for calling someone a jerk while the most egregious hate or racism or... anything... gets a quick check followed by This Does Not Violate Our Community Guidelines

(And of course because these services are monopolies, well, too bad, you just have to suffer. Hope you don't need the information from that Facebook page, because Facebook will tend to make it borderline impossible to view something public without an account)

Facebook is much worse because everyghing on there is user gemerated. Any small company would be just crushed by governments if they would have similar issues.

If the DEA and ATF wants to staff every shipping hub with people checking every package, that's fine by them (though admittedly it would hurt revenues).

For Google and Facebook and all the other user-content sites, it's just impossible to actually, fully uphold the law themselves, so their best bet is just to try to make it a pleasant experience for the users and leave upholding the law to the upholders of the law.

I don't mean this in a creepy way at all, but I got the impression the greatest source of joy was hanging around with younger people. A hungry grad, a cleaner, a nurse, male, female, whatever.

I'm sure he enjoyed his peers as well, but I could detect a shade of boredom of those interactions, which inevitably had stress and responsibility attached.

I think what I'm trying to say is that work isn't just about challenge, it's about socialization and having fun. And one of the greatest benefits of being financially independent is being able to navigate to those kinds of moments without the pressure of being on the make.

Is it? I know people who are really happy without doing much in their retirement. Probably because they weren't workaholics.

To my mind, if one doesn't have hobbies during the working years, then they will struggle to find purpose when they retite.

You don't have to find purpose when you retire

At all.

Instead, you just have to be willing to face each day when the day has no expectations. You can do anything you want, and decide you love it, hate it, whatever. You can do it again the next day, or not. you can hate it one day and love it the next. It's completely up to you.

For some people, this lack of structure is crushing. For others, it's liberating.

It's similar to having spent significant time alone as an adult - some people can't deal with it, some can.

I meet a lot of people who are like "I haven't figured out what i will do when i retire". These are the people i worry about, because there isn't anything to figure out. They want a structure that probably won't exist. They will likely tire of trying to force their own structure on it, and seek structure elsewhere (IE work).

In the past 3 weeks i've done the following:

Building powered paper airplanes with the kids

Mentoring high school and college students

Advising startups.

Woodworking

Hacking on CNC machines

Hacking on minecraft mods.

Hacking on compilers.

Playing video games.

and a lot more.

The next 3 weeks may be the same or different, depending on lots of things (mood, energy, schedules).

There are also days i do nothing cool or useful at all, and feel great (and unapologetic - nobody gets to judge my retirement but me, my spouse, and my kids :P) about it

The world is really big, and has lots to do. You just have to be able to drive yourself because you aren't being forced into doing anything at all.

In the end - for some i also feel it's similar to divorce - lots of people don't get divorced because they don't want to deal with being alone.

Retirement similarly forces you to spend a lot of time with yourself (even if you have an SO and even if they are retired). Lots of people don't like that, at all, for various reasons. Work lets them ignore it.

I wonder if this was the LOL[1] days - looking back on it, it's hard to believe how much people outside the org cared about the name, and us trying to not take ourselves too seriously.

[1] For everyone else, at one point we named the org Languages, Optimizations, and Libraries. People either loved or hated it.

I am saving up to retire early. If I mention this to friends, most look at me with big eyes and ask “But what will you spend your day on then!?” in a sceptical tone.

I imagine they think I want to drink beers and play golf all day every day, or something like that.

I’m a bit heart broken, that so many of my friends cannot imagine being masters of their own time, without thinking it would be bad for them and/or unproductive.

They seem relieved when I explain it’s more of the perpetual weekend I’m aiming for: sleeping till I wake, reading, cooking, hanging with friends and family, coding on my FOSS projects etc.

As a developer if, let's say, AI does make my profession no longer a viable option monetarily, what would happen if my entire identity is tied to it?

You cannot fully control your career no matter what. Many external factors can affect it and you deeply if that's your identity.

What if you can't even teach after retiring because nobody else cares about it?

For me it's about risk/reward and unfortunately in our current system the fact that all my efforts reward someone else disproportionately more completely taints it.

It can be something other than a job. It just can't be done alone.

We are social creatures and need to be needed by each other. Luckily there are plenty of people in need.

I FIREd 3 years ago and don’t miss working one bit.

I think leaving work becomes more difficult for those who do need to feel valued and especially if they don’t have interests outside of it. There are many people like that.

A more general need from what I see is to engage with and to accomplish non-trivial things.

For some it might be helping others people, for others it might be learning, researching or creating.

To each their own.

My perspective on these things have changed when I saw a successful old friend of mine thank his friend for asking his help. I feel like being asked to help by a friend might actually be a privilege sometimes.

I think this was illustrated well in the movie I Am Legend with Will Smith. He creates artificial situations where he is interacting with mannequins in order to fulfill this very basic need.

Its interesting that this part of the movie was missed by a lot of friends and family until I pointed it out to them.

I'd think this is universal but it's interesting to see others in this thread that disagree.

Is this generated by AI? English is all over the place in the article.

(If they used AI to create the article and put these baits in there, I might as well skip all the nonsense and let AI consume it for me.)

Company got sold, the owners were great and made sure everyone was taken care of.

Almost all the owners are now back working in one way or another. It's about +5 year since the sale.

- 1 spent the first year travelling

- 1 did loads of house stuff

- 2 got really deep into woodworking

Still the same people; I just think they got bored of the banality.

Additionally, I could see myself going back to work at a company if I saw a truly exciting project. But that excludes around 98% of the jobs I see out there.

No, the next generation of privacy management experiences that will impact billions of users configuring their privacy settings isn't interesting.

Good advice though, it really felt like a good point in my career to move on somewhere new.

There are various ways to look at numbers but my thumb rule is 4% inflation 9% growth keeps you perennially happy with some choppy years of course. 4% inflation 9% growth implies you can withdraw 4-5% every year and still have equivalent portfolio in inflated money.

Five years ago I paid for “market rate“ insurance through my business for my family because we did not qualify for ACA subsidies. The cost was about $40,000 per year.

I think the more important goal in FIRE is the 'FI' part - financial independence. Something that allows you to retire early - not necessary that you have to use this privilage. Something that allows you to next day take a day off or week off or 1 year sabbatical to recharge without asking anyone for permission or worrying if you will be able to pay the bills.

I think even in 4-hour-workweek Tim Ferriss called it taking mini-retirements throughout your life rather than at the end of you life.

Financial Independence, You're Not The Boss Of Me.

Once you're financially independent, at a level that you're comfortable with, you don't have to put up with crappy bosses.

If you're Sergey Brin, you kind of don't really have a boss, do you?

If you "retire" into working at a hardware store, or volunteering at the Humane Society, or just shifting into a lower-stress job...

Well, that's the dream, isn't it?

I was so happy when I realized that, unless there were dramatic shifts in the markets, I would always be able to find "decent" work for great wages. And maybe I could be patient and find "good" work for "pretty great" wages.

Once I had that level of comfort, I was way, way more brave at work. I thought, "Well, they could fire me for their own reasons, any day. So, I might as well do The Right Thing™. If they fire me for doing The Right Thing™, well, I didn't really want to work there anyway, did I?"

And then there were dramatic shifts in the markets, lol. But fortunately for me, I had built up a nest egg, and now I've shifted into a lower-stress job.

I honestly don't know what advice I'd give to younger folks. Move to Norway?

But I think "Fuck you money" implies, "I honestly don't have to worry about money, ever again."

Now, we all have different definitions for that, but the kind of thing I was talking about is definitely not "Fuck you money," to me.

I think if I had "Fuck you money," my best friends and close family would all have their medical debts paid off. I think my parents and in-laws would have their mortgages paid off.

FUM is the freedom to walk away. FMM is the power make your own terms.

Finding a purpose outside of work seems like the main issue most people struggle with when doing FIRE. Once you get going, the saving is automatic and addictive to some, but figuring out what to do with your life to give it meaning outside of a traditional work context is not just an issue with FIRE.

I said "Yes! If you don't mind that all the balls land on the floor."

Sergey found someone else to juggle with.

That person became CEO of a major Alphabet company.

Work feels pretty stifling to me.

That is exactly what I do now. Every question I've ever had I now have the time to devote to answering it. I take classes, I volunteer, I mentor Comp. Sci. students. But, more than anything, I still write code. I spent the last few months creating an LLM from scratch which was incredibly fun.

That said, I have a friend who will probably work until he dies. His only real interest in life is his job. I'm not suggesting that is a bad thing; its more to the point that "retirement" isn't a panacea for everyone.

Stephen Hawking, Einstein, Marie Curie, and Linus Pauling never retired. Did they not "truly live"?

That's also the reason why these multi-billionaires never retire. They've retired from real work a long time ago.

One is doing lifework, the other is doing labor.

Same way that dusting your cupboards is work.

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.

I don't think I un-retired but I'm performing some commercialy valuable tasks for someone.

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.

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.

Google has made some subtle moves that a lot of folks missed, possibly with Sergey's influence. Like hiring back Noam Shazeer, who practically invented the backbone of the technology.

It's good to have folks with presumptions of being scientists actually run companies for once.

That being said, I wish his ex-wife hadn't spent her millions in the divorce proceedings to get RFK Jr into a cabinet level position to gut billions in research spending. :(