I started learning them for fun and didn't find it to be very difficult. I agree that a weekend might be a bit fast, I'd probably say a week to a month is enough time.
To practice I like going on r/EnglishCyrillic and trying to read some of the posts
Is that a joke?
I’m eloquent in 3 languages and I don’t even consider myself to be particularly good at languages.
Or maybe you have a really high standard for eloquence.
by eloquence I mean, well, being well-spoken. I only speak two languages, and I feel that my ability to express myself in my native Russian degrades severely after periods of time away from home - for example, I often forget words, or fail to come up with a well-put way to describe a complex thing. and even when I'm home, I'm still consuming >= 95% of information and entertainment in English, and only my interactions with friends and family are conducted in Russian, so the opportunities for me to improve my Russian are very limited. the last time I've read a book in Russian was over a decade ago.
I do English/Spanish but when a fluent Spanish speaker starts speaking quickly I can't keep up. So maybe I don't know Spanish even though I studied it in school for 3 years. I watch anime/think I could learn Japanese but gotta actually immerse myself in that culture and learn it. At the very least I can discern the difference between Japanese/Korean/Chinese both written and spoken. Although I still have to sometimes check between written Japanese/Chinese.
I feel the same way as you do, regarding language degrading. I moved when I was 10, and while I can speak conversationally, unless I do it regularly I forget words.
And even without that, my vocabulary has huge gaps. Why would a ten year old need to know the word for "rent"? I didn't learn it until several years ago, in my 40s.
But I disagree about eloquence. We're just out of practice. If we spent six months of the year in Moscow and six in New York, we'd both be perfectly fluent in both.
When I was in high school I would mowe my neighbor's huge yard with a push mower. I had a green LG rumor and I put entire Metallica albums on it. It would take me like 6 hrs to mow this damn yard and I'd go through entire albums. But yeah it's just so funny all that work and I'd get like $40 which I didn't have any other income so that was money but just dumb. Your mind wanders though going up and down following the lines. This old guy would take me out fishing though, have our little cheap sandwich, he was a janitor so not like he was rolling in money but he helped me out.
It seems so silly to say but I too have a dream of not wanting to work. Then I can just exist. I came across this YT video about enjoying boredom. It slows down time and you do things you really want to do. I'm currently the type of person that is always plugged into noise (music, podcast, YT). It is rare that I sit in silence. But yeah I'm hoping I can save, exit working, I'll still be making stuff that I enjoy at a good pace. I have this problem where I want to share things that aren't done yet, it's early ego reward. That's the problem with YT too and attention span, things take time to do and it's about the immediate reward. I get it too, attention is a currency and people spend it where they want/deem important.
But I feel it though, the urge to grind. When I have free time I think, shouldn't I be doing/achieving something. If you quantify value by money then yeah there are dumb ways to make money like me driving Uber Eats and donating plasma (an extra 17 hrs of my life per week). I can instead spend less money and enjoy life more.
I almost think social media is the worst thing that I ran into, the points/likes aspect. Going back to sharing things that aren't real yet for the kudos. Anyway ranting. I'm thankful I became self-aware as when Facebook was new I was posting like everything about my life like "omg look at me...". Which is a double-edged sword you know, something like Instagram is how women scope you out and if you don't have a good one...
Tangent, there is also this fetishizing of productivity where you see this clean desk and a little notepad. Or some kind of setup like a minimalist laptop. The whole video is about that but not actually working ha.
> I'm currently the type of person that is always plugged into noise (music, podcast, YT). It is rare that I sit in silence.
Not directed towards you, but this brings up a thought I often ponder. I have friends and people around me who are plugged in 24/7. I don't really think they spend any time, what so ever, on internal thought or introspection / reflection. I think it really affects them. The "default mode network" as its neuroscience has coined it. No time to analyze the past or correlate cause with effect. Lives surrendered to notifications and scrolling the same 3 feeds, day in and day out. I don't even know what to say to them sometimes.
On the flip side, I do accept people for who they are. If this is what they want, and they enjoy it, then whatever. But it can be frustrating trying to communicate or interact with them.
There's an orthogonal aspect to it: control. I know I need some amount of noise to stay grounded and look outwards instead of collapsing into infinite reflection regression - but I also need control over that noise. That is, it needs to be my noise. Living in noise introduced by people around me is not reinvigorating, it's draining and depressing.
I couldn't agree more. Especially noise introduced by people around me. Drains me.
I'm not on a high horse either, I do succumb to modern temptations. I have a YouTube addiction, but its all educational / a topic I'm learning / a hobby / etc. I just got my Recap and somehow I have watched 4500 different channels this year, that's saying nothing of # of videos or watchtime. I was pretty shocked.
Still though, I purposefully make time to be alone and just daydream or relax and ponder. I don't use my phone while driving (besides maps etc). I try to put my phone away when others are around (unless we're sharing memes or photos or you know, actively using our phones together). I'm not a snob, go ahead and reply to your significant other while we're eating dinner - that's understandable. When I watch movies or TV (that I care about, I do keep old scifi on in the background while on the PC or doing stuff around the house) I am actively watching and do not touch my phone, and if I do need to I pause first.
The worst part? When you know someone is on their phone 24/7, phone in hand at all times, and you can't get them to respond to your calls or texts.
I feel like I'm bragging or showing off or something but I'm really not, just interested in how people interact with their devices, and their life.
> I do accept people for who they are. If this is what they want, and they enjoy it, then whatever.
You do you, but you're not obliged to accept someone for who they are if who they are is a brainless wastoid. I recommend minimizing the time wasted on zombies in favor of seeking out people who still value their brains.
Depending on how you categorize people into being a "brainless wastoid", that could potentially shrink some people's interactions with other humans to literal 0...
I see this type of sentiment reflected all over the internet as well, avoiding people because they don't fit whatever type of mold, I think this type of mentality is terrible. Not saying you gotta go out and find someone who has 14 hours of screen on time a day and hang out with them, but even just lumping people into the category of "brainless wastoid" feels to me very much like bordering on dehumanization.
the term "brainless wastoid" doesnt come across as dehumanization to you? thats strange. I think we are okay with taking people without brain activity off life support, so it certainly screams dehumanization to me.
> You are the average of the people you spend your time with. To spend time with thoughtless people is to drag yourself down.
this is a popular thing to say, that PROBABLY shouldn't be taken THIS literally, if i spend time with an idiot relative on a holiday, am i suddenly a dumber person? Is it suddenly your obligation to avoid certain gatherings because you know some of the people there aren't gonna meet your minimum standards of intelligence? If your child ends up not really being all that smart.. just hard abandon them? How literal should this statement be taken?
> Have you ever tried meditation? Does a great job scratching that ‘boredom’ itch…
No, but I am considering getting a working Amiga, a CRT and just writing some games for it.
All I had growing up was a C64, and I remember how peaceful I felt when I was designing and writing my (simple) games for it. I hankered all through my childhood for an Amiga; any Amiga.
TBH, I might even settle for a C128; just the thrill of writing software with some paper manuals next to me, no internet and no distractions.
I'm trying to. I don't know how you know it's working. Maybe, sometimes I do feel present like I am in this building, this town right now.
It is funny, I bought an old phone of mine from the 2010s, I had a different mindset back then (try to make a shit ton of money through ads on a website). That did not happen but I had this ambition/tried to make a lot of dumb apps. I'm trying to get back to that mental state as now I can make like anything, back then I didn't even know how to generate a CSR like come on you amateur!
I use the phone as a grounding tool for meditation/try to go back in time what I was thinking back then. I also loaded it with old cloud photos from that time. It doesn't have internet.
Oh yeah, what does work for grounding you to reality is when you lose internet. Then you're grounded in reality, bored. What do I do with myself now.
after a while it should feel like a refreshing nap. during the meditation itself, you're just doing a simple task and going along with it without resistance, like when sleeping. eventually the idea of "non-doing" will make more sense.
another way to look at it: upon waking each morning, you start with an empty glass. from this point, everything that enters your realm of awareness accumulates in this glass and at some point it will start overflowing if you don't manage what you're accumulating. meaning you can only effectively work with a certain amount of "stuff on your mind". So you shouldn't make a habit of carrying stress from the morning commute all day into affecting your afternoon meetings, for example.
take a few deep breaths and let the morning commute pass, and your glass is empty again. allow the glass to fill up with morning work, noticing and managing points of friction so they don't linger more than necessary. if you notice yourself getting overwhelmed or stressed about everything that comes up, you're overflowing and would likely benefit from some meditation. as you meditate more, it becomes more effortless so you won't be reliant on "doing meditation" as much.
the Plum Village app has a meditation bell that rings on a schedule (default is every 15 minutes). they recommend you take a few deep breaths to re-center and state your intention(s) for the moment. I started using it earlier this year and it has a noticeable effect over time, would highly recommend trying it out all day if possible. or at least during times where you're trying to do focused work but have a tendency to get distracted.
Thanks, I like that waking up idea, it is nice being fresh/blank.
It's crazy how our lives just run on autopilot (following some schedule, scheduled to pay bills, if I do this and that I'm good). The meditation/mindfulness will be good to get grounded/be in the moment. Worries too trying to stop that.
Honest to God, the best meditation for me is Focus 1 from The Gateway Tapes. I'm not sure the woo of astral projection and energy control are for me at all. But when it comes to blanking my mind and existing purely in the exact right now, that does it for me.
This is exactly why my dream is to save enough money so that I can retire and fuck off and just smoke weed and play vidya until I die. People speak of "hedonistic treadmill" but there's also "achievement treadmill" where you want to achieve more and more and more and it never ends. The biggest perk of my current job is that the company is completely dysfunctional, so it's normal for me to spend entire day doing nothing and I don't even need to be at the office. At first my body reacted with panic because I was used to being a slave, but I'm slowly adapting to think "wait, I'm actually winning"
I'm lucky to have a similar job where for an entire day I just watch YouTube then I say at scrum "it's in progress". Although it's not great, it's procrastinating then I have to do even more work in less time.
The OP isn't about not wanting to work. To labor in pursuit of your own personal purpose is a virtue and a privilege. But labor for the sake of labor is not a virtue, nor is labor for the sake of watching that bank account go up, and least of all labor for the sake of watching your billionaire CEO's bank account go up.
I can't imagine NOT working, just 100% pure leisure does not feel like a dream i have. If you can lump passion projects into leisure? then sure, i guess its my dream as well, because working on what I would prefer instead of having to stress about finances IS my dream.
But not working at all? sounds so boring, and not boring in the way that frees you up that others in this thread has mentioned as a good thing.
For example, I had two project ideas i kinda wanna pursue and was picking which to do first, one was very much almost no path to revenue, but way more fun and would be usable daily for me personally, the other? market aggregation stuff that i've done already and i know the exact structure, there is no mystery to it, its nothing special, just a helpful tool that might make me some money, and sadly THAT is the project i chose to pursue, over the personal project with no clear path to revenue.
I'll still enjoy making it, but I am positive if money wasn't a factor, i am deep into the other project instead.
Yeah I thought about clarifying that earlier, it's not responding to the post. I was saying it as a joke as in most people say "I wish I didn't have a job" (but somehow have money). Like I'm special thinking that way.
For me ego-wise I don't feel like I ever will be senior. I have worked with people who claim to be senior and are barely able to function so it's funny. I have worked professionally in some capacity for almost 10 years. Right now I'm working with cloudformation templates. I have seen myself improving over time and recognize my own older-self bad code. Learning faster. But yeah it's one of those things like I'm the quiet guy in a pack. I'm just lucky I lift so I'm big and people don't mess with me but I'm pretty meek as a person. This job is about merit, I'm not saying physical appearance should matter. But I'm emphasizing my self-esteem problem.
Counter to myself, a co-worker of mine who's been at the company I just joined longer than me, he gets to set things up, make decisions. Then he has to change directions and hands it to me, I ask him "how did you come up with this" and he says "I asked ChatGPT" and I'm like what?... But it is a learning tool and doing new things (this case was a starting point for Apache Airflow DAG work). But that's a case of "I'm senior".
I did read this article and I get the idea. I still have that problem where I ask what to do (mid) and a lot of times it's because I don't know if I can make a decision, is my choice good kind of thing. Uncertainty but again merit or ego?
I'm also fine not being anybody, stress-wise and finance. Not sure what the pay jump is where I'm at. Wouldn't mind a coast-type job as I have pretty good perks (gym, walks, beer on tap, hybrid) and I can pursue my other projects outside of work like robotics that I can't do at my day job (agentic work lately).
Alright I'll be done ranting, I have been a one-person dev for a startup that died it was a WebRTC document signing platform, damn that was a great project, had like 7 different repos of different tech even wrote a wrapper around Apple CUPS. So tragic when projects go nowhere and get shelved.
I think the best thing I have learned is to put ego aside (regarding avoiding arguments) and just go with the flow. In my tense environment anyway, I need money so I need this job. I was able to get along with my manager who I was having problems with in the beginning. He's one of those very blunt, direct people, you'd consider an asshole. But I aspire to be that you know a driver that makes shit happen. Like a Steve Jobs although I'm not really an asshole, I don't like seeing other people in pain. Back to self-esteem.
I've been with my org for 10+ years. Never had a promotion, people younger than me have shot up the org who joined after I did.
The thing is I prioritize health and wellbeing over any job I've had. However I've been told I'm super reliable, well liked and hard working... Although like you I'm the quiet one at the back of the room.
I recently failed an interview for a promotion, this would have been for a senior engineer. Feedback was I failed to convince the panel I had what it takes to lead a team (despite doing this everyday anyway in the org). Makes it hard to stay motivated TBH. Back to lifting weights I guess!
I am the guy that jumped around to get a salary bump kind of looks bad but also a lot of random tech stack experience, one minute I'm doing full stack JS, next I'm doing C# and Rails.
Yeah having a presence does matter. It annoyed me that manager was buddy buddy with a coworker and he was getting all the work... But now I'm friends with my mgr and I get all the work lol, almost wish I didn't. But good learning.
I suppose if you're not after money you could stay at a company for a long time. I don't know I would stay somewhere for 10 yrs just because I'd need change. But yeah I have doubled/tripled my income by jumping jobs after a couple years.
> Counter to myself, a co-worker of mine who's been at the company I just joined longer than me, he gets to set things up, make decisions.
This is the most funny part I am encountering all the time. Either one has more experience (job hopping), or one has more weight in decision making (staying longer at one company).
It is unusually hard trying to convince a manager who had their tech stack calcified the day he was promoted to manager role.
reply