I think it comes from a difference in what people want. Some people want to achieve goals, while others want to be given tools to be creative. There's a whole spectrum in between, plus other motivations as well.
I enjoy being creative to an extent, but I like to solve problems, so I naturally gravitate to something with a long-term goal to achieve like Factorio (I rapidly lose interest after launching a rocket though).
I fully empathise. It feels like my career went from upwards to a horizontal line. I have far less energy for work, for learning, and for the things I'm interested in. It's incredibly demoralising. I dread weekends and look forward to school drop-offs - what kind of life is that?
I don't care about my career so much, but the weekend and school dropoff thing resonates hard.
Work is the only part of my life where I feel any sort of competency. Anything else I'm just a ship on a stormy sea being battered around. I can change the sails and move the rudder, but the sea takes me where it wants me to go anyway.
The joke was "welcome to your vacation" when people got back from paternity leave for their new kid. I don't think I ever left that vacation.
It's also normal, and okay, to feel down about being tired and feeling like you can't do everything at once. Because that's how it is — you can't do everything at once. You have to choose, and a lot of the time the depression comes from the conflict of having to give up things you want to do.
And what can also help is talking to your partner or to a friend who's also a parent. And realizing it's normal to look forward to the weekend being over so you can sit down and work on the thing you're good at and know how to do... unlike dealing with our kids, who are always creating problems we don't know how to solve.
Luckily I have an amazing wife. We don't hide anything from each other, and she's always been there for me (just as I have for her). I have good support.
That said, you say "it's normal to look forward to the weekend being over so you can sit down and work on the thing you're good at and know how to do" - this isn't what I'm getting at. I look forward to the weekend being over so that I can spend time away from my kids. I trudge through work for the week while trying to regain mental energy to tackle the after-school pickups and the next weekend. I'm just always running at a mental energy deficit. I enjoy my work, but I just have no energy to apply myself - the kids suck it out of me.
> It feels like my career went from upwards to a horizontal line. I have far less energy for work, for learning, and for the things I'm interested in. It's incredibly demoralising
How do you separate how much having kids affects this, and how much of it is just being 30+ and not taking care of own health?
I have a few childless friends who say the same thing word for word.
I had a week where the kids were with Grandma and Grandpa. I got more done on a Wednesday after work than I did in the previous few weeks including weekends.
I don't think everyone needs kids and I don't subscribe to the 'moral high ground' of having kids, BUT I have zero sympathy for childless peers that think their life is too busy.
Also as a parent, I still don't understand. I have two kids and regret it. They suck all the time and energy from my life. I give my all to be a great parent to them, and I would never let them know that I regret having kids, but if I could wind the clock back I almost certainly would. I feel like I'm throwing the most valuable years of my life in a wood chipper.
Exactly. I probably spend 1.5x the money on a really solid build, and it's paid off - I'm still running just fine on a 10 year old desktop (overclocked i7-6850K). The only component I've upgraded (other than hard drives) is the graphics card (to a 2080Ti), and it's still running all the games I play just fine. I was planning to upgrade it on the 10 year mark, but now I'm just going to make it last a few years longer until RAM pricing becomes less silly again.
If anything, writing "7x" is actually just a poor emulation of writing "7×".
Saying something is "done at 7x speed" should be read as "done at seven times speed" not as "done at seven x speed". So using the 'times' (multiplication) symbol is the better form in my opinion; it just happens to be significantly easier to type "x" instead, which is how we got here.
I fully agree that speech evolves, but maybe this is just in the US? I've never really heard anyone say it here in Australia, it's usually "times", although admittedly almost no one uses the phrase/format here.
I enjoy being creative to an extent, but I like to solve problems, so I naturally gravitate to something with a long-term goal to achieve like Factorio (I rapidly lose interest after launching a rocket though).
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