Good article about why to quit your day job.

I have hard time taking anyone's advice who hasn't had similar experiences as me. Whether it be the dude who rides MTB all day in Colorado because his wife is a doctor who doesn't care if he works or not wants to give me life advice on how I need to live for today...my thought is "you're lucky, I get it."

The same goes for someone who went to Cornell for Computer Science in the late 80's. From the very get-go this guy was on a different path than I ever will be.

I get a lot of flack for being nosey about people's background, but I think its how you determine IF someone has the same experience as you. I've met a few people who are very similar to me in terms of experience, employment history, and life outlook, and those are the people I really really listen to. Their mistakes and their successes are things that will be much more realistic for me to mirror than some guy who's completely different from me.

One of the first questions I always ask when meeting someone new is "So, how'd you get into that line of work?"

Certainly some artistic license taken, but I looked at it like a boot to the butt to be productive and stop whining about your station. To some degree, we exist in a meritocracy.

z31maniac wrote: I'm seriously curious from where this almost fetishistic adoration of society's collapse originates?

Originates from the first person not happy with the creation of their society's structure. Given enough time they will be correct. The US actually has an old government structure. A big chunk of the world got restructured in the 1940s/50s. Not many government structures still in place from the 1700s - early 1800s. Most don't make it 250 years before they collapse. It's like an astrologer's annual predictions - sooner or later, they'll be right.