Have you ever devoted a significant amount of time to something only to later feel it was pointless?
Have you ever devoted a significant amount of time to something only to later feel it was pointless?
Have you ever devoted a significant amount of time to something only to later feel it was pointless?
looks at his comment count
Nah...
Hmm...
And here I thought you were the biggest commenter here. That person is beating you ten-fold.
Single-handedly helping the fediverse thrive.
Which is a radical act to fight tech billionaires like Zuckerberg and Musk. Who have both been reasonably accused of enabling some incredibly awful stuff.
Contributing to the fediverse is probably not the most efficient way to fight for human rights and against billionaires and fascists, but it certainly makes some sort of tiny contribution. So I wouldn't call it pointless. :)
Dear lord, that's 43 comments/day
I don't think I go a day without seeing at least one Kolanaki comment.
Haha yeah...
I thought I had a problem...
Kolanaki sacrificing himself so we can feel a little better about ourselves o7
âWe are here on Earth to fart around, and donât let anybody tell you any different.â --Kurt Vonnegut
Like this comment if you recently farted.
I farted while reading it, so idk what to think here
Vonnegut is so based. Just all the time.
Definitely. It's hard not to be upset that I spent the first half of my life in church learning bullshit.
well hey at least you made it out instead of sticking with the crazies for a few more decades
Yeah the wasted youth I spent doing church shit weighs on me.
Me as well. What really bothers me is it was mostly me driving it. My parents are/were god fearing but I was way more than they were.
All this information about the Bible and it does me no good at all.
You mean life?
As a software developer, more frequently than I'd like. Pouring a couple weeks into an epic only to see the entire thing scrapped... At least I got paid.
Happens with personal projects too sometimes, I'll start refactoring and decide at the end of the weekend I really don't want to waste me next weekend on it and it'll go to the archives lol.
But even in those cases, not entirely worthless. I still learned and grew my knowledge. Same applies to similar scenarios not related to writing code.
There will come a day when all the code we've ever written will be dead.
I know the majority of mine is.
"A man dies two deaths. The first, when he draws his last breath. The second, when the last bit of shitty band-aid code he wrote is overwritten."
Hah! Only if you've never written a "temporary" dirty hack -- that code will live forever.
Had a thing about this at work this week. Got a small project in that is loaded up with garbage requirements, client is never coming back to us after this, and the budget is marginal.
What's the point? We aren't getting new knowledge, we aren't establishing a relationship with a new client, we aren't even making money. Sales fucked up, these things happen, move on. It isn't even a challenging assignment so the entire victory is hollow. Boss-man didn't like my brilliant idea to just ghost the client.
I have ADHD, anxiety, and trauma.
A solid 75% of everything Iâve ever attempted to do takes more time to do than regular folks because it has to be perfect. And then I may not tell anyone about my efforts because I donât want the attention. Or if the work is too hard or Iâm too scared of revealing I canât do it all myself, I give up. Assuming, of course, I donât forget about what Iâm working on until the relevance has passed.
Oh shit are you me? Adhd + anxiety is such a shitty combo, I feel like I can never accomplish anything and when I do I don't even get the satisfaction of a job well done because the chemical reward system in my brain is screwed up. Shit sucks.
In my retail days, every time we had visits from corporate. We would bust ass on overnights to make our location look good.
One time, as a fucking manager, I was told I needed to literally scrub the floors. Our machine that did it hadn't been repaired in 6 months due to the GM pinching pennies. He told me to scrub the real bad parts by hand.
Corporate came the next AM. Spent all of 5 fucking minutes in our store to tell us his flight got changed and had to leave. I chewed out my manager and told him it was the last time myself, or any of my crew was slapping lipstick on a pig for a corpo visit.
Work.
Early in my career, I made the mistake of revealing to my employers that I'm competent at my job. More and more work flowed onto my plate and before long, I was assigned tasks that were supposed to go to seniors. So, the seniors received almost double my salary while they enjoyed more open schedules since I was doing my work + some of theirs.
It's simply not worth it to go above and beyond at work, unless it's your own business.
if you can dig a hole the fastest someone eventually is going to hand you a bigger shovel
-an uncle of mine multiple occasions.
I do have to mention that he was one of the laziest people I have ever known and died in his mid-40s due to his weight and zero exercise. So while he was technically correct you might be better off being wrong in this one case.
All things in moderation. Hard work is a virtue, but it's good to recognize when it's not paying off for you.
Why yes, I am human.
No no don't you know how these things work?
We're to use this extremely common feeling to diagnose a variety of mental illnesses over the Internet. You can then take that information and put it into your Insta Bio, and your AIM status to up your street cred.
Honestly, slay!
Sure. Two big projects at work come right to mind. Both were fucked before I started and ended up fucked when they ended. There is about half a football field in the Great Plains full of valves, boilers, plumbing, and pumps all ready for a chemical process that doesn't make financial sense to run. The company that paid for it went bankrupt from the project. It sits there rotting. Months of my life, working well over 60 hours a week
Who hasn't? We really don't have the foresight to avoid pointless activities.
I spent years of my life and a ton of money on a 150 gallon salt water tank. I had a thriving coral population and a lots of cool little fish and crustaceans. The metal-halide hood alone cost $2,500. I moved houses and just couldn't bring myself to set it back up.
Most things, in my experience, are not worth the effort. I really feel that a lot of people who are constantly hustling, going out and doing things, etc. are doing so because they can't allow themselves to stop and think. I tend to focus on necessary things (food, shelter, etc) and some things that let me feel comfortable. For the rest, I just try to live a quiet life.
Often... I have sometimes spent hours trying to photoshop faces of my mates (with permission) on random objects or random scenarios, like a cat or kettle, trying to make it look as normal as my skills allow for a 1-off joke.
bro you gonna have phtoshop skill of a god, you just need to make it useful
You have more faith in me than I do xD
Appreciate the kind words
That feels like time well spent.
Yeah, a lot of things tbh. I think if I hadn't then I'd not be who I am today. I'd probably be a better and happier person.
I'd probably be a better and happier person.
don't say that while i'm in university, i'm gonna start second-guess myself...again.
Yes, but that's marriage for you.
Plenty of things, college being the biggest. But, I've gotten to the point where I'm able to see benefits in just about everything I've done in my life.
Agreed. I'm sad I wasted time and money on a failed attempt to get a degree, but I appreciate the people I met and the experiences I had.
Listen, if you want a degree, you don't have to do the usual route. Check out WGU - it's competency based so basically if you can do the math test, you pass the math class. If you can write the english paper, you pass the english class. Just push through and you'll be done, and it's super cheap. My advisor said she had someone finish a masters in 6 months.
Sometimes, and I think that's normal, but usually upon reflection there aren't many things that are truly worthless. I totally sound like a bad motivational poster but I really believe that even poor uses of time can teach you things - even if only how to be patient, forgiving to yourself, or wiser. It's a life philosophy of mine that you should always be pushing yourself enough that you might fail (research shows that failing about 15% of the time is the sweet spot for motivation and learning). Plus sometimes just passing the time is a goal in and of itself, especially if you're doing something you enjoy. Playing a video game, listening to music, etc doesn't "accomplish" a lot but makes life better.
Most of games these days. After a couple hours I feel like I was doing chores, not playing game and have fun.
"Oops! It's all fetch-quests!!"
Or maybe it's just me. I'm getting old now and doesn't have infinite free time to do mundane virtual chores anymore. I got 1-2 hours of free time per day, if I'm lucky and the kid won't tear up the house.
It's a shame, one of my favorites was Elite Dangerous. I love explore the universe in peace. But to be able to do so would require months of constant and repetitive grinding for material to upgrade the ship.
This is why I have failed to make any headway in Skyrim even though I've tried to play it 5 - 6 times.
Indie > AAA
An oh dear, I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR LORE. Just let me start playing the stupid game, no need for a giant cinematic.
Most papers Iâve written, especially one where I know the professor gave me a mercy C.
My ex. 10 years down the drain, and the worst part is I knew it was almost impossible to make it work. But I had to try anyway.
My degree in software engineering
I work as a professional number checker and "that thing is not on fire" checker now and am getting an MBA to make up for not knowing shit about half of thay before being hired
You mean anytime I write out a comment
Or a response to a comment.
On some level yes, but ultimately the worst cases of poorly invested time make me learn to spend my time better, so it wasn't entirely wasted - I like to think of it as a learning experience.
What I am more concerned about is subtle time wasting, sprinkled all throughout daily life in the form of various technologies and media mainly. It's so hard to get a feeling for how much time you are really spending there and it's even harder to escape it.
and why this subtle time wasting matter?
Every fucking day friend...
I was in a relationship for 13 years.
So yeah.
I'm not even at a decade, and I can only imagine how disruptive and traumatic that would be on so many levels.
I hope it's well in the past and that you're underway with your new life now.
Organized sports.
Loved sports and playing as a kid and was exceptionally gifted at basically all of them I ever tried. Ended up loving a few and before I had a chance to understand the vast difference in joy vs. occupation playing them through college.
Looking back, I didn't enjoy any of the school sports from jr. highschool onward. I still loved the games and playing and practicing on my own, the sport itself, but the organized "competitive" part of it was awful full of horrible adults and structures and painful situations that ate up an enormous amount of time.
I could have played recreationally for 2% of the time and still have enjoyed myself just as much and still loved the sport. The sports-industrial complex in the US brainwashed me into thinking their path was the only way to continue with my love of the sport.
This is me and music. I love playing, composing and performing. But do I want to be a musician? hell no. The industry is fucked up, abusive, ungrateful and miserable. Sure, for less than the 1% they get to be billionaire celebrities. But for the rest it is unlimited hard work and atrocious conditions without safety nets or benefits and meager pay (A cousin is a pro musician and I get to know all the ins and outs). I want to enjoy music, not work at music. I learned that on the organized swimming competition rings. Didn't get sucked into the machine, but got to see how miserable it can be to do something you love for work, competition or for a living. Chose a lovely career that I enjoy enough to happily do it well everyday, but that is not a surrogate for my whole life, passion and personality. Still get to enjoy music and swimming as recreation and hobbies.
I have certainly put a lot of time into things without achieving the outcome I initially hoped for. I don't think any of that was pointless though. All these experiences made me who I am today, each girlfriend or job that didn't end up working out made me learn something about myself, each failed project taught me something, if only to be patient and deal with frustration.
I try to think that life is all about the journey, and not always arriving where you set out to go is what really makes it interesting.
Joomla.
Drupal.
It's rough when a project dies and years of contributions by thousands of people succumb to bitrot. Such a waste.
Funny enough: Drupal was where I went after giving up on Joomla and it had the same fate for me. It had 1000 pounds of functionality for a simple web app.
This question reminds me of when I first realized that in the grand scheme of the universe nothing we do matters in the slightest. Not even my first existential crisis either. Looking back on it, accepting the intrinsic nihilism of life is really the least stressful thing I've ever had send me into a depressive slump.
Just about everything I've ever done.
Yay, nihilism!
Not quite. I do believe values and existence in general are meaningful, but I'm convinced that mine specifically don't matter. Nothing I've ever done had any impact on anything or anyone, so I am either just a gigantic loser (likely) or all others are idiots (unlikely). I would be exactly at the same shitty spot in my life if I didn't try to uphold my values, so why bother anymore?
School was a monumental waste of a childhood. Then unis. Now work. It all sucks.
Sanding a corner.
Scrapers. Your welcome.
Oh totally. I was going for the pun. âOnly to feel that itâs pointlessâĻâ womp womp
Looks at everything. Looks at the sun expanding. Looks back at everything.
Yes, I do believe so
Yes. Work is that useless investment of time.
Some friendships be like that. Usually it's the case of me going out of if my way to help... Only for then to purposefully make terrible life choices.
Examples,
He was just out of jail and wanted to get on track. I got him a place to stay, a job, I even personally moved him (like drive, picked up his stuff), and got him an interview with the college. The choice, fuck his perole! Drinking, meth, and knowingly getting a warrant for arrest (to impress the ladies... And it worked) was way better.
The list for her, would be too much as we knew each other for like 28(?) years. She's a mom of a disabled teenage daughter. She thought it was a great idea to get into a relationship with someone she knew was a convicted child predator. I just cannot abide. (I called CPS)
Predictor? Predator?
Dang auto complete. Fixed.
Every amphetamine user reading this post: fidgets nervously in chair
Fitting in society. I might as well say society doesn't fit in with me.
How did that one go? Being well adjusted to an ill society is not a good thing.
Unsuccessfully at the moment, and I've been where I am for a couple years now.
Yes.
My anxiety beast says hi.
Nope. I usually drop it well before that. Then go back to it for a few minutes or a day. Then drop it again. Rinse and repeat
Absolutely every day... Sadly. Maybe it's just my anxiety and ADHD. But yes.
Oh ya know, just being alive
Almost every job I had prior to realizing I need a work life balance.
Flight Rising
Let me answer that with a book title: Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Nothing is pointless. Everything is temporary.
Everything is pointless, everything is temporary.
Most things I do ;)
It's not like there's a captain of planet Earth, driving humanity towards some common destination. Purpose implies meaning, and I think meaning is subjective and temporary.