me_irl

Still haven't figured it out yet

I was pretty young when I knew this in my brain.

I was way too old before I really believed and felt it in my soul.

Way too damn old.

Don't be a doormat, but be nice and take a little time to be a bro at work. I've been given many great opportunities because I tried to be nice. As long as you're competent and you care, you don't even need to be competitive.

Around 16 or 17. I was already aware that "studying hard" was bullshit by 13, which made my grades fall from 90-100% to just passing, which in turn led to lots of complaining from my mom until I finished high school.

I think I was in my early 20s, at my second dev job. It was early enough in my career that it helped.

Oh, way too young. Grade school. I didn’t give up on the nice part, but I realized that extra work got a brief notice - and you constantly had to apply more effort to get that notice, the rest of the time you were the same as anyone else. So why work extra all the time for little reward? Guess I’m not very approval- or reward-driven.

Been in union gigs for decades now. You do your work, do it right because that’s what you do, and you get paid pretty well. Generally nobody’s in your business offering or retracting rewards based on how they feel about you or your work.

Professionally? When I got my first non-Union job.

Personally, weirdly enough it actually has worked for me

Pretty damn old. I’m too embarrassed to say.

Let you know when it happens.

For the most part the more active and nicer you are the happier you will be. Yeah yeah you get taken advantage of, you know the same result if you are a lazy asshole.

Your insurance company is going to deny your claim, your stuff is going to break down, you will be ripped off, you will be injured, you will be robbied, and eventually you will die. All of this stuff will happen in your existence and there is fuck all you can do about it.

What you can do is stay active and stay giving. You can surround yourself with people who very much want you to be happy in life and your happiness almost completely depends on it.

So go ahead and make your decision. Do you want to pass judgement on a world that doesn't care what you think about it and rot with whatever pathetic little you have or do you want deep connections and a lifetime of achievement.

When my angel of a tee totaling mother who would cry from the stress of working unpaid OT, making every family member custom holiday sweatshirts, or hosting other little girl's birthday parties at their lazy mother's request, died rather quickly from a brain tumor after her quack therapist ignored her months of aphasia. Selflessness guarantees nothing.

29

When I had to have a tiny mental breakdown over getting a single day off after spending the year prior doing favours for the store manager like driving the delivery truck and being the pillar that kept the fresh departments standing. Ohh and I hadn't had a holiday for 2 years.

Now I work 4 days a week by choice, I come in do my work well enough then sign off. I constantly remind them that if I'm not being actively paid by the company I see myself as unemployed and free to do what I want.

I think I was 17 or 18.

Still trying to fully realise this.

I thought I learned it in the army. Then I thought I learned it in college. Then the VA actually taught me the lesson.

33 - After burning out from taking too much on 😅

16, I was in highschool when it happened

At 15, on my first job. There were 3 others in the same position. I finished first, perfectly, while they goofed off. Told the manager, all excited. She had me clean out a closet while I waited for the others to catch up. It was a real defining moment.