<story><title>Not Having A Real Job</title><url>http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/not-having-a-real-job</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phillmv</author><text>Let me get this straight.&lt;p&gt;Your solution to feeling socially isolated, having no fulfilling hobbies outside of work, and your apparent unhappiness, despite your success, is to &lt;i&gt;open a co-working space&lt;/i&gt;?&lt;p&gt;Folks, this is as clear as an indictment of the culture as you get.&lt;p&gt;I work out of a co-working space. They&apos;re great. I am slowly working my way up the informal foosball rankings. And I&apos;m not particularly good at living life, but we&apos;re still working at the financial stability part.&lt;p&gt;There is more to life than work, even if you were blessed with huge natural reservoirs of motivation. Learn to paint. Learn to cook. Learn another language. Write fiction, investigate some non-fiction, learn how to take beautiful photographs (pro-tip: your iPhone is an amazing camera), READ BOOKS, start playing a team sport in an adult rec league, go camping, if you can afford it GO TRAVELLING, oh my god you have the money and total flex but you won&apos;t go travelling?, VOLUNTEER at the homeless shelter, at the library, at the office of a political cause you believe in, INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS [in a setting outside of &quot;lol tech startups&quot; once in a while].</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sown</author><text>Why does everyone say &apos;travel&apos; or &apos;volunteer&apos; when these questions get asked?&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m not being rhetorical or sarcastic. I genuinely don&apos;t know. I can only assume that it&apos;s something I&apos;m missing and everyone else just &apos;gets&apos; without having to say it outloud (this has happened) or ... something else?&lt;p&gt;I&apos;ve done both and I can&apos;t say I really cared for travelling since it&apos;s such a hassle. As for volunteering, which I&apos;ve done, it feels exactly like work -- except even less people wanted to talk than before. Do people who give this advice actually go volunteer?&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;  INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS&lt;p&gt;Yelling at people doesn&apos;t help. It kind of feels like people are telling a person to just cheer up if they&apos;re clinically depressed.&lt;p&gt;I think that the problems here, and their solutions, are a lot more complicated than anyone gives them credit for.</text></comment>
<story><title>Not Having A Real Job</title><url>http://edu.mkrecny.com/thoughts/not-having-a-real-job</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>phillmv</author><text>Let me get this straight.&lt;p&gt;Your solution to feeling socially isolated, having no fulfilling hobbies outside of work, and your apparent unhappiness, despite your success, is to &lt;i&gt;open a co-working space&lt;/i&gt;?&lt;p&gt;Folks, this is as clear as an indictment of the culture as you get.&lt;p&gt;I work out of a co-working space. They&apos;re great. I am slowly working my way up the informal foosball rankings. And I&apos;m not particularly good at living life, but we&apos;re still working at the financial stability part.&lt;p&gt;There is more to life than work, even if you were blessed with huge natural reservoirs of motivation. Learn to paint. Learn to cook. Learn another language. Write fiction, investigate some non-fiction, learn how to take beautiful photographs (pro-tip: your iPhone is an amazing camera), READ BOOKS, start playing a team sport in an adult rec league, go camping, if you can afford it GO TRAVELLING, oh my god you have the money and total flex but you won&apos;t go travelling?, VOLUNTEER at the homeless shelter, at the library, at the office of a political cause you believe in, INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS [in a setting outside of &quot;lol tech startups&quot; once in a while].</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>calinet6</author><text>This line &lt;i&gt;baffled&lt;/i&gt; me:&lt;p&gt;&quot;I found myself in a co-working space the other day. I passed row after row of neatly ensconced workers and realized that I would be just as lonely working there, separated in that manner.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Ridiculous. People look like they&apos;re isolated when they&apos;re &lt;i&gt;working.&lt;/i&gt; That&apos;s how you get work done. It&apos;s one of the great things about a coworking space, that it&apos;s still a coWORKing space: people are there to work.&lt;p&gt;But they&apos;re also there to be social, to work in the same space, go to lunch together, get to know each other, and generally have a structure to their lives and their work that&apos;s similar to a &quot;real job&quot; but still working on independent stuff.&lt;p&gt;And it &lt;i&gt;works.&lt;/i&gt; I spent 9 months in a coworking space, totally stabilized my life/work/psyche, and made more friends than I could have imagined. Were they all tech people working on startups? Absolutely not and the better for it—it&apos;s great to have some diversity in your social interactions. Knowing such a wide variety of types and personalities of people is a goddamn blessing.&lt;p&gt;I just don&apos;t get it: why reject coworking and then go start a coworking space? This has an air of hipster entitlement that I just can&apos;t shake. I&apos;m glad the author found a way to get out of his rut, and perhaps found an interesting tech incubator spinoff, but it could have been a lot simpler and less dramatic.</text></comment>