I started to work on improving my life one step at a time. Wanting things to happen overnight but knowing that takes time. Sometimes losing faith but never losing focus on the end goal. I want to to not waste my life. Forget being smart or doing something big. I don't want to regret wasting it.

Ive recently realized that things worth doing are worth doing well. That means its going to take time before anything good happens. Having patience is paying off.

I do stumble. Sometimes choosing to not work and relax. Whatever. My way to deal with this is to not see this as a loss but as an inconvenience. I can still (and often do) work for 10 minutes after wasting an hour or two. Its better than nothing.

Lastly, if you want to accomplish something noteworthy, go and jump off the empire state building. If you want to do something worth doing, look inside and figure out what makes you tick. Then go do it. Its not wether you can or cant. Its wether you want or not. Good luck.

It took me a few years to figure out what was meant by the conversation. You see I have two kids. I came to realize that it was about more than my kids. So now I work at a University after working at a credit card company and I volunteer for programs that help youth. Mostly STEM related activities like FIRST Robotics.

>If you want to do something worth doing, look inside and figure out what makes you tick.

This is so true. I used to think I needed to volunteer in ways that were public or the opportunities provided by my employer or friends. Once I got over that I searched for opportunities that were aligned with my skills and talents. So I work with STEM and more.

P.S. I am very sorry to hear that you lost your brother. That must be painful.

I'm not proud of my intelligence, why would I be? (much of it) is determined by genetics and the environment you grew up in and I had little control over either of those.

I also point out she is the one who speaks 3 languages fluently, has a degree in finance and qualified as a shipbroker, I just explain things really slowly and simply to a very fast idiot for a living.

Given that I have the same job as you do, this took me an embarrassing number of seconds to understand.

Well said.

All I come up with is you guys are lawyers?

Funny, that's the same for me. People confuse memory for thought.

In a similar vein, my mom and dad forked into different paths but are both intelligent in very different ways. The intelligence that allows him to speak five languages fluently, though, is something that's really far from my mom's aptitude with Fortran and laser physics, or my own with the "very fast idiots" (as you say) that I work with.

The only disagreement was over whether 2001 or Bladerunner should hold the top spot on best films, I maintain 2001, she maintains Bladerunner.

Noteworthiness is also very dependent on context. If you're too late, you're not a genius, even though you came up with it independently... how can what other people do affect your brain tissue? It can't; genius isn't about your brain, but the context.

Geniuses are like prospectors who get intrinsic credit for striking it rich... but they didn't put the gold there. However, it is right to celebrate them, to encourage prospecting...

This is one of my favorite Ted talks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duende_(art) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duende_(mythology)

Thankfully, I have a good counterbalance of extensive readings in philosophy and theology.

Now, for a real sense of loss, two days ago the grandmother of my best childhood friend died. She raised him since his mother was about 15 or 16 when he was born, and she was one of those influential adults from my childhood. She was 93.

I happened to be taking a driving trip from Iowa (where I was raised -- yes, by Swedish parents) to the east coast, so on the way I drove through the tiny town where I grew up. (I grew up with the people who made Templeton Rye when it was still bootleg. I recognize the people on the label, even though I haven't seen most of them for 40 years.)

When I drove out to my childhood best friend's farm (a mile outside of town), only two of the outbuildings were still standing. The barn is gone. The house is gone and the basement has been filled in and grass is growing there. Some of the old trees have been cut down. Even the old hand pump that was in front of the house is gone. (It worked when I was a kid.)

It's ridiculous, I suppose, but I cried, and I'm not at all what you might call "a crier." The memories were so thick and so . . . not painful, but acute. I am cursed with an extremely good memory. The sense of loss, or really I suppose the sense of the contrast of difference between reality and the ideal in my memory, made me cry.

I think that is what accounts for that sense that perhaps one is a genius: 1) the desire to be a genius, in order to impress your dead parents or perhaps your peers who have inordinate reverence for genius; 2) a better than average memory that creates a deep sense of time; 3) sensitivity to change; 4) as the article points out, noticing things others ignore.

Now that I'm mildly buzzed, I'm going to work on creating a triple boot of LinuxMint, Manjaro, and OpenSUSE on this shitty little ThinkPad T60 made in 2006 since the wifi has quit working with OpenBSD. I'm too tired to figure out why, and I've never tried any of these Linux distros, and who says doing stupid stuff like this is only for teenagers?

Please forgive me for drunken rambling on a Saturday night. I promise I won't do it again for at least a year.

But perhaps it's just me rambling on a Saturday night.

I propose to blog anonymously about those “interesting ideas” then. That way you can achieve something, but get none of the personal recognition you seem to want to avoid.

> Then, as a general rule, I start drinking if I have no obligations for the evening.

Please stop drinking alcohol regularly, especially when you feel depressed. It may make you feel good for a short while, but drinking alcohol regularly can result in liver failure, mental illness, and an increase in the risk of cancer, among other diseases.

I only drink alcohol very occasionally, and not compulsively. It is quite different than it was when I was compulsive decades ago. I have been to literally thousands of AA meetings, but have abandoned that philosophy as incomplete and disingenuous. (See the Orange Papers if you understand the previous sentence and are curious.) I sincerely appreciate your concern.

P.S. I really don't think I am a genius, just to be clear.

This is probably the best lesson to learn in life. Love yourself. Forgive yourself. Put one foot in front of the other and keep moving.

My mother used to tell me that I was a genius but I ignored her because she was a little crazy (literally).

I think we should all try to find out what we are good at and try to improve that. The more I read HN the more I get humbled into knowing that I don't know or understand much in terms of the complex world we live in. I don't even approach genius, nope not even close.

I used to get depressed thinking about what I could have become. And as I approach retirement (4 years out) I have had many thoughts of regret for what could have been. But now I seem more comfortable in being me, in being what I had and have not accomplished and being okay with that.

For me the big accomplishment has been raising a family that is well adjusted and loving.

Which, for such a relatively common outcome, is no small thing.

You're good at lying to yourself, too. Bush and Gore weren't the same. Clinton and Trump weren't the same, either. Had Gore won, we'd literally live in a different world. The Middle East might not be as stable as the US, but it would be vastly more stable than it is now.

And, looking back in 4 years, I'm pretty sure the world will be very different than it would be had Clinton gotten elected.

Between you types (the apathetic) and the Trump voters, we are so fucked.

All of that experience taught me that there is, in fact, no difference between Bush and Gore. There is a difference between Clinton and Trump, but there is no difference between Clinton and Jeb Bush.

By the way, Trump is different because he comes from outside of that system that has been built up since the late 60s. He doesn't fit any of the existing paradigms the Baby Boomer generation created, which is why establishment Republicans were busy attacking him during the election and obstructing his agenda right now.

Now, tell me again I'm lying to myself. Tell me how many politicians you have personally eaten with, or even spoken to in private, in the last 30 years. Tell me why your experience is superior to mine when it comes to making such a judgment.

I'll tell you how you are lying to yourself: Gore would never have invaded an entire country because of 9/11. He would have sent in SEAL team 6 to kill Bin Laden.

I'd recommend starting writing a journal with ideas you want to execute and instead of drinking / watching tv crack your habit and design something cool.

Hear! Hear! Total agreement. been married almost 32 years. There were many difficult years in the first ten or so. Now it is love, support and understanding.

There's truth in the genius of mainstream and average too.

If you accomplish some great work of genius, but no one can understand it, what then?

One is a genius of memory. He memorized the entire Norton Anthology of Poetry when he was a child. (I'm not even kidding.) In college we all played a game where we would give him the first line of a poem. He would then supply the title of the poem, the author, the year it was published, and generally the rest of the poem, or at least the rest of the first verse. He's a college professor. You've never heard of him, but his students invariably love him. He changes people one at a time.

There are others in this group who are very accomplished in publishing, acting, comedy. I also know a guy whose name is associated with the creation ("discovery") of several elements. (I suspect he glows in the dark from all the radiation he has absorbed, but I haven't actually confirmed that.) Tough crowd if you're in a mood to compare yourself.

I used to (and still occasionally) suffer from staring out into the stars at night and realizing how insignificant I am. We should all be like Zaphod, eh?

Just remind yourself that life in an absurd universe is pointless, so there's no need to achieve anything beyond having a nice snack and a beer this evening.

To be honest, the thing that's most improved my happiness is exercise. It wasn't that long ago I (re)discovered the joy that you can observe on the faces of small children when they run for the sake of feeling their muscles move.

And yes, exercise is excellent for nearly every malady. (See Plato for specifics.)

One has been completely inactive as far as I can tell, but the sense of "repression" has always been strong. I have no idea what the root of this is, but mutual friends have all commented on it at some point.

As for the remainder, it is best to draw the curtain of modesty over the scene.