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TL;DR: I'm losing touch with reality and relatability and I am seeing it happen to me.

Context: As a dev, as we all do, I started with a low salary and was poor for the first 4 years of my career. I used to take pride in my poverty and because of it I faced difficulties in life.

Somehow because of that (and drugs), it gave me a fun personality and I was able to crack jokes about it and laugh it off. I was fun at parties.

But now, with moderate struggle, things are much better for me. I'm a YouTuber, I have clients and a full time job and I end up making the salary from just one client what I used to make in 2018 from a full-time office job.

Now, when anyone jokes about being poor and struggling, although I can still laugh with them, I pity them. I feel they are not working hard enough (even though I'm aware that I don't know their story, so it's a bad judgement and unfair).

I can no longer relate to my past self.

For me, I get sad about myself that I still don't have enough, while knowing I have more than what I could ask for.

I know this is not a good thing to happen to me, but it feels like I'm helpless. Sigh, I'm becoming a boomer aren't I?

Comments
  • 1
    This is something that money does to people. I've seen enough people affected by moderate success, including myself, and how it changes you. I for one am trying to manage this by not hoarding the money when I don't have to. When you just look at the numbers tick it's almost like min-maxing in a game, where you just want to hit the next checkpoint and setbacks feel bad. Gotta keep those weird emotions in check

    It's also easy to think that since you managed to be successful with hard work, that anyone can, but the truth is that we were lucky to be born in an age where specifically what interests us is also one of the best ways to make money. If someone really enjoys teaching, then it takes incredibly more time and dedication to earn the same as we do by just doing what is essentially fun for us.

    This is less my opinions and more just a loose string of consciousness regarding this topic.
  • 1
    And then there's also this weird contradiction going on, where you can be earning several times more than the lowest income in you country, and still just barely being able to afford anything fancy like housing, vehicles, vacations... even food is sometimes surprisingly expensive and can eat a big chunk of my pay in a month if I let loose... So even being technically *rich* is bullshit, because the world is designed in such a way that it's never really enough to just sit back and relax... the grind never stops anyway...

    Money really can't buy happiness. The most happy I am is when I can disconnect from this whole grind at least for a couple of hours and just be with people I care about or working on creative stuff I actually enjoy without the monetary incentive tied to it... It's all quite sweet and sour
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