That sounds painful. Absolutely no shade to the lovely older person I overheard today say: “so how do you get the little folks on the screen to know what buttons I pressed?”
But I’m guessing it could be similar to music copywrite law where jurors don’t have to understand audio engineering to know two samples sound the same.
I don’t even see a point in commenting on the current version of reddit anymore (and I haven’t for a couple of years). You’re either replying to bots or about to get into a useless argument with a bad faith actor. I’ll gladly comment on reddit alternatives because it’s a better experience for me and it’s more likely to get other people to make the switch.
That’s the most well written account of something similar I experienced, but not to that extent.
You start out doing something because you enjoy it, then you hyperfocus because your brain is built in that way, then the praise and accolades start pouring in (for me it was academic success and getting into MIT), then it becomes your identity and you/others (mainly yourself as he pointed out) start expecting that level of output from you, you try to maintain it to unhealthy levels because your brain was built without the normal guardrails to keep itself safe, and in one way or another you just break.
For me, as my body was breaking down from stress and sleep deprivation in my 20s, I went to doctor after doctor who diagnosed me with one rare incurable diagnosis after another. A lot of young women may relate with the progression: POTS, then EDS, maybe autoimmune diseases or CFS, likely MCAS and gastroparesis, then sleep apnea and narcolepsy, also migraines with severe aura symptoms towards the end. I believed I did have a rare disease because I had Bells Palsy at 15 (from school stress!) and I still have lingering effects from that ever since.
It actually mainly ended up being sleep apnea, but to his point, an earlier diagnosis and treatment would’ve been great, but it wouldn’t have solved my lack of boundaries and identity outside of “MIT grad” either. My breaking point was being so sleep deprived I literally stopped having thoughts and desires. I just…stopped showing up for work because all my brain wanted was sleep at every moment and couldn’t conceptualize any other thought. I’m past that now thankfully, and I’m grateful for the things that part of my life brought me, but yeah, being that “smart and accomplished” has a very dark side. Especially if you don’t come from a privileged background.
Maybe the interests we serve are the friends we made serving another’s interests along the way…to serve interests? Or something like that
Genuine question, what are the alternatives not called Azure/GCP?