Having Real Problems

When I was 22-25 I lived in Seattle and worked at Google. I was making $80-140k (plus stock), I had an upward career path, I had a handful of close friends, I was active in a couple of fun things, I didn’t have a partner but I knew I’d figure that out, I had plenty of free time.

In short, I didn’t have real problems.

Here are some things that captured my attention during this time:

The whole time I felt a little unfulfilled. This is when I first sought out a therapist and considering “depression” as a thing. It’s easy to see why: I didn’t have real problems.

when you don’t have real problems you go a little nuts

None of the things in the list above were bad ways to spend my time, really. They just weren’t really fulfilling. Some of them, in retrospect, seem like what happens when you leave a border collie in an empty room: he’s got to do something. His energy isn’t being put to use; he just spirals out.

A recent tweet2 points to this too. Poster Romy’s friend was despairing because, without real problems, they just got too inwardly focused. Romy’s solution was, “I was in this situation too. I got married and had a kid, and you should too.”

So you’d think I’d be in violent agreement, and I kind of am, but:

when you do have real problems you go a little nuts

I did the same thing as that poster! I got married, had a kid, and decided to care about work. (Tried academia and data science, then came back to software engineering and decided to Get Good.)

That’s three Real Problems. I mean, not problems in a bad sense, but three Real Meaningful Life Projects. Maybe 3.5, if you count “get healthy and strong”, which I’m not pursuing as fervently as the first three; maybe 3.75, if you count “build a spirituality”, which I know is important but certainly don’t dedicate as much time as I do to the first three or even my physical health. I have real problems now!

And I think I am definitely safe from Charybdis. I don’t really wonder so much about meaning.3

But I do wake up many days wondering if it’s going to be a 5/10 day or a 2/10 day, not really knowing why I’m doing the things I’m doing, feeling like I’ve been accidentally cast in someone else’s life.4 When it’s raining for a day or a week, you’re bummed; when it’s raining for a month, you hunker down and stock up on supplies; when it’s raining for three years you start to wonder if something’s gone wrong with the sun5.

what’s going on here

I don’t think Romy, or the countless other people who write similar things, are way off base. I don’t think I am either. How can these both coexist? Here are a few possibilities:

  1. I veered too far to Scylla. That’s too many life projects and now I’m overwhelmed! This seems unlikely in general, as so many people do this, but maybe I am just particularly weak and unable to successfully juggle “family and career and health.”
  2. This is the path for most people, but it actually isn’t the path for me; I should have searched more. I don’t think this is the case; see footnote 4.
  3. This is the painful transformation period where caterpillar young-wandering-wastrel Dan dies and upstanding-dad-husband-careerman Dan is born. Possible. Man, what a long transformation period!
  4. It’s the transformation period, and it’s so long because, somehow, I keep sabotaging myself. Also possible.
  5. You can’t win, life is impossible, sorry. This one seems unlikely; too many people seem to be doing it just fine.
  6. We can’t draw conclusions from one data point; there are too many different variables going on here.

The “no real problems” phenomenon shows up in more than just “wasting your time.” I got real mad about bike lanes for a while, like it was my own personal crusade to scream at everyone that they’re wrong and bad if they park in the bike lane. (They are, but I would have lived a much better life if I asked my city councilor to enforce bike lanes, let them write tickets, and moved on.)

Perhaps a lot of the social struggles of the 2010s were the same phenomenon. I recall being a “good gentry-ladder person” involving a lot of saying the right words, and not a lot of doing anything. You were supposed to know that you call the people whof were here before Europeans “First Nations”, not “Native Americans”, and certainly not “Indians.” You were unforgiveably bad if you accidentally misgendered someone. I remember being told to call people under 18 “youths” because it avoided the stigma of “kids” or “teens”. A lot of people online and some IRL picked up some of these as pet causes and fought for them hard, because they didn’t have real problems. Life is ok and I have free time -> I’m still mad about something -> well I can yell at people online and I am Enforcing Justice.

(It happens on the right too! “I’m still mad” -> “It’s the fault of immigrants/minorities/liberals!” And the right is much worse, as we’re seeing now! Please don’t mistake the previous paragraph!)

so what’s my advice for that friend

Anyway, back to “people who feel depressed and purposeless.”

Some people do get themselves snarled up because they don’t have real problems. I think I would also advise someone in that situation to get real problems. But I’m not sure of that, and it’s a hard road. I think the answer to their dilemma lies on the other side of Mt. Everest, but I’m only halfway up; from my vantage point you better start climbing, because a chance of finding it is better than staying where you are forever, but I can’t promise anything.

  1. I think, actually, this in particular should be written about as a warning sign. If you care about restaurants too much, you might not have real problems. ↩︎

  2. from @Romy_Holland, line breaks removed so it’ll fit in a footnote here, sorry: “i recently had a friend who’s going thru a hard time ask how i got out of the suicidal pit of despair i was in not so long ago. my flippant answer is that i got a husband and baby and this friend should do the same. my longer answer is something like: spending time a bunch of time focusing on yourself is a trap. you feel bad so you think you need to look inward and work on self care or whatever so you can suss out the bad feeling and fix it, but actually much of the problem is the self-focus itself. get a project that actually matters and that’s way bigger than yourself and focus on that instead. kids are the ultimate version of this, but not the only option. you will by necessity grow, and you’ll do it a whole lot faster than you would by naval gazing in the vacuum of a therapist’s office or yoga retreat or whatever. people weren’t meant to have endless leisure time. drinking your coffee in peace is only enjoyable if it’s in contrast to doing something hard during the bulk of your day. you don’t need more special you time, you need way less of it.” ↩︎

  3. I remember reading “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl a couple times, thinking “Meaning is what I need. How do I get it? This is the only book I can find that’s addressing this head on!” and then being like “… so they find meaning in… suffering? the hell is this, stupid book” ↩︎

  4. I don’t think I’ve actually chosen a terribly broken path! Sometimes I get moments of clarity that I’m absolutely on the right track; that my day to day is deluded by the -1s and -2s but I am building +1000000s. And yet. (God, wouldn’t it be funny if I was getting one-shotted in reverse.) ↩︎

  5. ah do I have to put a disclaimer on this post that yes I know many people call this depression and yes I am managing it well and yes I do have all the support systems I need ↩︎

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