You can see how mIRC looked and use it on my site https://pieter.com on a working IRC server with a working dial up connection with Winsock and a real ISP made by @bai0
Hang in there! Take life one step at a time. Everyone is dealing with their own challenges all the time. You can do the ting! And if you ever need someone to listen, send me a message on Twitter
Oh for sure, yes. Simply "doing stuff" helps, and the novelty of traveling and experiencing new places is very exciting. The challenge is that it's like a drug, and it stops working if you keep traveling because your dopamine receptors get usd to it and then you feel the same, so it's not really a long term fix. You see that with nomads especially:
1) go nomad
2) omg life's amazing
3) yeah
4) oh shit why am i depressed?!!!
Then again, travel can give you permanent solutions, like you might meet a new partner(s), or people that you will build something new with, etc. Those interactions can change the course of your life and many of us need to move out of our own home bubble to a new place to realize the possibilities that life has to offer, outside of your usual routine.
I do think a creative pursuit (because it's endless) and being around people you love (difficult these days) and working out (lifting weights esp and cardio) and eating healthy (organic, and lots of vegetables) are the most probable ways to feel somewhat satisfied. But it's not like I or anyone else really has it solved I think. And with corona now I'm failing on about half of those things.
P.S. Nomad List was also very very basic and barely functional and it took ~6 years to be somewhat pretty and properly functional and it still has bugs, so it's just a daily iterative process of fixing small things like a button.
Hey :) you should see my brain and discover what I'm plagued by! I struggle with moderate anxiety and depression on and off too and esp this year has been quite hard.
Work is quite therapeutical for me because it keeps me creative, active and have goals. It keeps me on the rails really. Daily creative stuff to work on. My dad does the same as he's always renovating the house, doing woodworking, or studying film history. Just tasks to do.
Even if those tasks feeling meaningless and motivation drops (eg symptoms of sneaking up depression, especially during this crazy year), getting one task done usually helps to alleviate that and get back into it. That and a supportive girlfriend, working out a lot and trying to eat healthy.
I think it's much more common especially in entrepreneurship and ambitious pursuits than we think, so the moment I drop the word depression or anxiety people are like "omg are you okay?", but it's just a part of my and many people's existence I think.
So just so you know, while it might look like my brain has it together from afar, it's somewhat of a struggle on and off and will be the rest of my life, and I think for many people. And my work might just be a result of trying to deal with that, instead of an obstacle.
Patrick is awesome! He asked me to have lunch after I tweeted feature suggestions about Stripe. Indeed, which founder of a billion dollar company does that (or has time for that)?
Another time, I had trouble getting the Stripe code to work and Stripe's former CTO Greg Brockman debugged my PHP code (!) to fix it for me. I'm not making this up.
The CEO wants to have lunch with me (a nobody) and the CTO debugs my code.
It's one of the few VC-backed companies I really root for.
Stripe has a great product, great service, solid business model (it can't get more simple than % on transactions really), great engineering (their USP is/was their API) and it seems they really support small and medium business owners (and bootstrappers especially).
My only hope is anyone who will acquire them (and I think this will happen soon) keeps the product at this level.