Maybe I’m slow (alright, I know I am) but it seems to me that HN has jumped the shark with it’s apparent shift to “all AI, all the time” making me lose interest.
Yes, I won’t let the door hit me in the ass on the way out…
I would add that after reading The Machine Stops you should read Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" from 1951. Talk about prescient! It reads like a meld of Idiocracy and the current U.S. administration.
From the Wikipedia entry: "In 1988, real estate agent and con artist John Barlow is placed in suspended animation after a freak accident. He is revived in the distant future, in a confusing world filled with hypersexualized advertisements, vapid entertainment, and people who exhibit erratic, nonsensical behavior."
Nice story. If you haven't read the Rabbit series I heartily recommend it along with all of Updike's works.
And it makes me a little sad that I check the comments here and see I'm the first leading me to believe that John Updike isn't as well-known nowadays as to provoke discussion.
Good on you for posting here and please follow all the advice about seeking professional help. It may take time but it will help. You will get through to the other side.
In my case, due to a buyout, I lost me job over two years ago and felt myself in a similar place as you.
What made it hard for me is I was 63(!) years old at the time . (I know what it is like to feel "over the hill" in technology employment.
After picking up my pieces, I started freelancing and haven't looked back. I've had more fun, on my terms, than my previous three decades in stressful tech jobs. That's the easy part.
The hard part was accepting my humanity and asking for help. Ask everybody and don't be ashamed to do it. You'll find out who your friends really are and you'll get the support you need.
O'Reilly at the time was my go-to for anything tech. Loved the look of their books. I was a CompuServe moderator at the time - pre-AOL even, and ran a small BBS.
I used to be a CompuServe forum manager 25 years ago and got started with dialup BBS using Qmodem at 2400bps. Sent mail via FidoNet and loved it. Got my first internet access when IBM offered accounts to the general public. Our small office of 15 had a Class C service provided by PSINet for $1100/month. Even though I'm still active building sites and managing networks it seems... boring. The old stuff took a bit of fiddling to optimize but now it is all so homogenized it seems... boring and I notice myself avoiding online stuff.
Yes, I won’t let the door hit me in the ass on the way out…