Comment by datsci_est_2015
5 days ago
I’ve lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well. So much has happened that it’s impossible to pinpoint one root cause, it’s all contributing.
Don’t know if you’re soliciting advice, but there are a few things that keep me feeling the way I did before: physical exercise, and live music. Unfortunately I find less time as the week goes by to dedicate to those things, but I at least know they’re there.
Therapeutic writing that out loud, in a way.
> I've lost a lot of my spark in the past 6 years as well.
I felt similarly and had a "crisis" point at the start of 2025. I realised that living a fulfilling life had to become my top priority, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable it may seem. Otherwise, I might not survive another 30 years.
Now I can see a bit of the mechanism behind the dimming of the spark. I had gradually conceded the direction of my life to external forces, and let anxiety and self-doubt drive my decisions. It's a great way to end up with a life that you don't want. I shudder to think of what it's like to do that for 20 years instead of 5.
Can you expand on what "living a fulfilling life" is for you?
Your post really resonates with me, but the rub is (at least for me) "living a fulfilling life" means other trade offs, and potential losses.
Maybe fulfilling to me is something that doesn't fit nicely in the box of traditional society... am I ready to give all that up?
I think the "what" is way less important than the "how". I think "how to live a fulfilling life" has general principles that apply to everyone, but the results of applying those principles are different for everyone.
I think the core of it is: following my intuitive sense of "rightness" across time scales (seconds to decades). When I'm doing it, I feel peace, joy, contentment, and my life seems meaningful. When I'm not doing it, I feel dissatisfied, restless, and nihilistic.
I'm frustrated by how vaguely and abstractly I'm conveying this. But this intuitive rightness thing precedes language. It's like a bodily sense or an emotion, but deeper. Have you ever put a t-shirt on backwards and only noticed because something didn't feel right? Then you take it off and put it on the right way around, and it just feels right. It's a bit like that but for life in general.
I can give some examples of "what" I've done if you like but I'll leave them out of this comment.
> "living a fulfilling life" means other trade offs, and potential losses.
Part of how I know I'm doing the thing is that the trade-offs and losses don't concern me. If Y matters to me, and X really is necessary to have a life with Y, then I do X. X is simply the price of having Y, which I'll gladly pay.
In contrast, when I feel resentful of a price I'm paying, it's evidence that I'm not following my sense of rightness.
Not to be a downer. It is therapeutic, and I exercise 5-6 times per week between strength and conditioning, but it's not enough. It's a short distraction, it helps me temporarily. The truth is there's something very wrong with the world today and the pressure we're all feeling, speaking personally here, leaves me feel like I'm ready to crack constantly. But I have a wife and kids and elderly parents, and they all depend on me so I need to keep holding it together. Somehow.
ive also been trying to find my mojo back especially the last few years.I do get major spurts of massive productivity and optimism like an unplanned incident that i try to analyze later to recapture but it crashes back into the usual with pessimism about the future. I've noticed publishing non-AI assisted writing (even without an audience) helps.