Who can blame them?

After having failed romantically one too many times and having an average dev job AI will probably take from me, that won't allow me to FIRE for 6 more years even if I can keep it, life's not fun for me at 35 already, how will it be at 55, all wrinkled up, frail, probably cancer stricken and with no future potential left?

I've had one same-aged friend kill themselves, and I try to be attentive to the signals being put out by everybody in my circle.

For them, I keep going. I think because both the best and worst times in my life were roughly due to my own decisions, I always have the idea that I will get back to the good times.

My friends who are older are pessimistic as fuck. Several have been unemployed for lengthy stretches due to ageism in American hiring practices, which has resulted in their life crumbling around them as they lack the resources for basic upkeep anymore. I see that and shudder for myself, wondering if we’ll finally get this sorted before I hit my 50s or if this is just going to be a shitty fucking thing for the foreseeable future.

Social activity is hard for middle-aged men. We spend several hours a day commuting to and from work, which eats into our social budgets. Hard to host dinners, attend game nights, or go on dates when 80% of your day is spoken for work alone in some capacity (preparing for, getting to, performing, commuting home), which leaves us isolated. Most of our peers have paired off, so they have a stronger support structure - yet they too disappear at alarming rates.

At every conceivable intersection for the past fifty years, we’ve chosen to make life more hostile and less comfortable. I’m tired of feigning surprise at what, at least to me and my circles, is so sickeningly obvious.

My brother's friend attempted recently however and AFAIK in that one case it's because of him having poor job prospects. I reckon the data should be disaggregated into full time employed suicides and all other employment status suicides to get a good idea of what is going on.

Back when we were in high school we were aiming to do the least amount of work to get through the year and spend the rest of the time hanging out with our mates.

A big part of our fault is also that we accept to get dragged by women into a territory that is not ours which is made up of large amount of introspection, extremely fine margins between good times and awful times and walking on eggshells with regards to social cues and the avoidance of social faux passes.

We should go back to the basics and hangout with our mates trying to do the least amount of work as possible, play sports, banter with each other, take everything much less seriously and when we feel the need shoot for ONS or visit escorts or prostitutes and then go back to our mates.

What I do know is that I wish he could have known how many people would miss him.

I was made redundant in August and despite being a 20 year career vet who has done many different langs, I still can’t find a new job.

My skills as a developer are no longer required because the all knowing robot can (apparently) do what I need to do. I’ve heard multiple companies now using it to ship stuff all the way into production without any human intervention at all. This feels to me like driving the car without holding onto the wheel.

The side hustle I had of writing books to teach people development is over — they can just ask the robot instead.

I honestly don’t know what I’m supposed to do here to provide for my family.