Losing My Hands(jxnl.co) |
Losing My Hands(jxnl.co) |
Anyway. After reading all the philosophical quotes etc I felt bad when you ended with this:
>> Despite my injury, I still try to maintain a bulletproof growth mindset. I constantly ask myself why I shouldn't make more money every month.
My friend, even if there is anything to Carol Dweck (severe criticism is warranted there), this is the servant mindset that you just wrote about. Make more money for what? You can’t take it with you when you die and it will not make you happy in ill health.
Oh and you’re right about there not being any moral epiphany or reward in ill health. It just sucks. Feeling good is the opposite: it’s just good. There is nothing else.
Agreed that money is far from everything when it comes to happiness and health shouldn't be utterly broken striving for it, but your comment reeks of a neatly privileged bubble in which you seem to have enough money and access to resources to ignore just how important they are for doing all the things that do make life better.
No, you can't take it with you when you die, but it's only while you live that actually matters, and being poor can sure as fuck ruin a lot of that decent living, not to mention your health, which money absolutely does help make better.
Apparently some people can't see these obvious details, that billions in the world face every day, even while they criticize others for not having a clearer perspective.
You can leave it to your kids, hoping it will give them a slightly easier and safer starting position in life, which sort of fits in the basic premise of all life, ensuring the extension of your gene line... or you could spend it all on hookers and blackjack, in the Fender from Futurama style...
If that's what you care about sure, but should we really care about it more than some other things?
It all started with a mild discomformt. Then the discomfort becomes something like mild but constant pain in fingers, hands, arm joints where the nerves are. Not pain-pain but unpleasant sensation. Then my fingertips went numb. And it was getting worse with every week.
My company had a great insurance so I went through a bunch of doctors. What they said was "all relatively fine FOR NOW, nerve microtraumas accumulate but don't get enough time to restore".
In the meantime I couldn't do anything that involved touching a keyboard or a screen. A trivial phone call was a problem.
It took a while but I had to reassess my relationship with computers and health.
1. I started doing cardio. Walk a lot. 10k+ steps a day integrated into my routine. Kettlebells and running. Weightlifting. Weight control. The point is to increase blood flow everywhere and let the body fix itself. 2. Less stupid typing, more smart typing. 3. No mechanically clicking keyboards and mice. That's is a nerve hit 1000s right there times a day.
It didn't happen over a month, or even a year. The habit refresh took a long time to develop, years.
But I have my hands back! As a side effect I am in a good shape now, definitely better than in my early 30s.
He also says he has 3 hobbies, and when the pandemic hit... it burst his bubble? I mean how many hobbies are you supposed to have? I'm not going to have 10 different hobbies to have "resiliency" in my hobbies shall a pandemic arrive.
Also, glaring omission on not sharing the reason how it happened? Everyone here works on a keyboard 8+ hours a day... maybe share what some of us could avoid?
I wouldn't say I specifically overworked for any one employer, but during lockdowns I was definitely spending way more time at a computer overall.
mostly training really interesting models, optimizing recommendation systems, designing frameworks. i was having a lot of fun.
Partly though, it seems to me that he will never achieve the results he hopes for. He is a product of the culture - he cannot think outside of the terms he has been given. He says as much:
> Despite my injury, I still try to maintain a bulletproof growth mindset. I constantly ask myself why I shouldn't make more money every month. The worst part is I truly do not know whether this is a ‘good’ mindset to have.
The thing I would say, is that yes it is possible to adopt all sorts of mindsets. The author is likely the product of his upbringing - ie the product of a good school, that has directed his competitive nature, etc. He has easily taken to the provided framework, which promises money! Ok, fine - but this is not what a person actually is, imo. It is akin to growing a tree in an espalier fashion to make it more usable for the gardener - the tree grows, fruits, etc, but does not grow as it would naturally.
To work out what one is requires inner work, uncovering what one is inside oneself - and adhering to that. One needs to listen and be in accord with one's soul. (Which is not an acceptable HN phraseology, I know.) I'm not making a religious point either.
As someone who went through a similar experience, I would not be surprised if the author's pain is/was entirely psychosomatic (this doesn't diminish its severity or significance). Probably a direct result of burnout.
It sounded like rheumatoid arthritis.
closest thing people gave me was DQT but 10 months of PT didnt help and MRA / XRAY found nothing
But well, last week we had a Google exec praise his team for pulling 100h work weeks, so I guess we're not there yet.
I thought people sticking needles in me was fucking scary though, so I never went more than the one time.
But then the patient and practitioner attribute the recovery to needles, or energy beams, or homeopathy, or religion.
Well, I'm happy that they recover.
If you are Sking yourself the same question as the author, consider an alternative animating force: curiosity.
When you're in a rut, get curious. Pursue projects that make you go "huh, I wonder what's going on there". Pursue people that make you go "huh, I want to hear more from this person".
If you're in a manic tunnel of grinding, I bet you're also in desperate need of curiosity.
My hands were getting pretty bad too but then I got a Kinesis Adavtantage 2 and after 6+ months I have no issues. Definitely helped my hand issues
...no mention of going to a doctor. I have a friend who died of cancer while getting his fillings replaced instead of seeing a doctor because "mercury". I don't know that modern medicine could have cured him, but I sure know getting his fillings replaced didn't.
See a doctor, people!
This really jumped out at me. As a society we have really screwed up royally when so many people derive their value, or own self worth, almost exclusively from work.
People should enjoy their work obvious, that's better than hating it. But especially when you work for someone else, work should ultimately be the "how" behind the rest of your life.
Humans were built to derive value from community and relationships, both with your loved ones and with nature. The fact that we have effectively imprisoned the entire society into working 8-12 hour days 5 days a week just so they can rush to get chores done and do it all over is absolutely horrible.
If you're reading this and this sounds familiar, go for a walk or plant some flowers in fresh soil. Call an old friend or go have dinner with some family and leave your phones at home. Don't let work consume your life, it will never fill the void.
but I think it's bit exaggerating to say losing my hands, while they're still "there". What about the guys who had their limbs amputated? They even can't swim anymore, don't even talk about cooking or putting on trousers (or self love..)
It's a drama. Yes. I feel for you. I also feel/see a lot of self pityriasis in your thinking/text, like paying lots of attention to own condition and whining about.. I'm in a severe condition by myself, but I always have thought of this "this shit. But others got more shit to bare and have a ticking clock over them"
So, keep up the sanity. Live with your condition. Try to find a relief. Adapt to the new situation - what you already did. Write less text that trend to provoke others feeling pity for you. Or in my words: my problem is my condition and it's my condition that it won't become your problem.
Peace. Wish you the best.
I have spinal cord injury due to bad posture (sitting in front of a computer for 20+ years) that led to multiple herniated discs in my cervical spine that are pushing my spinal cord. According to my neurosurgeon it’s quite common nowadays, even in young people in their 20s.
My hands get tired when I do a lot of typing (these days much more on Slack than in VSCode, sadly), but they don't hurt, and having some ergonomic notes pounded into my dumb head when I was young is probably a lot of that.
But wtf man making 500k? And not having some reasonable exit plan at this point?
How uneven do you have to be to be smart enough to make it that far and not just exiting?!
exiting what? i have like some money saved up i took 2 years off work, i have about 6-7 years run way, but like turns out i like building things?
Can you elaborate?
My hands do feel better these days but I don't just assume healthy hands. Typing is a resource I manage the same way I manage time.
> 3. No mechanically clicking keyboards and mice. That's is a nerve hit 1000s right there times a day.
I'm curious how do you go about replacing the keyboard? You can replace the mouse with touchpads, touchscreens, trackballs etc. but what is you effective keyboard replacement (speech to text maybe)? Or do you mean no clicky-switches (for example Cherry blue)?
You mean you don't use a mouse or use it infrequently?
https://web.stanford.edu/~ouster/cgi-bin/wrist.php
An important excerpt:
“My experience suggests that once you start having RSI problems it is very difficult to get rid of them: it will probably be an issue for the rest of your life, and if you don't act quickly things will get much worse. ”
No matter if you're a programmer or not, you have to find your way. Each of the samples, and a lot a lot more, are there, (like RSI too?), for the rest of one's life.
So how much of such people do you know? How much of them are posting on a site what they are suffering? I don't know one in my aroundings. I too, do not post anything blog wise. I don't feel pity for my self and I don't want to be pitied by others is my reason. And that's what I say. If one wants to help people in same condition with tips on handling, which is completely feasible, then the text would sound differently.
No matter what condition one have, one must cope with it.
Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20210425082459/https://web.stanf...
I don't know about RA. OPs blog post sounds a bit too optimistic for someone living with untreated RA for 3 years.
Light keyswitch keyboards do help, yes. Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard in my favourite but these things are very individual.
So, your tip with resting is exactly that what is needed. But I don't know, whether all conditions can be healed by that, or some still needs medication or operation.
Good luck to all and always pull up your pants!
Imagine a doctor with your attitude.
People have a real problem that no one has a real answer for. They don’t need to be told how much worse it could be.
I’ve got a GitHub repo where I catalog many RSI instances and treatments.
So here we are. You want to shut up as first?
I’ve put effort into researching it and gathering the data so others might be able to identify solutions that work for them.
I’m always looking for ways to “cope with it”. If you’ve got something that’s not on my list…
there’s no value in that conversation. In fact, it lacks a bit of maturity.
OP did just whine about in a longish post, how bad it is and how low active that guy now is and so on.. that's public whining. One talks about oneself, do not even think of others - others like me or the other guys, whomever has something different than RSI and who would be happy to change for RSI.
... And then you have someone who is "loosing his hands" -
It's a kick in the face of someone who really lost his hands and now has to cope with a handless life, while the first person complains to not be able to type anymore.
That's what my comment is about. To be modest and think- and thankfull. To cope with the illness, but not to whine about it. That lets everyone feel better.