Ask HN: What are some of your recent failures?
My life mostly.<p>I&#x27;m 34, have a GED, have a bankruptcy, do not have a degree, do not have some sort of skill where I <i>might</i> be able to get around not having a degree like some sort of CS skills, I basically make a little less each year due to inflation and increase in insurance costs not being higher than the tiny merit based increase my employer gives, I&#x27;ve never had a relationship as an adult, I&#x27;m repeatedly denied jobs because of lack of degree and&#x2F;or my bankruptcy and&#x2F;or the fact my job doesn&#x27;t really transfer to anything else and I&#x27;ve been doing it for 13 years, I can&#x27;t afford to even contribute enough to my 401k to get the full employer match.<p>Even someone, with considerable means that told me thier success is purely due to luck (and obviously through chances they&#x27;ve been given by mentors), told me that they are sorry&#x2F;find it unfortunate that a degree is treated as a de facto dues card... yet the past 2 companies they&#x27;ve ran, require degrees for their entry level work and when I flat out asked for any job that could give me new experience, asked to take a chance on me, I got an &quot;I&#x27;m real busy right now, but I&#x27;d love to work together some day&quot;.<p>I could try and get a degree, but I don&#x27;t test well and while I&#x27;m quite intelligent school was always difficult for me. So taking out tens of thousands of dollars of loans and spending my free time doing something I&#x27;ll almost certainly hate and&#x2F;or be frustrated by, just to bury myself in debt for the second time in my life and graduate around 40 to compete against 20-22 year old people for entry level jobs in a new field with my fancy piece of financed paper... doesn&#x27;t sound very smart, does it?<p>In literally hundreds of appplications in the past 3 years I&#x27;ve had 3 interviews, 2 of them declined and the 3rd I declined when they told me the starting pay was a 5$ and change less than I make an hour now and less than 4$ above minimum wage. Doing roughly what I already do, just for freight on ships instead of planes.<p>Yup.<p>Basically my life is a complete failure. If I dropped dead today my mother, that lives with me, would notice and honestly that&#x27;s probably it. I&#x27;m a wholly replaceable cog in a machine.<p>(obligatory disclaimer: not suicidal, just honest and mostly defeated).