The relationship between mindset and getting old
It would be interesting to see how much of this is truly biological and how much of it is due to societal and situational conditioning.<p>There were lots of things I could do in my 20s (e.g. refuse to use gasoline-powered city transportation, refuse to patronize places that used disposable cutlery, refuse to use non-free software, etc.) that I can&#x27;t do when I&#x27;m in my 30s because people around me would think I&#x27;m a stubborn idiot, jeopardizing my career at a point where I have not yet established myself. It&#x27;s very easy to tell a colleague, advisor, anyone at school that you&#x27;re going to bike to the destination or take electric-powered transit [because you don&#x27;t believe in a fossil fuel future]. It&#x27;s very difficult to say the same thing to an investor, co-founder, employee, customer, or whoever is offering you a ride in their car, without feeling like an ass. I&#x27;m basically forced to be &quot;normal&quot; during work times and fit into the mould of society. I can only be myself on evenings and weekends.<p>I can only imagine how much more &quot;being normal&quot; I need to do if I had kids, pets, tenants, or whatever. I don&#x27;t have any of those at the moment. The other night I was pondering over potential improvements to our music and mathematical notation systems while staring at the Milky Way. (I didn&#x27;t come to anything conclusive, but I love thinking outside the boxes that society defines for us.)<p>10 years ago, I could truly be myself 24 hours a day. I was basically learning all kinds of things about the world by doing that. Now, I only get about 5 hours a day to be myself. The rest of the time, I need to conform. The lack of &quot;me&quot; time itself may be contribute to some degree of mental rot&#x2F;aging, apart from the biological component.