Comment by jzellis

I'm not autistic and my family was more emotionally neglectful than anything else, but I had a miserable childhood nonetheless. I was a child prodigy who could read aloud by two and a half, I was studied by pediatric developmental psychologists, etc. IQ of 185 at last check, which was 30 years ago.

Unfortunately, I either inherited type two bipolar depression or it's just what happens when you're very smart and see the world as it is. It has undermined me my entire life. But I also have zero competitive streak and I find material ambition embarrassing. So I've never been particularly financially successful.

Been a coder and writer my entire adult life. Started writing professionally when I was 18, had a column in an alt weekly in a major city before I was 23 and was Pulitzer nominated when I was 25. At the same time I was first a web designer and then a dev. I've worked for a few promising startups but they always did what most startups do. In retrospect, I was already burned out by the mid-2000s but I kept going because I thought I'd either get rich or find something worth my time.

Had a heart attack at 38 and another at 42 that nearly killed me. Had a triple bypass and moved to England to marry my girlfriend. Now I've got heart failure and spinal problems from a lifetime hunched over a computer and all the health problems you get from a lifetime of being a freelancer or contractor without insurance.

But I've lived an amazing life so far. I've traveled, partied, been witness to history, done what I wanted to do and followed my heart and will. I've done some good things for the world, I think. Now I'm writing a new social network app to fix the problems with the existing ones, working on a book about how to survive climate collapse if you're not a billionaire, and writing the best music I've ever written.

You won't make yourself feel safe by getting rich or powerful. You'll feel safe when you've surrounded yourself with people you love and trust. That's all. It has nothing to do with success or ambition. However you find that, whatever it takes, make that your ambition. And to use whatever the universe gave you to make things less hard on you and everyone you can.

If you're as bright as you seem to be, other people probably seem stupid. Maybe they are. But that doesn't make them any less human or any less important than you, and if you can see ways to make life kinder for them, do it and you'll never regret it. Everything else is just ego and self-reinforcement to drown out the things in your head that tell you you're not good enough or living up to your potential. Fuck that.

If you try as hard as you can to make the world a kinder place than you found it, you've won. That's all you can do. That's the only real wisdom I've ever found. We are born falling from birth to death, and all we can choose is how we use our time in the air: we can enjoy the rush of the air in our ears and the view, we can try to make sure everybody falling around us has their parachute open, or we can open ours without a thought for anyone else and still fall...alone.

I hope that helps.