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Quitting engineering to pursue art full-time

(www.staysketchy.com)
181 points Tomte | 5 comments | 27 Apr 24 10:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.882s | source
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datadrivenangel ◴[30 Apr 24 20:38 UTC] No.40216034[source]▶
Reminds me of the classic: "Sorry I missed your comment of many months ago. I no longer build software; I now make furniture out of wood. The hours are long, the pay sucks, and there's always the opportunity to remove my finger with a table saw, but nobody asks me if I can add an RSS feed to a DBMS, so there's that :-)"

https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149...

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1. passion__desire ◴[30 Apr 24 20:50 UTC] No.40216175[source]▶
I remember a quantum information theorist went to become a hard labourer in construction because he thought "physical labour is food for the soul"
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2. monster_group ◴[30 Apr 24 22:41 UTC] No.40217326[source]▶
And I want to become a quantum theorist. I think being able to manipulate symbols on paper and explain the universe is food for the soul. Grass always seems greener on the other side. :-)
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3. aleph_minus_one ◴[30 Apr 24 23:55 UTC] No.40217919[source]▶
> And I want to become a quantum theorist. I think being able to manipulate symbols on paper and explain the universe is food for the soul. Grass always seems greener on the other side. :-)

I don't think this is a case of "grass always seems greener on the other side", but of getting a job as a quantum theorist. It is hard to find (and keep for a long time) a job in your area of academia. :-(

4. pixl97 ◴[01 May 24 00:00 UTC] No.40217963[source]▶
Honestly I would say labor/exercise is food for the brain. Of course moderation in everything.
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5. passion__desire ◴[01 May 24 04:07 UTC] No.40219411[source]▶
Decades ago, Wiesner left academia, embraced Orthodox Judaism, moved from the US to Israel, and took up work there as a construction laborer—believing (or so he told me) that manual labor was good for the soul.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=5730

Stephen J. Wiesner (1942 – August 12, 2021)[1] was an American-Israeli research physicist, inventor and construction laborer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiesner