> He told my mom even if it didn't help him he hoped it would help someone.
He did help. Absolutely. A friend was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma 5 years ago, and she's in full remission today with an optimistic prognosis. Her life is possible because of researchers and people like your dad.
I travel on the cheap (2-3 months per year), volunteer at a museum a few times per month, spend gobs of time with my spouse, and work on various artistic/craft projects.
Friendships have been challenging. I have less in common with people my age now. Long time friends are still friends. Coworker-friends drift away once you realize they weren't really friends at all, just colleagues.
No real friction except with super spendy friends (who are still climbing the ladder I jumped off of) who want to make spendy plans. No, we aren't going to drop 10k on a Greek Villa this summer. They have limited time and lots of money, for me, the opposite.
I don't miss work. At all. And I was passionate about it while I was in. Life has its seasons.
Worries in FIRE are mostly related to inflation. Healthcare costs have skyrocketed, and so has the cost of food. We planned a generous buffer and are fine, but the trend line is a bit concerning.
I read Fire Upon the Deep earlier this year and it blew me away.
If you want to read his work, please buy a copy instead of using archive. Or borrow a copy from your local library. Authors still get royalties with libraries that use catalogs like Overdrive and Gardner, as most municipal libraries do.
Vinge is still with us and he deserves to get paid for his work.
I participated in JROTC in high school decades ago, and although I didn’t go into the military, it was overall a positive experience. I learned skills (organization, discipline, project management, public speaking, planning) that helped me make the transition to college and adulthood.
That being said, the program definitely pushes young people toward military service. It wasn’t until I got into “real” ROTC in college that I learned I would be miserable in a military career. JROTC is unrealistically warm and fuzzy, and thus it does a poor job of preparing cadets, particularly women like me, for the realities of service. As an adult I’ve frequently heard accounts of female recruits being sexually harassed and assaulted. I also learned about the psychological toll of warfare and how many wars are profoundly unjust. None of these topics were so much as glanced at in JROTC. Later, as a freshman, I saw that the culture of college ROTC was arrogant and bro-ish, and thankfully that was enough to turn me away from the military and toward a rewarding career in the private sector.
JROTC was an optional program at my high school. Automatic enrollment of kids amounts to coercion and is a terrible idea. Even given the benefits I received as a teenager, I’m not sure I’d want a kid of my own to join that program. Character can be built without getting sucked into the military pipeline. But like many kids in poor areas, I signed up because my home environment sucked and I didn’t have money for other school activities.
I don’t despise JROTC, but it is (as the kids say) problematic.
He did help. Absolutely. A friend was diagnosed with stage 4 melanoma 5 years ago, and she's in full remission today with an optimistic prognosis. Her life is possible because of researchers and people like your dad.
I'm sorry for your loss.