Too much Youtube
Pandemic has proven to be a good chance to do things I've never done before. Such as...idly listening to Youtubers as I'm running mechanical tasks in my computer.
It's all usually pretty idiotic stuff: art youtubers, traveler youtubers, anime youtubers. But once in a while, many of them will share deeply personal videos about how school sucked and X thing changed their lives, allowing them to finally find friends and achieve healthy real lives, without giving up on what they enjoy.
Those are experiences that are enlightening to hear, because I can definitely relate to them, except on the real life part, duh. But I'll still take my cue to write my own experience.
School sucked! (lol) I guess there was just too many things about me to make me unlikeable. Too good grades for my own good, teachers liked me, and I was...a weird kid. Never learned how to properly socialize; I would cling to whoever was nice to me and I would become a freaking leech. Needless to say, that usually backfired. My unusual interests did not exactly help either on appealing to people; whenever I was unable to contain my mouth and ended rambling about Harry Potter or videogames, it was inevitably followed by judgemental looks. Yikes.
High school was the point where I basically became desperate. I turned into anime as an escape from my miserable school days, and securing one single friend became almost a matter of life or death. A real one, one that didn't require for me to act like "a normal person", one that didn't require for me to hide my shameful, weeb ways. At the time, I truly believed that being different was my sin, and yet, I was unable to let go of the one thing that made me a full weeb while allowing me to retain my sanity. This contradiction made my time in HS the more hard to go through.
College was a turning point for me, much as it was for those Youtubers. For once, I finally realized that I wasn't that weird; my college was actually full of weebs, I just happened to have been in the wrong place the whole time. But as opposed to Youtubers, I had pretty much given up on "real life" by this point and had fully embraced online life. Therefore, my college life was anything but memorable; most of the time, I would just limit myself to going back and forth between home and classroom, not spending much time in the college buildings otherwise (mom certainly contributed to this, but that's another story). Looking back, it was kind of a waste, but I didn't think much of it at the time. Forced interactions with unknown people, face to face, would give me too much anxiety (it still does, to a degree). Meanwhile, forums and LJ were my life now, and I was fully committed to it. For the first time ever, I was truly "living" and showing myself exactly the way I was...for better or worse.
Naturally, my leech ways were still fully kicking. I was still desperately trying to get friends, and while I came to understand later that people usually take a muuuuch more casual approach to friendship, it was (still is), unfortunately, a serious business to me xD To further elaborate, being a leech was basically resumed as a "PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEE" attitude at life. Someone like me, with no confidence at all, desperately needed the reassurance that I could be myself: my annoying, noisy, boring, awkward self, without fear of repelling people. Or maybe, I just needed someone willing to reach out to me, without me having to beg for it.
In the end, after years of aggressively pushing, all it took was just for one person to put up with me for a while, for me to be satistifed. My "attention whore" self finally came to an end, never to come back again. And with this, I could finally stop trying to pursue new friendships, be it online or in real life. Trying to reach people, with this permanent fear of potential rejection in the back of my mind, was mentally demanding and time consuming. Being able to stop was a defeat of sorts, but quite liberating, at the same time.
By now, college was over and it was time to get a job. I had to close the door to my online life; there just wasn't enough time for me anymore to put the required commitment. Timing certainly helped; those were the days when LJ was in decline and Tumblr was on the rise (never been a fan of Tumblr myself, urgh). That certainly made it easier, as there was less and less happening in my online life, after all. I went back to my fandom lurker ways, just like in my early days of Internet.
And that brings us to this day.
...wait, that's it?
Well yes, nothing else has happened. I've been working in the same company for the last 9 years, within the same team, except that no one from that original team is there anymore, leaving me as the lead by default, just because there's no one else around having the knowledge to deal with that ancient database /shrugs As with everything else in life, I don't have the courage or the confidence to go out of my comfort zone.
At this point, Youtubers would say "I can finally say that I'm proud of what I have accomplished". That's not the case with me...I can't really say that I have accomplished anything, and there's nothing really that I can be proud of. Unless we're talking about my evergrowing merchandise collection, but this is certainly not something that my parents can proudly talk about, lol.
I'm fully aware that at this point, all I'll leave behind is a big pile of crap to be disposed of, and I'd be lying if I said this doesn't bother me. I've lived up to the expectations of no one, and it wouldn't be totally wrong to label me as a disappointment. My life as a whole is anything but healthy, and I can't even say anymore that I have either a real or an online life xP My online activity is limited to a full check of Twitter timeline, giving likes here and there, rinse and repeat. No interaction whatsoever, except for ocassionally replying to questions on FB. I suppose I can claim to be a functional adult to a degree, but this world is not kind to those like me who failed at grasping the basics of social relationships.
However, the excitement of a future game release date, of an AmiAmi box approaching pick up point, those are the things that drive me forward, as lame, and pathetic, as it may sound like. But I guess...that's enough for now; it's something that not everybody has.
I wonder if I'll have a different story to tell 10 years from now? Only time will tell.
It's all usually pretty idiotic stuff: art youtubers, traveler youtubers, anime youtubers. But once in a while, many of them will share deeply personal videos about how school sucked and X thing changed their lives, allowing them to finally find friends and achieve healthy real lives, without giving up on what they enjoy.
Those are experiences that are enlightening to hear, because I can definitely relate to them, except on the real life part, duh. But I'll still take my cue to write my own experience.
School sucked! (lol) I guess there was just too many things about me to make me unlikeable. Too good grades for my own good, teachers liked me, and I was...a weird kid. Never learned how to properly socialize; I would cling to whoever was nice to me and I would become a freaking leech. Needless to say, that usually backfired. My unusual interests did not exactly help either on appealing to people; whenever I was unable to contain my mouth and ended rambling about Harry Potter or videogames, it was inevitably followed by judgemental looks. Yikes.
High school was the point where I basically became desperate. I turned into anime as an escape from my miserable school days, and securing one single friend became almost a matter of life or death. A real one, one that didn't require for me to act like "a normal person", one that didn't require for me to hide my shameful, weeb ways. At the time, I truly believed that being different was my sin, and yet, I was unable to let go of the one thing that made me a full weeb while allowing me to retain my sanity. This contradiction made my time in HS the more hard to go through.
College was a turning point for me, much as it was for those Youtubers. For once, I finally realized that I wasn't that weird; my college was actually full of weebs, I just happened to have been in the wrong place the whole time. But as opposed to Youtubers, I had pretty much given up on "real life" by this point and had fully embraced online life. Therefore, my college life was anything but memorable; most of the time, I would just limit myself to going back and forth between home and classroom, not spending much time in the college buildings otherwise (mom certainly contributed to this, but that's another story). Looking back, it was kind of a waste, but I didn't think much of it at the time. Forced interactions with unknown people, face to face, would give me too much anxiety (it still does, to a degree). Meanwhile, forums and LJ were my life now, and I was fully committed to it. For the first time ever, I was truly "living" and showing myself exactly the way I was...for better or worse.
Naturally, my leech ways were still fully kicking. I was still desperately trying to get friends, and while I came to understand later that people usually take a muuuuch more casual approach to friendship, it was (still is), unfortunately, a serious business to me xD To further elaborate, being a leech was basically resumed as a "PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEE" attitude at life. Someone like me, with no confidence at all, desperately needed the reassurance that I could be myself: my annoying, noisy, boring, awkward self, without fear of repelling people. Or maybe, I just needed someone willing to reach out to me, without me having to beg for it.
In the end, after years of aggressively pushing, all it took was just for one person to put up with me for a while, for me to be satistifed. My "attention whore" self finally came to an end, never to come back again. And with this, I could finally stop trying to pursue new friendships, be it online or in real life. Trying to reach people, with this permanent fear of potential rejection in the back of my mind, was mentally demanding and time consuming. Being able to stop was a defeat of sorts, but quite liberating, at the same time.
By now, college was over and it was time to get a job. I had to close the door to my online life; there just wasn't enough time for me anymore to put the required commitment. Timing certainly helped; those were the days when LJ was in decline and Tumblr was on the rise (never been a fan of Tumblr myself, urgh). That certainly made it easier, as there was less and less happening in my online life, after all. I went back to my fandom lurker ways, just like in my early days of Internet.
And that brings us to this day.
...wait, that's it?
Well yes, nothing else has happened. I've been working in the same company for the last 9 years, within the same team, except that no one from that original team is there anymore, leaving me as the lead by default, just because there's no one else around having the knowledge to deal with that ancient database /shrugs As with everything else in life, I don't have the courage or the confidence to go out of my comfort zone.
At this point, Youtubers would say "I can finally say that I'm proud of what I have accomplished". That's not the case with me...I can't really say that I have accomplished anything, and there's nothing really that I can be proud of. Unless we're talking about my evergrowing merchandise collection, but this is certainly not something that my parents can proudly talk about, lol.
I'm fully aware that at this point, all I'll leave behind is a big pile of crap to be disposed of, and I'd be lying if I said this doesn't bother me. I've lived up to the expectations of no one, and it wouldn't be totally wrong to label me as a disappointment. My life as a whole is anything but healthy, and I can't even say anymore that I have either a real or an online life xP My online activity is limited to a full check of Twitter timeline, giving likes here and there, rinse and repeat. No interaction whatsoever, except for ocassionally replying to questions on FB. I suppose I can claim to be a functional adult to a degree, but this world is not kind to those like me who failed at grasping the basics of social relationships.
However, the excitement of a future game release date, of an AmiAmi box approaching pick up point, those are the things that drive me forward, as lame, and pathetic, as it may sound like. But I guess...that's enough for now; it's something that not everybody has.
I wonder if I'll have a different story to tell 10 years from now? Only time will tell.