So.... ...happy birthday to you. You are now 25. For some reason, this bothers you. Or perhaps it "depresses" you is a better term. Perhaps it's just your current state of mind (which is even more negative than usual as of late), you're not sure. For some reason, you feel you have passed the top of the hill and you are beginning a downward descent at accelerating speed. This birth anniversary, for some reason, has really made you think of your connection to the rest of humanity and how you fit in with it.
And the conclusion isn't really that great. It's not that you can't or don't wish to fit in, but somewhere in your life you curved away from, well, everything (or it feels that way, at least). Maybe you're just feeling down because you feel you should have accomplished more by now - nothing as great as "making a difference in the world" of course, but shouldn't you be more gainfully employed? More socially connected? More involved in something? Just one of the three, even?
But then you have to deal with your messed up psychology/brain chemistry/et al. What do you want to be gainfully employed at? You have no idea. You don't feel you have the qualifications to do a serious job. The fantasy jobs? Very few of those, and you just dismiss them as not worth pursuing. And you don't seem to have the drive to truly go out and get the qualifications you feel you'd miss.
What social connections do you want? It's irrelevant - my social anxiety and nervousness won't easily allow it. People just seem to make you internally nervous, mad, or apathetic. It sucks. Doing something that isn't productive? You don't know what you'd do. Nothing seems to truly interest you or give you joy.
Perhaps you're just frustrated and mad with yourself. You feel that You're wasting your potential (and you'd like to think you have some), and it aggravates you that you haven't really done anything serious to turn off that course. And it's really your own damn fault for not being more aggressive in pursuing opportunities. But feeling disconnected and alone (like you have been) doesn't help matters. It's dreadfully easy to just curl up in an isolated ball of half-misery and not change, because at least the feeling of unhappiness, while unpleasant, is familiar and comforting in its own pervese fashion. And that, really, is what you think has happened.
You'd really like to end on a positive note, that today really is the first day of the rest of my life, and that you'll kickstart yourself into high gear and start changing. But you're pretty sure that'd be a bunch of Pollyanna nonsense. Le sigh.
Your apologies for bumming everyone out.
Welcome to Our Generation, Khululhlul. Maybe, it's time you go back to square 1 and go back to school. Again, technical schools are fine. Get an Associates in IT-Networking or Programming. I know that you like heavy metal so you have to be smart. I know you use the internet and computers regularly, so it won't be a field that's hard to creak into.
I was in your position a year or so back, except I wasn't an admin to some obscure forum somewhere. I signed up for random classes in metal-shop to get my hands dirty, web design since it was a hobby, and even a few programming classes since I wanted to see if I had any talent in designing the next generation of pong games.
The instructors were great and I found myself in a varied group selection. We have people from over age 40 coming back for new careers. We have people in their mid-20's facing career crises. We have high school students pushing the limits on their education. It was quite an interesting group of people.
In little more than a year, I learned .NET, XHMTL, JavaScript,CSS, Perl, MySQL, and now I'm working on PHP, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Torque, 3DS Max, Oracle, Java, and some other things.
It's a whirlwind of things, but if I list all the things I can do and have learned, it's an impressive ego stroke. Furthermore, if I put those on a resume, it's likely that I'll get a good enough job getting $15+/hour entry level.
A few weeks ago, a classmate told us he was approached by a local community person to make a website, 10 pages, xhtml. Offering price, $650.
I wish I could say Lyrs is wrong, but where else does late Gen-X/Gen-Y go? There's three .NET and one C programming jobs here in town, all of them pay 12++ an hr and I know that you don't need any certifications for the .NET jobs available, just enough knowledge to write simple code. Not saying it's the norm, but you get the point.
Unless you want to be cooler than Lyrs and get your CISCO. Then you and I could work together and pretend to be the guys from Hackers. I'll be Crash Override, you can be Acid Burn.
CRASH AND BURN, BABY.
On the other hand, take a step back. Look at the world as it is. How many of us feel the same as you do? What does it mean? How do we be a social generation when even the popular girls only go out on the weekends to drink, spending the weeknights on myspace?
The stores are glittered with gold and nobody cares; we're at a turning point if all else.
...happy birthday to you. You are now 25. For some reason, this bothers you. Or perhaps it "depresses" you is a better term. Perhaps it's just your current state of mind (which is even more negative than usual as of late), you're not sure. For some reason, you feel you have passed the top of the hill and you are beginning a downward descent at accelerating speed. This birth anniversary, for some reason, has really made you think of your connection to the rest of humanity and how you fit in with it.
And the conclusion isn't really that great. It's not that you can't or don't wish to fit in, but somewhere in your life you curved away from, well, everything (or it feels that way, at least). Maybe you're just feeling down because you feel you should have accomplished more by now - nothing as great as "making a difference in the world" of course, but shouldn't you be more gainfully employed? More socially connected? More involved in something? Just one of the three, even?
But then you have to deal with your messed up psychology/brain chemistry/et al. What do you want to be gainfully employed at? You have no idea. You don't feel you have the qualifications to do a serious job. The fantasy jobs? Very few of those, and you just dismiss them as not worth pursuing. And you don't seem to have the drive to truly go out and get the qualifications you feel you'd miss.
What social connections do you want? It's irrelevant - my social anxiety and nervousness won't easily allow it. People just seem to make you internally nervous, mad, or apathetic. It sucks. Doing something that isn't productive? You don't know what you'd do. Nothing seems to truly interest you or give you joy.
Perhaps you're just frustrated and mad with yourself. You feel that You're wasting your potential (and you'd like to think you have some), and it aggravates you that you haven't really done anything serious to turn off that course. And it's really your own damn fault for not being more aggressive in pursuing opportunities. But feeling disconnected and alone (like you have been) doesn't help matters. It's dreadfully easy to just curl up in an isolated ball of half-misery and not change, because at least the feeling of unhappiness, while unpleasant, is familiar and comforting in its own pervese fashion. And that, really, is what you think has happened.
You'd really like to end on a positive note, that today really is the first day of the rest of my life, and that you'll kickstart yourself into high gear and start changing. But you're pretty sure that'd be a bunch of Pollyanna nonsense. Le sigh.
Your apologies for bumming everyone out.
Welcome to Our Generation, Khululhlul. Maybe, it's time you go back to square 1 and go back to school. Again, technical schools are fine. Get an Associates in IT-Networking or Programming. I know that you like heavy metal so you have to be smart. I know you use the internet and computers regularly, so it won't be a field that's hard to creak into.
I was in your position a year or so back, except I wasn't an admin to some obscure forum somewhere. I signed up for random classes in metal-shop to get my hands dirty, web design since it was a hobby, and even a few programming classes since I wanted to see if I had any talent in designing the next generation of pong games.
The instructors were great and I found myself in a varied group selection. We have people from over age 40 coming back for new careers. We have people in their mid-20's facing career crises. We have high school students pushing the limits on their education. It was quite an interesting group of people.
In little more than a year, I learned .NET, XHMTL, JavaScript,CSS, Perl, MySQL, and now I'm working on PHP, VB.NET, ASP.NET, Torque, 3DS Max, Oracle, Java, and some other things.
It's a whirlwind of things, but if I list all the things I can do and have learned, it's an impressive ego stroke. Furthermore, if I put those on a resume, it's likely that I'll get a good enough job getting $15+/hour entry level.
A few weeks ago, a classmate told us he was approached by a local community person to make a website, 10 pages, xhtml. Offering price, $650.
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Unless you want to be cooler than Lyrs and get your CISCO. Then you and I could work together and pretend to be the guys from Hackers. I'll be Crash Override, you can be Acid Burn.
CRASH AND BURN, BABY.
On the other hand, take a step back. Look at the world as it is. How many of us feel the same as you do? What does it mean? How do we be a social generation when even the popular girls only go out on the weekends to drink, spending the weeknights on myspace?
The stores are glittered with gold and nobody cares; we're at a turning point if all else.
Reply
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