Comments | draegonhawke: "So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."

draegonhawke

"So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible."

Mar 28, 2010 23:06

I spent most of last week feeling like crap either physically or emotionally. (Or both. It was sometimes both.) Along with a persistent low-grade fever, I got hit with a case of I'm not doing anything with my life, I'm not going anywhere with my life, I will never amount to anything and I'm never going to mean more than I mean right now. Which ( Read more... )

topic: neuro(a)typicality, *hurt, entry: rambledansen, *samuel lawrence tyler needs a hug, *well that was random, *why don't i have happy tags?, entry: note to self, *remind me, *i can has plan?, *(not) hiding under things

Comments 12

squeemu March 29 2010, 04:30:29 UTC

Baco and I are both struggling with this right now. The "How to Feel Good About Myself" model of accomplishment and selfworth instead of using outside criteria. Baco's been doing a lot of reading and pointing some of it my way, and it seems like the main gist is doing lots and lots of repetitions of reinforcement and self encouragement, because it takes lots and lots of repetitions to build the right neural pathways. But! You can get there! So any progress is awesome and a good sign ( ... )

draegonhawke March 29 2010, 23:44:21 UTC

Heh, yes. Habits are hard to form, especially when you're running against the bulk of years of conditioning. (Freakin' conditioning.)

One of the ideas I really liked from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which I never actually got around to doing (sigh... never finished the book, either) is making a personal mission statement and then making sure everything you do is in line with those values. I never got to it because... I have a hard time working out what my own values are, honestly. :|

[The whole "aaaagh I am not doing enough with my life" really hit me this year during the Olympics when almost all of the athletes (in the events I was watching) were still in high school or just graduated.]

There's an XKCD for thatTo be honest, though, I never really wanted to be an Olympic athlete. (Did you?) So losing that one opportunity doesn't really mean much, though I do know what you mean. It keeps coming back to that gut "People younger than me are Doing More With Their Lives!" which means more than we should let it ( ... )

thebaconfat March 30 2010, 01:00:37 UTC

I've been meaning to check out that Seven Habits book! I picked it up little while ago but got turned off by what I felt was a lot of gratuitous buzzword use in the Intro. Do you recommend it?

If you're looking for other reading along the same lines, though, (if you have time ha ha) I really recommend M.J. Ryan's This Year I Will (solid, specific steps for making and meeting goals), Richard Wiseman's 59 Seconds (quick, scientifically-supported ways to increase happiness, possibly more fun and quirky than helpful), and Bill O'Hanlan's Do One Thing Different (breaking compulsive behaviours/thought patterns by interrupting them).

rachel_swirsky March 29 2010, 18:32:24 UTC

It's kind of a perpetual problem.

I became aware it was going to be when Connie confided that having won more hugos and nebulas than anyone else made her depressed, on account of now what was she going to do?

And I went, oh shit.

x_los March 29 2010, 20:43:24 UTC

... O_O

Surely there's some point where we'll be... done and okay. Surely.

rachel_swirsky March 29 2010, 21:04:10 UTC

Well, eventually we die?

x_los March 29 2010, 21:05:31 UTC

Ahaha. Ha. Ha.

Thread 5

wolfenkahlon March 29 2010, 19:48:01 UTC

There seems to have been a lot of feeling like crap physically and/or emotionally going around recently.

Feeling good about oneself seems to come more from what one is doing, than what one is achieving... (Except possibly for people for whom sitting around polishing their trophies all day makes them feel good about themselves?)

And following on from that, how one perceives what one is doing is a big factor as well.

There's probably too much focus on 'achieving something' every minute of every hour of every day these days.

On the other hand if one just shut out friends and family and focuses exclusively on working like a dog for pats on the head, one can eventually afford that snazzy gold plated coffin just in time to use it.

Which isn't to say that hard work isn't a good thing, just not hard work for the sake of hard work and gold stars...

I think I had a point here but it seems to have wandered away from me...

draegonhawke March 29 2010, 23:57:56 UTC

Yeah. Is my entire extended friendsgroup hitting its collective quarterlife crisis?

It's kinda the philosophy of "find something you love to do and find someone who will pay you to do it." There's no sort of magical end result that's going to materialize and present you with Neverending Personal Satisfaction, unless you, I don't know, attain enlightenment or something. Life is a continuous experience, so I suppose looking at it from that angle, it makes little sense to look at satisfaction with life as a boolean value.

...I think my point followed yours.

thebaconfat March 30 2010, 00:53:21 UTC

Man, I don't know how many times I've thought to myself some variation of, "If I would just be a better person, I'd stop hating on myself so much!" And of course, Squeem has to keep gently reminding me that no, that is backwards.

Glad to hear you're making progress. For what it's worth, I admire you a lot, for many reasons. *hugs*

ryuu_no_hime March 30 2010, 13:06:55 UTC

I too, am back in the treadmill of emotional fail. Every term I end up shooting myself in the foot emotionally and academically, and I REALIZE THIS, and I'm TOO FUCKING STUBBORN to give up, even as I'm destroying my sanity bit by tiny bit in the process. (And it's not like I had all that much to spare to begin with.) I keep pinning my hopes on this whole "degree from Caltech" thing as an instant path to happiness once I get it. But the thing is that even IF this degree-and-a-job thing were the key to instant happiness, that's still at least a year and a half away, so what the fuck am I supposed to do in the meantime ( ... )