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Wellness Wednesday for February 22, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Long post - tl;dr - have never done anything hard in my life. Isolated, still living in my super dysfunctional family and voluntarily in a sabbatical to fix my CS fundamentals now for the next months, feel really low about myself with immense self doubt. Never met someone as lazy and ambitious as me so the disconnect between what I expected to have happened by age 22 and what actually is happening hurts to talk about. Now forced in a corner, I cannot muster any positive emotions and am drifting towards nihilism. Isolation is another factor which I really would appreciate tips on. I remember being told 2 years ago here that life will go on without me if I do not change, seeing that warning turning into reality has definitely shaken up things. How can one even cope with self worth in a world of billionaires where you have so many people better, more successful than you?

Some thoughts -

I feel dead on the inside, do not think I actually am smart enough to do anything and may be too late to the party. I cannot find any joy in food, porn, music, movies etc. Everything feels tasteless, this is despite being on prozac. A recurring pattern in my life is me hating isolation, not having any peers and being forced to do something hard with those two things happening simultaneously. Getting off of cram schools without ever studying a day always made me feel that I will have to pay for it by working like that some later time in my life so the Sabbatical is a voluntary step in that direction. Everyday I recoil with anger, horror, fear and envy when I see someone my age or slightly older or younger doing good things (like getting into Stanford for a second degree or publishing papers in journals that matter or partying in higher end places with a rad social circle, meeting models regularly or working a super interesting, respected job that is meaningful). A part of me wishes I could do those things but the remaining half sorta knows I will likely never make it given what has happened till now.

I have applied for a semester waiver for this semester( get my 4 year degree this summer without having to attend any classes, exams, labs starting next week) so that I can study full time without college o disturb me and save time, actually do something good. Real programming has scared me, I doubt myself each time I work but end up learning something new. Learning and working hard is by definition really really painful and never having done it before, living a life of just surfing all day has fried my brain to the point to only ever like things that are easy. I look at really really good guys and feel a sense of awe and sadness for I marvel at their ability but simultaneously subconsciously feel that I will never be good enough no matter what I do. No one can ever be like John Carmack but you can only know if you keep trying and competence is its own reward so always right to do these things, hope that you get so good that you enjoy them.

Regardless, I just hope I succeed with this. I will also take up a combat sport in some time as the only thing I will do for the entirety of my day is study, work out and sleep, no classes or exams and whatnot. Programming itself is not bad, no matter how tired, bad I may feel starting work has a wierd effect where once I begin, I can feel everything else disappear and bang out some code only to actually feel tired for real when I do a few hours of it (2 or so for now but can push to 5 or 6 maybe?) which is something I feel only when I work. There is happiness, satisfaction at the end of a hard day of work where I like having learnt new things and feel good about myself for not doing what I do by default which is to never do fuck all. Developing actual skills is like developing a chiseled physique in the sense you must do the thing hard enough, long enough without breaks only to see results in a few months. The first few weeks is just pain but the payoff is otherworldly. I have felt some of it recently and it felt great. Like waking up from an opium dream to a reality that feels cleaner, more vivid but also better.

Some Developments in life -

On the 9th of March, a day after Holi I will get my sacred thread (Janeu). It is a highly respected thing which only a small minority of the country can wear. I feel immense pride in being born into a lineage that traces its origin to divinity. The thread means that you are a twice born, born once from the womb of your mother and the second happens when you take your Janeu. It is something that very clans can take up and despite the gloomy nature of the post below, knowing that I will be the first in my family to revive the tradition is heartwarming. My recent ancestors did not get theirs so my family's lineage will now have my name in it as those who will take up the sacred thread will do so under my name (or so I was told) which is very touching. I was told not to post here and that was honestly great advice given I would simply lie about my progress and would post just to get some semblance of validation from the internet as real life is too dull.

Recently, more specifically, today I have been feeling really low. I also got paralettes (bars for push ups) for push ups and have started doing Timed Static Contractions (a form of isometrics) now. The real bottleneck for everything fucking me up is sleeping on time and electronic distractions as I have had some really good days where I felt great and had no screen time besides work, slept on time. Getting off of sleep meds so will just take prozac and staretta, I hallucinate on ambien sometimes and think about my oneitis who is dating someone seriously now. Deep down I feel that I will never get anyone better but then again, why not date someone who is rich or has a settled life instead of me. My city has played a huge part in this as she lives in the capital whereas my town barely has anything and feels like a retirement home. I do not meet interesting, attractive people ever at all and this is not just me being someone with a superiority complex, someone young is better off in a metropolis with other young people instead of the sandy land of Rajasthan. My GPA is super low at a 6.77 out of 10 but I am just glad uni will get over soon. I hate, fucking hate it with all my passion and have met better people here than in uni.

Sabbatical -

My uni taught me fuck all. The exams, labs, classes were all a LARP and a bad one at that, something others here can attest about Indian higher education, all I got was 4 years worth of wasted time and a college life I will forever hate. I have decided to take a sabbatical of at least six months after university ends to fix the holes in my CS knowledge and decompress from all the trauma I got at uni. I have good people I found as mentors via the internet helping me out in learning key fundamentals from ground up properly (Computer Architecture, Discrete Math, Data Structures in C etc etc) and will end it with a capstone project so that I not only have the fundamentals required but also a fixed direction.

My mental health is in the gutter in all honesty. All I have ever wanted is to leave my home for a better life but somehow I find myself in prolonged isolation yet again. My town is way way too small, the only decent uni here is mine and I cannot befriend more people or see any girls for now as I take my sabbatical seriously.

I finally did nearly finish my first proper notebook since 10th grade which is an achievement for me, finally.

I aim to get a remote gig from some firm based in the west by the end of this year that pays me well and have actual fucking skills to make things that matter instead of just cramming questions off of leetcode because that is the extent of what I have seen in my uni for all 4 years.

Even during such times of extreme nihilism, I would much rather die than work a 9 to 5 job here where I commute long distances for a job where i deal with office politics from people who pretend to be intellectuals on Indian tech twitter.

Remote jobs or migration are the only two things I wish for.

My mind was dead when I began writing the post but I feel better after having written this out. My friends and mentors grill the fuck out of me daily and weekly with progress reports so at least I have that going for me. I miss my oneitis, the big reason for wanting to move out is to meet better women than her, by the hundreds. Sure that is not the main reason, that is obviously bettering my career but most Megacities have both. She was nice to me so I still wish her well but I really still want to at least spend one night with her irl. I have always have had needy one sided crushes since forever so I need to work on myself too.

Also the online world, the screen, the internet, TV, my brain, none of that is real. The more I work and the less time I spend with all of these things, the better I feel. Sure my mentors and friends who help me out are all online but I will get a dumb phone. I study in my Unis library which is a 20-30 commute away from my house and turn on gather.town so that my friends can check my work and my screen. Adds another layer of safety. Also will try out the book focusing by gendlin which is about self therapy of sorts. Just need to stick to a routine long enough and all should be fine.

Will post updates next. Take care!

Have you ever thought about joining the army? You have the right heritage for a military career, don't you? It will impose a structure upon your life and will get you away from your sleepy town.

Yeah, my clan has been into warfare since the beginning of our civilization but the world has changed. The army sure will help but I do not wish to waste 3 more years on that endeavor. I would have had I been in some other country but the perks here are not worth it.

I am actually feeling better now, just was feeling super low yesterday so apologies.

Just to give you my opinion. When I graduated college at 23, I thought very seriously about joining the navy. I actually took the Officer Candidate School test, got letters of rec, went through the physical, and was very close to signing the papers. But I also didn't want to sacrifice 4 years (minimum) of my life in the military. After all, I'd be 27 or 28 by the time I could go do something else.

But looking back now at age 31, those four years went quick and I do regret not joining. It's too late now, I'm too old to sign back up, but looking back I sort of wish I had done it. I don't feel a ton of regret, but it would have been an interesting experience, no doubt, and four years will go by faster than you think.

Anyway, I'm not suggesting you enlist, but it's something to think about if you're looking for something with more structure and purpose.