Update

I no longer consume any of the content specified below, as I think I’ve gotten to be more confident in who I am, instead of seeking appraisal and ideas on what kind of person you “should” be.

I have come to terms with myself that I had become addicted to self-help material. Videos from Jordan Peterson, David Goggins, Jocko Wilink, and Joe Rogan really helped me in this part of my life, and I do not regret that I stumbled upon this material. I now realize perhaps it was not very good to put them on a pedastol and take their words as gospel without a second thought, because I was just missing a personal father figure in my life, though I have a biological father.

What prompted me to write this were two things:

1. taking a long break from consuming any self-help information
2. reading on criticisms of Jordan Peterson I believe it’s good to realize that I was once a HUGE Jordan Peterson fan, and now I’m just indifferent. I am a nerd that actually doesn’t care about these broader, real world problems. I just needed someone to yell at me nicely and tell me that it is possible to become a better person. I am perhaps quite easily influenced and gullible in this regard.

I take great influence from Lex Fridman as well. In many regards I feel like a dumber and weaker Lex, but he inspires me and many others to be a better person, have an open mind, and try to spread more love, kindness, and information in the world in your own way. In this regard, I think I will post this stream of consciousness rant in hopes that someone similar to me or my future self will appreciate the open honesty of my teenage weirdness.

I am writing this on 01/30/22 with a realization that I would like to be honest. I have found these extremely helpful to me personally at that moment in time. I actually haven’t touched anything here in a while. I only come back to watch maybe the Goggins running video to motivate myself to work harder when I feel like giving up on something hard.

I continue to try to do what I believe to be right, under the constraints of my individual being. There is still a lot that I do not know, and I want to try to keep on improving, even if that means that I will make painful mistakes along the way.

I don’t want this to be a set in stone farewell to this phase of my life, which has undoubtedly influenced me significantly, but I just want to continue to grow and not get stuck in the past in videos like this. I focus instead on simple, clear binary paradigm information. 1 or 0, true or false, right or wrong mathematically/computationally. The world of vagueness of the humanities is too complicated for me. I am often confused, and frankly it is not something that I naturally (I think) am inclined to look at and think about. I just don’t care, and that’s how I am.

I hope I look back and cringe a little and see that maybe it was a mistake but at the same time it was NOT a mistake because my past me NEEDED this phase in my life to continue on. If I hadn’t encountered these ideas (whether they turn out to be right or wrong) it was the effort and thought behind these actions that counted the most: trying to improve.

The public discourse and situation is increasingly “heated” and to me scary. I keep quiet in public spaces and keep my personal opinions to myself in fear of being touted as someone deranged. Maybe I am not giving myself enough self-respect. Very likely, but I am at least lucid enough to know that I should not make statements that I really do not know. Instead, I stick to doing what’s easier. I will state things that can be proven mathematically or computationally. I don’t need to convince you if the numbers speak for themselves. Maybe my internal goals are skewed by my personal beliefs about the world and the people that inhabit it.

Deep down I think I’m a very simple creature. I like to play video games and masturbate. On top of these fundamental truths, I try to do other things to convince myself that I am more than this. In fact, I try very hard to convince myself that I not what I am.

No, that’s wrong. I recognize the fact that I grativate naturally to these more simple things. To the things that do not require a lot of thinking. It is hugely due to the external factors of the world that I have decided to pursue a degree in Computer Science and dedicate a lot of my time to learning about the computations and processes that are in software.

Maybe I should keep life simple. I cannot think about a lot of things at the same time. I can only laser focus on one thing at a time. I multi-task badly. My writing is still terrible, especially when it is about myself.

I want to conclude with this: no matter what happens, keep it real.