With some time on my hands, and not being very socially outgoing, I find myself with quite some time on my hands. One thing I’ve done, is allowed myself to consume more online content that I really didn’t get the chance to do so while in college, with the focus on doing coursework and whatnot.

Had the time to watch things like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Twilight, and some Healthy Gamer content:

I enjoyed this video, a lot of it due to the fact that I like walking through understanding processes of the mind, but also because I see myself in these people at one point in my life. I’m glad that I’ve kind of been operating in the mindsete of “Plan for the future, but live in the present” for some while now, but I definitely can relate to many of the things that they were talking about when it came to wrestling with your own ego and not allowing yourself the space to fail at things.

I think one thing that I’ve failed to learn well, even throughout my college experience, is how to be socially agentic. I think I am constantly getting better at being independent in other domains of life, but as Dr. K has noted in a separate video here, I think am quite utterly failing at understanding how to engage and slowly build connections with other people. I’m not even thinking about dating anymore right now, because I’ve moved away from my college friends and don’t have many old friends that I keep in touch with from my past life anymore, I become to realize how lonely I am. It’s honestly quite frightening. This plus some general worry about not finding a job in tech (like what did i spend the past four years for anyways?).

semi personal rant incoming

100% my elementary, middle school, and high school I had been cultivating a superiority complex, even though I wasn’t the best, I could count on being a top student all the time. However, with this came what many “gifted kids” would realize is a tragic fatal flaw of not learning a lot of other critically useful skills in your life. I remember many times where I would realize that I was behind on X, and just thought to myself, it’s ok, as long as your better than them in some academic subject Y, then you’re better than them.

Oh boy, was I wrong.

This didn’t make me better than the person I was comparing myself to; this made me worse, bottom of the barrel scum. An actual fucking dumbshit. I won’t go into my whole life story, but I would say that I 100% played myself, and fell right into my own gaping chasm of stupidity. With a warped, delusional sense of reality, my fate as an isolated special needs kid would be sealed. I isolated myself, and tried restricting myself from doing fun things like hanging out with friends or playing video games in order to grind school out. I definitely still did that to some extent in colleg, but not as bad I would say. Teenage angst would be the strongest during high school, who knew.

I want to think I’m better, my ego wants me to believe that surely I’ve made some progress in becoming a better person, after being humbled, learning to not take myself so seriously, laugh and live a little, and to embrace all the pain and happiness of letting yourself experience the inevitable ups and downs of life. Have I actually become better?

This whole blog reeks of an ego-centered life. When do I write about anything that isn’t tangential to a part of my mental problems? Never? maybe.

I just don’t know how to help myself, how to live in the moment, how to avoid rumination, on my own.

I need the help of outside forces, of other people. Somehow, I’ve got to put myself out there and not make everything about me, and learn how to truly engage with other people because I can feed into their energy and do something nice together. But how? how to do such a magical thing of strangers engaging cooperatively and having a blast while doing it.

-> multiplayer video games…

I’ve been terribly out of the loop on the multiplayer video games now. I’ve withdrew myself at anxiety-inducing opportunities to engage in multiplayer games by my own with strangers. The hardest enemy I will face is myself, and yet knowing this, it doesn’t feel like half the battle is won, it feels like the battle is just harder.

Sometimes I think about suicide, but not in a terribly sad way; I just imagine the horror of not being able to escape rumination and being completely trapped and isolated in one’s own head.

God, what to do