I recently realized I can't deal with shit the way I could in high school and I dropped out of a fairly good college because I felt like it wasn't my "calling" or my "dream".
But here's the problem: when it comes to my dream lifestyle, I love being a failure for some reason. I hate facing expectations, I hate having to deal with people, and I hate going to extents to change myself, no matter how unattractive I am.
The original plan was to force myself to obtain a good outward life, and hopefully it will support me when all I want to do all day is sit at the computer and play games and draw all day by myself. Should I follow through with this plan and get back in school and deal with shit I hate? Or should I spend time trying to love a lifestyle I've never loved.
I'm sure there are some people out there who aren't too fond of social expectations, casual friendships, and ambitious dreams. How do you get yourself out of bed and moving in a world where those are the attractive traits?
Dunno. I'm holding off on a second semester of college for this same reason. Supposed to go for physics and math, but I'm so fed up with externals that I value sitting at home doing drugs and dreaming more than work. My fallout plan is therefore to switch to computer science, get something like a sys admin job (where the hours are standard, the work is mundane yet allows for free time in even the office, and I can go home to doing more drugs).
>>1
I was you exactly at your age. You'll be exactly me at my age. That's 26. Nothing will ever change, because you'll never start hating the way you live enough or start loving the alternatives enough. I've looked for ALL the reasons. I have found none to my taste. I've tried so many times, but always failed. If you do not care you'll never have enough motivation or energy for something. Everything I ever do is for others, to conform to fit in, or because they want me to. Me, I want nothing. To be perfectly honest, I don't care so much about my computer, my games and my artistic shit either. I'm good at art, I get job offers. I either botch them due to lack of motivation, or don't accept out of knowing the outcome. I could make a living but living at all isn't very appealing to me.
It's not like I wanna die or kill myself. But if someone for some reason would ever get the idea to end me, I would smile, grab his hand and say "thanks". Then I'd lol and die.
Look at it this way, OP.
It is up to you to determine what you want out of life. Do you want happiness, or do you want prosperity? I do not mean riches per se, but rather, success -- whether it be money, love, fame. Prosperity can induce happiness, and happiness can motivate you to prosperity.
The thing you need to determine is, what do you want from life? What will make you happy? Don't force motivation -- but look for happiness. It sounds to me as you are content with what you are doing, just not happy.
Don't force yourself to go to college or work a job that you're not happy with. Fuck the people who expect you to be like everyone else. Your happiness is more important than your success. What is the point of having a six-figure job, a pretty wife and two kids if you're not happy with that position in life? What is the purpose of even LIVING if all you are doing IN life is spending all your energy TO LIVE? Spend your energy to ENJOY life, fuck spending it to stay alive.
If you play any MMO's, then you can look at it this way: There's a healer and a tank in a group. The healer tries to conserve mana by healing less. But the tank dies when the healer has 50% mana! Why? Because he's not getting enough heals. It's better to see the healer OOM than the tank dead at 50%. Of course it's best to have them both alive and with mana, but that would be a rare occasion in real life.
>>3 wow, i feel the same. Some would say, you only live once..and then i answer: " should i spend it like a drone working 9-5 with little time for my hobbies ?"
And if death would come, i too would not reject her but embrace her:). Life is just a dream i guess.
DO IT!
I WILL DO IT!
My agenda: SUCCESS OR DEATH
And i will freaking be consequent.
I will go for major physics.
Time for success or death.
>>I'm sure there are some people out there who aren't too fond of social expectations, casual friendships, and ambitious dreams. How do you get yourself out of bed and moving in a world where those are the attractive traits?
Obligation, I guess. I have a job, so I'm obligated to my employers to show up on time, every day. My parents want to see me get a JD or PhD, and provide financial and material support toward that end, so I'm obligated to them to stay in school and get good grades. My professors recommend me to various grad/law schools, nominate me for awards, and advise me on my grad/law school applications, so I'm obligated to them to keep moving upward.
Ultimately, if you can't motivate yourself to do anything, you have to at least have a sense of duty. If my life were entirely my own, I'd love nothing more than to die and finally get some peace. My life, however, is not my own -- it also belongs to those who have vested interests in my success -- so I simply have to square my shoulders and keep moving forward.
The thing about motivation is you kind of have to be 'on a roll' to have it. That is, you need to be motivated about almost everything you do to be motivated about anything in particular. Sometimes something like depression or a major setback will cause you to lose motivation in one area, such as your work or love life, and this anti-motivation can spread to other parts of your life until everything seems boring and pointless.
To get yourself out of the rut you need to focus on basic things such as getting up at a fixed time, washing regularly, keeping your living space clean, getting your work in on time etc etc, and only once you have these little things fixed can you move on to bigger challenges. It's a matter of walking before you try to run.
OP, I bring motivation up because you talk about your life and ambitions in negative terms: "I hate", "I don't like" etc and you don't say much about what you want and what you do like, and I'm guessing this is because you don't know what you want, because you've never found anything you really like doing. You may be experiencing a symptom of depression called 'anhedonia' [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhedonia] which is an inability to derive pleasure from normally enjoyable activities such as eating, socialising, sexual intercourse and so on.
You should strongly consider dealing with your motivation problems before doing anything else, since deriving happiness from an activity requires making an effort to be fully invested in that activity. You cannot expect fulfilment to find you, you must find it.
Suicide is a solution.
Be consequent, no matter what you do, that's all.
Never betray yourself, do it with full will.
BUT JUST DO IT!
OP here. Just spent another day doing nothing but lying in bed.
>>4
You are definitely right. But like >>3, I just don't have too many things that would make me happy, at least nothing that I can obtain.
I will try to focus on the small things first because >>8 is right, I lack motivation to not only go out and work but to also eat on time and sometimes even to brush my teeth. I will try to not make this such a big dramatic decision (which atm is the case), and to just try the little things to get the momentum building up.
Anyway thanks for the responses they got me thinking a bit more practically and reasonably.
Keep in mind that thinking more like the Machine-driven Society and less like yourself is not necessarily "reasonable."
What I mean is, just because the world calls suicide unreasonable and a bad idea doesn't mean that it is.
It's perfectly fine to be unmotivated, don't try to convince yourself that being a drone is a-OK if you don't really want to be a drone.
On the other hand OP is human, and should reasonably expect to have normal human feelings and desires. If he doesn't there may be something wrong in his life.