[Chill of Eons]

Hello, fellow humans. I hope you’re all doing better than I am. Well I probably shouldn’t say that, as it makes me sound ungrateful for the good things in my life, which are many, though not money.

At 26 (now), my existence has ever been mired in stagnation. Be forewarned, the following is not organized too well, so if people don’t want to read it I have only myself to blame for that.

I’m in a comfortable, though not quite stable, situation. Mom can’t cover the house bills on her own, even with the help of my younger brother who makes more than me, though she could also rent the garage out for more income. So my income is needed as well, and I give it (yes, pretty much all of it). I don’t want to still be living in my mom’s house by age 30, but that’s exactly what will happen if I don’t make some big changes, and soon.

One of my biggest problems is that I have so few interests. I just DO so little. I don’t watch TV though! I used to draw a lot, and I was pretty okay, and still am, but now I almost never draw because I’m afraid to for some reason, most likely fatal perfectionism and the belief that I won’t enjoy it (drawing), which is indeed the case when I apply said perfectionism.

What do I do for fun? Well, I’m addicted to fiction, and that’s largely it. From age 8 to several years ago it was videogames, but now it’s staggeringly epic, ultra imaginative and endlessly ingenious plots, such as Dune by Frank Herbert. At least it isn’t drugs. But in addition to that I spend a deal of the rest of my time ruminating, which is a deal less fun and probably not much better for me, though it makes me feel less like I’m sticking my head in the sand.

I have social anxiety, partly in the form of being prejudiced against young liberal hipsters. You know, the ones that do drugs and stuff, or at least get intoxicated frequently. I cannot identify with them very much. They strike me almost invariably as being vastly inconsiderate and brazenly disrespectful to anyone who dares openly disagree with them about anything. I hope I’m wrong about that, there’s no way I can be entirely right on the matter. Still, I feel like I have to stay biased against them for my own safety and morals.

I feel like I’m not close enough to anyone, because I don’t know anyone at all who I feel even remotely comfortable saying just anything I think about to, since to me everything I say has to be intelligible and have a reason or at least relate to the current topic, and if I say something that doesn’t go anywhere I usually feel awkward, even ashamed. I’ve never even gotten used to it, probably because I hate it so much that I don’t do it often enough to get used to it.

Another one of the biggest problems in general is that I feel truly stupid. I never get in arguments (and indeed hardly even express disagreement, especially with people I don’t know well) because I think pretty much anyone could make me quickly unable to come up with a response (imagine how idiotic I’d feel then!), though if I’ve learned that from some limited “traumatic” experience I don’t recall it clearly. I’m very hesitant to engage in activities of any sort with others because I am, compared to most people, very slow to learn and the thought of looking so clueless, and them saying something like “What’s the holdup?” seems unbearable. Hell, I feel like most kids are smarter than me too. So when “forced” into such a situation I feel it’s safer to apologize in advance for my supposed handicap, and maybe even get mad at myself openly a little. What a drainer, huh?

Virtually all of my fears boil down to thinking I can’t handle (or am guaranteed to act like I can’t handle) repeated failures after wholehearted attempts, the latter (and thus the former) in which are so exceedingly rare for me, and that I’ll awfulize and fume righteously at the air and decide to kill myself. Yes, I really do think I’m that immature and incompetent, so I have to find a way to believe otherwise, permanently. NLP sounds like a great idea, but by this point I really doubt I would be anywhere near persistent enough to give it enough of a chance. And there are no quick solutions, I know! This is a relative lifetime of fuzzy crap I have to dig my way up and out of.

Yes, I bought and read Brain Building In Just 12 Weeks, but of course haven’t done much more than read. Just the thought of attempting many of those exercises, like getting lost on purpose or thinking in visuals rather than words when reading, has me cringing from the too-common human aversion to intellectual labor. Why, it’s something of a bear just for me to write this post, that’s why I’ve put it off for so long.

I have ridiculous magical expectations for every new thing I try. I’ve read and reread many of Steve’s articles of course, and will continue to read more, and they always seem to make me feel better (as in, I’m going to make things better), but only in the moment. I seldom actually apply anything, and when I do I usually give up after just a couple of days. If I don’t see immediate results, I lose faith. I used to consider myself a patient person, but what I really am is complacent. That’s the bad kind of patient.

One major factor is the feeling, the ‘shouldness’, that I must do pretty much everything by myself, and that if I seek help from others who are further on in their journey so to speak (that would be most people, in my view), or even allow them to assist me significantly if they ask on their own accord, I will owe them, even if they insist I don’t, and I’ll be ridden with anxiety and guilt, feeling unable to reciprocate (since I feel so incompetent to begin with) and thus appear less than sufficiently appreciative. This notion is obviously highly toxic and serves me in no way, yet to let it go I have to actually, consistently put myself in such situations and stop avoiding them.

So rarely do I ever, to my recollection, push myself to do anything I’m not already used to doing. Is that stagnation or what? The obvious solution is to get used to doing a lot of things. There is no way to make it easy, but there have to be ways to make it easiER, in addition to just doing it.

So that was nowhere near all of my problems of course, but I have to draw the line somewhere and actually finish the post (which has taken me at least five hours total), even though I feel like I have to mention everything in the first post, which I suspect is a disempowering thought for me because it further reinforces my perfectionism. What I am looking for is advice, if my problems seem to make any sense that is. If more clarification is needed, I’ll do my best. Thanks for reading!