The More I Know
Dec. 28th, 2007 02:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janxangelThe more I realize I'm clueless. Awash in a sea of information, I'm afraid my intelligence is failing me.
This is a long one, so get comfy if you're so inclined. I didn't cut it because it's all or nothing. Deal. It's only text.
I have no defined sense of self. I am a little bit of everything and as such have no core identity which I can build off of. I don't have one place, one group, one passion that I can always go back to, always use as a baseline for the rest. I am the ultimate floater. While that can be pointed to as a refutation of my previous statement, I think it actually proves the point very well. You can't build on sand, or air.
Humans are pack creatures. At least social ones. To not be a part of any tribe or group is to be missing an essential component to wellbeing. The lone wolf doesn’t work out so well in the long run. I don’t have a core social group I can say I totally belong to. I’ve been through so many, and never really fit in all the way. One foot in, one foot everywhere else.
I don't think my mother thinks I'll ever be able to accomplish anything anymore. Or maybe that was my Dad... I don't know. My brother and my step-sister are the success stories of the family. I'm still a-wandering around. I can’t seem to find one thing that I can be happy doing. Or at least not go crazy doing over and over again. I want to create and discover and solve problems. I was asked over the holiday what I was doing, job-wise, and I replied with “Nothing worthwhile.”
There's so much in my head. I know I'm capable of alot of things. I just can't find the way to do them. I seem to get bored so easily. Or maybe not bored, but just lose enthusiasm for whatever I’m doing. I’m also easily distracted. I’m reading 3 other sites as I’m writing this, plus listening to music. Oh I ate lunch in the middle there too.
There's so much to do. It's all so overwhelming. So I don't do anything. I'm trying to figure out why. I haven't come up with anything yet. All I know is that the more fun and novel something is, the more likely I’ll scrounge some extra time for it. Yet I get home at 4 in the afternoon, and do a few things, then wonder why I can’t seem to find time for all the other things I need to do. Or even just want to do. Sometimes it seems that I’m perpetually chasing after the “high” of feeling like I’m happy, instead of making something of myself. Which in turn makes me feel like I must be the laziest person around, so again I feel overwhelmed instead of driven to change.
I'm supposed to be a fully functioning adult by now. I feel like I'm just realizing all the things I was supposed to do when I was 17 and didn't because I was sure I had things under control and a real plan for the future. I also feel like I was lied to alot when I was younger. Or at least that the truth was not properly explained. Is there a way to catch up or am I doomed to a lonely life full of failed expectations?
From what I was given to understand, you picked something, you went to school and life was good. Only they didn’t say that all of a sudden you had to not only go to school, but learn how to manage your own life in total at the same time. Did we mention that you make your own rules now too? Oh you’ve never operated outside of parental control before? Well, hope you learned how to manage your own time & money then! At least for me, I didn’t have a life outside of going to school before leaving for college, so I really had no clue how to integrate all these facets into a functioning whole. I went home, watched a little TV, did the most minimal amount of homework I could, read to pretend I was doing more homework, a little more TV, then bedtime. That was high school for me. “College will be fun for you. People will be nicer and more diverse and the work more interesting.” First two: Totally true. Last one should have been, “The work will be more interesting late in the first year or maybe the second year. Your homework will be massive, boring, and if you skimp on it, you WILL fail, unlike High School where you can skate by.” No one required me to develop the drive to persevere through things I don’t like to do, or through failure really. Now I’m older and set in my ways, even though I recognize where I have problems, I don’t know how to fix them. It’s all a big mess.
This goes beyond my sometimes overdramatic spilling of whatever is troubling me at the moment. This is everything. This is my life. I have all this great potential, and I know this is true despite the little voice in my head yelling that I'm wrong, that I'm arrogant and selfish for even thinking it. I just don't know how to focus, how to use it, or how to apply it to my life in a functional way. It's just sitting there, taunting me with its power and me not able to take it in hand and forge my path.
There’s just this huge mass of failure, shame, procrastination, fear, self-loathing, and confusion that inhabits me now. Where before I could sort of plunge forward trusting that I’d figure out the way as I went along, I’m so unsure and unsteady currently that I feel like I have to know everything about what I’m doing or I’m doomed to miss some important detail and fail. There’s no middle ground either. So much in my mind is pass/fail these days. I am Jack’s Gordian Knot & it can’t be cut like the original one.
Am I alone in this malaise or are there others who share this disjunction of capability and action?
This is a long one, so get comfy if you're so inclined. I didn't cut it because it's all or nothing. Deal. It's only text.
I have no defined sense of self. I am a little bit of everything and as such have no core identity which I can build off of. I don't have one place, one group, one passion that I can always go back to, always use as a baseline for the rest. I am the ultimate floater. While that can be pointed to as a refutation of my previous statement, I think it actually proves the point very well. You can't build on sand, or air.
Humans are pack creatures. At least social ones. To not be a part of any tribe or group is to be missing an essential component to wellbeing. The lone wolf doesn’t work out so well in the long run. I don’t have a core social group I can say I totally belong to. I’ve been through so many, and never really fit in all the way. One foot in, one foot everywhere else.
I don't think my mother thinks I'll ever be able to accomplish anything anymore. Or maybe that was my Dad... I don't know. My brother and my step-sister are the success stories of the family. I'm still a-wandering around. I can’t seem to find one thing that I can be happy doing. Or at least not go crazy doing over and over again. I want to create and discover and solve problems. I was asked over the holiday what I was doing, job-wise, and I replied with “Nothing worthwhile.”
There's so much in my head. I know I'm capable of alot of things. I just can't find the way to do them. I seem to get bored so easily. Or maybe not bored, but just lose enthusiasm for whatever I’m doing. I’m also easily distracted. I’m reading 3 other sites as I’m writing this, plus listening to music. Oh I ate lunch in the middle there too.
There's so much to do. It's all so overwhelming. So I don't do anything. I'm trying to figure out why. I haven't come up with anything yet. All I know is that the more fun and novel something is, the more likely I’ll scrounge some extra time for it. Yet I get home at 4 in the afternoon, and do a few things, then wonder why I can’t seem to find time for all the other things I need to do. Or even just want to do. Sometimes it seems that I’m perpetually chasing after the “high” of feeling like I’m happy, instead of making something of myself. Which in turn makes me feel like I must be the laziest person around, so again I feel overwhelmed instead of driven to change.
I'm supposed to be a fully functioning adult by now. I feel like I'm just realizing all the things I was supposed to do when I was 17 and didn't because I was sure I had things under control and a real plan for the future. I also feel like I was lied to alot when I was younger. Or at least that the truth was not properly explained. Is there a way to catch up or am I doomed to a lonely life full of failed expectations?
From what I was given to understand, you picked something, you went to school and life was good. Only they didn’t say that all of a sudden you had to not only go to school, but learn how to manage your own life in total at the same time. Did we mention that you make your own rules now too? Oh you’ve never operated outside of parental control before? Well, hope you learned how to manage your own time & money then! At least for me, I didn’t have a life outside of going to school before leaving for college, so I really had no clue how to integrate all these facets into a functioning whole. I went home, watched a little TV, did the most minimal amount of homework I could, read to pretend I was doing more homework, a little more TV, then bedtime. That was high school for me. “College will be fun for you. People will be nicer and more diverse and the work more interesting.” First two: Totally true. Last one should have been, “The work will be more interesting late in the first year or maybe the second year. Your homework will be massive, boring, and if you skimp on it, you WILL fail, unlike High School where you can skate by.” No one required me to develop the drive to persevere through things I don’t like to do, or through failure really. Now I’m older and set in my ways, even though I recognize where I have problems, I don’t know how to fix them. It’s all a big mess.
This goes beyond my sometimes overdramatic spilling of whatever is troubling me at the moment. This is everything. This is my life. I have all this great potential, and I know this is true despite the little voice in my head yelling that I'm wrong, that I'm arrogant and selfish for even thinking it. I just don't know how to focus, how to use it, or how to apply it to my life in a functional way. It's just sitting there, taunting me with its power and me not able to take it in hand and forge my path.
There’s just this huge mass of failure, shame, procrastination, fear, self-loathing, and confusion that inhabits me now. Where before I could sort of plunge forward trusting that I’d figure out the way as I went along, I’m so unsure and unsteady currently that I feel like I have to know everything about what I’m doing or I’m doomed to miss some important detail and fail. There’s no middle ground either. So much in my mind is pass/fail these days. I am Jack’s Gordian Knot & it can’t be cut like the original one.
Am I alone in this malaise or are there others who share this disjunction of capability and action?
