11–20 of 155 posts
Learn to meditate and don't watch tv. Take fish oil, eat healthy, get exercise, ....
I'm not trying to be a jerk by phrasing it that way, I just feel like you need to be tougher on yourself to reach your goals.
"It's not enough for me to just exist. I feel a deep desire to build, to create, to learn, to teach, and as the weeks and months drag by with no discernible progress made on many of these fronts, my agitation grows."
I suggest you read Symposium by Plato, especially the part where Socrates has his word. Although it was only a small part of the many things that helped me get over this, it is one of the most concrete things I can suggest.
Something I find helpful is abandoning the idea of goals (at least for a while), and instead simply focusing on habits. What do you want to be like? What kind of day would you think was a good one? (here you can include things like "think silently, with no distractions, for 30 minutes" - NOT things like "have 3 good ideas"; also things like "End each day by listing 3 things I want to do the next day, and make sure th…
People here tend to be too goal oriented, and that's perfect when you have a goal that you want to attain in an area that you love working. But the truth is that it seems that having all the basic needs fulfilled you don't find enough attraction to the higher needs (in the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs) that you have in mind. It probably is because the goals you've set aren't really the ones you crave for.
I was, more or less, like you, high twenties, nor happy neither sad, bored with everything. Now, mid thirties, I'm full of energy and will to live to the fullest with the things I love to do. What I did was to start doing activities after work, stuck with the ones I liked (longer the more I liked them) and discarded the ones I didn't like much.
Different martial arts, guitar playing, vegetarian dishes, ... I started to do whatever I felt the desire to do and could be done in a short course (3 months of 1 weekly hour). Until I found my passion (dancing). Now I devote most of my free time to it, I even have left WoW because I have no time for it.
Try things, in a short time scale (i.e.: 7D RPG, NaNoWriMo, weekend kayaking, ...) , and keep with what you have the most fun. Life is worth living, don't waste it all on external goals or in doing things because they will look good on your resumé (unless that's what you love to do, of course).
That doesn't mean you can't better yourself, but please don't be too hard on yourself for being imperfect. What separates the person you most admire and you isn't as much as you think - in many cases, it's just a bit of luck.
2) 60,000 per year isn't a big paycheck. That's about what I'm making, after getting laid off and taking a big pay cut to get back into the workforce. It's a decent living, but you won't be paying off all of your debts in 3 years with that kind of money.
3) I don't know any 25 year-olds who are debt free unless they're trust-fund babies, and they have their own huge set of problems.
4) The picture you paint in the middle of your diatribe is not a picture of someone who is in control of one's life. Your life has been good to you. You're intelligent and gainfully employed, but I think you're worse off in self-control, discipline and health than you think.
Comments suggesting building good, small habits are some of the best advice you'll get. Don't get discouraged by the "I built this supermassive startup in 2 hours that got bought for 80 bajillion dollars" type stories. They might show up here with frequency, but those kinds of results are atypical at best, and at least one metric, if not all of them, are usually exaggerated. (2 hours of coding, perhaps, but months or years of daydreaming and planning)
As for goals... Give yourself a single daily health or productivity goal if you're one of those impossibly pedantic goal-oriented fiends. Make sure it's attainable. Maybe that'll help you focus.
I will knock out that project by quitting time. I'll ride my bike to work today instead of driving. I'll go to bed before 10:00pm. I'll skip the usual Wednesday trip to Starbucks.
Chances are, you already know what you don't like about your current circumstances, but you just don't have the courage (yet) to face it. The exercise above will help you -- it helped me. I'm quitting my day job this Friday to focus on what I love doing.
I've found it works, because even when I'm lazy, I don't want to let my friend down, and it's a sustainable level of working out. After a few months it starts to have a noticeable impact on everything you do. I'm more confident and more motivated than I was before I started about 8 months ago.