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I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

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Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#81

Post by mattmichielsen »

josefresco wrote: post #21

Sounds like typical depression setting in, something he's probably unaware that he's been fighting for years. Sometimes your problems aren't new and unique (no matter how 'brilliant' you are), and it can benefit you to reach out to people whom you may not think can help you at first.

Sounds more like existential thinking to me. I don't consider that directly related to depression. I have often felt the same way he does in not really knowing what to do with my life, wondering about the meaning of life, etc. I think that's just the human experience rather than depression.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#82

Post by gloob »

unalone wrote: post #44
josefresco wrote: post #21

Sounds like typical depression setting in, something he's probably unaware that he's been fighting for years. Sometimes your problems aren't new and unique (no matter how 'brilliant' you are), and it can benefit you to reach out to people whom you may not think can help you at first.

Is that really depression? I think that what a lot of us confuse for depression is really contentment. This guy is happy to live his life as it is, but for the worry that he ought to have a drive.

I would suggest that if he's worried, he's not content.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#83

Post by unalone »

gloob wrote: post #82
unalone wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that really depression? I think that what a lot of us confuse for depression is really contentment. This guy is happy to live his life as it is, but for the worry that he ought to have a drive.

I would suggest that if he's worried, he's not content.

The question is where worry comes from. Sometimes there's an external force contributing to worry, like having to pay rent or living in an apartment with a rabid bulldog. Other times, the worry comes from something inside, like wondering why you don't go out as much as other people or why your house isn't bigger. The internal worries are ones you can fight without necessarily changing your life, because they're fictions in some way.

In this case, he's been told that he isn't happy unless he's feeling a certain way, and now that he's not feeling that certain way, he decides he must be unhappy. The problem's circular.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#84

Post by scott_s »

unalone wrote: post #43
SamAtt wrote: post #27

I honestly thought this was terrible advice. The problem this kid has is everyone has praised him seemingly since birth and so he thinks everything is simple. The mere fact that one teacher saying his dream was silly could throw his life into chaos shows he's underprepared for the world. In fact, the only reason he seems to feel lost is because he doesn't stick with anything beyond the initial thrill. Rather than nar…

Why not do what's easy? It's a lot more fun, and as you do it you learn. Never assume that just because you're drifting through life you're not growing as a person. I find that I learn and progress just as much in my idle states in life as I do at those critical moments that throw everything in relief. I also think it's very, very bad advice to tell somebody to follow a dream that they don't entirely understand. I've…

The good stuff - the learning that, I think, matters and helps you actually grow - happens when you get past the easy beginnings and push into the hard stuff.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#85

Post by unalone »

jimmyrcom wrote: post #71
unalone wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm younger than this guy was in the article. My next door neighbor just went off to college to become a fashion designer. A handful of my friends became poets. A few friends of mine are forming a video game company. I don't see the point in bashing somebody because they like something. Very often, those people that try something and turn out to be terrible find what they love in the process. Why insult them?

It's not insulting them, it's looking at them as if they're naive because they don't know half the other guys or girls also secretly want to be the some thing. I have yet to meet anyone that's become a poet as a career choice. It doesn't pay. Only a handful of those girls ever become fashion designers. It's like looking at a little kid saying I want to be a policeman, fireman or doctor. All the little kids at 5 years…

Well, I don't know the author, but from what he wrote I don't think there's too much blame-throwing going on. What I do know is that it's wrong to smirk at somebody who tells you what they want, or to flat-out tell them they're wrong without backing yourself up. Sure, you have a right to tell somebody their life is meaningless if they aren't saving lives, but it's a dick move to do so and all it does it hurt.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#87

Post by unalone »

scott_s wrote: post #84
unalone wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not do what's easy? It's a lot more fun, and as you do it you learn. Never assume that just because you're drifting through life you're not growing as a person. I find that I learn and progress just as much in my idle states in life as I do at those critical moments that throw everything in relief. I also think it's very, very bad advice to tell somebody to follow a dream that they don't entirely understand. I've…

The good stuff - the learning that, I think, matters and helps you actually grow - happens when you get past the easy beginnings and push into the hard stuff.

I disagree. While sometimes you might not be willing to get into the good stuff, other times you're absolutely in that mood and get into it without breaking a sweat. I see nothing wrong in going with the flow most of the time.

For the last while, I've been going at things at my own pace. I try, hard as possible, not to let myself get into anything I don't want to do. The result, I find, is that while I'm not as überproductive as I was last year, when I was in a bad place and trying hard to get out, I still generate a lot of work without seeming to have to make an effort. What's more, I'm growing in a lot of ways at once because I don't have the slight resentment against the work I used to force myself to do.

I find as I look at great works of art, regardless of the genre, that with the greatest masterpieces there comes a sense of relaxation. The people who made them weren't obsessing over them any more than they wanted to. They'd just taken themselves down a path in which what they were making was exactly what they wanted to make, and they made it. I find the same thing about Internet startups, actually: My favorite start-ups tend to defy a lot of the conventional rules, work at a relaxed pace, and then explode and grow huge.

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#88

Post by scott_s »

unalone wrote: post #87
scott_s wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good stuff - the learning that, I think, matters and helps you actually grow - happens when you get past the easy beginnings and push into the hard stuff.

I disagree. While sometimes you might not be willing to get into the good stuff, other times you're absolutely in that mood and get into it without breaking a sweat. I see nothing wrong in going with the flow most of the time. For the last while, I've been going at things at my own pace. I try, hard as possible, not to let myself get into anything I don't want to do. The result, I find, is that while I'm not as überp…

We've had a similar conversation before, but I think you confuse "hard work" with "uncomfortable, obsessive, frantic work."

Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost

#89

Post by raintrees »

nostrademons wrote: post #67
raintrees wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But when it really comes down to it, isn't almost anything a good thing to do "until you figure it out?" The lessons we learn are to be found everywhere. Hindsight makes me laugh at how so many of my "lessons" were around me at all times, in even the most mundane things! I keep forgetting that for me, it's all about the journey, not the destination.

I'd say it's much better to do things you can get out of "until you figure it out", because figuring it out often requires going down many blind alleys, and it's nice to be able to turn around and go back if you don't like one. If I had to give advice to struggling young college grads who don't yet know what they want to do with their life, it'd be take a job . Any job, though you should preference ones that will exp…

What about the lesson learned from commitment? That promises that have strings attached are important enough to require longer than normal consideration?

Although it could very well be considered a school of hard knocks, learning about x Year commitments at a younger age may help tremendously for same or larger commitments later in life (starting companies, buying a house, committing to a relationship, etc.).

If I choose something I know I can get out of fairly easily, I may not give it enough time to see it work, because I have an easy out.

(Insert reference to military leaders who have cut off their own forces' abilities to retreat here).

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