‘I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless, and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life’

But what is the long term value of seeing places and things, if the person experiencing them expires leaving nothing behind?

I went on some great adventures as a young man, backpacking round the Middle East and later in a job that involved a lot of world travel. I always thought I'd do more of those things, and while I have enjoyed family life I felt I lost something when I settled down and had kids and a career.

However, now that my kids are teenagers I can share my experiences of the world with them. We've been on some great holidays together, and have more planned. Those old adventures now have value, because they made me the person I am today and I can share that and leverage it in how I bring up my own children and shape their introduction to the world. Those experiences and the stories I have to tell and lessons I learned have acquired a new value, beyond merely myself.

The purpose of getting a CCNA is networking: not only the digital kind, but also the social kind. That could help me get a student visa to be in the right country, where I might meet the right people to help achieve my dream of settling there.

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Learning things does not help people with ADHD like it can help people without ADHD. ADHD is a performance issue; they don't end up doing things to the extent that they know how to. It is not a knowledge issue. If she has ADHD, learning about how her life patterns are dysfunctional and why is not going to fix how she executes her life in a dysfunctional way.

It certainly won't hurt though, outside of opportunity cost. ADHD has a genetic component, and growing up with ADHD parents is often a big contributory factor to the life problems that ADHD folks face. But it's not getting screened for ADHD, which if you suspect you have ADHD really should be the first step.

>Do you get out much?

I train at two gyms 4 days a week, aside from my coach saying hi to me and occasionally bye to me everyone talks to each other and I'm off to the side effectively invisible.

I'm an SCAdian. Every few years I'll email the baron or baroness and the seneschal and say hey I'm going to come to fighter practice, haven't been around, could you introduce me to people. They do and without fail 5 minutes in I might as well be a dust bunny in the corner.

Same at church. I go every weekend just to be around people. I don't particularly believe what they do, in fact I'm mostly team simulation hypothesis, but they are upbeat and cheery and friendly... yet again though I have a pew to myself, people will sit elsewhere even if it means in folding chairs. Without fail. Every single weekend.

I'm a Freemason, Lodge was always the same too. The casual hi to me, then everyone breaking off into their little social circles.

Without fail I can try and start a conversation, or insert myself into one, and I'll often get talked over which is an interesting thing as more oft than not I'm the largest person in a room.

It even happens in team meetings at work, it's like I've a damn cloaking device or something. You know in office space when, I believe Milton, keeps being passed the cake and being told to keep passing it... yeah, that, although it's generally more like I'm invisible. I can walk into rooms in plain site and finally say something and startle people if I talk because they were oblivious to my presence. I get the same thing at social groups.

Sometimes I wonder if people that have Cotard delusion think they're dead because they have a similar experience to me and their brain just interprets it as 'omg I must be dead'.

I don't know if it's because I simply lack in-person social skills and people on some subconscious level dismiss me like they would a cat or dog or what.

When someone does engage me though, and starts talking about something that interests me, I'll talk their damn ear off. I've had dates text me after the fact with shitty comments like I was so self obsessed and never once asked them any questions about themselves and I'm like, you brought up a topic and we had an ongoing DIALOGUE for 3 hours where we both said quite a bit...

I don't know, I just don't get people I guess.

I know there's other people like me out there. I mentioned one above, but for all intents and purposes they might as well be considered a god with the level of responsibility and impact they have and again they are a couple thousand miles away.

Try as I might, I can't find someone like that here or even someone that actually has free time for actual proper chats.

I suspect a lot of it comes down to I'm simply not interested in what many people are. I don't care about what the sports ball team did or what happened in such and such television program, I don't particularly care that your child got a ribbon at their intermural swim dance piano recital, if you need to vent about your relationship it's a wholly alien subject to me and I haven't a clue what you're on about or what to say, when you're reminiscing about college I'm just like yeahhh no clue. I care about the future of our species, what we're doing to our planet, how we're running out of time to save ourselves, the statistical hopelessness of finding evidence of another intelligent species in the firmament even if human civilization last a million years.