my advice would have been: think harder
I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
41–50 of 134 posts
Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
#42What good are video games? Since I also always wanted to create them (and still haven't created a great one, just small ones): for me I think they are part of a greater quest against loneliness. Sure, creating a vaccine would be nice, but loneliness is also a killer (I don't have numbers, but it is not only suicides - also older people who just die when their spouses die and so on). Maybe they are not for everyone, b…
Video games fill the role that any art does. They help us find ourselves and fill us with a static strength that we can't get from people, who are constantly changing as fast as we are.
I've actually always had the opposite reaction as that teacher in the article. I've never felt interested in science or technological process. It fascinates me, but I shudder at the thought of spending my life dedicated to it. I want messier things to spend my life achieving. But then, I also identify a lot with the person that wrote this, though I don't feel as beaten as he does, so this might not be a particularly unique perspective on the matter.
Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
#43I 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 had both: Dreams where I only vaguely felt I wanted something, and dreams I couldn't help but pursue because I understood them so completely. The latter dream is valuable and absolutely worth pursuing. The former dream isn't really a dream at all, and pushing too hard at it will only make you feel that maybe dreams aren't worth following after all. Following the wrong kind of dream will burn you out in the worst way.
Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
#44Sounds 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.
Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
#45This happened to me (although I was not brilliant). My social awareness (or whatever you might want to call it) only developed when I started university, and it made me look at what I was studying with disgust. Having said that, I think the advice given by Salon sucks. There is no "finding yourself" this is bullshit, there is only "making yourself". You have to choose and you have to throw yourself after your choices, there is no way to think yourself into life.
I always liked this Baudrillard quote: "The modern ideal is to make your life what you want it to be. In reality, that is what you do when there's no other solution."
Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
#46The 'I want to make video games' for a living is like hearing a teen girl enthusiastically brag about having great style sense and wanting to be a fashion designer or a poet because the things she writes are 'deep'(depressed with loaded words). These statements are so common it can feel disgusting. The counterstrike neckbeards of my generation would always go into CS half assed, learn java and usually not do it as a…
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?
Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
#47The dude is not nearly as brilliant as he thinks he is. I've seen better.
You don't know him. Don't be an ass.
Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
#48He doesn't sound all that brilliant to me. Anyone who gives up just because someone tells them that their ambition is worthless is certainly not a true visionary. People who really are brilliant are usually knocked back many times before they have their first success.
It's funny, 'cos you're pidgeonholing the guy while telling him that he shouldn't let people pidgeonhole him.
Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
#49The women did it to him, I've said it before, and i'm going to say it again. If you want to be king of productivity, avoid girls.
Procreation isn't productive?
Re: I'm 20, brilliant and totally lost
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
23 could be a bona fide mid-life crisis in the 17th century :)
A 23 year old in the 17th century would expect to live nearly as long as a 23 year old today- the depressed life expectancy statistics are largely due to the fact that 3 out of 4 children died before they hit the age of five. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
What you say about life expectancy at birth is true, but it's also true that people who made it to adulthood didn't live nearly as long. I'd guess the average life expectancy of a 23 year old in 17th century England was under 60.