My brain is a fucking paradox. This is not new to anyone who reads these (not many). As much as I spent most of my life drowning in all the noise of hopelessness and self hatred and nihilism, I’ve also spent a lot of it making up pointless fantasies. Delusions of being something or being with someone. Hopes and dreams and all that idiotic shit. It was delusions that made me apply to grad school. It was delusions that made me still message her after she stopped talking to me a year and half ago. It was delusions that made me think if I just kept going and chipped away at it, I could have a thesis and robot I’m proud of. All my delusions just end up fucking me in the end. It got my dumbass shipped across the country to a strange land I knew nothing about. It left me heartbroken every time I went to check the messages and she still hadn’t replied. It got me a subpar robot that probably won’t even work.
But there’s also another element that’s tucked into it. Fear. I was afraid of going into the workforce because I didn’t think I could hack it so I continued with school, the only thing I’ve ever known. I was afraid that I’d never find another person who made me feel the way she made me feel and someone who I could talk to about anything. It was fear that drove me to spend nights and weekends trying to get this thing to work because if it doesn’t then that proves I’m not an engineer and without that I have nothing.
See what I mean? One big mass of contradictions and nonsense lodged in my skull. My brain.
4 comments
part and parcel of the whole humanity nonsense, most of the paradoxes you’re talking about. Somewhere earlier in life, it was easier for you to calm your fears, if you were looking for a diagnostic, or there were external circumstances insulating you from the things you now find frightening. That’s be my guess.
because the brain is a layer cake, with the most rational functions only occuring in the top layer. As long as all is peaceful in the lower layers, you can achieve amazing things in your frontal lobe.
but that damn amygdala, when it starts screwing around it really starts screwing around. It’s somewhere in the early mammal layers, tied in with scent and hearing quite a bit. It’s an absolutely useless professional path, but I’m familiar with the type of brain likely to have needed an early version of the amygdala.
As an engineer, even a struggling one, you should appreciate loyalty to a design concept, and how iterative design can put you in some difficult problems, well that’s most brains.
Modern humans having those design elements, it’s what makes us such easily excited, angry and frightened animals. That’s humans working to spec, us on this site tend to be going our own way.
it seems like you’re doing some good work trying to understand yourself though, not that you needed my encouragement on that front. Why your life is currently not working seems to be an apt goal to understand.
You may even discover you’re something more than you thought. That’s what I’m seeing here, potential for movement beyond prior limitations. Granted, I see that everywhere, that’s my commitment to a design concept.
I can’t say I envy those who can see something and assume that’s all it will be. What a dull awful outlook. Even potential to become more awful is potential, and potential is the only interesting thing going on with anyone.
So, where is your potential I wonder? To become what?
Maybe. I guess it’s hard to say what my potential will be from my pov. Outside of that it’s different.
The design process is nice though, I’d have to agree. That’s why for a while I wanted to shoot for a PhD. I love that the people in the lab are constantly working towards something new, for the sake of it. New ideas, new concepts, what can we do with the tech and push it further. I felt that if I can contribute even a mm of progress to the field I’d be happy. It just doesn’t seem in the cards for me.
Sounds like a very familiar tug of war – delusions and fear. I’ve created/lived in fantasies for most of my life and then reality hits and it sucks. The delusions of becoming something… idk man. And the living in fear and it still fucking you in the end. I can’t relate to the exact scenario you’re going through, obviously, but I get it. It’s part of why I’m not at a certain level of life I should be at.
I also get the ‘if I’m not (fill in the blank) I’m nothing/have nothing’ – in your case the engineer. It seems to be something important to you, so I know it stings when you’re not where you wanna be. It seems like a pretty intense path to begin with, at least from what I’ve heard from others. But idk, maybe you’re not the only one struggling in it rn- although I’m not expecting it to be a comfort.
Contradictions. They’re headache inducing, at least for me. But I understand it- wanting to be w someone/hoping for something that just never comes/just always out of reach. Little comfort it may be, but you are something, you are significant despite what you’ve yet to achieve or what you may have failed. I do hope you find that – whether it be your current path or maybe something else you find, but ofc it’ll probably take time.
Hoping for better days for you as always – I think you’re better than you think but don’t wanna invalidate anything. I hope you can quiet your mind
Thanks as always sinner. I hope things get better for you too.