Re: akratic's ERE journal
Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2016 12:27 pm
Interesting point about others wanting to contribute and maybe not feeling able to on a topic like ERE, long-term travel, or a thru-hike. I think I feel like I am "contributing" most in conversations when I am passionately engaged in what the other person is talking about, actively listening, and trying to learn from them. In this case I'm better off if I know nothing about a topic the other person cares about rather than knowing a lot. (Things I already know are boring.)
Maybe the reason this lack of connection is starting to get under my skin is simply that I feel like I am growing more disconnected from people in general. Not everyone, I mean I'm closer to my fiance than ever for example, but the average peer and the average stranger certainly. I wonder if this will be a common thread among those who ERE, and I wonder as well if the great parts of ERE like freedom and opportunity aren't outweighed by the social difficulty created when you take a weird person and make them even weirder.
The job search is meh. I feel like the episode of South Park where half the episode Stan sees everything as shit. At first you're thinking South Park is going for some low brow joke, but later on your realize Stan is going through an especially tough time with his parents divorcing and feeling alienated from his friends. (S15E07)
Basically all the jobs look like shit. Also entrepreneurship looks like shit. And just continuing to play video games all day looks like shit. At first I was starting to seriously consider whether I was depressed or bi-polar, both of which run in my family, and I even started having long hard conversations with my family members with mental health problems.
There's a big difference between my current situation and theirs though, which is basically that I've been under an incredible amount of stress recently. I alluded to some of it in my June post with my family members on suicide watch for example, but there are some other things I didn't say, like at some points I felt an almost overwhelming burden without knowing how to handle it. Um for one example I actually called the guy who had cheated on my sister for months, because I thought there was a real chance he might kill himself over it (based on things he told my dad). I didn't think anyone other than me who knew the details could handle calling him and talking him through it, and I knew he didn't have anyone else to talk to and had to talk to at least one person. I mean that shit was hard.
Another thing that happened is that the former friend that I tried the failed startup with turned batshit crazy. I don't really know how to tell this story concisely but let me try: CF is my close friend that I've known since college, and BP is his husband, my former business partner. BP hired a malicious/incompetent lawyer who ended up inexplicably coming after me, despite my code not really ever being the problem. I eventually had to get a lawyer of my own to defend myself, a situation I never thought I'd be in, and especially inexplicable considering we were former friends and I can't even figure out what I did to make BP so hostile. Things got so ugly that CF, one of my closest friends, is one of the only people who didn't RSVP either Yes or No for my wedding, which was especially distressing because BP had threatened during the negotiations at one point that he'd block CF from coming to my wedding if I didn't accept BP's shit deal. CF and I eventually worked things out, but only after I agreed to sign a written contract ceding everything that BP wanted. CF is going to come to my wedding without a plus one, and I don't know how it's really going to work in the future. CF was caught in a really hard place between the two of us, but still the way things ended left a decidedly bad taste in my mouth. At least it's over. I'm disappointed but I don't have to live with BP and CF does, and now that I know more about BP, I guess I'm little scared for CF as well.
I mean I don't have a 9-5 so my life should be pretty easy right? But this stuff has been real hard, and there haven't been many distractions. There was even this crazy thing that happened where one of my cousins that I barely know (this cousin has never met my fiance despite us being together over seven years) invited herself PLUS FOUR to our tiny, intimate 60 person wedding. She sent me an email saying she already booked flights and an airbnb etc! I had to figure out how to explicitly disinvite her, which would have been the most stressful thing to happen to me in a normal month, but was more like a blip.
Coming back to the job hunt question, I think my true lifestyle preference across all the adult years of my life would be, in order:
1) student at university
2) on an adventure I was excited about
3) 9-5
4) playing video games all day
5) entrepreneurship
This makes me think I should get a PhD and not a 9-5 at all.
PS: Unless I'm going crazy you edited out your question about an update on my job search in the time it took me to write all this crap, but I guess I'm going to leave it for now.
Maybe the reason this lack of connection is starting to get under my skin is simply that I feel like I am growing more disconnected from people in general. Not everyone, I mean I'm closer to my fiance than ever for example, but the average peer and the average stranger certainly. I wonder if this will be a common thread among those who ERE, and I wonder as well if the great parts of ERE like freedom and opportunity aren't outweighed by the social difficulty created when you take a weird person and make them even weirder.
The job search is meh. I feel like the episode of South Park where half the episode Stan sees everything as shit. At first you're thinking South Park is going for some low brow joke, but later on your realize Stan is going through an especially tough time with his parents divorcing and feeling alienated from his friends. (S15E07)
Basically all the jobs look like shit. Also entrepreneurship looks like shit. And just continuing to play video games all day looks like shit. At first I was starting to seriously consider whether I was depressed or bi-polar, both of which run in my family, and I even started having long hard conversations with my family members with mental health problems.
There's a big difference between my current situation and theirs though, which is basically that I've been under an incredible amount of stress recently. I alluded to some of it in my June post with my family members on suicide watch for example, but there are some other things I didn't say, like at some points I felt an almost overwhelming burden without knowing how to handle it. Um for one example I actually called the guy who had cheated on my sister for months, because I thought there was a real chance he might kill himself over it (based on things he told my dad). I didn't think anyone other than me who knew the details could handle calling him and talking him through it, and I knew he didn't have anyone else to talk to and had to talk to at least one person. I mean that shit was hard.
Another thing that happened is that the former friend that I tried the failed startup with turned batshit crazy. I don't really know how to tell this story concisely but let me try: CF is my close friend that I've known since college, and BP is his husband, my former business partner. BP hired a malicious/incompetent lawyer who ended up inexplicably coming after me, despite my code not really ever being the problem. I eventually had to get a lawyer of my own to defend myself, a situation I never thought I'd be in, and especially inexplicable considering we were former friends and I can't even figure out what I did to make BP so hostile. Things got so ugly that CF, one of my closest friends, is one of the only people who didn't RSVP either Yes or No for my wedding, which was especially distressing because BP had threatened during the negotiations at one point that he'd block CF from coming to my wedding if I didn't accept BP's shit deal. CF and I eventually worked things out, but only after I agreed to sign a written contract ceding everything that BP wanted. CF is going to come to my wedding without a plus one, and I don't know how it's really going to work in the future. CF was caught in a really hard place between the two of us, but still the way things ended left a decidedly bad taste in my mouth. At least it's over. I'm disappointed but I don't have to live with BP and CF does, and now that I know more about BP, I guess I'm little scared for CF as well.
I mean I don't have a 9-5 so my life should be pretty easy right? But this stuff has been real hard, and there haven't been many distractions. There was even this crazy thing that happened where one of my cousins that I barely know (this cousin has never met my fiance despite us being together over seven years) invited herself PLUS FOUR to our tiny, intimate 60 person wedding. She sent me an email saying she already booked flights and an airbnb etc! I had to figure out how to explicitly disinvite her, which would have been the most stressful thing to happen to me in a normal month, but was more like a blip.
Coming back to the job hunt question, I think my true lifestyle preference across all the adult years of my life would be, in order:
1) student at university
2) on an adventure I was excited about
3) 9-5
4) playing video games all day
5) entrepreneurship
This makes me think I should get a PhD and not a 9-5 at all.
PS: Unless I'm going crazy you edited out your question about an update on my job search in the time it took me to write all this crap, but I guess I'm going to leave it for now.