Anyone relate?

LegacyUser

One more day looking at the walls, once again. The glow of computers stared back slave to habit, a habit born of distraction and avoidance. The cog in the machine looking at the world, the only metric of worth the extent of my success in the eyes of others. The single biggest determinent and stumbling block in my life how will others perceive me. Fear is at the root of all decisions the fear of making a bad choice and throwing it all away. Procrastination now mentally iron chained by the force of habit. The constant need to be better than everyone fueled by the horror of failure. The courage to escape it? What if I fail? Click there look at an email click I've lost my stream of thought click click click. All day long. I will fail I must fail it is not possible to succeed. Drink, drugs anything to remove the feeling of failure. I know only it, it defines me totally. I embrace it and feel it filling my body. Heros are for another time, men who stand alone and embrace their individuality, smart people people who understand these people are not me but I want to be them, I've always wanted to be them. I want to be myself but my reality has never been mine it's always been defined by someone else. I never let go and I need to I need to but I can't let it out because I don't know who I am or what I want. Money but luxury gets boring, I want people to like me. It is simply that I want people to like me and I don't like being told what to do. I can't handle that anymore living with total self obession aspiring to the perfect life of conformity. I am bred to be the cog one more cog in a long line without the self confidence to break out., My life is ending one minute at a time. I don't want to work that is wasting my life work is a waste. I don't know what it is I want. Self obsession is a terrible affliction. How to be happy?

Hi OP
This seems more like a vent than an actual request for advice
Can you please clarify what you are looking for as otherwise I'm afraid I will have to lock this
thanks

RossFixxxed

OK, I'm doing my best to be delicate here. I notice some fight club references in there amongst other things. I would say two things initially: 1) Many of us have been there 2) However, this seems taken too far and it may be a sign something isn't right.

Your post comes across as very teen angsty (cog in a machine, one day at a time, "Conformity" - that's an alarm bells word for angst tbh.) You need to realise firstly that something isn't right and you are clearly not happy. You then need to resolve to do somthing about it. To my mind your first step should be to the GP and explain how you are feeling. That is always the biggest, most important step. Trust me it will feel good to actually DO something about it. Something worthwhile and practical. It makes a big difference.

This is very self absorbed and whiney thinking, going along that line will only feed into it and make it much worse. I don't say this to be mean, I've been there, hell many, many people have been there.

You CAN fix it. You just need to drop the excuses, drop the 'suffering hero / victim' persona and get out there and make the first step. If you have friends I'm sure they will be willing to help and you can always post here if you need any information or support.

woodchuck

I don't mean to offend OP, but you're no different than the rest of us! Stop making yourself out to be a victim. You need to make the most of the time you have when you're not at work. It's up to you to figure out what will make you happy. Do you not have any hobbies? I suspect creative writing could be a good outlet for you (although don't self indulge in your negative emotions too much... that would just make things worse). I'd also recommending trying some clubs/groups/sports too. Give yourself something to look forward to.

Overheal

Try working in retail, that will expose you to the real horrors of the world.

Work is not something that is inherently bad. However, most people fail to take control of their working life, and choose one job or another for the wrong reasons. And when you get into a job you make the job yours. If you want it to be miserable it will be miserable. These are the people who best fit your cog metaphor.

You are plenty capable of attaining the job that suits you. In addition, that job is not always going to be directly in front of you, so you will pick other jobs along the way that will ideally enrich your ability to do what you really want to do. For instance, if you wanted to be an Engineer, building and designing new things (let's use a passenger plane as an example, or a war ship, but concoct your own) you know you will likely find yourself part of a very expansive corporation that employs hundreds or thousands of people. Grand. You can do a couple things here. One is to work labor around machines or computers. Either a computer or a car repair shop, whether you're electrical or mechanical. Or, if neither of those is available to you (either because of vacancy shortages or required experiences missing) You can always instead engage yourself in other jobs and focus on the other things they teach you. I myself settled into a very large retail that employs tens of thousands and has a very conventional corporate structure; one that's simple to familiarize and has given me a chance to develop many things about myself that I really didn't think I would be able to in a retail environment, but there you go.

Nothing is really stepping in your way except you and your mindset. The world will throw very tangible and intangible roadblocks at you. Once you recognize them and decide how to navigate around them it's pretty easy after that. As for smarts I'm a firm believer that if you really understand yourself and can apply critical thought then you will best understand how you learn new information, at which point you can learn whatever you want (even if it has a big scary name, like Trigonometric Differential Calculus. Or History.)

What are your dreams/ambitions OP? I don't even necessarily mean dream job, I mean what do you really truly want to accomplish in your life? What would you like to see accomplished within your lifetime? Only you are in charge of you and your personal Brand. Even if you work in a team of your peers - even if you all wear the same oddly colored uniform as I do, your actions still impact how people see you. Even the most seemingly 'normal' job, it's really easy to leave a dent. And fun.

LegacyUser

Sorry was late and needed to purge some stuff I was feeling at the time. Thanks very much for the replies I just get down sometimes and posting as above is a nice way of releasing some emotion but this probably isn't the place for it. Life is grand but sometimes I get a little bit of teenage angst as mentioned above even tho I'm way to old for that. Creative writing is definitely something I need to do! The release of feeling feels good!

Big Bag of Chips

OK, OP as you have confirmed that you were just using the thread as a release rather than looking for advice we'll lock this now. The Forum is for people looking for advice on their own Personal Issues.

If you want to have it reopened to ask for advice please contact any of the Mods by PM.

Regards,
Big Bag of Chips