The Spark Dies Out
July 25, 2022
There's something about being a young man in his 20s that kills the soul. When a young man like myself exposes himself to the bullshittery of the world, it kills something inside.
The working world in particular, it's like high school. There's this incessant soul-sucking nature of working culture that kind of kills you. You're on this endless treadmill getting paid for you work and yet the demands keep piling on. You have no connection to these people demanding more of you besides the fact you enter the same building everyday.
When I self-study, and when I used to pursue my hobbies there was this sense of purpose, fervent passion, and happiness. A sense of fulfilment in everyday nature. Now I head to work and I'm just trying to do the minimum amount of work to not get fired and to go right under my manager's nose.
There's no sense of desire to be promoted, because I'd hate to be a manager. Having to manage some of my own team through Agile is kind of bullshit. I hate managing these guys and trying to whip them to work, it's stressful. The political horse crap is also something not be envied, having to deal with upper management and balancing their opinions of me.
So the idea as an individual contributor is to do the absolute minimum. The Gervais' Principle, or so I read once.
But nowadays, I don't seem to care about work. But that bleeds into my life too. I don't really care about life. I'm doing the minimum to get by, and I know that's the fastest way to die.
And it seems, I, I just can't pull my bootstraps and get myself to focus on the cool, personal work again.
I can't seem to focus and motivate myself to pursue my own projects, there's this mental block. A hard, hard block of demotivation. Just the fact that I'm not doing this for anyone or anything really.
I can't believe I'm burning out and I barely write code at work. It's just the expectation that I would actually not be bothered by other people that made me happy. Now it's a bunch of horseshit.
It's a dragging sense of depression. I used to have the drive to just, y'know, wake up at 5AM, go to the gym, go to school, study my ass off, go talk to people out there, fucking drink kool-aid, fucking, just, fucking working hard and making video games and learning languages and trying to just be something greater than I was before. There was that drive. Jocko. Whatever the fuck kool-aid I was drinking.
But now, it's all gone. It's like, I just don't want to do anything but rot my brain on fucking video game videos on YouTube. I'm not even paying attention to the world around me, my existence, or anything of it. I just fucking drift and I'm already fucking turning 22 soon enough.
What in the actual fuck happened
In my teenage years, I volunteered at a nursing home for people with Alzheimers' Disease. When I talked to those folks I kind of realized why life needed to be lived vigorously and not be wasted. You only get so many years to live.
Yet, without that forceful reminder of seeing older folks pass away before my eyes and memories vaporize in thin air, I seem to drift to degeneracy again. Uncontrolled degeneracy and chaos. My room is a fucking mess.
It's clear I'm going down a dark path. I'm not really sure how I feel about this, if anything at all. My self-preservation has been fucked since I could remember and I feel like I couldn't care less.
It feels as if anytime I did self-preserve, it was just a shitty way of lying to myself. That I was just trying to try just for the sake of appearing like I was trying, and not really that I wanted to change. But I know that's untrue.
A series of lying to myself, gas-lighting what I believe in, and other bullshit. That's my mental state right now. It's just all fucking lies, and I can't believe any of it.
So what's the fucking truth? The truth is that I'm pissed. I'm so fucking pissed at this shitty world, and how shitty I handle everything. It pisses me the fuck off.
The problem with smart shitheads like me, smart-aleck shitheads mind you, is that we over-analyze and get stuck in our heads. We just go in fucking circles all the time. Then we write several sentence rants and vents on their shitty personal blog and the angst against the world because FUCK.
Fuck this gay earth
Really, fuck my worldview. It's so shitty. Do the minimum. Get by. Don't give a shit about anything. Why? Because I wanted to relax. I wanted to be lazy.
FUCK RELAXING.
You know, I've definitely gone haywire personality-wise. I used to be mild, meek, and fucking calm. But I think that was a persona.
In reality, I'm a pissed off little goblin ready to give the fuck up and submit to the Demiurges of whatever plane of reality this shitty place exists on.
The office world is actually making me go fucking insane.
I'm tired of relaxing. This life is gay. I get up and roll out of bed, hop on my Teams call and say nothing, and do fuck all. I'm going to start grinding programming again. I'm going to start doing the things I enjoy. I am going to go out and do things. I'm going to talk to my friends. I'm going to go program and draw and read and meet new people and go to parks and run and lift weights and have fun and achieve goals. I'm tired of accepting my neurotic fate to be a stressed goblin fucker.
Who gives a fuck how much money I make? Fuck you, fuck off for asking. Who gives an actual shit? We'll all end up 10 feet under the clay earth.
I'm nice to people not because I want to like people or that I want to be nice to people. I do it to avoid their bullshittery. I forgot that I kept this habit since high school to keep my distance from the stressful horseshit that spews out of most people's mouths.
I've got a little more fight in me. A fight against this world. A fight for my idealistic beliefs that somehow, somewhere I'm worth something. That I'll contribute to the world, that I'll contribute and make a difference. That I'll make someone happy one day, that I'll find a reason, a purpose to live. Whatever that raison d'tre is or whatever the fuck it's called.
I want to believe that a better day, a more happy day is out there. And I gotta' start fucking moving if I ever want to see that day. I can't believe that I grew up with the childhood I did, but I'm not a fucking victim of it.
I've got to grit my teeth and keep going, just like I told myself when I was a little teenage boy getting bullied. I can't believe I lost my fight so easily. It makes me frustrated to see myself get beat down this quickly and fast.
The world is cruel and hateful. The world is happy and loving and caring. It's everything as the world flows. It's just how it exists. There's no inclination towards good or bad, just is.
And so, a conclusion
What the fuck was the point of this? Well, it's me realizing that I still care. That's what the point of it is.
I still care about my life, and that I care about my goals. I care about where I am now, and where I'm going. I'm angry that for the longest time it was as I didn't.
And that, is probably the most important part. Just to keep going, and without any care in the world, care about the world.
It just occured to me that the Don Quixotes of the world are probably the happiest people on this planet. Is it really such an ill thing to be so romantic and delusional?
Is it really a bad thing to be so idealistic and wanting for adventure and going out and creating it?
I think it's admirable and foolish. But more admirable than anything. Cheers.