missed opportunities

when i look back at my life so far, i see a long series of missed opportunities. a long series of situations in which, if i had known what to do to take advantage of those situations, things would have turned out much better for me. a long series of situations in which i utterly failed to achieve any of my goals or get what i wanted.

i also see some opportunities that i did manage to take advantage of, and some things i did accomplish. and every time i accomplish something big, it turns out to be a disappointment. what do i mean by that? well, if you are working on something important like graduating college, it seems like a really big deal, and it takes a lot of hard work. then, what happens when you finally accomplish it? hardly anything. you are at some big ceremony with a couple thousand other graduates who are all getting the same honor as you: a piece of paper that says you are smart and know lots of stuff, in a nice frame. and you get to wear a traditional graduation outfit. oh great! and then guess what? no more free all-you-can-eat meals from your college meal plan that your parents paid for! you are no longer surrounded by intelligent people the same age as you! no more walking long distances between classes, and up and down hills every day! you are no longer told what to do all the time! for me, freedom is the greatest prison. if i am not told what to do and given deadlines and there is no carrot-and-stick approach, i am not motivated to do anything productive. i become aimless and lazy, and stay in my house all the time, not getting anything accomplished. my sole motivation becomes seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. and to seek pleasure, i do the things i have found pleasure in, in the past, such as video games, television shows, and food that i like to eat. to avoid pain, i avoid awkward social situations by not going out of the house, i avoid the pain of rejection by not asking out any girls and hardly applying to any jobs, i avoid being yelled at by my parents by being awake when they are asleep and asleep when they are awake, and i avoid having to do things by saying i am going to do them and then not doing them.

so, what exactly is my problem? it appears my main strategy in life is to avoid anything i find the least bit unpleasant. i just avoid, avoid, avoid. the only emotion that seems to be able to motivate me to do something unpleasant is fear. it has to be strong fear, strong enough that it makes me worried that i will no longer be able to sustain the repetitive pleasure-seeking activities of video games, tv shows, etc. i do not have any hope, or if i do, there is very little. inside me i feel an emptiness, a void. i do not really think things can get any better in life, or if they can, not much better. and i still think i have already missed out on most of the fun in life, and it is too late to go back and redo my childhood and teenage years as a more social, more active, more fun-loving person. i crave having fun, at least emotionally speaking, and yet, behaviorally, i find myself avoiding any sorts of unfamiliar situations that i have not been in before, even including ones that most people find very fun. morally speaking, i am quite complex, because sometimes i am selfish and care about nobody except myself, and other times, i have a utilitarian/humanist sort of philosophical attitude, meaning, i want to help others, and do whatever benefits society as a whole the most, by being kind and helpful to people, and helping to promote causes that help the downtrodden and oppressed. it is sometimes strange how i switch between my good side of being nice and helping others, and my bad side of being selfish and uncaring. my bad, evil side is actually sort of in the mode of ayn rand’s philosophy of objectivism, where she defines selfishness as good and helping others when you get nothing in return as evil. except i have no illusions about objectivism being correct. i know it is pure evil. but sometimes, it is useful to be evil for a little while. if you are good all of the time, there are lots of things you just can’t do, and it seems kind of unrealistic for someone to succeed in life if they are good all of the time. it is usually the most evil and selfish people who get all the way to the top. so it is sometimes necessary to be like them in order to get ahead.

but in the real objectivist philosophy, you are supposed to act in your own personal long-term best interests, and ignore everything else, unless that other stuff is relevant to your own personal long-term best interests. and you are not supposed to care about anyone or anything else, because that will get in the way of your greed and your lust for power and wealth. however, since i know objectivism is evil, when i put it into practice, it is just for silly little things which are not in my long-term best interests, but just basically doing whatever i feel like without giving a damn about anyone or anything else. my variant of it is basically equivalent to the mooninite philosophy from the show aqua teen hunger force, a philosophy based on doing whatever you feel like doing, at all times, and not caring about anyone or anything else. it is also the philosophy of the character master shake on that show. frylock is the righteous, moral, uptight one. and meatwad is the stupid, impressionable one. master shake is also quite stupid, but much more amoral than meatwad. meatwad at least has some sense of right and wrong, albeit primitive. anyway, i basically alternate between 2 modes: thoughtless self-indulgence, and trying to do whatever the good and righteous thing to help others is. actually, i am usually somewhat in between the 2 modes. i often try to punish myself because i see myself as bad and evil, so i try and sabotage myself in order to prevent myself from being successful or happy or achieving any of my most important goals. this is because i don’t believe i deserve those good things, that instead, i deserve punishment, pain and suffering, humiliation, and deprivation. it is all tied into my low self-esteem. i hate myself, and i don’t see why anyone else would have a different opinion of me than the one i have of myself, and i am always trying to punish myself for my perceived inferiority. but at the same time, i see myself as superior to others, which is an affront to my sense of right and wrong, meaning i need to ruin my own life even worse.

it is quite annoying having an obsessive need for self-sabotage. whenever there is an opportunity to ask out a pretty girl, my mind is filled with thoughts about how now is the perfect time to go up and talk to her, and about what i should say to her, and stuff like that. but i never actually go up to her and ask her out; instead, i avoid eye contact and pretend not to be interested, and don’t even talk to her at all. and if i do manage to get myself to talk to her, my self-sabotage impulse is so strong, i always manage to make myself look foolish and stupid and perhaps arrogant but very naive, and i somehow forget all of my education and am reduced to a fool; worst of all, i never even manage to ask her out, even in the rare circumstance where the conversation lasts longer than a minute or two. and i am also beset by self-sabotage during job interviews, saying foolish things that make me look stupid or immature, despite the fact that i know better. it is just that i have such a strong belief that if i actively pursue my own interests and go after what i want, that is an evil thing and it makes me a bad person. i also feel bad because i have rejected the belief system of most people in this country, and i am kind of isolated. i am in a prison of my own design. my hermit-like existence is based on an obsessive need to keep things from getting any better, because of my insanely powerful fear of change. it doesn’t make any sense, but i am worried that if my life gets a lot better, that might somehow actually be a lot worse than if it just stays as bad as it is now. on some level, i seem to enjoy seeing myself suffer. my personality has partitioned itself into the active part that controls my behavior, and the passive observer that comments on things, and the passive observer part seems to delight in the failures of the active part, without ever trying to help make things better. i just have a typical self-destructive personality of the type found in people who are suicidal or have very low self esteem, but for some reason, my personality is relatively stable and has not really changed much over the years. there is something that keeps me from doing anything too extreme, something very powerful inside me that inhibits me and prevents me from doing anything that is very very bad. but underneath the nice behavior i sometimes exhibit, and the way i seem to care about others and want to help them out and make the world a better place, further down, deep inside me, lurks a terrible evil, that does not just want to harm myself, but all of society. it is bent on revenge for all of the bad things other people have ever done to me, all the times i have ever been mistreated or had people be mean to me or play tricks on me, and also revenge on people who have been happier or more successful than me, who have lived more enjoyable lives than my miserable existence. i have a visceral dislike for people who are too optimistic or too happy, preferring people who seem to be at least somewhat miserable and dissatisfied with their lot in life. i remember throughout elementary school, junior high, high school, college, and even today, i have always seen other people having fun together and being happy, and felt left out, and miserable, and wanted to have revenge on them by making them even more miserable than me. that is the evil inside me, that is why i feel such a strong need to do good, to help make the world a better place. it is a penance, it is my duty, in order to atone for all of my evil thoughts. and what is most odd about that is, i am an atheist, so why do i still cling to the judeo-christian morality? it seems like i feel a need to prove that atheists are not immoral or amoral, so i have to adopt a sort of morality very similar to the judeo-christian one prevalent in most western countries. except my morality is the liberal variant instead of the conservative variant, meaning, i want to help the downtrodden and people such as homosexuals that the conservatives condemn as evil. but i have always had a strong distrust of authority figures, and those who are in charge. it is true that i hate the wealthy and i hate those who are powerful. how could i not hate them? it is perfectly natural for me to hate them. they have what i don’t have, and i want it, and i am jealous, and don’t think they deserve it. so, for me, it is quite natural to support the idea of a socialist economy, and to be opposed to capitalism. my emotional instincts, my conditioning, my life story, all of it contributes towards a leftist worldview. the right-wing worldview is based upon the premise of restoring some sort of glory that existed in the past, and avoiding rapid change in the way things are. the way i live my life is, in fact, quite conservative. but the reason i am so conflicted is, that is not the way i want to live my life, by avoiding change and all of that. and the more i see how it fails in my own life as a viable strategy for getting ahead, the more i see it fails as a viable strategy for a nation to get ahead. i am informed by my failure. anyway, that is about it for today. this sentence is an abrupt conclusion that does not fit well in the context of the sentences that precede it, leaving the reader unsatisfied.