This is me not giving a gosh-god-darn

Nique · 03-07-2010, 06:52 AM

At the risk of sounding overly emotional or introspective (I'm so far past this point that not only am I everything-you-are-about-to-read, but I am also confounded by the sheer inability of the term 'emo' both as a means of insulting someone or as any kind of self-descriptor whatsoever) but it's 3:09am and I am at once awaken and confronted by the endless gravity of mundane everyday life and the sick weightless feeling of floating in a vast inky void that is absolute meaninglessness.

Help?

Everything about life is revolving around my head and no matter what kind of importance or end goal I try to imbue anything with, it all feels exactly pointless. How exactly does one cope with the feeling that the world or all the parts of it significant to me can and may very well implode. How does one push through everyday life when suddenly my choices are 'take a lunch break at home, eat out, or quit my job, sell all my worldly possessions and just go somewhere, anywhere, in an effort to escape either suicidal depression or outrun a collapsing world economy. (I am not, to my knowledge, suicidal, and one or two doctors agreeing with my self-diagnosis at age 17 is not enough for me to throw in with anyone who is actually suffering from clinical depression. Should I invest some time to find out? Maybe.)

My day started on an incredible high too. I was well rested, got up and actually went to the gym. THE GYM. You have to understand how big that is for me. I have no idea where this is coming from. Am I just now being hit by a shockwave of social stress about the economy? Have I been pursuing a lifestyle that I don't want? What on earth do you do when your own internal ranting on meaninglessness in life slingshots back as also incredibly meaningless whining which get's tossed over to the other side ad infinitum.

NPF has never felt like a place to hide crazy, so please feel free to share your own existential crisis (Crisi? What is the plural of that supposed to be?) humorous or otherwise.

I have no delusions that these are somehow unique feelings or 'realizations' that are accurate in anyway, but even knowing that... Well, damn. It's a lonely feeling. It's 3:41am, and I guess I just felt like I needed to tell somebody.

Green Spanner · 03-07-2010, 07:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nique

NPF has never felt like a place to hide crazy, so please feel free to share your own existential crisis (Crisi? What is the plural of that supposed to be?) humorous or otherwise.

If I ever get important enough to warrant a biography (ha!), the period of my life I'm in (starting at age 17) will be called something like 'the crisis of confidence'. No matter what I do, I have found myself completely unable to see anything I create as something other than a piece of shit.

As such, I've sort-of dedicated my life right now to proving to myself that I'm not a completely unlikable talentless fuck-up. I'm sure these feelings will go away over time.

It was quite possibly the worst time in my life (so far) to write a novel (though to be fair, I did start it before all this went down). Even though initial feedback has been positive, I'm still not happy with it, and probably never will be.

Amake · 03-07-2010, 08:30 AM

The plural of crisis is crises.

Selling your stuff and travel the world sounds like a bold idea to me. Think it through: Is there actually anything stopping you from doing it? Most people don't, because they're comfortable and lazy. Break the norm, get out there and have an adventure while you're young. Then you can tell us about it over and over in the years to come. Write a book, maybe. At the very least, get some distance to examine your life, if you're worried it's not the one you want.

Krylo · 03-07-2010, 08:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nique

Everything about life is revolving around my head and no matter what kind of importance or end goal I try to imbue anything with, it all feels exactly pointless.

I cope with that through the philosophy that things don't need to have a point. So long as you're enjoying things, you're doing fine. You don't need to be creating a legacy or some such. If you aren't, then you should change things so you are.

Life's too short to waste worrying about whether things you do have a point. Just enjoy them and don't fuss over it.

Course the downside to this world view is that it leads to a lot of personal apathy, but... ehhhhhhhh.

IQ: Last I checked he had a wife. That MIGHT slow down the whole 'sell everything and run away' plan. Assuming he still has one and he likes her. That's what I'm assuming.

Amake · 03-07-2010, 08:57 AM

Aah, you'll never get a good price for a used wife anyway, might as well take her with you.

synkr0nized · 03-07-2010, 02:16 PM

Sometimes, I end up dwelling on the idea of death meaning the complete and total end of my life, the lack of any additional thought, movement, speech, experience, etc. A total void. I then inevitably try to imagine what it's like to have nothing/be a void, and it creeps me right the fuck out and invariably makes me depressed for a day or three. Good times.

But yeah don't worry about it and move on if you can...

Azisien · 03-07-2010, 02:22 PM

Existentialist moments are awesome.

Of course the whole part after the moment that's significant is forging your own meaning. Which is not unlike what Krylo and others have pointed towards.

Funka Genocide · 03-07-2010, 02:31 PM

I took a beating with the economic collapse and had to sort of flub my way through the transition between military life and civilian life for a few years. I would get really stressed out at times over things I seldom considered during my younger life.

How am I going to pay all these bills? When am I going to get a real mattress? Why do I eat so much McDonalds and why haven't I used my overpriced gym membership in 6 months?

I guess sometimes you just need a kick in the pants (or a self applied kick in the pants.) For me it was a few things, one I was laid off from my boring ass, low paying job and for another my relationship with my girlfriend went from "hey this is great" to "hey this is serious" which prompted all sort of serious self assessment and personal growth (or at least I like to think so.)

I guess it's just transitioning from the craziness of youth into the somewhat staid environment of adulthood. I still get stressed about money sometimes, and I still need to go to the gym more often, but I've defined what's most important to me and everything else can pretty much go take a walk.

I tend to override any thoughts of existential despair with things that entertain me. I mean fuck it, we're all going to bite it some day, it used to scare me when I was a kid but I've had a few decades to mull it over and its not something I really care about anymore. What I do care about is being healthy so I can live longer and play more video games/have more sex/read more books etc. etc.

You're going to get older, things are going to get boring and money is always going to be an issue. Get over it and enjoy yourself as best you can, and try to make more money while you're at it. (Oh, and have more sex. Like seriously, people don't have enough sex. That shit is awesome.)

Toast · 03-07-2010, 04:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nique

but it's 3:09am and I am at once awaken and confronted by the endless gravity of mundane everyday life and the sick weightless feeling of floating in a vast inky void that is absolute meaninglessness.

Life is kind of absurd that way. Experiencing the void can be a catalyst for change. At the very least, it is an experience that is unlike any other.

Quote:

Everything about life is revolving around my head and no matter what kind of importance or end goal I try to imbue anything with, it all feels exactly pointless.

The universe (or universes) is quite indifferent to meaning. Create your own. Make it up as you go along. Have fun with it. If the universe is indifferent, mock the universe by making fun of it.

Quote:

How exactly does one cope with the feeling that the world or all the parts of it significant to me can and may very well implode. How does one push through everyday life when suddenly my choices are 'take a lunch break at home, eat out, or quit my job, sell all my worldly possessions and just go somewhere, anywhere, in an effort to escape either suicidal depression or outrun a collapsing world economy.

Your choices are a lot broader than that. Even if you don't take action, the very least you can do is change your attitude towards the givens in your life (like the state of the economy).

Quote:

Am I just now being hit by a shockwave of social stress about the economy? Have I been pursuing a lifestyle that I don't want? What on earth do you do when your own internal ranting on meaninglessness in life slingshots back as also incredibly meaningless whining which get's tossed over to the other side ad infinitum.

I'm kind of running into this myself. My career path was going to be doing research in existential psychology. Having spent the last three months seeing how much of a pain in the ass it is just to go about starting the research proposal and how little generalizability any such research has to real life, I'm going through some serious doubts about my choices up to this point. Still not quite sure what I'm going to do about it, either.

Quote:

I have no delusions that these are somehow unique feelings or 'realizations' that are accurate in anyway, but even knowing that... Well, damn. It's a lonely feeling. It's 3:41am, and I guess I just felt like I needed to tell somebody.

Sometimes an expression of despair is all it really takes to galvanize change. Experience it, learn from it, be who you are.

Hanuman · 03-07-2010, 04:49 PM

What are feelings? What are these things going "HEY YOU, I AM A FEELING SO FEEL ME!"

Well, are they like little spiritual emotional blah blah blah? No.
They are chemical, and although feelings can be caused by certain emotional links to certain things it's not the thing or even the trigger making you feel, it's the chemical.

What does your body do to fight stress? It metabolizes the stress hormone and flushes it away; that is how your stress goes away instead of just stacking... emotional baggage is a combination of obsolete emotional triggers and stress that was never metabolized, causing negative effects both brain-chemically and physically.

How do you stabilize or increase the amount of stress your body can metabolize?

Go for a run.

It is that simple, your body will adapt to the incoming physical stress and raise your ability to metabolize it safely, if you have WAY too much stress then its possible you should try and fall back onto a low stress lifestyle while you build yourself up to the challenges of regular stress, either that or try and dissolve your emotional triggers with things you generally can't control anyway like the US economy.
Hell, just move out of the US if it's that bad.

A little something extra to dissolve emotional triggers:
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/co.../taote-v3.html

Getting Fit:
http://www.exrx.net/

03-07-2010, 08:30 AM	#3
Amake Keeper of the new Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: A place without judgment Posts: 4,506	The plural of crisis is crises. Selling your stuff and travel the world sounds like a bold idea to me. Think it through: Is there actually anything stopping you from doing it? Most people don't, because they're comfortable and lazy. Break the norm, get out there and have an adventure while you're young. Then you can tell us about it over and over in the years to come. Write a book, maybe. At the very least, get some distance to examine your life, if you're worried it's not the one you want. __________________ Hope insistent, trust implicit, love inherent, life immersed

03-07-2010, 08:57 AM	#5
Amake Keeper of the new Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: A place without judgment Posts: 4,506	Aah, you'll never get a good price for a used wife anyway, might as well take her with you. __________________ Hope insistent, trust implicit, love inherent, life immersed

03-07-2010, 02:16 PM	#6
synkr0nized synk-ism Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: throughout the Wired Posts: 6,861	I end up wanting to do nothing, which is like the exact opposite of what I should do Sometimes, I end up dwelling on the idea of death meaning the complete and total end of my life, the lack of any additional thought, movement, speech, experience, etc. A total void. I then inevitably try to imagine what it's like to have nothing/be a void, and it creeps me right the fuck out and invariably makes me depressed for a day or three. Good times. But yeah don't worry about it and move on if you can... __________________ Find love.

03-07-2010, 02:31 PM	#8
Funka Genocide Sent to the cornfield Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Las Vegas Posts: 4,566	I took a beating with the economic collapse and had to sort of flub my way through the transition between military life and civilian life for a few years. I would get really stressed out at times over things I seldom considered during my younger life. How am I going to pay all these bills? When am I going to get a real mattress? Why do I eat so much McDonalds and why haven't I used my overpriced gym membership in 6 months? I guess sometimes you just need a kick in the pants (or a self applied kick in the pants.) For me it was a few things, one I was laid off from my boring ass, low paying job and for another my relationship with my girlfriend went from "hey this is great" to "hey this is serious" which prompted all sort of serious self assessment and personal growth (or at least I like to think so.) I guess it's just transitioning from the craziness of youth into the somewhat staid environment of adulthood. I still get stressed about money sometimes, and I still need to go to the gym more often, but I've defined what's most important to me and everything else can pretty much go take a walk. I tend to override any thoughts of existential despair with things that entertain me. I mean fuck it, we're all going to bite it some day, it used to scare me when I was a kid but I've had a few decades to mull it over and its not something I really care about anymore. What I do care about is being healthy so I can live longer and play more video games/have more sex/read more books etc. etc. You're going to get older, things are going to get boring and money is always going to be an issue. Get over it and enjoy yourself as best you can, and try to make more money while you're at it. (Oh, and have more sex. Like seriously, people don't have enough sex. That shit is awesome.) Last edited by Funka Genocide; 03-07-2010 at 02:37 PM.

03-07-2010, 04:49 PM	#10
Hanuman Love Is Strength Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Vancouver/BC/Canada Posts: 1,135	What are feelings? What are these things going "HEY YOU, I AM A FEELING SO FEEL ME!" Well, are they like little spiritual emotional blah blah blah? No. They are chemical, and although feelings can be caused by certain emotional links to certain things it's not the thing or even the trigger making you feel, it's the chemical. What does your body do to fight stress? It metabolizes the stress hormone and flushes it away; that is how your stress goes away instead of just stacking... emotional baggage is a combination of obsolete emotional triggers and stress that was never metabolized, causing negative effects both brain-chemically and physically. How do you stabilize or increase the amount of stress your body can metabolize? Go for a run. It is that simple, your body will adapt to the incoming physical stress and raise your ability to metabolize it safely, if you have WAY too much stress then its possible you should try and fall back onto a low stress lifestyle while you build yourself up to the challenges of regular stress, either that or try and dissolve your emotional triggers with things you generally can't control anyway like the US economy. Hell, just move out of the US if it's that bad. A little something extra to dissolve emotional triggers: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/co.../taote-v3.html Getting Fit: http://www.exrx.net/ __________________ If you want to stay connected send me a PM with your email. Last edited by Hanuman; 03-07-2010 at 04:53 PM.

03-07-2010, 02:22 PM	#7
Azisien wat Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 7,177	Existentialist moments are awesome. Of course the whole part after the moment that's significant is forging your own meaning. Which is not unlike what Krylo and others have pointed towards.