Weirdly Human

I went to my birth city for a national competition. I lived there for the first 7 years of my life… and I remembered so much about friends, the place, driving home there. The front door was red, the sidewalks were huge, there was a thick tree that would never lose its leaves.

I got to revisit the home I went to. I was expecting to feel a wash of nostalgia, expecting to feel the relief of returning home…

But that peace wasn’t there. The nostalgia wasn’t there. The door was painted gray, the sidewalks were tiny, the tree was thin. I didn’t feel nostalgia or relief, I felt indifference. We thought about visiting the old friends but, it’s been around 10 years, we didn’t know where they were.

Though…

although my view was likely jaded because I was young, the memories were still real. I remember the friends that were there, the red door, the sidewalks, the tree. But those memories just live with me, no one else. But those moments do not exist now, they are gone. The past is dead.

I don’t know how I feel about that. Grieving isn’t really my thing. I feel strange inside knowing that I won’t experience those moments again, or experience a future where I stayed there, but I don’t think it’s that important to me, if I am being honest.

Me getting frustrated at teachers fr. Please fill out my teacher recommendation if I ask you too. I understand if you have a lot going on and several students to deal with. But I catch you at free time, I email you, I talk to you IN PERSON, and yet I see it still isn’t submitted. And now the due dates passed and I feel like crap. And like fam, I put in effort for you to get my stuff in on time, and you can’t do the same???? I swear the only way I can get some teacher to do things is if I sit with them and make sure they do it. And teacher recommendations are supposed to be private.

AND what really bugs me is that I spent hours stressing and completing 4 applications to the best of my ability and now I might not even get considered for any of them because the teacher recommendations can’t get in on time. (I have this issue with multiple teachers). And I can’t lie I half saw this coming from some, but they are teaching in the field the application cares about and what I am trying to go in so now I have to deal with that.

And now if my dad finds out he’s going to start freaking out because he’s also going to share the same sentiment and this is only a junior year thing (at max) and idk if he’ll start speaking angrily or saying “This is bad” in that stupidly harsh tone he says it in like he’s blaming me, because like I did my best. I tried, and I can’t.

And then he’s going to ask me how I am going to do actual college applications in a rhetorical harsh tone because if I can’t do these, how can I do those? Why am I expected to control the actions of other people and make sure they get things in on time?

Why did teacher recommendations become a requirement to get into even anything remotely selective. They literally have at least a hundred kids to worry about. Isn’t a recommendation supposed to idk be something optional, to help people be moved along, rather than a stupid requirement. Actually why am I even trying to get into anything remotely selective? Literally everyone applies seems to have at least an unweighted 4.0 GPA and is the president of at least 1 club and has like above a 30 on the ACT and like at least 12 APS.

I don’t know anymore. I just want a job that gets me enough money to own a 4 bed 4 bath house (with a partner at least), allows me to work from home if I want to, and live comfortably where I can spend money without worrying about the price of anything under $1000 (being reasonable).

Showing off my personal coding projects to my parents is ....

Like don't get me wrong, they're great and everything, but like I wish my projects were more impressive. Like with art, you can use colors and make things realistic and detailed, and people find it cool.

But when I showed my mom one of my coding projects, it took me the same amount of time and effort to do the program, and I made this really cool to do list function that I am really proud of, which is a part of a crucial design aspect of my game I'm trying to make into a final project and maybe a base for a personal project. But like, all she really complimented was the images, which were just simple assets that I didn't even make. Like I spent a while learning a time keeping system and did my best to make it function like an actual game, but all she really complimented was work that wasn't even mine.

And she got into how I could bring Chat GPT into it and how I should use it to code and like yeah, I know that's what jobs want and such, but first, I don't like the unnecessary use of AI, especially LLMs which aren't what I need for this project, and second, I am not doing this just for a job fam, I like coding and making games and you are kind of ruining the vibes.