Allergic To Pocky

Is that on the one hand, I believe in being practical. Knowing your limits, knowing your goals, knowing yourself. Accepting and working within those bounds is the easiest path to success and happiness. 

On the other hand, I believe in the power of perseverance, in pushing one’s limits, in not accepting that something is impossible just because others have not achieved it. 

I know that I am at a severe disadvantage in life. I started way behind in the race and I’ve been limping the whole time. There are reasonable goal posts I could set for myself that, while being incredible progress, would be reasonable, and would give me a good life. However, there are farther, more appealing goal posts that no one except perhaps myself could ever believe I could reach. And in a way, I believe in the nobility of chasing those goals as far as I can, pushing myself far past my limits, truly being a MAN (re: Rudyard Kipling). 

A good example of my personal mentality is this:

Just, you know, remembering all the times that I responded very happily and with enthusiasm to strangers being nice to me, only to be told I was weird by my family and friends, and shrink back into myself in shame. 

Hmm, could it be that rather than me being “weird” I was just starved for positive social interactions by abusive people that thought it was appropriate to scold me for displaying signs of happiness? 

It makes me sad to think about how I let myself be treated in ways that cause me to be withdrawn and unhappy, letting myself be publicly put down because I didn’t/don’t have a solid basis of understanding of what is “normal”. 

To be constantly on edge and afraid in social situations that I will somehow mess up because I’ve been constantly criticized and treated like a freak. Which has become a self fulfilling prophecy because my tendency to self isolate and withdraw from a society which I don’t understand and was taught to fear has only furthered the problem, until I AM the weirdo I was told I was at a young age.

I recall letting my mother do all the talking for me whenever possible. A toxic relationship where she was my abuser but also my only conduit to the outside world, because her attacks on my self esteem left me crippled and at her mercy. But others couldn’t see this because she hid it well and taught me to fear strangers to the point that I couldn’t even stand up for myself.

Was my mother a bad person? I don’t know. Mostly I think she was a person, damaged like most of us, and she damaged me. Although I suspect a lot of her damage to me wasn’t completely unintentional. She did have a spiteful streak, but was mostly a pathetic human being. 

I’m often angry at her as I realize over and over the effects she had on me and my life, and how much better my life could have been, how much potential I had... But do I hate her? I don’t think so. She hated me, at the end of her life. I didn’t go to her funeral or to watch her die. I wanted to, but I was held back by the pain and fear that she had instilled in me. 

In the end, if I was a bad daughter, who can be blamed but the mother who raised me? I don’t believe I am a bad person at heart, although certainly I am terribly flawed and often extremely confused. But “bad”? I don’t think so. As I get older I often feel like I’m both becoming  a worse person and a better person. I think at the very least I’m a more honest person who understands myself and others better. 

I am an ongoing work, and so much of that work has been in repairs rather than growth. Finally I am at a point where I feel I can grow, but getting to this point has required me to stop blaming so much of the past on myself and allow myself to feel angry at my abusers. I have had to stop worrying so much about being good or bad or right or wrong and just focus on being more successful, happier, more complete, healthier. 

Darwin’s voyage on the HMS Beagle, which led to his Theory of Evolution, was....

AN UNPAID INTERNSHIP. 

The trip was only supposed to be 2 years as well, but ended up taking 5...

8 am: Wake up. Look around. Go back to sleep

11:30: Wake up from a nightmare about how bad a person you are. Realize how late it is. Take ages to take a shower and get dressed because you dread everything you have to do. Call your fiance twice. Watch YouTube and be filled with guilt and regret.

1:30 Fix "breakfast" (soylent and a koolaid pack?) And watch tv. Oh this anime is really good. Lose another hour.

2:30: Tidy up minimally. Feel accomplished. Immediately take a nap afterwards.

4 pm: Wake up you fucking slacker. Wtf are doing. Gosh that was a good nap though. Now what? Procrastinate by telling people about your bad behaviour? Sounds great.

ADHD is:

I’m reading my chapter in astronomy about light photons.

I switch to my chemistry book because it has a more comprehensive chapter.

I pull out my ruler so I can follow along with the words on the page.

Then I realize I should get some good bookmarks.

I start by googling free bookmarks, I’ll just print them out.

But end up on amazon shopping for science-y bookmarks.

I get off track when a reference to the periodic table reminds me that I want a poster of the periodic table.

I start shopping for the periodic table poster.

But get off track from that when I see a bookmark with a quote by Stephen Hawking. 

I decide to look for more Stephen Hawking quote bookmarks, but wind up looking at Stephen Hawking Books.

I end up buying $100 worth of books by Stephen Hawking (and one by Einstein).

Then I post about it tumblr because “hahaha, relatable” right? 

You’re not REALLY a procrastinator until you’ve calculated the number of pages you have to read, then taken tests to determine how long reading that will take you, then researched ways to increase your reading speed, then researched why speed reading is actually bullshit, then posted about all of that on tumblr. 

Seriously.

Roasting Every College Major in 60 Seconds

When you put it like that, it makes perfect sense why everyone thinks I should study computer science.