I think I’m wayyyy too monetarily minded. As in, I think/speak about money too much. I literally gave a MYSELF ick today. But only in hindsight — so there were multiple scenarios in a single night which I think back upon and gave myself the ick. UghHHHH.
But it’s whatever — I guess the point of social situations is to continuously refine yourself by being disgusted at whatever you say, and then… not doing that again. I shouldn’t be frustrated by the learning process, but I also can’t help but feel upset that I didn’t pick this up earlier? If I’m only noticing this now, I must’ve had tons of interactions that were stupid prior. I want to avoid that thought, however.
Another observation of my own is that I try too hard to be likeable, to mould myself to be someone whom the other person likes, at the start of an interaction (maybe the first 5 times I meet someone). Counterintuitively, this makes me LESS likeable; I have zero personality, and I don’t talk enough about my “interests”.
Just to cause myself more pain, I’ll list some examples from badminton… Hopefully I’ll find this funny looking back? But I feel genuinely super disgusted with myself now.
Being too “monetarily minded”
R: “wait, do you separate your shuttles into used ones and new ones?” Me: “yea i’m too cheap to rally w/ new shuttles, so I practice with used ones and use new ones for matches”
R: “should we get wristbands?” Me: “nah i just wait for them to kick me out, sometimes they don’t kick me out and i save $10”
R: “did you drive here?” Me: “nah my dad drove me, parking here’s expensive”
THE FUCK AM I SAYING???? I guess each individually is true. But, why couldn’t I something like “yeah I don’t want to be wasteful of shuttles, don’t want unnecessary geese to die” or just… pay $10 for a wristband. Or say that I don’t have my drivers license yet cuz I don’t spend time in Calgary and I have to retake it for SF.
I can’t help but feel that money rotted my brain a bit. It’s really not all about the money. Am I actually internally like this? I did this whole Sisyphus impersonation as a meme to start and now it’s a legitimate part of my personality?!
Not being true to myself
R: “wait, you do rust, are you into crypto?” Me: “kinda?” proceeds to deflect q The dumb part is that I do this to like… Everyone who doesn’t know me as “sudolabel”? I guess I have some perception that everyone hates crypto and as such, try not to talk about it. But it’s such a huge part of my personality that everyone eventually has to find out, so why don’t I just… say it?
R: “wait, tell me something cool about game theory” Me: “errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” (I shoulda said something like consumption smoothing or EV being super influential in my decision making/daily life… but my mind blanked???)
There’s probably a lot more scenarios I’m not thinking of. But what’s super frustrating is that it’s not true to myself; it’s just not… game theoretic optimal. I think of myself as a fairly generous person; I usually try to pay for things for my friends who are still in college, I took both my parents out to travel for a long time and paid for everything, and take them out for nice meals sometimes. I’m generous in my time for people who need advice (see 08-20 lmfao). And I know I have interesting opinions on many subjects. I just… didn’t think my reply would be appealing, and didn’t say it??? Plus, by trying to craft their opinion of me, even if they like me, I’m straight up not who I claimed to be; it’s just pushing it down the line. It’s better to let them filter for your true self sooner in the “getting to know each other” process; less time wasted for both parties. So incredibly irrational of me. I knew this for the past year; everyone says ‘just be yourself!’ but it’s surprisingly nontrivial.
When I put it all like this, I’m mildly surprised I have any friends? I’m literally a walking red flag for the first… 5 times I meet someone, and even then I still find myself completely insufferable. I literally have zero personality outside of work. I read cool shit but I don’t internalize it enough such that I can say it out loud. I’m actually quite upset/disappointed about this.
There’s this shitpost that I sometimes think about, it’s oddly true for human connections as a whole.
There’s probably a lot of possible friends that I scared away by being an absolute autist, but my lasting friends are people whom I can’t scare away even by being a brick.
But even knowing this, I really hope this is an illusion of human perception or something; R is cool, level headed, etc. Why can’t I just be sane too?
Not gonna lie, making friends as an adult is Really Fucking Hard. Or maybe I just have negative charisma. Meeting R was definitely the worst social interaction “performance” I’ve had since Matt Huang in LA. Absolutely horrible autism. Legit had my brain mushed by a nap. Fortunately, it doesn’t get worse than this 💀💀💀💀💀💀
It’s kind of hilarious that my current life has the complete opposite problems of a “normal” 20 year old. A normal 20 year old is probably at their peak number of friends thanks to University, but has to worry about money, school performance, jobs, etc. Meanwhile, job security is a much smaller issue, and making friends is a much larger issue for me.
I actually quite like this journal now. These are things I wouldn’t have realized without writing them out. It’s important to learn from it the first time.
I don’t like the person I’ve become.
While I rant about stuff that pisses me off, I spent like 4-6 hours of my day doing some work for Fabio for completely free. No expectation of pay whatsoever. I send it to him, invite the cofounders to the repo, and none of them acknowledge anything? He literally left me on read on DM’s; no “thanks”, no acknowledgement whatsoever. I’m obviously not doing it for acknowledgement (I need him to owe me a favour so that he does my O-1 stuff) but… seriously? Surely that’s the least you could do?
I was reading through really old discord messages my “thoughts” channel to try and find other instances of me being sad as a “frame of reference”. Really, for any hint of progress in my life.
I found this old message from almost 2 years ago:
It’s kind of insane how little my “worst fears” have changed. I guess they’re the biggest problems anyone faces ever. But my life’s definitely gotten tangibly better, even if quantitatively it isn’t much different.
I’ve gotten less fearful since; I don’t work out of being scared to get fired anymore (or that I’m not smart enough for school). I’m glad I’m more secure about this. After spending time away from my parents (and a huge health scare), I don’t take my parents for granted. I took my dad on a trip in Europe for 3mo which we’ll have memories to discuss for years to come. My mom stayed 10 days with me in SF, which I overhear her telling her friends about. I’m really proud of this and I know my parents are thankful for it as well, as I overhear their calls, and it’s all they talk about.
I’ll do just fine !