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I spent a lot of time hiding away in my room - up late on the internet, playing video games, reading books, listening to music - often the kind aimed at the ali
by loudtieblahblah 5y ago
I spent a lot of time hiding away in my room - up late on the internet, playing video games, reading books, listening to music - often the kind aimed at the alienated. I felt alone, like i didn't belong.
Some of it was my personality, some of it was how my parents raised me. Some was how that was juxtaposed against the culture/environment i was raised into.
My parents pushed a lot of sports and i grew out of it - favoring poetry ( that i didn't have thick enough skin to ever better myself at), dreaming of being a rock musician (see former), watching hours of scifi and fantasy.
And i dunno. Now I'm 40. And all my life i've almost prided myself on my introversion, my anti-social aspects, my quirky, sometimes cynical view of the world, my constantly ability to not want to be locked into the major binaries and choices society sets out for you.
And after coming down with severe anxiety.... something about it just flipped in me that made me realize how valuable human connection is.
how much family matters. How much connections with your community does. Not some online community of people who only get in contexts you can easily block or mute.
How much.. being outside in sunshine and nature and being active, matters.
I look at this boring cyberpunk world i was a part of, and there's nothing there but isolation and depression. There's nothing there but bad habits preventing you from being your best, healthiest, happiest, you.
And it's one of these things you don't realize....until something happens that forces you to need these things. Then you look back and be like.. would i ever be right where I'm at, right here, right now.. if i didn't do all this mentally unhealthy shit for 25+ years?
There's lots of reasons i wasn't positively engaged with my peers - there's blame to go around to me, my folks, and even externally to just the way society was and increasingly is, but I take responsibility for my portion and i say my reaciton to it all was wrong.
And don't want my kid getting lost in digital worlds (and jesus - it's so much scarier today that it was 20-25 years ago), hiding away, brooding to depressive and aggressive, mad-at-the-world music and basically being someone who's unreachable unless you're some underdog geek or "wrong crowd" peer.
- woah 5y agoHonestly, it sounds like your current attitude is as extreme as your former one.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoI spent 25 years online. I'm now 40 with a family of my own. I don't have the time in the day to find some happy center. I'm happy to cut out video games and wasting my time online except for the odd Hacker News break while I'm at work. The pendulum might be swinging, but i have a lot less free time now than I used to and I chose to use it more precisely and with more conscious intent rather than just letting the hours waste away clicking around in a digital wonderland. If i want to read - then i make time for that. I make time for alone time, exercise, being outdoors. I make family time. I do this around work, taking my kid to sports events, school drop offs and pickups. I look back and see the 20k posts i made on Vbulletin forms and all the reddit accounts I had and all the hours logged on video games and it all just seems like a waste of life looking back.. When i think about the things that enriched me, these things did not.
- brundolf 5y agoIf they didn't enrich you then they didn't enrich you, but don't overly project your own experience onto others. Many (not all) video games have been enriching and/or healing experiences for me personally.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agoHuman beings are social creatures and it's a psychological need whether people recognize this or not - and this is still considering some of us are introverts and it takes more out of us to be social. 40-50+ years ago, all the way back to the dawn of man - so most of human history, this conversation would be completely irrelevant. Technology changes us an individuals and as a society, it's broken our bonds, ruined out communities, destroyed our connections to each other, increased rabid individualism - not just in the political sense but in the sense of consumer identities and lifestyle brands and hyper-specific cultural balkanization and what do we have to show for it? mass increases in anxiety and depression levels. The average high school student today has the anxiety levels of a person being seen by professionals for the disorder in the 90s. As a parent... you are going to project one way or another. I'll project the way that'll more than likely build a stronger, happier, more resilient child. This love affair with the people who give you likes and retweets being the only ones who really get you, is poison. Relating to digital worlds more than the real one - sitting around for hours upon hours "consooooomnig" digital goods from your phone or laptop, is not life.
- selfhoster11 5y agoI've had the same realisation aged 25. Reality is underrated, assuming you live in a nice place. That sadly isn't the case for everyone.
- Kiro 5y agoI feel the opposite. I'm a very social and active person but recently I've realized I don't enjoy it. I have been wasting my life on stuff I don't care about. Now I just want to sit inside and dive deep into this "boring cyberpunk world". I wish I came to this realization sooner.
- brundolf 5y agoI don't think it's helpful to "take pride in" introversion any more than it is to demonize it. Human connection is important, and so are many solitary activities. They aren't mutually-exclusive. And each of them can take many different forms.