4 ms·

I'm 18, and occasionally I feel like I've lost something I had before. But that's a common feeling, I'm sure: I'll always want to be wiser and simultaneously yo

by unalone 18y ago

I'm 18, and occasionally I feel like I've lost something I had before. But that's a common feeling, I'm sure: I'll always want to be wiser and simultaneously younger. I doubt that has anything at all to do with my actual age or level of knowledge. The feeling of losing things may very well stem from the inertia that builds up in life, along with your own growing awareness of your abilities. When I was 5 I thought I was a superhero: I was powerful and could crush anything. When I was 16, I didn't think that, but I thought that I was a powerful, fascinating individual around whom the world revolved. Now I've begun working out and taking care of myself, and I'm probably stronger now than I've ever been, but I don't have the same blind, false confidence I had before. Is that losing it? I'll suspect that a year from now if I continue to work out with any level of dedication, I'll be stronger than I've ever been - not just in my mind, but in reality. Similarly, every year I become more aware of my limitations, but simultaneously those limitations lessen and disappear. I'm brighter now than I've ever been, and it's my intent never to enter a life scenario where I'm not allowed to continue to grow. Inertia is the larger problem: both with body and mind and personality, the longer you don't use something the more it fades away. By your late 20s, you've left school, you've entered a more stable type of living, and there's every chance that you're in a duller, more monotonous setting - and worse, you're faced with the prospect of things never abruptly changing. That's deadly, and I'd suspect it contributes a lot to this attitude of people burning out. (I come from a slightly unique perspective - the world of writing, where if you publish a book before you're 35 you're considered precocious. In all of literature, the greatest changes have come from people older than 30. I think it's because literature, unlike other forms of music, is forced to be subtle in order to work: it requires command of only a few skills, and there's no pressure to hurry with writing, and so as a result the field is full of people who can dedicate a decade to a single piece. The works that are remembered are the ones so rich with experience that they stand above even this field of work. Unlike, say, music, where not knowing anything means you have an advantage in your ability to create new works, literature very often requires at least an understanding of what's been done before, because without it the chances of your making something worth people's time is virtually nil.)

electromagnetic 18y ago
Speaking from 3 years ahead of you, you're going to begin feeling like you've lost things a lot more. I swear old age starts at 5 years old, because I can forget the most simple things, but last night my wife was asking me the demographics of Canada and I nailed like 7 out of the top 10 in the right order through guessing alone, just because I have a lot of knowledge to base my guesses off of. I had a clarifying moment when I was 15, which I believe is the point at which I reached maturity and quite honestly I feel very little difference at 21 than I did at 15 except for experience. I simply realised that the one thing I wanted to do in life was write, and that all the BS of school was transitory. That summer, at 16 I started working as a reviewer and was the first person at the company to get an excerpt on a product, however I left when the politics started interfering with the job. It was like, depending on who the product came from you had to add points to the review. It wasn't so much with movies, but with video games if one was coming from EA it was virtually impossible to badmouth. The final straw came with Oblivion, the preview material was so flawed the game was inherently unplayable without cheats (the whole, a rat can kill a lvl 30 thief because they stupidly made all the creatures level too). After I left I switched from writing short stories to actually going for the goal posts with a novel. I've ditched a lot of projects, simply because I outgrew them in the process of writing them. I threw out an entire months work because it wasn't original enough for me, and from my experience humans have a very limited ability to see outside of the box when they're focusing on something so if I released it wasn't original then so would everyone else. My honest advice to you is find someone with a valid opinion on writing (in my case it was my editor, who I became quick friends with) and get them to be brutally honest. Take every single word they say to heart and then feel free to ignore every fucking word if it doesn't help you. Do this with as many people you can trust and get them to be honest and if they don't provide criticism they're not helping. People often avoid hearing the bad things about their work and people often avoid saying bad things about it, but you need to hear every single criticism no matter how irrelevant it actually ends up being. If it doesn't help you immediately, it will eventually because once you're published your work is open to the judgment of millions of people. It also helps with denials, lots of agents/editors can be helpful, but don't be surprised if you get a standard denial letter... I once got one when I emailed an agent asking what genres he was currently accepting submissions for, which was exceptionally funny.

by unalone 18y ago

electromagnetic 18y ago

Speaking from 3 years ahead of you, you're going to begin feeling like you've lost things a lot more. I swear old age starts at 5 years old, because I can forget the most simple things, but last night my wife was asking me the demographics of Canada and I nailed like 7 out of the top 10 in the right order through guessing alone, just because I have a lot of knowledge to base my guesses off of. I had a clarifying moment when I was 15, which I believe is the point at which I reached maturity and quite honestly I feel very little difference at 21 than I did at 15 except for experience. I simply realised that the one thing I wanted to do in life was write, and that all the BS of school was transitory. That summer, at 16 I started working as a reviewer and was the first person at the company to get an excerpt on a product, however I left when the politics started interfering with the job. It was like, depending on who the product came from you had to add points to the review. It wasn't so much with movies, but with video games if one was coming from EA it was virtually impossible to badmouth. The final straw came with Oblivion, the preview material was so flawed the game was inherently unplayable without cheats (the whole, a rat can kill a lvl 30 thief because they stupidly made all the creatures level too). After I left I switched from writing short stories to actually going for the goal posts with a novel. I've ditched a lot of projects, simply because I outgrew them in the process of writing them. I threw out an entire months work because it wasn't original enough for me, and from my experience humans have a very limited ability to see outside of the box when they're focusing on something so if I released it wasn't original then so would everyone else. My honest advice to you is find someone with a valid opinion on writing (in my case it was my editor, who I became quick friends with) and get them to be brutally honest. Take every single word they say to heart and then feel free to ignore every fucking word if it doesn't help you. Do this with as many people you can trust and get them to be honest and if they don't provide criticism they're not helping. People often avoid hearing the bad things about their work and people often avoid saying bad things about it, but you need to hear every single criticism no matter how irrelevant it actually ends up being. If it doesn't help you immediately, it will eventually because once you're published your work is open to the judgment of millions of people. It also helps with denials, lots of agents/editors can be helpful, but don't be surprised if you get a standard denial letter... I once got one when I emailed an agent asking what genres he was currently accepting submissions for, which was exceptionally funny.