13 ms·

I'm a shut-in. This is my story

• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted_account 14y ago
  "It only takes one crazy dick to cause dicks for generations to be forever mutilated, The Butterfly Dick Effect." What am I reading.
  • confluence 14y ago
    Poetry. Circumcision, like other hazing rituals, is simultaneously pointlessly arbitrary and unnecessarily barbaric.
• dreamdu5t 14y ago
  Not much of a story.
• jpxxx 14y ago
  TL;DR: Abuse survivor gets depressed, has untreated foot wounds, descends into his own echo chamber, navel gazes for fifteen pages.
  • lastbookworm 14y ago
    Normally I wouldn't detract from someone's opinion of something I wrote by responding to summaries. I believe people should be allowed to judge for themselves whether opinions are accurate and when authors jump in defensively it's a slipper slope to derailing the conversation. However, your summary is factually misleading. You imply I was physically abused which I was not. Hopefully my article doesn't give that impression, I didn't mean to do so. I don't have foot wounds. They're bible cysts, basically fluid that leak from my joints into my feet. Here is a quick wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganglion_cyst https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganglion_cyst. I'll leave it up to others to judge the rest of your summary.
    • jpxxx 14y ago
      I'm going to put this in all caps because you are not paying my day rate: YOU ARE AN ABUSE SURVIVOR. Find professional help (NOW) to starting approaching it and dealing with it. Find professional help (NOW) to help manage your mental disorder (depression) which carries an enormous and present risk of self-harm. Get whatever the fuck is wrong with your foot fixed, and start walking out the door on the regular. You appear to be bright, talented, and a capable writer. Resume applying those gifts to the people around you instead of yourself. You are the best person in your own life, now be the best person in other people's lives.
      • q_revert 14y ago
        even a cursory read of the post would suggest that the OP is actually doing quite a good job of dealing with his problems
        • Domenic_S 14y ago
          To the uninitiated, perhaps. It's the first step to wellness, but people (especially the types that are drawn to technology) put way too much weight in analysis. "Getting better" stalls, more often than not, in analysis. It's why your friend or cousin or mother or whoever tells you they went to therapy for 10 years and accomplished nothing. The root cause is this: feeling bad about yourself is easier than the pain of actually doing something about it. So if you can stay in analysis mode and take a couple hesitant shuffles in some direction, that's good enough. You'll never get better, but at least you don't have to change. That's why the author should get into therapy today. With a good therapist, and some willpower, he can begin actually changing his life. As it stands, I expect a couple more blog posts and another existential crisis sometime around Thanksgiving.
      • Afforess 14y ago
        You seem to have a significant bias against leading an asocial lifestyle. I suggest that this says more about you then it does the OP.
        • 14y ago
  • gverri 14y ago
    This kind of answer is totally unnecessary. Only because you can't understand someone that's different from you and has different problems, that does not mean you're allowed to ridicule and make fun of their situations. This kind of abusive behavior is the root of many suicidal (and homicidal) tragedies.
• cousin_it 14y ago
  It's sad that when your problems are genuinely different from other people's problems, people won't believe you. They will keep giving you advice that worked for them.
  • darrhiggs 14y ago
    Yeah, the one I get is: "Me and 'X' have been talking and we think you should do 'Y'" Great, now I have groups of people talking about me.
  • deleted_account 14y ago
    I think it's more sad to expect others to divine the solution to your problems when they have no point of reference; I think it's sad when expressions of love and concern are rebuffed with a dismissive, "But you don't understand." Of course poor Aunt Sharon doesn't understand. And no, the onus isn't on you to make her understand. Unless you want her to...in which case, it may take some effort on your part to frame your emotions to her experience. Even then you may only meet part way. Which you'll have to accept, but not as a failure.
    • pdonis 14y ago
      I think it's more sad to expect others to divine the solution to your problems when they have no point of reference I didn't get any sense that the author was expecting others to divine the solution to his problems; I think he was just irritated because they were besieging him with "concern" without actually helping any. I think it's sad when expressions of love and concern are rebuffed with a dismissive, "But you don't understand." An expression of love and concern like "Hey, it seems like you're going through a rough time, I hope things work out for you, let me know if there's anything I can do to help" is one thing. That should be met with thanks, yes. An "expression of love and concern" like "I think you should do X" or "Have you tried Y?" is quite another. It is not really aimed at helping or comforting the person who is having a rough time; it is aimed at easing the emotions of the person who thinks they are being comforting. That is the sort of thing that might (and should) get met with "But you don't understand". Of course poor Aunt Sharon doesn't understand. Indeed. And therefore she should not presume to tell the person she doesn't understand how they should "fix" things. The issue isn't really that she doesn't understand; it's that she doesn't even know that she doesn't understand. it may take some effort on your part to frame your emotions to her experience. This is true, but Aunt Sharon has to be willing to meet you halfway. Many Aunt Sharons are not.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• EToS 14y ago
  worlds worst foursquare user! :)
• networked 14y ago
  >Over concerned humans must cause at least some percentage of suicides. Someone needs to compile the stats and do a TED talk stat. Now that's an interesting hypothesis. I have seen a study on how insufficient parental attention increases the risk of suicide in teenagers but not this. Edit: searching for "overprotection and suicide" ("overprotection" is the best keyword I could come up with; I did the search without the quotes) yields little.
  • DanBC 14y ago
    England has some suicide and deliberate self harm research done by "University of Oxford". (Uh, that's not "Oxford University" or any of the colleges.) You could noodle through their website? (http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/ http://cebmh.warne.ox.ac.uk/csr/) You might remember the reports a few years ago about cortisol levels in children at nurseries, compared to children at home? People said that cortisol was a stress hormone, and thus it's bad to be in the brains of children, and thus putting children in nursery is bad because it causes cortisol to be released. But other interpretations are that children need to learn to regulate their emotions, and that lack of cortisol means over-protection and lack of a chance to learn how to regulate emotion. Sorry about the lousy links, it's the best I can do at the moment. (http://www.parentingscience.com/daycare-centers.html http://www.parentingscience.com/daycare-centers.html) (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18633-mom-and-dad-stop-stifling-me--its-damaging-my-brain.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18633-mom-and-dad-stop...)
    • taejo 14y ago
      > "University of Oxford". (Uh, that's not "Oxford University" or any of the colleges.) The University of Oxford is indeed the ancient and well-known university informally called Oxford University.
• jetti 14y ago
  It was an interesting read and I saw a lot of myself in there. Instead of books on science I was reading books on philosophy. My favorites were Neitzsche, Sarte and Kirkegaard. One thing that definitely struck me about this though was how much it reminded me of the narration of Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, maybe that is why I enjoyed this as much as I did.
• Skoofoo 14y ago
  > When you are so different there is no frame of reference to figure life out. I can relate to this. As I spend time withdrawn from society (including cybercultures like reddit), my views distance from everyone else's, and it becomes harder to relate to people. I appreciate Hacker News because people here tend to be unusually receptive to independent thought.
• metastew 14y ago
  Interesting read, though I just have one minor complaint about your style of writing... Foot notes after every 3-5 paragraphs is somewhat jarring and hampers the flow of reading your story. I suggest moving all of the foot notes to the bottom of the post and let the reader read them if they want to. Just my $0.02.
  • nthitz 14y ago
    Indeed, I got to the first set of footnotes and assumed I was done reading until I saw this comment!
  • axusgrad 14y ago
    The footnotes wouldn't have made any sense all the way at the end. My favorite footnotes on a webpage are when you can hover over the superscript, and have the note floating there. That way, they wouldn't interrupt the reading.
    • mhartl 14y ago
      The hover design, while nice, doesn't work well on tablets.
• gverri 14y ago
  I used to be just like you. I spent almost an year without leaving my apartment. Only going out for food (too hard to find 24/7 delivery in Brazil). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_N.H.K. You're probably familiar with this animated series. One thing that helped me a lot was doing some Vipassana meditation. Acknowledging that everything as an end. All the pleasures, all the pain. If you wait long enough you'll fell better. Other important point is Nutrition. It makes a WHOLE LOT of difference on your mental habits. And after some time it will make you a new person. I suggest you watch the movies "Food Matters" and "Fork over Knives". They're great movies (with some flaws) that can be a kind of "wake up call". As someone that was on the same boat I wish you all the peace and happiness in the world.
• yesnomaybe 14y ago
  I'm disturbed by how much of myself I saw in this. Cutting off all contact with friends in order to work on my project without distraction. During my day job I space out fantasizing about re-emerging into society as a successful entrepreneur. And I've picked up an adderall habit to facilitate binge programming on the weekends.
  • OGC 14y ago
    well, good luck with your _amphetamine_ habit.
• pan69 14y ago
  Thanks for writing your story. I didn't read the whole lot but I can tell you're a person who could use a friend or someone who can help you. Would it be a loss for you if you told your story to a professional counselor? I think you should. It's only a small step to take and there are no obligations what so ever. You're a prisoner of your own life and it doesn't have to be like this. You already took a first step by publishing this story, now take that second step!
• jey 14y ago
  I have a logistical question: how/what do you eat?
  • gcb0 14y ago
    Is this an AMA now?
  • k-mcgrady 14y ago
    I presume he orders online. I'm not sure what it's like where you are but here I order online from the largest supermarkets (Tesco, Asda etc.) and have it delivered to my door the next day for a £3-5 delivery charge. It's pretty commonplace.
    • cowsaysoink 14y ago
      That isn't commonplace in the US which I assume that is where he is from considering the whois info. In fact it would probably be much more expensive here. The main choices probably are a family member picking up groceries for you, or a small market which still can deliver groceries, I know mine stopped offering delivery around 5 years ago because the community size grew so much.
      • itafroma 14y ago
        Though I don't have any metrics on how "commonplace" it is, it is pretty accessible in several urban areas (Portland and other Oregonian urban areas, Seattle, LA and other SoCal urban areas, San Francisco, and New York off the top of my head) and the price is only slightly higher than what k-mcgrady quoted. In Portland, if you're okay with a four-hour window, Safeway charges ~$7 USD. A one-hour window is ~$13.
      • pizzeys 14y ago
        Though I'm UK-based, not US, I'm a housebound agoraphobic (I don't leave at all, ever) - you'd be surprised how easy it is logistically in this day and age, actually. I have family members pick things up that are time critical (ie. my dumb ass forgot something I'd need) but other than that everything is deliverable from somewhere.
• hjay 14y ago
  I don't have much to comment on this, as I myself am an introvert and somewhat of a shut-in. But after reading up to "I guess I'm kinda different.", I couldn't stand it and had to use Developer Tools to change the background color and font color. Still feeling some discomfort in my eyes and it feels like the text is burned in front of me.
  • Lambdanaut 14y ago
    The paragraph text didn't necessarily bother me, but the nearly invisible headers are just ridiculous.
  • berlinbrown 14y ago
    I did copy paste into gedit. A for effort.
• gcb0 14y ago
  i'm pretty sure he choice of typeface is part of the shut-in work.
• throwawayz9v7 14y ago
  FYI, the page was blocked by my workplace in the brief period between reading it and re-visiting it after reading the comments here.
• tsunamifury 14y ago
  I am a person who loves being social but gets in shut-in cycles. I once took 4 months and backpacked in the woods of Canada in an extreme cycle. Several points bothered me in this story, as it was a combination of honest observations and immature conclusions. 1) Life takes time, you need to be at peace with being young and not having all the solutions. 2) The author seems to suffer from observing the image of Silicon Valley success without actually experiencing it. Most people fail, most projects go unfinished, most beyond that never make enough money to sustain a company. A successful product is the evolutionary result of 10,000 products before it that failed, went unfinished, or were unprofitable. Even the best of the Valley didn't sit down, bang out some brilliant code, slap a business strategy on top, then cash a billion dollar check. They worked long and hard through repeated failures, with sometimes B and C squad talent, slowly carving away at the block of ideas until a product appeared. Then after that, they spend months or years compiling a business strategy and altering the product to become palatable to enough customers to gain a profit. It takes a team of imperfect people and a lot of time to make even a passable product. Even finishing a unprofitable product is an massive achievement in itself. It worries me at the end that the author again seems to come to a single conclusion that he believes will bring both success and happiness. That may never come, or it may be that the author never makes a lot of money or never is the best in the field. This was the most painful part of growing up for me -- accepting that you live in a sea of talented individuals, and you are in no way, the most talented among them. You learn to reach out, form a team, and that great things come from hard work and diligence as much or more so than from natural talent.
  • rokhayakebe 14y ago
    "A successful product is the evolutionary result...." What we call success is possibly persistence mixed with applied failure science, a method in which the practitioner modifies his techniques continually based on previous failures. She is an explorer who does not stop because she meets an ocean north, instead she tries to go west or if she gots balls, she builds a ship, but ultimately she is determined to find what she seeks.
  • omegant 14y ago
    I completely agree with you. I would only add that even when living in a sea of talented individuals, most people will keep themselves on known waters. It takes a lot of effort to go outside of your comfort zone, but once you do, you gain a huge advantage over more talented people. Because now you feel able to do things they think are out of reach or simply don´t think of them at all. It is really being outside a bubble while the other people is inside. I´ve been feeling this way for this last year since I begun my project. Probably I will fail, but even then I have am far ahead from I thought I would be able to be.
• RyanZAG 14y ago
  I think you're wrong on one point: you constantly repeat how different and strange you are from everyone else. You're really not. As you mentioned at one point: you didn't want to go out and play, but the teacher forced you to do so. This is very common behavior, and teachers are forcing children every day to go out and play. Huge amount of people go through similar experiences to yours. Others start to lapse into an experience like yours and get scared - they go the other way and try to force social behavior on themselves, often becoming bullies or the kid you mentioned who hurt himself trying to show off to you. So my advice (since you're obviously not posting something publicly and expecting to get away without advice shoved at you) - stop worrying about 'normal'. Stop trying to fit in or not fit in. There are no points to be won by having social interactions. Social interactions are so you can learn, experience and enjoy. Approach them like this, and walk away when it's not working and try again. Everyone is doing the same thing, social interactions are breaking everywhere, you just don't see it so much from a distance because people cling to the precious few social interactions which have actually worked for them. Since you're trying to put things in terms of programming: if your program doesn't work/is slow because you're looping over the wrong thing, try again with a different loop, try a different data structure. You don't need to avoid 'if' loops in the future because they didn't work once. You don't need to keep trying to use an 'if' loop because its 'normal to use an if loop'. Excuse the terrible metaphor.
  • gruseom 14y ago
    I agree with your first paragraph. We're really not very different from one another, but a craving for identity causes us to seek or invent distinguishing features, which have a way of turning into traps. The pattern seems to be that one spends adolescence and early adulthood acquiring this "wardrobe", then later the task becomes to shed it. That is not easy, because by when you get to shedding-time you've lost the ability to distinguish between your wardrobe and yourself. It's counterintuitive and devilish, but the most enticing material for identity-building seems to be one's suffering. It took me many years to learn about that, and boy was that process slow.
    • runT1ME 14y ago
      fascinating. Are there studies done on this, or is this a well known developmental phenomenon?
• Erwin 14y ago
  This reminds me a bit of this first-person piece of autism-related sci-fi: http://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-Dark-Elizabeth-Moon/dp/0345481399 http://www.amazon.com/The-Speed-Dark-Elizabeth-Moon/dp/03454... I used to keep a diary, where 13 years ago my entries were long monologues similar to this. There was a clear correlation between amount of personal and emotional human contact I had in a day and the length of the diary entries where I tried to reminisce going mushroom picking with my grandmother a decade earlier. The world today seems too constantly distracting for that sort of thing.
  • nickknw 14y ago
    Just curious, which way did the correlation go? Less contact => Longer entries?
    • Erwin 14y ago
      Yes, less personal contact, perhaps a less meaningful job at the time meant more time brooding over everything due. Now that I do something people depend on and no longer live alone, I haven't felt the need to reminiscence.
  • lastbookworm 14y ago
    That seems like a very interesting book. Thanks for sharing! I have added it my list of things to read.
  • geargrinder 14y ago
    This is an excellent book. Thanks for reminding me of it.
• digitalengineer 14y ago
  Thanks for an excellent read, K-2052! Loved your story. You should really start publising! (Oh, you won't be alone after the collapse, I have a cunning plan as well -wink-wink, nod, nod).
• jamesmiller5 14y ago
  I found that the 'Bad habits can become a lifestyle' section to be very well written and it made a number of great points, notably: "Life is the series of choices we remember making. When something goes wrong it's easy to see it is as not a choice. There was too much stress. Your dog ate it. Your clients were assholes ... I now realize that to fix myself, I'm going to have to be myself; and to be myself, I'm going to face myself."
• jawns 14y ago
  "My name would be Kenneth Luke Erickson. I'd be male. I'd like blue. I would be a Gemini. I would be Christian. They'd chop off some of my penis so I'd never forget that last one." There's a common misconception that circumcision, for Christians, is a religious ritual or a religious requirement. In fact, it's just the opposite. Many Christian denominations (e.g. Catholicism) specifically DISALLOW circumcision, if it's done for religious reasons.
  • jmcqk6 14y ago
    >In fact, it's just the opposite. Many Christian denominations (e.g. Catholicism) specifically DISALLOW circumcision, if it's done for religious reasons. On the other hand, many christian denominations (e.g. esp pentecostals) circumcise precisely for religious reasons. The simple fact is that while it might not be a religious ritual for some christians, it is for others christians. Oh, look at that, christians not being consistent from one type to another. What a surprise.
    • Domenic_S 14y ago
      > Oh, look at that, people not being consistent from one type to another. What a surprise. FTFY.
      • jmcqk6 14y ago
        I completely agree with what you're expressing here, but when you belong to an organization that claims to have a monopoly on meaning and truth in the universe, a higher level of consistency is not an unreasonable expectation.
        • joelmichael 14y ago
          Catholics and Pentecostals are different organizations. Back in the old days we used to purge non-orthodox views, but that's not as tenable anymore, so we have thousands of interpretations. In any event, the traditional Christian view is that circumcision is no longer necessary, as stated by Paul several times in the New Testament.
• bitwize 14y ago
  I like the humorous tone of this essay. It made it resonate all the more powerfully for me -- who also use humor to deal with painful situations -- but you're the sort of person about which one of my more gregarious friends might say "u r soooo fukin funny!" all the while without understanding.
• timwoj 14y ago
  > If you don't like who I am then you can go fuck yourself. I think this is something that comes with age for almost everyone that perceives themselves as different. People in their younger years attempt to change how they are in order to make everyone like them. Later on in life, they realize that this is pointless and they're better off just being themselves and shedding the people who can't deal with that.
• undupe 14y ago
  I wish there was a web community for shutins like myself who would like to no longer be shutins. It's definitely not Grouper - sorry, "ending loneliness" doesn't mean finding a girlfriend and being judged on your tagged Facebook photos (as someone who is actually lonely, I have no photos tagged, and I assume that's why Grouper never admitted me. You have to be unlonely to join Grouper, in reality.). The only people I've really been able to relate to are other loners but they're hard to find obviously. My biggest fear, which is confirmed time and time again, is that my awkwardness and general boringness scares people off. It'd be nice if I could meet someone who, with fair certainty, would not be like that to me. > They form relationships with other people only if they believe they will not be rejected. Loss and rejection are so painful that these people will choose to be lonely rather than risk trying to connect with others. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000940.htm http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000940.htm
  • mnicole 14y ago
    Don't feel too bad about not being eligible for Grouper. An [introverted, self-proclaimed lonely] friend of mine did one a few weeks ago and said he had nothing in common with any of the women except for one that also worked in tech. She ended up being the one everyone was pining after and because lonely/introverted people aren't the ones that are going to strike up conversations (especially if it means competing against others to do so), he ended up going home and feeling pretty bummed about the whole situation. Are they really targeting "lonely" people? I thought their model was more about getting people who wanted to do that sort of thing out and doing it without the planning. If they're trying to target people who prefer staying in and playing board games, their homepage does a terrible job selling that.
    • undupe 14y ago
      Their official mission statement: > Our mission is to end loneliness. This is oft reported elsewhere in describing Grouper: https://www.google.com/search?q=grouper+mission+end+loneliness https://www.google.com/search?q=grouper+mission+end+loneline... It made me think it was just a site for meeting people, not necessarily dating. But it is exactly that: a group dating site. I was confused by its non-datey name, and their "sex in the bathroom" article which seemed incongruous with ending loneliness. You can fuck strangers while being utterly alone, and I think most people experienced with healthy relationships would agree that dating/sleeping around out of loneliness is an unhealthy way of getting out of it.
• josscrowcroft 14y ago
  From the comments here I suspect that not many read to the end, and so may have judged the story before reading these closing words: "Publishing this was hard but it felt like my only option. For years I have not been living my life, I have been delaying it. Five years ago I paused my life and now it's time to choose between play or stop. I'm pressing play. The world pushed me and instead of pushing back I hid, now I'm pushing back. I'm determined to be myself no matter the consequences. I know that facing what I am and facing the world is really going to hurt, but I now know that I can survive it. I know that eventually all pain fades away and you're left with only scars. I know that no matter how shitty my emotions tell me things are, that it's not actually that bad. I'll come out the other side no matter what. I'm going to step once more into the fray, come whatever may. [...] For now, I'm going to; Get Out. Live. Grow. Change. Fight The Urge To Fade."
  • omegant 14y ago
    If eventually he is able to simply live and forget about how attack life, he´ll do nicely. If he obsesses about how he is struggling and how he is not fitting.. he may end in an infinite loop and going nowhere. I hope he succeeds.
  • argonaut 14y ago
    I thought that the ending actually ruined the essay. It felt like an anomaly, a self-contradiction. His entire life story is one of how it has always been impossible to reprogram who he is, and here he is, at the end, declaring how he's going to "fight the urge to fade," and change himself, trying to change himself into something that is very clearly antithetical to who he is at every level of his personality.
• pnathan 14y ago
  People find the idea of people who prefer to live by themselves disturbing. I mentioned Sylvan Hart recently to some geeks, and cue the deranged bomber jokes. Really made me sad. Nothing wrong with introversion, IMO. Lots of people have done it throughout centuries. It can be harmful, and props to OP for recognizing the problem and choosing to move forward.
• xk_id 14y ago
  Programming is supposed to be enjoyable. If you're not enjoying it, why are you doing it? If you are enjoying it, then what is the problem? There's people who dedicated their entire lives to Mathematics, for example. They did it because they had a passion for it. The absolutely extreme case is obviously Erdos. If you don't have a passion for programming, stop damaging yourself… If you have a passion for programming, then you're lucky, and you should let the entire world know that you do.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  • mtrimpe 14y ago
    That's a very specific diagnosis made from a quite widely interpretable blog-post. I'm sure you mean well but these kinds of off-the-cuff diagnoses are, if not wrong, rarely of any benefit to the diagnosed.
  • hvs 14y ago
    A professional psychiatrist or psychologist would never presume to diagnose someone based on something they wrote, and I doubt that your armchair psychology is any more accurate.
• jcroll 14y ago
  If you're serious about the world forgetting you then why did you write this post?
  • astine 14y ago
    If you'd read the post to the end, you'd know. He explained it pretty clearly.
    • jcroll 14y ago
      Oh, guess I had more important things to do with my time.
      • astine 14y ago
        And yet you still had time to leave a comment? If you want to criticize what someone writes, read it first. As it stands, you're just an ass.
        • jcroll 14y ago
          omg dude serial?
• JohnBooty 14y ago
  I've been struggling with overcommitment for years, too. It's caused a lot of pain and it's a very serious thing. Like you, it makes me tend toward isolation and it... well, it hurts. "Before long I'm committed to a shit ton of things and I am so stressed out that I cant focus long enough to fake my way through life. Inevitably I implode and disappoint everyone I had commitments to." First, there's a ton of positivity in your writing, because you're recognizing that overcommitment is really bringing you and (even better) you're taking responsibility for correcting this. This part concerned me a bit: "I'm taking all the skills I have learned from learning and applying them to my psyche. I'm going to re-build and re-form my emotional centers from the ground up. I'm going to take my unhealthy mental state and refactor it into a functional vibrant self. I'm re-life-ing" This is very ambitious! Not all ambitious goals are a path to overcommitment, but are you being very careful that this ambitious goal won't wind up being yet another overcommitment (leading to yet more pain) on your part? Perhaps you could set up meaningful milestones along the way? For example, you could count the number of times you stick to a 4-day or 5-day work week each month. Even if the "reward" is just a big green checkmark on the wall calendar, that can be really gratifying. Best wishes!
• javajosh 14y ago
  Hey Ken, I see a deep internal contradiction in your belief system, and I want to point it out to you in the hopes that you can lead a happier, more fulfilled life. What is that contradiction? I want to be alone I want to make money This does not compute. Creating things for money is a fundamentally social act. And indeed, the stuff of your life was all produced by others, from the house you live in to the clothes you wear to the food you eat. It was all build, manufactured, grown, distributed and sold by others. By consuming even these mundane things you've been integrated into society your whole life, even during these 5 years of isolation. Now your childhood is over, and you know it is now time for you to create. But mere creation is not enough to make money. You need to create things that people want to buy. That means solving their problems, addressing their pain. And that means being social. And, since money is vital for your very survival, you must be social to some extent. To rail against this fact is to rail against the need to eat, or to breath. Society is literally that vital to your existence. The fact that it is painful for you is bad luck. Just like asthmatics have it pretty hard when breathing itself can be painful. And just like an asthmatic, you need to figure out how to manage your condition so that you can breath again. Don't worry about just "getting back to normal". Something tells me that you will remain a unique, talented individual even when you start socializing again.
  • martinced 14y ago
    "Creating things for money is a fundamentally social act." Uh!? For years and years I've been writing books (real, printed, published books) and articles. I was probably the most antisocial person in all my friends group and I was also the one making the more money. I could disappear for months from civilization. My only trip outside would be to go to the grocery store and going to the garage doing the maintenance of my spiffy sport car (bought cash with the money I got from writing). The rest of the time I was writing, during night time. Sleep 6 to 7 hours and wake up at 1 or 2 pm. Take the car for a spin, alone. Rinse and repeat. No social life. No girlfriend. Just work (and the money that goes with it). Making money and being social are two totally different things. Especially moreso in that always-on, Internet connected, society were brilliant people can work from home if they want to: there are more and more domains where you can work from home and be as much anti-social as you want. I know a single mom who runs her entire business from home, updating her websites, receiving her stuff and repackaging them. And she's making a killing money-wise. A company I was contracting for was shelling big $$$ to south america to two genius programmers: we didn't have a freakin' clue as to wether this guys were socials or not. Doesn't matter. It's nearly your entire comment which doesn't compute: making money and being social are two completely orthogonal concepts. Now don't get me wrong: I'm not saying you should be anti-social just for the sake of it or be anti-social and make lots of $$$ just to make a point. Since I've opened a FB account (I barely ever go to the movie but a friend I hadn't seen in ten years convinced me to go see the movie and I kinda liked it, so I opened a FB account, go figure ; ) And now I've got a girlfriend since two years and life is better I'd say. Yet I make much less money than when I was that anti-social books and articles writer. I wish the author of that entry good luck and, like you (but for different reasons) I think he should try to socialize to some at least some extent.
• CanSpice 14y ago
  There's one paragraph that's sticking with me: > Play keep away with a normal persons hat and you're just taking their hat. Play keep away with an Autistic persons hat and it's possible that it's his best friend named "Charlie". It's highly unlikely that Charlie enjoys flying at highspeeds through the air into greasy hands. You're not playing keep away with a hat, you are tossing around and abusing his best friend. It takes a damaged monster to play keep away with someone's dog or their younger sibling, but most will think nothing of playing keep away with the weird kids hat. My four-year old daughter isn't autistic, but this morning we were running to her daycare. My wife had her blankie and was out-running my daughter. All of a sudden my daughter stopped and started bawling, when five seconds earlier she was loving the chase. I'm thinking that maybe the above paragraph doesn't just apply to autistic people, it applies to anybody who forms a bond with an inanimate object.
• astine 14y ago
  There is a persistent ignorance about homeschoolers lacking socialization, an assertion I find laughable. Homeschooling done properly, frees up more time and increases true socialization. I was involved in sports, chess, and a wide range of homeschooler organized activities. 90% of the homeschoolers I have ever encountered were as equally if not more involved in social activities. I was homeschooled and while it's true that homeschoolers tend to have cooperatives, and join social clubs, you're still more isolated than children in more traditional situations. To this day I'm more socially awkward than most of people I know and I wonder if the homeschooling didn't have something to do with it.
  • strlen 14y ago
    Most personality traits follow a normal distribution: half are more socially awkward than average, half are less socially awkward than average. I found it surprising and even counterintuitive, but empirical data suggests that on average home-schooled students are still better socialized than students of public schools. Here's one article: it was published in a Catholic journal, but it seems to be heavily cited by secular social scientists and sufficient in its methodology ( http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/001-is-private-schooling-privatizing-36 http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/001-is-private-sc... ) I'd add that there's also more to socialization than not being socially awkward: someone can be socially awkward, but start a family, be active in their community, and contribute to society through work, entrepreneurship, or academic pursuits.
  • cupcake-unicorn 14y ago
    I was homeschooled (just through highschool), yet maybe not a "traditional" homeschooling - I basically chose my own classes and went to community college, etc. I would think that any studies done on homeschooling from the more religious aspect would be hard to interpret. I feel more socially awkward and that I have to fake it, but I think in reality I do quite well. Sometimes I wonder if what I'm experiencing is the fact that I have a low-tolerance for sophomoric, highschool-like drama and BS, because I never had to experience it :)
• readme 14y ago
  Recluse? I work from home, so I only leave to get groceries or go out to dinner with my girlfriend on an average week. I don't have any more IRL friends. Going to try to make some when spring comes, but it's too cold to really bother right now. Being a recluse isn't so bad.
• emilnewton 14y ago
  I say fade. See what happens. You already know what happens if you don't fade. You fight every second of every minute of every hour of every day until one day you die. It'll be exhausting and possibly not worth it. Maybe fading will be some totally cool experience? Of course no one else would ever know, but screw em.
• Osmium 14y ago
  I find it interesting that a person who has shunned all outward social connections, tries to then make a social connection via the internet in retelling his story to us. Humans, whether you like it or not, have evolved to be a social species. Even if one wishes to withdraw, they can only do this in practice with the tacit permission of the society they live in, at least unless they're prepared to give up all worldly conveniences and just go live in a cave somewhere. I also find that interesting, though I'm not sure what to make of it.
  • Afforess 14y ago
    I had the same thought. It's a bit of a paradox. If he is living a healthy asocial lifestyle, there is little chance he would need to externalize his internal thoughts. So by writing an essay on his healthy asocial lifestyle, he contradicts himself... ------------- Edit: Seems reply below is right, I misread the article. He actually calls out his lifestyle as specifically "unhealthy". >...my unhealthy mental state...
    • pdonis 14y ago
      He didn't say his asocial lifestyle was healthy.
• georgeorwell 14y ago
  Hey K-2052 / lastbookworm, good job on coming out of the closet, that's a difficult step. You obviously want to turn things around, and I think you'll find that in general, at least a tiny part of the world will be there to support you if you genuinely want your life to change. It's gonna take some guts and determination, but it can be done. Don't pay too much attention to all of the people in this thread criticizing you or offering advice that doesn't fit. The two worst things about the internet are that it's simply more difficult to empathize with other people, and that there are fewer / zero consequences for rudeness. One thing caught my attention: > I have never known my Dad. My mom left him when I was four. They were both drug users and to escape the drug usage my mom left him. I have only blurry memories of him. None of my memories of him are positive. Having had similar experiences, from my perspective this is the root cause of your troubles. It's kind of unbelievable how deep the rabbit hole can go in terms of how this affects your life. I just want you to keep that in mind. Take care and good luck. You'll figure it out.
• ytNumbers 14y ago
  Site Advisor has flagged this site as a security risk. I wonder if the site got hacked. Wow... Talk about kicking someone when they're down!
  • lastbookworm 14y ago
    Did a quick check and nothing is hacked. It's just a static page served up by a rack app on heroku so it's unlikely it would ever be hacked. One other comment mentions the site being flagged so I imagine there is something that certain filters don't like. IIRC Site Advisor uses bots to flag sites. In the essay I cuss a lot, mention Las Vegas and mention drugs so I imagine it's a combination of 1. bots not liking the things I mentioned and 2. it's a recently registered domain.
• MattGrommes 14y ago
  I was a lot like you and the main thing I took away from your story is not that you're so different, but that you're _really_ young. I thought almost all the same things you did about books, being smarter than your peers, being an alien (for me it was an alien robot). When I was 12 or so I saw a kid on TV talking about how he intentionally made an inventory of facial expressions and body language and it literally changed my life to know I could do such a thing. You're not as different from other people as you think, but you're just coming out of the age where you think you are (again, I know from experience). You've made it to the point where you know you have to make a change, which is awesome. I hope you can also get to the point where you can stop being so self-conscious about being different and just live your life. Unclench a little. I'm almost 35 and I'm just now starting to enjoy people in a real way, having done a program of "Fake it til you make it" for years. You're entering real adulthood now and you'll make adult friends, you'll move on and get some perspective on things. Take it from me, it seems like an impossibly long time now but in 5 years you'll look back on this story in a very different way.
• scottrogowski 14y ago
  Really interesting read. That is the first time in a while I have read something that long on the internet without skimming. A couple of thoughts: You mentioned that your last close friend was when you were 12 and that you were in a distance high school. Do be sure that you realize that middle school was as bad as it gets in regards to social pressure to be normal. This is a different world now. Immediately out of college around your age (22?), nerds like us become pretty cool because we have interesting jobs and make a lot of money. To some extent, almost all programmers have a few social idiosyncrasies and for the most part we share these in common. So what that means for you is that those idiosyncrasies which previously got you bullied are now the same that people associate with success. While I realize that for you it might be the only way, I think your plan in the 're-life' section is a bit misguided. Learning to be social is a fundamentally different thing from learning a new skill. There is no sense in focusing down and trying to find the core problems because social behaviors generally exist below our stream of consciousness (somewhat related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introspection_illusion). If you approach this in a way that you would learn a new programming language, you will also quickly find that the difference is that learning to socialize is NOT interesting or fun in an academic sense and you will quickly lose motivation. Instead, since you seem to have a lot of varied interests, I would start with a Meetup. There should be hacker or entrepreneurial groups holding meetings near you (unless of course you still live in Idaho!) The important thing is to go out and try to do things you are interested in with other people no matter how painful or awkward at first. Social behaviors will eventually be picked up subconsciously. Measuring your progress is always a good way to motivate yourself and stay on track. But I would avoid measuring "all the human things" and instead focus on metrics like, "how many people did I say hi to today" or "how long was I outside of my room". To make this easier for yourself (and therefore increase your chances for success), you might not want to change your name to K-2052 just yet. I think it is great move and I agree with your logic but put it to the side until you are a bit further along on your quest. Then, you will have the ability to rock the name. And suggestions on where to move? Being in a big city is important more than anything else. I live in San Francisco and a great thing about this city is that weirdness is embraced more than anywhere else I have ever spent time. You might also think about moving to a abroad if you know any foreign languages. People will tend interpret social differences as cultural differences and you will be get a bit more wiggle-room with your weird behaviors while you come out of your shell. I would venture to say that most of us here (myself included) feel empathy towards parts of your story so just know that you are not as different as you think you are!
• waxjar 14y ago
  What I find strange is that this story even exists. If OP truly wanted to live in solitude, truly didn't want to be bothered by others, this story would have never been written. Why even bother? I'm not suggesting it is a cry for help (though it certainly could be), but it certainly is an attempt to connect with others. I must admit I haven't read the full story. I found it too lengthy.
  • worktodo 14y ago
    Skipping to the end might give you more perspective.
• SCAQTony 14y ago
  So many words defending his recreation and insisting it was a legitimate sport. It was as if he presumed the reader was judging him and he felt the need to defend himself. I suspect some spectrum issues are involved but he is still no less of a person.
• yarou 14y ago
  Stay strong pal. You are clearly a gifted and talented individual. However, more often than not, individuals such as yourself tend to be extremely critical of themselves. Change is hard to accomplish, especially when you're set in your ways. But I think you have solid achievable goals. FWIW I'd be your friend :) On a side note, I didn't realize HN was becoming more and more Reddit-like every day. This is probably the first submission I've seen that reads almost like an AMA...perhaps it is a sign of things to come.
• cupcake-unicorn 14y ago
  Something I find interesting that I don't see immediately mentioned in the comments is what a "shut-in" or "hermit" really means when you have the internet. The author has a prolific Twitter account, and in writing this is interacting with people. Yes, online interactions are different, but a modern-day "hermit" with access to the internet can't really be viewed as such. Also, I may get downvoted for "armchair psychology", but I did notice elements of what seemed like thought disorder in the post. It's also diagnosed often in autism spectrum, not just with schizophrenia. I do think diagnoses generally mean very little, and "personality disorders" generally bother me because it seems like broadly defined, you could slap that on anyone - which is also the case with thought disorder. It's not like everyone who goes off on a tangent is "crazy"! But I've interacted with enough non neuroptypical type people (myself being one of them) that I did notice a similarity to others.
  • intended 14y ago
    Do note that interacting on the net is one thing, dealing with a network of people such as friends and colleagues at a firm, is an entirely different ball game. Unspoken comments, reading between the lines, motivations behind bringing up a topic, moods, wit, having to respond to aggression immediately, saving face... Its on a different level. ---- In the case of HN, personally I feel its more polite not to mention it and see if someone with real experience echoes the same. The reason armchair psychology should get downvoted is the same reason idea-guys get downvoted when they talk about something they don't know much about. Although I have to admit, I've seen my experience on HN change. Earlier someone would chime in with real information, now I see similar arm chair diagnoses (on subjects = all) crop up.
• tantaman 14y ago
  It sounds silly & cliche but having a significant other will really help him out in this department. Someone that you have to commit to. Someone that'll be there long enough to see all your bullshit and hypocrisies and call you out on them. If you're alone, it's easy to commit to doing something only to later "forget" about the commitment when it is no longer convenient for you. A partner that you've made a commitment to won't forget it so easily. The same goes for business. Maybe that's why startups often have strong co-founders.
  • mike_esspe 14y ago
    Not necessarily. For me, when I'm living with someone, in several months I become a complete hermit. Probably because all my rudimentary needs for socialization are fulfilled.
• AlexDanger 14y ago
  Hey K, have you ever considered working with children? You know, the ones who'd prefer not to play outside with the other kids? Whilst at uni I worked part time in various capacities as a tutor or educational assistant. One school in particular was very accommodating to students with different needs. And not just the kids who couldnt read, but the kids who wanted to read all day. I think you'd have something to contribute in that space.
• theklub 14y ago
  What I find funny is that everyone wants to be different but we are all different and thats what makes us the same. Also shut-ins are ironic in that they will never meet each other, therefore missing the people that they might possibly get along with best.
• msutherl 14y ago
  The typeface on this page creates a visual illusion whereby the terminals and serifs appear brighter than the stems and bowls. Makes me wonder if this happens with a lot of serif faces in light on dark color schemes and if there's some way to fix it. Also, not sure if the OP is reading, but while the alternating dark/light text on a grey background is an interesting idea, it just doesn't work. The dark on dark text is hard to read, the emphasis is too strong and comes off as heavy-handed, and the overall effect on the experience of reading is negative in my subjective evaluation.
• coldtea 14y ago
  >I'm not agoraphobic, I'm not depressed, and I'm not insane 2. I simply don't socialize. Isn't that for others to judge? It's not like one person can judge himself to be or not be the above.
• krob 14y ago
  This guy probably has aspergers. It makes sense in my opinion. Very articulate, doesn't see the social necessity to be around others.
• lightyrs 14y ago
  Although I think you overestimate your uniqueness, you have the potential to be a very good writer. Please keep the posts coming, Kay. Of everything you wrote, this line was the most relatable to my own experiences: "If you don't like who I am then you can go fuck yourself." Once I adopted this mindset, all things became possible. Good Luck!
• berlinbrown 14y ago
  Awesome.
• berlinbrown 14y ago
  One small comment, black on white pages tend to read a little better.
• cpsales 14y ago
  I'm truly sorry for you. God has made us to live, enjoy life, and see the beautiful world. Only have 1 life and might i say that you are not living it...at all.
• grownseed 14y ago
  This is really interesting and I'm glad you felt like sharing, but as a lot of people have pointed out, I don't think you're so far out from the norm, or maybe few people are actually normal, I'm not sure. The more you segregate yourself from society the more you'll try and generalize behavior, leading to the idea that most other people fall in the same basket when in fact they're just normal in only certain respects. I was born with a slight genetic defect, meaning that by the age of five my hearing was entirely gone. Luckily enough for me, multiple operations have led to getting most of my hearing back, and of course I'm extremely thankful for that. Not meaning to spill out my life here, but I simply want to point out that being a shut-in was in a way forced on me, and I learnt a lot from it. I turned the most traumatic experience of my life into the best thing that's ever happened to me. Very much like you I'm pretty weird in a lot of respects, and as I believe you're trying to achieve, I've turned most of my weirdness into strengths. I can read body language naturally, so I use it to identify stress and discomfort in other people, often before they even realize it. I empathize very strongly, generally without people needing to tell me what's happening. I can become "deaf at will", i.e. shut the world around me entirely and concentrate even in the noisiest places. I see rhythm and patterns in everything, even in social interactions. And so on. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the source of your weirdness is very much the same as the source of your greatness. Having the tools is one thing, and it's now a matter of using them properly. It also turns out socializing is very much an elaborate way to showcase your weirdness to your peers, and often realize someone will share some of it with you (a lot like some people have done in this thread). Two things that have made my life considerably better in every respect: Don't lie, to others but also to yourself. I have done the same thing you have, pretending, a lot! Pretending to be happy when I wasn't, pretending that I cared when I didn't and vice-versa, making up stories that I actually started believing in myself to justify everything... So I made the simple decision to not lie, ever. I can't even begin to explain properly the freedom of mind it's brought me, and how much simpler and cleaner it's made my relationships and my life in general. It also means that after a while, you'll also never get offended by things. When you don't lie, it's nearly impossible for somebody to undermine you. Simplify your life. I used to have a fancy place, owned tons of fancy stuff, have very strong opinions about everything that I thought other people were too stupid not to agree with, etc. You start believing that you actually need the crap you buy, then you get attached and worry about said crap. It is, in my honest opinion, a waste of physical and emotional time and effort. Nobody gains from it, least of all you. I've done away with pretty much all of it and am really happy for it. I have more room in my head and in my life for genuine worries (of which there are now very few) and I appreciate the simple things a lot more; the things that most people of all backgrounds can connect with. This is my 2 cents, but as a fellow weirdo and programmer who's gone through depression and a bunch of other unpleasant things, I thought I'd share how I've become the happiest I've ever been. (My apologies for the long comment)
• rfugger 14y ago
  On the surface, this sounds like schizoid personality type: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizoid_personality_disorder http://schizoids.info/ http://schizoids.info/ I know it's not about labels, but sometimes knowing a word for it can help you find others' stories, which can help you go easier on yourself for being different from what you perceive is "normal". Edit to add: Get your B12 levels checked. Low B12 can lead to schizoid-type behaviour. Also possibly folate levels.
• INTPenis 14y ago
  You're a 23 year old boy who thinks too much. I hate to sound like a cliché, but, it's just a phase!
  • fideloper 14y ago
    I have to agree on this point somewhat. I'm not saying you're "just some 23 year old boy who think too much" (Altho I'm leaning that way), but the difference in thinking, attitude and well-being between teens to early twenties to late twenties and into thirties and beyond can be drastically different in each.
    • INTPenis 14y ago
      Yes and we have to keep in mind that people grow up a lot slower these days in well developed nations. In other words, we're spoiled rotten kids at 25. So not having found your role in life at 23 is not uncommon these days.
• DocG 14y ago
  I will read it to the end, half way, got to go, but two things: I am year older than you, you know what psychologist said to me, only time I ever visited her(I had to, for some paperwork)? I am still not grown up. If you are under 30, you are still not fully developed. Second, there seems to be unlucky amount of not your kind of people around you. I have managed to find people, who seem "default" on the surface, because they have to, but the praise different. Almost any kind, there is no "you are too weird". And it helps, its awesome.
• talmir 14y ago
  I read this and had this small voice in the back of my head translating what I read into "Look at me! I'm special! I'm a shut-in! I do it because I'm special!" In reality the author is just alike everyone else, with fears and emotions which caused him to shut himself in and rationalize it with some meditative jargon.
  • onli 14y ago
    Don't think so. That rather reads like the description of an undiagnosed asperger or not-so-dramatic (not in a sense of not severe, in a sense of "not screaming when overloaden" unlike in movies) autistic patterns. He even mentions an Aspie-board, maybe he is aware of it but didn't want to mention it in his article? The water, the need for routine, the unabilty to fully play chess when in a social context, the need to simulate social interactions - the "funny" thing is that if that diagnosis is right, he is not faking by faking it, it's simply him. The not so funny thing is that if that diagnosis were right, many comments in this thread like "we all feel like we are not normal" mask that condition, and lead to unhelpful advice.
• dinosaurus 14y ago
  This comes up as porn for me... (work filters)
• easy_rider 14y ago
  I used to shut myself in a lot of time when I was playing poker avidly. Instead of going to parties, bars, socialize with friends, there were always tournaments to grind. Putting in more hands meant cutting down on variance, meant being able to deal better with bad luck and facilitating a more consistent winning playing style. Obviously it was the thing I loved at that moment, the riches allured to me and my friends didn't "Get" the amounts I would be playing for anyway. They also didn't "get it" why it sucked so hard to end up 11/1500 in a big tournament. (Hey you still won right?). You're right when you see relationships don't work when you always have a communication problem. Usually though, the problem is not that people don't understand you - (sidenote: i know there are just stupid people who don't, or don't want to. You don't need them anyway). The problem is you won't let people understand you, because you are ignorant, arrogant and self-righteous. No offence but, if you were such a genius you wouldn't be working on Ruby projects (no pun.) People probably would understand you, and you would probably have better socializing experiences if you tried. Seems you sucked at this stuff when you were a kid, and now when you've grown up enough to be able to understand yourself and put everything into words, you still decide its the best route to go. Well die lonely then if you like it. It's not for me.
• scotty79 14y ago
  Funny how many things are similar in my own biography. OP: chess, checkers - me: school olympics, chemistry, math, physics OP: tour trauma, when asking tour guide a question, everybody laughed - me: tour trauma when tour guide played naughty joke on my mom and everybody laughed OP: abusive dad, divorced early - me: no dad, left at birth (fortunately awesome grandpa that taught me Ohm's law, how to drill, solder and lots of other stuff) OP and me: interest in psychology (for me ended with learning what Freud was saying, I have no business in branch of science where name of such clueless bent puppy is remembered) OP: crappy kindergarten experience, me: spent few hours in kindergarten, don't remember anything but I never went back there, I cried too much when they tried to drag me there Fortunately, I had (still have) great, stable mother, I had close friends (full honesty with them, nearly kind of mind melt) until I was 17 or so (OP had some till 12). I'm 34. My true self kind of melded with my fake self. They switch in seconds. When I'm interacting with acquaintances I still fake it. Often I fake amusement because I want to come off as cheerful, but I'm rarely truly amused. Pretty often I fake quite well which makes me proud. But I don't have to fake with few people that are close to me. I just have to restrain myself from exposing full me in some cases, but I guess most people do that even (especially?) with their loved ones. I went different way than OP, I was madly in love two times as a teenager, now I have de-facto wife. She's awesome. After 8 years or so of the relationship, from time to time I feel that I love her and I feel the urge to tell her that. Not sure if that's unusual but I think it's a good sign. But I know I chose one path. And sometimes I long for the other, for being a shut-in. I hate going out. I hate meeting people who are not my closes friends. I don't eagrely await meeting even my closest friends. Social interaction exhausts me. I used my relationship to shed off almost all of my friends. Still I think living among people takes at least 80% of my energy. I have only 20% left for doing the stuff I actually care about. As they say, grass is always greener on the other side. I'd probably be same looser with too high IQ and too little motivation if I were a shut-in. But one can dream.
• shoxty 14y ago
  In all seriousness, how can you support this? Is it assumed that he lives with somebody who pays for his living expenses? If I didn't have so many bills to pay I feel like I would be more of a shut-in.
• enimodas 14y ago
  Here's the thoughts i had while reading the article, or after. A static idea of self, vs fake self. This is all wrong. Your mind / "you" isn't unchanging and properly definable, you can work your mind to do anything. You in 5 years could be the 'fake you' that you can be now. What's "fake" anway, it's still you who's acting, thinking and feeling. I wish i could explain this better, since it comes up all the time. I think you could benefit from reading some philosophy, a bunch of history, and lots of other people's experiences, and maybe even some pua stuff could be insightful. There's "how to live" "things i learned from xy" posts on HN every week, i don't understand how come everyone isn't a zen master yet? All your experiences are from while you were growing up. I consider people adults about halfway their 20's, thats when their brain is "complete". It also means your experiences of the social world are almost worthless, since everything changes as you and the people you interact with grow up. You're still young. Why are you so certain of everything? You said you were interested in science, didn't science teach you to be sceptical? It seems you leave no room for uncertainty, or accepting that some things can't be known, in your thoughts about yourself, about others, about everything. i tried visiting wrongplanet some years ago, but it seemed full of whiny oversensitive circlejerky hivemind full of people who only want to read what makes them feel nice and as such get stuck. You wrote "too" 2 times where you meant "to"