Recently, I've been feeling emptiness in my life. I wouldn't quite call it depression since it's too strong a word and I'm technically not sad. I'm 23 (but Korean age system insists on labelling me 25 for some reason -_-). I have one semester of college to go. I haven't even served my military duty yet. The military service is a pretty fuss for the young 20's. You'll have a conversation about it every 3-4 days and it somehow never gets old since it's something you never stop thinking about until you're done with it.
So, my the reason I'm writing this, where to start...
First of all, I feel bad that I've almost graduated college and I don't think I've learned enough to be ready for the 'real world.' I didn't put nearly as much effort as I should've in my first 2 years in school. I regret it but not completely. Just having fun like I wasn't even a student definitely left some good memories. But I've been thinking about 3-5 years from now. I might (or probably) have completely different friends from now, just like high school is a stage in your life. A lot of my friends already have jobs, or served their military service, some even married lol, so I always have this uncomfortable feeling that I'm falling behind like I'm on chapter 3 whereas they're on 7, except we're all given the same amoutn of time.
My sleep schedule is fucked up. I've woken up around 10-11pm for 3 weeks and feel like shit because there's nothing to eat (all the restaurants are closed and I live alone). I can't say I've tried making my own food but I've always had the impression that it's harder to find ways to make yourself good meals for single males in Korea. Not like mac n cheese in the microwave So, I'd order from the same 3-4 menu choices I have. It's unhealthy as shit, and after a few months, you feel like the main character from Old Boy who ate dumplings for 15 years straight. You eat to stop the pain of being hungry.
I'm at point now where I don't look forward to eating. I used to enjoy eating. I'd wake up and look up a list in my head and be semi-excited about having sushi for dinner. It's 9 pm right now and I skipped dinner because:
1. I just don't feel like it even though I'm hungry 2. I'm at an all time low in terms of $. My parents say I should ask them to send money (they live in another continent) whenever I need since they understand the town I live in and I should eat whatever I want but I feel like a loser/burden whenever I ask them for (extra)money since they give me a reasonable amount every month. 3. It'd be the same shit I've had
Another thing that sucks is that most of my friends are out of town since it's summer break and I'm basically spending every day alone (mostly in front of a computer) which is boring as shit.
In Korea, there's this werid culture where it's sort of 'gay' to watch movies at a theater with only guys (and ofc, it doesn't apply to girls for some reason). With all the stuff that's considered gay (like guys wearing tight jeans to look tall/skinny and gay fashion sense in general) in this country by other cultures, it's funny that such a hypocritical phenomenon exists :p Anyway, I can't remember the last time I watched a movie at a theater. I used to watch movies reguarly with guy friends only despite the shit I got from Korean-Koreans whenever they found out it I watched a movie with all guys. I miss that feeling of being fully pumped for a movie that I've drooling over from the trailers.
On the bright side, I'm planning to quit smoking. The amount of money I spent on cigs adds up to quite a bit since I smoked a pack a day and at some point I'd feel like shit and feel like it fucks up my appetite. It's odd because some guys from Thailand @ AWCG showed me their packs of cigs from thai and they had those grotesque pictures of ppl who suffered the consequences of long term smoking and I think I may have been affected by it. I never thought I'd be the one to get influenced by those types of propaganda. The last time I tried smoking, I tried reducing the amount I smoke gradually but that didn't turn out well... I basically snapped at one point and said 'fuck this.' I hope I can quit it clean this time. To be perfectly honest/realistic, I'm pessimistic about it since I have really bad self-control. Has anyone ever started reading a long thread and said to yourself 'I'll only read til page 20, then I'll go to sleep' and ended up at page 57? Yep, that's me.
And I've lost nearly 7 kgs over 1.5-2 years from pretty much being lazy. I used to be pretty confident about my build but I'm just skinny now, maybe slightly cut. I'll try hitting the gym tomorrow. I'm hoping to put on a healthy 3 kgs by the end of August.
So that's it for now. I just felt like getting that out. If anyone has advice on any of the things I've mentioned, I'll be listening
EDIT: I just hit sumbit and it told me to login again... almost a FUUUUUUUU moment :D but I hit back a few times and was saved -.-
I wouldn't be too concerned about your situation. I think a lot of people have felt this way in their young life at some point. Like you, I'm also 23, and what does it for me is to make sure every day you do something that progresses your life forward, even is it's small. Whether it be go to work, or finish up your resume, or stick to a plan like going to the gym.
Don't think your behind others. I'm amazed how many people I interact with on a daily basis manage to function and have the brainpower to subconsciously breathe. It's unbelievable. In my opinion, you need to start to focus on the person you want to be maybe a few years down the road from now rather than expecting a miracle over the course of a few days. It takes time. That, and a healthy dose of confidence. Keep blogging, I'm interested to see more. Cheers.
Knowing how to cook is great when you live alone. You can cook a ton of food and then freeze it or refrigerate it and eat it later on. It`s not much work and it`s healthy and decently tasty. Obviously it`s cheaper too. I find that better physical shape gets you into much better mental shape, so good luck with quitting smoking and hitting the gym regularly. I recently started doing jump rope and it`s great, good cardio and you can do it pretty much anywhere.
On July 18 2010 21:58 GTR wrote: grats on getting 3rd/4th in singapore. how was the experience?
Thanks.
It was a lot of fun. Overtall, te food in singapore is excellent in terms of price and taste.
About the actual tournament, it was piss poor. None of the teams, I assume, had any idea that warkeys was banned this year. And on top of that they felt it was okay to make all players play on 11 inch wide screen alienware laptops which is stupid in so many ways.
Screen to small the minimap feels like it's nonexistent. There's no numpad. The keys are obviously annoying as hell to work with. And of course, just like last year, there is LAG on LAN. Yes. There is lag. It's at least 100+ ping especially if you're on scourge.
Host > Sentinel (since sentinel = host) > Scourge. I shit you not, they have to figure out what's wrong since LAN should be close to 0 ping. As the tournament progressed, more and more teams picked sentinel over 1st pick when they won the coin toss I believe.
Our 3rd/4th placer game. The players used up all 10 saves so the refs wanted us to load the game, except it would fatal error. We were down in kill score by 27-20 and they took 1 melee rax from us but we killed the majority of their team in their attempt and roshaned right after (this is immediately before the save). There were only 30-40 mnutes until the awards ceremony so replaying the game was out of the question. Their rules (whatever they are since I they seem really unorganized/inconsistent) stated that Thailand was ahead and should be claimed winner. However, we felt it was unfair since it was entirely the organizer's fault of being ill prepared (maybe a smarter time schedule or putting refrees in since there were only 2 games: ours and the finals going on). The 2 teams and several marshalls discussed the matter for half an hour and the best offer we had was that we get joint 3rd place cept thailand keeps all the prize money.
For anyone that cares it was them: storm, alch, sand king, lion, witch doctor us: tide, sf, sniper, pugna, vs
2 of our players played like shit that game which explains how we were the ones who lost a rax. and they had 3 BKBs and a pipe which made sf and pugna useless in team fights basically.
We had lucky group seeding so I'm not too bitter but I, as well as many other teams, lost respect for the event.
Things should get better as you get older, find friends by being friendly.
Try doing things that require no little to no money to make. Go play some sports, read a book, learn something new (math, history, science, writing)
Buy an instrument like a small keyboard, guitar, saxophone and play it. If you still got one year to go, find something in school to keep your mind entertained.
Things will get better once you find you graduate and find a decent job.
I'm 21, going through pretty much the same thing as you. Alone in a one-bedroom apartment during the summer, and all my friends are 2+ hours away. I've actually been 95% this much alone for 6-7 months now, and this is the first time in my life I've felt this horrible for such a length of time, so a couple days ago I finally manned up and went to see a counselor on campus (they're free). I have poor sleeping habits, undereat for much the same reasons you do, and I'm on the computer all day. I sometimes spend 4-5 days without going outside at all.
So I told the counselor everything that's been getting me down recently and she listened and took notes. After each "chapter" or so, she'd comment and ask questions; basically she just wanted to try to understand me better. At the end of the hour, which ended up being an hour and a half because she's super nice, she gave me some advice.
1. Get outside once a day. The further from home, the better. If you decide to take a walk or do something outside / out of your living space, it's better if it takes you an hour to drive there so that you're away from your "comfort area" for a longer period of time. Make it a hassle to be inside your comfort zone for too long. If you're going to do something like read, don't just sit inside your place alone to do it. Go to the library or a coffeshop or something. Be near people. If you think about it, if you're trying to meet people it doesn't always have to be YOU saying the first words. So if you're among others more people will have more chances to say hello to YOU (and vice versa!).
2. Try to fix your sleeping habits. This means going to bed at night and getting up before 10am. If you're really screwed, like you've been going to bed at 8am and getting up at 6pm for a week, what you do is get up at 8 or 9pm and stay up for 23-24 hours so you then go to bed the next time at a "normal" hour. Keep this up for at least one month. As long as you're up at a decent time, it's ok to stay up late some nights.
3. Three meals a day. This doesn't mean eat healthy unless you think you can really manage it. But the first step in eating healthy is to eat three times a day. I told her I eat two times a day, when in reality I might eat once or so. I feel like this is the biggest thing I need to work on.
4. Try to exercise more. If it's just going for a walk, it's ok. But sitting around all day isn't good because you're not releasing endorphins. Endorphins make you feel good, and they're released when you move.
5. If you know ANYONE in the area, try to hang out with them more. For me, I have my sister and brother in law about 20 minutes away, but we hardly hang out. So one of my 5 short-term goals now is to start interacting with them more.
Once you make the decision that you're going to do all of these things, STICK to that decision. If you decide you don't really need to, or you'd be happier by being lazy and going on the computer all day for weeks like I usually do, you're cheating yourself. I know you probably know all of this already but it helps to have some defined short-term goals to work toward, and then after that you can work on other things. But these things are so important that if you fail to do even one of them, you can fall back into depression / loneliness (because you'll be tired or hungry or frustrated, etc).
Getting a job helps too. But you should try to get your sleeping better before that.
Good luck, and wish me luck too please if you don't mind!
You want to be in the present, right now. Stay there! Do things now, whatever you want. Or sit there and stare at a wall just be in the present.
If you want to know more and prepare yourself more for something then do it. If you want to go find a girl then do that. For a while I was fighting depression and I just would go for a walk and focus on the fact that I was walking. When I got back my mind was focused on the present moment and I was ready to do something.
Oh, and if you work out hard - I assure you - you will enjoy eating any sort of food.
On July 19 2010 00:56 hp.Shell wrote: I'm 21, going through pretty much the same thing as you. Alone in a one-bedroom apartment during the summer, and all my friends are 2+ hours away. I've actually been 95% this much alone for 6-7 months now, and this is the first time in my life I've felt this horrible for such a length of time, so a couple days ago I finally manned up and went to see a counselor on campus (they're free). I have poor sleeping habits, undereat for much the same reasons you do, and I'm on the computer all day. I sometimes spend 4-5 days without going outside at all.
So I told the counselor everything that's been getting me down recently and she listened and took notes. After each "chapter" or so, she'd comment and ask questions; basically she just wanted to try to understand me better. At the end of the hour, which ended up being an hour and a half because she's super nice, she gave me some advice.
1. Get outside once a day. The further from home, the better. If you decide to take a walk or do something outside / out of your living space, it's better if it takes you an hour to drive there so that you're away from your "comfort area" for a longer period of time. Make it a hassle to be inside your comfort zone for too long. If you're going to do something like read, don't just sit inside your place alone to do it. Go to the library or a coffeshop or something. Be near people. If you think about it, if you're trying to meet people it doesn't always have to be YOU saying the first words. So if you're among others more people will have more chances to say hello to YOU (and vice versa!).
2. Try to fix your sleeping habits. This means going to bed at night and getting up before 10am. If you're really screwed, like you've been going to bed at 8am and getting up at 6pm for a week, what you do is get up at 8 or 9pm and stay up for 23-24 hours so you then go to bed the next time at a "normal" hour. Keep this up for at least one month. As long as you're up at a decent time, it's ok to stay up late some nights.
3. Three meals a day. This doesn't mean eat healthy unless you think you can really manage it. But the first step in eating healthy is to eat three times a day. I told her I eat two times a day, when in reality I might eat once or so. I feel like this is the biggest thing I need to work on.
4. Try to exercise more. If it's just going for a walk, it's ok. But sitting around all day isn't good because you're not releasing endorphins. Endorphins make you feel good, and they're released when you move.
5. If you know ANYONE in the area, try to hang out with them more. For me, I have my sister and brother in law about 20 minutes away, but we hardly hang out. So one of my 5 short-term goals now is to start interacting with them more.
Once you make the decision that you're going to do all of these things, STICK to that decision. If you decide you don't really need to, or you'd be happier by being lazy and going on the computer all day for weeks like I usually do, you're cheating yourself. I know you probably know all of this already but it helps to have some defined short-term goals to work toward, and then after that you can work on other things. But these things are so important that if you fail to do even one of them, you can fall back into depression / loneliness (because you'll be tired or hungry or frustrated, etc).
Getting a job helps too. But you should try to get your sleeping better before that.
Good luck, and wish me luck too please if you don't mind!
Those advices might actually help me ^_^
I'm 29 and felt like you lately. I have a younger sister with 3 children married recently and that made me think about my life. I'm always thinking i'll go out today, or i'll exercise, or i'll learn to play piano and i always end up spending the night on my comp browsing random shit.
It took me a long while of off and on smoking to finally kick it. Every couple of months I'll have one when I'm drinking (which is still stupid as hell), but now I don't regularly crave it. To each his own, but for me I had to slowing decrease the smoking. Trying not to smoke after meals ect.. I'd do one in the morning (not always) then try and wait until like 3-4pm and try for one after dinner/before bed. From a pack to three a day is super hard, but gotta get it down somehow. Good luck
EPT
So, I'd order from the same 3-4 menu choices I have. It's unhealthy as shit, and after a few months, you feel like the main character from Old Boy who ate dumplings for 15 years straight. You eat to stop the pain of being hungry.
but I, as well as many other teams, lost respect for the event.
