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I'm a longtime lurker here on TL. I'm pretty sure I've had an account since 2009, check the forums every day, yet I still have under 100 posts. This is my first blog on here, and to be honest, I'm only even bothering with it because I see how positive people on here are. How sympathetic to other's issues and they always seem willing to help.
I'll be the first to admit, my problems aren't nearly as serious as a lot of people's. I don't do drugs, my life isn't in danger, I'm not poor or homeless. If anything, my problems probably seem like those of a spoiled brat. I'm just extremely apathetic. Which makes it almost ironic that I'm even writing this post describing my apathy.
I don't come from a rich family. I grew up with a single mother, I didn't know who my dad was until I was 10, and I grew up in a town with a total population of 310 living in a trailer. Even through all that, I somehow managed to grow up wanting to know everything. In high school, I was co-captain of the math team, co-captain of the quiz team, participated in JETS, basically anything that involved knowing stuff, I was there. Then came time to go to college. I applied to big universities and got accepted. YAY, right? Well, not so much. Despite having a great GPA, high ACT scores, and a 5 on the Calculus AB AP test, I couldn't go to a big university for the simple lack of funds. My mother's credit score prevented me from getting student loans to cover tuition, I had no savings, and the part that killed me was that anyone that had the ability to help me shot me down. My dad, my grandparents, etc.
As a result, I had to spend a year working in a factory to save up money and enrolled in community college. They had a partnership with a nuclear power plant to offer classes for non-licensed operators, which I thought would be a great chance to move up in the world. I spent a year taking classes and working 40 hours a week. I did all of my homework and earned an internship. Then I realized I hated it. It was terrible. I didn't get to do the math, the physics, anything. It was boring as shit. I remembered part of my reason for wanting to go into nuclear science was partially my love for physics and partially my desire to live in not-America. Nuclear science has the blessing of being a high-tech field that people don't want to go into, for the most part. What else is sort of like that? Programming!
Fast forward to today. I am still taking classes as I had financial issues that prevented me from taking max classes every semester/my apathy issue. I don't even have an associate's degree yet. I still work 40 hours a week, but I'm a VB scriptwriter for an insurance company as opposed to working in fast food. You'd think that more than double the pay would make me happier. That living in a house instead of an apartment would make me happier, but as time goes on, I just feel more and more depressed.
Right now, people that I went to high school with are getting bachelor's degrees. I won't graduate from community college this semester. I work in VB every day, but I've failed my VB 1 class 3 times at the college because I can't seem to get any passion for programming. What's worse is, the less I care about that stupid VB class, the more I'm screwing myself over for a bachelor's degree. My GPA is below 2.0 and the worst part is I don't care. My dream is to move to Japan and every step of the way, I'm just preventing it (need a bachelor's degree for a work visa). Even at work, I have no passion. I'm writing this on the clock while I watch debates on Youtube because I just can't seem to get my life into a somewhat sorted out pile. (That and the product I was working on is down for the day thanks to unforeseen issues over the weekend.)
I look at myself and I know I have the skills to do almost any job, but I just can't bring myself to care. I guess I just thought that writing this would help my get some motivation to just finish up my classes and actually go somewhere in my life instead of being the loser that it seems I was destined to be, but now it just seems like writing this has just made me more depressed about my current state. Eh, hopefully someone has a good comment that can help people like me out. I'm sure I'm not the only one that just has no reason to get up in the morning outside of trying to make enough money to eat.
 
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Maybe you are too high achieving and therefore hard on yourself, just saying, you seemed very disappointed that you had to do a CC. You need to know most people SHOULD do a CC first as its a LOT cheaper. Maybe you expected a full ride scholarship, if you are a white male you probably will never do that unless you invent a solar panel powered by piss or have some crazy genius history.
Anyway you seem to get bored easily and your motivation is gone, you have fallen into the trap my friend. You think you need that serious STEM degree, need that job to get that self-worth, you tried the degree in science, boring, tried programming, also boring. However you are a very smart man supposedly. You need to think about business.
Read the book, Choose Yourself by James Altucher, he failed a lot at life too, but he turned those failures and all the sucking up and social game playing he used to do, threw it all out and went independent and became a multi millionaire, the book has practical no BS advise about how to live day to day so that you don't run into long term depressive periods and keep positively moving forward with your goals.
You sound like a person who isn't fit for playing The Man's game of a day to day grind, you have to know thats not the only way to live, you can work for yourself, doing your own passion and every day work toward your goals.
What is cool about business is your smarts are applicable right away, the more you know about your market the better you will be than the other guy, theres a competitive spirit in business that will breathe life into you.
My advise is consider entrepreneurship you might realize that you love being the boss.
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First of all, getting degrees is not a race. You are probably moving much faster than other people who have to work 40 hours a week. You can't keep comparing yourself to other people. You need to be proud of who you are and what you are doing. And if you don't like what you are doing, you need to find the courage to change.
Have you considered that your apathy at work has to do with the industry are in? Insurance is a hard industry to get behind. When I worked in that industry, I saw major hypocrisy in the companies mission statement (to help people) and their practices (anything to help the bottom line). Its really hard to believe in what you do if that is the case.
How hard would you work and love your work if you worked for Blizzard, or were programming to help people, or for any ends that you could really believe in.
I think some steps that you can take are to 1) start looking for work in a different area. This means get a resume out there and be selective to what you apply to. I think the suggestion to start your own business is a little too much. There is a lot involved, huge risk etc. Maybe when you are a bit more seasoned and experienced and have some type of great idea for a business plan you can make that happen.
2) Focus on your school work. Start by spending 30 more minutes on than you currently do each day. I know you can find that time, it will make a huge difference if you try.
and 3) do something for yourself. Start a savings account for a trip to Japan. Put $400 or $2 in it each paycheck. Whatever you can afford. You have a goal of moving to japan. Start by taking a trip there instead of full on moving. I know you want to live in "not America". But ask yourself, is that because of America, or the people in your life, or are you running away from something? Because it sounds like you are just trying to get away instead of working on fixing what you have.
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On April 15 2014 04:03 Smancer wrote:
and 3) do something for yourself. Start a savings account for a trip to Japan. Put $400 or $2 in it each paycheck. Whatever you can afford. You have a goal of moving to japan. Start by taking a trip there instead of full on moving. I know you want to live in "not America". But ask yourself, is that because of America, or the people in your life, or are you running away from something? Because it sounds like you are just trying to get away instead of working on fixing what you have.
Actually, I did just that in March of last year. The trip was amazing and was probably the happiest I've been in years. Also, part of the reason I dislike America, I feel, has to do with where I grew up. I'm not exactly religious and I've had people trying to shove religion down my throat the whole time. So I've always had it in the back of my mind that a country with less religion is going to be superior by default. Not that religion is necessarily bad, but it's like hearing Blurred Lines on repeat.
Have you considered that your apathy at work has to do with the industry are in?
I don't think it has to do with the company itself as I've only been here a few months and my work has nothing to do with the insurance. I write testing scripts for their software, so to me, I'm just throwing in dummy data that has no effect on people's lives.
Read the book, Choose Yourself by James Altucher, he failed a lot at life too, but he turned those failures and all the sucking up and social game playing he used to do, threw it all out and went independent and became a multi millionaire, the book has practical no BS advise about how to live day to day so that you don't run into long term depressive periods and keep positively moving forward with your goals.
I'll have to read that. Actually, I did start a small thing when I was jobless for a while, but I wasn't making money fast enough to really go anywhere as I didn't really have the money to properly fund it from the start. Currently, I'm working with someone from school to make a mobile game, but I'm worried my apathy will just come into play there too and I won't finish it. (She's doing the art and I'm doing the programming.)
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You gotta do what you gotta do to survive, it isn't a race. I've worked customer service for almost 4 years after graduating in 2011, and only just got a break in a new job, in a company with some real opportunity to grow and take those next steps.
I personally love this quote from Clerks: "Sooner or later, I'll do something with my life. And make my mark. But until then, whatever I do is not a waste of time it's all building towards something"
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EPT
