In the end, I think I’m just not really cut out for the “realities” of modern adult life…
Maybe that’s because I was the “forgotten child”, like you were.
Maybe I’m weak. Maybe I’m still just “too immature”. But I have to be honest man, I just can’t do it…
I don’t think I’m intellectually “stupid”.
I probably have ADHD, among other things. Maybe I’m not as “emotionally intelligent” as I could be.
But I just can’t do this…
In another life, I could have been a good soldier, or like, maybe a pilot or a train driver. Something “simple”, and routine, and kind of… Generic.
Not because I necessarily wanted to do that sort of “grunt work”, but because it is increasingly seeming like my brain can’t do the other stuff…
Or like fuck, maybe I could’ve been a tour guide or something. Or a museum curator.
If we still lived in a world where those things paid a livable wage, and didn’t require extensive study anyway, maybe I still would go that way…
But regardless, that’s never been a path I could pursue.
I just… Can’t. So, much though I hate academia, and suck terribly at it, I’m still going and going and going, because I need that fucking piece of paper… 😑
Like I said to my lecturers, though: if it was just Uni - like, you just do the work, and go to class, and everything else worked around that - ok, I could manage. But it’s not like that now. Not here. You have to work part time, and find somewhere to live which you can afford, and hustle for internships, and manage extracurricular stuff, and play the bullshit game with admin (see again: false accusation).
On top of the study, and everything happening in my life, I just…
It’s all just too much.
For me, anyway. Some people seem to manage most of that. But not me…
It's one of the things that we have lost over the years as our education changed from the vocational to the school.
In ye olden times the blacksmith son learned to be a blacksmith, or of he wasn't cur out for it he might be taken to the baker to become his apprentice. Point being children were given purpose and something to work towards.
However at our current state everything is missing. You aren't given purpose as a child and instead dumped into a school that will generally teach you stuff that you most likely will never use.
You aren't given goals in life since women are ever more entitled and protected by the state. We live in a time where we have no direction and no carrot on a stick. Some people thrive in these environment, some of us however just aren't cut out for it and are falling through the cracks. Even worse when teachers and academia in general becomes what it is now
The thing with the blacksmith is that you weren't just learning the trade, you were learning it by spending time with your dad (or mom for girls) and if he saw that you weren't cut out for it he would go find some mentor for you to learn with where you spent time with your neighbour and friend.
Education tended to be more personal and that was lost.
Every element that made society function has been lost through out the years and it's made festering wounds that now show themselves through mental illness of those lost in the system.
Cases like yours or mine are sort of the inbetween where we do feel lost in the system but haven't gone off the deep end (whether we manage to claw our way back and how is a personal journey that is hard to get help with).
People now lack motivation, we don't have a personal mentor/father figure to get us into a trade, we don't have the reward of a loving partner at home, we no longer have the bliss of ignorance or the happiness of lies.
We don't have the hope of bad kings meeting unfortunate ends or good kings living long lives, our corrupt leadership is less of a single man and more party based thus everything about our society is wounded and all the mentally ill are the symptoms of the festering.
On a brighter note though just cause a person is lost in the cracks doesn't mean they can't have a good life, that they can't have inner peace and find happiness. They just need to stop taking what other tell them is "happiness" and find a "happiness" of their own which they can path towards.
That white picket fence of the american dream (or your local equivalent) has become a path-less dream only achieved by stumbling into lucky encounters, it's time to find a goal that does have a path and chase it (which is hard to do but as long as one is alive you might as well find something to enjoy)
In the end, I think I’m just not really cut out for the “realities” of modern adult life…
Maybe that’s because I was the “forgotten child”, like you were.
Maybe I’m weak. Maybe I’m still just “too immature”. But I have to be honest man, I just can’t do it…
I don’t think I’m intellectually “stupid”.
I probably have ADHD, among other things. Maybe I’m not as “emotionally intelligent” as I could be.
But I just can’t do this…
In another life, I could have been a good soldier, or like, maybe a pilot or a train driver. Something “simple”, and routine, and kind of… Generic.
Not because I necessarily wanted to do that sort of “grunt work”, but because it is increasingly seeming like my brain can’t do the other stuff…
Or like fuck, maybe I could’ve been a tour guide or something. Or a museum curator.
If we still lived in a world where those things paid a livable wage, and didn’t require extensive study anyway, maybe I still would go that way…
But regardless, that’s never been a path I could pursue.
I just… Can’t. So, much though I hate academia, and suck terribly at it, I’m still going and going and going, because I need that fucking piece of paper… 😑
Like I said to my lecturers, though: if it was just Uni - like, you just do the work, and go to class, and everything else worked around that - ok, I could manage. But it’s not like that now. Not here. You have to work part time, and find somewhere to live which you can afford, and hustle for internships, and manage extracurricular stuff, and play the bullshit game with admin (see again: false accusation).
On top of the study, and everything happening in my life, I just…
It’s all just too much.
For me, anyway. Some people seem to manage most of that. But not me…
Oh well.
It's one of the things that we have lost over the years as our education changed from the vocational to the school.
In ye olden times the blacksmith son learned to be a blacksmith, or of he wasn't cur out for it he might be taken to the baker to become his apprentice. Point being children were given purpose and something to work towards.
However at our current state everything is missing. You aren't given purpose as a child and instead dumped into a school that will generally teach you stuff that you most likely will never use.
You aren't given goals in life since women are ever more entitled and protected by the state. We live in a time where we have no direction and no carrot on a stick. Some people thrive in these environment, some of us however just aren't cut out for it and are falling through the cracks. Even worse when teachers and academia in general becomes what it is now
Yep to all that.
On the blacksmith’s son thing, though:
My extended family still gives me shit for not doing medicine, like they all did…
So I guess, in that sense, it still applies, lol.
Though I was clearly never mentally well enough for that path to suit me.
But hell, I guess it might have worked out better than how all this ended up going.
I honestly doubt it, though.
I was just never that sort of person.
I don’t know why. Just not.
And now… Well now I’m just broken.
Unlike my HS classmates, “the path” totally failed, for me.
Again, I don’t know why. It just did.
There’s lessons to be learned from my life, if it does inevitably end prematurely.
Unfortunately I’m not sure anyone will take them on board, though.
But yeah, life is just… Well, some people just don’t make it. Let’s go with that.
The thing with the blacksmith is that you weren't just learning the trade, you were learning it by spending time with your dad (or mom for girls) and if he saw that you weren't cut out for it he would go find some mentor for you to learn with where you spent time with your neighbour and friend.
Education tended to be more personal and that was lost.
Every element that made society function has been lost through out the years and it's made festering wounds that now show themselves through mental illness of those lost in the system.
Cases like yours or mine are sort of the inbetween where we do feel lost in the system but haven't gone off the deep end (whether we manage to claw our way back and how is a personal journey that is hard to get help with).
People now lack motivation, we don't have a personal mentor/father figure to get us into a trade, we don't have the reward of a loving partner at home, we no longer have the bliss of ignorance or the happiness of lies.
We don't have the hope of bad kings meeting unfortunate ends or good kings living long lives, our corrupt leadership is less of a single man and more party based thus everything about our society is wounded and all the mentally ill are the symptoms of the festering.
On a brighter note though just cause a person is lost in the cracks doesn't mean they can't have a good life, that they can't have inner peace and find happiness. They just need to stop taking what other tell them is "happiness" and find a "happiness" of their own which they can path towards.
That white picket fence of the american dream (or your local equivalent) has become a path-less dream only achieved by stumbling into lucky encounters, it's time to find a goal that does have a path and chase it (which is hard to do but as long as one is alive you might as well find something to enjoy)