Mediocrity is making me sick

TehGinjaNinja · 2014-05-24T00:40:08+00:00

Mediocrity is making me sick

You aren't mediocre, you're depressed. Get into counselling. Your university probably has mental health staff. Go get some help.

I feel like going to university is the most average thing in the world.

Most people in the world never attend a university, so it's not average.

why the fuck do I have to live the meaningless zombie-like life.

Meaning is what you bring to a thing, not what you take from it. You're shambling zombie-like through life because you don't a have a vision; you don't have goals. You need to decide what, specifically, you want to do with your life, and then pursue it.

Why couldn't I have become anything GREAT.

Great men don't just "become" great. They make themselves great. They don't settle for "anything GREAT", they pick a goal and work towards it.

You want greatness handed towards you? Too fucking bad, that's not how the world works. You have to create your own greatness for yourself.

But fuck I want to be content.

No you don't. You're fucking terrified of being content, which is why you're so depressed about having no great goals to shoot for. You want a life of meaning and significance. Well, that takes struggle. It takes sacrifice. It takes risk. It takes long, hard years of work. You have to embrace that struggle.

Let me tell you what I did today, I quit my job. Seriously, that just happened today. I had a six figure salary doing software development. I was taking home $1500 a week after taxes, and I just walked away from it.

Why? Because I decided to hit the reset button on my career 2 years ago. The work lacked meaning and significance, so I ended it. First, however, I did it for 2 more years and saved up a huge nest egg. Now I'm going to study new kinds of software and get some certifications. I may sign up for a masters program in math or stats.

After 3 or 4 months of training and self-improvement, I'm going to spruce up my resume and hit the job market looking for the career I want. I'm shooting to become an AI developer. I want to code Machine Learning algorithms which will process massive amounts of data and discover things no human analyst could have. That has meaning and significance for me.

I may fail, and have to go back to the company I just quit and ask for my old meaningless job back. But even if I fail, I will have tried. And I'll try again, after rebuilding my savings.

That's how it works son. You pick a goal that matters to you. You make a plan to attain that goal. You put in the work and make the sacrifices to make your plan happen. If you fail; you rebuild and try again. If you change your mind, you start over with a new goal and a new plan.

This is what it means to be a man, embrace the fucking struggle.

[deleted] · 2014-05-23T23:51:01+00:00

Man I used to be exactly where you are. Kinda creepy how close you sound to the way I was 12 years ago.

Drop out. Seriously. You are young and still have plenty of time, but you can't ignore that gut feeling.

It's not about being great vs mediocre, it's about doing what your inner soul is built to do.

Quit, just leave it behind and do some traveling and thinking.

Society says you need to follow the prescribed pattern, but fuck that.

I never did anything about it. I chugged along, got the stupid degree, and the stupid jobs that followed, and for the last decade after I've floated along with a dead soul living a life that never gave me any joy whatsoever.

And now here I am 33 years old, struggling to figure out how to fix my life. Wondering if it's too late, if that spark that I stuffed down and hid has died forever.

[deleted] · 2014-05-24T03:37:26+00:00

This sounds like depression. You really need to look into a therapist, or some type of support group.

Don't let anyone here convince you that this is weakness, and you just need to get over it. Consciousness is chemical, and it sounds like yours are all out of whack.

Crying when you come home every day is not normal. Please get help.

Talk to someone, go to the doctor, get a prescription for anything and everything.

Better men then us have killed themselves over this.

whoops_fap · 2014-05-23T23:47:21+00:00

How old are you? Where do you live?

Aaron565 · 2014-05-23T23:55:09+00:00

Fuck you for wanting to be content. Honestly if you hate mediocrity it will never go away. You need a good dose of passion so that you can throw yourself at something until you either are good enough to be unique or rich enough to travel, etc. You will not be happy as long as you are content it seems. There should always be some risk and hopes in your life, always.

xiko · 2014-05-24T00:30:14+00:00

My brother didn't know shit about programming. He decided to make an online system and learn programing. After two years he made it and made money from it. He got great jobs and after 7 years he is happily working at SoundCloud. Get a goal and do it.

LS_D · 2014-05-24T01:36:52+00:00

being happy is a choice .. learning how to make that choice in all possible circumstances, is the art of living

deciding your worth via other people's opinions is a mistake ,, sycophants abound

magicalbird · 2014-05-24T03:03:37+00:00

Find your passion. Do that passion and let it kill you.

If you need more money to do that passion, save up and work anywhere towards getting the money to do that passion.

StrongestVersion · 2014-05-24T05:20:37+00:00

Have some thoughts... hope this helps:

1. Focus on your present actions, not on your past failures to take action. Stop focusing on what you could have done, and focus on what you can do. You are losing a lot of precious energy because of this.

2. Stop pursuing greatness; it is just a cleverly disguised version of the need for external validation. Think about this for a second. How exactly do you want to be great? What exactly entails greatness?

The pursuit of external validation is the most soul destroying force in the world. It will cause you to abnegate your own needs, while you do things to placate others. So you need to stop putting so much pressure on yourself to be great. Instead, you need to find activities that assist you in validating yourself just by engaging with them.

3. Stop trusting the popular narrative of how you should live your life. "Going your own way in life" is one of these narratives. "Lift weights to succeed" is another one. There might be nuggets of wisdom in these aphorisms. But you have to want to do it, for the sake of doing it. Otherwise, you run the risk of being very unhappy on a daily basis.

You need to focus on doing things that you actually want to do. Your brain is constantly being inundated with information from the outside world on a daily basis. There's a lot of value in this info, but not for the person who is not anchored within themselves. So your first priority needs to be to find your real inner voice, not the fake one that echos all the nonsense that the culture surrounding you promulgates.

I have a few more thoughts, but I think this should suffice for a start...

1vs1 · 2014-05-24T06:25:54+00:00

Man I feel you. I felt that zombie like life a couple years ago because I was depressed. You should go get some help/ talk to somebody if it doesn't clear up soon.

In terms of being mediocre, I think a lot of us are mediocre. I'd consider myself mediocre. I was just at a friend's party a couple of weeks ago and I was pretty much a wall flower while my friend was the life of the party. But that doesn't affect me that much. I have goals in life that I want to achieve, and I urge you to do the same.

When I got through my depression phase, I realized how much shit there is to learn in this world. Right now I am so driven to improve myself, this is what I live for. There is always something to chase in this life, you have to find what it is that you're passionate about.

We both might be mediocre our whole lives if we keep comparing ourselves to other people. See if we were to compare ourself with Bill Gates, we'd be a only a speck of dust. So don't compare yourself with other people. Compare yourself with the old you. Have you improved in any way over the past couple of months? couple of years? If you have you're not mediocre in that sense if you can see yourself grow.

I'm getting a bit emotional as I write this because I can totally relate. I just hope you really make some good choices down the road. Just remember there are so many things in this world that are amazing, you just have to find it. Travel the world if you have to, do whatever the fuck you want because its your life.

Alfach · 2014-05-24T07:33:29+00:00

I don't see how the advice to drop out and travel will help OP. OP does not have the funds necessary to do so, nor will he get the funds from his parents.

Title	Mediocrity is making me sick
Author	StrongestVersion
Upvotes	9
Comments	20
Date	May 23, 2014 11:09 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/26c5dw/mediocrity_is_making_me_sick/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/mediocrity-is-making-me-sick.139957 https://theredarchive.com/post/139957

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