I'm good at planning in Journal of life stuff

I have trouble giving myself credit for things. A lot of trouble. I saved a company over $30 million in revenue one year, and over $20 million in year-to-year recurring revenue (literally the best kind of revenue possible) and got laid off a few months later because I was a pain to work with because I dared say “this is dumb” to shit that was dumb. Ce la vie. I mellowed a bit as I got older.

But I never really saw how amazing what I built to do the testing required to find the bugs that lead to that massive cashflow for the company I worked for. I understand how complex it was, all the pieces, but I (falsely) imagine anyone could do it. That is simply not true. My current job shows, time and again, that I think differently and can achieve things others don’t really have the ability to see or understand, even with pictures and diagrams.

But that’s the problem…if I start to give myself any form of credit for having anything close to skill, it sounds like bragging or being a chest-thumper. Well, that’s because anyone who can’t match or exceed you doesn’t want to feel inferior, so they tell you that you have a problem when you actually surpass them, because the ability to admit someone is better than you is a personality trait a lot of people never attain.

I lost 180 lbs and not even for a single day did I feel like I’d accomplished anything or gotten anything I wanted. There were days that were nice, sure. Like the day I realized I could lay (sleep) on the floor without pain. Or the day I could do a pushup. Stuff like that. But I never found any joy in being normal sized. I’ve regained about 80 of those lbs and I can’t say I’m a fan, but I recognize myself in the mirror again, so…idk what you make of that.

”…you said you were good at planning…” Indeed I did. I made plans to lose weight and they worked. I made plans to solve problems at work and they worked. I made a plan 11 years ago, to buy a car that would last for 10 years with minimal repairs, and then replace it with an electric car when I was done.

Now, my specific plan 10 years ago was to go Tesla, but that’s on shaky ground because of how firmly rooted in anti-right-to-repair the company is. As much as Louis Rossmann hated being called a rapist by Toyota, Ford, et-al, Toyota will still sell you ever single piece of a car if you call them. Tesla won’t even sell you wheel nuts. Fucking wheel nuts. As in the bolts that hold your tire on to your car. The things you have to loosen and re-attach when you blow a tire. They won’t sell you those. Why?!

Money. “We’ll fix that tire for you in our shop buddy.” And charge me $50 per nut. Thieves. Nevermind all the other problems associated with that.

But I digress. My car is now 11 years old and starting to show its age. I only had two significant repairs to it, and while both were somewhat expensive, that was an artifact of living in a place with a high cost of living and also picking a garage that wasn’t the cheapest so that the work would be done properly. And, while I hated getting fleeced on every repair, the repair fixed the issues and didn’t leave secondary issues. So…it worked.

I want to replace my car because it’s getting to the point where it’s going to have a new $3000 repair every year. Seals wearing out, rust on the exhaust system, etc. But electric cars, 10 years on, aren’t where I wanted them to be. The Model S Plaid shows that what I want is achievable, but still too expensive. I don’t need the crazy acceleration. Rather, the battery pack and the range. Electric does make more sense for power vehicles than gas engines. And the days of an old ‘dumb’ car like mine, where the only electroncis were simple switches, with no real computers to speak of, are long gone. I miss those days, but unless I build my own car, that’s not really something I can avoid.

“Vote with your dollar” is a meaningless statement when entire sectors of industry move in a singular direction. You can only vote with your dollar when the choice you want exists at all. “Then make that choice exist!” That’s…non-trivial. Tesla is the first new car company in 100 years, and they aren’t profitable. The only reason they didn’t go bankrupt is because Elon is..well..Elon. People give him their money with a smile because they believe his words. Those words are somewhere between outright lies and wild exaggerations. I leave it to the reader to decide which term they pick.

But there’s one thing I can’t plan. How to make myself happy. I was programmed to serve others. I was programmed to serve other people who would not show me the love and respect I was due as a human. I broke out of that programming, but now, I have no purpose. I can find any number of places to help out, but I always find people in those roles who are just like my parents. People who will gobble up whatever I will give them, then laugh at me behind my back, not include me in their activities, and generally be spiteful dicks.

I don’t understand how to attract people who are good. I don’t understand how to be anything other than alone. I cannot make a plan that is viable to solve these problems. I want to see a plan that leads to me just feeling happy inside. Not for a few months every decade. Happy, permanently. Happy day in and out for years on end. The same sort of happy 90% of humans feel. Because the level of alone and disconnected I am and feel is normally reserved for people in solitary confinement. Even prisoners get more social interaction than I do. I can’t make a plan to achieve this goal. And by ‘can’t’ I really mean “i see no path that leads to that objective.” It doesn’t mean it is impossible to achieve, it means I can’t see any way to work toward that goal.

I’ve run meetup groups, I’ve run guilds, I’ve run social organizations. I’m always alone. Something fundamental to how I think and exist is broken, but I can’t see it. Therapists can’t see it. I’m great at planning, but I can’t find a way to plan for this.