A decade in reflection in Journal of life stuff

There was a thought provoking question on Reddit a few days ago: “If you could go back in time to Dec 21, 2011 keeping only your knowledge but giving up everything else, would you?” I considered it for a moment and said no, flatly. But the root of that question is one I have asked myself many, many times.

Up until 2016 or maybe 2017, despite all the pain and sadness I’ve gone through, I never wanted to go back in time and change the past because I was proud of who I was and what I had become. I knew I was the direct result of my experiences, and those had made me a better person. But by 2017, I no longer believed that. I had learned all the lessons from the past I needed to learn, but I had also come to realize (and soon would realize even more) that I had learned many wrong lessons. But, moreover, I realized I hadn’t gained anything of value from all my suffering. It’d made me stubborn, but that wasn’t helping me move through life. It’d given me a good mind for divining truth from lie, but that wasn’t helping me get through life. On and on.

But Dec 21, 2011. Where was I? The South. How I was I? Over 300lbs. …if I went back to Dec 21, 2011 I would have to re-lose all the weight I lost initially. I would have to go back to working at a company that paid me around 1/2 of what is fair for the work I was doing. I would have to go back to…just…so many things I hated.

And most of all, the changes that I want to make in the 10 years in between? Well, the biggest changes wouldn’t be to me. See, the problem would be remembering the next 10 years. I was young, idealistic, motivated. I still am some of those things, but it has changed and gotten jaded over time, whereas back then, it was pure. Whether this process is a good or necessary thing is for scholars to debate. I no longer feel proud of the person I see in the mirror. I feel more like I’m looking at an old, tired, stranger.

If I were to go back in time, then there are two jump points I would want to go to:

1. If I were to go back in time but keep my memories, then the destination would be Nov. 1, 2016.
2. If I were to go back but follow a set of time travel rules more in line with what Avengers: Endgame laid out, then I would pick a nondescript date around 1990.

Plan 2 is a very, very, dark plan. The fundamental point would be that I would raise myself. I would fix my childhood obesity, I would fix my lack of loving parents, I would fix many things. I’m not sure what I’d do for work, how I’d get a job, how I’d raise myself…there’s a lot of unknowns in that plan, but the goals I would have are the clear part. Give the branch version of me a life I never had; all the intelligence, knowledge, and motivation, but by channeling the sociopathic energies into a purely humanitarian direction, rather than every stressful day being an exercise in control.

Path 1? That’s far simpler. In 2016 I had a large pot of money in the bank doing nothing. One month would be long enough to go back, setup accounts at Gemini and Bittrex, get my money wired to those accounts, invested into bitcoin, then altcoins, and then to have one year between the date of purchase of bitcoin and the date of sale; allowing for long-term gains tax. I would easily 50x my investment in this window, and be set for life. But being rich isn’t the point. Being rich fixes one problem. The date has other benefits.

I never wanted to live in New England. In 2005 I visited Boston, NYC, and various other major east coast cities as part of a school field trip. On that trip I learned that I would hate living in any of these cities, or any large city at all. Why? I like the suburbs. I like needing to drive to get anywhere. I like people wanting to talk to each other. I like open yards and flat spaces. I like land that is just land, not owned by a business, not full of traffic, not guarded as an ‘investment’. That’s not the only reason why, but it’s a big one. NYC was great to visit; lots of really impressive stuff to see, but also such a terrible place to live.

In 2017, I got laid off from a job where I loved the work, and hated the pay. I was underpaid by around 30%. People laughed when I told them what I made. It was pitiful compared to their salaries, and those same people who laughed also admitted I was working above their level, so I should be making more than them. Yet, I have a management team that didn’t give a shit because I refused to kiss the ring and brown-nose. But then I got laid off, and told that it was my work performance that was the motivating factor. In some ways, I’m amazed I didn’t knock that manger’s head off his neck right there in front of HR. But, violence is only the thing I want in my mind, not in my reality.

Every single thing I hate about my life right now, today, comes from that single event of being laid off. It started a flat spin that I haven’t been able to recover from. I’ve stabilized, but I’m still in that flat spin. This is, obviously, not good.

If I could go back to Nov 1, 2016 I would be able to NOT renew my lease for the 2017-2018 rental year. That would get me out of New England 3 whole years sooner than I would end up getting out otherwise. The investments I made in bitcoin, coupled with knowing that 2017 would be a crypto boom, would calm the anxiety that I would not have money to live, or another job, and all the other fears I had about being unemployed.

Instead of getting laid off, I could choose whether I was going to relocate and ‘work remotely’ against my manager’s wishes, or just plain quit. In the end, it wouldn’t matter much. I have no real desire to screw over my employer, just that one manager, and if life has taught me anything, it is that people like him are their own worst enemies. I don’t have to screw him, he’ll fuck himself and my hands/conscious will be clean for it.

Because I wouldn’t have money anxiety, I wouldn’t go on a date with that toxic girl who shattered my faith. Because I wouldn’t be in New England I wouldn’t get that job at a Cambridge IT company that, first, said I couldn’t have the job I wanted, leading to me gaining 20lbs in a month while they tried to get me to take another job I knew I wasn’t suited for.

One change: investing that money in Nov 2016, fixes so many problems. The source of all my unhappiness is taking shitty job, in shitty place, after shitty job, in shitty place, purely because I was more terrified of being unemployed than I was of working somewhere I hated or doing something I hated.

Even when I go back to my teenage years, almost 20 years ago, I had the same problem. I loved a girl. No, not liked, loved. To this day, she’s the only person I’m 100% sure I have loved. I loved her, and she didn’t love me. I knew this in my mind, but I was so terrified of telling her how I felt and having her confirm back to me that I was right that I never did, and that is a major contributing factor to why I spent 13 years wanting to kill myself every single day. It’s the same problem: I was more afraid of an outcome than I was of a situation. Even when the outcome and the situation were the same thing, until the outcome arrived, it was still a ‘maybe’, and I held on to hope with a death grip.

If anything changed in the last few months of 2019, it’s me finally letting go of that hope. Yes, my money is in bitcoin, yes, I do think it will boom again, yes, I do think I’ll manage to 10x, maybe 30x, my investment. But I don’t actually believe it will happen. It’s ‘something I’m trying’ rather than something I actually expect to work. That’s why I’m looking for a job, even if that job search is half-hearted at best.

If I could go back and make those investments, then I probably wouldn’t be typing here. I’d be worth millions, I’d be at my ideal bodyweight, I’d have spent the last 2 years moving from place to place trying to find somewhere that felt like home. Maybe I’d have rented a house in Kansas or rural Indiana, gotten a dog, and enjoyed the company of my doggo. Maybe I’d have taken up dance classes to find someone to date. Maybe I’d have met people who helped me become a teacher of some skill I have. The thing that I’m sure of is that I wouldn’t be sitting in an apartment, in a place I hate, waiting for my lease to expire so I can go try something new.

I get that hunger that so many people have to ‘go be an artist’ or ‘go to the city and make it big!’. I get that fear of being stuck at a dead-end in life. The thing is, I’m not stuck. I don’t feel stuck. I feel bored. I know that April is going to be a whirlwind of emotions. I know I’m going to have multiple panic attacks. I know finding a new apartment isn’t going to be easy. I know there will be problems, unforseen expenses, and a lot of other shit going sideways. I know all of this. But I’m not stuck. I’m not without reasons to wake up in the morning. In Dec 2011, I was 300lbs and just taking my first steps toward losing weight. 10 years later, sure, I’ve regained about 40lbs from my lowest, but I’m still down over 100lbs from where I started. I lost and kept off 10lbs a year for a decade. That’s something.

I haven’t wanted to kill myself for 6 years. I haven’t felt like money was so tight that I kept my credit card balance memorized in my head month-to-month. I don’t worry about ‘what if’ my car breaks down. I know that I can afford to rent a Uhaul for a week to move, and that even if I have to move everything by myself, I can do that. I know I will be ok. I know I can survive alone. I don’t want to survive alone, but I know I can. And that’s the single greatest point of growth for me in the time between 2011 and now. I used to be terrified of being alone. Now? I’m used to it.

Being alone is dangerous. Once you realize how peaceful and calm being alone is, you stop wanting to deal with other people’s crap. That’s the bastardized version of a quote I saw recently. It’s so true. When I ask myself “What do I want my life to be about?” I still, fundamentally, want someone to share my life with. The difference is that I no longer believe that person will ever actually come into my life, and I no longer fear getting a dog to fill in that void.

When a dog can love me better than a human? That’s not the dog’s fault, and it isn’t my fault either. I have never been accused of not loving someone enough. But I have accused others of having that same failing. Not every problem in the world is your fault, no matter how many times empty-brained idiots tell you “hurr durr well if you keep seeing the same problem over and over, you’re probably it’s source!”. Maybe, but it’s also entirely possible for that to NOT be the case.

I legitimately feared being alone not because I feared being alone itself, but because I knew how peaceful and enjoyable being alone is. I knew that if I ever got used to being alone, I’d love it, and not want to let people in because of it. What changed? I finally understood how much people suck, and that if a fucking dog can love me better than you, then it isn’t worth the bullshit to put up with you. I call the dog’s name and he comes over. I say ‘let’s go for a walk’ and he’s excited to go. I touch him and he’s excited to see me. And the few times he isn’t? That’s ok, because there were so many other times that they were. It isn’t that the dog is 100% there for me, it’s that the dog is there for me enough that when he isn’t, that’s not a problem. THAT’S THE FUCKING POINT! And if that fact could be manifested as a baseball bat I would violently smash motherfuckers in the head with it by the million because too many meatsacks fail to understand this basic goddamn concept. Fucking Christ in hell this makes me more angry than you can imagine. YOU ARE OUT-LOVED BY A GODDAMNED DOG! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF!

In 2011, I was motivated by hate more than any other emotion. I used to literally think of hate as a fuel that kept me going the same way gasoline keeps a car going. In 2019, I am motivated by food more than anything else. I have been walking this entire time that I type because I had a tasty smoothie for dinner. It was too many calories, but if I walk, then I can burn some of them off. And when I burn them off, I stop gaining weight, and maybe even lose a few lbs. And when I see the scale go down instead of up, and when I see myself inch closer and closer to that 199.9 weight, that gives me hope to keep on going. Getting back under 200lbs and staying there will be a huge hurdle. Once I’m past that, it’s just a tumble all the way down to 150. I will probably struggle with my weight for the rest of my life. There are things that could make that struggle easier, and things that could make it harder.

The biggest difference between 2011 and 2019 is that I know I can win, and I know what winning looks like. I know what winning feels like. My life is no longer driven by fear that tomorrow won’t be good, but rather…by nothing at all.

That’s been the biggest thing I’ve been trying to wrap my head around these past couple of months. I absolutely have depression. I absolutely lack motivation or self-start initiative. The things my friends feared for me when I told them I could retire are all true. The thing is, unlike the depression I had before, when I wanted to die, this depression isn’t overly dangerous. I still pay my bills on time, it just takes a bit of conscious effort. I do overeat to calm myself sometimes, but I haven’t gone over 206lbs in 2 months, and given that I was up to 209lbs around the time I got laid off, that’s something. I was consistently gaining 1lb per month since 2017. I finally got that stopped, I’ve been at or below 206 for 5 months now. I’m no longer gaining.

But yea, I’m depressed. And the loss of hope has made me question what is my life actually about? What is the thing I actually want enough to try for? I used to want a wife and/or family. I no longer see that as a viable thing to pursue. You can’t make someone love you. There are no checkpoints, no waypoints, no indicators of success. I can’t work toward the goal of having a wife. People don’t work that way. Emotions don’t work that way. You can go to the gym every other day and lift over and over and eventually you’ll lift a heavier weight than you ever could before. But it is entirely possible to go out and be social day after day and never once make any progress. “Oh, but you talked to new people” “Oh, but you learned new things!” none of these are progress, they are just events. Because of who I am and how I think, having a wife is a goal I must not have. I need goals that I can work toward and measure my progress on. “Spend a year able to run a 5k at 7mph without notice or practice” is a far better goal for me than anything involving other people.

If I do retire, and don’t find another job, I don’t know what I’ll do to keep myself busy. Ideally, the place I move will have animal shelters I can volunteer at, or other places where I can be around people but without the actual work requirements or expectations of a real job. I’m also not opposed to getting a real job; having health insurance just removes one more worry from the back of my mind. It’s just that I’m 100% sick of the bullshit involved in finding a job. The interviews, being told I’m lying when I’m not, being asked questions that are not relevant to the position, being interviewed by people who just want a brown-noser to kiss the ring, being at a company that wants A-level work for F-level pay. On and on, I’m so sick of that shit. I didn’t work so hard to get fucked like this.

And believe me, if I had a business idea that I actually thought would work, hell yes I would pursue it. I just don’t have that business mindset. I would, for example, love to run an insurance company that wasn’t fucking scum: IE: you pay in, you get out. None of these bullshit exceptions or ‘gotcha’ clauses that everyone hates. None of this “Well yes, over the last 8 years you have paid us 2x the cost of your vehicle that was just totaled without any other claims, but we’re only cutting you a check for 1 months’ premium because fuck you lol!” But an insurance company isn’t a one-man business. Also, there are evil people who would try to milk an honest company to death just because they never learned how to be decent themselves. Bleh.

I need to find a niche skillset that is either up and coming or super rare, but in demand, so that I can make my own way without dealing with all this stupidity.