Starting 2023

I have to be honest. I am getting absolutely paralyzed by the amount of thoughts I have about my recent past, present and the future. I wanted to get back to writing blog posts to organize these thoughts somehow. This is like my 8th blog post draft and I just cannot settle on anything. So, the plan is to break it down because I will never post or finish anything otherwise. I'm writing a whole book out here, yet, I'm not satisfied with a single paragraph.

This time I'm briefly summing up my previous year and writing an update of my current state of mind and what I plan on doing about it. Lots of thoughts, lots of uncertainty.

2021

Just like I will remember 2021 for my study group and lifechanging friendships and social progress I made, I will remember 2022 for 2 disastrous semesters at uni, my first job as a VR Developer and my first relationship.

University was just a background, an unpleasant, lifedraining addition to everything that was happening.

At work I got a ton of insight on corporations culture, I got technical skills and big social skills with first great parties I've ever attended.

And then the relationship, that really dominated this year.

Relationship

Yes, it was not easy. That's probably all you have to know about it.

It easily made 2022, alongside other demanding events, the most painful year of my life. So far, hehe.

Painful, but not the worst. I'm trying so hard to think from my distant future perspective, where pain feels distant, but the lessons stayed with me. A valuable, costly experience.

I already went through it, so be it.

I could try to pretend that it never happened, but I don't want to. My life is never going to be the same. This relationship left such a big imprint on me, that's impressive. There were days where it was everything I thought about, figuring out why am I being treated like this and what can I do better. I couldn't sleep because I thought of it, I dreamt about it and I woke up to a thought about it. Sounds like a definition of obsession. Truly it's a curse and a blessing to be an overthinker.

More like a curse, actually.

Proportions are like 70/30.

Or maybe even more extreme.

It depends.

Am I overthinking this?

Nobody will ever fully understand my life without details about what happened in 2022. That is why I want to embrace that pain and conquer it. I'm not letting all that suffering go to waste.

Importance of experience

Last year was a reminder to me, that knowledge without experience does not mean much. They come together and beautifully complement each other.

Knowledge of betrayal and its dangers will never be as informative as getting betrayed by the person you trusted the most. Never.

I’d say that experience is much more costly than knowledge. Of course, it’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes. But somehow, making the mistake by yourself is another level of understanding, with proper approach. The information/cost ratio is lower, but the information itself is greater.

So, get experience, analyze it, make use of the knowledge, talk to people about it, understand various aspects of it. Don't be ashamed of your mistakes, but put them to a good use. This is our contribution to discovering the truth on our own.

On the other hand, I wouldn't make mistakes just for the sake of it. It's important to know the acceptable cost of getting more experienced. That is where my recently discovered beauty of non-fiction comes in (it deserves a blog post on its own). We can safely experiment in our heads what would we do in extreme situations.

I'm only afraid that there are lessons to be learned, that are practically impossible to be comprehended by the knowledge itself. Like babies that don't understand language and are really motivated to touch the fire. As babies we had guardians to keep us safe from dangers, but now we're adults. And dangers still exist. Can we recognize them all?

[It sounds like a name for a game show xD]

It only emphasizes how costly and valuable the experience is. And that's exactly what I do here, as Inexperienced Me. I never had a real authority to admire and to answer my curious childish questions. So I plan on continuing bravely going through the fog of life, touching the fire for a short while to see what is the result. It will hurt btw. Luckily, it will heal. Then step back. And try a different path I haven't tried before, that seems reasonable.

Slowly, steadily, to the better future.

Future

So, I got my experience last year. Came with a great cost. Ultimately, I’ve been deeply hurt to the point that my side quest for life is to not let anyone hurt me like that again. I’m only scared of what that might look like. Will it be hard to trust people now?

It’s not looking too optimistic, knowing that I was already quite selective with who I invest my time in.

Well, I don't have a big choice other than doing my best.

At the beginning of this year, I made this video:

In the video I made New Year's promises, that are manifestation of the desire to change this year:

It’s one of the best ways to handle the situation that I could think of: Going back to my roots of structuring life to have a solid ground to walk on. No matter how shaky everything is, I know that I'm going to read before going to sleep. That's a mental comfort.

I used to read a lot of books, but last year I have read only one. It was just one of the symptoms of absolute chaos coming to my life. This chaos was manageable earlier, but after getting that solid hit from life, there is just no other way to keep going.

And the habits turned out to be very helpful. I’ve read almost 6 books this year already, reading usually before going to bed to calm down. (Btw, I got recently bullied by my friend to start using goodreads.com, so people can track what I read: my goodreads profile)

I sleep better because of that routine. I exercise every day to maybe become confident one day. I also knew that social contact will be a problem, since I lost all motivation to meet anyone, so I purposefully added the social meeting goals to my New Year’s promise. And it definitely was a good decision. I forced myself to meet people that I respect and that could give me a much needed honest talk about life. I am really grateful for these people; they kept me sane.

I guess we don’t really get to know each other without going through hardships together.

Anyway, that is my current plan. I just started my 6th semester. Didn't have a ton of time to recover, but I feel strong enough to stand up and do my things. I'm not sad, I just have a big void to fill with my hobbies.

Pretending that last year never happened is not my way to handle things. I appreciate the pain. It keeps me humble. It's more useful than any human teacher I ever had.

Even though I did my best, it’s always useful to think that I am responsible for putting myself into these situations. It’s hard, but useful. I could do better. I guess I lack experience. No surprises there.

Next time will be better.

Symbol

My symbol of 2022 is Nova Imperator, my main Raven class from the game Elsword, that I also put on the PCB I was working on:

We have to keep going. We cannot let them win.

Stay strong.

Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light.

Such a relief to know that I'm antifragile.