u/PoncingOffToBarnsley

Not that I remember, at least. Certainly nothing that made an impact.

I've spent my life either coasting/getting by with the bare minimum, avoiding trying altogether, or the main one: getting "challenged" and completely collapsing in abject failure.

For example, when I tried to go to college 10y ago, I basically has nowhere near the prerequisite education for the classes I was trying to take. I was way to far behind. So instead of learning to study, I stopped going to class, hid in my room and binge-ate while watching TV and chatting with randos on my laptop for most of the day. Sometimes I did the work, but I failed every assignment; I had an 11% in a basic class at one point. I failed out and moved back home, my parents shipped me off to another school because not going to college isn't an option, and I repeated the process twice more, before I begged to never go again and started trying to get a job.

Or a couple of experiences with trying to learn skills: both times, despite putting years into each, I plateaued at a very basic level and just never got better. If that's all that's going to happen, why put in effort at all? Why should I "push" and "work harder" for something that will never happen?

I genuinely have no model for getting through something hard, or struggling and coming out better. It's a fantasy that better people on the internet talk about, not something that happens in real life, at least not to me.

I'm also really bored and just don't do anything lately. So I think I need to at least make progress on this, if not fix it, but have no clue how to do so that won't just be a demoralizing waste of time?

Not that I remember, at least. Certainly nothing that made an impact.

I've spent my life either coasting/getting by with the bare minimum, avoiding trying altogether, or the main one: getting "challenged" and completely collapsing in abject failure.

For example, when I tried to go to college 10y ago, I basically has nowhere near the prerequisite education for the classes I was trying to take. I was way to far behind. So instead of learning to study, I stopped going to class, hid in my room and binge-ate while watching TV and chatting with randos on my laptop for most of the day. Sometimes I did the work, but I failed every assignment; I had an 11% in a basic class at one point. I failed out and moved back home, my parents shipped me off to another school because not going to college isn't an option, and I repeated the process twice more, before I begged to never go again and started trying to get a job.

Or a couple of experiences with trying to learn skills: both times, despite putting years into each, I plateaued at a very basic level and just never got better. If that's all that's going to happen, why put in effort at all? Why should I "push" and "work harder" for something that will never happen?

I genuinely have no model for getting through something hard, or struggling and coming out better. It's a fantasy that better people on the internet talk about, not something that happens in real life, at least not to me.

I'm also really bored and just don't do anything. So I think I need to at least make progress on this, but have no clue how to do so that won't just be a demoralizing waste of time.

Technically I'm NT too, but the older I get the less I care about anything. Though I've actually had this problem since childhood: there's nothing I do or care about enough to actually know about or converse about. It's a genuine social hindrance.

Meanwhile online, it feels like I'm more exposed to various "neurodiverse" ways of experiencing interest:

"Yeah, I got so distracted reading about [random complex thing], I missed 10 phone calls, two appointments, a date, and I didn't eat for 3 days."

"Here's my basic preliminary research for a thing I take a casual interest in: it's 10Gb of cutting edge research papers on a Google drive".

"Here's my total beginner hobbyist project. I started practicing this hobby a week ago. It looks like a professional with decades of experience did it."

Yes I am being a bit sarcastic and hyperbolic, but you get the point. I get that us NTs largely don't do this, but most people aren't as indifferent as I am either. What does normal interest look like?

And I almost resent it. "AI bad" after all, it's just uselessly reflecting your thoughts back at you and probably making you psychotic. You should just use your brain and resolve everything completely by yourself with no help!

Like yeah, the chat I've been dumping much of my life story into isn't always the smartest. It misinterprets or exaggerates with fair regularity, and I just sort of ignore that part and take what seems useful to reflect on, read more about, etc.

This one started, admittedly, by my pasting in a post that got to me emotionally, asking for an analysis and saying I wanted to discuss it.

Basically, my mentally hopping around and dumping in random memories made me make a sudden connection: a self-development process my dad followed before I was born is VERY VERY SIMILAR to a process I seem to idolize, and have wanted to - and been unable to - attempt on my own. My dad died when I was in elementary school; I learned about this history of his secondhand through my mom. In fact, I attributed most of my worries along these lines to my mom's influence (which is definitely still there).

I never noticed the connection to my dad until I wrote it all out, in a single place that's easy to reread and reinforced by someone - or something - offering analysis and reflecting back and engaging me. The possibility that I've been unconsciously trying to follow a dead man's blueprint and attaching it to something else entirely.

Maybe a therapist with the right modality could have guided the same realization (for $1000 a session). Maybe I could have done the same thing with my usual thought-dumping method of journalling. I don't know. Instead I'm genuinely astonished by this connection.

I was technically hired as a file clerk, one year later I'm *technically* an admin assistant with the range of roles they've given me. I barely know who my supervisor is or what my role is, but I feel like I have a real chance to be useful and learn more here (or else get some new skills before I look elsewhere).

I work for a biofuels company who keeps a lot of paper records: my first job was spending about a year cleaning out a whole room of unfiled papers. I thought their idea to keep a spreadsheet of all the missing items (so papers with no file) was stupid, turns out there's over 3600 items on it and its invaluable. On top of that I helped out from time to time with mail (including envelope stuffing for campaigns) or smaller jobs like shredding old stuff.

They also had a project that involved scanning over 60 boxes of oil receipts for records with a proprietary app. They put it on hold and I've only started chipping away at it again in the past month.

A few months back, the controller pulled me aside to ask if I wanted to help out in accounting. She's expressed that she likes me and thinks I'm smart in the past, and I jumped at the opportunity to do something different. Mostly it's scanning and attaching invoices/receipts in QBO, but they also showed me how to cut vendor checks. That's my Thing now: in fact, the staff accountant left right around the same time we got a 500 check backlog, that I cleared in about 2mo. Our vendor list in QBO is such a mess, I'm doing a LOT of manual data entry. Though last week, they wanted me to put checks on hold for a bit to help with some receipts. My switch over to FT accounting was never finalized, though it was discussed.

So I currently have 2-4 mini projects going, and no idea where to go from here in terms of specializing or getting new/better skills. I feel like I'm just bumbling through whatever I'm assigned. Honestly I'm most bothered by how repetitive it can be. Splitting my day between accounting, filing, and scanning helps. I'll gladly take ideas.

I'm only saving that much per week and it just feels hopeless (especially as the stock market's been eating it lately. I deposit money and it's gone in hours because everything went down). My net worth has gone up by like, $2k this entire year.

That ~$250 is about 35% of my main job's income; 25% in some kind of savings or investment, 10% in the company 401k I opened a few months ago. Some of my problem is being shit with money and overspending, but I still supplement it with plasma donations ($125 a week if I can get there and I'm not anemic) and my part time job. Said job is event-based, so I might work as little as a couple times a month; it can bring in a few hundred a month and I'm trying to save that.

I'm old too, so it's not like compounding means anything. I'm just frustrated.

Like, I knew it was going to happen but I didn't expect it to feel like this. Just log in at one point hoping to continue a chat that seemed to have gone past its date and BAM: everything is gone except some very recent items. I have exports of part of my most enlightening chats but I feel like I lost something of value.

My work idea sounding board is gone along with the analyst for my oversharing. I literally talked to those yesterday and thought I had more time to export them.

Curious to know if people could offer a Jungian take on this.

I've only kind of recently started taking this seriously, as I realize it's probably my primary mode of escaping things. I daydream pretty much all the time: at work, my brain channel-hops between thoughts almost constantly, especially given how dull and repetitive my work is.

At home is where it's most notable. I can spend literal hours pacing, listening to music (often the same handful of songs at any given time) and running mental videos to them. I've gradually realized the extent to which I'm doing this: I've literally missed things, been late to things, put off things for absurd amounts of time because of it. I spent this evening alternating between daydreaming and scrolling Reddit when I had planned to go out. I genuinely wonder how much it's contributed to the state my life is in, currently: basically nothing. No goals or accomplishments, no relationships, I'm barely even culturally literate because I'd rather daydream than watch a show, but I have lots of things I'd LIKE to do but never get around to acting on.

I've had multiple dreamscapes throughout my life: some are pure fanfiction, internalizing an existing fictional world and playing with those characters (and maybe some original ones) like dolls. Other times it's my own half-baked attempts to make my own stories and characters - though they're never well fleshed-out and I tend to be more interested in character interactions. Most of my daydreaming is in the third person; even love and romance is acted out with a proxy character at most, most of the time.

What strikes me when I tried to look up how to remedy maladaptive daydreaming, is that I genuinely don't think I can do it because it's so ingrained in me. I'm in my 30s; my earliest memory of doing this kind of thing was around age 5. It's practically my default mode of functioning if I have nothing else to do, and it increasingly feels like I just checked out of reality at a young age. I don't have much really BIG trauma, but my MD carried me relatively unscathed through a decent amount of upheaval and loss. It's my norm now even though it's partly responsible for my having missed out on so much of life.

I'm not necessarily asking for cures, more like what it means, where it comes from, especially when most of the bad stuff happened *after* this became my default coping mechanism?

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

I'm over 30, and I've been doing some kind of immersive daydreaming almost daily since I was about 5 (possibly earlier? That's the earliest I can recall). Every place I live ends up with a pacing corridor: you could put me in a cell and as long as I can stand up I'll find a way to pace and daydream. Music is my greatest fuel; while I CAN dd without it, it's a lot harder. My focus is usually some kind of fiction, original or fanfiction, though occasionally it will be alternate lives or fantasy-me doing cool stuff. I also make a lot of mental movies: adaptations of books or games, music videos, etc.I can replay the same song for hours refining a video in my head. I gave the MD Index a try today, based it on the last few months, and scored a 76.

Within the last few months, it's been ramping up to the point of almost full on dissociation. It's *fully* maladaptive. I have things I've put off for actual months because I can't make myself sit down (or get up, in some cases) and face them. Too much, too hard, too overwhelming. I live in near squalor and am embarrassed about my self care. My life is increasingly becoming one of work, chores I can still make myself do, doomscrolling and daydreaming. I've never had friends who weren't online, and have been on less than 5 dates in my life (I'm ugly and fat anyway).

I have god awful executive functioning; I have for most of my life. I've never really studied, which is part of why I barely made it through school and failed out of college at the freshman level multiple times. I don't know how to learn, I can't retain information and it just gets worse with age. I have literally never overcome a "challenge" in my entire life. The things people say normal dopamine systems are supposed to find satisfying have virtually never been. I don't even have interests. I WANT to have interests, but anything that catches my attention, I can't focus or care long enough to learn anything about it.

Lately I've been a little quieter in other ways: working without music, daydreaming confined to periods where I have virtually nothing else to do. So I largely can't daydream while walking to work, or grocery shopping, or during breaks, but a 5-6hr stretch between after-work and bed? Crank the music, clear the pacing corridor, and nothing else needs to exist for a few hours. And that's exactly what I'll do, despite the chores that should have been done weeks ago, administrative stuff I'm completely neglecting out of sheer fear, project ideas sitting by the side for literal years, hobby attempts I did once and found them too boring (except now I'm also boring).

On the other hand, someone here talked about imagining themselves doing things as soon as they get an idea, and never actually doing it. I'm just now realizing how much I fall into this: hell, I've had MEME ideas recently that I daydreamed about making and getting reactions for instead of making them, as I'm really shit at photo editing.

Maybe you guessed by now, but I found this post today. I don't have words. It describes me perfectly. I'm not sure I ever put those things together.

There's no way out for me. I'm literally too far gone. And plus, if I gave myself pseudo-ADHD as a little kid, and it's all my fault, do I even deserve to get better? Or maybe the lifetime of anhedonia and emptiness that "getting better" would entail is actually a perfect punishment?

I look at some people describing "just stopping" or feeling so good and clear after less than a day and I almost want to call y'all bots or just liars. There's no way that feels good in the long term, absent something to take its place. I don't believe you can completely jettison your entire interiority, go from vivid imaginer to mindless passive consumer, and just be fine. Even the link has people talking like that.

Worse too, as creativity is so commonly promoted as this good, healthy thing, a source of spiritual growth or something to replace TikTok with. I've been saying for ages that I'm not creative, because outside of MD, I'm not. I'm awful at making connections, am very slow to "get" things; if you gave me open free reign to make whatever I want, I'd be terrified and freeze up. Been like this most of my life. And now I supposedly need to give up the one thing I DO have? The sole way I've coped with change and loss, the one thing that allows me to feel sort of like a person with a reason to keep living?

Currently my only real alternative to daydreaming is scrolling, mostly Reddit. I've had a few glimpses of realization that if I stop both things, for long enough (and really, not very long), without doing anything else, the chasm that opens inside me is unbearable. It's loneliness, mostly. Daydreaming takes me out of myself entirely - I don't exist, or I exist by proxy; scrolling and commenting at least feels like being among people. IRL interactions are a differently unpleasant beast. I don't think there's a cure for this besides time and luck.

It's much like my overall thoughts with dopamine detoxing in general: it's as if the goal is to be a depressed work drone, and nothing else. Don't do anything that feels good, don't even think. Just do work and when you want to relax, do MORE work. Here are some control methods to make sure you don't have any Bad Thoughts that are too Abnormal. This is really fulfilling, I promise /s.

I can't change. It's too late, and too severe. There's literally nothing out there for me, nothing else in here, and no capacity to get it. You're asking for death. Change is death, and failure; there won't be any coming back, and I'm not quite ready to die yet.

I could probably say more but I'm tired.

I have maybe a coin-toss chance of telling something is AI.

Recently, I went back to Mechanical Turk to try to scrape up some money, and figured I'd try my hand at one of their AI training tasks, which mainly involved deciding which of two generated photos fits the given prompt better. Specifically, this seemed to be teaching ME what to look for for future tasks.

And I got almost every single one wrong. The ones I did get right felt like pure luck. I failed the "exam" portion with 16/25 correct.

This ranged from misinterpreting what it wanted, to literally just missing details or focusing on the wrong one. Holy shit I missed so many details: extra fingers, extra letters, missing items. I'm over here trying to look at the picture in a larger way or zooming in on the one thing that apparently doesn't matter.

Though even on the more subjective, artistic section, I STILL miss things like overexposure, some other "off" detail, forget part of the prompt, misinterpret exactly what they want, think too literally. I don't know what depth of field looks like, how to distinguish if lighting is good or not, or how to tell if something is too flat. And what in FUCK constitutes "composition"? On one prompt, the straightforward, plain result is wrong - I think "okay, look for the "artier," more stylized version". Two prompts later, the stylized version is wrong.

Meanwhile, online, people seem to be able to look at something and *instantly* notice some tiny or worse, conceptual artifact that proves it's AI.

I barely do any image generation; what little I've done is just messing around. I think it also confirms my own belief that creativity is a talent that people either have and can do, or don't and shouldn't.

Vent time because Reddit is my main social media and I have no one else.

Something is wrong with me and I can feel it. Yesterday I got a real glimpse of it: I woke up early, and almost immediately didn't know what to do with myself. Absolutely NONE.

Sure, my apartment is an overwhelming mess and I want to move, I have a bunch of things to take care of online and been putting off for months, a few ideas and projects that have been sitting for literally YEARS in some cases. Nah. I'll scroll Reddit for a few hours, then crank some music and daydream until the last possible second to get to that thing I DID want to do today.

(I re-learned last week that I REALLY can't do that latter bit on a weekday morning. I WILL be late to work)

Indeed, the daydreaming is getting out of hand. I can do it for hours now, and have been doubling down on it for the past few weeks. It's not a new thing, I've been doing it in some capacity almost daily since age 5 (and I'm in my early 30s now). Crank some music, and pace while spinning stories, mental music videos, fanfiction (more common), original characters and stories. At any given time I probably have the same 3-10 main songs looping. I don't even watch movies or shows at this point, I fucking daydream. A normal person would write these down and be done with it; words fail me when I try lmao, or I'm too restless.

It all feels like pure avoidance, but I just CAN'T push past it for more than a few minutes at a time.

On top of that, I'm restless a lot. I've been walking everywhere lately, and while it's made my sleep phenomenal (seriously, I bounce out of bed at times I would have struggled to hear my alarm months ago), it still doesn't feel like quite enough. I'm still scattered and can't do the things I want.

I need sympathy and maybe some advice.

I'm a fat fuck with PCOS and it took me a year to lose 15lbs, most of which was in the last 6mo or so.

More recently though, I've started walking to and from work - just under 1.5 miles each way (though I don't walk the full 3mi each day, if I have somewhere else to go after work, etc). The effects of that little effort are bizarre. I sleep SO MUCH better, I'm less of an emotional wreck and yes, I'm keeping weight off more readily. I can't get my eating under control entirely, but I'm somehow maintaining and very slowly creeping the scale down.

It's basically nothing but actually gets results?

EDIT: OMG so many upvotes??

Posting here because declutter won't let me.

I can count 5 piles of clothing that needs to be either washed or put away right now. I can think of at least 4-5 boxes of stuff crammed into my closets, NOT counting the out-of-season box.

I live in like, 20 items, most of which are heavily worn and uncomfortable. But they fit, if badly.

As you can tell, I hate 90% of what I have, but also worry about getting rid of things I need. I have a bunch of things that are either too small (bought with the intent to diet into them, OR bought when I was a different weight) or too big (because I lost weight). I wanted to sell the stuff that doesn't fit but that takes a lot of work, and a lot of time (I've tried, and had items listed literally for YEARS before they sold).

A lot of what I have is also either too dressy ("I'm going to try to dress better! Oh wait, now I have some really nice shirts and only frumpy, ill fitting bottoms to wear them with...") or too casual ("I just need simple clothes I can wear consistently....wait now half my wardrobe is "around the house" clothes...")

Part of me genuinely wants to find a perfect shirt, a perfect brand of pants, maybe a perfect skirt, and just buy each one in like, 5 colors and that's my wardrobe. I've tried, but I thrift everything so I just lose interest in the capsule wardrobe project when there's weeks or months between acquiring items.

Until then, I'm overwhelmed. I barely know what I have and everything is a cluttered mess stored in bags and piles, with the exception of my also-packed dresser and closet. But it's easily the largest source of clutter in my studio. I swear I need some kind of encouragement.

EDIT: I apologize for all the parentheticals.

Other edit: Holy shit I'm glad this is resonating with people. Thank you for the advice all!

Basically the title. Specifically skills that aren't ultimately mindless repetition.

I don't have hobbies and never have. I don't have interests, and I also don't believe I'm capable of mastering skills. I've literally never done it.

Anything I do, I've either been immediately mediocre at it and never continued because it was boring. OR, I put years worth of time into it and barely gotten past the basics (I have two examples, music and video games). I keep obsessing about that latter situation and I just have zero faith in the ability to do anything.

"Well you should just enjoy the process and not care if you never improve". I don't buy that. Think about some hobby you love doing, maybe even share with other people.

Now imagine if all you ever did was the super easy fundamental baby version, and but it still sucks and you still fuck it up. You don't progress to a new level, are never really "challenged" since the beginner stuff is hard enough, you certainly don't create anything new. It's not even fun, you just mindlessly do the same thing over and over and over and hope to get better eventually and that's your "hobby". How much would you enjoy that process, really? Moreso when you can't even participate in a community about it: either you can try to hang out with the other experienced [whatevers], and be the weird one since they all surpassed your level years ago, or you can hang out with the constant rotating roster of beginners who will surpass you in no time. Really? That's fun?

I've literally never mastered anything. Not academically (college dropout, can't study), not athletically (don't exercise), not personally (this post). I can't even conceptualize it at this point, but I'm also empty and bored even of scrolling, which I'll still do for 12hrs a day. At the same time, anything, literally ANYTHING I'd do would be starting from absolutely zero and I'm not sure I can even handle that lmao.

OK, sure, I'm on Reddit 12hrs a day to the exclusion of things I should be doing. In fact part of me wants MORE social media in my life, more variety at least; while everyone says the anti-SM life is better.

But what on earth do you people *do*?

Just work and solitary hobbies (with no outside advice, inspiration, or sharing of course) and that's enough? You aren't bored to tears and waiting to die?

You have no friends, community, or social contacts besides anyone you live with, and you're just content like that?

Sure, maybe there's a small percentage of the population who genuinely wants to be completely cut off from humanity, and do the two things they enjoy in complete isolation forever. Surely not everyone here is like that?

Do you just go up to strangers and ask for phone numbers? I have been attending a meetup group more often, I don't feel like I know anyone there intimately enough to warrant something like that. I attended another group that wanted to start a group chat but never did.

"Well, what did you do before social media?" Hung out with my mom all the time since I hadn't moved out yet? Then I had unfettered internet access in college and found forums and haven't logged off since. I do recall mindlessly consuming a lot of fiction - books, TV, etc, and daydreaming what amounted to fanworks about that. Now those thoughts come from online.

The other part: I'm no one and nothing by nature. Every part of me comes from outside myself and always has. Never been creative and have no inclination for it; people act like quitting social media or the internet will give you this huge surge in purpose and creativity and deep thinking but I can't imagine it. I'd just be even emptier (and deep thinking just plunges me into an unproductive cycle of anxiety spirals and and depression. How virtuous). I don't have any hobbies or interests, I'm not good at anything, soanything I start I'd be starting from the absolute beginning (and with no help, if I'm supposed to be quitting the internet but also can't afford a full class/lessons). I don't really enjoy things, so I guess that's why I don't see the point.

But no seriously, what do you people even do with yourselves?

Someone said I should make this a post a while back. I drafted it, forgot about it, then had an argument with my mom today. I'm in pretty dire financial straits and am seriously considering getting roommates; my mom forbids it on the grounds of how extremely trashy and dangerous it is. So now's a good time to post.

I often see people here arguing that you should live at home for as long as possible, or else have roommates. Not doing so will make you poor. I've asked about it and see that some people consider safety or stability a luxury for after you get rich, so maybe that's my problem.

People even seem to agree that you pay for those savings with your mental health, but I wonder what people actually consider acceptable (with parents or with strangers):

Would you tolerate physical violence? Regular noise, possibly aimed at you (being interrupted frequently, or regularly woken up during the night)? Complete lack of privacy? Rules about internet access, limits on movement, food restrictions not based on your health or medical reasons? How about property damage? Theft? How much money would living in fear for your safety be worth?

I mean, I wouldn't be shocked if I'm just overly sensitive and these are actually all completely normal things to tolerate in the pursuit of wealth. Especially since in my case, it's not like I was stacking money. People here talk about saving more money in a year or two than I've made in my entire working life. But I want to know what folks' limits would be.

I apologize first as I'm slightly impaired writing this. I'm generally more articulate than this.

I have a problem with it and I just don't know how to stop. It's getting worse with age. Even my mom believes the "creature" I've become at 30 is significantly worse than the normal person I was at 17-18. I had shades of all of this then - it's part of why I failed out of college so many times - but not as severe.

Tell me anything and I will speed-race to the worst interpretation. Show me an idea and I'll take it to the worst extreme.

Envy or frustration turns into a desperate desire to be unhealthy: I hate how overweight I am so I want to have an ED. I hate my lack of executive functioning so I want to be a rigid workaholic perfectionist. If only I'd been abused growing up I wouldn't have all the problems I do now, because I'd be repressed and perfect. Can I "reparent" myself as a hyper-disciplined tiger parent, for whom perfection is the bare minimum and we don't praise the bare minimum? Then I won't be as much of a fuckup: I'd be hard-working, perfectly in control of everything, and never make mistakes. *immediately goes back to doomscrolling reddit for 10hrs a day*

I take everything personally: this person gave a (perfect, irreproachable) scathing criticism of this or that type of person. I am, probably, that type of person. They're talking about me; they, and everyone who agrees with them, would despise me if they met me. This is bad and I have to fix it - unless I can't fix it, in which case, I can spiral about how hopeless it is.

I've outright traumatized myself away from entire spheres of human knowledge because my experience amounted to me misinterpreting every idea into the most insane, life-denying version of itself, and then mentally collapsing for a week until I can repress all of that thinking enough to feel better. I might recognize how bad it is, but hedging at all feels too risky. I like to say that shades of grey are shades of failure, if I don't commit enough that leaves plenty of room to be wrong, and everything that results from being wrong - stupid, lazy, weak, immoral, etc.

I'm also great at freaking out over minor things. On a really bad day minor inconveniences feel catastrophic and I'll rant try to "explain" myself internally for sometimes hours.

I'm usually pretty normal, but also in a state of pretty serious arrested development. I don't know anything about anything, I barely even consume any media meant for actual adults (no, I will not accept arguments that this is fine. I'd like to be more balanced, at minimum) in part because I worry I won't be able to emotionally handle it.

I have no idea what the fuck is wrong with me. I know I started going downhill in my early 20s, after I failed out of college again and lived with my mom for several years, which did a 100% invalid number on my mental health, and I still think about it 12y later. But otherwise, I know people here can't diagnose but what is all of **this**.