Losers Anonymous

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

(Step 1: Admit that one cannot control one’s suck.)

Hello out there to all you wimps, misfits, creepy basement-dwellers, and human garbage. My name’s Doug, and I am a loser. I am a bitter, self-punishing, clinically depressive, passive-aggressive, binge-drinking, socially-averse, involuntarily celibate, chronically underemployed, high-functioning-learning-disabled 41-year-old adult child.

I am newly moved back into the house I grew up in and am pretending to work on a master’s degree at the local university. In reality, however, I have spent the past 72 hours resolutely refusing to get started on the second draft of an important assignment because I totally misunderstood it in the first draft. I just will not face up to such a high level of suck, or indeed, that I am going to have to make such grievous mistakes fairly often if I’m to learn anything from this program and get a degree.

Indeed, if I want any shot at the last half of my life being anything other than a slow inexorable descent into the deepest circles of hell, I am clearly going to have to embrace the essential cosmic joke here and begin actively pursuing the kinds of failure I have no constructive way to deal with - the kinds that make me want to go off my meds and just shamble around in a walking coma of self-pitying rage.

It’s a case of having to tempt my self-destructive instincts now or watch life’s realities slowly dissolve me over a period of years. It’s been made much worse by the fact that I’ve been prolonging the inevitability of it all since I was, oh, 25 or so—about the age I discovered that work was not only never going to be my life, but was actually going to be a garden of psychic hurt and a lose/lose situation for me.

So I hereby embrace my essential suck. I am, in and of myself, worth exactly dick to any decent human being, and I am okay with that. Fuck you, world, we have nothing to offer each other, and yet I must go on. Anybody have any ideas how?

Come on, fuckoffs, we’re all in this together. Let’s help each other! :smiley:

2

Indeed. Screwing up is a part of life. Two steps forward, one step back and all that. Giving in to your fear of failure is the only scenario in which you are guaranteed to fail. I’m glad I figured that out before it was too late.

3

(Step 2: Suck it up and write the paper)

I’ve made that exact same mistake on a couple papers. In one case, it wasn’t a draft, but a finished product, and I had poured a lot more work into it than the professor was looking for. My paper was excellent, but because it was off topic, it got a C-. Being an otherwise smart person, I kicked myself for weeks over that.

You have a chance to fix your mistake. Be grateful, not depressed. Fix it.

4

You should make an effort to cut down on the alcohol. It makes life ok for a night, but then you are stuck with days of insomnia, digestive weirdness, mood swings and other stuff you don’t need in your life. And get to work on that paper already!

5

You people are making sense, and I can’t deal with that right now.

Have you ever felt that anger and misery are the only strong things in you? I feel that way now, and fairly often. I have buffaloed friends, family, therapists and clergy with my capability to become a walking, talking black hole of existential despair. I hate the strength and confidence of men, and I never wanted manhood, only its privileges: the women and the house and car and freedom from life’s neverending bullshit that comes only from having fully embraced and believed in it all.

I never feel more real or stronger or more meaningful than when I am in the pits, and everything else seems worthless and without meaning. It’s either me or the world, it seems: there’s no having the two together that I can see.

I guess I’m hoping I hit bottom soon enough to get very, very psychically tired and just write the goddamn paper in a sort of waking coma, just because all my feeling receptors are burnt out and not writing it no longer means anything.

6

Wow, I forgot what it was like talking to an emo teenager.

You don’t have to buy into the 9-5 job, suits and cubicles lifestyle to have what you want out of life.

You do have to complete shit when you say you will. And you have to make enough of some kind of mostly legal money to cover your own expenses.

Deciding that you’re only happiest when you’re the most depressed isn’t helping.

7

Wow, you do sound seriously depressed. Have you tried therapy? You say you are on meds, so I’m guessing that’s a yes. How did that go for you? In any case, I recommend cutting down on the booze and starting (or continuing if you already have) an exercise routine.

Oh, and get that paper done pronto. I also procrastinate, and it’s a real bitch of a habit.

8

I’m definitely a loser at the moment: I’m sucking down a £10K+ pension pay cut. So I’m investigating alternatives. That includes hitting the books as well as the boots.

9

Put the Dope down! The Straight Dope, that is. I’m here right now grazing around because I have to write a stupid paper on fuel cells, economics, alternative energy, and solar power. Last week it took me 12 hours to churn out a paper that earned me a B-. I want to stick out my lip, stomp my foot, and be pissed off, but the fact is that I didn’t include the data that the Prof. wanted, so 80% for me.

I’m taking my own advice now and closing this screen out so that I can get back to it. I’ll give you the same advice… just get your ass busy and write the paper. It sucks. You don’t like it. Do it anyhow.

Love and kisses,
Haze

10

By the way, you are an excellent writer.

11

Yes, not sucking requires action and action will sometimes lead to failure. I think you need to learn how to deal with failure. I know you say you can’t, but if that is true you are going to suck forever. There are countless books and articles on the subject. Try something. If that doesn’t work try something else.

Maybe you can use my motivation. The reason I take action is because I am scared to hell of becoming like you when I turn 41. That fear overcomes any fear of failure. Maybe you can be scared of continuing like this till the day you die?

12

Hi Doug…

I’m ThisSpaceForRent and I’m a Lose-A-holic too. Consistently an under achieving overachiever. Thanks for starting the group.

If i wasn’t so pathetically unmotivated I would share more…

tsfr

13

Maybe because I’m in self pity mode at the moment. I thought the OP was hilarious and I’m pretty sure he is just poking fun at himself. Come on losers, speak up and announce yourself to the world.

I spend way to much time thinking about my ex wife. Jesus, yeah she was great in bed but she was also a bitch. Get over it.

I hate my boss but I don’t have the nads to tell him that he’s an asshole.

I spend way too much time on message boards like the SDMB instead of cutting the grass.

If this thread grows I’m sure I will think of more.
Hang in there Doug.

14

I’m back, and ready to join the club.

After banging my head on the keyboard over this latest homework assignment, I’ve decided to drop this class and try it again with another Prof. next term. This is probably a really dumb idea, but I hate this class with every fiber of my being, and the thought of going through this crap for the rest of the term is just too much.

It’s not even a required class. I took it becuase it seemed like an interesting subject that I’d like to learn more about. I talked to someone else, and she enjoyed it with another prof. This guy has been teaching the same thing since 1982 and is always telling me to ‘quantify my data’. Well, he can take that data and shove it up his…

Never mind.

Back to your regularly scheduled posting of Losers Annonymous…

15

I’ve read some of those books. I still don’t get what it means to “deal with failure.” Every failure I ever had reminds me of every other. I get so sick of dragging all that psychic shit around - I could no more “get over it” than I could make money fall from the sky. It is a part of my life like breathing, and every breath fucking hurts.

If I fail any more, I will have an F average at life. And I’ve done a fair bit of cool and impressive stuff - I am a good writer, as purple haze pointed out, and I have numerous other strengths, talents and aptitudes. And guess what? I’m still a loser, because most days I can take just enough shit from the world to get out of bed and crawl around for awhile, never taking or asking for a chance, just letting my day piss away till bedtime.

I just have something broken somewhere. I have some piece missing that means I have never really believed in myself. Only in small ways, for a little while, here and there. You need that to deal with life, and that’s what I don’t have any claim to right now. Nothing, even despair, makes me sicker than fake self-confidence.

16

Jesus. I really do think I’m trying to talk myself into a Class A super deluxe fuckin’ nervous breakdown here. I better stop before I end up in a wicker basket someplace.

17

Honey, I’ll let you in on a small secret. We’re all faking it.

I’m on the other end of the spectrum. Nice house, good husband, above average healthy kids, very successful self made business woman in a male dominated field, relatively attractive and in shape, money in the bank. Modest, too.

And I fake it* every single day.
*
I fake it to homeowners, I fake it to kids, I fake it to employees, I fake it to friends.

Yes, it is easier to be confident when all your ducks are lined up in a nice little row. But everything you do is a leap of faith. Getting up in the morning is a leap of faith.

You just do it. The next morning, you get up and you do it again.

If you fuck up, and we all do, you learn what not to do, and you try something different next time. You just keep plugging away. Learn to build on your successes, and learn to have realistic expectations of life.

It helps if you are too damn stubborn to give in or give up.

18

Welcome to life. I think that some people expect too much out of it. The world needs losers as much as it needs the ass kissing, suck up, well to do’s. Your value is you…do not ever let anyone, including yourself, let you believe that you do not hold the same value as any other person. Fuck the assumption that you have not met your potential.

19

Too late to edit-

And if the last post seemed to Pollyannish for you, chuck it.

Maybe just walk away from all the stuff you are “supposed” to do. Perhaps you should just wander down to the Keys and clean fish for tourists, get drunk every night, and pass out in a sleazy trailer home.

You’ll either go for the brass ring again, or you’ll die young from liver failure. Either way, until you figure it out, at least do it in a nice place with pretty girls to look at all day. Yeah, you’ll smell like dead fish entrails, but that’s a small price to pay.

20

Similar to what fisha said, I think you need a drastic change of pace. Have an adventure. Move somewhere and do crazy things. Get out of the house and your current stifling rut. I’d especially recommend somewhere with lots of sunlight, as that seemed to help when I was depressed.