Losers Anonymous

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

You have to realize that failure is a good thing. Some of the greatest athletes in the world have failed more times than you can imagine. Are they losers? No, because failure has made them great. Every time they screw up they become a little better than everyone else. They never see failure as a sign to give up. To them it is a chance to get better. A chance they would never have had they not failed.
*
I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.* - **Michael Jordan **

What do you want to do that is so spectacular that thousands of other average Joe’s haven’t accomplished? What makes you think that they all tried and failed less than you will if you try?

Everyone who accomplishes anything fails more times than you know. It’s just that no one talks about it. You don’t have to talk about it either, but you will have to try, fail, and try again. Failure is necessary for success. It is the only way success can work.

You don’t even need to believe that you will succeed to succeed. You never need real self-confidence. Like fisha says, most people fake it anyway. All you need is to be able to try, fuck up miserably, and then try again.

22

I’m sorry I really thought your OP was kind of a joke about life in general. I suck

23

I guess I’m about ready to join your little club.

I’m in a nice, easy, well-paying job. They don’t demand too much from me, they let me take off as much time as I need or want as long as I get coverage for my shifts, and people treat me with politeness.

And I’m ready to quit and leave the fucking continent. Because I’m bored. :smack: :smack: :smack:

They don’t let me innovate. Innovation isn’t discouraged here, it’s fucking forbidden! Everyone just keeps making the same old mistakes over and over again, and whenever I suggest any sort of change or improvement, my boss looks at me like I just suggested legalizing heroin for pre-schoolers. And the situation is getting worse. A lot worse. Our part-timers are undertrained. We have a verbally and emotionally abusive employee in our department. Mistakes are beginning to multiply. And the boss and her boss just shrug it off. It’s like that scene in Sid and Nancy where they’re just lying on the bed stoned out of their minds watching the bedroom burn down right in front of them. It’s been like this for the past eight fucking years!!!

Sigh . . . pant, pant, pant . . .

So I’ve applied for my passport, and I’m going to be applying to jobs overseas in Korea. See, I’d been doing volunteer work around Boston, hoping it would pan out into a full-time job, but not in this economy. I was also hoping to try to get out to the west coast to start over, but again, not with the way things are now. But they’re still looking for workers and teachers in Korea, so I’m going to try to start out teaching and hopefully wind up in a corporation with my language skills, and then try to somersault back onto the west coast, hopefully Seattle. But really, I’d settle for work in Yazoo City if whoever I work for would just let me come up with ideas on my own! Fucking seriously, folks!!

And in the midst of all this, I realize what a fuckheaded loser I’m being. I’m leaving a good stable job and a good stable marriage to go halfway around the world to some country I haven’t been to in over ten years, since I was in the army. My wife says she’s cool with it, but she can’t come with me. She’s got to take care of her mom and our cats. So it’s just me and the big Kimchi pot in the sky, and if this breaks up my marriage, I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. But I’m going to risk it anyway.

How big of a loser am I? I’m not depressed. I think I’ve got the opposite problem, whatever they might call that. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the tiny sliver of brain devoted to my own well-being is telling me not to do this. It’s telling me that things are actually very good right now, and the economy would get better, and there’s no reason to leave Mrs. Fresh on her own right now. It’s telling me to hold out another year or two and maybe go back to grad school. But a large part of me is waiting for my passport to come in the mail so that I can immediately apply for an overseas work visa and risk the past ten years on a roll of the economic dice. It’s the large part of me that cannot stand to be talked down or condescended to.

A good shot of depression would probably help. It would slow me down enough so that the two or three misfiring neurons that constitute my left brain could go to work and convince my right brain–which has apparently been free-basing cocaine for the past few months–to settle down and try its best not to fuck up my life seven ways from Sunday.

Tell you what, Doug. Give me some of your depression, and I’ll let you have some of my hyperactivity. Together, we might just pull each other out of this shit.

And by the way, I’m quite sure my marriage will survive. I’ve married a good woman, and we’ve been separated by circumstance before. Just not while we were married, but if I were a gambling man, I’d definitely bet money on us making it easily. Still, that doesn’t mean I have to like it. :frowning:

24

Hi Doug, I’m nyctea, age 33, and I could have written this. I have been living in loserdom for the past 6 months, ever since I lost my job and just completely shut down. Like you, I just had to move back in with my parents. The job loss made me very very angry, depressed, and I lost any self confidence I had. Things were going fairly well in my life until 6 months ago, and I have basically regressed back to the state of a child, unable to do anything, unable to support myself, barely able to get up in the morning. Yes I am getting help, but I can relate to your procrastination problem - my “homework” every day is to find a new job, and it’s just too hard to do.

Anyway, know you’re not alone…

25

You want depression? Stay in your job for a few more months.

That’s what happened to me. My job became insanely tedious and completely unchallenging. I though I could handle it, but without warning I became severely depressed three months before I would have quite anyway.

I had to reduce my hours and do volunteer work to make life more tolerable again.

I didn’t see it coming, so maybe if you stay a little longer, you’ll get what you want.

26

Recently, I’ve found that cognitive-behavioral therapy, volunteerism and a support network that provides both (a) open ears and (b) copious doses of MDMA are a recipe for getting out of just about any rut.

ETA: In that order.

27

This is going to sound very saccharine, but I find a good way to feel better about what you don’t have is to be grateful about what you do have. And no comparing between the two! It has to be true and humble gratitude or it doesn’t work.

28

I might just be the biggest fuckup this firm has ever seen.
Gah… I feel stupid. Maybe I should’ve been a burger flipper…

29

Paper’s just about done. :slight_smile: I don’t hate myself or my life anymore, for awhile, anyway. Maybe 'cause I’m just too fucking tired.

This shit happens about 4 times a year. My throttle jams open, I get all emotionally self-destructive and everything starts to look like a nightmare. I already take medication.

30

Well THIS member of Loser’s Anonymous IS a gambling man.

Beware-of-Doug…if I were closer to Iowa, I’d buy you a drink.

You’ve got a couple years on me, but at least you moved out in the FIRST PLACE. Disappointed everyone when I backed into a B.A. in Psychology with a 2.8 GPA. Now 4 years later I’m trying to go back to school to get a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering which everyone thought I should get in the first place. Only going to lead to more disappointment when I have to drop out again because I can’t cut it the second time around either. At least if I dropped out I’d get to work more and hopefully move out. :rolleyes:

31

I’m in the “we all fake it” corner. Life is a series of ups and downs. I bask in the ups and try to get past the downs as best I can and move on.

I was thinking about my brother and my son, both of whom are off the grid, for the most part. I was thinking that this big financial fiasco really won’t cause them to lose much sleep. Funny how the things you’re supposed to strive for can end up being the things that take a big steaming shit on your life.

Good luck with your degree. It’ll all come together. Me? I’m looking forward to a little less of the American Dream and a clearer perspective of what I really want out of life. I’m pretty sure it won’t involve massive financial wealth.

32

My usual answer to these situations is to just do the next right thing. Like write the damned paper. When I keep doing that, I make progress.

33

There is a joking reference among my friends that we are always waiting for The Fraud Police to come up and tap us on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir, but you must come with us - you do not belong here and should’ve been taken away years ago - we have no idea how you got away with it for so long…”

I am sorry you feel the way you do - by starting this post, you clearly are tapping into the fact that we all feel this way at points in our days, weeks, years and lives.

The question for all of us is: what can you choose to do about it? You make it clear “I never feel more real or stronger or more meaningful than when I am in the pits” - I read this to mean: “When I am not in crisis, I don’t know how to weigh my concerns and priorities vs. everything going on around me - sometimes I force my needs to the front only to realize I shouldn’t; sometimes I swallow them only to realize I should’ve asserted them more. But when I am in the pits, my needs are unambiguous and their priority is clear. So being in the pits simplifies things in an unfortunate sort of way.”

How did I do?

Regardless of how far off I am, there are a few things that anyone can do when facing the feelings you are sharing:

  • **Deal with any clinical issues **- IANADoctor, but assume you are doing what you need to.

  • Stop Drinking - I have yet to look at any situation involving mental / emotional complexity in my life where I can look back and say “wow, the near-term benefits of numbing or escaping how I feel more than made up for the suck I felt for days afterwards”

  • Start exercising- go for a 20-minute walk, anything. Nothing changes perspective more than keeping physically active. I hate it, but have come to recognize its necessity in life.

  • **Reset your expectations **- I am not sure I will articulate this well. One of the biggest ways I have beaten myself up over the years is by expecting too much. For instance, I am extroverted and speak my mind - to a fault, in ways that have limited my personal and professional life. I know this and beat myself up about it a LOT. However, expecting myself to just stop doing that 100% of the time is unrealistic and bound to not only fail but to tie me up in mental knots. Ah - but if I realize that I will probably only get it right maybe 15% of the time - well, that’s more realistic. I know: 15% of the time?! That stinks! But I find it to be a super-powerful tool - not only is it more accurate, but it requires that I accept that I can only get it right a small percent of the time - so I have to acknowledge that and am a bit more vigilant when I encounter those situations. “Well, self” I say to myself “here you are again - and you only get this right about 15% of the time, so be careful” - and you know what? I am a bit more careful. It helps - a bit.

  • **Put one foot in front of the other ** and **Stay active **- these two complement each other. Picking yourself up and keeping busy can distract you from how you feel. And doing something - anything even remotely positive - makes the possibility of changing your situation for the better vs. doing nothing.

I am so sorry you feel the way you do. Sometimes the best thing to do is push your mind off to the side and get busy - my mind is not always my best friend because it can paralyze me with indecision and anxiety. If I don’t try to stop world hunger and just try to accomplish minor tasks, I can get past my mental barriers and before I know it, the minor tasks have the potential to add up to something - but I try not to think about that too much. :wink:

Best of luck. I hope this post and thread help - that is the intent…

34

This may be wildly off base, so feel free to disregard it. This is from my experience and may not work for everyone.

You need to make a choice. And that will be the hardest choice in your life. You need to choose to believe in your future. You need to choose to believe in yourself, in life, and in things working out all right. And this is going to feel like you are tearing your psyche apart and rebuilding it. It’s gonna hurt and you are still going to feel creaky and pieced together when you are done.

You are going to need to give up on each and every one of those little things you’ve been doing to get yourself through the day. Because right now you get through life by plunging deeper into darkness. By embracing the self-pity. By avoiding and forgetting and wallowing. Sadness has become your friend. Your comfort zone. You keep going back to it just like you reach for a drink when you feel bad.

And that isn’t going to get you anywhere new. You have to let go of that. Cut off. Not allowed. Not even a little bit. Those coping strategies are off limits. When you start crying or whatever you gotta tell yourself “No, I can’t have this. I’ve abused it and can’t handle it.” Just like an alcoholic with a drink. You can’t do it.

We live our lives according to little stories we write about ourselves. Who we think we are. Your story got all perverted somewhere along the way. It became a story about sadness, about pain, about falling deeper and deeper. You gotta crumple that story up and write a new one.

And that is going to be like making a whole new you, and it is excruciating. Terrifying. You have to deal with all that pain. Process it. Mourn what you need to mourn. There are terrible things in this world we all have to fit in our lives, and it sucks and it doesn’t make sense but you just have to deal with it.

And then you have to summon up the courage to go on. And the hope to tread new ground and deal with the unknown. This is the hardest part. We think of emotional healthiness as a perfect thing, but it is not an easy path. You are going to have to deal with the weight of your expectations of yourself, of other people’s thoughts of you, of your future. And you won’t be able to escape into self pity anymore.

And trust. Trust it will work out. Trust the future. Trust yourself. It’s scary as fuck because you don’t know what is there. You are jumping off a psychic cliff by deciding to get healthy. But I promise you it is worth it. I wake up every day and feel so thankful that i had the luck to get out. I wrote a new story- one about an adventurer. And amazingly it came true. You can have what you want, you just gotta come up with the courage to trust in that.