I had a productive week!
Monday was spent on Reddit reading the TIL section, while feeling superior to an online community that thinks the most popular comment must be the smartest. On Tuesday I planned a trip I have always wanted to take, recreating “The Motorcycle Diaries” on a
(just me, the elements and some lonely girl I pick up on the way)
BSA up the Pacific Coast Highway. Hell I bet I could get a bestselling novel out of it. After a couple of hard days of work I rewarded myself on Wednesday by getting drunk and watching reruns of Frazier. I woke up Thursday with my head spinning with the most amazing business idea I have ever had, only problem is it will take a few millions to start up. I guess I can file that one away for when I sell my bestselling novel. Friday I changed the world, I got into a comment war about how to restructure Health Care in America. I’m sure it had a positive effect on the overall dialogue of the internet.
And Saturday… Saturday I woke up feeling pretty lousy about myself, honestly I felt worthless. I walked around the house thinking that nothing ever changes, I am not making any progress on any of my goals, and actually, my life kinda sucks. It got so bad that when a friend I don’t care much for, called me to help him move, I begrudgingly said yes. –Though I made sure to make the day a living hell for him, letting him know that helping a friend move is basically the modern day equivalent to the Holocaust.
(I don’t know why my self image is so bad)
Strangely, after this horrible day of hanging out with someone I don’t like, while doing monotonous, labor intensive, free work, I felt pretty good about myself. I soon realized I was the only person he could count on, and that made me feel great. That night, he treated me to dinner and got me drunk. We joked about how awful moving is. – Our final conclusion was that basically ever evil act in the history of mankind probably started as either vengeance for helping someone move, or as an excuse to get out of it, ‘Oh sorry, I can’t help, I’ve got to….. go bomb the World Trade Center today.”
I started thinking about how worthless I felt earlier in the day and I decided that when I feel worthless it’s probably because I am worthless.
Self-worth really only comes from two places.
What you create and how you treat others.
So if you are feeling worthless, the first thing you need to do is admit you are worthless, then go out and do something of worth! It sounds crazy, but we were all raised being told how special we are, we had parents whose parents neglected them to the point that they overcompensate for us, and this mentality will take us years to break. You are only special if you do special things.
Personally, I wish whenever I was depressed as a child my mom would have kindly explained to me how worthless I was and that I needed to go out and do something. This however would have probably created a whole new list of unintended consequences.
Feeling worthless leads to being worthless. You spend more time in bed, more time on the internet, more time playing video games. The only way to break this cycle is to do something. Quit planning, quit talking and go out and do something that furthers the cause of humanity. Its cliché, but go volunteer at the local shelter, fix that faucet that has been dripping, mow your lawn and maybe build a patio.
There’s another plus to not being worthless, doing stuff makes you a winner, and people like winners. People will start to migrate towards you – and not worthless people, but people who actually have their shit together. Talking about the Koi Pond you built in the backyard inbetween your stints of helping build a school for a poor Mexican Village and taking a weekend to hike the Los Angeles Crest, is a great party conversation. So is the time you worked at the soup kitchen only to be mugged on the way home.
People like people who do things. In this world where getting by is the norm, anyone who breaks that norm is now some kind of modern day Ernest Hemmingway, and you don’t even have to write a book, fight in a war or kill yourself. It’s awesome.
(I’ll let you keep Cuba, but I will always be watching you from the Florida Keys)
Twitter Feed
Nice. I like!
This is legitimately messed up advice… on many levels.
You have no idea how much I enjoyed your post.
Lynn
P.S. I too am a big fan of Hemingway; when at his house in Cuba, I paid off the guard so I could reach over the barrier ropes and touch the Pilar. You have no idea how proud I am to have done that–I’m still patting myself on the shoulder. And bragging, obviously. But Papa would’ve been cool with that I suppose, for he too enjoyed the hell right out of bragging. You would bowl over if you saw how small the Pilar is. It’s positively minuscule for going hunting Nazis in like he did. God, what a man!
Sorry for the late reply, but that is amazing, I wanna visit his house – been working, have a few new posts coming up though =)