Endless Paradigm

Note: I use "you" a lot, but I'm not telling "you" the reader on what you should think, rather this is an internal monologue directed towards myself. I usually avoid "me" because it just sounds really narcissistic and pompous.

Not exactly a complaining post (but the title kinda implies that I'm going to), just feel like ranting about it though and what's better than my favorite online community.

Since I know this is quite an old community (if wee're counting relative to the age group of 20-30ish) I think some of you might be feeling the same way that I'm feeling right now. That realization where you figure out you're an adult and look back on the choices you've made. For some, they probably made all the right choices, for me, I think there's a lot of bad choices and a whole lot of stuff I haven't done.

So what's making me think I haven't done anything anyway? Technically, I have to some extent, since I'm starting my fourth year BSC in computer science. But I'd tell you that "accomplishment' is a very, very small fragment of my used potential. Embarrassingly, I bet I could find a lot of people in school and out that would demolish me in the amount of knowledge I possess on the subject.

So what do I NOT do? Well for starters, I don't do a lot of self application and learning. Why don't I do it? A lot of the lost students that I meet (and myself included), say things like "oh well I can't think of any ideas" or "I just don't want to waste my time doing something worthless".

I guess that's the key part: Most unsuccessful people who attempt to further their field of study just say "I'd rather to be spending my time elsewhere" and are never proud of what they have done nor do they have any interest to "waste" on their profession. What happens is, these students obtain a bare minimum of knowledge and usually they end up never doing anything. Hell, they never even budge because they are so preoccupied on "worthy" pursuits.

I guess a key point that I'd want to put down is that if you want to reach a professional level in some skill, it needs to be something that is a part of your life. It's also something that you can't be afraid of doing or showing. Fear of wasting time is just going to waste it in the end. Having a direction and just attempting to do something is usually the thing that will get you to move forward onto bigger things.

So if you have that direction, WALK ALONG it, don't try to keep guessing a faster/smarter way to go about it. (Another school of thought is to work smart, but I think that just comes back to plotting something that you want to work on, then work on it.)

A funny example of positive direction is the sig making wee had back in the day. Now a good thing to note is that whenever I posted a sig or what not, I really had no shame as a kid about it's quality. At first, most stuff looked like spoon, but I was proud of the direction I was taking. Amazingly, the quality improved after awhile and you could see some interesting designs it subsequent productions (lol, what a big word, more like, spoon). I was never really put off from people who were better than me either, I just assimilated what they did and started putting things together.

So basically, there was improvement and satisfaction. To be honest, I'm still pretty happy with the fact that I actually had some passion for a brief amount of years in something. Too bad I lost most of that energy as a young adult, but I want to pick it up again.

So here I am, writing another post (I'm trying to be a better writer, as you can see, I'm very lond winded and have chocolatety grammar). As for my current aspirations and directions, I'm just going to leave that for another day, maybe when I feel like showing it off.

No, I'm not a firm believer in talent, I've never seen a person good at something where they didn't dedicate any time into it.

Of course, this is all personal opinion, so I'm not saying that this is the recipe for success. Rather, this is just something to feel good about so that you can actually function when it comes to getting down to work. Works for me at least.

Oh yeah... I'm not that old! ;_;

Well, there will always be people that know "more" than you, as well as those who know "less" - that's just how it is.

The flip side is that it can be useful not to be too per-occupied with one direction.  Some pursuits are simply not worth pursuing (for most), others may lead to dead ends or perhaps synergies can be gained from focusing on multiple things.
You may love video games, for example, but becoming a pro gamer is probably beyond what most game enthusiasts could ever hope to achieve.  Of course, maybe if you do decide to head down the path, you may later discover that a slight change of course makes sense (perhaps streaming from Twitch), though this does require you to be a bit flexible.

But of course, you shouldn't be discouraged by others in your endeavours; ideally, however, you'd still take them into consideration (i.e. feasibility of your dream), provided (again ideally) you can make good judgements.
Working towards your passion can be a fickle thing - it can work, it may not.  Either case however, you'll probably learn a lot and being young (relative to your expected lifespan) gives you this opportunity.  So give it a try and see if it works!

Thanks Zinga.

I guess I'm just ranting about how I've only come to realize this now at an age where getting a job and what not start becoming, well, important. You have less time for silly pursuits and you have to start considering practical work. So like you said, the feasibility is something to take into account and that feasibility only becomes lower (I feel) as you get older.