The recent drama is probably not in great taste to talk about. I don't care to go into depth about it; it's more the things it reminds me of.
I thought about talking at great lengths about this in the Discord, and it ends up being I dump this here, I guess. Usually under this identity I don't talk about my life, but probably it only makes sense to do so after I went out of my way to make myself not just the awkward mess I usually am but
obscenely visible and in the fray.
I don't get people. I mean, I do - I can take someone's psychiatric papers and a few hours of stories about them and make reasonably good predictions on what they'll do, and I guess that's "I get people" to most people. But I also don't understand why reasoned conversation and what seem to me like straightforward expectations and conclusions are hard to communicate and seem to be received, and I can't decide if it's me or just how humans are.
Think I was like 12, 13 when it became apparent that my brain was fundamentally odd in the way that made understanding computers absurdly straightforward for me. Cold binary logic - not great, but at least
it doesn't make me cry. And even now that process of reducing things to structured logic is my fallback when I can't convey what I'm saying to people. That's not to say I'm some whiz kid or thebestthebestthebest - Frankly, I admire you lot for your abilities, collectively, at understanding the underlying architectures that many video games are built on, to the point of ACE or lag reduction being something halfway between science and art when I'm hearing it. To hear someone that I would expect to be, you know, a lay person (at least in regards to microprocessor architecture) discussing
a buffer underflow and what it ultimately means for falling quickly is something that means a lot to me just in "here's something I can actually connect to".
I'm in my late 20s now. Let's be fair and say for 15 years I've struggled with interacting with people. Were it not for the few oddballs and close friends I've made over the years, I'd not have many people, I think, in my life anymore. As it is I'm gifted with enough close friends to not feel overly lonely - something that apparently is incomprehensible to most people who talk to me - that I actually have friends that genuinely like me and that we would share any joy in each others lives.
Probably people from the recent conversations will be here, or on a later date this will be dredged up and "oh, look at his pity party for the audience of one". And that's okay. I've seen it enough times to enough people in enough places that I expect it. About all I have to say about the "it" of this post and what's bugging me is that it's just something that hurts for me at a human level, and that I struggle to convey well (I doubt I am even now). I don't expect people to "take it easy on me" or "give me a free pass". I'm not "chucking out a victim card".
I've struggled with it to the point I've decided this is who I'm going to be. People are irrational and often frightening, overall, to me. Computers... don't hurt my feelings for reasons I struggle to comprehend. Computers... don't hold grudges because I did something that I can't comprehend being wrong based on the principles we often claim to live by. Computers... didn't do a lot of things to me that I'm trying hard to keep out of this post because I could write a novel of all the reasons I don't trust people before we even talk about what I am talking about here and now.
Oh, I get frustrated at code, don't get me wrong. I get frustrated often that
codebases don't do what they say they'll do in
documentation. And I file those error reports and I scream into my hands and I create another trainwreck by just asking what is wrong with it. "Oh well".
I get less frustrated and more wounded with people. To think I'm hateful - in any sense - is usually wrong. I try hard to make my feelings and thoughts abundantly clear. I - to all appearances - fail at this. Hatred is rare for me - hatred is a very active emotion and
I just don't have that kind of energy. I am more likely to completely forget someone existed than spend my time going "oh, that horrible so-and-so, oh how I hate them, ohhhh, they make me drink!" That is not to say I think I am a generally loving person, either - I think I am, you know, a person. Some things I like, some I don't, some people I like, some I don't, and so on and so forth.
I just don't get how I have this knack for disentangling people's problems but - while often people come to me for that - I don't have any ability at all in getting along with them over sustained periods of time. This - too - is okay. I've tried to act "normal" before. I just am not. I just can not. So I don't. And besides that, when I did, I just felt... plastic. Integrity, as much as people claim to hold it as a value, seems to be undervalued if it means "oh, but you're not in on the whole social system thing we got going here". "Everyone is special and valued - except for you, you weirdo". So on.
I also don't get how I can fight to embody, as much as I can manage - with how incredibly awful I apparently often manage, sure, that's fair - things that I thought were supposed to be valued and feel like all that makes me the bad guy, time and time again. Where the mistake is I am not sure, and while I could write a political treatise on the matter I wouldn't be able to bridge the gap between "I thought I was doing the right thing" and "I tried really hard not to make anything overly personal without cause". I don't have the heart to look over logs for where I failed and slipped an ad hominem in anymore. Countless times looking tell me that I generally don't, or that it's so minor as to be incomprehensible to see people's responses, like I shot their beloved pet instead of ("only") stating that they were being foolish. Or else that's what it devolved to and the argument I'll have with myself will then quickly become "Han shot first!" levels of back and forth. It's not worth losing a week I could be writing code.
This has run long already. And really I was checking on the stuff that I was involved in and posted here more on "well, it's something that's bothering me and I may as well" over anything else.
Don't lose any sleep over any of it. I've been living like this for most a decade now at the least, and even as I type this I have an episode of Family Guy loaded on one monitor and my code and API docs on the other. I do, you know, whatever - a talent developed from years of realizing that I'm not going to "solve" anything in some categories of my own understanding no matter what I do, so I may as well accept that much and just lay my hands where I feel I might - with a little luck - be able to solve
something. It hurts only when I think about it or I'm reminded of it strongly enough I can't help but think of it, and I think it's fairly human to say that I just try not to do that and to just do my work and push it away if I feel nothing good can come of it. (Why I get my hopes up about people at times still baffles me, granted, in response to what seems like the natural point to raise there.)
And besides - the
world is full of
fascinating problems just
waiting to be solved.
Be well, thanks if you read this much, and stay warm if you're reading this roughly when it was written.
