Panoptic

Thank you all for the responses, I really appreciate it. I'm not sure what you are referring to. Do you mean my reluctance to go to that party in the first place? Or my reluctance to go with my brother? I originally knew that the event was going to take place, but I knew I wasn't interested when I was invited. I also anticipated my brother eventually inviting me from the onset and I dreaded this. Usually when I try to avoid going to events with my brother, it is because I act differently when he is not around. I feel more social awkwardness around my brother than around others. My parents were always very reluctant to communicate with us. They hardly even communicated with each other. There was hardly any communication besides the basic "how are you?" and "what's going on?", let alone communication about emotions. Whenever I tried to talk to my parents about emotional things, they always sat there, listened, and then never really said anything. It always seemed like they just wanted to get out of those situations as quickly as possible. To give an example, my half-brother got a divorce and nobody told me. I didn't find out about it until over a year later. Hm, you definitely have great perspectives. When I made the post, I was thinking that this is all about me and that there must be something wrong with me. But you are pointing out that my brother is in fact fragile (from what you can tell from my original post) and that the guilt is not necessarily a bad thing. I appreciate that your answer tends to be more action based (e.g. if you want to help your brother you should be more honest with him) rather than analytical (e.g. what were your parents like?). Not that either are bad. But I guess in the end what I really need to do is take some action with my brother and maybe even speak with him about my own feelings aside from that. Like I said above (in this post), I feel almost infinitely more socially awkward around my brother than around others. I think I can begin to break though that if I just begin to be more honest with him. Thank you.

I have been a member since 2013. I feel that the way I participated on my old profile was unproductive at best. I feel that I tended to seek help but was not willing to put the effort in myself to change. I also feel that I was guilty of running to FDR when I needed some emotional help, but didn't stick around to continue the needed effort to change. I have a desire to help people and the world. I admire those who have made the effort to repair themselves although it is tough and grueling work. I do look up to those who have gone through the journey I have not begun yet. There seems to be something holding me back from beginning the journey. I hope that I can push through that and begin self-work.

I was just laying on the ground studying for a summer class I am taking. I was reading through the textbook trying to figure out how to approach a particular circuit problem and all of the sudden I received a sudden and sharp recollection of last October when my brother wanted to go to a Halloween party with me. I did not want to go but I felt really bad for him. He was gently pressuring me to change my mind and to go to the costume store with him to pick up a pair of costumes on Halloween night. I felt bad and did not want him to be upset. So I gave him some false hope by telling him I would go to the store. We got there and looked around and I thought the prices were pretty expensive. I walked off to look around the store to try to subconsciously signal him that I was not interested. He was very patient and found a pair of costumes that came as a pair and were cheap (yes, the classic hot dog and mustard combination). I was having a lot of anxiety and kept walking around, and he picked up a ticket to go get the costumes at the counter. Then he tracked me down and asked me if I wanted to do it. I said I don't know yet. I kept pushing the decision off. I didn't want to commit but I felt sorry for him. He was patient and kept asking me if I had decided yet. Eventually I told him I didn't want to go. He was upset and said he thought I wanted to go to the party and I said in a mean way "I never said I wanted to go". So he asked why we were even at the store to begin with and I think I told him that I just wanted to look around. He said in a disappointing and resentful voice "okay lets go". I vividly recall walking behind him out of the store and him in front of me dropping his ticket without looking down in the garbage can. I felt a huge surge of sadness and guilt. I can't stop thinking about his hand dropping the ticket in the garbage. He didn't seem sad, just disappointed and resentful. I tried laying on the floor when this thought came up and experiencing the emotions I was feeling. I began to tear up. I kept recalling other times I had disappointed him. I feel like I must sit down with him at some point to tell him how I feel. (He is my fraternal twin and he is a few minutes younger than me.) I have a history of feeling sad and guilty towards him, like I've done him so much harm. I think after puberty I began to "leave him behind" so to speak throughout middle school and high school. When people we mean to him, I was usually embarrassed about him and try to isolate him from my life. In high school and college, I would wait until he was not around to go hang out with people so he couldn't ask to come with me. I wanted "my own friends", I wanted a life separate from him. And I wanted him to have friends because I felt bad, just not the same friends as me. The relationship between us in life seems to have manifested itself where I am somewhat of an older brother/parent to him and he is the more fragile one. Does this sound reasonable? I am kind of just writing my thoughts down on here. Why would I feel so sad and sorry for him all the time? Is it because I was mean to him in the past? Or could others reasons be a factor as well?

I agree that the prepper mindset is based on fantasy. Its actually sad to see how much of the life and money they are wasting, especially since they consider firearms to be a part of the "necessary" preparation gear. In fact, it seems that many of them are more interested in stockpiling firearms instead of food and water which reinforces the idea that its a fantasy. I believe in keeping food and water stockpiled. I honestly think I would feel paranoid if I started stockpiling medical supplies, clothing, etc. Even though its totally possible that it would come in handy, I just don't like the idea of keeping track of all of this, it just seems to weigh my life down. I live in the middle of a decently sized city and I keep a cupboard loaded with canned foods. I aim for variety because you cannot just survive off of beans (in case you didn't know!). I have ton of different types of vegetables and fruit. More importantly though I have a good sized stockpile of bottled water in my closet. I don't have a firearm because I don't want to have the responsibility that comes along with owning one, but I do hear gunshots outside from time to time. Somehow it seems that the inside walls of my gated condo complex are perfectly safe

I think you make an interesting point. I think there is a significant difference though, and that is the fact that your position as "Ethics Compliance Officer" was a responsibility to uphold ethics standards, whereas my position is not about that. I.e. the purpose of your position was to uphold ethics (or was to said to uphold ethics) whereas the purpose of mine has nothing to do with upholding ethics, just to fulfill some duties. In my situation, I still did it because I thought it was a good thing to do (although in truth, I was letting the concerns about others walk over my desires, which were not to do it in the first place), but that assumption still holds. Even though I am not doing what I thought I would be, it is still true that I can repay the club by being an officer here. The only thing that has changed is the stated responsibilites. The responsibilities themselves do not change the fact that I can still repay the club, which is what is bothering me. When I made the commitment, there were 2 things assumed: I can fulfill the duties of the position I am applying for I have the time to fulfill these duties Now, number 1 is has obviously changed because I thought I was applying for something else. Number 2 though, is the problem. It was implicit in my commitment that I have the time to be an officer, but I do not have that time any longer. I am probably confusing you so let me clear up my case. If I go and explain to them that I will not meet this commitment, I have to give them reasons. The first reason I was planning on giving them was that I simply do not want to do this any longer because the stated duties have changed. The second reason is that I do not has much time as I thought I did before to make this commitment. I think my first reason shows them the "legal" basis for leaving. The second reason though, does not, because I originally told them implicitly that I could make the time commitment. Now, other things that I did not anticipate are filling my schedule. These are things that I committed to after I made the officer commitment. So I could have not done those things, knowing that I had the original commitment. After this long thought process, it seems like it comes down to the fact that my decision making faculty is not very good at the moment and I made an irresponsible decision to begin with. I think what I can do, is be 100% honest with them and explain the two reasons I gave above. I am still not sure about the morality of leaving because it almost seems optional. I originally made a commitment and morally bound myself, but this commitment was made under a bad decision on my part. Also, the other party was completely aware of my unkowningness to commit to something that I did not understand, and they said nothing. It is definitely confusing but I think I know what I am going to do now. Thank you Livemike for this!

Last semester in school, I made a commitment that I now regret making. I didn't really want to do it in the first place (so I obviously had signs to myself that the decision shouldn't have been made) but I ran for an officer position in a club I am in. The reason I ran was because it seemed like not many people were running and I felt like it was somewhat of a responsibility of mine to run since I had been a member for a year. I felt "bad" that if I didn't run then the other officers would have to deal with that situation. Although I suppressed this emotion by telling myself that it would end up looking good on my resume. So I ran for "outreach officer" which I thought had to do with bringing in relevant, local industries to talk to club members (which is a position I held in a different club before). Unfortunately, this was a complete misunderstanding and the position actually involves going to middle schools and elementary schools to talk to children about science. This is something I am extremely uncomfortable doing since I have no experience with children (nothing against children). So I ran for the position and gave my speech (which was all about bringing in industry) during a club meeting. It was extremely obvious to the others that I had no idea what I was getting myself into during this speech, but I was not aware. After I spoke, the floor was opened to questions, and not one of the officers (or anybody for that matter) told me that I had this misunderstanding. I ended up getting elected, and still nobody said anything. It wasn't until 2 weeks later when one of the officers invited me to go with her to an elementary school to talk. I texted her and explained that I wasn't comfortable doing that, and she replied saying that it would be good practice since I would be doing a lot of this as an officer. This is when I found out, and I was pretty shocked. Even later on I talked to one of the other officers who saw my speech and he joked that it was pretty awkward when I was up there not knowing what I was talking about. This seems a little bit unfair to me, but maybe I'm just putting the blame on the others. I still haven't decided what to do and school is approaching. I will start my officer position for the year unless I back out, but I don't know what I should do. I feel like I would feel guilt from breaking a commitment I made if I back out. I have guilt issues anyway and so I'm not sure if it is a valid feeling or not, because I get a feeling of guilt about the smallest things and tend to let others walk over me. At the same time, I still made the commitment and I feel it is my responsibility to carry it out, even if I don't believe I made the right decision in the first place. So what do you all think? What is the morally good decision to make? I don't want to live with more guilt if I make the wrong decision again.

How about Labor Day weekend? August 30th

When I said don't compare yourself, I was talking to OP. As for the Google GPA and transcript info, I said nothing about that. I didn't mention the word "GPA" in my post. My GPA is terrible, and I am working an internship right now. Of course, I wouldn't have gotten the job if I wasn't in college, and the degree I'm aiming for is still required for the jobs I want to work. When I was referring to CS, I didn't say it should be called a science. I was just explaining what the degree consists of compared to Computer Engineering. I would also argue that CS is not really engineering. Anything "applied" is not automatically engineering. Then you could call a technician an engineer. You say I have conformation bias because I'm going to college. How do you know that? Couldn't I just as easily say you have bias because you're not in college? As a matter of fact, I've almost dropped out 2 or 3 times over the past few years because I didn't think I was getting anywhere. Then I realized it was just my bad attitude holding me back. Anyway, Eric.Linux, if I were you I would research as many opportunities as possible. You could go to community college first and save boatloads of money, unless you've managed to obtain scholarships. Also, you don't have to rush. Some people take a break for a semester of two to travel or to figure things out for themselves. Just make sure you're ready before you go and jump in (if you decide to do it). I had such a bad attitude about it for my first three years and lost so many opportunities. You will get out as much as you put into it, so put in as much as you can (i.e. take every opportunity you can). All I put in was going to class and doing enough work to get B's. I didn't do anything in the realm of clubs or networking, and so I got little out of it. Now I'm changing that. You can keep jacbot's position in mind. I think he's somewhat right about the value of a CS degree, but a lot of jobs require it and there's no way around that. Its much better to open your horizons IMO by getting the degree instead of aiming for companies that hire people without degrees. Besides, if you want to get hired at a place that hires without degrees, you still have to KNOW what they want you to know, and learning that in your free time may or may not be something you're good at.

Don't compare yourself to Elon Musk. Everybody is different. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dropped out. That most definitely says nothing about what you should do. Computer Science and Computer Engineering are vastly different. Computer science is heavily concentrated on mathematical methods for solving programming issues. Computer engineering is a subset of electrical engineering and has far more to do with hardware. Computer engineering is essentially the same as electrical engineering except with different technical electives. Computer science majors don't need to take much physics or even high level math (at least where I go to school). Jacbot, I think you have good input but you are being far too biased. Everybody is different and college is still very valuable even for how much its quality has declined over the years.

I can make a road trip to California, whether it be on a weekend during school or on a break. I have a 3 day weekend on Labor Day, maybe then?I'd prefer to do it after school begins because I'm pretty busy for the summer right now.

This is really awesome to see! I think FDR lacks meetups, we need to meet with each other more!

That's a really cool idea. Of course, it would have to work out for everyone. Out of all of those states, the middle point seems to be Las Vegas. I'm down lol. As for dates? I'm still in college, but I can find a weekend to go if it happened after school is in.

I'm actually learning Russian right now in my free time. Maybe when I become intermediate we can try talking.

Thank you guys for messaging me and being so outgoing and willing to help. I really appreciate the replies. Well, I kind of meant I needed to make sure my thoughts weren't overly strange or derived from my own neglect to my emotional development. I should have used a better word. I just feel like a lot of my feelings and emotions shouldn't be what they are. For example, for some reason, even immediately after I just met a new person, I get extremely jealous and hurt when I see them talking to somebody else other than me. And it is more so for women, but men as well. Its seems like attachment issues or something.

If you get depressed easily, maybe don't read this - I have no friends, nobody to talk to, nobody to listen. I also feel like I will never have friends (or "buddys"). Even though I've improved my social skills in the past year, I still fall so far behind others. I feel self-conscious, unable to look another person in the eye. I walked past a girl today in my apartment complex. I saw her polite smile in the corner of my eye as she passed, but I walked past as if she wasn't ever there. I feel hollow and plastic. I would love to have smiled back and said hi, but I could not. I have no idea how to express my emotions. I have no emotions. I feel nothing. No anger, happiness, excitement, sadness. Everything I see is nothing to me. I finally got the internship I've wanted for years to push my career foward, but I feel no happiness. The only thing I feel, whenever I do feel, is guilt and fear. I'm guilty of only ever coming on here when I'm desparate. I don't take the time to gain self-knowledge. I'm scared, I want help. Most of the time I go through my life feeling nothing, pretending everything is fine. I day dream a lot about being powerful, about someday coming back to the people I knew from high school and surprising them all with how rich and successful I am (in my head). Its weird, most of the time I NEVER feel like anything is wrong. I feel comfortable. But once every 4 or 5 months, I find myself in a bout of depression and anxiety (which is what I feel now). I feel fear and guilt. Then after a week or two I get distracted by something else, like school work or some new thing I find on the internet (idk, like Reddit). Then I go another 4 or 5 months feeling nothing. I'm SICK of feeling nothing. I want to feel, anger, sadness, happiness, excitement. This time, I'm afraid I will get distracted again and find myself back on here doing the same thing 4 or 5 months from now... TL;DR Is there anybody on here who is willing to maybe set up a chat room on Facebook or some other medium? I'd love to Skype, but I really can't with my brother always around, he'd hear everything although I'm sure there will be points where he won't be here. I feel like I just need somebody who I could talk to regularly about life, emotions, and things that I never get to share. I have no idea what I'm doing right or wrong with my actions and thoughts. I need verification. Thank you for reading and replying, I feel a bit better writing this, although I want to cry right now, but my brother is here. EDIT: I also wanted to add how shameful I feel for coming on here and asking FDR for so much, and yet I don't even try myself. If you don't feel like responding, then I understand.

I thought about all of these posts so I'll try to work through them here. LovePrevails - I see what you're saying. Just stay calm and treat it as an everyday conversation but more calmly. I'm 21 years old by the way. dsayers - I really appreciate the post. It is true that I've had problems with "analysis paralysis" where thinking far too much about something will stop me from doing it. Honestly, I really did not want it to be staged but I didn't know how else to approach it because I wanted to ask her out. Assuming you meant this, I agree that one should talk to a new person, regardless of their reason, if they want to get to know them. One should not need to justify it by saying that the other person is intelligent. Unfortunately I don't think my self awareness in this area is good so I'm not sure what gave me the urge to talk to her. xelent - I haven't thought about that before. I can't recall any situation like that from my childhood but I remember in high school always wanting to go out and hang out with my friends. They'd call me up last minute and tell me that I needed to come hang out with them because of all the fun they were having and you'd hear them all laughing and having a great time in the background. My mother always said no. She told me it was too late for me to be going out and she didn't want me getting in trouble. I would explain that I never get to do anything I want to and the answer was still no, oh and no more questions. Rainbow Jamz - I haven't thought about it like that. I think you have a very good perspective. Holding these expectations is detrimental to both people, and it would probably result in some very awkward conversations as well down the road. Nathan Diehl - I can understand if the over thinking is a red flag but I think being a bit nervous is normal for anybody who wants to go out of there way to talk to a stranger. Too much nervousness is a red flag though. But once one starts to plan it out it becomes nerve racking which is not good. Nala - Thank you for the female input, definitely valuable. I guess even the phrase "gauging her intelligence" sounds insulting. I try not to take things personal, something that I've become a lot better at over the years. So I see the overall picture. Don't think about it too much, don't set your expectations high, don't daydream about outcomes. I think I need to be more of an outgoing person in my daily life and just try to start conversations with more people. I'm sure once you get good at that, things like this flow more naturally. Its still a debated issue with me, whether or not I should explicitly tell myself that I'm ready for a girlfriend and then go out searching with that purpose, or if I should just go through my life and see what happens while trying to be more outgoing. I guess the latter for now while I build confidence and social skills. So with that, I guess I'll just talk to her for the fun of it and for the experience and see how she reacts, without actively trying to get any type of relationship out of it. I love coming on here and being able to speak about my feelings. Its like having a friend during a time when I have nobody to talk to about these things. Thanks guys for trying to help me stay on track. I need to do more self work. Class is on Tuesday so I'll let you know how it goes, that is, if the situation presents itself.

I feel like it is like colonizing the new world. Its going to require risks but in the end it needs to be done. The planets in this solar system all have massive amounts of valuable resources, and we need these to expand our race. I understand people saying this isn't practical, because it really isn't in the short run. I believe that the attitude needs to be there. Of course we should be skeptical but we shouldn't just throw it out all together. Mars One itself may be a bit ridiculous (even though it is made up by world renowned scientists), but colonizing other planets is necessary if we are going to advance our race. I for one dream of a time where an average human being can easily travel between planets. A guy lives on Mars, goes to his local space port, and heads to Titan. A lot of those moons around Saturn likely have underground oceans of liquid water that span the entire planet. Saturn and Jupiter have massive amounts of Helium 3 that can be used for nuclear fusion. A typical class-m asteroid is a few miles across and has something like 3 times more precious metals that humanity has EVER mined. The benefits are absolutely enormous. Anyway, a lot of people just say its science fiction for now and it won't happen before we all die. Well maybe that's true, but personally its something that fuels my imagination and I support anybody trying to do it. I'm going to stick with the hopeful side of the human race. Besides, there must be SOMEBODY that tries these new things out or else we will never get new data for it.

There's a girl in my technical writing class who seems very intelligent. It's weird, I haven't ever talked to her before but I get a sense of her intelligence subconsciously when I hear her talking and by the way she reacts to situations in the same way I do. I feel like asking her out just to see what happens. So I'm trying to think of how to do it. She rides her bike everywhere. There's also a set of half-walls that extend out from the building where the class is right up to the bike racks. I thought of sitting on the wall next to the bike rack and waiting for her to arrive for class then striking up a conversation with her in order to gauge her intelligence. But then what happens? Should I ask her out at the end of the conversation right before class? Or should I have the conversation, wait for another chance to have a one-on-one conversation with her and ask her then? Or should I just ask her out first thing? Here's how I imagine it. Wait for her to come up. I say Hi (her name here). She replies, and I ask her about her bike (I'm pretty interested in bikes actually and it's obvious that she is as well). We walk to class together while talking and I try to gauge her intelligence better. Then what? Should I wait another day, get into another conversation with her and ask her then? I want to be up front and honest and I don't want it to look like I planned everything out. I want it to be natural yet progressive and actually go somewhere without having to wait because my goal is to ask her out not to be friends. I'm not sure if it would seem planned if I asked her about something to talk about before I asked her out. I'm just not sure.

Unfortunately I don't think the chances of you finding a roommate on here are greater than 0 ha. There's simply not enough people on this forum to find somebody in that specific area. I seem to be the only one that's on this thread trying to meet up with people and I live in Tucson

Hi giancoli. I went back and read your first topic and this one and so I will answer both. I feel terrible for what happened in your childhood. It was actually a bit of a learning experience for me because there are so many things you mention that are similar to my childhood that I have not thought about too much. The extremely superficial conversations with my parents, the isolation from extended family (which I guess could be a good or bad thing), the passive aggression in the family, etc. I teared up reading your story. Its so sad to see this happen to somebody. Although I have similar issues I have yet to actually feel empathy for myself because I have not gotten into my self work too much yet. I also have never had close friends and continue to lack them in college. I also have significantly lowered the frequency I speak with my parents. Once I came to college I began talking with them multiple times a day because I had nobody else to talk to, but eventually I realized that they obviously did not care about my concerns and issues and so I lost all interest in speaking with them. It seems impossible to find somebody to talk to about life issues. I admire your strength and I believe you are on the right path to recovery. It seems like your largest issues are guilt, not fear. I think I also have a problem with guilt. I'm not sure why but I have a very high susceptibility to guilt and I become very guilty when my parents do not approve of something I want to do and very good when they do approve of something I want to do. Is this something that you can relate to? It seems like your mother is afraid of losing control over the relationship. That is understandable for somebody who has essentially had control over you for your whole childhood. Have you gone into detail explaining all of these feelings you have to your parents or other family members? I see that depression is also a problem. Depression is a sign that you have given up hope. It is almost like an acceptance that life is miserable and there is nothing to be done about it. That is not true at all. Look at how far you've come from your childhood. You are extremely intelligent because of the progress you've been making. I think that in order to get rid of the depression you need to realize a few things. Realize that you had no choice in your upbringing and that your parents are responsible for their actions. Then realize that you are also responsible for your own actions (which you already have) and that you have made unprecedented progress in your life so far. Essentially, you can not change your past, but you can change your future. You HAVE been changing your future by working in the present. You are a human being. I think that maybe you continue to beat yourself up over past issues instead of realizing that the only thing that matters is NOW. Even if you have made mistakes in the past, mistakes are necessary in order to advance. You started off in a bad place and learned to survive your childhood by developing bad habits such as feeling guilt. It is inevitable that, in reteaching yourself the proper way to live your life, you will make mistakes. You should not feel like you will never be happy or never be happy with a romantic relationship. Although I do think that some self-work is necessary before getting into a relationship, I also think that a relationship can involve self-improvement for both people where you help each other out with their personal issues, as long as there is an agreement that will not allow the relationship to degenerate. In other words, you do not have to be perfect to find love, I think that learning about yourself with somebody else can be an adventure where the other person supports you, as long as both people are at relatively the same level of self-knowledge (i.e. self maturity). But this will be for you to decide. Maybe there are certain issues that you would like to fix before a relationship like I do, but having other people to help you through will be good. I think having friends interested in self-knowledge is extremely beneficial. Have you tried journaling? I have not yet begun to journal but I have done tons of thinking in my free time. Writing your thoughts out like you've done here on the board is a very good way to elaborate on thoughts and understand yourself. Journaling though allows you to do it everyday (or every other day, whatever you want). Its good to explain to the paper how you are feeling, its like you have somebody to speak with.

Thank you all for your replies. Every reply seemed very helpful to me. At the end of Nathaniel Branden's The Psychology of Self Esteem, it answers the question whether or not understanding childhood experiences are important in the therapy process. It said that it is likely not necessary because what matters is the "now"; what you are doing in the present to eliminate the habits of avoiding thought is the most important thing. I was confused because I figured that emotional healing was something sort of "spiritual", where you become "one with yourself" or some weird hippie garbage like that. It states that there are many things that are in our direct control that we can work to change daily in order to improve our self esteem, such as achieving small goals and working your way up, becoming more of an outgoing person, not backing down from smaller fears, etc. That seems to coincide nicely with what you all are saying.

Hey all, I'm ready to begin my self-knowledge journey. My anxiety has led me to interest in self-knowledge because I know it's the only cure for my problems. I just finished reading Nathanial Branden's The Psychology of Self Esteem. It is frightening yet invigorating to read because of his examples which seemingly dissect my mind onto the pages in front of me. I am scared and my fear is attempting to hold me back from this. But my tendency to allow my fear to run my life when its presence is powerful is a problem that must be eliminated. I am sick of being a weak human being who backs down to all challenges for the “comfort” of safety. It is not comforting knowing that you are letting the entirety of your ambitions float away. So please give me some advice. Journaling seems to be the option since therapy is out of my reach for now. I have heard that people make reasonably good progress with journaling. How do you journal properly? I have read threads on here about it but it still seems a bit confusing to me. I know there's no right or wrong but the general idea seems to be to write down daily what emotions you find troubling to you during that day, or, if nothing happened that day, troubling emotions from other times that you may be thinking about. I assume you write the emotions, desires, fears, etc. that you felt along with the events that triggered them and maybe also the possible reasons behind each emotion/desire/fear.

I am 100% uneducated in economics and law is too damn confusing to follow for me. I've been looking into ObamaCare and have a few questions about it. Please bear with me, I have absolutely no idea how any of this works and I would like to understand this because I live in the U.S. (for now). If ObamaCare contains an individual mandate does that not mean that all 315 million Americans will be forced to obtain healthcare? I watched Stef's video The Truth About ObamaCare and it says that 16 million will be affected but what about the other 299 million people in the U.S.? If you sign up for a private healthcare plan why should I do it through the Obamacare website? Is there some sort of requirement that I must use that site in order to get insurance? I'll probably have more questions after these initial ones are answered. If anybody answering could provide me with reliable sources as well that would be great.

I think I have personally seen a significant increase in my own productivity over the last 4 months. I'm assuming you've seen Stef's video on the topic. The first time I watched that video it all made sense to me but it didn't have any effect. Eventually though I really put what he said into play without realizing it at first. I was struggling in college trying to work towards my ECE degree. Eventually my grades got so bad that I was forced to switch majors, so I took the easier route of systems engineering (still engineering though). It just so happened that I enjoyed the material much more (this new major was actually my original choice but my father convinced me to go against my own wishes a few years prior) and since it is generally considered the easier engr major I had a ton of extra free time. All of this was happening around the time I was gaining self-knowledge for the first time and I felt empowered. My old method of attempting to get myself to do things consisted of picking a long term goal (like a career field), figuring out the best things to do to make myself more competitive in order to reach the goal easier (like what technical/project/club experience I could get), and then trying to force myself to do those things. I always planned on doing a TON of things in order to approach my goals but I kept finding myself lost in the reasons why I wanted to do these things in the first place. Deep down I really did not want to do any of these things, I had thoroghly lied to myself and it hadn't worked (it took some serious honesty and guts to figure that one out). Once I switched majors my previous stress disappeared. I also stopped talking to my parents while in school which seems to have done a lot of good, I'm still not sure why. So I essentially had no distractions or stress and I felt as if I could do whatever I please without having to worry about other crap. I began to pursue what interested me, not because I thought I wanted to make a living in those areas but SIMPLY because they were interesting (I tried not to worry about the future and just enjoyed life). Over the course of a few weeks I found a new passion within me for the colonization of space and the advancement of human kind. I joined a space oriented club at my university and joined one of the project teams they had. Within a few months I found myself meeting plenty of like-minded people, making connections, and doing a large proportion of work on this project team, things that I could never get myself to do at any point in the preceding 3 years of college. I think what you have to do is really just do what interests you simply because you find it enjoyable. Stress is an important factor and too much will destroy any ambitions you have. Too much stress is not natural anyway. Once you reduce your stress it should be much easier to clear your head and just do what you enjoy. I actually found my interest in space after sitting around on the computer with nothing to do and going on torrents of Wikipedia searching in my free time. Maybe my interests will even change in the future too, who knows. As long as I am doing something I enjoy at the time. Once you are using your life to do what you want other tasks such as calling your cable provider to get the TV fixed or going to the bank to deal with account issues become much easier. I'm not saying you should not think about/plan your future at all. I think its important to lay out a general plan but to not punish yourself for failing to meet any goals. Use it as a learning experience instead. Remember what Stefan said, "We do not put off that which gives us pleasure." Sometimes I think it helps to fantisize about what your future could be like. I sometimes imagine a "perfect" future where everything goes exactly as planned and I think about all of the possibilities. Idk how good/bad that is but it helps to think about what you would want out of life. It also helps me to get through things that suck in the moment. My classes suck but I imagine how awesome it will be to finally graduate, like what I would do immediately after the last final exam I ever take. I don't think it's possible to go through such a dramatic change that quickly. It takes time. I'm used to putting far too many expectations on myself and so once I began to become more productive I was pretty satisfied with myself for a while. But sometimes things in life get stressful and you will mess it up. I have gone back to procrastination multiple times and I began to beat myself up again then realized what I was doing. I decided to stop beating myself up and use it as a learning experience (something that I must remind myself every time I find myself doing it).

Thanks for starting this. I've looked into BTC before. It seems like a very good way not only to make some money but also to learn about computers. I don't have any practical experience with computer hardware which was why I shied away. It sounds like a fun thing to try out though once I get out of school. I always wondered about the profitability of constructing one of those powerful computers specifically for BTC mining and having to pay for the power it consumes. Would it be worth it?