It has been about five years since I first got my computer. Endless hours I have spent in front of the two dimensional rectangle, the third world. Before I got the machine, most of my time was spent in the world inside my head. My thoughts, feelings, sensations and so many things. I was never at rest. Then I got the machine. I had dreamed of it for like years before I got one. I was excited, fascinated. There were so many things in my mind to do with the computer, so many plans of changing the world. I couldn't harness any of them. Now it feels like every dream I had back then has become a burden on my shoulders, depressing me, making my feet heavy. Keeping me from moving forward. I am feeling powerless, like I am losing a bit of life with every failed dream. I'm getting frightened from dreaming. What have it brought to me other than burden?
Clarity of thoughts was never my strength, but nowadays I am feeling much more puzzled. Lost. Like I am stuck. World is leaving me behind. I've always seen the world like a witness. The third person standing on the shore looking at the fishes racing, the canaries flying. Something has happened. Making me feel as I am in the middle of the race I always witnessed. Just witnessed. Never participated. Not even as audience. I blame dreams. The fallen ones.
Yesterday on reddit I found a name for my madness. Existential Depression they call it. It made me believe I am not the only one feeling this. There are others. There might be others who have gone through the path I am on now. May be they could give me a tip or two. Here I am outside my diary, writing in public.
I have been into computers for so long. And yet I found myself no where. So much time I have put into programming, operating systems, security, psychology and so many other things. All seem wasted. It is depressing to just look at all the mess I have made of me. I see people so less talented than me, with no knowledge of what they are doing, even doing it wrong, crossing me in terms of success. They are richer, happier, and better than me. I know I can do what they are doing 10 times better, but I don't. Instead of motivating me, it is drowning me even deeper. I feel no motivation to finish any project I start. And when the unfinished gets piled up, they haunt me. They make me angry and depressed. I can't remember how many times I swiped my hard disk to get rid of the unfinished 'awesome' projects I thought will change the world. So many half written poems whose traces can't be found now in the burnt notebooks. It sucks. I feel like every single thought I had, every new idea I ever failed has cursed me. I have a trembling feeling just thinking about thinking something new.
So many techniques I tried. So many psychology papers, books I read. Still I am here. Another trough. I've tried the GTD (Getting Things Done) and the concept of 'limited willpower'. Wrote all my mess down. Tried to minimize the decision making. And so much more. This fucking wave is just not leaving me. I find myself stuck in the crests and troughs all the time. I am on the top of sky when on a crest. Have so many new ideas, start new projects. Start reading new books. New programming languages. New frameworks. New poets. And then it all start fading. Then come the phase when I try to balance things. And just when I feel I can do it, I find myself in middle of a trough. The disgust and depression of it is just killing. I do many stupid things in troughs. All failures. May be writing this blog post is one of them. May be after some hours I will start feeling ashamed of writing such a thing, and delete it. It just sucks to be here. I know it will pass. It always do. But it leave behind scars. Scars that will keep scaring me from thinking new ideas, from dreaming. And I think this might be the lesson. Dreams suck.