leaving?

[fullerene]

mkay... so I'm leaving for school tomorrow, and I have a busy semester. I have 7 full classes, plan on cooking for dinners and weekends, and I actually have friends at college. Classes don't start 'til Monday, so I might be around during the weekend a bit... but it depends on how much there is left to go out and get after moving in.

Anyway, I have no idea whether I'll even be able to handle the schedule as it is... so for right now, I'm going to say that at least my activity is going to drop off significantly, if not altogether once things get moving. I'll try to check back... but quite frankly, I can't promise anything. At this point I could never come back again, come back a few times and leave after this weekend, or be away for a week or two until I realize that my schedule is crippling and drop a class or two to free up some time.

On the chance that I never come back, though (or only come back during breaks and days off, weeks/months from now), I feel like I should take my 300th post to say "it's been fun!" If nothing else, I'm thrilled to have found this place to reassure me that there are some others like me out there... even if there weren't in my high school. I'm suspicious that this forum was created pretty much for the purpose of drawing a scarce minority together and creating a place where they could learn about themselves and grow. If that's the case, then I think the admins/creators/mods did a fantastic job with it. Even if this wasn't their intent, take advantage of it ; I'm sure you all already know it, but it's one of this place's greatest strengths.

 

[Wisp]

Well I at least hope you'll come back.

(Don't be sad! My summer is waning too...)

 

[Agent Intellect]

ugh, i don't understand how people can cram so much into their schedule. i think i'd probably go insane if i didn't have my free time. good luck though, hope to see you back soon.

 

[Dissident]

I hope you can check back now and then, you will be missed otherwise.

Good luck!

 

[Titania]

My school started two weeks ago and since I've been actually more active here... weird. Or maybe I've just spent more time indoors 'cause weather is horrible... But anyway, don't let any schedules to pressure you too much. I've noticed that I get things done better if I don't stress myself with planning... Good luck with the school and hopefully we'll see you here again (Heh, you have been here less time than I, but you have 300 posts and I 34... )

 

[Vrecknidj]

This fall I will be teaching full time at one school (six classes), part time at a university (two classes of 90 students each), and working part time as a tutor (perhaps 15 hours per week), and working part time as a freelance editor (another 15 hours per week).

Somehow, I'll find time to check the forums once in a while. But, it's gonna be hell. It's amazing what most Americans have to do to earn enough money to survive.

Perhaps it's that I live in Michigan. We have more foreclosures than any other state, and worse unemployment than any other state. (At least, last I checked.) Things are bad here folks, very, very bad.

Dave

 

[Kuu]

My classes stared 3 weeks ago... 6 full courses, though the architecture studio should count as 3 cuz we practically live there... so my activity has dropped off too. But I find my free time anyways

 

[Jordan~]

You're studying architecture? I might have done that. I don't think I have the patience.

I think I've said this somewhere else. :P

 

[fullerene]

yeah I'll see... obviously I'm here right now, so with any luck I'll still find time. There's a good chance I won't be able to keep up with every thread anymore tho.

 

[Agent Intellect]

This fall I will be teaching full time at one school (six classes), part time at a university (two classes of 90 students each), and working part time as a tutor (perhaps 15 hours per week), and working part time as a freelance editor (another 15 hours per week).

Somehow, I'll find time to check the forums once in a while. But, it's gonna be hell. It's amazing what most Americans have to do to earn enough money to survive.

Perhaps it's that I live in Michigan. We have more foreclosures than any other state, and worse unemployment than any other state. (At least, last I checked.) Things are bad here folks, very, very bad.

Dave

what part of Michigan you from? i'm from Grand Rapids

 

[Decaf]

yeah I'll see... obviously I'm here right now, so with any luck I'll still find time. There's a good chance I won't be able to keep up with every thread anymore tho.

I can barely keep up with every thread and I GOT time. Good luck though, its been nice having your perspective... maybe we can flag threads that we want you to respond to

 

[loveofreason]

I hope you're still lurking out there Cryptonia, even if you're not posting.

 

[fullerene]

indeed I am... as it turns out, school/cooking for yourself doesn't take nearly as much time as I thought it might. But I think I've reached that point with people where I'm either going to stay silent or start screaming... I have no idea what might tip me over that edge, but it can't be much. I have withdrawn from all my interactions with people, at least in spirit, including here... and if the INFJs don't manage to give me some reason to interact with people, I think I would sooner sit idly by while my mind tears itself to pieces before I go out and do it on my own.

I said that no more of my thoughts would come through this forum, and I meant it.

 

[Dissident]

Was it that bad?

I get that you, like LoR, are a lot more sensitive than the averange INTP, that coupled with the fact that most of us are not very receptive to certain ideas (read closed minded) resulted in a quite unpleasant place to be, and I take my share of blame.

I think that screaming is better than going mute, it leads to something, maybe to some change, maybe to some undertanding, even if of unpleasant things.

 

[fullerene]

actually most people were fine. I only got really annoyed at a couple... and I don't even think they were all that bad objectively, just very poorly timed. I've been through so much crap over the past several weeks that I can't keep it all straight and could never lay it down logically--but I know enough's changed that the random dreams and scenarios my mind has always created (say, if someone tried to mug me while walking down the street) has switched from "what would I say to him? Should I care more about trying to get away safely, or doing what I can for him?" to "I wonder if there's any way I could just get the guy to kill me, or if he'd believe me if I told him I wanted to borrow the gun to use on myself," so I know it's not nothing. Yesterday I was walking down the street for food and could barely manage to stop from bursting into tears--and I haven't cried in front of anyone since I was about 6... in fact I don't think I'd cried at all between about 6 and 16. Such is a major problem with college life in the city; city + roomate --> no physical location where you know you'll be alone.

Most every reason I've found for living has dissolved or been torn away over the past several years, one thing after another. 3 of them over the last 7 weeks or so. A couple of responses to me were poorly timed and said more than they meant to, so I sealed off ideas, effectively taking myself out of a place where I can get hurt anymore. Until something happens outside of the world of computers or someone can show me otherwise, fuck life--I give it up.

 

[Jesin]

Wait, hadn't you just gotten out of that state a couple weeks before you joined?

 

[fullerene]

mm, I wasn't sure if I'd mentioned that here or not. Tough to describe accurately... the last time I was in this state fully was 2 1/2 years ago, but yes about a week before I came here something did happen that I would have described as giving me all the reason I thought I'd ever need to exist. Funny how someone's actions/responses (tho no one here) can undercut reasons so easily.

*shrug* what to say but "I guess I was wrong" and "maybe that was just a brief hiccup of serenity." Now that I think about it I just simply haven't lived long enough to tell what my more normal state is. 14ish years of peace, 2 or 3 of turmoil, a year or so of peace, a few months of turmoil, a few weeks of piece... hey, maybe this won't last that long after all. Who knows anything anyway?

rest assured it's not the same things coming back over and over again...

 

[loveofreason]

Solitude = soul food. Don't give up.

 

[fullerene]

yet the line between solitude and isolation is a hair's width at best

*shakes head a few times*

ok, I think I'm cool again. As soon as I started organizing what was upsetting me internally, which (oddly enough) only took about two or three hours once I mad a conscious attempt at it, I started feeling better. *shrug*, I should be around now and then though... activity varying with school work and time it takes to feed myself, of course. Thanks anyway, though.

 

[Dissident]

Welcome back!

 

[Ogion]

Wow, seems like some (dare i say?) crisis was going on while i wasn't here.
But i think i couldn't have said something helpful anyways or at least it would probably be a little hypocritical because idon't think i ever had a real crisis of my own (or i just missed it).
But you're ok again now, cryptonia?

Ogion

 

[fullerene]

hmm... well when you said that I actually started wondering if I remember what it's like to be ok. I can't remember any time before a couple years ago where I even had a problem worth considering, but I can't think of more than a continuous month or so since then without them. For all intents and purposes of anyone else though, especially from forum people who hardly know me, yes I'm ok.

 

[Ogion]

Hm, yes, 'ok' isn't very sharply defined. I meant it as being somewhat tranquil and calm, and not haunted by problems, but feeling to be able to at least react to them sanely. I suppose with me there is some, how shall i call it, procrastination at work. I mean, i mostly ignore and forget all about problems, and then from time to time i remember them, get some rush of adrenaline and do something about it. Then i forget again and so on. Of course this has big disadvantages but at least i can keep inner peace and serenity (As long as i get it done just in time, that is).

Ogion

(I didn't intend to quiz you about the prolems, i just wondered wether you have a short break or are still in 'action-against-problems' )

 

[fullerene]

haha oh geez... I did that for a while, ignoring things that weren't big deals except for short bursts just because they weren't big deals. Then the tipping point comes and you start back-analyzing everything that wasn't a big deal just because it's somewhat related.

yes I'd say I'm somewhat tranquil and calm again. Haunted by problems is tough to say, because my ability to ignore and forget about them has also been practiced quite a bit. I certainly feel like I could react to them sanely... but like I said, "who knows anything anymore?" I've started remembering my feelings and reactions, and nothing about that particular one guarantees the ability to react sanely at all.

I have a thin shell set up keeping my reaction to problems intellectual again, but the key word is thin. If it cracks then I can back-analyze to know that I couldn't react to problems sanely and was, in fact, haunted by problems... but--and I can't believe I'm saying this because I have a pretty strong ability to predict future events in other peoples' relationships and reactions to things--I can't find any reason to tip me into thinking that "im fine" or "still in trouble" at all... so I think I'm just gonna ignore it and see what happens.

 

[fullerene]

...yes I'm aware that's probably a bad idea

 

[Jesin]

haha oh geez... I did that for a while, ignoring things that weren't big deals except for short bursts just because they weren't big deals. Then the tipping point comes and you start back-analyzing everything that wasn't a big deal just because it's somewhat related.

Could you explain what that last sentence means?

 

[fullerene]

mm... I was debating just saying no, because the only way I could think to explain it was through example, but I think there's a way to make it distinct and clear neutrally. I apologize in advance for this--I'm taking too much math this year.

let Xi be the set of all events that would upset most people, but don't seem to affect you for one reason or another. X1, X2, X3, ..., X(n-1) go by and you forget about them almost as soon as they happen--because you're focused on other things or find them unimportant or whatever. Xn eventually occurs, and it either hurts, makes you angry, or illicits some other reaction that X1 ... X(n-1) didn't for some reason... so of course you stop and wonder what the difference was between Xn and the others. When the answer is "absolutely nothing... it was of greater magnitude, but in essence the same event," then you have a problem. The harder you look comparing Xn to the others without finding anything substantively different, the more the little things begin to look like Xn.

You'd think this could work either way--that either Xn begins to look less important or X1...X(n-1) look more so, but that's not really so. I don't know if the rest of you have figured it out... but I definitely can't shift my feelings willfully. They definitely can shift at the drop of a hat and for almost any reason, but I can't just say "I'm not going to think about this anymore" and let that be the end of it. Since feelings about Xn seem to be static, comparing it to other seemingly related things in the past just serves to make them more annoying than they were when they first happened. That's the "back-analysis." So many individual events changing almost demands a shift in the "what's important to me?" part of your worldview. Since the answer to that is, by nature, something you're heavily invested in with your life, it's not an easy thing to rennovate--least of all for INTPs, whose lives and minds are cohesive wholes where everything relates to everything else.

 

[loveofreason]

I've done the exact same thing... over and over.

There'll always be another set to analyse, another nth time and an ever diminishing capacity to trust one's own judgment.

Imagine living with the fear that every interaction in which you partake is only going to be revealed in retrospect to be part of a behaviour set that illustrates a fruitless, faulty or delusional pattern.

This ties in with the questions you had about trust. I'm at the point where I can't trust myself not to be blindly following a pattern I haven't yet identified or in which every option before me is not a continuation of an already identified set. How do you walk forward in life knowing you're making the same mistake for the nth time?

That's no consolation, I know. But at least for me it's a revelation that someone else understands their experiences in just the same way.

 

[fullerene]

ahh thanks... I'm glad you put it just that way too, because the wording reminded me that I had told myself a couple years back that shifts in worldview and seeing your past saturated with mistakes is the only real sure sign of personal growth. Meno was better off knowing his ignorance without having an answer than when he gave a wrong one. If you don't think your past self a fool, you're far more likely a still a fool than always been wise. I think what just happened was the change between "of course it's an obvious logical conclusion that my actions now are foolish too, and someday I hope I'll see that" to being able to see that every decision is foolish in real-time.

 

[Jesin]

Ah, I get it now. Yes, I think I've done that at least once. At least it only ended in embarrassment.

 

[Ogion]

Interesting perspective. When you accept that you will be wiser than today, or that you are today than yesterday, then you should accept too, that your motivations today are not as wise as they will e tomorrow.
But somewhere you have to get some motivations and 'guidelines' to your acions and thoughts, right? But from where then? From your past motivations? Obviously not. From your present ones? Well, if you want to prevent your present motivations to be unwise, then you shouldn't. So that'd leave only other ones, possibly future ones. But how do you know that they are wise?
I think that is dilemma, and my 'answer' would be, that you should test you current motivations, and with time learn, get wiser and refine or reform them. Because even when you think you know that your current preoccupations are unwise, you still have to learn somehow to get wiser. So i think you just have to go on, even and because in future you will know that today you aren't wise.

Hm, hope this doesn't sound stupid.

Ogion