I’m kinda starting to panic. (Warning: Wall-o-text follows.)
I don’t like giving out my age, but I was born in mid March 1988. That makes all of these much scarier:
I live with my parents
My physical activity consists almost entirely of pacing the house when everyone is asleep/not at home.
I have ~$180 in paypal, $700.08 in the bank, and $~130-150 in cash, and receive $~630 in disability benefits monthly. My student loan payments ar ~$860. All the loan stuff is hadled through my parents, who, in spite of my waiting until my dad was on the phone to tell the Teller my desired pin, seem to alternate between whether or not they use money from my account or their own to pay for things without warning.
Meanwhile, someone I went to kindergarten with taught my cousin’s seventh grade English class, and my best friend in elementary school(1) is the director of finance at the local university.
I avoid interacting with anyone else who lives in this house as much as possible. Now that local schools are on summer break, that means much more hiding in one room or another. Which means considerably less physical activity, and only eating things that can be quickly grabbed and taken elsewhere (rather than anything that requires preparation or utensiles). I am worried about my health enough without this.
I own property and a livable building nearby. I’d much rather live there than move to a city with actual sidewalks and public transportation and people I might be more likely to stand interacting with. This is most likely completely irrational (though I keep reminding myself that this means no rent and low utility costs as though that makes it any better an idea).
I don’t think my parents trust that I can actually do anything. I recently decided to go cross a non-busy street to where one parent was waiting in the parked vehicle to ask about lunch plans, while the other screamed that I would get run over. Notice, I’d been taught how to cross streets unaided annoyingly often since fourth grade by various mobility instructors. My interest in App Academy has been met with constant concerns over where I’ll stay/how I’ll eat/etc (The San Francisco facility, according to the interviewer I talked to, is livable, which was sufficient that I didn’t feel the need to ask any further questions at the time.). I’m basically expected to tell them if ever I need anything.
I am socially broken. I blame the constant “Don’t care what anyone thinks!” / “Say no to peer pressure!” / “Do what’s right and stand up for yourself!” / “College education! Seriously, it will magically dump the solutions to everything into your lap!” memes. Combine those with my poor vision, and I’m pretty sure the closest thing I had to a peer group is “people I annoyed the least”. Recently, my father declared in a moment of frustration at all the social activity my cousin was trying to have that he selected our current location because it was far away from everyone before all the recent construction. They basically create an atmosphere of “Getting involved with other people will get you in all kinds of trouble!” … then they turned around and started berating me for not being normal starting after seventh grade when the school started complaining. … Then sent me to summer camp, which pattern-matched to “You’re not submitting to peer pressure. Prepare to be reeducated.” so closely that… eh, this is probably where I stopped talking to them. This is also the age where my classmates started behaving less and less like people I wanted to associate with (because sex drugs profanity and insulting people for status were things I’d been told since birth to avoid. Except the sex part. I wasn’t told anything about that, so just kinda put it in the same category, since that’s what most people seemed to do.). So even though I failed socially for the first half of my life, the second half has been much worse. Actually, that’s definitely when I stopped talking to them, since that’s also when my already poor vision took a very steep decline, which I never told them about (Other things I never told them about include that time I found a giant lump in the inside of my thigh (I think it turned otu to be some kind of acne that trapped a lot of water, but it was pretty terrifying at the time), that time one of my toes was having such problems that I couldn’t do much walking for a while (they found out only because I was at college at the time and my braillist found out and told them), or that time I had horrible stomach problems (I only informed them when it got painful enough that I could only crawl into their room at 3AM in the worst pain I’ve ever felt). Keep in mind, they’re my only means of accessing a doctor.).
I’m happiest when I’m successfully working on something—or at least thinking about it productively. Occasionally awesome things (good music/fiction) help. Actually working on anything is an uphill battle, one not aided by the afore-mentioned summer break. Since I don’t prepare food in any involved way when anyone’s around (and have no cooking skills better than microwaving or making sandwiches), my food selection is limited. I once got my parents to buy an air filter for my dorm room at college, but they never paid attention when I reminded them that the filters need changing every 60 days.
The end result is me spending a lot of time miserable and probably unhealthy and only occasionally having bursts of enthusiasm strong enough to get around it (usually when people are away).
I’ve applied to App Academy, and get the impression that my chances of getting accepted are quite high. Since their locations are in San Francisco and New York, if I do attend, I might be able to benefit from annoying the rationalist communities there in person. I’m trying not to plan for this as an eventuality, though; the costs of travel and the $3000 downpayment have to come from somewhere (Remember that I only have ~$1000 that I can use, and I’ll lose SSI if ever I have more than $2000), and my independence skills leave everything to be desired. I’ve looked into local opportunities—there aren’t many jobs with online listings in my area that I could actually do, let alone ones I’d have any interest in (never mind the enhanced difficulty that I keep hearing about blind people having at getting employed, ADA or no ADA). The local bus system is… well, it exists, which is pretty much all I can say about it (it certainly doesn’t stop anywhere within walking distance of my current location, not that there are any sidewalks within walking distance). Cabs are expensive enough that I wouldn’t dare try taking more than one or two without a serious income boost. And this all still runs into the big problem: If I try to do anything on my own and my parents find out, they will say something. I doubt it’d be anything negative, but I have such a strong desire to avoid that sort of conversation that it puts a huge cap on what I’m willing to do with them within 100 miles. To the extent that in the extremely unlikely event that I somehow wind up with a girlfriend, they’re the last people in the universe I’d want to know. They’re not awful people, or anything; they buy the food and pay the bills, after all; but beyond that, I’d rather go get lost in San Francisco than talk to them about anything important.
The end conclusion that all this leads me to is that I have no reason to expect I’ll live all that long, let alone while avoiding depression. And that just sucks.
I’m kinda feeling like I’m close to exhausting what I can do and just need a genie to come save me. But that seems overly pessimistic. I can’t seem to come up with a plot more thorough than “Make money somehow”, which has the nasty problem of requiring that I can manage people and/or consistently work on something. I kinda feel like imagining what Harry James Potter Evans Verres would do in this situation is a better strategy than what I’ve been doing, but I can’t actually seem to do that (and half suspect it’d involve writing something awesome online, using the charisma to fund a startup, and using said startup to fund his escape).
I’m also tempted to repost this in tomorrow’s open thread, but it is a >8kb whine-fest, making me doubt that the utility of doing so outweighs the disutility of annoying everyone more than I have already.
(1) “Best friend” = person I spent the most time with at recess, maybe. The first and only out-of-school interaction we had was when I was 18 (and by complete coincidence it resulted in his new car getting totaled).
You’ve got a lot going for you. You can program, you can write, you can enjoy working, you have at least some college education. This is enough to build on.
Based only on this post, it looks like your biggest problem is your social paralysis. Solving this problem isn’t easy, but it’s possible. Comfort zone expansion (CoZE) seems like the recommended model for training these skills. Try doing things that are possible but make you feel awkward—say, spend five minutes at a social event and then leave, or eat a quick meal in the kitchen, or something. Don’t worry about doing these things confidently or well. It’s supposed to be difficult and terrifying; when you do something terrifying and the world doesn’t end, your brain will be less terrified to do it in the future. This should hopefully expand your comfort zone until you can eventually ignore strangers rather than flee from them, or ask your parents what they’ll use your money for instead of living in uncertainty.
Your relationship with your parents sounds really destructive. Changing that should be high priority, whether it’s by moving across the country or group therapy and reconciliation or whatever. I don’t think income is the biggest barrier to your independence. Mediocre programmers can do pretty well (and can often work from home), and you say you own property, which can presumably be rented or sold. I’m more worried about your independent-living skills; being able to manage the dozens of mundane tasks that parents take care of (e.g. buy groceries, get an air filter changed, pay bills on time) can be a struggle for a lot of people when they first move out. Reddit threads about “life pro tips,” or whatever the kids are calling it these days, will be your friend.
I have no idea how much blindness might exacerbate the problem. In any given city, there might or might not exist disability services that can help. My mom would probably be able to find out; let me know if I should ask her about any place in particular.
Applying to App Academy is exactly the kind of proactive, courageous thing you should be doing. Please take a moment to bask in my approval. The program sounds like it could provide everything you need, but it’s definitely high risk. You’ll be in a crucible where you have to live on your own, take care of yourself, and interact with humans. Either you’ll be forced to grow into a significantly more competent human being, or else you’ll get overwhelmed and burn out. If you get accepted (although my understanding is that such places are competitive) and decide to go, you’ll want to take what precautions you can. Work with the program to set up the supports to make sure you succeed. Leaning on the local rationalist community to do this in parallel, as you mentioned, is also a really great idea.
If you don’t go, do what you can to build your independence as soon as possible. You need those skills. Maybe you could do freelance coding online? Maybe you could move into that property you own? I don’t know. Change something.
You’re in a shitty place for now, but it looks like you’re on track to change it. You can gain the social skills, independence, and self-confidence you need to accomplish your goals. People in your situation have done it before. Mostly it seems to require the courage to actually try, and you already have that.
I’m not overly optimistic that I have many opportunities to change anything, is the problem. If I do wind up at App Academy, I’d be surprised if that didn’t make a huge difference for the better. I can’t help but feel like that’s mostly all I have to bet on, though.
Something that makes this even more frustrating is that, had I realized enough of this just a year or two sooner, my opportunities to do something about it would have been far more numerous, simply by virtue of being at college and having access to more people and places (some of which were not unpleasant). But college was more about academics, and now the matter of paying for it is relevant, and both of those I’d like to avoid if at all possible.
I’m not sure how to respond to suggestions like “Go out and meet people” or “Go buy <-useful object->” (I’ve gotten these from elsewhere). Anything that involves me leaving the house is ridiculously difficult. I get the impression that this particular detail isn’t coming across very well when I try explaining the situation. “Gain the ability to do things outside the house” is more or less one of my current goals, not that I know how to achieve it.
I can’t help but feel like that’s mostly all I have to bet on, though.
There are other things that can provide the same benefits. Off the top of my head: a job where you don’t work from home, other coding boot camps, or CFAR. If App Academy falls through, you can pursue something else.
Something that makes this even more frustrating is that, had I realized enough of this just a year or two sooner, my opportunities to do something about it would have been far more numerous, simply by virtue of being at college
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t feel the same way about college, although the specific regrets vary from person to person. It is incredibly frustrating.
“Gain the ability to do things outside the house” is more or less one of my current goals, not that I know how to achieve it.
What’s the biggest difficulty standing in your way? Is it the physical travel or the social anxiety or something else entirely? If it’s a matter of location and transport, the first step is almost certainly “acquire money.” (Given your situation, I think “acquire money” is a hard but solvable problem. Maybe do something like earning two dollars on Mechanical Turk to break down ugh fields and start a success spiral?) Step two would be either “turn money into transportation” or “use money to move to civilization.”
More importantly, you can start building your skills without leaving the house. For example, if you’re training basic social skills, you could call an acquaintance from college or spend five minutes on chatroulette. Or work on getting to the point where you can move through your own house without fear—it sounds like that would improve your mood and productivity dramatically, and the resilience you’d acquire will help you everywhere you go.
Writing (music and fiction), programming, and the ability to write hundreds of pages of notes without actually accomplishing anything. Best I can tell, I’m Mediocre at all of these. I was good at math until calculus 2 (more complicated antiderivatives and summations of infinite series are where I got lost), and rumors of my linguistic abilities have been greatly exaggerated (I might be able to manage in Tokyo, Northeast China or the Francophone world, though I can’t follow native conversations in either language very well at all). My website (The hotspots on the homepage are not properly scaled to the image) sorta-kinda demonstrates these. (I’ve been wanting to upgrade to a more consistent site layout for like four years now, but haven’t ever gotten around to it.)
I have a strong feeling that I would prefer manual labor to a programming job, although the latter is where I’m directing my vague attentions at present.
I’m kinda starting to panic. (Warning: Wall-o-text follows.)
I don’t like giving out my age, but I was born in mid March 1988. That makes all of these much scarier:
I live with my parents
My physical activity consists almost entirely of pacing the house when everyone is asleep/not at home.
I have ~$180 in paypal, $700.08 in the bank, and $~130-150 in cash, and receive $~630 in disability benefits monthly. My student loan payments ar ~$860. All the loan stuff is hadled through my parents, who, in spite of my waiting until my dad was on the phone to tell the Teller my desired pin, seem to alternate between whether or not they use money from my account or their own to pay for things without warning.
Meanwhile, someone I went to kindergarten with taught my cousin’s seventh grade English class, and my best friend in elementary school(1) is the director of finance at the local university.
I avoid interacting with anyone else who lives in this house as much as possible. Now that local schools are on summer break, that means much more hiding in one room or another. Which means considerably less physical activity, and only eating things that can be quickly grabbed and taken elsewhere (rather than anything that requires preparation or utensiles). I am worried about my health enough without this.
I own property and a livable building nearby. I’d much rather live there than move to a city with actual sidewalks and public transportation and people I might be more likely to stand interacting with. This is most likely completely irrational (though I keep reminding myself that this means no rent and low utility costs as though that makes it any better an idea).
I don’t think my parents trust that I can actually do anything. I recently decided to go cross a non-busy street to where one parent was waiting in the parked vehicle to ask about lunch plans, while the other screamed that I would get run over. Notice, I’d been taught how to cross streets unaided annoyingly often since fourth grade by various mobility instructors. My interest in App Academy has been met with constant concerns over where I’ll stay/how I’ll eat/etc (The San Francisco facility, according to the interviewer I talked to, is livable, which was sufficient that I didn’t feel the need to ask any further questions at the time.). I’m basically expected to tell them if ever I need anything.
I am socially broken. I blame the constant “Don’t care what anyone thinks!” / “Say no to peer pressure!” / “Do what’s right and stand up for yourself!” / “College education! Seriously, it will magically dump the solutions to everything into your lap!” memes. Combine those with my poor vision, and I’m pretty sure the closest thing I had to a peer group is “people I annoyed the least”. Recently, my father declared in a moment of frustration at all the social activity my cousin was trying to have that he selected our current location because it was far away from everyone before all the recent construction. They basically create an atmosphere of “Getting involved with other people will get you in all kinds of trouble!” … then they turned around and started berating me for not being normal starting after seventh grade when the school started complaining. … Then sent me to summer camp, which pattern-matched to “You’re not submitting to peer pressure. Prepare to be reeducated.” so closely that… eh, this is probably where I stopped talking to them. This is also the age where my classmates started behaving less and less like people I wanted to associate with (because sex drugs profanity and insulting people for status were things I’d been told since birth to avoid. Except the sex part. I wasn’t told anything about that, so just kinda put it in the same category, since that’s what most people seemed to do.). So even though I failed socially for the first half of my life, the second half has been much worse. Actually, that’s definitely when I stopped talking to them, since that’s also when my already poor vision took a very steep decline, which I never told them about (Other things I never told them about include that time I found a giant lump in the inside of my thigh (I think it turned otu to be some kind of acne that trapped a lot of water, but it was pretty terrifying at the time), that time one of my toes was having such problems that I couldn’t do much walking for a while (they found out only because I was at college at the time and my braillist found out and told them), or that time I had horrible stomach problems (I only informed them when it got painful enough that I could only crawl into their room at 3AM in the worst pain I’ve ever felt). Keep in mind, they’re my only means of accessing a doctor.).
I’m happiest when I’m successfully working on something—or at least thinking about it productively. Occasionally awesome things (good music/fiction) help. Actually working on anything is an uphill battle, one not aided by the afore-mentioned summer break. Since I don’t prepare food in any involved way when anyone’s around (and have no cooking skills better than microwaving or making sandwiches), my food selection is limited. I once got my parents to buy an air filter for my dorm room at college, but they never paid attention when I reminded them that the filters need changing every 60 days.
The end result is me spending a lot of time miserable and probably unhealthy and only occasionally having bursts of enthusiasm strong enough to get around it (usually when people are away).
I’ve applied to App Academy, and get the impression that my chances of getting accepted are quite high. Since their locations are in San Francisco and New York, if I do attend, I might be able to benefit from annoying the rationalist communities there in person. I’m trying not to plan for this as an eventuality, though; the costs of travel and the $3000 downpayment have to come from somewhere (Remember that I only have ~$1000 that I can use, and I’ll lose SSI if ever I have more than $2000), and my independence skills leave everything to be desired. I’ve looked into local opportunities—there aren’t many jobs with online listings in my area that I could actually do, let alone ones I’d have any interest in (never mind the enhanced difficulty that I keep hearing about blind people having at getting employed, ADA or no ADA). The local bus system is… well, it exists, which is pretty much all I can say about it (it certainly doesn’t stop anywhere within walking distance of my current location, not that there are any sidewalks within walking distance). Cabs are expensive enough that I wouldn’t dare try taking more than one or two without a serious income boost. And this all still runs into the big problem: If I try to do anything on my own and my parents find out, they will say something. I doubt it’d be anything negative, but I have such a strong desire to avoid that sort of conversation that it puts a huge cap on what I’m willing to do with them within 100 miles. To the extent that in the extremely unlikely event that I somehow wind up with a girlfriend, they’re the last people in the universe I’d want to know. They’re not awful people, or anything; they buy the food and pay the bills, after all; but beyond that, I’d rather go get lost in San Francisco than talk to them about anything important.
The end conclusion that all this leads me to is that I have no reason to expect I’ll live all that long, let alone while avoiding depression. And that just sucks.
I’m kinda feeling like I’m close to exhausting what I can do and just need a genie to come save me. But that seems overly pessimistic. I can’t seem to come up with a plot more thorough than “Make money somehow”, which has the nasty problem of requiring that I can manage people and/or consistently work on something. I kinda feel like imagining what Harry James Potter Evans Verres would do in this situation is a better strategy than what I’ve been doing, but I can’t actually seem to do that (and half suspect it’d involve writing something awesome online, using the charisma to fund a startup, and using said startup to fund his escape).
I’m also tempted to repost this in tomorrow’s open thread, but it is a >8kb whine-fest, making me doubt that the utility of doing so outweighs the disutility of annoying everyone more than I have already.
(1) “Best friend” = person I spent the most time with at recess, maybe. The first and only out-of-school interaction we had was when I was 18 (and by complete coincidence it resulted in his new car getting totaled).
Oh, hey, we’re almost exactly the same age.
You’ve got a lot going for you. You can program, you can write, you can enjoy working, you have at least some college education. This is enough to build on.
Based only on this post, it looks like your biggest problem is your social paralysis. Solving this problem isn’t easy, but it’s possible. Comfort zone expansion (CoZE) seems like the recommended model for training these skills. Try doing things that are possible but make you feel awkward—say, spend five minutes at a social event and then leave, or eat a quick meal in the kitchen, or something. Don’t worry about doing these things confidently or well. It’s supposed to be difficult and terrifying; when you do something terrifying and the world doesn’t end, your brain will be less terrified to do it in the future. This should hopefully expand your comfort zone until you can eventually ignore strangers rather than flee from them, or ask your parents what they’ll use your money for instead of living in uncertainty.
Your relationship with your parents sounds really destructive. Changing that should be high priority, whether it’s by moving across the country or group therapy and reconciliation or whatever. I don’t think income is the biggest barrier to your independence. Mediocre programmers can do pretty well (and can often work from home), and you say you own property, which can presumably be rented or sold. I’m more worried about your independent-living skills; being able to manage the dozens of mundane tasks that parents take care of (e.g. buy groceries, get an air filter changed, pay bills on time) can be a struggle for a lot of people when they first move out. Reddit threads about “life pro tips,” or whatever the kids are calling it these days, will be your friend.
I have no idea how much blindness might exacerbate the problem. In any given city, there might or might not exist disability services that can help. My mom would probably be able to find out; let me know if I should ask her about any place in particular.
Applying to App Academy is exactly the kind of proactive, courageous thing you should be doing. Please take a moment to bask in my approval. The program sounds like it could provide everything you need, but it’s definitely high risk. You’ll be in a crucible where you have to live on your own, take care of yourself, and interact with humans. Either you’ll be forced to grow into a significantly more competent human being, or else you’ll get overwhelmed and burn out. If you get accepted (although my understanding is that such places are competitive) and decide to go, you’ll want to take what precautions you can. Work with the program to set up the supports to make sure you succeed. Leaning on the local rationalist community to do this in parallel, as you mentioned, is also a really great idea.
If you don’t go, do what you can to build your independence as soon as possible. You need those skills. Maybe you could do freelance coding online? Maybe you could move into that property you own? I don’t know. Change something.
You’re in a shitty place for now, but it looks like you’re on track to change it. You can gain the social skills, independence, and self-confidence you need to accomplish your goals. People in your situation have done it before. Mostly it seems to require the courage to actually try, and you already have that.
Thanks for all the encouragement.
I’m not overly optimistic that I have many opportunities to change anything, is the problem. If I do wind up at App Academy, I’d be surprised if that didn’t make a huge difference for the better. I can’t help but feel like that’s mostly all I have to bet on, though.
Something that makes this even more frustrating is that, had I realized enough of this just a year or two sooner, my opportunities to do something about it would have been far more numerous, simply by virtue of being at college and having access to more people and places (some of which were not unpleasant). But college was more about academics, and now the matter of paying for it is relevant, and both of those I’d like to avoid if at all possible.
I’m not sure how to respond to suggestions like “Go out and meet people” or “Go buy <-useful object->” (I’ve gotten these from elsewhere). Anything that involves me leaving the house is ridiculously difficult. I get the impression that this particular detail isn’t coming across very well when I try explaining the situation. “Gain the ability to do things outside the house” is more or less one of my current goals, not that I know how to achieve it.
There are other things that can provide the same benefits. Off the top of my head: a job where you don’t work from home, other coding boot camps, or CFAR. If App Academy falls through, you can pursue something else.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t feel the same way about college, although the specific regrets vary from person to person. It is incredibly frustrating.
What’s the biggest difficulty standing in your way? Is it the physical travel or the social anxiety or something else entirely? If it’s a matter of location and transport, the first step is almost certainly “acquire money.” (Given your situation, I think “acquire money” is a hard but solvable problem. Maybe do something like earning two dollars on Mechanical Turk to break down ugh fields and start a success spiral?) Step two would be either “turn money into transportation” or “use money to move to civilization.”
More importantly, you can start building your skills without leaving the house. For example, if you’re training basic social skills, you could call an acquaintance from college or spend five minutes on chatroulette. Or work on getting to the point where you can move through your own house without fear—it sounds like that would improve your mood and productivity dramatically, and the resilience you’d acquire will help you everywhere you go.
This seems to be the only sentence in the post which includes the word blind. Are you blind?
For all intents and purposes, yes. My right eye may or may not do anything useful on occasion.
Blindness will make finding a job in many areas harder. On the other hand what useful skills do you have?
Writing (music and fiction), programming, and the ability to write hundreds of pages of notes without actually accomplishing anything. Best I can tell, I’m Mediocre at all of these. I was good at math until calculus 2 (more complicated antiderivatives and summations of infinite series are where I got lost), and rumors of my linguistic abilities have been greatly exaggerated (I might be able to manage in Tokyo, Northeast China or the Francophone world, though I can’t follow native conversations in either language very well at all). My website (The hotspots on the homepage are not properly scaled to the image) sorta-kinda demonstrates these. (I’ve been wanting to upgrade to a more consistent site layout for like four years now, but haven’t ever gotten around to it.)
I have a strong feeling that I would prefer manual labor to a programming job, although the latter is where I’m directing my vague attentions at present.