My current life plan, which revolved around graduating college, failed miserably, so I ditched it. I’m going to bike about a 1000 miles, then reassess why what happened happened, and what I’m going to do next.
My current thoughts are as follows;
It was a mistake to go to school when I did. I went because I was scared, and didn’t really know what to do with my life. I thought college was a good idea because it would buy me time to figure myself out a bit more. Sadly, this only works out if school doesn’t make you depressed and apathetic about life. While I’m convinced I picked a good major, possibly even the best one I could have taken, the mistake was thinking that after a lifetime of schooling, my best move was more school. I’m still not sure what I want to do with my life, but I’m no longer concerned about failing. Been there, done that. I wish I could have learned the lesson some faster, cheaper way though.
While in college, I thought I could fix my grades by being more disciplined, by having a schedual, by cutting bad influences out of my life, and by having fun hobbies that engaged and interested me. This didn’t work. What happens is I have to do something I dislike, which I do, and ends with me being depressed and apathetic about doing anything other than mindlessly browsing the internet and playing video games. As a result, I don’t socialize or do an interesting hobby, and so when I do that difficult, annoying task again, I come away just a little bit more apathetic and depressed. This continues until the apathy builds up enough that instead of doing the unpleasant task, I procrastinate instead. So the task doesn’t get done, I’m just as apathetic about life since procrastinating doesn’t make me happy, plus I’m not happy with myself as a person. The end result is a slow, downward spiral that ends with me endlessly browsing the internet and not talking to anyone.
I thought I was depressed, and if I could just find the right drug (coffee, mild anti-depressents, modafinil, that sort of thing) I would become motivated to do things I dislike. This also failed. Chemicals may help, but cannot be the main source of happyness/motivation. In retrospect, this seems obvious.
As for the future, the way I see it my options are:
1: Getting a job, like hotel night clerk, that doesn’t require much effort on my part, so I can explore my interests on the side without getting stuck in that cycle of depression, lack of motivation, procrastination, and frustration with myself. This is the most likely outcome.
2: Be paid to do what other people want me to do, and hope I learn/am able to enjoy the work. This was my original life plan. I am currently avoiding this route, at least in the short term.
3: Create my own job by doing fulfilling work and finding people willing to pay for it. This remains a distant dream. That said, I am now much more willing to make the sort of sacrifices required for this to happen.
4: Go back to college. NO. But maybe in 5 years.
My goal for this bike ride is to do what I should have done before going to college; be totally free and financially independent. Carry everything I want and need in my life on my bike. Want to spend a day biking from nowhere to nowhere? Go for it. Want to spend the day in the library? Sure. Sleep anywhere? Of course; cars and houses are for chumps caught in the rat race. No deadlines (at least till the money runs low), no expectations, no goals other than the arbitrary one of reaching a certain physical location on my bike at some date in the distant future.
I should also make some friends, as my standard reaction to stress is to isolate myself. This is often a bad idea.
I’ll re-evaluate all this 1000 miles or so from now.
Getting a job, like hotel night clerk, that doesn’t require much effort on my part, so I can explore my interests on the side
If you decide to go this route, I would strongly recommend looking for something where you can multitask exploring your interests with working. As hamnox mentions, a job can eat up a lot of time, even if it doesn’t require much effort. Hotel night clerk sounds like a pretty multitaskable job, but be careful about the negative effects of working night shift (my understanding is that you can counteract these by carefully managing how much light you’re exposed to during the rest of the day).
Out of curiosity, what other interests do you hope to pursue?
Things I currently enjoy doing include modding video games, playing video games, reading books, and writing books (the last has been on hold for a while.) I’d like to try and expand on these interests. For example, read books I wouldn’t normally read, and instead of fiddling with other people’s programming, make more of my own. I majored in computer science, and I really enjoyed many of my early classes, so I know there is still plenty for me to explore there. The internship I had last summer was OK as well. Same with writing; I wrote roughly half a million words back in high school, and even though everything I wrote was rather terrible, I enjoyed writing it. I’ll see.
As for working at night, that doesn’t worry me too much. I seem to end up being nocturnal naturally anyway.
This sounds like the start of an interesting story! Please keep us updated as often as you can manage, I for one would love to read about it.
That said, I have to point out that not staying too long in any one place is also isolation in a sense, which may not be what you were going for. (Also, don’t neglect personal hygiene.)
You’re living the dream. That’s amazing, and I don’t want to do anything to discount that. You’ve done well in breaking your previous bad habits, and I think you certainly are smart and dedicated pull this off. What are your plans for sleep, weather, thieves, and explaining the job history gap? Improvising is half of what makes runs like that exciting, but it’s probably better to have a plan in advance for the more predictable issues. Just because there is a plan doesn’t mean you have to stick to it.
Your failure mode sounds a lot like what I just got out of doing, and yours is a more coherent explanation of why I can’t do college right now than I’ve managed to articulate. You go [insert appropriate gender noun]! Your bike ride sounds similar to the fantasy I had about packing up (Well, mosting throwing away) everything I own and driving off to see more exciting places. I’d say the bike is a better idea because it provides a focus for your energy and gas is expensive, but I really do appreciate having a steady place to sleep and guard myself from weather’s whims.
I’m currently stuck somewhere between 1 and 2. My job doesn’t take much effort on my part, but I’ve become increasingly aware that it does take a good amount of time out of my day that I could be spending on things I actually want to do.
For theft: Everything I own that is expensive stays in my backpack, which never leaves my back. I have full weatherproof gear, so I’m not worried about rain either. If anyone enquires about my job history gap, I’ll tell them I was traveling.
If you want to change some aspect of your life, like ditching everything you own and walking off into the sunset, all I can say is that you have to want it, and want it bad. At some point I got so depressed and fed up with my life that walking away became easy, because nothing I was leaving behind was worth it. I was too profoundly unhappy about my life to care about little things like where I sleep or if it’s raining. It also helps that sleeping in strange places does not bother me overly much, and I live in California, so the weather is rather mild.
How do you plan to not get robbed (backpack and/or bike) while you’re asleep? I suppose you will lock your bike somewhere while you sleep, which is probably? reasonably secure for one night at a time. The best way I can think of to prevent backpack theft is to physically attach it to yourself in such a way that moving it will wake you, but even that doesn’t necessarily prevent someone from opening and rooting through it.
I should also make some friends, as my standard reaction to stress is to isolate myself.
Won’t continuous biking and not being tied to a geogrpahic area make it harder to make friends? Unless you mean making friends with people you meet and practicing friend-making, in which case this may be a good way to go about it.
My current life plan, which revolved around graduating college, failed miserably, so I ditched it. I’m going to bike about a 1000 miles, then reassess why what happened happened, and what I’m going to do next.
My current thoughts are as follows; It was a mistake to go to school when I did. I went because I was scared, and didn’t really know what to do with my life. I thought college was a good idea because it would buy me time to figure myself out a bit more. Sadly, this only works out if school doesn’t make you depressed and apathetic about life. While I’m convinced I picked a good major, possibly even the best one I could have taken, the mistake was thinking that after a lifetime of schooling, my best move was more school. I’m still not sure what I want to do with my life, but I’m no longer concerned about failing. Been there, done that. I wish I could have learned the lesson some faster, cheaper way though.
While in college, I thought I could fix my grades by being more disciplined, by having a schedual, by cutting bad influences out of my life, and by having fun hobbies that engaged and interested me. This didn’t work. What happens is I have to do something I dislike, which I do, and ends with me being depressed and apathetic about doing anything other than mindlessly browsing the internet and playing video games. As a result, I don’t socialize or do an interesting hobby, and so when I do that difficult, annoying task again, I come away just a little bit more apathetic and depressed. This continues until the apathy builds up enough that instead of doing the unpleasant task, I procrastinate instead. So the task doesn’t get done, I’m just as apathetic about life since procrastinating doesn’t make me happy, plus I’m not happy with myself as a person. The end result is a slow, downward spiral that ends with me endlessly browsing the internet and not talking to anyone.
I thought I was depressed, and if I could just find the right drug (coffee, mild anti-depressents, modafinil, that sort of thing) I would become motivated to do things I dislike. This also failed. Chemicals may help, but cannot be the main source of happyness/motivation. In retrospect, this seems obvious.
As for the future, the way I see it my options are:
1: Getting a job, like hotel night clerk, that doesn’t require much effort on my part, so I can explore my interests on the side without getting stuck in that cycle of depression, lack of motivation, procrastination, and frustration with myself. This is the most likely outcome.
2: Be paid to do what other people want me to do, and hope I learn/am able to enjoy the work. This was my original life plan. I am currently avoiding this route, at least in the short term.
3: Create my own job by doing fulfilling work and finding people willing to pay for it. This remains a distant dream. That said, I am now much more willing to make the sort of sacrifices required for this to happen.
4: Go back to college. NO. But maybe in 5 years.
My goal for this bike ride is to do what I should have done before going to college; be totally free and financially independent. Carry everything I want and need in my life on my bike. Want to spend a day biking from nowhere to nowhere? Go for it. Want to spend the day in the library? Sure. Sleep anywhere? Of course; cars and houses are for chumps caught in the rat race. No deadlines (at least till the money runs low), no expectations, no goals other than the arbitrary one of reaching a certain physical location on my bike at some date in the distant future.
I should also make some friends, as my standard reaction to stress is to isolate myself. This is often a bad idea.
I’ll re-evaluate all this 1000 miles or so from now.
If you decide to go this route, I would strongly recommend looking for something where you can multitask exploring your interests with working. As hamnox mentions, a job can eat up a lot of time, even if it doesn’t require much effort. Hotel night clerk sounds like a pretty multitaskable job, but be careful about the negative effects of working night shift (my understanding is that you can counteract these by carefully managing how much light you’re exposed to during the rest of the day).
Out of curiosity, what other interests do you hope to pursue?
Things I currently enjoy doing include modding video games, playing video games, reading books, and writing books (the last has been on hold for a while.) I’d like to try and expand on these interests. For example, read books I wouldn’t normally read, and instead of fiddling with other people’s programming, make more of my own. I majored in computer science, and I really enjoyed many of my early classes, so I know there is still plenty for me to explore there. The internship I had last summer was OK as well. Same with writing; I wrote roughly half a million words back in high school, and even though everything I wrote was rather terrible, I enjoyed writing it. I’ll see.
As for working at night, that doesn’t worry me too much. I seem to end up being nocturnal naturally anyway.
This sounds like the start of an interesting story! Please keep us updated as often as you can manage, I for one would love to read about it.
That said, I have to point out that not staying too long in any one place is also isolation in a sense, which may not be what you were going for. (Also, don’t neglect personal hygiene.)
You’re living the dream. That’s amazing, and I don’t want to do anything to discount that. You’ve done well in breaking your previous bad habits, and I think you certainly are smart and dedicated pull this off. What are your plans for sleep, weather, thieves, and explaining the job history gap? Improvising is half of what makes runs like that exciting, but it’s probably better to have a plan in advance for the more predictable issues. Just because there is a plan doesn’t mean you have to stick to it.
Your failure mode sounds a lot like what I just got out of doing, and yours is a more coherent explanation of why I can’t do college right now than I’ve managed to articulate. You go [insert appropriate gender noun]! Your bike ride sounds similar to the fantasy I had about packing up (Well, mosting throwing away) everything I own and driving off to see more exciting places. I’d say the bike is a better idea because it provides a focus for your energy and gas is expensive, but I really do appreciate having a steady place to sleep and guard myself from weather’s whims.
I’m currently stuck somewhere between 1 and 2. My job doesn’t take much effort on my part, but I’ve become increasingly aware that it does take a good amount of time out of my day that I could be spending on things I actually want to do.
For theft: Everything I own that is expensive stays in my backpack, which never leaves my back. I have full weatherproof gear, so I’m not worried about rain either. If anyone enquires about my job history gap, I’ll tell them I was traveling.
If you want to change some aspect of your life, like ditching everything you own and walking off into the sunset, all I can say is that you have to want it, and want it bad. At some point I got so depressed and fed up with my life that walking away became easy, because nothing I was leaving behind was worth it. I was too profoundly unhappy about my life to care about little things like where I sleep or if it’s raining. It also helps that sleeping in strange places does not bother me overly much, and I live in California, so the weather is rather mild.
How do you plan to not get robbed (backpack and/or bike) while you’re asleep? I suppose you will lock your bike somewhere while you sleep, which is probably? reasonably secure for one night at a time. The best way I can think of to prevent backpack theft is to physically attach it to yourself in such a way that moving it will wake you, but even that doesn’t necessarily prevent someone from opening and rooting through it.
Won’t continuous biking and not being tied to a geogrpahic area make it harder to make friends? Unless you mean making friends with people you meet and practicing friend-making, in which case this may be a good way to go about it.
Hey, something like that worked for that guy!