fuqnbastard

I wrote and rewrote this over and over. This is what it boils down to:
I'm 21, I'm a student on paper. I'm intrinsically motivated, just not motivated to the stuff I reckon to be useful. I have spent a lot of my time thinking about what to do with my life, and I think I got a pretty good idea. However, I'm just too easily distracted, too moody, my interests and abilities too fluctuating, my balls too small to carry through with any significant part of it. I have abilities, I have ideas, but it all doesn't add up to a personality.

What do I do?

maleficent

If you were 21 and said that you had no idea what you wanted to do with your life, I'd give you a cookie and say congratulations, you are completely normal. But you have some idea of what you want, it's your follow thru that seems to be lacking, you can still ahve the cookie, because you are still completely normal.

What do you want to do with your life, and it doesn't have to be the "rest of your life" because it's rare that somoene will pick a career at 21, and have it for the next 40 years.

Break it down into smaller numbers. Where do you see yourself in a year? Out of school, living on your own? Working? What do you have to do to make that happen?

What about 5 years from now, what are your short range plans.

Having a personality doesn't stem from what you want to do, it comes from you, and you have one... What makes you tick, what are your interests, are you quiet and shy, are you the lampshade on the head party person, animal lover, helper of people.

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fuqnbastard

My shortterm goals are: Studying sociology, because I want my ideas to have some influence. From university I hope to learn how to present ideas successfully and get qualifications that make people listen to me. However it's hard for me to focus on the tasks I get posed. I never before had to do something, that was at the same time (1) not the most interesting thing I could imagine to do and (2) people didn't force me to. I cannot focus, when I sit in front of the book I cannot concentrate, when I try to write I cannot think of anything. Part of that is, that it's 2 years since the end of school and recently I have mainly watched movies/tv-shows, surfed for pr0n and listened to music. I don't have much self-esteem left and I'm not entirely convinced I'm able to do stuff at all.

*Nikki*

I have the exact same problem with concentration. When I am reading something for school I am thinking about every thing in the fucking world except what I am supposed to be studing right in front of me. I wish I knew the answer on how to apply myself and concentrate also.

hannukah harry

you guys may have ADD... i've never been able to sit down and read for class well... i'd have to read the same paragraph over and over sometimes because i'd just not be paying attention to it. and i wouldn't be able to start a paper until hours before it was due... so i just got tested and yet, i've got ADD. i'm trying to decide if i want to do the whole medication route or just learn the skills to cope. anyways, i might be useful to look into that.

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shabbat shalom, mother fucker! - the hebrew hammer

NotMinus

I don't think of personality as someone abillities, skills or idea. I see personality as a tool used to get you to where you want to be. It is your charictar, your mannerisms, your tone of voice and you command of words, all tools you use every minute of every day.

I would spend some time identifying who you want to be, what lifestyle that is like and what it will take to get their and just do it. No one is going to give you permission to succeed but yourself.

My life is my priority. I spend time focusing on who I am, what I want, what I can do to get their and make decisions based on not only who I am right now but who I want to become.

roboshark

I think the key to becoming good at something is to find a field that's challenging, interesting and involving for you. Of course, that's the hard part. But there must be something you like? I took up Astrophysics when I finished high school, simply because I found the subject matter cool. I couldn't care if I'd be able to get a job later on in life as an astrophysisict (I didn't in the end). But I sure as hell didn't sign up for something "rational", like Law or Economics or whatever, simply because I found those fields boring, job opportunities notwithstanding.

Think about what you find thrilling, exciting, challenging to do. Something that'll make you to stay up late working on it, without having to! Then go for it. The most rational choice is not always the best one.

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I want no escape.

TurbineSlut

Those stories sound exactly like me. I used to think I had ADD but then I read descriptions of people with ADD and it sounded a little more extreme than what I have. I think its just a lack of discipline. I always seem to have other things to think of and get distracted by things. I'll be looking up something for school on wikipedia for example, but then veer off on a tangent and read some article that really interests me.

I've been able to cope though, so I don't think I have ADD. Its more a case of procrastination. I'm now studying for hopefully my last exam ever. University has taken me a couple years longer than most people, but I don't really mind. It was fun and I had a job on the side.

As for your problem fuqnbastard, like roboshark said, find something that really interests you... be it academic or a hobby. If its academic its a good end in itself. If you have a hobby you really enjoy you work hard to get to be able to do that hobby and to have money to spend on that.

I used to be aimless like you. Then a friend introduced me to skydiving. I have never been so passionate about a hobby before. I now have a job so I can pay for my hobby. Its gives me purpose in life, something to achieve, a goal to work towards - becoming a lot better at a specific skydiving discipline.

So what I'm trying to say is find something that drives you like that. I used to think I wouldn't be driven by anything, but I guess I was wrong. I think you need to keep looking.

fuqnbastard

Thanks to everyone for your answers. I actually started working for university yesterday. I read a hundred pages and started writing my essay. It felt good, it felt like I was on the right track. This morning I stood up, washed my due dishes, continued writing. A few hours in, it started as a reluctance to continue, I thought "Ok, that'll go away, just get a bit of distraction and continue working later". However, I believe what I got yesterday was rather a loss of ability to concentrate, which came back after some time; not reluctance. Thinking about it a bit, i think I motivate myself by imagining what it'll be like when I successfully complete the task. In my current state, those hypothetical situations just don't seem rewarding for me.
roboshark and Turboslut suggested that I should find what I reallly want in life, something that I find thrilling in itself. The problem is, that this is varying for me, and I have no idea how to control it. Seen naivly, it's a bit like a mild multible personality disorder: What's interesting to me changes in time slices, preventing me to bring forward a consistent effort, when I'm not physically forced to do so (like sitting in a classroom). Unfortunately I believe it's only consistent efforts that will give me purpose in life.
The two sides to me are very different. One part of me wants to be entertained 24/7, it cares little about what's going to happen to the world, as long as I have a front-row seat. The other personality questions everything that comes to it's attention, it has set its abstract goal and demands me to attain it. Unlike in the real illness however, the knowledge of the other mode isn't blocked when the interests change. When I work towards my abstract goal, the other half will tell me about how stupid I am to bore myself with stuff like this. When I'm in entertainment consumption mode, the other half will make me hate myself for being a useless piece of shit. Those are only two of the more dominant modes. They usually change too fast to produce useful results in one go.
maleficent suggested that I have to concentrate on more immediate goals, rather than the abstract longterm ones, and he's absolutely right. I was too lost in abstraction to see the next step ahead. It worked fine yesterday, however it seems it's only a part of the solution.
NotMinus is right in that personality is pattern in how you behave. But because what thrills me is so fluctuating and I live a life that is supposed to be self-organized, there is not much left to identify with.
Several people suggested that I might be suffering from ADD. That's a distinct possibility, I guess I cannot really judge whether that's a problem I have, and if that is the main cause of my current difficulties.

I currently can think of two possible ways to cope:
(1) try to organize my stuff into batches to resume, when the corresponding mode comes up
(2) see a psychiatrist

I'll try both in this order.

Johnny Rotten

Maybe I'm just a romantic but, in my experience, sometimes all it takes to make everything different is a special someone in your life. It sounds like you could use a little of that magic .

Anomaly_

I wouldn't be so sure of that. One should be comfortable in one's own skin and have a decent bearing on life before embarking on a relationship. Adding another person to the mix in an attempt to "fix" some personal problem just seems like a recipe for disaster.