Note 55

Took a road trip that finished yesterday. Went from Chicago to my apartment in San Diego. Thought it would help me with some thinking. And honestly I was pretty close to full sending it into medicine on Monday. But when I came here, I had a thought. So far, in my life, I've never REALLY had to struggle for much. Most things come relatively easily. I learned pretty quickly in school early on and I was pretty fast at learning instruments. But once I hit a struggle point, I either gave up or didn't care enough to build a solid foundation. I think that's my approach with a lot of things. And it's so hard to a) take that step into building that foundation and b) actually having the discipline to continue building. I realized that I have an awful fear of failure. I hate doing things poorly but I also don't have the mental fortitude or discipline to see things be done the right way. I start and stop things so often, have ideas I don't follow through on, or just don't do things properly even after I start them with that mindset. I just don't know what I'm supposed to do in order to fix this. And it makes me exhausted.

Why should I even entertain the option of medicine if I'm not sure I have the discipline to stick with things over 1-2 years minimum just for the right to apply to medical school? Why even have ideas for projects related to machine learning or programming in general if none of them see it past the researching stage? Hell even the thing I enjoy the most which is gaming I just fucking show up and sit there doing nothing for 3 hours and then say yeah I definitely coached them to this level. Like fuck me man.

I look at others and see consistent efforts paying off and I just can't find it in me to do the same. I don't know what it is or why. Well, I guess I know the why. And I guess I know how to fix it, which is probably just doing things. And I know I can be good at the things that I do. I. JUST. CAN'T. It's so fucking exhausting. The ONE SINGULAR thing that I enjoyed and knew I could be great at (rowing) had the opportunity fucking shot down because one coach just disliked me and even if he didn't disparage me, he didn't help me either. And the other coach just decided to leave and give up on everyone else besides one team who didn't even have good results (although the way they went out was a bit unfortunate but still that's on them). And maybe I'm trying to supplement that with this shitty esports thing I have somewhat going on, but holy fuck WHY CAN'T I JUST DO THE THING MAN. I don't know why I'm stopping myself and shooting myself in the foot. It really just doesn't make sense.

Maybe I am the embodiment of Einstein's definition of insanity.