Thank you Ask MeFi. 1000 thank yous (2000 if you're really lucky)
December 6, 2009 4:58 PM Subscribe
Hi, I know this isn't a question but I thought you guys would like to here a success story. I honestly think ask MeFi is one of the best things in the world and I owe you guys a huge dept of gratitude. The following is an email I just sent to a fellow mefite.
Hi,
I guess you probably don't check this address anymore but I'm going to write this anyway. I read yourAsk MeFi question a few months ago and it really affected me deeply. I hope you're feeling better but in case you're not I want to tell you that I've been through exactly what you've been through and I'm all better now.
I just turned 23 and for the last 7 years or so I've suffered from severe depression and social anxiety which meant I pretty much did nothing but watch TV and read stuff on the internet. check out this question and this question and this one too. Suddenly, the day after my 23rd birthday, I completely snapped out of it and lost everything about myself that I didn't like. It made life so completely effortless that I had to find ways to make it harder, just so I could use up all my energy. Before, even when I wasn't depressed, I was too self concious to go into a clothes shop (I bought all my clothes on ebay). Yesterday I walked around Bath (the city I live in, city of angels) going into every clothes shop I could find, even ridiculously expensive boutiques which only sell women's clothes, trying on any clothes that caught my eye, chatting with sales staff about what to look for in a suit, talking to cute girls about nothing in particular, and generally having an awesome time. Today I started the day by reading an email from Rudy Rucker - my favourite SF writer - which said that the short story I sent him (check out my blog) is too short to really be considered a story but it was an interesting idea and I should keep at it. Then I listened to a Beach Boys album while eating breakfast and reading my favourite blogs before strolling into uni at about 10.30. As I walked into college a little neighborhood cat snuck through the door behind me. I picked it up and started stroking it which sparked a nice conversation with the cute girl at reception. I then did some sketchbook work while chatting to whoever was around until 2 when I had a group tutorial. The lecturers loved my work and had some great suggestions, and the other students' work was really interesting. I then headed into town to find a cool sushi bar I remembered seeing once (the kind with the conveyer belt). I tried to get the other people in my tutorial to go with me but they didn't go for it so I went by myself. Turns out a meal for one at sushi bar is no more expensive than a meal for one at Burger King! Next, I headed to the uni's tennis club where I met some amazing people - a couple of japanese exchange students, a mexican performing arts student, a cute and funny biology student on whom I now have a crush, a black version of my brother's best friend - and had a great time playing tennis which it turns out I'm naturally pretty good at (although it would have been just as fun if I wasn't). I ended the day having deep, meaningful conversions about nothing in particular while listening to Sun Kil Moon and Velvet Undergound albums with my housemate Katie - an awesome person who spends most of her time playing world of warcraft (at some point in the evening I agreed to form a band this summer with my childhood best friend on facebook chat and decided to attend MaxFunCon ). It's hard to describe how great I feel now - I honestly feel like I've achieved enlightenment or something.
Y'know that depression I talked about in one of the questions I linked to? That kept getting worse until about a week and a half ago. At one point I was very seriously considering suicide. Pretty much the only thing stopping me from hanging myself with my macbook's power cord was that I couldn't decide if it would be more traumatic for my housemates to find me or my parents. This might sound like a rationalisation but I honestly think it was the best thing that ever happened to me. When you hate absolutely everything about yourself it's easier to let go of all the illogical crap in your head that's preventing you from enjoying yourself, and shyness is 99% fear of embarrasment which doesn't seem remotely scary if you've been through something that's actually traumatic. I think depression might be like diarea. It's really unpleasant and in extreme cases it can kill you but it's ultimately a very good thing - it's a way for your body to quickly get rid of loads of germs (or something like that). Maybe the reason so many people get depressed as teenagers is because we inevitably learn lots of crap as kids which is useful at the time but which we have to grow out of to become functioning adults (I'm thinking of shyness, fear of strangers, embarrassment, jealosy of piers etc.) and depression is the brain's way of purging all that stuff. And maybe we have the causal relationship between intelligence and depression backwoods. Maybe depression makes people more intelligent.
There's a coment on one of my questions which I ingnored when I first read it that says there's no such thing as wasted time. I think that couldn't be more true. All I did for those seven years was listen to music, read blogs and magazine articles on the internet, watch vast amounts of American TV, listen to podcasts, and read the occasional (short) book. At the time I was sure I was wasting my life but I didn't have the energy to do anything else. Turns out that instead of learning about life from people who were in the process of figuring it out for themselves, I learned from Dan Savage, Paul F Tompkins, Ricky Gervais, Jesse Thorn, Richard Dawkins, Ira Kaplan, Tom Scharpling, Andy Kaufman, Richard Feynman and countless other amazing people. I might have had a better time if I had spent that time studying hard and hanging out with friends, but I doubt I'd be more interesting or more funny.
I think the brain is alot more resilient than people give it credit for. It's really hard to fuck it up to a significant degree. If you're completely honest with yourself about what makes you happy and you make every effort to do those things then you'll be exactly as successful as you want to be. The brain has a perfectly good guide to what you should do called enjoyment. I'm not talking about instant gratification - I'm sure studying hard and getting good grades makes alot of people deleriously happy. If all you want to do is watch repeats of Two and a Half Men then that's exactly what you should do. You'll get bored with it eventially and you'll probably come up with some really interesting theories about Charlie Sheen.
Wow, 5 paragraphs in 2 hours! This would have taken me weeks a month ago!
Good luck and I hope your inevitable flowering into an amazing person with some fascination theories about J-pop happens soon or has happened already.
Hi,
I guess you probably don't check this address anymore but I'm going to write this anyway. I read your
I just turned 23 and for the last 7 years or so I've suffered from severe depression and social anxiety which meant I pretty much did nothing but watch TV and read stuff on the internet. check out this question and this question and this one too. Suddenly, the day after my 23rd birthday, I completely snapped out of it and lost everything about myself that I didn't like. It made life so completely effortless that I had to find ways to make it harder, just so I could use up all my energy. Before, even when I wasn't depressed, I was too self concious to go into a clothes shop (I bought all my clothes on ebay). Yesterday I walked around Bath (the city I live in, city of angels) going into every clothes shop I could find, even ridiculously expensive boutiques which only sell women's clothes, trying on any clothes that caught my eye, chatting with sales staff about what to look for in a suit, talking to cute girls about nothing in particular, and generally having an awesome time. Today I started the day by reading an email from Rudy Rucker - my favourite SF writer - which said that the short story I sent him (check out my blog) is too short to really be considered a story but it was an interesting idea and I should keep at it. Then I listened to a Beach Boys album while eating breakfast and reading my favourite blogs before strolling into uni at about 10.30. As I walked into college a little neighborhood cat snuck through the door behind me. I picked it up and started stroking it which sparked a nice conversation with the cute girl at reception. I then did some sketchbook work while chatting to whoever was around until 2 when I had a group tutorial. The lecturers loved my work and had some great suggestions, and the other students' work was really interesting. I then headed into town to find a cool sushi bar I remembered seeing once (the kind with the conveyer belt). I tried to get the other people in my tutorial to go with me but they didn't go for it so I went by myself. Turns out a meal for one at sushi bar is no more expensive than a meal for one at Burger King! Next, I headed to the uni's tennis club where I met some amazing people - a couple of japanese exchange students, a mexican performing arts student, a cute and funny biology student on whom I now have a crush, a black version of my brother's best friend - and had a great time playing tennis which it turns out I'm naturally pretty good at (although it would have been just as fun if I wasn't). I ended the day having deep, meaningful conversions about nothing in particular while listening to Sun Kil Moon and Velvet Undergound albums with my housemate Katie - an awesome person who spends most of her time playing world of warcraft (at some point in the evening I agreed to form a band this summer with my childhood best friend on facebook chat and decided to attend MaxFunCon ). It's hard to describe how great I feel now - I honestly feel like I've achieved enlightenment or something.
Y'know that depression I talked about in one of the questions I linked to? That kept getting worse until about a week and a half ago. At one point I was very seriously considering suicide. Pretty much the only thing stopping me from hanging myself with my macbook's power cord was that I couldn't decide if it would be more traumatic for my housemates to find me or my parents. This might sound like a rationalisation but I honestly think it was the best thing that ever happened to me. When you hate absolutely everything about yourself it's easier to let go of all the illogical crap in your head that's preventing you from enjoying yourself, and shyness is 99% fear of embarrasment which doesn't seem remotely scary if you've been through something that's actually traumatic. I think depression might be like diarea. It's really unpleasant and in extreme cases it can kill you but it's ultimately a very good thing - it's a way for your body to quickly get rid of loads of germs (or something like that). Maybe the reason so many people get depressed as teenagers is because we inevitably learn lots of crap as kids which is useful at the time but which we have to grow out of to become functioning adults (I'm thinking of shyness, fear of strangers, embarrassment, jealosy of piers etc.) and depression is the brain's way of purging all that stuff. And maybe we have the causal relationship between intelligence and depression backwoods. Maybe depression makes people more intelligent.
There's a coment on one of my questions which I ingnored when I first read it that says there's no such thing as wasted time. I think that couldn't be more true. All I did for those seven years was listen to music, read blogs and magazine articles on the internet, watch vast amounts of American TV, listen to podcasts, and read the occasional (short) book. At the time I was sure I was wasting my life but I didn't have the energy to do anything else. Turns out that instead of learning about life from people who were in the process of figuring it out for themselves, I learned from Dan Savage, Paul F Tompkins, Ricky Gervais, Jesse Thorn, Richard Dawkins, Ira Kaplan, Tom Scharpling, Andy Kaufman, Richard Feynman and countless other amazing people. I might have had a better time if I had spent that time studying hard and hanging out with friends, but I doubt I'd be more interesting or more funny.
I think the brain is alot more resilient than people give it credit for. It's really hard to fuck it up to a significant degree. If you're completely honest with yourself about what makes you happy and you make every effort to do those things then you'll be exactly as successful as you want to be. The brain has a perfectly good guide to what you should do called enjoyment. I'm not talking about instant gratification - I'm sure studying hard and getting good grades makes alot of people deleriously happy. If all you want to do is watch repeats of Two and a Half Men then that's exactly what you should do. You'll get bored with it eventially and you'll probably come up with some really interesting theories about Charlie Sheen.
Wow, 5 paragraphs in 2 hours! This would have taken me weeks a month ago!
Good luck and I hope your inevitable flowering into an amazing person with some fascination theories about J-pop happens soon or has happened already.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Yeah, you can't really do this in askme. -- cortex
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posted by DMan at 4:59 PM on December 6, 2009