some self-centered reflections [serious]

[bookgeek98]

hi guys. it's been a loooong hot while hasn't it? how's 2020 treating everyone?

i just wanted to come back to document some of my thoughts at the moment - i've become so reflective and changed so much this past decade, grown so much that i wanted to leave behind a post for anyone who was wondering - what happened to that weird ass 11 year-old girl?

it's so odd to me that i used to go on the internet as a precocious 11 year old girl and just... tell everyone that i was an 11 year old girl, that i so freely contributed absolutely nothing substantial but yet persisted with my shouts into the void on this unknown corner of the internet. it makes me think about how lonely of a kid i was, how much trouble i had fitting in with my peers, how little real social skills i had at the time. but on the upside, that early experience of solitude has produced the current me today: a philosopher, a mathematician, a polyglot, a mediocre artist, and an aspiring changer-of-the-world.

i also just graduated college this past spring, in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of a lockdown, in the very epicenter of that pandemic. i stopped going to classes entirely and it's an absurdity that my college let me graduate. the college-to-real-world transition was scarring enough, imagine having it forced upon you prematurely. terrifying.

during my time in college i became somewhat fluent in japanese and tried to do some really hard math. i spent a lot of time thinking about religion and spirituality, about high-brained philosophy that i really did not understand, about life and love. i met the strangest creatures on earth and found my home among them, then rejected them to be a 'cool kid'. i wish i'd just kept being myself. it's made me question who i am for the past year. which probably is what led me back to asdf.

yet i did not become who i am today (as opposed to the me of 'asdf'), did not accomplish what i have thus far, had i not believed that i could shape my own destiny. had i not taken risks. had i not thrown myself fully into society. so, i hope you are all living out your best dreams right now, and if not, i want to encourage you all that there is indeed hope and you have the power to fashion your life into something beautiful.

anyway, i mainly just wanted to let you guys know that i've grown up. but i'm horrifically terrified of adulthood. and i wonder every waking second what i can do to change the world now that i'm an adult who people might have to start taking seriously.

seeya space cowboys

[atomtengeralattjaro]

Omg hi!
It's been... a while, at least! (Maybe 2 whiles, even. Idk, I'm no mathematician.)

Reading this just made my day. Loving the attitude, and I'm glad you're doing well!

Yeah, growing up is... a process. I like how Saint-Exupéry puts it: "to live is to be slowly born".

And congrats on your graduation!! Math is hard. Really hard math is... ugh!
Best of luck in trying to make people take you seriously (I'll risk sounding patronizing here, but people often won't take you seriously by default, especially what with the uh.. gender bias thing, I'm sure you have experience with that already). Anyway, rock on! There's world changing to be done.

[Ml08180]

it's so odd to me that i used to go on the internet as a precocious 11 year old girl and just... tell everyone that i was an 11 year old girl, that i so freely contributed absolutely nothing substantial but yet persisted with my shouts into the void on this unknown corner of the internet. it makes me think about how lonely of a kid i was, how much trouble i had fitting in with my peers, how little real social skills i had at the time.

This is, hands down, the most relatable thing I've read. I was having a really shitty time when I was about that age and found ASDF. I used to post obsessively because I had absolutely terrible social skills and was going through a really rough period at home. I'm honestly not sure how I would have turned out if I hadn't had this place as an outlet, but I can definitely say I'm better off because I did.

[atomtengeralattjaro]

I still have terrible social skills!

But it's so nice to see how much this place meant to some of us.

[Shai'tan]

Same. Well, they're less terrible now than when I joined ASDF at least.

Omg hi!
It's been... a while, at least! (Maybe 2 whiles, even. Idk, I'm no mathematician.)

Reading this just made my day. Loving the attitude, and I'm glad you're doing well!

Yeah, growing up is... a process. I like how Saint-Exupéry puts it: "to live is to be slowly born".

And congrats on your graduation!! Math is hard. Really hard math is... ugh!
Best of luck in trying to make people take you seriously (I'll risk sounding patronizing here, but people often won't take you seriously by default, especially what with the uh.. gender bias thing, I'm sure you have experience with that already). Anyway, rock on! There's world changing to be done.

^ Reiterating this. Life's weird in the teens, but it mellows out some. Sounds like you're doing good though. Adulting is hard, but don't be fooled, everyone is just winging it and you just get better at that with age and experience (some do at least).

Learning Japanese is an incredible feat, it's a very difficult language to learn - speaking from experience.

Until next time