Venting I am talentless, lazy, and learning is hard. Is improvement possible or should I CTB?

[prone2fury]

For some short backstory, up until young adulthood, I was very book smart and respectful to my teachers and elders. Of course this meant that I rarely needed to try in school, which came back to bite me later when I had a huge depression crashout at the start of college. What few abilities I hadn't forgotten were completely useless now.

The worst part is that I have attempted before to learn new skills. Riflery, driving planes, carpentry, theater, fitness. Nothing stuck and nothing was fulfilling, and all I was doing was failing and suffering and wasting years of my life. Nowadays, when I try something new like music or art or writing, I quit when it gets difficult in the slightest way. I hate being this way and I don't know what to do. I've been on antidepressants on and off for about 3 months.

I'd like to find some skill or talent that I don't hate, but I worry it's impossible due to my sheer lazy piece of shit nature. Is there anything I can do to find something worth doing, or should I give up and CTB?

 

[TheEmptyVoid]

For some short backstory, up until young adulthood, I was very book smart and respectful to my teachers and elders. Of course this meant that I rarely needed to try in school, which came back to bite me later when I had a huge depression crashout at the start of college. What few abilities I hadn't forgotten were completely useless now.

The worst part is that I have attempted before to learn new skills. Riflery, driving planes, carpentry, theater, fitness. Nothing stuck and nothing was fulfilling, and all I was doing was failing and suffering and wasting years of my life. Nowadays, when I try something new like music or art or writing, I quit when it gets difficult in the slightest way. I hate being this way and I don't know what to do. I've been on antidepressants on and off for about 3 months.

I'd like to find some skill or talent that I don't hate, but I worry it's impossible due to my sheer lazy piece of shit nature. Is there anything I can do to find something worth doing, or should I give up and CTB?

Your just like me, I will ctb, I'm just needing a guaranteed lethal and painless death, I deserve death, no one likes me, all I want is death.

 

[wham311]

It is possible. We have the fucking deck stacked against us..

Absolute fucking bullshit.

 

[hippiedeath]

Choice is yours to make. I know I've tried everything, and I know where I stand. I enjoy food and nature. People are the problem. To ctb is to end the rat race of suffering. I'm not in any serious physical decline. My mental health is shot. Right now I just want to smoke, and eat myself into oblivion

 

[ForsakenEcho]

I get what it's like to want to develop new skills. I have a long list of things I'd love to learn, but every time I try, I eventually give up.

Recently though, I found something I'm slowly starting to get better at. So my advice would be to keep searching. Maybe one day you'll find something that really clicks with you.

You can always catch the bus later, so there's no harm in postponing that moment until you truly feel like it's the right time.

 

[Linda]

I don;t know whether carrying on, or giving up and catching the bus, is the right option for you. And I doubt that anyone else knows either. There are some things that other people can't decide for you. You must decide for yourself.

That said, my feeling is that you should carry on trying until either you succeed at something or you get to the point where it is obvious that trying is hopeless. I don't think you have reached that point yet. If you had, you wouldn't be asking for advice here. You would know what to do.

 

[-Link-]

Desire, self-confidence, motivation, hope, mental energy, physical energy... Depression has a way of stifling these things, sometimes to a point where they're not even perceivable. The end result is something easily construed as "laziness", except it's not actual laziness and not so much a personality flaw as it is a product of pain and suffering.

It takes a lot of energy just to exist with this pain, and it takes away from the energy that you'd normally be able to use towards finding (and keeping) purpose in life.

So, I'd say the first thing here is to try to be a little more compassionate towards yourself. You're surviving. Sometimes survival takes everything we have -- all our energy. If you're struggling with motivation despite actually trying and wanting to do things, and given that you're on and off antidepressants and active on a suicide forum where you're talking about ending your life, it would be reasonable to move away from the "lazy" label and to view this as a symptom of an illness.

I quit when it gets difficult in the slightest way.

As someone who is book smart and someone who rarely needed to put in effort in school, you might have gotten used to the idea of personal accomplishments in exchange for comparatively little effort.

So, you (probably more than most people) may need to remind yourself that feeling discouraged doesn't mean you're hopeless. It means you've tried. Look at the urge to quit as a sign of effort instead of defeat. Look at your hurt and frustration as signs that you're doing something of worth.

Is there anything I can do to find something worth doing

I would suggest setting aside the idea of "talent" here because it seems to have implications of big, long-term goals whereas you'll probably be better off focusing on smaller goals. One step at a time. This is the difference between chasing a talent and just trying to feel a little more alive in the moment.

So, "chasing a talent" would be something like, "I want to learn the piano."

But "just trying to feel more alive in the moment" would be, "What can I do with the piano today?" This would be more about staying present and trying to find a degree of comfort or feel less numb. Then theoretically, if you put enough days like this together, you could one day find yourself in a world-renowned orchestra. But you would have gotten yourself to that point by just taking it one day at a time (or one moment at a time, even) without necessarily having set out to join an orchestra in the first place... Small steps...

This may especially apply to somebody whose natural smartness has altered their brain's idea of what's reasonable as far as the time and effort required to accomplish certain things in life.

"Enjoy the journey."

Along the way, remember to give yourself credit. Credit for trying. Credit for surviving. And credit not just for the big things but the small things too (like coming on here and engaging us and posting this thread).

 

[LostHighway]

For some short backstory, up until young adulthood, I was very book smart and respectful to my teachers and elders. Of course this meant that I rarely needed to try in school, which came back to bite me later when I had a huge depression crashout at the start of college. What few abilities I hadn't forgotten were completely useless now.

The worst part is that I have attempted before to learn new skills. Riflery, driving planes, carpentry, theater, fitness. Nothing stuck and nothing was fulfilling, and all I was doing was failing and suffering and wasting years of my life. Nowadays, when I try something new like music or art or writing, I quit when it gets difficult in the slightest way. I hate being this way and I don't know what to do. I've been on antidepressants on and off for about 3 months.

I'd like to find some skill or talent that I don't hate, but I worry it's impossible due to my sheer lazy piece of shit nature. Is there anything I can do to find something worth doing, or should I give up and CTB?

You've proven that you are smart and capable because you did very well in high school. (I had a C- average and barely graduated.) It sounds like you might have ADHD. It could be the inattentive type. It explains SO many of your symptoms: laziness, trying different things, quitting when it gets difficult etc. I've been this way ALL my long life. I strongly suggest you look into that. There are medications that really help you get centered and give you the dopamine it sounds like you're lacking. I so appreciate that you have tried to learn so many interesting things. Perhaps you just haven't found your passion. (it would have been photo-journalism for me if I had treated my ADHD when I was young.) PLEASE don't leave the planet. You're smart and young and one of millions upon millions of "lazy" people just trying to make their way through life. Appreciate your friends and family. Make sure your friends are on your side and want the best for you. And you do the same for them. Stay here.

 

[Celerity]

How old are you? Have you investigated a possible ADHD diagnosis? You sound a bit like me when I was younger. Though I was already much improved by my 30s, medication has made school much easier. It's not a silver bullet and won't fix all of your problems, but it's great for motivation.

 

[author]

I definitely won't say it's easy, but it's never impossible to change. Literally as long as you're alive, things can change. It's obviously your choice in the end though.

I agree with what Celerity said, you might want to look into a potential ADHD/Autism diagnosis. I have a similar background to you, being the so-called "gifted kid", never needing to study but always having too much expected of me, and burning out hard. Turns out, lots of burned out "gifted kids" have ADHD and/or Autism, like myself. There's been studies on this and for some reason when a kid has ADHD they get like, 10x more criticism from adults than other kids get, and it can cause perfectionism so bad you literally can't learn new skills because if you're not immediately good at it you might as well give up. I've been struggling with that for years in a similar way to you. Interested in learning many skills, can't seem to hold any down because I'm not immediately good at it. It's like being bad at something is almost terrifying to me.

Personally I've been unmedicated for years due to chronic lack of money but if you have ADHD like me, medication isn't a bad route to try. It can take trial and error (which I know, sounds like the literal worst), but for a lot of people it's very worth it. You get a sense of what it's like to be able to actually fucking function. At least, that's how it felt in the brief time I had access to meds.

Without meds, I've just been working on trying to "do the thing" regardless of whether I do it well or not. It's a fucking trial in and of itself but I've got a method, or at least a semblance of a method. Basically, I started doing things badly on purpose - just, the bare minimum of effort. For example, my art; for a long time I was just staring at a blank canvas, paralyzed and unable to move my pen because I didn't want to draw a "bad line", so I literally never improved because I Could Not Bring Myself To Draw. I was just constantly erasing and undoing my work. I eventually got so fed the fuck up I started drawing badly on purpose. What I made sucked, but that was the goal. I made something shitty, and I did it on purpose, so I achieved my goal - but I still made something. I finally actually fucking drew. It gave me a bit of dopamine to want to keep going, and to study stupid youtube videos on how to draw. Ever since I started doing this, I've noticed huge improvements in my art overtime - which I didn't think was possible, because obviously I'm just fucking around and doing it all "badly" - but I think the trick is, when you do shit "badly" on purpose, you're at least doing the fucking thing and if you keep at anything long enough, you're going to improve even if you're putting in minimum effort.

I hate for my advice to end at "just do the bare minimum and get the thing done" but honestly sometimes that's what it takes. Hope it helps.

 

[GhostInTheMachine]

I'm dealing with a similar issue. I have a lot of interests that I do care for, but I just don't get any sort of feedback motivating me to keep going these days. I've never been diagnosed with anything, but I'm also not ruling it out. I'm too broke to actually get professional help though, so I'm just kinda floating along and using whatever bursts of energy I get to scrape any sort of progress I can.