Originally written around January of 2024. Adjustments made in February of 2025. Choices…
To preface this for my future self: I’ve been going on and off, as in; different sides of the war are winning in my mind. I was doing especially well for a while, then the other side started winning, and I started to feel horrible again. Right now, as I write this, I am in the state of “horrible” and have not broken out of it yet.
I think that choices have had more of a negative impact on my life and I’ve never been able to properly take advantage of the choices that have been available to me. I have many options available, and I can do many things, however the things that undeniably occur are the ones I feel “must” happen, those that are not truly out of my control, but I have decided that they control me. I have three main examples of the puppet being the puppet-master.
The first and most prominent example is: work. I don’t have to work, there is no pressure to do so, and I can go without it just fine. The precursor to work was school, but there was pressure to go to school, and I truly had no other choice other than irrelevant extremes. Now, I’m once again forcing myself into a position where I must go to school again, because I have now paid for it. Of course, this comes down to the core, which is that I made the active choice to pay for school and go, as it is true, I didn’t have to do that. However, the reason I did it, or so I believe so, is that I must go to school if I want things to change. With these all come benefits. As much as I may hate work, and wish that I would quit, I still receive a paycheck at the end of the week, which is a big benefit to keep going, because it can at least give a sick sense that I’m working on my future. Although this is may not be completely true, it is true enough to keep going back there, even if it feels like my soul is being torn away from my body.
The second is that I feel I am forced through pacts. For this particular example, it has only really happened once, but it is one with Masual. We have a pact for me to play guitar for two hours a day and in agreeance with the pact, he will go to Japan. This was a mutually beneficial pact. I feel forced to play guitar because that is what I promised, and I knew I had to learn something soon, whether guitar or something else, guitar was what was available to me, and I felt like without the external variable, like a pact, nothing would ever happen! I have the choice to learn this, or that, or do this, or do that, but a pact forces me to, at the bare-minimum, play for two hours. Yes, there is the choice, the option, to just stop practicing like an asshole, but I don’t consider that an option in my paradigm.
The third is the daily things I could go without, but since they’ve become part of my daily ritual, I can’t just throw them out. A daily shower is not necessary by any means, I could easily take a shower every other day, but it feels good to take a shower, so there is at least a benefit in doing so, but the choice to not take one is also there. Yesterday morning for example, I was considering taking a short-shower, rather than my long shaving shower. However, that did not occur, as I felt like I would be far too uncomfortable if I had gone without my long-shower, which is likely true. Brushing my teeth twice a day is another choice I take, but I could go without a morning brush or night brush, or both, if I wanted to. The reason I don’t go without either is because I want to have good oral health.
I like feeling forced to do things because it undeniably leads to something actually happening. If I decide that I don’t need to do something, I won’t do it, and I’ll take the easiest route. If I don’t need to read, I won’t read, and I will gladly (or not gladly?) web-crawl for hours, feeling like my time is wasted, and repeat the cycle. Or I could read for hours, and I will gladly (OR NOT GLADLY!?) feel like I used my time well and actually learn something, and didn’t waste my time. Most of what I do is rotating around the fact that I have finite time. I would rather do X than Y because it is worth my time versus something else which would not be worth my time. What is dictating the worth? Me, obviously, but my dictations are inconsistent, because my humanity, and when there are inconsistencies, I start to question my own systems. This usually hinders me from actually doing anything. If I’m forced to work, I can do that, but if I have the night off, it becomes unlikely that I will do anything other than what I have arbitrarily decided as “necessary.”
Of course, this ends up becoming another cycle that I have to break out of. I have to set myself or have someone else set me back on track onto what “worth” actually is defined as in my own system, and once I’m back on track, things are a little better. Being on a track is only half the battle, because sometimes I don’t want to be on that specific track, I’d rather be on another one. Instead, I’d rather be working on something or creating something rather than just playing VRC. I don’t want to play video games! It isn’t fun! I don’t feel like I’m gaining anything! I’m just being a hedonist! It’s just like eating food because it tastes good! However, I don’t know where to draw the line when it comes this! Sometimes I do need a break from the hard, dedicated, effort towards things that I have decided that matter, but if I’m not keeping a balanced diet when it comes to these things, my mind becomes a mess and I turn off. I’m back to being inhibited from doing both the hedonistic action and the action that would matter if I could force myself into thinking it mattered, so I’ll web-crawl or stare at the wall instead of doing anything.
This taking “the easiest route” is common whenever I use the internet on my computer. Take for example how many times I’ve alt-tabbed when writing this document. I don’t know the number because it is that great. I could remember once or twice, but it has already exceeded that. It doesn’t matter the reason, whether I was changing a song or checking Discord, I lost my focus many times because it was so easy to do so. When everything is so fast paced that I can switch from one thing to the next in a second, I’ll do it, because I can, and I have the choice to. If I didn’t have the choice to, I wouldn’t because how would I? Or if it came with a downside for doing so, I might have to take the choice a little more seriously. This plays with the feeling that “nothing matters” or when I can’t put my focus towards anything. I can easily and quickly just web-crawl and actively do the equivalent to watching paint dry because my brain is so small it can be easily amused by images and text on a screen. I feel slightly better without putting any actual work in, and so I feel horrible when I have to do any amount of work. If someone just put a book in front of me instead of a computer screen, I could put in slightly more work and feel far better, far more inspired, and more willing to do other things after. However, I put myself in front of the computer screen time and time again.
Upon realizing the negative impact the computer can have on me, it makes me think that the answer is to take away the choices that are available to me. This has some level of truth, because if I couldn’t as easily alt-tab away, or be distracted from the task I’m actively trying to focus on, then I would more easily be able to focus on the things that matter. In response to this, I could tell myself that I actively need better self-control. The only problem with the self-control argument is that sometimes I literally do not have that control. If I wake up feeling horrible, how can it be expected for me to have the same level of focus I would have if I woke up feeling great? That expectation can’t be held, and it doesn’t need to be, but the core issue of not being to act because of too many choices, or choosing the easiest choice, is still present.
Sometimes I think that a change in environment is the answer, which really never ends up being the case. For example, I started writing about “cycles” because I would have a cycle of changing operating systems (Windows and Linux) and in doing this, I would hope that switching to either, which would give me the end result of making something or doing anything that wasn’t the lowest bar. (Playing video games, watching YouTube videos, and other low-effort tasks.) However, the issues still presented themselves. No matter in what environment I tried to place myself, I would always choose the easiest route or implement a method so that I could walk in it, rather than talking the more difficult, but in-the-end, more pleasurable path. This is exemplary of how I am as a human being, and the aforementioned pact forcing me to play guitar (or giving me the false sense of forcedness) actually overcame this major issue. Even if it did overcome this issue, I still have to find out how to handle it on my own terms if I want to be able to do other things. Just watching YouTube if I’m not eating feels disgusting. If I play VRChat for three hours, I feel horrible and believe that my time was wasted, even if I did have fun, because in that time I could have been doing things that I felt could have been a lot more impactful to me.
As of recent (today is 1/12/24) I’ve been fantasizing about how fun it would be to do any type of computer thing. It has been sucking not having options as what to do. I’m bored of doing what I’ve already done time and time again, and I think about all the fun I could potentially have if I had more hardware. This makes my thoughts divulge into a dichotomy: either I need to spend money and buy more hardware or I’m trying to find excuses as to why I don’t do anything with what I have now, and I’m not being creative enough. If my preliminary notion is “I can’t” then nothing afterwards will suffice. I’m already giving up before even trying.
A reoccurring thought to me has been to buy laptops over and over again in order to revitalize an urge to write in me. Materialism principally is not a horrible thing but I can’t hold it as a reason to buy things which will lead to me actually doing anything. Someone who wants to write will write with whatever they have. Someone who wants to draw will draw with whatever they have. A musician will play with whatever they have. It’s all about what you truly want, what you think is cool, and what you want to do. Forcing it upon yourself is a way to get something out but whatever that ends up being is not always the result wanted. There is the other side where you buy things because you are in love with the thing and buying into it will open other opportunities within it. For example, I’ve been playing on purely acoustic guitar for the past couple of weeks but by buying an electric guitar, other options are opened to me and since I listen to a lot of music with electric guitar in it, it makes sense as to why I would buy it and use it versus an acoustic guitar. Not that I dislike acoustic guitar, I love it, and think it sounds beautiful, but now I’m going to have options that actually make sense. My baseline is having choices between two options I’m content with. If my choice was guitar or playing a video game, that changes everything.
The difference between buying something focused versus buying something fruitless is that the thing I want to happen has already happened and would continue happening with or without the purchase, so insinuating or hoping that a purchase would help propel or create that purpose is silly and incoherent to an outsider. So, why would I do it? Because I want these things to happen! For example, writing may take effort, but it feels good. It’s like I’m constantly missing a chance to do something great but I’m opting out because I “can’t handle it,” or I “don’t want to,” when I totally want to, but for whatever reason, whether it be because I’m too tired or whatever, I’m making the choice to go without it. Wouldn’t it be better to write a tiny amount over a long period of time rather than none over a long period of time? Of course it would be, but I don’t choose that. When I wake up for example, there no way I’m going to write anything, draw anything, play guitar, or whatever, no, I’ll be doing the lowest-caliber things I possibly can do because that’s where my mind is, and I accept that, but I can’t accept that my mind can be in that state during other times during the day.
Technically, I have the choice in the morning to try and write incoherent nonsense and then it can at least lead to something else. Or, I can actively choose to watch videos, brainlessly scroll, and whatever else. When I write off that I don’t have the capability to even start because I’ve chosen to give up before even trying, I’m trying to find an excuse to avoid the difficult thing. I could try again, again, again, and again, even if it were technically fruitless, I am trying, and by trying, possibly, perhaps, maybe, even once, I would start something meaningful. Why would I cut myself from that possibility? Why should I wait until everything is perfect? Am I truly choosing this?
I wanted to ask myself to help revitalize the same feelings that I had when I began writing this, so here they are:
Choices you’ve made…
Choices you haven’t made…
Choices you could have made…
Choices you intend to make…
Why do choices matter?
How do I know my choices matter?:
I know my choices matter when they are going to impact the world or the people in my world. An example of a choice that matters is choosing whether or not to burn the house down. This would impact both the people around me, the world around me, and myself. A choice that wouldn’t matter so much would be drinking green tea instead of water or vice versa. There is little impact in the short-term and long-term when choosing what to drink, and whether to burn the house down or not will have both short-term and long-term impacts. A purely short-term choice that would matter would be reading one book a day. A purely long-term choice that would matter could be going to the gym for a month. Both of these are close in timeframe but one has a higher likeliness to continue than the other, the latter. This is because of the amount of time required for the completion of the task within that timeframe. Reading one book per day is a lot more time and mental effort than going to the gym, let’s say, four days a week for a month.
Of course, this is indicative of who I am as a person, and what is possible for me, or what I think is easier or harder for me to do. It becomes difficult to compare long and short-term choices because of the density of information required to be internalized in a timeframe but also moods throughout those timeframes. I may feel like I could totally read one book per day for a week, but after that week, it all shatters apart and I’m totally done with reading for at least two weeks or some other arbitrary amount of time. Going to the gym for a month might be easy for the first three weeks, but on the fourth, it may start to feel tiring because I’m not in that original mindset I once was.
Another way a choice can feel like it matters is when you have chosen to dedicate yourself to something, it starts feeling less and less like a drag as time goes on. Going 1-2-3-4 on a guitar for an hour is much more of a drag than going through different modes in different ways, along with string skipping and whatever else in order to lift up the weaker areas that need to be ironed out. Eventually with enough time, spending one hour doing technically the same thing (practicing guitar) feels different because you’re doing different things on the guitar. It eventually will be normalized, and after a few days or weeks, of consistently dedicating one, two, or three hours of my time playing guitar, that time will always be dedicated to guitar in my mind, so when I don’t have to practice, I start to think to myself, “Wow, look at all this time!”
To hold onto something is a choice too, I could stop at any time, but by pushing past discomfort, something great could unveil itself. The long-term choice where I can’t see the end clearly is a struggle for myself, because it becomes more difficult to decide early on whether or not the choice “mattered.” Arguably, all choices matter, because if you don’t make the choice, you are still blind in a sense, as you don’t know what you don’t know and you only know what you think you do know, which you can’t even be certain of. If you don’t act, how could you be so completely sure of the outcome unless you’ve done it before? And even if you had done it before, if you had changed significantly since then, who’s to say things will be as they were in the past, if you are no longer in the past? Of course, some level of sanity has to be applied. You can’t go on trying the same thing on a daily basis expecting a different result, but sometimes doing the same thing will eventually lead to something else. That’s what practice is, doing the same thing until it is refined so that you can move onto the next thing with competency.
In the first example I gave a choice that does not matter, like choosing between green tea or water, in the example, that was a choice not mattering to me. To someone else, that could the equivalent of choosing between life or death for myself. Choices “mattering” is completely up to the individual. Some are better at grasping those long and short-term impacts than others, and the ability to calculate for those impacts will decide whether it matters or not.
What can I do to make better choices?:
By making any choice. I won’t improve my decision-making skills unless I make decisions. I used to be in a hole where all my decisions would be poor and by repeating that cycle of poor choices, I would start to feel like I shouldn’t make choices for myself, rather I thought I should make others choose for me, or that I should just avoid making choices altogether. In due time, I found that I couldn’t simply run away. I would always be confronted by options and decisions that I undoubtably had to make, there was no running or avoiding them. Sometimes it would be fine, sometimes it would be a mess. I’m an imperfect being, which is another rabbit hole, but is running away the most efficient coping mechanism I could think of? Of course not. Facing the bad decisions, and continuing to make them is the only way to improve. I gain wisdom and I fine-tune what makes a good decision “good” and what makes a bad decision “bad.”
Even with this baseline level of wisdom, I don’t have complete trust in myself, nor do I have complete trust in others. In time, I learned that having others decide things for me can only work with the things that are harmless or “meaningless” to me. If it had meaning or could have impact, I knew that I would have to make the decision because I’d have all the information available to make the most correct decision based on my environmental awareness. There is one particular case where I trusted the opinion of a few individuals, in which I disagreed with all of them, but I went through with the choice, and regretted it. The damage was done and was irreparable. I knew it was going to happen, or something along those lines, but I felt like I could not trust myself. Now I feel like I cannot trust others nor trust myself. Others don’t know what’s best, but I don’t know what’s best either. Who knows best? No one. What do we gain out of that? Nothing. I have to open up at least a little to both sides. Things have changed since then, that was when I was 16, now I’m 19. I have more knowledge and understanding of the world, albeit very limited, and will likely continue to be limited as I age further. However, I have people in my life who have experienced more than a decade more of life than I have, which gives them opportunities to bestow me with wisdom that I otherwise would have never gained. This does not even include work colleagues, many of which who are over 30 or 40. This gives them far more wisdom than I have but there comes limitations with these people. Purely age does not give wisdom, but rather, it is the experiences of life that give that wisdom. That’s why “my people” are the ones I have the most willingness to trust and believe in.
With a combination of my wisdom, the wisdom of those who I can begin to trust, and all the information I can collect, my decisions can be at their maxim, and even if it ends up being different from my expectation, I can use it and learn from it, and after learning from it, I can use it elsewhere to avoid the same result again. I have the power to do this, and locking myself in a cage, or in cuffs, or whatever metaphor, will lead to ZERO change and ZERO results.
If you want to make better choices, you have to make choices. The more data you use from the more choices you make, you can then calibrate that data and wisdom, along with some from others, to enable yourself to make better choices.
-> This question helps continue the original…
How do I know I’m making the right choice?:
This works in tandem with the first question because the you will only be able to know whether or not you made the right choice by making any choice at all. You can’t see into the future; however, you can sort of make out your predictions of what to expect to occur after making the choice, but you will always lack 100% certainty. You always have to make the choice first to find out.
Resisting to make a choice will always leave you in a place of discomfort and confusion. No one wants to make a poor choice, but all we can do is make choices with what information is available to us. A fear of mine is judgement; I fear being judged by others with my decisions. If I decide I want something, I don’t like the thoughts of how I’ll be viewed by making that choice, even if I know within my mind and heart it is the best thing for me. This plays together in the idea that I must be “forced” into things. I must be forced to play guitar, although I am fearful of the judgement of others hearing my poor ability to play and practice, even though that would align with any sane person’s expectation, but somehow these outside expectations have crunched down onto me and made me think I must exert perfection at the first move, and continue that for every subsequent action. With these thoughts pounded into me, I started thinking irrationally, and it has only done damage to how I view myself and the things I do.
This judgement would also work to impair me from making choices. The outcome had to be perfect, if it wasn’t for certain in my mind and it didn’t contain the perfect outcome, I wasn’t going to make it. Even small risks were out of the question, and this gave me a certain level of paralysis, although not being completely aware of it in the midst of making the choice. I didn’t know it was something I had to look for, something I had to work on. Only until recently have I decided that I have to start fixing myself because I wouldn’t be leaving this world anytime soon. If I had decided that my end was truly near, I wouldn’t have taken any action towards anything, and I would have stagnated at my darkest moments.
I’ve taken steps to exist, and while the darkness attempts to bring me home, I continue walking forward, because I’ve chosen to do so. How do I know this is the right choice? I don’t. All this effort could be for nothing, and my depressed-self could be right. All of this is worthless, none of the movements will lead to anything that holds in my heart, but in that same vain, I have to trust my heart to keep living, because that has been its whole purpose, to keep me going.
Dramatic points in your life where you had to make a groundbreaking choice and from that choice, everything had changed:
There are many choices that I had made because I was the one loosely in control, but it has been rare for everything to change. Some change has arisen out of many of my choices, so I’ll try to pin those down. Other choices merely showcased that I am still in control, and I can do whatever I want, and I have no reason to fear making choices.
One of the most impactful choices made was telling my parents I did not wish to be a man, but rather a woman. Leading up to the event of telling them this thing, I had only online friends to pressure me into telling my parents. They would say things like, “This will help you; they will help you; they love you!” and of course, these people probably had their best intentions in mind. Maybe they truly did think my parents would love me no matter with what I presented to them. However, in my ignorance, I trusted these people despite knowing they did not have the same data I did. I was in this environment, I know what my parents are like, I know their ideologies, and I could assume many different varying outcomes upon telling them such information.
Despite having my own conscience telling me to not go through, I did it anyway, and it did not benefit me, as I predicted, and these people were wrong. In addition to this, those people faded away from my life; how mysterious. They were wrong, had inadvertently hurt me, and then disappeared. Just what I needed. Now I was in pain inside my own world and in the outside world, without anything to do about it. All I could do was suffer. With my own mother saying things along the lines of, “If you marry a man, I’ll disown you.” I can’t let those things go. She truly meant that. When I cried for help, all I was presented with was the fucking bible, and how could you expect me to feel then? This newfound pain I experienced was the result of trusting others instead of trusting myself, and I had to now pay my debts. This world truly is Hell.
With time, it all passed by. My parents never forgetting my words, and never actually helping me, but eventually they let go of those words I had said then. Over the years I’d be asked things like, “Do you still feel that way?” and I would immediately deny it and go on about how what I originally said didn’t even make sense and that I had definitely been conformed into thinking those things. I had to cover myself. I had to hide. The feelings never went away though. I still felt the same, and I experienced the same pain as I do today. I don’t think the pain will ever leave me, but I can be more careful about what I share with others, because most are quick to judge. If they are not quick to judge, they are quick to assume that I can magically be fixed with treatments, which is also not the case.
Of the three main people online that I spoke to, two I remember being transgender. I think this influenced the events that occurred later on. They had gone through their movements, things may have worked out for them, and since it worked for them, surely it must for me too, because we all live in the same world with the same parents and the same everything, right? No, obviously not, but we can all be blinded by our own environments and how things work for OUR worlds, and not the worlds of others. The other person was not transgender but someone I would feel uncomfortable to call a friend but there is so much uncertainty shrouding my view of him that I am unable to define a label that makes sense. Nonetheless, he also pushed for me to say something, because he too, thought it would help things. He never declared it would fix my life or problems, but rather give me a small amount of power, which it may have done. There comes a small amount of courage to say these things despite knowing what the result will be of saying them. Thereafter, the thoughts of running away only increased.
Choices that impacted others and their fate:
N/A
Knowing the difference between what you do and don’t have control over; what you can and cannot choose:
I’ve begun to think that you have virtually complete control over all your choices. There are situations in which I would prefer to think I don’t have a choice because it would benefit me and force me into other positions, but I actually have the capacity to back-out. Knowing that you can choose or not choose anything gives a lot of power back to the individual. I can choose to stop working, I can choose to write all day, read all day, or do whatever I want while also comprehending that my actions have consequences. If I choose to quit my job, I can expect that my parents will have the expectation that I will get another job, or if I don’t, I must have the expectation that I won’t be able to pay for school.
I can choose to play guitar every day for 8 hours, that’s an option available to me, but despite knowing this is a choice I can take, I don’t. Just like right now, I’m actively choosing to type out my thoughts instead of run away in escapism like a video game. I want to make the right choices, I want to find answers, I want comfort while being able to face the demons. If I choose to distract myself from what matters, I hurt myself. I don’t want to hurt myself. Every time I feel like I “waste” my time, I ask myself questions like “Why did you spend all your time doing X?” If I have to ask myself this question, usually it means that I won’t have a good answer to reply with. I shouldn’t have spent all my time doing that thing. If it didn’t feel right and nothing productive came of it, why did I continue?
There is this continued feeling that there are many parts of me, but there are two main “controllers” who battle it out and decide who is in power temporarily. “War” is usually the metaphor that I use for these two who want to reign over my mind. One wants to continue pushing, finding answers, and making and finding reason to continue on living. Right now, that’s the one who is writing. I want to keep on living, I want life to feel like something other than drab and misery.
Yesterday night, that darker part of me was winning. I was dooming and brooding over life, wishing for death, and encircling myself with all the reasons that life was purposeless and that I have no reason to continue on. Both sides have reasonable arguments. There is no purpose in life, I have no reason to do anything, it’s all arbitrary, and unfortunately feels forced most of the time. Many are able find those things quickly and easily. Some find drawing at an early age, coding, painting, whatever it is, very early on, but others like myself are left picking up the scraps of what they “are” and what they could be.
That darker side also brings out many realities. I think about the things I can’t change. I can’t change my physiology. I am forever a man, and that is an undeniable fact. I can lie to myself, tell myself that isn’t the case, but it doesn’t change the facts. Reality is one the things that I can choose to stay in or exit. I am bound by the laws of physics, and this is something I cannot opt out of, unless I kill myself. That has been and still is a prevailing thought of mine.
I’ve probably had an obsession and have idolized over the fact that I can choose whatever I want. In this obsession, one of the few I’ve ever had, I thought it undeniable that if I wanted true freedom, true ability to choose everything, I’d have to make the choice to sacrifice my life in order to gain that greater level of freedom. Although purely conjecture, I thought it to be truth, and so it participated in my fantasies of death.
Now my current thought processes lead me to acknowledge that there is no absolute certainty that I would receive what I wanted in throwing away the thing I know to be true and am actively experiencing; life. With this new apprehension, I try my best to find a healthy mixture of working towards the future and existing in a world that isn’t too agonizing. For aforementioned reasons, yes, I’m always going to be in, one way or another, agony. Sometimes I can be distracted from it, but at other times I can focus on it. The takeaway shouldn’t be that life is horrible and that I should remove myself from it, but rather, I can search into those distractions and stray farther and farther away from that agony which tries diligently to control my life.