I'm glad I'm not the only one that realized this. Not that I actively go around trying to find other people though.
Even bad geocities pages were unique and interesting. I haven't come across anything that's like that in so long. It seems like an endless cycle of content aggregators and the usual news website. There's really no reason to actually explore or any easy way to do it. Might just be me though.
Even myspace allowed you to edit the CSS and pretty much do whatever you wanted with your personal page. Now all we have is Facebook and the actual information isn't important at all. I rarely even bother visiting people's pages nor have I updated mine in so long. It just doesn't matter for the most part.
Sometimes I'll start something and then a day later I'll realize that I only just started something and try again, the cycle continues until I beat myself up over not getting anything done and it just gets miserable sometimes. The worst is with things that I don't want to do but I need to do because it becomes like this constant fleeting thought where I know I should do something but I'm doing this other thing so I don't get stressed about doing the thing that I don't want to do and not doing it makes me even worse because I know I need to do it.
That's the best way I can explain it.
Oh yeah, being interested in one thing one day and completely hating it the next day makes it hard to really plan for any long term goals when you're not sure what you'll even want to do tomorrow, in a few hours, next week, next month.
It's like your head is disconnected from your body and you're watching a bored teenager live your life for you. Watching him annoy the people you enjoy being around because you can't seem to get him to do anything that causes the slightest amount of stress. If you're too stressed thats when angsty teenager drowning in his own emotions comes in and flails at everyone around him and you can't even get yourself to say what you want to say because everything that comes out of your mouth sounds like you're blaming someone else for something when you're just trying to be like hey, I need you to calm me down I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
I feel worse for the people around me sometimes than I do for myself because I still have a hard time admitting I have ADHD and not that I'm just lazy and don't want to do anything. That's the true nightmare.
When you're attempting to be social and someone brings the attention to how weird/awkward you are and then pauses like they expect you to respond to it when you're just trying to float around in the background.
I felt that way too, they always felt like a quiet retreat from anything you may be experiencing in life really. It was always so calm and peaceful in there. Never anything offensive to the senses going on. Finding that place in the back corner where there wasn't any foot traffic and getting lost in a book was possibly one of the best things I remember about childhood. It was also one of the few things you can do without needing any money.
Knowing all the different information that could be hidden inside these walls of books that I was surrounded by that might be interesting to me was also something special. You can get that with the internet but there's really no visual, material feeling you get actually seeing the amount of things you can learn about.
I kinda get the feeling a lot of the content on semi-large websites is curated to bring in more views, playing on their main demographic's idea of what they find interesting instead of what the author is actually interested in. I'd rather listen to someone talk about something that they love than something they think I should love. I feel like that all got lost in the rush to bring in a profit and websites that haven't updated to that style get pushed back because they don't artificially raise interest in what they have to say.
I keep thinking about deleting my facebook but a few days ago I went back a few years to figure out what I needed to do to drag myself out of a horrible depression I've put myself in the past few years and I found the exact thing I needed and all I could think was, I could never delete this if it was this important to me. I feel chained to the website in a way, I've had it for 6 years and quite a bit of important social interactions are hidden in between things that don't matter that I might never find again and completely forget that part of my life.
Is there any way I can separate myself from the website without losing these things that I might need later in life at some point? I'm really wanting to just delete it but the history makes it important to me.
My first concert was a band called The Chariot in some cramped bar and when the audience started moving it was like everyone was in sync because you couldn't move without pushing someone and it was one of the best experiences of my life.
TLDR; I've done what you've done on a massive scale.
Most things end up depressing me if I follow them, knowing people are willingly participating in such an absence of brain activity. I had to stop myself from constantly scrolling down on facebook when I was bored (I realized I don't even actually read what people post most of the time because I'm looking for something interesting, but I still subconsciously notice what people are doing somehow.) I'm not against this by any means, so don't take this as me complaining. I don't know what's popular right now, I don't know what is trending on twitter. What's left is my little bubble where I have what I need to explore what I'm interested in. I can find interesting articles, I can find new music, and I can talk to people who actually are interesting to talk to. I've completely cut off any noise and am completely left with pure signal.
I'm completely out of touch with most everybody, and I've never felt better. I guess this goes hand in hand with being super introverted, I couldn't imagine actually holding a conversation with anybody around me with the information I know that wasn't super technical or completely shallow. I've lived with this obvious gap between me and other people my entire life though so it doesn't even feel lonely anymore when I can just find whatever I need to keep myself occupied when I'm bored.
Hours of browsing similar wikipedia articles to find out something but nothing describing exactly the issue only to come across an unrelated comment on hacker news unexpectedly that helps a ton.
"Let's see what happens" is how I love to live my life but sometimes it's just not possible given how affected I am by external stimulus because of my introversion and ADD. So I have to plan out some things but I'm not looking for the perfect life. I've learned from past experiences that wanting something to be perfect is always the wrong way to look at something because no matter how hard you try you will never achieve it.
I've only read the first link so far, I've had a bit to do today but I appreciate all these links. Already learned a ton so far and this is almost exactly the sort of material I was looking for. Just wanted to say thanks before this falls into obscurity and/or you forget about it so you know your time was not wasted.
I'm 21 now trying to plan out my life and this is one of the major things for me. What do I want to do in life that is important to me and can I accomplish this within the timeframe I have. I don't have a second chance so I don't want to spend time doing something that I'll lose interest in, or end up being stagnant in some job that I can barely stand. I'd rather do all that worrying now then when it could mean finishing something on time. At least now I can plan accordingly (do this before I'm x years old) to how much time I've wasted, instead of wasting time and not accomplishing a part of it before I need to.
Also trying to figure out how "great" I am, or what I am "great" at. So I'm not disappointed at myself . I've already gone through that once on several levels when I went from being an old teenager to a young adult. One time is enough, and I bet it's so much worse when you're at the point where you can't accomplish the goal because you're not good enough (or even just questioning if its feasible, that has to drop you farther than where you should be and end up doing worse because of it.)
Or I may be just wasting time now and I should just jump in. I don't know, maybe I'll figure that out. I don't need much in life, just to feel like I've done the best that I can at whatever I end up choosing. Not even in an idealistic way really, I want to give back what people have given to me (knowledge, ideas, materialistic things if any) so at most I don't leave the world knowing that I did less than nothing. If I leave doing more than I have taken then I can be happy in the fact that I've made the world a little bit better. Not a lot but it wasn't a waste being alive.
I didnt realize how much I typed so I put it in pastebin. I've never commented here and your comment gave me hope that someone understands me (I'm sure there are a lot of people who do, its likely a miscommunication on my end) This is also an example of my writing when I'm not focused.. really tired right now but this is important so im half there so hopefully its half readable enough to give me maybe a half answer even though I want the full one I will accept any piece of information that makes me a little more closer to being successful in life)
tldr You made me realize stuff from your post and how do you live without flow and also this is more or less for me trying to figure what the hell my problem is and why I'm not good at a lot of aspects that make a successful person, also you don't have to read it because its probably an unrelated issue that sounds like mine but its worth mentioning just in case it is and I rarely find anyone that I can relate to with this sort of stuff so forgive me.. just trying to learn more about myself.
Even bad geocities pages were unique and interesting. I haven't come across anything that's like that in so long. It seems like an endless cycle of content aggregators and the usual news website. There's really no reason to actually explore or any easy way to do it. Might just be me though.
Even myspace allowed you to edit the CSS and pretty much do whatever you wanted with your personal page. Now all we have is Facebook and the actual information isn't important at all. I rarely even bother visiting people's pages nor have I updated mine in so long. It just doesn't matter for the most part.