I Find Effort to be Meaningless

[Runtashea]

I sincerely believe that effort is meaningless and that there’s nothing wrong with quitting. Plenty of people try and excel at various things (ex. sports, art, writing, etc.) that will simply be forgotten as time goes one. This is a fact that no one can deny so why bother wasting the effort, especially if you’re bad at something.

Honestly, I accept that I’m bad at most things I try. Be it writing, video games, drawing, etc. Perhaps this is because I was a beginner and most beginners are absolute shit at the start. However, not all beginners are shit at the beginning. In those cases, talentless folks such as myself will call that talent; a word that bothers people who worked to attain their skill at something. To simply put, those that are talented gasp concepts easier than most.

In that case, I see no reason to put in effort for something that is ultimately meaningless. Why should I waste time and effort to improve when someone can do it in an 1/8th of the time it took me to learn? I acknowledge this probably just an excuse to be lazy and continue on as a worthless sack of shit, nevertheless, I am curious. Then again, you’ve probably closed this tab because all of the grammatical errors a high schooler would’ve noticed in this. As someone who’s been compared as being less than and exists in the shadow of others, I see no reason to try. No reason to fight anymore.

[White Wolf Guardian]

To live is to try, you have to keep trying to live and survive. A lot of us will not be the best authors or scientists, but you can be competent enough to be employable and that ultimately matters a lot.

[Runtashea]

The first and last job I had I lost because I fell asleep on the job. The task was just hanging and glue insulation tiles onto subs. Clearly, I am not compentent enough to be employable.

[Brisky]

I used to have the same mentality as you when I was a tad younger than I am now.

But the thing that you should try to understand is that it's not about doing something that will be remembered forever, but that it's about doing things that you enjoy doing. And it seems like you've been trying to do a couple of things already.

What you need to find is things that you enjoy doing. And, you don't even have to be good at them or be instantly capable of achieving the result you are looking for, because overtime you will find a huge amount of reward and enjoyent just in seeing yourself get better at the thing you are doing, and see yourself, or what you're creating, get closer to what you aspire (it) to be, aswell as the enjoyment of actually doing it, in itself.

And if you think that talent is unfair, then perhaps you could try looking at the bigger picture.

Wether you believe that you are product of evolution and that your bloodline has stood a test of time stretching over billions of years, or that you're a creature made by a god who creates all life equally, there's always something you're good at.

It's true that some people have to work more than others to achieve a scertain goal, but there's always something that's easier for you than it is for other people.


My view is that you're a living being in a huge dynamic world with all sorts of things, and you'll have about a hundred years of pure oppertunity to live trough.

So, you can either sit around and do nothing, or find things that you enjoy doing, and make your time here something that you can look back at when you're an old man / woman, and be happy and proud of doing the things you've done.

c:

[anoni]

Well I mean if you really wanna go down that path, even people who ARE (lets say magically for the moment) good at anything shouldn't bother, because they're gonna die and it won't matter (to them) if they're remembered or not.

The point is, this kind of logic is self defeating in and of itself. The point of doing something isn't really to be remembered, it wouldn't matter to you whether you are remembered or not (even if you believe in an afterlife like heaven, wouldn't the everlasting afterlife become more important to you than the temporary life you lived? If you believe in reincarnation, you don't retain any of the memories, maybe you hear about your past life's achievements, but not knowing that it was actually you just makes it another "famous" person.) The point of doing something is about what enjoyment it creates to you now, while your alive.

You want to feel that you will be remembered because it gives you happiness now, you can quit if you want, but it won't give you happiness in doing so. I have a personal belief that it is better to have tried and failed than not to have tried at all, because even in failure you can create something from it, some experience, some interesting paths, there is no shame in failure of a hobby. If you draw and your bad at it, your still learning something, your still doing a different experience, learning a new skill, you may never be a master, but you would have created something, and even if that something isn't good, its still something, a permanent monument to your journey, a monument not to anyone else, but to you. (And hell, there is a always a chance something you create might actually be interesting to a lot of people!)

Do what makes you happy, if you feel quitting makes you happy, then quit, I'm not going to say you should do things you don't want to do just because you want to be remembered. I'm going to ask you though to really look into yourself and figure out whether quitting is really what you want to do, it might be, but it might be an unrelated solution to a different problem you're having.

[Runtashea]

The universal thing is I find no enjoyment in anything. Literally everything I do at this point is done to kill boredom. <Removed> However, my goal was never to be remembered, I accepted that as pointless a long time ago. From personal experience, being bad at something is unacceptable. Failure in general is not acceptable. Years of constantly being treated like shit and talked down to by my betters has me taught that if nothing else.

In terms of being remembered, I really couldn't care for. It was more so to wonder why people try in the first place. Generally, people want to be remembered after death, no? Don't people want to leave something that still exists of their efforts after death? Mediocrity is usually forgotten so why waste the effort?

[anoni]

I think everyone has differences into why they do things. Motivation is a complicated and faceted thing.

For me, I am a goal oriented person who has enjoyment in meeting my goals. I will look at something and say "this is what I want to do" and then I have enjoyment trying to meet those goals. The goals don't have to be massive things, they can be small things like "I want to write this document tomorrow for work" or they can be longer term things like "I want X amount of money by Y date", etc. The reason for the goals is to improve my quality of life, but overall just striving for the goals gives me something to do, effort is not necessarily the enemy.

From the sounds of your post though it seems you have some form of depression or depressive disorder (though I'm no psychologist so don't take my word for it!) But in general, if you can't find enjoyment in ANYTHING than this seems to be more physical than just a viewpoint thing, in which case my suggestion would be to see a shrink. Medication may be able to help you maintain a chemical balance.

[Runtashea]

Well that's where we differ completely. I am not a goal oriented person who find enjoyment in meeting them. Like I said before, any goal I do is done to kill boredom. I acknowledged a long time, that for me, effort can amount to nothing. There are times where I put 100% effort into something only to fail completely. Once upon a time, I turned in a test to teacher, the next day he told me that I was first student to turn in a test to get a zero.

Then again, academics is right for everyone so let's move to sports. Growing up, I was more or less forced to play on the girls side as I was physically inferior to my male classmates. The rare times I was able to play with the boys, I was more or less a burden. Having me on their team was always considered a handicap, not that anyone really disagreed (myself in included). I can still remember trying my very best, only causing the other team to win instead because I was bringing the rest down.

Let's try the arts shall we? Specifically writing and drawing. I understand that plenty artists that are impressive have done so since childhood. Over the years they've improved their skills from drawing stick people to amazing works of art. Recently, I tried to pick up the craft as I figured why not, people claim it can be a refreshing hobby to have. You can probably guess what happened them, right? I got unbelievably pissed off at my terrible drawings. Granted I acknowledged the experience gap, but as I said in a prior post: I find being bad unacceptable. As a result I quit after ripping up all my sketches and tossing the sketchbook in the trash.

Then there's writing, a vastly easier task to learn. The basics are drilled into head in school, more or less. Yet that couldn't stop me from writing absolutely trash stories. Initially, this was done for me by me. No one else was meant to read them. Although one day, I was curious to what people thought of my work so shared some new stuff. It went about well as expected, no real advice to help improvement, only the usual reaction the internet has to things it doesn't like. What little advice I got, I took to heart and tried to improve. I sincerely did since this, above all the other tasks, is the easiest (imo at least) so I thought I some praise, at least very not a 'OMG this is absolute crap'...nope. Got the same comments I usually got.

Perhaps there is a chemical imbalance that prevents me from caring about trying. However, I'm simply following the logic of my meaningless existence. If all these things I done my absolute best on are completely worthless than what does make me? Worthless, I'd say. If the best you can do amounts to nothing but negativity leading to crappy self-worth, why bother?

[anoni]

It is quite an dilemma I'm afraid, to be absolutely frustrated with being bad at anything. Any skill someone starts they start off bad, there isn't really going to be a skill where you're just a natural, naturals are kinda myths. Taking in the advice on writing was a good move, and if you continued those comments about how your art is bad will eventually turn into comments about how your art is good, but to go through all that, well, its a skill in and of itself.

I think what others have said is true and I think you know it too, in order to be good at something you need to work hard at it for a long time, and for that whole time you will be bad at it. I always say what makes a man great isn't what he does when he succeeds but what he does when he fails, because if you're able to adapt to every failure then you will become unstoppable. If you can't handle failure, if you can't handle bad craft, then you have to turn to other means as to why you can't handle this.

And it sounds like your issue is less to do with logic and more to do with your own perception of self worth, that you think you will be bad at these things forever, but I dunno if there is true evidence of that. I would say see therapist, it may be helpful!

[Runtashea]

It is quite an dilemma I'm afraid, to be absolutely frustrated with being bad at anything. Any skill someone starts they start off bad, there isn't really going to be a skill where you're just a natural, naturals are kinda myths. Taking in the advice on writing was a good move, and if you continued those comments about how your art is bad will eventually turn into comments about how your art is good, but to go through all that, well, its a skill in and of itself.

I think what others have said is true and I think you know it too, in order to be good at something you need to work hard at it for a long time, and for that whole time you will be bad at it. I always say what makes a man great isn't what he does when he succeeds but what he does when he fails, because if you're able to adapt to every failure then you will become unstoppable. If you can't handle failure, if you can't handle bad craft, then you have to turn to other means as to why you can't handle this.

And it sounds like your issue is less to do with logic and more to do with your own perception of self worth, that you think you will be bad at these things forever, but I dunno if there is true evidence of that. I would say see therapist, it may be helpful!

What you're describing is patience. Patience to be bad at something long enough to become decent, maybe even good. I severely lack the general patience for such things anymore. Years of being berated by strangers online, peers, and family will do that to you.

Perhaps you're right about this being more of self worth. However, self worth tends to follow a logical pattern. Or is my assumption wrong?

[anoni]

I think your assumption is wrong yeah, self worth doesn't necessarily entail actual worth. Actually, self assessment is notoriously terrible for humans, I try to avoid it at all costs. I mean just look at all the cognitive biases that plague every human on earth (and those are only the ones we know about).

Not to mention that if you do have some kind of mental disorder like Depression, your self worth will be skewed in the opposite direction as most people, making not for a logical pattern. Again, this seems to be about overcoming these emotions, perhaps you can't do this on your own which is why I suggest professional help.