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So I was just invited to the wedding of one of my friends from college.  I love weddings; they are usually always a ton of fun.  But this is going to be a bit different than what I’m used to because as you know, I am a downtown type of guy:  I live in a modern high rise in the city.  I walk or take public transportation everywhere.  I don’t even own a car.

My friend and his fiancée moved out to the country a few years ago.  I’ve been out there once before and it’s the total opposite of what I’m used to!  I live in a 700 square foot apartment.  They have a big house on like 3 acres!  He has a pickup truck and a riding lawnmower.  The wedding should be awesome, though.  Like I said, they’re almost always fun, and they’re having the wedding on their property in the back yard.

My friend said he wants me to get there a day early and look at some trucks for sale with him.  I was like “dude, shouldn’t you be preparing for your wedding the day before?”  He was like “don’t worry, it will only take a few hours.”

I think he’s crazy, but he’s one of my good friends so of course I said yes.  I wonder if his wife-to-be knows what we’re doing!  Despite not having a vehicle, I do know a thing or two about trucks, and due to my job I’m pretty decent at negotiating price, so I can see why he invited me out, although to tell you the truth I think he just wants a break from the pre-wedding madness, and what better break than doing something manly like looking at trucks?

The thing I remember most from last time I visited him out there is his huge garage.  His garage holds 4 cars, has extra room off to the side for a workstation, and is even two stories tall to accommodate a life he has in there.  Seriously.  Like an actual lift to raise up his trucks so he can get under them and do some work.  How awesome is it to have your own lift in your garage?  He said I could bring my car out there to work on it if I ever got another car.  Ha.  I think that was his joke about me living downtown.

I guess living out where he lives it makes sense to have a pickup truck.  He’s always hauling stuff around… wood to build a fence, a dog house, groceries, etc.  Even going to his mailbox is a bit of a journey.  They have one of those houses that is like pretty far off the main road.  His driveway is probably a quarter mile long.  I’m not exaggerating!

My subway ride to work this morning was long.  I’m not sure why.  I did the same thing I always do, get on the redline at 7:10am, and normally it’s a 20 minute ride with a few stops, and pretty consistently drops me off at my stop at 7:30, and then I walk two blocks and I’m at my office.

But today after a couple stops, the train just stopped.  They never told  us what was going on, either.  The only thing that happened was a voice came over the intercom saying they were experiencing delays.  We sat there not moving for about 15 or 20 minutes before it finally picked up again, so I ended up not getting to work until after 8:00 which kind of threw off my schedule.

A lot of people on the train were getting visibly upset, trying to open the doors to stick their head out and see what was going on (as if that’s going to work), or getting angry and swearing, etc.  I try not to do that kind of stuff, though, and instead I just pulled out my phone and started playing some games.

I swear, I think I use my phone to play games more than I use it to actually make calls.  I’ve been playing Words With Friends (which is basically Scrabble) with a few of my friends for months now.  I usually win, too, because there’s a website you can go to and put in your letters and it will tell you the best words to make.  It’s kind of cheating, but I usually lose if I don’t use that site, so sometimes I’ll just play normally but then when I start losing I’ll get some suggestions from that site.

I also play Angry Birds.  I love that game, let me tell you.  I have every version of it.  I have a page on the home screen of my Android phone that is only Angry Birds games.  At work, they gave us tablets to bring with us when visiting clients and guess what the first thing I installed was?  Angry Birds.  And it looks AWESOME on a tablet cuz the screen is so big.  It also gives me more accuracy to aim my shots because there’s more physical space to move your finger in.  I was even meeting with a client last week and I was showing him something on my tablet and he saw the Angry Birds icon and goes “oh, you have that game?  I play that all the time!”  Needless to say, we clicked and that meeting went very well.

I worked at Toys R Us when I was in high school (97-99ish) which was when Pokemon was HUGE. We had these huge posters that were in the windows, I’m talking like 4×6′ massive posters with different pokemon scenes and characters and stuff on them.

Anyway, they were taking them down one day and I was like “can i have those?” Since I was the first person to ask, I got them.

I should have sold them on eBay. Crazy parents would’ve paid a ton for them. But I was like no, I want them.

eBay was crazy in the late 90’s. Do you remember people were paying thousands for Beanie Babies? And there was like this one Pokemon Beanie Baby type thing that was super expensive on eBay, too? Jigglypuff maybe? I remember whenever we got a shipment in I would look for a Jigglypuff (or whichever one it was) but I never found one.

You know what’s sad? We’d have a lot of adult collectors come in and buy all the valuable Hot Wheels and Star Wars action figures (like the one of Leia in a slave outfit) specifically so they could sell them for high prices at conventions. We’d even catch these people looking through our warehouse in the back. We’d be like “wtf are you doing back here?” They’d be like “oh, sorry, we can’t come back here?” And we’d be like “don’t be dumb, don’t you remember when I kicked you out last week?”

So I said forget that, I’d find out which of the ones were most valuable and then hide them until after the collectors left, and then put them on the shelves for the kids to buy.  Screw the collectors trying to make a profit. Toys are for kids.

And my friend used to work at Victoria’s Secret.  Here is her story:

yea, when I worked at vickies we got to take neat stuff home too if we wanted it(just our store, we weren’t supposed to). We had a guy working there and he took home one of the big window clings of the models.

We never had many of the pokemon beanie babies, but we still have about 2-3 of the bed in a bag bag’s STUFFED with beanie babies. My mother went nuts for them, bought 1 for each of us kids and thought when they went SUPER big and rare she’d be able to sell them and put us through college. She doesn’t like talking about them now.

And I agree with you, it sucks that people will do that and charge crazy amounts. I’ve read on some forums that these guys will get to know when shipments come in at toys r’ us and hound all the stores for the good toys. I went to a con in san fran and people were charging crazy amounts for things. I think what was even worse though were the “celebs” charging crazy amounts for autographs.

Reminds of a story that happened to me when I was staying in another city for school. I was a broke student and didn’t have very much money. Had very basic possessions like a CD player, my computer but no internet, books, and so on. This place that I had to stay at for a couple months was not very good, the house was falling apart basically.

Anyways there was this guy there. He was obviously very disturbed. He would not leave his room during daylight. He had blackout curtains in his room, a massive 60 inch TV, he pretended that he was not an alcoholic but you could hear beer bottles clinking in his room (he would have been kicked out if the landlord found out he was drinking, they knew each other).

Anyways, needless to say, I was a young, opinionated worker and student, and he was… well, I’m not sure what he was. But one day, a young man from India came to the door of the house and was seeking a room to rent. So I sought out the alcoholic guy, because it was his job to give them the information.

This guy goes off on a racist tangent, tells the guy there are no rooms for rent, and shuts the door on him and goes back to his room. I notice this and run out the door, tell the guy to wait while I call the real land lord.

The real land lord, (who was not a good person either), told me it was all right and he would deal with it. Meanwhile that Indian guy was sitting nervously on the couch while me and the alcoholic argued. I told him that I’d call the city and have the house torn down if I ever seen anything like that again.

During the time I was there, he also muttered about an experience he had. He went to a psychologist, who obviously diagnosed the sick man with a plethora of disorders. He stormed out very angrily, calling him racial epithets.

So from practical experience and first hand confirmation, I know that individuals who condemn psychologists or therapists are terrified of their own mind, they are very sick, afraid, and lying to themselves. There is nothing on earth that requires more courage from an individual then to begin to confront their own terrifying psychology. Everyone needs to do this, the fact that they do not is why the world has so many problems. Ultimately we need to become our own psychologists, but we also need to reach out for help.

Don’t feel terrible that you can’t motivate yourself to go to the gym or class. These are problems that I struggle with every day. Not out of anything else but pure laziness.

The real issues here are those feelings from the past and your current relationship issues.

Don’t be afraid to speak to a psychologist, and do try your best to open yourself to what they have to say. They are there to help, not lecture you. Whatever you do, you can’t just keep on dealing it with the way you have been dealing with it. You need to try something new. You need lifestyle changes that will take the stress off you for a while. Maybe some time away from classes to figure things out.

Alright, but listen: do not compare yourself with others. That was the defining characteristic of your original post. It is very easy to set impossible objectives for yourself at that rate. You will see the best in everyone, without realizing that people are always putting their best foot forward and hide their inadequacies from the public. Would you be surprised to consider that others might be envious of you as well? Envy is not a very good thing. It is the secret mechanism, the gears of society. It wants what others have, and is never satisfied.

Learn to be content with what you have. Two friends is not shabby, most people I know have around two friends. If they have any more, they are often complaining about the qualities in their friends. You seem to be doing fairly well in school in general. You’re basically in the top 0.1% of the world, education wise. Not many people in society manage to come close to your level of education, and most societies in the world are not even capable of producing the education level that you are at. So you have to consider your blessings here.

Anyways. I’ll end my rant there. I hope you can find some value in my words, they’re not the greatest but maybe they can offer some unique perspectives.

I am very self aware and know what issues I face inside my mind. I never saw the point of seeing anyone because they would tell me exactly what I already knew. It was just how I was and this is what I’m stuck with.

That was until I went for too long with too much stuff and I found myself cracking. I would feel myself slipping into depression and life was just getting too much.

I’ve seen people before and they all told me I had my head screwed on and knew what issues I faced and there wasn’t much more they could do with me. So I was very hesitant in wasting my time and money again.

But even if it’s just to brain dump it’s helping me. She hasn’t exactly told me how to fix the issues I face or how to change my behaviour but we’re working through it and I get to talk to her without any concern about how I will be looked at next time i see her.

I hope you’re doing well.

First thing I want to point out is that it’s not healthy to measure yourself with the world. You don’t need to be anyone but who you are. You don’t need to get the best grades (who cares about grades anyways), you don’t need to have a huge social network of friends. You just need to be who you really are. Be authentic to yourself. You can make 100 friends and still feel empty inside. It is better to have one true friend or even better: to be a friend to yourself.

At the same time, you need to learn how to manage the past. That’s not an easy thing for me to say, because I don’t have to deal with a major incident like that. Really, it does not seem like the type of thing you will ever be able to move past. So you will have to learn effective strategies to deal with that pain. Talking is one of them. Maybe meditation if it fits your personality. Study effective strategies, there are many people who endure terrible events like plane crashes or traumatic events that create PTSD, they need to form ways to deal with that.

That being said, you could very well have PTSD. Again, if you have not been seeing a good psychologist then you should be looking into that because there are a lot of thing you need to know. My father has PTSD, in fact it probably went right down the line from my great grandfather who was a machine gunner in world war I. Maybe your father had it is well, I don’t know, but investigate it, because it is very impacting.

The issue with your boyfriend. Again, very difficult. Whatever happens, after all of this I would recommend a period in your life where you let things settle down for a couple of years. You have way too much on your plate right now! You should really consider withdrawing from school perhaps. Final exams are soon but many schools have become more compassionate. Perhaps there is an option to withdrawal without penalties if you speak to your schools’ psychologist. Just a consideration.

So. Process what you have on your plate. You have a lot going on in your life right now. Ultimately, no one can tell you how to deal with all of these problems. They require you to come to personal resolutions.

What I can tell you is that you have wayyyy too much on your plate. Any one of those issues is difficult to deal with on its own. Yet you are managing all of these at the same time. You must be a titan. But slow down. You have to stop and figure things out for yourself at this point, you can’t just ignore your feelings and press on ahead. Some resolutions and processing is required here, but how can you do that when you have to worry about studies? School is optional. Dealing with your emotions is not.