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Here's a genuine rant for you. Probably the only one I've ever made and ever will..
It's a bit depressing and covers a few topics so just read it, it's important.
*deep inhale*
So, with the help of my friend and my Nana, I was getting VR set up. (Oh, what joy.)
Now, I love everything about VR. But the thing is, I've had this damned headset since may (Dell MMR) and I haven't been able to use it. The reason for that is, something always came up that I needed to buy and this became a huge deal.
But let's start from the beginning.. I'm curentally fighting depression. I have been for months. My only income is what my Nana gives me ($150/mo) and what my friend ocasinally gives me.
Anyways, the first issue was that I couldn't afford the headset. This was find, as my friend would get it for me, and I would pay them back the following month. But, then, once I got the headset that's when the real problems started. First it was that I needed bluetooth, so I bought an adapter. Then I realized my entire CPU was incompatable, so I had to get a new tower and I went ahead and got a new GPU as well. I also got a charging kit for my headset (This ended up making me owe my Nana money). Then after all of that was settled, I learned that the evauation software lied, and my computer doesn't have USB 3, so I need that too but low and behold; both of my graphics cards cover my second pcie slot. So my options are to either try and rig up something, or to buy a cpu and psu for my third AMD PC which I had forgotten about during this whole ordeal..
This was soposed to help me with my depression and stress. Now I don't even want to get out of bed.
With all that said, I might be getting on SSI soon (I'm sure some of you are familar with that, and no I don't want to talk about it) and when that happens I might just leave behind tech (well, my PC and games) and all the stress and pain it's caused me over my life so this was all for nothing.
Honestly.. I'm just done with everything. To all the new faces around here; Hello! How are ya? To everyone else; You know me. I've been around for a while, though I'm not popular because I lurked and commented with Alice. You all probably noticed that I left a while back, and it was because I was trying to get out of tech. My reason for tech was that I was searching for something. I was always looking for the next game to sate me, or fill this gap in my life. I became a programmer because it gave me control were I lacked it otherwise. I made friends online because my anxiety prevented me from doing so in the real world.
But to what end? What have I acomplished? My twenty second birthday is next month. I've no job, I move from family member to famly member because I'm so fixated on becoming someone else to make something of myself.
I have my own ideals, but it seems that I push them aside to try (and fail to) impress others.
It's time for change. Of course, I can't do anything without money, so I'll have to wait for my SSI which I will get news on in August.
I hope this message came through how I meant it to. There is so much I want to say, but I've no words to say them. And btw, the VR thing is just one of manny issue that i've delt with (but certanly the most expensive)
Alice, Zennoe (Alexis, whom is not on devrant); I'm not giving up tech entirely. don't expect to suddenly not hear from me. I'm mostly just giving up my computer and games. More casually so for now, and them more seriously once I get on SSI. I'll still message you every/other day like I have been. <326 -
May i ask for help dear fellow devRanters?
@aureliagbrl suffered a deep depression and pressure from her family, the cause is exceptionally simple yet very crucial; so here's the story :
Every week, in friday after the last class she have to go home to fulfill her family wish to gather around and will come back to her dorm in Sunday. her home is more than 1.5 hour from University. recently one class in Wednesday moved out to Saturday Noon for some reason this cause her to go home in Saturday afternoon, yet her family doesn't care if it means she have to wake up 3am in Monday, to get back alone to catch up with class. her family just want to gather around longer, that's it, no exception. According to her this is so frustrating and exhausting. so the condition now is Tomorrow Morning (Monday) there will be a Live Coding Exam. she isn't prepared, her only wish was to get back on Sunday instead of Monday to Study. her family discard her wish entirely. this make her so deeply depressed and i can't even talk to her, she starting to mumbling about quitting college, and etc, etc.
We all know how bad it is to burnt out right ? and we want our fellow developers get out from it and a good shape. My wish is simple from you guys, i wish you can mention her in comment and cheer her up.
Thank You
here is her cheerful photo.
35 -
My job feels (and acts) like a soulless void.
Wow, that sounds like lyrics to an emo song for adults. screw that.
But it's still pretty accurate: While I have quite a few coworkers, and they're at least somewhat chatty, they never seem to respond to me, or even notice me. I see them talking, but anything I do or say gets ignored. It goes into the void and disappears.
I talk in the off-topic channels. People talk around me.
I make comments on releases. No responses.
I talk about music I've been addicted to. No responses.
I talk about food and cooking -- a popular topic at work. No responses.
I respond to an invitation to join the security team. No responses. (well, an empty deferral)
I release various features, some both my boss and a coworker described as "soul-crushing." No thanks, priase, appreciation; honestly, no one even seemed to notice.
I build useful utilities and functions for other devs to use. Nothing.
I optimize the scripts everyone uses on a daily basis, and mention it to others. Still nothing.
The void eats my efforts, and occasionally spits out parcels of work for me to do. The only responses I recieve from the void are when I ask about its parcels of work. When I send them back completed, nothing happens -- unless they need more work. If they do not... nothing.
My previous job was friendly and nice and rewarding.
The job before that was Hell.
This one feels like Purgatory, but ... somehow emptier.10 -
A story about burnout you say? Well, here it goes.
In 2019, I worked in a now-defunct startup. Back then, I was deep in "treatment" with wrong medications that almost ended up turning me into a vegetable. When I was hired, my mind was already deteriorating quickly, and I was caught in a downward spiral of losing intelligence.
Prior to working there, there was never ever ever a situation in my career when I was given a problem to solve and failed to do it.
But right then, with already double-digit IQ and constant, pumping anxiety, I was seeing task descriptions that looked familiar and doable, yet I absolutely could not do them. I couldn't comprehend. It was an absolutely screeching, crippling panic about me losing my intelligence forever, being fired and ending up unhireable, dying alone on the streets.
Apart from my depression I recovered from, this very experience was a trauma that haunts me to this day, every day. You know, my experience being raped as an adolescent doesn't, but this, it's something else. Now, my intelligence is back, I design architecture, I'm a CTO, and my solutions are objectively cleaner and better in every way than what I did pre-depression. Yet, I still feel a sharp, sudden rush of anxiety, and my heart skips a beat, when I think about writing code or even opening the IDE.
I don't know how does one recover from this. I'm now slowly transitioning into "architecting CTO" role that is just being a devrel, assessing ethics, working with business to realize their need, designing solutions and leaving the implementation for the team to do. You know, the stuff I was taught in the uni.
Maybe doing open source and launching small pet projects will help. But at this stage of my life I have no emotional resource to care.11 -
I work 3 PM to 1 AM as a daily office job. Then go home and try to learn programming. Wake up next day at 8:30 AM for kind of another work until 1PM. Doesn't pay as much but I have to try. Then if I get free time do some freelance on UPWORK with whatever little graphic designing I know to help pay the bills.
And the fact that even my laptop is dying is a huge blow. Don't know when it might give up. Has 1st gen core i5 dual core, takes ages to load Adobe softwares. I have wanted to hulksmash this shit, but can't.
If I'm lucky, I get a stress free 6 hours of sleep a few days a month. And my depression doesn't help. More sleep should ease me a little, but I can't afford to waste any time. But this is life, isn't it.3 -
So, depression, yeah?
Two good days of work in a row, and on the third, I sleep late and think during sleep and throughout the night, wake up tired and feel shitty and feel a crash-burn in my feelings. (or whatever you want to call it. Burnt out? Tired? Exhausted? Lonely?) So now I have the rest the optimizing sql bullshit project and a paper to finish, plus I need to work more on the thesis. And ofc, work itself.
Everything feels so gloomy.
I know it gets better, but feeling shit doesn't help either.
Anyways, I'm fishing for attention this time so gimme your good vibes! 🙂4 -
It is the year 2451 ad and mankind rules the galaxy with a lazy iron fist. There are roughly 14,000 civilizations, comprised of just over
17,000 intelligent species on a quarter of a million earth-like
worlds. And all of them call themselves 'the galactic empire'.
No one told them that twenty planets doesn't qualify them for the title "galactic."
Well, we could rule, if we wanted to. Most of its just backwaters that no one wants anyway. It turned out that the reason no one invaded earth before was because they were too busy fighting themselves. Stupidity it appears, is not a unique human quality.That and the sex robots. Theres more of them in the galaxy than actual meatbags. Many species had taken to artificial wombs and 'vatbabies', which is exactly what they are called. Those poor bastards will carry that label for life.
We never did break light speed, but most of the rich exist in hypersleep anyway. Most of them only wake up once a year or so. There are some that only creek out of bed to check their stock portfolio. I hear there is even one trillionaire thats up and about once a century to ask if we have broken light speed yet.
Despite all the progress over the last 400 years, historians all agree about the most significant event in modern history.
The lobster went extinct two hundred years ago on earth.
Theres been riots ever since.
* * *
In other news I'm still working on the game I guess. It's like totally the most okay indie game you'll ever play--if I ever finish it.
I put about a year of work into the NPC system, and then chatGPT came out.
After everything thats happened, at this point I may just make a game about an indie dev making a survival game, being stuck in the actual apocalypse or some weird political dysopia.
Put it on rewind, it was originally a zombie game. But at the time the market got flooded and steam sales for zombie games cratered. So I pivoted to something more along the lines of fallout. Then the flash market crashed, bunch of publishers folded, and adobe stopped support for flash (probably for the best). Then newgrounds, which I was gonna launch on for promotion (because actual marketing is expensive), ended support for flash.
Was going the route of kickstarter, and that year the KS market got flooded and the bar rose almost over night so you needed super high production quality out the gate, and a network of support you already built for months.
We had a brief nuclear war scare, and I watched the articles come out about market saturation for post-apocalypse games, so I pivoted back to zombies. Then covid happened and the entire topic was really fucked. So I went back to fallout meets rimworld. Then we had a flood of games doing that exact premise pretty much out of the fucking blue, so I went for a more single-survivor type game. Then ukraine happened and the threat of nuclear war has been slowly sapping the genre of its steam, on well, steam.
Then I was told to get a cancer screening which I can't afford. Then I broke a tooth and spent a month in agony.
Then a family member died. Then I made no money from the sale of a business I did everything to help get off the ground, then I helped renovate an entire house on short notice and sell it, then I lost two months living in a hotel
while looking for a new place to live. Then I spent two and a half years suffering low-level alcoholism, insomnia, and drifting between jobs.
Then I wrote amazing poetry. And then I rediscovered my love of math. And then I made out for the first time in over a year. And then I rediscovered my love of piano and guitar. And then I fell into severe depression for the last year. Then I made actual discoveries in math. And I learned to love my hobbies again, and jog, and not drink so much, and sing, and go on long drives, and occasional hikes, and talk to people again, and even start designing games and UIs again. And then I learned that doing amazing things without a lot of money is still possible, and then I discovered the sunk cost fallacy, and run on sentences, and how inside me there was a part of me that refused to quit because of circumstances I couldn't control, and then I learned that life goes on even when others lives have ended, even when everything and everyone never had an once of faith in you, and you've become the avatar of the bad luck brian meme..still, life goes on.
And we try to pick up the pieces, try, one more time, because the climb, and the fall, and the getting back up, is all there is.
What I would recommend, if you're thinking of making a game, or becoming an independent game developer, is, unless you have a *lot* of money upfront (think 50-100k saved, minimum, like one years income *bare* minimum), and unless you already have a full decade in the industry--don't make a game.
Just don't.17 -
tldr: I am a human with dreams and doubt.
At the Univeristy you end your course of study with a thesis, and there are two kind of thesis: compilative and progettual.
Compilative means that you study something and then make a report about it. Usually I see that this kind of thesis is done by people who just want to end the course.
Progettual means that you actually develop something, maybe driven by a professor, doing something new, or try something in a different way to see if it works... This is for the good guys.
but mine does not fit any of those.
I studyed a lot about some topics, I learned to use the existing tools, I learned to decide which tool is better and when. I learned the open problems in the field. And my thesis is an analysis for a solution for some of them. I did not develop a project, but I didn't just study something. And I am giving the base for a much bigger project.
And I did everything on my own, the prof who is supposed to drive my work let me go on, and I never really asked for his help.
Obviously everything is a mess, the thesis describes broadly a large range of things, who are outside my course, and I am just copying from here and there (avoiding wikipedia because I would be ashamed of that) (I mean, I avoid wikipedia and jump directly to the source).
I actually made a little project from the conclusion of my analysis, but it is more of a mistake than other.
And maybe I am writing this to grow my pride, and avoid depression. To tell me I am not a total failure. Or maybe am I really good as I dream to be? (because that is how pride works, doesn't it?)
I intented a new kind of thesis! Ah!
I will see the prof on wednesday and the deadline is on saturday! I will let you know!
and oh!I am writing it in english so you can read it!
Just kidding, I don't give a fuck about anything anymore, I just want to end this mess, and in english is easier to copy.
I learned from this big mistake of a thesis, next time I will make sure that the prof drives me, because I am 20 and cannot do an analysis such complex on my own.
becauuuuseeee yes! There will be a next time! I am graduating in december, but I am following the master courses since september! In january the first exams! I am practically already thinking about the next thesis. Suggestion on other mistake to avoid?
Did you know James Joyce and the stream of consciuosness? Well, here it is.
I may have spelled something wrong, I hope everything is undestandable.
wow, 2500 characters of rant, I am improving writing the thesis in english!
mngr, out.1 -
I've come to notice that mindful meditation does some good things to me.
And by "mindful meditation" I mean my subjective experience based on the shitty articles and videos I saw online, aka, I close my eyes and focus on how my breathing feels...
spoiler: it doesn't fix my depression and anxiety. The good thing that it does to me is that I seem to be more focused and to bump into simple solutions to problems I have everyday instead of freaking out about them.
So while it doesn't fix it, it does help a bit with anxiety.
The problem is that it's very, very, very goddamn hard to meditate to me.
I try to focus on my breath and not think for like 10 minutes. Even for 10 minutes, the experience is jarring.
I have this insane urge to just do something immediately. It's not a painful experience or anything or bad for my mental health so far, I just get massive urges to start doing something else, like, for example, I can't wait to start working.
So it's as if it decreased anxiety, but increases adrenaline or whatever? I dunno.
Disclaimer: I don't care much about the religious aspect at all, which is kind of problematic because 95% of what you find online is just biased religious marketing, and I avoid that like the plague.8 -
The taboo of not finishing.
(As I prefaced to many posts I made, don't take this too seriously)
It is very normal in the programming world to get recommended to finish projects.
But I was wondering "what if you don't?".
Of course, we can agree that having little patience or persistence is not good for any endeavor.
But what if this recurrent focus on finishing is also bad?
Granted, I have started dozens of things and only finished one or two of them and none have become popular.
So there's not a lot of support to back my take.
But I definitely learned a lot from these projects. And I definitely had a lot of fun at some points.
In fact, I think if I had switched more often early on I would have been less miserable, and maybe I would have learned more by the virtue of not getting stuck with some project.
Of course this applies as long as you stay within the same field; it doesn't help learning gardening one day but karate the following.
But even then, there are so many hobbies in life that the chance of finding the one that you love and are the best at are very slim. So switching out of the least pleasant ones might bring you to a favorite one.
But, let's go back to programming.
Here, people recommend finishing things as means to become profitable. If you want to live as a gamedev, then you need to sell games, and to do that, you need to finish games.
That is understandable.
But if gamedev isn't your main profit, why is finishing games a requirement?
What's the point of publishing a game that you know looks like shit?
Why? Why should you put time and energy, pain and stress, all the way through the end only to finish or even publish a game that you can feel ashamed of how awful it looks? (because most 1st games look awful).
Why would you ever want to finish something that looks horrible?
First tries are always terrible, and that's fine, nothing wrong with that.
What's wrong is this sheepthought that you should publish to the public every turd that you can produce in your early learning stages.
I've been a programmer for almost 8 years now. I'm not the best out there, but I consider myself ok.
And considering I had some pretty deep depression pits thanks to this mentality, here's my advice to folk having stress with unfinished projects: don't give a single fuck.
If a side project has become stressful, shelf that shit, maybe tell someone about your issues with it. But don't care much about it.
In fact, if you manage to finish a project but it has costed you a great deal of stress, maybe that should be the shameful thing.
Life is too short to waste it considering suicide because you're not a prolific programmer.
And i would argue that iterating 100 times on different things is far more productive (and fun) than fetting stuck or spending shitloads of time on the first one, even if you don't finish any of them.2 -
I need help.
I don't know if I can do this anymore.
As much as I love coding, what I do and making new things, I feel like I can't handle it as well as I used to be able to. I was diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression and anxiety (amongst other things) and it's taking a toll on me. I can't work on problems as well as I used to. I overlooks simple errors and typos and spend hours trying to fix it. I can't focus on anything or even remember what I was doing a minute ago. I seem to constantly miss deadlnes. My performance has taken a nose-dive and I'm in constant fear of losing my job. I'm the breadwinner for my household (dad doesn't work, mom doesn't make enough) and much of my salary goes towards my family and rent.
I have a couple of attempts, and one of my recent ones got me fired from my previous job. I've tried to get help. I've gone to therapy, I'm on a shit-load of anti-depressants and trying to change the outlook of my life, but nothing seems t work.
I don' know what to do. I needed to vent out. What do you think I should do?4
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