2:45:24 PM Katja Grace: The main thing that puts me off in online dating profiles is lack of ambition to save the world
2:45:35 PM Katja Grace: Or do anything much
2:48:03 PM Michael Blume: *nods*
2:48:07 PM Michael Blume: this is indeed a problem
2:57:55 PM Katja Grace: Maybe there is a dating site for smart ambitious nerds somewhere
2:58:25 PM Katja Grace: Need to set up lw extension perhaps
2:59:02 PM Michael Blume: haha, yes ^^
3:00:40 PM Katja Grace: Plenty of discussion on why few girls, how to get girls, nobody ever says 'oy, girls on lw, want to get together some time?'
3:01:14 PM Michael Blume: somebody really should say that
3:01:34 PM Michael Blume: hell, I'm tempted to just copy that IM into a top-level post and click 'submit'
3:01:48 PM Katja Grace: Haha dare you to
Yep, that's the mental state I thought you were in; I spent several years there, with the significant difference that I had to support myself and perhaps have a bit more inclination towards self-preservation than you do. (We seem to have similar opinions on the morality of suicide; my long-term motivation for not taking that route is simple curiosity about the future. I doubt I'd last six months if the world suddenly became predictable, no matter how many options I had for exploring that predictability.) Most people don't seem to even be aware of 'don't like it' in that sense, though - 'have to' and 'should' completely drown it out. But if you are basing your actions on what you want or don't want, 'push' motivation ('do this or else') simply fails, and most 'pull' motivation ('do this and you get the shiny thing') fails because you know you won't care about the shiny thing, either - and you have the right kind of self-confidence to use that knowledge, instead of doing something because others will disprove if you don't. The situation changes a little if you find something that you do care about, but that's not at all trivial - it took me over a decade, and the thing I care most about is something that was practically under my nose my whole life.
I lived near Atlantic City 'till the end of last year; now I'm in North Carolina. I have been thinking about going back for a visit come summer, though.
Indeed, that describes me very well.
Thank you for your kind words. It's late, and I need to get some sleep. Anyway, my current short-term problems are loneliness and having to take care of my 94-year-old grandmother. My loneliness can, in theory, be fixed by finding someone to spend time with in person, a... (read more)