Blogospheric Refraction

Well… now that I’ve redirected most of the major viewers to a safer feed, I can now drop a few bombshells and let off some steam without making Linux distributions look bad.

The last 12 months have been a bit of a roller coaster ride for me. Specifically, it has been events at university, and the stress brought on by these events that have lead to me getting burned out. No longer have I any interest in persuing a career in IT or electrical engineering, or continuing with life in general.

Early last year, I was looking forward to finishing my degree, and ideally working with some embedded systems, as that was what I seemed to enjoy. The idea of getting useful software onto an embedded computer (with limited memory, storage and CPU power), then stuffing that computer inside some package appealed to me.

In a way, it kinda still does… but not to the same extent. See, my big problem is that I’m not able to play the social game, and have no desire to. While some are not happy unless they’re chattering away with the big boys in the posh end of town — I’m more comfortable sitting back in a quiet space working on whatever projects interest me at that moment in time.

I do have quite a few technical abilities, and some social qualities that are considered highly valuable by many employers — however, what they get is a package deal, and it’s some of my personal traits that could make it a deal breaker at the interview. Put simply, interviews do not suit me or people like me. Which is a shame, since it’s people like this, that gave us many of the advances we have today including AC power generation and modern computers.

My situation at the moment is this. Make no mistake right now, I am in a suicidal state mentally. I however, don’t want to put undue stress on those that I’m working with within the university… thus I won’t be enacting on any plans until next year. If things don’t go well this year, I may well be a corpse around March next year.

Essentially, my problem revolves around the fact that I see no worthwhile future at this moment in time. If I can’t gain employment, then I’ve got no means to support myself — I’ll wind up on the streets. I’d rather jump now whilst I have some dignity, then wait until I sink to the bottom of society.

I’m in talks with various medical people at the moment… so far this has largely been a waste of time and money. I’ve been following the advice given, but so far haven’t had any real resolution to the issues that I face. My biggest problem, is that not being a socialite, more or less means that my skills are not in an easily accessible form. Thus, people conclude that I have nothing to offer them.

They see me as an ordinary person who should understand the unwritten rules of social behaviour. I mention that I have AS, the usual retort is, “You look fine to me…” Yes, I do look fine. I have good vision (slightly myopic, but acceptable), good hearing, etc. I have both arms and legs fully intact and operational. I have no mobility problems and my mental abilities are fine. But this does not mean that I react the same way as everybody else. It’s this total lack of understanding for people like myself that has me on the brink of suicide.

And no, pills aren’t the answer here … not unless you want to try and medicate 6.1 billion people who have the lack-of-understanding disease. Indeed, it’s not just AS, it’s other conditions too: being of a particular ethnicity, various forms of disabilities (mental, physical and social/communicative), demographics… you name it.

It’s something that really gets up my nose about society today. The bigger we get, the less we care. If this is how the world is going, then count me out — this is not a world in which I wish to participate.