A discussion regarding the things that affect me in daily life would not be complete without a discussion of the fear of missing out (FOMO). I constantly have this fear, and I understand it is commonplace in today's society. It has likely been commonplace for all the way back in history.

My fears stem from the possibility that my hard work will be unrewarded. That doesn't quite capture what I mean here, let's try again to define what I'm talking about. I am afraid that I will be left behind. This is more like it. I am not confident in what I'm doing right now so I will change course to try and get to the end point faster. Conspicuously, this has never seemed to work the way I wanted it to.

Pick and stick. That's something I wrote about years ago, which I have failed to follow. My fear gets the best of me in these instances, and I am left bouncing to the next thing. This holds true in career and relationships. One thing I have stuck with the longest is one of my hobbies. You don't get to know the specifics here, and it's not important what the actual hobby is.

The most present example is that AMC stock. I watched it run up, and I never bought in. I watched the opportunity pass by, and I justified my decision along the way. It reaches a point, however, where I am kicking myself for not making the decision to act when the opportunity was right in front of me. I then bought in at the high, all-time high. Just gambling folks. The fundamentals do not support the valuation, but neither did Gamestop, and that thing ran all the way up. Am I justifying again? Perhaps. I am looking at possibility here, and I can rationalize any decision. Whether that decision turns out positive or negative, I am always learning. I cannot fail, only learn, grow, and become better for the experience. What have I learned?

Roll those dice, fuck it let's ride. FILR stocks. Fuck It Let's Ride. This post is not about investing (or gambling) advice. I am not at all qualified to give such advice. What's the point if I keep rambling about bad decisions? There is also the career choice. I see rich people in an industry, and I want to be in that industry. There are happy people that I see in certain positions, and I want to be in that position. There are happy people living in Southeast Asia, and I want to be there. There are many things I see that I don't have, and I want those things. Interestingly enough, those things could be mine if I only had made the choice to stick with one thing. If I can do one thing well, I will have all the things I desire. If I help enough other people get what they what, I will get what I want.

Are these addictive behaviors? I ask this question because it feels like drugs when I make these decisions. I may get manic tendencies, and I act on them. I currently want to build a lighting apparatus that will outshine the world. How many lumens are enough lumens? How bright is bright? Can I do enough research to know? Will I miss out if I make a decision? What if it's not enough? What if I fuck it all up? Ain't that what we're trying to avoid?

Remember, we cannot fail. I can say that, but everything inside me screams that I can fail. Do I get a second chance through my children? Simply, no. I cannot co-opt their lives to my own purposes. I make my own decisions, and I do not make the decisions for others. Shoulda, coulda, woulda...

Relationships. Maybe if I said the right things, it might not have gone this way. Never would have gone this way. Maybe that's the problem because I still kinda think it was up to me, when I never could have made you stay. All I do is get over my decisions. I am bad at this, and I let myself fall into this trap. I fall back into your eyes, and you melt my heart, melt my desires, melt everything inside me to make me want to throw it all away to have the opportunity to see you once again. I'm bad at it. I let myself hope. I let myself do these things, and I constantly question whether it's the right thing.

Was it my decision at all? Again, simply, no. This is the life of another. I cannot force myself into their lives, and I cannot be so full of pride and hubris to think it was all up to me. If I think this, I am discounting the other part of this equation, that other person. I am happy to allow them to go. Haha, yeah right! I just said some shit that I want to believe. Shitty party, I don't believe it. I say these things over and over again with the hope that my mind will eventually believe these things. Does that negative voice stand in the way of me finding the true happiness that underlies this life?

I don't have any good answers today. Another, unrelated, point is what I believe of the relationships I have. I did put a stop to some sex with a friend recently. I love having sex, but I don't love the consequences and strains it puts on a relationship. I'm not ready, and I don't know if I ever will be. This sucks, realizing that I may never be able to love (sometimes, I write sentences that I know to be false only to find myself talking through that initial thought, this is one of those times). I am able to love. Love, the verb, is easy to do. It is painful though. Where is the good part of loving someone? I don't even fucking know. I haven't had luck with this. Every time I give of myself, I get burned. That previous sentence is best stated in the past tense. Every time in the past that I gave of myself, I was burned. I fell and crashed into the rocky chasm below. This is something my mind has come to know. It is a thing I expect, and for that reason, I am hesitant in taking action. I fear losing. I fear I will make the wrong decisions.

My fear of missing out stems from a deeper fear that I will be judged, that I am not good enough, that I will lose out on love, receiving love. Giving love is easy. I keep saying that because it is easy. It can get hard though. The difficulty arises when the fear creeps in. These fears we just mentioned. I don't have a fucking clue on a day-to-day basis. I am just bumbling my way through this nonsense. This whole thing is chaotic and weird. This is normal, and normal involves change. The give and take of life is hard to handle because we can never predict what will be taken and what will be given. I have desires, and they never quite materialize in the way I imagined.

Walk away for a couple minutes..... And we're back (you'll never know how many minutes I was gone).

That thought train left the station, and I wasn't on it. Am I afraid that I missed out? Yes, slightly. This fear, however, is only temporary. The thoughts come and go, and I don't need to hold them all.

There's an issue that's been weighing on my mind, and I hesitate to even write about it. What if that person reads this?! Fuck it. If I don't write about it, nothing will change; if I do write about it, nothing will change. There is only positive that come from writing. If that person reads this and decides it's too much, well that's a good thing. If they read it and like it, well that's a good thing too. My fears get the best of me because I have a sense that if I do write it, she will be gone (just as the others have gone). But was she ever really there in the first instance? Most, and all, things are temporary. Why should I cling so tightly? Why do I fear a change in the current circumstances? I am not one to speculate, but here you find me speculating. Here goes....??

I made a friend, and I admire this friend. I like this girl, as a friend. I must repeat that. How do friendships blossom into something more? I've never seen this, but I have read about it. There are movies made about this. A lot of drama TV has this as a central theme. Won't they just realize they should be together? The audience is hoping for it, and yelling at the screen for the characters to know. The point here is to explore thoughts and try to learn from them. Taking the thoughts and placing them in an objective format to be examined. Why should I fear saying my thoughts? FOMO, that's why. If I say these things, I may miss out on something. Is this true though? Nah man, this ain't true at all.

I can't see myself going down that road. My mind might receive these thoughts, but that doesn't mean they are true. I can think until the thought is all that remains. The original event, the reality, is no longer visible, and the dust covers up who I really am. The clutter and chatter in the mind make it possible to cover myself and the reality around me. I don't want to do this, but I do this. Then I can think all the way through and convince myself otherwise. It would never work, our lives are too different, we are at different stages in life, I want something different, etc. There's a lot of "different" in that statement. What is the same? We are both good people trying to be better, we have a common sense of right and wrong, we share laughter, and the way we smile around each other, these are all similar. Will it settle on the differences, or will it be the similarities? I cannot say, mostly because I don't have a damn clue.

Finish with this thought: the future is what it is, allow it to unfold. Pick and stick. Find something you enjoy and continue to do that. Do not worry about missing out. Those people are jealous of you, and you don't realize how good you have it. Don't place expectations on the future. This will lead to disappointment because the future is never quite what we imagine, and our hopes can be shattered if we cling to tightly to what could be. What could be, that's none of my business. What could have been, that's not even true. This could have been, and it is. Nothing else will do. How do I convince myself to accept this? When does the contentment set in? Can I be happy even with my decisions that got me to this point? Where do I find happiness? Can I find a best friend that can be my best friend for longer than a few months? Have I met this person yet? We must do what's in front of us today, and we will leave tomorrow for tomorrow. I can only change tomorrow by changing my actions today. My actions feed back into my thoughts just as the thoughts fuel the action. Desire drives us into something new; fear results in stagnation. Will I be the river moving to the end, or will I be the mucky waters of stagnation?

This is Learning Made Hard.