OK, so a relatively pessimistic thread title, but I'm feeling that way out.

I remember feeling like I was a pretty creative person once. I played in bands with some success, turned down a couple of major label record deals, used to write out of habit, felt like my close friends expected something spectacular to emerge from me at some point. Never happened.

I feel like I've spent the last ten years (literally) doing nothing of worth. It's ten years since I exhibited anything creative, put anything in the public domain. This year I've started re-collecting enough musical equipment to experiment again with songwriting and arranging, but I doubt I'll ever be able to sit down and dedicate myself to it properly despite spending thousands on the gear I always wished I'd had when I was active as a musician.

I've also been writing daily for about a year, but it's all very private and I'm sort-of ashamed about it. I did publish a popular "blog" a few years ago before the term was coined (and wrote the software to drive it because there wasn't any available) but now I don't feel like I write anything worth publishing.

I feel like, gradually, computer games and internet forums have dragged me into a state where - once the working day is done - all my free time is too easily consumed by repetitive pleasure-seeking (although most games these days are far from compelling, I still manage to waste my time with them), and/or pointless argument. And I think these distractions, over a prolonged period, have actually made me less functional as a creative force.

Am I just getting old?

Does anyone else feel like they've fallen into the same trap?

Yours frustrated,

Kev.

Edit: Anyone else find they hide windows containing anything they've created from spouses/significant others if they suddenly enter the room unexpectedly? It's not like I'm looking at porn!

yep... since ive been in lfs... 1 years.5 wasted

Kev, what about the inverse, I have a desire to be creative, and no matter how hard I try it always looks like shit and I'm ashamed of it? Sometimes I totally agree with pessimists, that there isn't anything to live for.

I think the shame is pretty normal. Everything that comes from your inner... valuableness... (I don't want to say "heart" or "soul") that you put up for potential public execution is going to be embarrassing unless you think it stands up to scrutiny, and I think it's normal to think that whatever you created isn't as good as you thought it should be.

What's weird is that when you revisit it a few years later you'll be really impressed and wonder why the stuff you produce now isn't quite so clever. No doubt if you revisit that after you've forgotten about it you'll experience exactly the same emotions.

Trying to be clever sucks cock.

21 years old, never had a proper relationship, I have no dreams or ambitions, unemployed, no motivation to even get out of bed and shave most days. I look at my friends from school on facebook and half of them are married with kids and full time jobs, or at university getting fancy degrees in science. I have been turned into a pessimistic person, and I hate myself for being like that, because I never used to be.

Have I wasted my life? No, because I think that I made some kind of choice to live like this. I don't persue wealth, or pieces of paper that say I can learn a text book and spit up the contents onto a test paper, then forget it the next day. I think I will just drift through life and get some kind of creative job that pays badly, find someone to share my life with, have kids, get a mortgage and die from cancer at some point, since thats how life seems to work in my family.

But I will be happy in the end, and will have learnt more about life than I would have sitting through endless education and mindless boring work.

I have cocked up a design degree course (not just any university, it was central saint martins ), just because I was a bit complacent with myself and forgot the importance of commitment and dedication, from then on I never take anything by chance again.

I guess, I also have a huge block between my imagination and my skill level, so I have these goals, and then my product turns out so bad, I dunno why I spent so much time on it.

I think I'm better (in comparison, I suck at programming too ) at programming stuffs for that reason, becuase none of it is visual, programming is logical rather than visual.

However, I do wish that I had my first website though. The details have been lost in 8 years of growing up, because I know it'd make me see how far I've come. From doing simple HTML, to now doing PHP+MySQL would be fun to see.

I do have some sort of light at the end of the tunnel, that at the end of it all, I'll have acheved nothing, along with everyone else due to their impending death, and the doom that the Earth will encounter.

Oh well, I just know that no matter what hole I dig myself into, I can always use the only creative skills I have with some female friends to give myself some sort of satisfaction that I kick ass.

QS: Pretty much sums up the way I am choosing to live, just with a few more female encounters along the way.

i think i have wasted all my free time here. i kind of a set a goal like''this will be the best skin ive created'' and i will make it for 12 hours.i use my time on that skin but it still turns out to be an epic fail.

Oh I'm not talking about being an "achiever". God, I don't honestly believe we have any of those in here.

I just feel like I lured myself into wasting years of my free time doing nothing valuable whatsoever. Call it "winding down" or "me time" or whatever you like, but you'll find you end up craving it, and at the same time doing nothing with it.

Maybe if nothing else I can serve as a warning to others.

i know what you mean and im not even creative at all... in the last year or two ive somehow managed to completely lose all ambitions (largely thanks to siemens and some messed up crap at uni) and now i spend my days mostly drifting through life trying to barely hold onto the scraps of determination that will somehow have to suffice to carry me through however many years of work while indulging myself in tons and tons of pointless waste of time tv shows

Kev, I think with our views, we could start up the most cheerless team ever.

PS Racing. Pessimistic Sadists Racing. We can mod LFS, make all the screens be that sad guy on the credits screen, change the applause to sobs of sadness, and then we'll have tons of sorrow together.

Indeed i have but im only 17 ive got many more years to f up still.

hmm this sounds like a wake up call..


To bad it is all to easy to live through life unhappy unfufilled, maybe the state we live in, the world we created doesn't compli with human needs.. Do we really need to work 8 or more hours a day? Do we reallly need all kinds of gadgets to take our minds of things like loving and caring for our "neighbour"..

a bit more, give a compliment to yourself and just some random persons. Don't watch to much corrupted mass media. Find out what there is you can do (not to just merely enjoy yourself).

The force of imagination turns the tides! Mind over matter..
http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/ephoto.html


Namasté

I wasted 14 years of my life, I am making up for it now

How old are you Kev?, sounds like early onset midlife crisis!!!!.

I sometimes wonder about getting a more fulfilling job, something that would "make a difference", apart from designing overpriced wooden conservatories for posh nobs

I can't really say i've wasted much of my life, but the past year or so, ever since i discoverd lfs, i have been a computer addict, i still spend lots of time with gf, freinds, school ect, but when i get a spare moment ill come on. I sometimes think its laziness, but then i don't. I sometimes think that i have to accept defeat, and realize that the computer has taken over me. But im 15, i shouldn't have to worry about this, after all its the quality of life that matters, even if it is a demeaning truth we all have to face; and when you get there, often it isn't what you expected.

Computers.

If there's no value on paper this doesn't mean there is no value at all. The big things happen in our heads
So maybe you should be pleasant?

When i was 13 years old (6 years ago), i got connected to the internet via dsl.

This was the biggest mistake i've ever done. I've spent the next 5 years playing mmorpg's and posting on forums (have over 15k posts on one forum). I also started smoking when i was 13 and didn't really in to school much.

Last year, i stopped smoking (7.5 months ago, still strong ) and enlisted in the israeli defense force (5.5 months ago) as a digital comms technician in the navy, working with all the warships and other watercrafts, even with some aircrafts that are used by the navy.

I did manage to fix my life, but i'm still disappointed about my past. I'll have to finish my highschool degree during my military service and once my service ends in 2.5 years, immediatelly start getting a higher degree in a university.

I hate t9, i need to get a better phone. Took me like 10 minutes to type this message.

vBulletin has been my downfall.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

I just feel like I lured myself into wasting years of my free time doing nothing valuable whatsoever. Call it "winding down" or "me time" or whatever you like, but you'll find you end up craving it, and at the same time doing nothing with it.

I suppose it kind of depends upon what motivates you to achieve the certain goals which you have. It's all fine having "me time" or whatever, but I believe you still have to do something personally productive with that time and something of which you can be proud (even if in hindsight!)

After years of the rave scene ('91-'96 for me) I had a proper hard time with myself outside of work, trying to decide what exactly I wanted to do with myself. Luckily this was before home computing became the force it is today .

I ended up going back to basics and started walking the hills again (my Dad took me out a fair bit as a bairn) slowly learning the ways and developing new skills, an apprenticeship that took years and in truth will never be complete. This in turn led to scrambling into rock climbing into Alpine mountaineering. Now I'm lucky to have a passion for this activity in all it's guises. But how much more different could it be from those mental strobe-lit years

Point is, there is no way any of this stuff could be described as 'creative' but it is what keeps me ticking over, and after 10yrs I still cry like a baby as the weather forecast inevitabley craps out for the weekend .

What lights yer fire Kev? Whats gonna get you out yer bed at 5am on winter mornings beacause you want to? Is there something that motivates you in this way? What is it that presses yer switches, do you know (that) yourself?

IMHO thats something everbody needs to find out :detective

The thing is, change. You just never know when..............

Well, i dont feel that i have wasted my life away as yet, but im only 16 so im not really into life atm. But even though i have my times where i feel fed up with my life, i do love my life. I have a beautyful GF, a job that pays well, i have my pleasures like racing and i have my noveltys, yet i still get the odd day where i feel fed up.

If i am honest though, i do regret getting into LFS. Before LFS, i only used my PC for contacting people, or doing telemtry on my car. Once i discovered LFS though, i became hooked. Before LFS, i never used my PC for gaming. But after LFS, i spent money on building a new PC, and i bought most new games that came out like crysis, TDU and others. At one point, it got really bad. I did'nt spend much time with my GF and due to her living with me, i constantly had her moaning at me but i ignored it. I denied invitations to go out with my freinds, and got lazy with my cars i.e not fixing them when they needed it. I also did'nt go to most race meeting which got me in some crap. As of about 6 months ago though, i got out of this phase and now im back to normal. I apologised to my freinds and GF for being a cock, and im back on top of the cars. As of then, i got bored with gaming. I still go on my xbox a fair bit, but its mainly when i have the lads round and we have a laugh. As for LFS, the last time i played online was about 2 months ago, and single player about a month ago. I really have lost interest in LFS out of all my games though. It just bores me now.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

Edit: Anyone else find they hide windows containing anything they've created from spouses/significant others if they suddenly enter the room unexpectedly? It's not like I'm looking at porn!

Im the same. Whether im having an innocent conversation with someone on MSN, or im looking at this forum, i still hide the windows and i dont know why!

My dreams are tormented by some of the terrible things i've done, but I dont regret doing them. I've got to where I am today which is a person with hope - literally as I have it tattoo'd in kanji on my wrist.

For better or worse here I am, regretting my failings and mistakes would make me bitter about the things i've seen and done, some of which you guys know about - the worst of it you guys dont and wont know about.

I'd rather plan for my future than gloat over my past. I'd rather work to make my and my partners life better than be morbid over things that cannot be changed.

If I had the chance to live my life again I dont think i'd change anything, because i'm happy about the prospects my future holds.

Sure I have 'damage', show me one person my age or older who doesnt? Some people I meet say "oh you've had it hard" or "you are very brave" like i'm some kind of martyr to myself, *shrug* I have a wonderful partner, and a future worth fighting for - stuff that's happened has already happened.

As for ailing creativity, yes creativity does temper with age, but it never wilts completely. What age also gives however, is the ability to make use of that creativity rather than skitting from one idea to the next leaving everything unfinished.

How i wasted it whel those are secrets not to be revealed on forum with people i dont know

sorry

But also the day i got photoshop and started skinning some of u skinners know what i mean

Time that you have enjoyed wasting isn't wasted time at all

Quote from ATC Quicksilver :

21 years old, never had a proper relationship, I have no dreams or ambitions, unemployed, no motivation to even get out of bed and shave most days. I look at my friends from school on facebook and half of them are married with kids and full time jobs, or at university getting fancy degrees in science. I have been turned into a pessimistic person, and I hate myself for being like that, because I never used to be.

Have I wasted my life? No, because I think that I made some kind of choice to live like this. I don't persue wealth, or pieces of paper that say I can learn a text book and spit up the contents onto a test paper, then forget it the next day. I think I will just drift through life and get some kind of creative job that pays badly, find someone to share my life with, have kids, get a mortgage and die from cancer at some point, since thats how life seems to work in my family.

But I will be happy in the end, and will have learnt more about life than I would have sitting through endless education and mindless boring work.

Well you saved me typing the same thing. Pretty much all the same except the Facebook thing. I would've done better in school but drugs and drink got the better of me, and I partly blame my mother for the drinking. She'd drag me to the pub most nights and keep putting drinks infront of me. Then aswell as that, I started hanging round with a group who smoked weed, tried it, enjoyed the buzz and didn't stop 'til about 6 months ago.

Kids, drugs are bad. They can and will **** your education up if you abuse them. If you want to do 'better' in life, leave the drugs out, or just don't go crazy.

I got kicked out of high school in year 10, and I wasn't exactly the 'dumbest' person in school, but I just couldn't take everything in. So despite being kicked out for a year, they still told me to take my GCSE's. I scraped through them with rubbish grades and that was that. Went to college for 6 months to try catch up on what I missed out at school and went on to work in shitty little jobs from there.

Motor spares shops, Bird's Eye factory, Pontin's, other holiday camps, a lot of temp work in factories. Just crappy 'go no where' jobs. Since I lost my last job (at Parcelforce, I'd been there three weeks and halfway through a shift I get a phonecall saying I failed a security check because of a criminal record. Why they didn't do that before they put me on the job I don't know), every job I've applied for since, they've turned me down.

I guess we live and learn. No ones perfect, but we make our own mistakes and learn from them.