The story of my life so far, 14 years after I wrote my initial post of which I was quite proud of ("The Story of My Life in 1500 Words")
- long article, work in progress -
All right, it is time for an update. At the time of writing down my thoughts and feelings about the general way things are in my life, I was an entirely different person - not to mention that I was psichologically hurt and still in pain.
I am going to comment on everything, starting with my initial long "little" 1500-word long essay, of which I used to be very proud.
I’ve managed to translate and adapt my recent post with the essay. This is the story of my life. I want people to know it, just in case something would happen and I wouldn’t be around anymore. I’ve learned that you can’t really be alone and no one know about you. If you take the time to read this post, I appreciate it. By the way I will try to write a book based on this some day.
I guess I might have exaggerated a bit, but the idea of writing a book about myself (maybe like an autobiography of some sorts) doesn't actually belong to me. It belongs to the artist girl I had met later on, and will be mentioned here later.
A while ago, instead of taking an exam, I had to present a 1500 words manuscript as an essay, in which I would describe the development of my personal life, as well as my professional life. So, upset that I had to hand write the whole thing, I started with a computer draft, in such way that I would write the story of my life in exactly 1500 words. Piece by piece, the final thing was ready, which can be seen in the picture from this link, the papers which I gave the teacher.
Yes, I know, OK, it’s kind of lame that I post this thing here too but it is among the most interesting things that I’ve ever written so, lame or not, here’s the post.
As a small introduction, I must leave some personal notes, pleasant or not. This is my “essay” for the “Personal development” curriculum (or whatever it’s called, I personally don’t think that the name has any importance). I must mention that this essay has been first written on a computer, in such way that it contains exactly 1500 words, without this paragraph.
Well, I did in fact copy this everywhere. It had been a long time since I had written something longer than a few words. Long ago I had to take my own so called "exam of life" (or "exam of maturity" - the Romanian baccalaureate), and after that I had thought that I would never need to write essays like that again. I was wrong... but more on that some other time.
Recently I’ve discovered I suffer from the OCD Syndrome, the Purely Obsessive OCD variant. I’m not kidding around, I really do have some obsessions about how I want things to look, about symmetry, a repulsion of talking in public and a lot more, which are personal. I don’t remember exactly if I’ve always been this way but I never did like to go in front of the class, for example and I never understood why I had to be humiliated in that way, besides the daily humiliation which I received from my colleagues.
At the time, I had never heard about Asperger's Syndrome before and all I knew about autism came mostly from what was the rather poor news on TV. My OCD was - and for most of the time still is - actually a symptom of being an aspie. Also, I've discovered several years later that there is such a thing as a reverse-claustrophobia, and it is called "Agoraphobia" - also caused by my... autism.
This humiliation came in several ways and for several reasons. One of them was that I didn’t go to kindergarten and my social skills were less developed than the others. Besides that, I was generally a geek, always wanting to be the best of the class but I’ve isolated myself because I never had a topic of chat or play with the other kids. I never could practice any sport so I couldn’t play football or any other game they’ve played, because it involved running. I had an operation when I was a year old, for a congenital disorder with the left leg and this is what kept me from having fun in any other way than my own, and I still can’t.
My mother had always brought me to and from school because I had a restriction not to carry heavy weights, and about 6 school books and 12 notebooks weren’t exactly easy to carry around with you, daily. I think that my colleagues have noticed that and became jealous of the fact that I have a loving mother which takes care of me. I am ever grateful for that, especially because I was generally ill during my whole childhood.
I've recently come to realize this, and how sorry I am for the lost time and for the days when she was severely upset because of me. Generally speaking, my mind is much younger than my body is. Sometimes I wish I had been born either many years earlier, or many years later - mostly earlier. The time of history I was born in made me belong basically nowhere. Anyway, what I'm poorly trying to say here is that during my childhood I always tried to make my mother happy, regarding school. In reality, I've realized that school meant absolutely nothing to me. It was, however, quite enjoyable to be better than everyone else. Yes, I was and still am a snob and maybe even a smug. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not that sick anymore nowadays, though.
I’ve played alone most of the time, and I used to collect Transformers robots. In a related matter, I used to play the piano. For every piano exam which I passed with a good grade, or in fact for every good result at the end of a school evaluation period, my mom bought me a Transformer. I had a collection of over 50 robots, some of which I have gave away, and some I’ve kept for myself, to remember the good days.
The Transformers toys are stashed somewhere, maybe in the cellar. I do kind of wish I started putting them on display somewhere, again.
I remember that I’ve always been fascinated with electronics, I’ve been the only one in the family who always knew in detail how stuff worked… and I still am.
Generally speaking, that changed or is probably about to change, since I am now part of the "old people".
Right before I first started school, when I was about 5-6 years old, I discovered the computer.
I was visiting a neighbor who, back then, was a student at the University of Medicine and who usually nursed me when I was sick. It was there that I saw a computer and I instantly knew that this was an incredible complex machine that I would master, I saw my destiny. Since then, each day I would think about that computer, until I finally got one, when I was in the late fourth grade, in 1998, after begging for my parents daily to get me one. Now I currently own my sixth computer, which I especially built to celebrate 10 years from my original computer, sixth computer if you don’t count the laptop I am currently writing this from.
I still build gaming PCs once in a while. I will probably stop one day in the not-so-far future, since I'm not doing so much gaming like I used to in the good old days...
Still… I can never forget the feeling I had with my first computer, although it wasn’t perfect, in fact it had a few bugs or was a bit malfunctioning, I uhm… I was able to do my “apprentice” years with that computer, considering the fact that I did get into the wonderful world of computing in the MS-DOS and Windows 95 era. Speaking of which, Windows 95 remained my favorite operating system of all time, even today I change the operating system theme of the computers I sit at, to resemble it. Now I collect old computers and I make them work. It is something that gives me my identity. I miss their days and I’d give anything to be able to relive them.
At least that hasn't changed, and also Gentoo Linux became my new "best friend" as well.
I generally don’t like and don’t accept change. In my opinion change is a bad thing, it makes us never be able to find our peace and stability. Even in our days I still collect AND use 3.5″ floppy diskettes, exactly for that reason.
Speaking of change, I still think change is bad for the most part... but there can be exceptions. I no longer collect floppy disks but I now have a lot of them, including Iomega Zip-100 disks (click here to open Wikipedia, if you don't know what they are), one of which was signed by John Romero (also click for Wikipedia), and he even drew a cute little pentagram on it, too!
So, after I got my first computer I started to learn how to use it, although I did use other computers before, at a computer study lab which was organized by my local school. The first operating system I’ve ever used was, obviously, Microsoft DOS version 3, on an IBM computer which I remember every day of my life, it probably had the PC-DOS version, with a white text on a blue background. I loved that thing. Besides me, no one liked that interface with typing the commands to console. For me it was kind of like a blessing.
I still never found another PC with white text on blue background default real mode, but I realized that could've been a feature of the computer monitor which was used with that PC, not of the PC itself. Anyway, I did find out the model of that computer.
It was an IBM Model 70, although it looked very much like this one, the Model 30, which was a 286 machine. Who knows, maybe the teacher thought it was a 386, when in fact it was not. I'm gonna post the picture from the website here too, just in case the site goes down in the future.
The computer is the machine that did whatever I told it to do and above that, it could also answer me. I can say that I felt and still feel like myself in front of this machine, because unlike people, it can not hurt me in any way like they did, it can only do what it is programmed to do and doesn’t ask any questions why it has to do it, in other words the computer was not human and that was the thing that made me feel something like king of the world.
That never changed either. Generally speaking, I am not fond of humans, and unfortunately I can't elaborate here on why.
Seeing how much I loved computer science, my mother started to enroll me to different kinds of courses. They are listed in my CV, in the years 1998-2000. Some of them are not that good but they’re a lot more than average people know nowadays. Perhaps some day I’ll even be good at programming. In fact I do wish that, I must be the best in what I do, no matter the price!
That certainly has changed. There are many young faces now who do know these things and maybe they even do them better than I do. Sigh...
About in the second half of the year 2002 I’ve got my first Internet connection. Because I didn’t have money to pay for a subscription of my own, I asked for some friends in the block to connect me to their building private network. They had a cable modem Internet connection. This is how I really started socializing for the first time, even if it was through the computer, working like a proxy (anyway it is built to help us communicate, isn’t it?). This didn’t bother me at all. In the real world I can’t express myself rapidly because everything must be spontaneous. Through the computer I can think and then express myself, in writing.
Socializing... in the last ten years I had regretted doing that so much and so many times, and with good reason, too. Had I been even less sociable, it would have spared so many years - yes, years - of suffering. Constant suffering without mercy.
About in the second half of the year 2002 I’ve got my first Internet connection. Because I didn’t have money to pay for a subscription of my own, I asked for some friends in the block to connect me to their building private network. They had a cable modem Internet connection. This is how I really started socializing for the first time, even if it was through the computer, working like a proxy (anyway it is built to help us communicate, isn’t it?). This didn’t bother me at all. In the real world I can’t express myself rapidly because everything must be spontaneous. Through the computer I can think and then express myself, in writing.
I am still friends with that guy from Arad, but we chat so rarely now. At least I don't know what to say anymore.
Speaking of losing friends, unfortunately, one of my oldest childhood friends and school colleagues had sadly passed away about at the beginning of 2018. Poor guy died in his sleep because his heart failed due to Lyme's disease (caused by ticks, which is a reason you should keep off the grass). That being said, I am the one who initiated the memorialization of his Facebook profile.
Rest in Peace, Alexandru Rareș Popescu. You will be missed.
This is how we get to my career development. It’s been two years now since I’ve been trying to find some part time work. I did manage to work at that provider company for a little while. It was a bit like a season job, because I was forced to quit when the University year began, so I could keep up. Meanwhile I helped friends by fixing their computers when I could. I can’t stand to see a computer that doesn’t work. I never asked for money for what I did, because it was my a pleasant activity for myself, however sometimes people insisted I accepted their money.
I have been working for ten years and a half now, and all I can say is that it's really not what I thought or hoped it would be like. As a matter of fact, I never got to do any of my dream jobs, except maybe one, but in a twisted, sad and annoying way during 2020 and 2021, because of Covid-19, of course... but more on that some other time.
To be honest, by doing this, I am trying to be like my former mentor from elementary school. He also had a passion for computers like I do. So I kept doing this stuff for some time, through out the high school and I still do this sometimes, when a friend needs it. For me the fact that I can do what he doesn’t know how or simply can’t is a delight. This has a special place for writing documents. I did some secretary work sometimes, but not because they’ve asked me to do it, but because I was extremely annoyed by their incompetence.
Well, now I'm doing secretary work without really having a choice but I am sort of paid for it (but only because the IT department is part of the secretariat). And I've come to see what it's like on the other side of the secretary office. Yes, it isn't easy, but the some secretaries could be more friendly. They're totally not obligated to behave like I'm the last scum of the earth.
Recently, because of the CISCO courses offered by the faculty I currently study at, a precious opportunity in the world of networking was offered to me. I think that understanding the way networks operate is important, especially nowadays when typically every company relies on a connection to communicate. Anyway besides computer hardware (and a bit software), networking is another thing which fascinates me.
Now with the new world wide financial crisis it’s kind of difficult to find some work but this doesn’t matter. Computer science is a vast area and I can find work in almost any field because computer science is mandatory.
I was so damn wrong... All my former hopes and dreams have been shattered into tiny pieces, and then some.
With that out of the way, all right... So about a year after I had written all this, I went to a sort of NGO club, but not really out of my own will. I was just trying to make my mother happy again, but in the end it did prove useful in the last year of faculty, because all the volunteering work I had done, counted as practice and internship work, which was a mandatory thing for the faculty.
In the mean time, I had met an artist girl who was also doing some volunteering work and you're probably thinking there was something between us. Well, no. That's exactly what the woman who made us meet, thought was going to happen as well, but she was wrong. Damn wrong. Just because two people are geeks, doesn't mean they are going to get along well enough for... romance. The artist girl was, however, the one who mentioned about the Asperger's Syndrome to me for the very first time. This was all happening at the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010.
So, back in 2016 I had written another little blog entry. To mention that this happened about four years after my... ex-girlfriend left. During these four years quite a lot had happened which time and time again can be summed up to the same valuable life lesson that I just seen to refuse to learn: that I should avoid people at all costs.
In the mean time, let's see what was going on in my head back then (by the way, this is the original blog entry from 2016 - click to open in a new window):
I’ve written on the “About” page that I’ve diagnosed myself with Asperger’s Syndrome.
You might be surprised, but it’s something I’m actually proud of, and it has become one of my obsessions. I do have proof that I’m an aspie, but I will never go get officially “certified” with this by a doctor, because nothing good will ever come of it.
It will rather just put a simple label on me which companies will see when I go to a job interview – it’s not enough that they can “sense” my social awkwardness and general anxiety anyway. Don’t believe me? I went to 30 job interviews for private companies with 0% success.
Heh, at the time, Covid-19 was still four years away and I still had my own instinct not to trust doctors, especially those who claim they're able to "help you" ("fix" your mind).
Trust me, when they say “we’ll call you“, that’s actually just a nicer way of saying “Sorry, we don’t need the lights of you here.“
You know what? I am really glad I never found a job at a private company. You all deserve to go bankrupt and then die of starvation. You know who you are.
The reason is simple. It offers me comfort, knowing that I’m not truly alone in this world. Over the course of my life, I’ve constantly faced difficulties socializing with other people, both when I was a kid and even now when I’m an adult. Until I discovered this syndrome I thought I was alone. I thought I’m just the type of weirdo that nobody likes and wants, and that there were no others like me. Believe me, being unique is NOT a good thing.
Yeah. You probably have no idea how lonely it can feel to have to many people physically near you, and literally none of them are like you and you don't have a single thing in common with anyone.
To be honest, now that I’m almost in my 30s (at the moment of writing I am 28 and 1/2 years old), I’m disappointed that during my childhood I wasn’t much into girls and my sexuality was very reduced – in fact out of shame and anxiety I suppressed it almost entirely, and I never had a girlfriend in my childhood. If you’re wondering, I am in fact heterosexual.
Like I said, I wish I was born either much earlier or much later...Like I said, I wish I was born either much earlier or much later...
To be honest, now that I’m almost in my 30s (at the moment of writing I am 28 and 1/2 years old), I’m disappointed that during my childhood I wasn’t much into girls and my sexuality was very reduced – in fact out of shame and anxiety I suppressed it almost entirely, and I never had a girlfriend in my childhood. If you’re wondering, I am in fact heterosexual.
I had no topics of discussion with other kids, and I had few friends of the same sex, let alone the opposite sex. They never seemed interested in whatever I was interested in, like cartoons, school (yes, I was interested in school long ago), UFOs and aliens from outer space (because I watched a bit too much TV), and just about anything conceivable about computers and video games and… that was about it. That’s literally all I talked about all the time – if someone talked to me.
Until I was in my late twenties, in fact just about until a year ago or so, I was still obsessed with computer video games. In essence, that’s one of the things Asperger’s Syndrome does to you – it is possible to remain childish for the rest of your life, not to mention the awkwardness of talking to people.
Like I said, I wish I was born either much earlier or much later...
What you call “geeks”, “nerds”, and anything in-between are people who are generally better at scientific and logical intelligence. Some of them are even geniuses. Of course, not all of them suffer from a form of mental development disorder, but chances are their brain works completely differently than that of a typical everyday “normal” person. I’m quoting the word “normal” because, after all, it’s society that defines what’s normal – or rather commonly acceptable, and what’s not.
I guess I am probably a nerd.
The other kind of people have better social intelligence, meaning that their social skills are much better and they’re generally much more out going and they are better at interacting with other people.
They go to parties, hang out with friends in larger numbers, they generally have many friends, they form relationships quite early in life, they tend to have attractive or well formed bodies and they’re good at sports and raw muscular power.
They’re somewhat the opposite of geeks, I guess. In school they don’t care about their grades, they like rebelling against the rules – and they often get into trouble because of this, and sometimes they suffer from substances abuse. They are the ones which are considered “the cool people.” Yes, I know this isn’t the 80s anymore...
That is the kind of people I just can not stop hating - not now, not ever.
Regarding language, up until recent years, I used to avoid swearing. I also intentionally avoided using words like (the Romanian equivalent of) “awesome”, “cool”, etc., because I felt it was demeaning to the language and the language speaker, and for that I was marginalized by my colleagues at school, especially the girls, interestingly enough. In the early years of my childhood, however, I have to admit I had a few language ticks – at least at home, and I used to yell stupid and sometimes meaningless words out loud.
I used to be so proud of not using street-talk...
I used to be very exigent regarding details, especially when said ex-girlfriend was to receive something from me, either a gift hand made by myself or I tried to organize a specific event in a very specific way… and I often got very sad when things were not turning out perfectly. After she left, I was never the same again; I lost the need for doing things as close to perfectly as possible, and it never came back.
This honesty is a bad habit which I can not change.
So, reading it myself after so many years, I realize I might have not finished all that I wanted to say back then and I might have wanted to add more, but time had not been kind on me.
...
