Worry

Are things really this important, or is my personality just “worrier”?

In middle school I worried about how attractive I came off to girls

In high school, same thing

Late high school, when it was time for college applications and decisions, I worried more about why I didn’t spend more time researching colleges and post-high school plans because of how ill-prepared I felt (+ how this same “lack of foresight” played back into how I viewed how attractive I came off to girls)

Entered college, same stuff

I gained interested in my major (computer science + astronomy) because of how easy it is to create and share products (computer + internet access)

Sometime thru college, I built a porn-blocker app. Working on the app felt terrific, I was very happy. I thought, maybe this tool could play some role in the porn-addiction / etc problem niche.

The worries came back, though, when I learned more about the associated problems in the industry — trafficking, distribution of illegal content (think, instead of 18+, 18-), the effect porn had on people’s relationships…etc.

“The problems span a much larger array that a virtual app can’t fully address,” I worried about. Whenever I read other people’s successes with their apps / projects (higher app store ratings, “measures of impact”, news coverage, comments on Facebook posts [as I was friends with some of these people], etc) I would feel jealous and incompetent.

Why care about these social metrics, when my focus should be on growing and enhancing my own product? That is a good question. My time would benefit my users much more if it was spent on the app instead of dwelling that I’m not going anywhere.

I guess, for sake of discussion, I thought that support and approval from friends and family and users would be enough to offset the number of moments spent crying over the scale of issues in this domain as well as the [personally-troubling] content I ran into while building out this app.

I don’t want to entertain any discussion that “It’s easier to talk about xyz than it is about porn, so don’t fret any lack of interactions”, “You don’t know what that person’s relationships are, all you see are comments and posts, don’t sweat it”, “News coverage doesn’t quite represent the impact and app has on its users…” and so on, because these conversations do little when it comes to what I thought would validate me and what I’m actually receiving.

Or, maybe, it’s not that the lack of validation (“validation”) is causing me to feel this empty (?) — maybe, it’s just been tough to accept that yes, I live on the same planet as the perpetrators of the aforementioned problems in this space.

Later on in college, I went on to meet another girl, and I liked her, and I worried again about my attractiveness. The relationship fell through and I am sad.

I’ve spent time recently reading about climate change and what that entails. This led to more worrying about the state of the planet and life on Earth. It doesn’t seem like there’s much I can do, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing I can do, so I’ve been trying to be a bit more resourceful. For instance, I wanted a bookshelf, so I made one out of cardboard boxes sitting around, and now I have a bookshelf that I didn’t pay for nor needed any shipping and additional resource consumption.

I don’t enjoy worrying, I don’t want to worry as much in the future, I would like to be happier, lol. I don’t know what all I’ve missed out on because of these worries, and I don’t think I can ever know, but I do miss just minding only my own business and nothing else.