Went from “I’m scared to open my PC” to knowing from how to mount one entirely from stratch in 4 days purely because my desktop didn’t boot after I made several changes to it. In each of these 4 days I woke up with joy, because I would learn something new even if I was failing miserably and my hands were covered in a dozen tiny cuts from the sharp metallic frame. Risked bricking my BIOS, rushed for stores to get a battery and a beeper before they closed up until Monday, a real adventure.
As an almost-failed CS student who gaslighted myself in “I’m not good with the subject and I don’t like it”, it was pretty ecstatic to see not only I grasped the concepts with ease, but I also had an underlying love for it without the pressure of the rigid academic system. I very casually was reading things I wouldn’t have guessed I could understand before the entire process started. In the classroom, even something like the order of boot was seen as difficult. On my house, I self-taught myself that in 2 minutes just by reading the fucking fluxogram in Wikipedia.
It is rather minor, and not heroic like most, but it was a rather hard switch between “I’m doomed to be a closeted hikikomori living with my narcissistic family until I give up and kill myself or go live in the street” and “there is hope, there is something I like doing, there is something I’m good at, my father was wrong, the incel bullies who scared me were wrong, I should stop carrying the burdens of bitter losers who raped my brilliance in order to feed their ego”
My most heroic one probably was in middle school. I made friends with this girl I really didn’t had much in common and who annoyed me sometimes, but she was very lonely and I was her only friend. I was there whenever she needed, and also every single day. It’s not a single act, but it was the entire year of just being there for company, hanging out with her sometimes, hearing her out. We parted ways when she changed schools the year after, though she made friends in the new school and seemed much happier. For a year, though, she had only me. So whenever I feel like an unlikeable monster I just remember that I probably saved her life back then (she was deeply depressed with multiple suicide attempts).
I can’t pick. So some highlights/vents:
Went from “I’m scared to open my PC” to knowing from how to mount one entirely from stratch in 4 days purely because my desktop didn’t boot after I made several changes to it. In each of these 4 days I woke up with joy, because I would learn something new even if I was failing miserably and my hands were covered in a dozen tiny cuts from the sharp metallic frame. Risked bricking my BIOS, rushed for stores to get a battery and a beeper before they closed up until Monday, a real adventure.
As an almost-failed CS student who gaslighted myself in “I’m not good with the subject and I don’t like it”, it was pretty ecstatic to see not only I grasped the concepts with ease, but I also had an underlying love for it without the pressure of the rigid academic system. I very casually was reading things I wouldn’t have guessed I could understand before the entire process started. In the classroom, even something like the order of boot was seen as difficult. On my house, I self-taught myself that in 2 minutes just by reading the fucking fluxogram in Wikipedia.
It is rather minor, and not heroic like most, but it was a rather hard switch between “I’m doomed to be a closeted hikikomori living with my narcissistic family until I give up and kill myself or go live in the street” and “there is hope, there is something I like doing, there is something I’m good at, my father was wrong, the incel bullies who scared me were wrong, I should stop carrying the burdens of bitter losers who raped my brilliance in order to feed their ego”
My most heroic one probably was in middle school. I made friends with this girl I really didn’t had much in common and who annoyed me sometimes, but she was very lonely and I was her only friend. I was there whenever she needed, and also every single day. It’s not a single act, but it was the entire year of just being there for company, hanging out with her sometimes, hearing her out. We parted ways when she changed schools the year after, though she made friends in the new school and seemed much happier. For a year, though, she had only me. So whenever I feel like an unlikeable monster I just remember that I probably saved her life back then (she was deeply depressed with multiple suicide attempts).