#steintalks

[auguststein]

Dude this is so fucking stupid. Last year my car gets stolen like a week before I’m set to drive up to see family for the holidays and this year my car gets broken into FOUR DAYS before Christmas.

I swear to fuck I’m cursed or something.

[auguststein]

I love that my ADHD meds make me feel like I’m on the verge of the worst anxiety attack I’ve ever had for like an hour or two after I take it.

It’s also pretty fucked up that I vastly prefer it over raw dogging my ADHD symptoms lol.

[auguststein]

Venting

I just got done watching a really great video about Shuji Nakamura's invention of the blue LED, and how much it revolutionized LED technology and changed the way a lot of the tech we use was made going forward. It went in to how it was the breakthrough that allowed for LED lighting to be a viable replacement for traditional filament light bulbs, as well as creating an alternative to CRT displays. I always loved watching these types of videos, and this one was particularly good, but it really got me thinking about my own life and accomplishments. Then I think about people like my best friend's father, who made huge strides in his field regarding xenotransplantation to work towards solving organ shortages in the medical field. I feel like, at one point in my life, I probably would have had the potential to go into a STEM field and do something great, and be it my undiagnosed ADHD, depression, or just general work ethic issues at the time, I never did. Maybe I would have gone into biomedical engineering and worked on neuroprosthetics. Or maybe I could have worked in programming and tried to make something that could better society or automate our most monotonous processes. Instead I went into digital marketing, and I've been struggling to find a job and/or get my own company off the ground since I graduated, and I don't feel like I'm making much of a difference in the world. And I'm still $80k in debt for it. On the other end of that though, I feel like a lot of issues we have similar to the Blue LED have been solved, and a lot of the worlds greatest minds are either working on things like AI being used to cheapen and replace creative fields or work on weapons in the military industrial complex. I don't know if I would be happy working in those environments, as they go against a lot of my core morals. Who knows though, maybe I'd just trudge through it and get swallowed by the system. I would probably be more financially stable. All in all, I'm just daydreaming about paths not taken I suppose, probably brought on by my bitterness about my difficulties finding stable work to pay the bills. There's not much you can do to change the past. Also, here's the video I was watching that started this train of thought if anyone is interested: Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED | Veritasium

[auguststein]

Man, realizing I’m non-binary at 25 really has been a clusterfuck.

That being said, my best friend of over a decade, who was always a little confused by societal changes around gender and sexuality (but always tried his best,) got me a they/them pin when we went to PAX West together. It felt so good to feel seen by someone who means so much to me, especially as someone who is still very masc presenting atm.

[auguststein]

Dude. I’m so genuinely excited to go to a convention again. I know Pax West definitely won’t be as good as it was the last time I went (the last time I went was in 2018 and it was where I met my current partner of almost 5 years) but I’ve missed conventions so much and I’m so excited.