DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I never thought your letters were true until this happened to me… 

All joking aside, I have a relationship problem that I’ve never seen anyone in the advice sphere really talk about and I’m not sure what to do about it. And before you suggest it, I’m already seeing a therapist, but this is something that has literally just happened and I’m not really sure how to process it and I think you could probably relate and give me some real insight.

The short version is: I’m an asshole and I’d like to stop being an asshole and be a better man. But I’m not sure how. 

The longer version is, well, a brief bit of backstory first. I’m what you might call a “recovering Nice Guy”, in that I spent a lot of my formative years doing the Nice Guy thing of being “friends” with a woman who I was interested in, in hopes that I could get her to fall in love with me and realize her ideal man was right there all along. Obviously that never worked out and I burned a lot of bridges along the way. Then like many incel-adjacent elder millennials with terminal Reddit poisoning I had a PUA period that came within a whisker of Andrew Tate-level f--kery. Thankfully I pulled out of that particular spiral though I will admit,  some of it got me laid. Problem is, I don’t think I was ever really sleeping with the right people. I’d be in a casual FWB relationship with someone,  sleep with them a couple times and then want to break up with them, but I’d only really fall in love rarely and never successfully. Every time I actually had feelings for someone, the relationship usually ended with me being dumped. The one that finally broke me was what I guess you could call a situationship that I initiated and thought was what I wanted. I’ll freely admit I wasn’t exactly acting my best with this person for reasons I’ll get to, but the TLDR of it all is that she had feelings for me, then I started having feelings for her and then she dumped me and it wrecked my s--t and I’ve been dealing with it for a long time now. I know it’s a form of oneitis, other women, better women etc. etc. but we’ve gotten back together very briefly but now it’s fallen apart again and it’s been doing my head in. 

Well to make a long story less long, I recently indulged in what some might call a Herculean dose of mind-altering chems with the intent of squeegeeing open my third eye and I had what others would call a stunning moment of insight where I realized exactly what my problem is: I don’t want people who want me because I feel like it’s too easy, like I almost don’t respect them, but I’m into it because I liked feeling wanted like that. 

(I know what the commentariat is going to say and I know it’s not a good look for me so please trust me when I say almost, not that I don’t and that I fully recognize and accept that this is very much a YTA situation)

On the other side, the people who run from me – metaphorically speaking – are the ones I can’t get over, and said third-eye-opening shrooms made me realize that this is because I have a tendency to almost fetishizing being the one “in control” and the ones who become my ones-that-got-away that I can’t get out of my head, like my double-ex, are ones who flipped the script on me. I was the one who was “in charge” because I cared less, then suddenly I cared and then suddenly they’re gone and I can’t seem to let that go because I fell for them and thought “Ok, I’m going to actually make this real and treat them with the respect they deserve and be my best self with them” and then as soon as I do, the relationship ends and I’m chasing them like a dog chasing cars. If the dog really wanted to date the car. 

Anyway, I’m really tired of not wanting what I have and wanting what I don’t. It doesn’t exactly take Freud to figure out how I ended up like this. I know the why of it all and I’m painfully aware of how this is the end result of my own choices, baggage and assorted assholery, but I’m not sure what to do with this newly revealed information. How do I fix this weird switch in my brain so that I can actually date someone who wants to date me without my having to go through a period of being an asshole that ultimately pushes them away because my attitude when we were dating could best be described as “Jesus that’s not healthy…”

In other words, how do I stop being so in love with being “in charge” and start bringing my real self to relationships so I don’t end up in love with someone who loved me (past tense) and then who I drive away because I was up my own ass? 

Self-Aware Self Destruct Button

DEAR SELF-AWARE SELF DESTRUCT BUTTON Alright SASDB, I’m going to give you some credit here: it seems like you’ve actually recognized and accepted your past actions for what they were, and I’m glad that it seems that you’re doing so without deflecting responsibility but also without going all “woe-is-me” and making the impact of your actions all about how you’re the worst. I hope you’ve also apologized to your ex about how you behaved, again without the performative “oh I am the worst, I am a worm, you must forgive me because I’m so pathetic” song and dance I’ve seen far too many guys do.

Not that I think it’s going to get her to give you a third try, mind you. But if you now know you treated her disrespectfully, I think it would be good for her and for you to acknowledge it and to apologize.

With that out of the way… I mean, this isn’t exactly deep or complex here. You were acting out of insecurity, and I suspect that insecurity is still at play to an extent. I also think part of the problem is how those relationships were ultimately about you, not them, and being intellectually aware of it isn’t the same as actually doing something about it. But I think the bigger, more important part of the problem is that, quite frankly, I’m not sure you’ve fully grasped what you were doing. I think you’ve got part of the picture, but without the whole picture, you’re going to make similar mistakes and end up back here with another sob story about another one who got away.

So this is going to sound like a digression, but stick with me for a second here. I think that might be helpful for you to grasp what you were doing would be to watch 500 Days of Summer, because I think this will give you some further insight to what the full issue is.

Here’s the thing: Tom, the main character in the movie, is kind of a choad, in no small part because he doesn’t really treat other people as being real. Instead, his behavior and his attitude are about how other people’s stories are ultimately about him. There’s a scene where Summer has an incredibly vulnerable moment, telling him about this recurring dream she has and what it’s meant to her. As she’s telling him, her voice fades and becomes a literal buzz in the background as Tom tunes her out and the narrator goes on about what he’s thinking. And he’s thinking, specifically, about all of this in terms of himself – how this is a sign that Summer is falling for him and how he’s getting to places where nobody has been before. Then, when she’s wrapping up the story, she says that she’d never told anyone that before… and he says “I guess I’m not just anybody”.

You can hear the f--king “achievement unlocked” sound in his voice when he says it.

And that right there is the crux of the movie and the serious flaw in Tom’s character. Someone he supposedly loves has this very vulnerable, very intimate moment, opening up to him in a way that she never has before. And not only did he stop listening, but he didn’t listen because he was too busy thinking about what this meant for him. And then when she underlines just how big of a deal this is for her… he makes the moment about him. Not “wow, thank you for sharing that”, not engaging with what it means for her, he sees it in how this moment affirms his specialness and his status as the Main Character Of The Universe.  

That’s more or less what you’d been doing. I mean,  you said it yourself: you don’t need to be Freud to see how all of this stems from your need to feel Important after however many years of feeling insignificant or undeserving or otherwise unworthy. The whole Nice Guy schtick that guys pull (and I’m very much including myself in that) comes from feeling too un-self-confident to actually own your interest and unwilling to risk outright rejection. So instead, they play games in hopes of being able to get what they want without ever actually taking a risk or making themselves vulnerable to another person. And that works out about as well as you might think.

(And, again, speaking from experience here, if it does work, that’s usually a sign that you need to run like all of hell and half of Hoboken was after you.)

Then later on, you learned some tricks and had some success and it plays to your ego and makes you feel like The Specialist of Special Boys, and you like the feeling of power it gives. Because it is power – it’s the power of not caring, the power of being able to put on an act without actually risking investment and still getting what you want. Even if what you want ultimately ends up being hollow and unsatisfying because you’re treating it like a game and oh look, the points don’t actually matter.

But when you start feeling actual feelings, instead of grooving on the power of caring less – about the relationship, about the other person – and how much they care about you, then s--t falls apart all over again. Because now you have actual skin in the game. Now you can actually be hurt. And, quite bluntly, realizing “oh, now I actually care about you” after you’ve been aloof and distant and enjoying the head games is frankly insulting to the person you claim to care about.

You wanted to feel special and thought that you were doing just enough to keep the other person around and didn’t realize the hurt it caused, in part because… well, it was always about you. And once it wasn’t about you (…ok wasn’t about you-ish), it only came about after you had been treating the other person like an accessory, not a person.

This is one of the reasons why the biggest sin of a casual relationship is to treat the other person casually. It’s not exactly a surprise when someone doesn’t feel like they can trust you or be vulnerable with you when you’ve done this, even after you supposedly repented, seen the light and made a switch.

And while you can do your best to say “but baby, I’ve changed!”, you’re going to have a hard time convincing people because some hurts run pretty deep and anyone can say some s--t. As the saying goes: deeds, not words. You are going to have to prove you walk the walk as much as you talk the talk.

So how do you flip the switch now that you know this about yourself? Well… you’re going to have to start letting go of the detachment you were holding onto. In fact, congratulations, I’m going to make a recommendation I’ve never made before: I think  you should be ruling out casual relationships or “situationships” (GOD I hate that term) because it’s pretty clear you were using them as a crutch to prop up your ego rather than an honest assessment of what you had to offer or what kind of relationship you could reasonably maintain.

I think, if you’re going to date someone going forward, you’re going to have to do what you haven’t done and actually date intentionally, pursuing relationships with people you can actually be serious with. You’ve gotten too comfortable holding yourself apart from people you were dating and it became a habit. So I think you need to unlearn that habit and the way to do that is to consciously do what you’ve avoided doing before now: be real, be vulnerable and be present with the people you date. You are going to have to consciously let go of the idea of having “control” or being “in charge”, no matter how much zing it puts in your spring, and be willing to get messy and confused like the rest of us. You have to stop being detached and be there, be in the moment and consciously give your time and attention to the person you’re dating.

Maybe after you’ve done this for a while and you can get over that need to prove that you’re “special” – to yourself, to the universe, to whomever you think you need to prove this s--t to – you can date casually again. But for now? You need to pull your head out of your ass and put your whole self into your relationships. It may mean you’re going to get hurt more. It may mean that you’re going to date less. But this way, at least, when you do date people, it’ll be meaningful for you and for them instead of someone trying to forge something serious with a person who doesn’t take them seriously.

And to be clear: I think you’re coming to this from a place of honesty and integrity. I do think you’re sincere about this, and I think it speaks well of you that you’ve recognized this about yourself and you’re willing to own it. If it sounds like I’m getting especially heated on the topic, it’s because I know of which I speak. I have been there, done that and blown up good things because of it. So here I am, speaking to you as the voice of experience: you f--ked up a good thing because you wanted to feel good about yourself and didn’t think about how it made other people feel.

It’s time to put this newfound self-awareness into practice, stop holding yourself back and get down in the muck with the people you want to care for. It’s time to stop trying to be casual and get back to the boy you used to be – who felt deeply, but didn’t have the courage at the time to act on those feelings. We always say “if I knew then what I know now”. Well, now you know. And while knowing may be half the battle, the other half is actually doing it.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So, a couple years ago I sent you a letter about how to be more vulnerable and open up to others. This is my update on that, with a follow-up question.

Your advice was helpful, and over time, I did largely achieve it. Friendships are better, and I became a trusted and well liked figure among friends in and out of work, with many even opening up to me more with some of their own vulnerabilities. Not just listening, but making people feel heard and understood, was the key. That front has turned out well.

I had also mentioned a cute new hire I was interested in; ironically enough (not in the fun way), not long after that letter, things had gotten hectic at work with very few physical opportunities for us to talk. We rarely saw each other, or even were in the same area; and while I did work to make our limited interactions count, we didn’t start talking more regularly until late last year/early this one.

From there, we hit it off really well, and grew close as we got to know each other. She has a lot of the personality traits I like in a woman, and I developed deeper feelings. It seemed she was interested too, so I asked her out recently. She didn’t feel the same way, but I accepted it with dignity, and we are still good friends.

The spectrum-dweller hindsight in me of course went over the main things I did wrong. I still don’t know how to flirt (or otherwise escalate a conversation/relationship beyond the platonic realm). And I know that’s very tricky to do well in the work environment, but there were times where she and I would meet with work friends outside the office, and I could have done so there if I knew how. I’ve also developed a low-key confidence that’s been great for my mental health overall, but has had no effect on my dating life, as it’s not the more overt sort that most people consider attractive.

So, here’s my new question: how do I become more bold? Both in everyday encounters, and when interacting with women I’m interested in?

I do want to clarify that I will need specific steps/practices that I can adapt to my natural style. It’s hard to find advice on this topic this isn’t generic and useless – i.e. “just practice flirting,” “just practice your social skills,” “just practice being confident/bold.” It’s like a chemist asking you to hand her the nitric acid, when none of the test tubes are labeled, and all their contents seem to be the same. The “advice” assumes you already know how to do it well, and tells to just keep doing it, when you have no clue of where Square One even is. And I know you like to go in-depth with this sort of topic.

Because despite the social success I’ve had, it hasn’t reached the point of building attraction in others. I’m lacking that bit of edge, of fire, of spirit that sparks it. The thing that puts one on the list of potential dating/sex partners. And developing this boldness can help avoid missing opportunities, like with the friend I asked out.

And yes, I know her feelings may change down the line, especially if I do become more bold; but, I’m obviously not expecting it. I can, however, cultivate the skills needed for future prospects.

Please and thank you,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Memelord Returns

DEAR YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD MEMELORD RETURNS: Right off the bat, I’ll remind you what I’ve said about flirting, over and over again: it’s simply the act of letting someone know you like them in a fun and charming way. There’re as many ways to flirt as there are people because there’re an almost infinite number of ways to flirt from being direct to being coy, being as overt and aggressive as Pepe Le Pew asking someone to come wiz him to ze Casbah, to someone being adorkable as they stammer their way towards asking someone out on a date. Part of learning how to flirt is learning what style of flirting resonates best with your personality and the people you’re most interested in. Not everyone is going to be into semi-antagonistic bantering back and forth, just as not everyone is going to be into being incredibly direct and forthright. You can look at examples of how other people flirt and try them out for size (and I recommend it, especially while you’re figuring your own style out), but at the end of the day, your flirting style is going to be unique to you.

Similarly, you’re dealing with a fundamental misunderstanding about what being bold is. Being bold isn’t about a series of steps, it’s a mindset. Boldness is, put simply, the state of not being afraid of the potential consequences of those actions. To give an example from Star Wars, when Princess Leia says “Darth Vader, only you could be so bold…”, she’s commenting on the fact that Vader has done something that many would see as reckless, even foolish: attacking a counselor’s ship on a diplomatic mission, something that would presumably result in negative consequences for him when the Imperial Senate hears about it.

Vader, being a Sith Lord, could not give less of a f--k. Leaving aside that he knows for a fact that the plans are on the Tantive IV,  Vader is power personified and feels (correctly, in this case) that there is nobody in the Empire who has the power to overrule him or enforce consequences. Neither Palpatine nor Tarkin are going to disagree with his actions, after all. 

Hell, on a meta level, George Lucas making Star Wars in the first place was a bold decision. He not only was making a high-budget sci-fi film in a time when sci-fi films weren’t big money makers, he did so while also choosing to hold onto the licensing rights in lieu of a higher share of the profits. That’s a pretty big swing and a bold decision to make, and one that clearly paid off for him… but it was a very big risk to take. 

This is why the process of becoming bolder is, quite simply, the process of not being so afraid of the potential negative outcomes of a particular action, or deciding that the positive outcomes are either more likely if you take this action or that they outweigh the potential negative consequences.

Being bold in a dating or flirting context would mean taking risks and making bigger swings than other folks would. This doesn’t mean that the risks are always real, mind you, just perceived. Being bold might, for example, mean confidently asking out the most popular girl in school even if you’re not one of The Cool Kids. Or shooting your shot with someone who is supposedly “out of your league”. Or going over to chat someone up even though there’re three other guys already talking to her.

The theoretical risks are myriad. You might get laughed at. Bullies at school might decide to punish you for your presumption. Those other guys might get upset and violent at your trying to horn in on their action. Or nothing might happen; you get no reaction at all or the entire conversation never goes beyond initial pleasantries. Or you might get that sexy somebody’s phone number… and that would be well worth the risk.

This is why there’s no step-by-step instruction manual for being bolder and why people who tell you to practice it aren’t just giving you the run around. You practice being bolder the same way you practice flirting or the same way you practice making goals in soccer or shooting baskets in basketball: you perform that particular skill, over and over again. If you’re practicing soccer, you’re doing the actions that you would perform when you play soccer – dribbling, passing, shooting, working with your teammates and so on. When you practice flirting, you flirt with people. You may not be flirting with intent – that is, you’re not angling for a date or to get their number or their WhatsApp profile – but you are flirting. When you want to practice being bold, you take bold actions instead of taking safe or less risky ones.

And this is important, because being bold is a choice you decide to make each time the opportunity arises. It’s not about taking the longshot every time, it’s about simply deciding in each instance whether this is a time to go for broke or not. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. Someone who’s bold may make the call to take the big swing more often than not, but they don’t do it every time. They weigh their odds and make their decision in the moment. Do you take the risk – either under the assumption that the odds are in your favor or under the assumption that failure would cost you less than what success might bring? Or do you play it safer, mitigate the risks but at the cost of potentially missing out on the greater reward? Is this the right time to make that play, or is it better to wait?

Part of what makes it practice is that your goal is to learn, not necessarily to succeed. When you’re doing passing drills in sports, you’re doing so to develop the skill to the point of muscle memory; moving from conscious incompetence to conscious competence to unconscious competence. If you have issues getting the ball to the right person, you figure out what mistakes you’re making and work on correcting them. When you practice flirting, part of what you’re doing is figuring out what works for you, what doesn’t, and why. Is it not working because it’s something that you’re doing wrong, or is it because it’s not congruent with who you are? Is it something you said or is it just that this isn’t the right person? When you practice being bold, you’re figuring out how accurately you measure risk, how well you gauge your skill vs. that risk and whether those risks are worth the reward.

Please notice carefully, however, that I don’t say anything about success or failure. Being bold isn’t about success, it’s about the attempt. You can be bold and still fail, just as you can play it safe and possibly succeed. It’s just a question of whether you’re willing to make a bigger swing and take a higher level of risk for that reward.  

So if you want to be bolder, the answer is to be bolder. To take shots that others might not, to take bigger swings that might not work out, in the name of a better outcome than you would get by being more measured or more careful or more restrained. To be bold is to be comfortable with risk and with the potential of failure. That only comes about by actually doing it and not letting failure rattle you.

So take some bigger swings and see what happens. If you fail, what can you learn from that failure? If you succeed, is that success replicable, or was it luck? Did you read the room accurately or did you fall on your face and are you willing to try again? Was the outcome worth the effort, or was this an area where making a bold move was a poorer choice? The more confident you become in your decisions and in yourself, the more often you’ll feel empowered to make a bold choice and take that risk.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com

DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Hey Doc, so I feel like I waste years basically doing useless crap. I went to college for essentially visual arts (the only “skill” I’ve had) and even then I doubt my skills aren’t that good compared to other fellow artists who entered more advanced sophisticated programs like animation and illustration, where I tried to enter and failed miserably by submitting the necessary portfolio. Said rejection hurts so much it just made me never want to pursue any career in the arts because deep down a part of me knows he’s not good enough and those two rejections are proof of that.

Now that I’ve essentially spent 4 years of my life getting stressed and depressed for essentially a worthless degree and debt. Now I’m working menial minimum wage jobs that frankly just souls sucking and tiresome (Line cook, waiter, bartender, cleaner, barista, etc.), jobs that require no talent and easily replaceable, essentially for high schoolers or high school graduates and only requires doing the bare minimum of skills and like you yourself said YOU DONT GET COOKIES FOR DOING THE BARE MINIMUM.

Now Essentially feeling the sting of regret not just because I got my worthless degree with worthless skills but because my friends and colleagues are pursuing actual careers that actual get good pay because they have useful skills. Mostly union jobs mostly tradesmen like welders, construction workers, plumbers, truck drivers, carpenters, nurses, firefighters, engineers etc.. Real jobs doing real work that’s actually valued by other people and society. It makes me turn both red and green knowing that I wasted so many years on something so worthless. There is a small part of that still thinks I can get a career doing art work IE Tattoo artists but it just feels like cope or delusions and I’m scared to pursue it because it’s gonna open of the scar of rejection.

What do I do? How I stop feeling so worthless and actually amount to something? Stop feeling like in beneath my colleagues and move forward without being delusional?

Sincerely,

Worthless Wagie

DEAR WORTHLESS WAGIE: Hoo kay, there’s a lot to unpack here my guy, but I think you’re probably gonna want to just throw the whole suitcase away.  

A lot of this is coming down to matters of perspective and how you choose to see the world. You’re choosing to see things in a very narrow, very limited way and in ways where you’re allowing your frustration to cloud your judgement.

I’ll start with an easy one: you’re misunderstanding the point of “you don’t get cookies for the bare minimum”. That’s not about so-called “unskilled jobs” (which is just a classist idea that’s more about what jobs are ‘important’; try running a fryolator with no training), it’s about people who think Not Being The Worst is something that makes them dateable. Being “a nice guy” isn’t a value add, it’s “yes, we expect that from someone we would want to date”, much as “doesn’t explode when you start the engine” or “doesn’t electrocute you if you touch the exterior” are baseline expectations for a car.

Unless you’re buying a Cybertruck, anyway.

So maybe you shouldn’t be using that to punch yourself in the nuts.

But speaking of nut punching, the real place to start, I suspect, is to tell you that you give up way too easily and way too quickly and I’m wondering how much research you’ve done in terms of careers in any creative medium.

I’m going to be painfully blunt here: if two rejections are enough to wreck your entire world, then you really aren’t ready for life in creative fields like writing, illustration, filmmaking etc. Anyone who’s made a go of it as a professional artist is both laughing and shaking their heads in rueful remembrance because, frankly, two rejections is, quite literally, nothing. One of the most common cliches when it comes to anyone trying to make it in a creative field is the comment about being able to wallpaper their house with rejection notices… and it’s a cliché because it’s true. Trying to get published, trying to get acting roles, get your screenplay out of the slush pile, get your film made, even getting into art programs means getting very comfortable with the idea of rejection and getting rejected constantly. I would say it’s part of paying your dues, except that implies that there’s a fixed number where, after you’ve passed it, you no longer risk getting rejected again and that’s not the case at all. It’s simply this: every field has it’s gatekeepers, and getting past them is often as much about luck as it is about talent.

And yes, I understand that this sounds elitist and exclusionary – and to a limited extent, it can be – but at its core, it’s simply about limited resources. No publisher, no agency, no production company or art program has unlimited resources, able to accept all and sundry who might want to take part. Every art program has a limited number of spaces for students; every publisher has a finite amount of money, personnel and room in the publishing schedule; every gallery only has so much room. Someone is going to be in charge of deciding who does or doesn’t get one of those openings, and they’re going to have criteria for what does or doesn’t make a good fit for them. That criteria is going to vary – whether they think it’ll make money (or enough money), whether they think that person is the right fit for the course and so on.

But here’s the thing: that acceptance or rejection doesn’t mean that they’re right, that what they accept is objectively good or what they reject is objectively bad. I mean, someone greenlit Gigli. Someone said yes to the Borderlands movie. Someone decided that it was a good idea to give Ben Shapiro a platform. Meanwhile, Stephen King was rejected by 30 publishers before Doubleday gave Carrie a shot, and Louisa May Alcott was told to stick to teaching because she sure as hell couldn’t write. Van Gough died in poverty and obscurity, an artist who was seen by the art world as being one of the most mediocre painters of all time. Hell, she may have descended into TERF madness, but nobody can deny the vice grip that JK Rowling’s books have had on pop culture… which is why her story of being rejected for years before anyone picked up Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone is the stuff of publishing legend.

This is why luck is as much of a part of success in creative fields as talent; someone has to be see your potential and be willing to take a chance on you. It just means that someone in the decision making process made a call based on their opinion and judgement… and that means that it’s all down to what one person or a small group of people think.

The fact that other people don’t see it or don’t want to take that chance doesn’t mean you’re The Worst. It’s just, like, someone’s opinion, man.

This is why part of success is simply not giving up in the face of obstacles and why knowing how to handle rejection or failure are critical to improving. OK, you got rejected… so now what are you going to do? You can give up, sure. Or you can decide to apply elsewhere. Or you can say “OK, so what about my work wasn’t to their liking and what can I do about it?” Then you can apply those lessons and try again. Or you might say “well, this didn’t, so I’ll put this one aside and try again with a different project.”

Sometimes the answer is “ok, I’m not ready yet, I’ll go work on my skills and try again”. Other times the answer is “well f--k you, I’ll find someone who does get it”. And still other times it’s “ah, I see what they had an issue with, let’s work on that…”

This is why it all comes down to how badly you want it, how much you’re willing to do to get it and how much you believe in your ability to succeed. If one or two rejections is enough to throw you out of the game entirely… well, as cold as it may sound, maybe this just wasn’t for you. And that’s ok! Not everyone wants or needs to get metaphorically punched in the face repeatedly. For some folks, that’s just a price they don’t want to pay and that is fine. Others are the sorts of mad bastards that’ll take the hit and say “thank you sir, may I have another?” And still others are of the school of “if God closes a door, blow a hole in the wall because f--k you for putting this wall in my way.”

But there’s a difference between saying “ok, this isn’t for me after all” and letting it wreck your entire life and worldview.

I mean, I’m going to get personal here: I spent more than two decades pursuing a career as an artist and illustrator. Over the course of that time, I was rejected more times than you’ve had hot dinners, even had people tell me to my face that I should give up. Hell, I had a teacher in college tell me that she’d rather see me cut my fingers off with tin-snips than call myself an artist.

I have thrown the equivalent of a down payment for a house into degree programs, courses, self-publishing efforts… and I never made it. I self-published a couple comics, worked very briefly as an animator and eventually just left the field entirely. And if I’m being honest? I don’t regret it; I never had the talent or the skill and I’m ok with that. I realized my talents and passions lay elsewhere.

And even then that didn’t mean that I was done with rejection; any author or professional writer who’s been on the Query-Go-Round with agents or who’s submitted proposals and pitches to editors is going to be getting rejected on a daily or weekly basis. Accepting it, rolling with it and working around it is part of the gig. As the song goes, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

The same thing applies to “wasting” time and money on your degree. Let’s leave aside questions about how over-inflated the cost of a college degree is (and the subsequent devaluation of anything that isn’t a post-doc) and instead focus on whether you “wasted” your time and money by pursuing a degree that hasn’t led to a career in that field. The idea that a degree only has value if it leads to a particular career in a particular field is a very late-stage capitalism belief, where the only point of education and learning is to make money… and probably for someone else. In reality, that time and money only “wasted” in as much as you think you’ve wasted it. If you want to define “wasted” as in “I’m not going to earn back the money I paid in by getting a career using this degree”, then yes, it was a waste. If you choose to see it as “I learned a lot about something I’m passionate about and it has enhanced my life in many ways”, it absolutely wasn’t a waste.

Again: I’ll point to my own experiences, with the amount of time and money I spent pursuing a dream that I eventually gave up on. Would I like that money back? Oh, sure. But I honestly don’t regret the time or effort I put into it. It didn’t pay out, but I also have no regrets. I learned a lot about myself and while I may not be an artist, all of my education and experiences gave me a deeper appreciation for the art I love, even when I’m not capable of creating it.

And an education’s applicability isn’t always going to be a one-to-one ratio in terms of one’s career. People in STEM fields love to s--t on liberal studies, but liberal studies are, in point, about learning how to learn, having a broader base to work from and how to collate disparate factors into a cohesive whole. It’s easier for a generalist to join a different field than it is for a specialist to become a generalist.

But none of that is going to matter because you’re mostly using all of this to, again, punch yourself in the nuts. That’s all this is: sweaty nut-punching because you had a set-back and you let it convince you that you have no agency and no control. The rejection hurts, sure, but it’s hurting in no small part because you’ve decided that they were 100% right and two people’s opinions have more apparent weight than your own. You’re letting other people’s opinions continue to shape your life by insisting that some jobs are for babies and the poors, not for “real” people. You’re buying into the belief that your job is supposed to be the same as your value and other people have decided that these jobs have little or no value…

…right up until the services that these jobs enable are unavailable. Let’s not forget the number of people who participated in violent uprisings because they were told they couldn’t to go to Applebee’s or get their mani-pedis. Suddenly those jobs were very important indeed, so important that they wanted people to risk death while performing them.

The other part of this that you’re missing is that you’re assuming that this is The End. You’re stuck like this FOREVER. And again: you’re not. Not unless you decide you are. The fact that you’re working minimum wage or tipped jobs doesn’t mean that this is all you will do for the rest of your life. There are many, many paths open to you if you choose to take them. Each of them will come with their own costs, both metaphorical and literal, but that’s true of everything in life. You could go back to college and pursue another degree – a BA or BS, an associate’s degree. You could even just audit classes in order to learn particular skills in career paths that don’t rely on degrees. Relatively few game developers, for example, got degrees in game development or even in STEM fields; many got their start by learning to code on their own or building mods for other games. Hell, there’s a very real pipeline between game journalist and game developer. You might start as a bartender before eventually becoming a bar owner. Or you might continue to pursue a career in the arts in one form or another. These are all choices you could make, right now if you want. So too is continuing exactly as you are. But you have to acknowledge that this is a choice you’re making. To quote the bards: if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

So if you want to stop feeling like a failure, you have to choose to stop being a failure and to stop seeing this as failing. You can see it as a false start, a dead end that you have to backtrack from or as one more step on the path that’s going to put you where you want to be. You can let all of this destroy you or you can let all of it energize you, motivate you and move you forward. You have agency, you have power and you have the ability to make choices. Those choices come with consequences, but all choices do. You just have to decide if those consequences and risks are ones you’re willing to accept. But again: deciding that you’re not willing to accept them is still a choice and you should acknowledge that.

Does it mean being “delusional”? Only in as much as “delusion” means “going against other people’s beliefs”; other people may think something, but that doesn’t make it true. People still believe Elon Musk’s a genius after all. 

Your life is in your hands. You can fail without being a failure, just as you can succeed in spite of yourself. You have the ability to decide how to shape it, how to direct it, what paths to follow and which to pass by. That’s all on you. Your future is your own, so if you want a good one, then it’s on you to make it.

Good luck.

Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com