/lit/ - Literature

There are four possible reasons why you made this thread:

1) Copypasta
2) Bait
3) You are lying about your life and are trying to make yourself feel better
4) You are honest about your life and feel like no-one loves you for your "radical life decisions" and hope that some loser on here will suck your epeen

Which one is it?

All four.

>>6857933
>radical life decisions
No, when I was 18 I just knew working service and creative writing classes wouldn't make me happy.

>>6857943
>I'm mediocre and thus everyone else is

ITT: butthurt NEETs who never leave their parents basement shit on someone actually living their life

>>6857928
Sounds pretty great to me.
Except for the crack, that shit is bad for you.

>>6857928
>chapped lips

Even if you are happy it hurts every time you smile.

I did something similar to this, albeit after I finished university and I had a real job (in a cheap, 3rd world, lawless kind of country). Came home 3 years later having suffered a nervous breakdown and hopelessly addicted to heroin. It was good fun a time though...so much good fun...

>>6858177

you should wait more until you samefag your own thread.

this is what happens when you get too excited. you ruin it.

>>6858246
>>6857928
Which countries?

>>6858422
Uganda

>>6858427
kek

>>6858422
cambodia and vietnam...
I'm curious how op managed it in Eastern Europe, as i thought most of those countries are relatively expensive these days...

>>6857928
No one cares if you live like Hemingway anymore. No one wants literature that's authentic, just entertaining. For all you've been through you'll just end up with collapsed veins, Hepatitis and refusal letters for every publishing house on the planet because your work is too 'derivative'.

>>6858177
>Assuming this hard

People don't like pretentious pricks judging them for wanting different things from life. Imagine a guy that joins a war then comes back talking about he is better than you for having the thrill of taking a life. That is how much of a prick OP sounds like.

>>6858464
(Not op but the other guy) I always did meet young westerners living the same as me and writing about it. Sometimes their writing was good, but the cynicism of fucking yourself up just to have something to write about seemed kind of lame. And we all reached the same end eventually (more or less psychologically cracked, broke, and abandoning any literary pretence in the face of growing need for heroin).
It seems naive in hindsight. But like I said - compared to the lives most people live in the west, it really felt at times like adventure and a more authentic and exciting kind of life

>>6858487
Were you teaching English? I've been in Indonesia for the past few years.

>>6858496
Ha, yeah of course I was :)

>>6857928
MFW Tolkein never experienced being king of Gondor and still think he can write about that

>>6858498
Did you continue teaching after you returned home? I'm starting to wonder what I'm going to do with myself when/if I ever head back.

>>6858544
I didn't...Im thinking of heading back overseas to teach again though. How do you find Indonesia? I was away 3 years, and it's really strange trying to readjust to a western lifestyle/ I.e hard work and being poor

Any prospects for a Eastern Euro to do this? I assume you only land easy language teaching gigs as a native speaker. What other work can unqualified expats find?

>had nervous breakdown last semester of highschool
>failed/nealyr-failed all my classes
>before I had pretty good university prospects but lost them all
>tfw almost every person you've met that's headed for university was an uninteresting middle class cuntbag anyways
>now spend my time working occasionally, drinking daily, and reading/studying
>moving to south America in a month to teach English

Is there a chance for me? I tell myself I'm getting an "authentic" education, but you can tell that people look down on you for not going to university.

I've heard that sometimes universities will let people in if they've "proven" themselves outside of highschool, does anyone know anything about this?

>>6858129
>Taking shitty university classes isn't mediocre
If you need a professor to grade everything you do and help you distinguish crap from quality you're already pretty mediocre.

>>6858464
>Caring about what other people want
I just want my life to be authentic.

>>6857928
>folk hedonism is living life to the fullest

High school state of mind tbh.

>>6858876
>I just want my life to be authentic.
You realise you can't be deliberately authentic, right? That's called being pretentious. The only way to be authentic is to neither desire it nor think about the concept of authenticity.

>>6858876
Going to South America to teach is 100% more /lit/erary than going to uni. You're going to make it, just practice your writing whenever you can.

>lonely nerd with no life experience
>tried weed once before, but just got a panic attack
>tfw I'll never have an adventerous life because I suck
>tfw I'll never have any interesting happen to inspire me

I've shared a piece of writing to you before, but you guys complained my characters didn't talk like real people. I don't know how real people talk, though, because I can't remember the last time I had a good conversation with someone. I'll never be a writer.

eduard limonov?

>>6858918
I'm pretty sure the only way to be authentic is to be deliberate, actually.

>>6858938
Thanks m8. I've been trying to write a couple pages a day of whatever pops into my head just to get some practice. I am kind of worried about being poor and unemployable though.
I'm thinking of just moving to Buenos Aires when my teaching gig is done and trying to take classes at a university there. I really can't stand North America

>>6858954
What are you waiting for? No one else is responsible for your life, if you want adventure, go out and find it.

>>6859033
>if you want adventure, go out and find it.

How? Do I just wander around until something happens? People say I need to get out more, but it's actually more boring because I don't have my computer with me.

The idea of an "authentic" life is a spook.

>>6859033
>I'm pretty sure the only way to be authentic is to be deliberate, actually.
No, that's just roleplaying.

>>6859037
Start hitting up local libraries, coffee shops, cultural centers, etc. and looking for cool stuff that's going on in the community. Go out to concerts and museums regularly. Volunteer once a week. Start saving up money out of every paycheck for a trip to Europe or wherever.

You've got to be the person to make it happen though, and that's the hard part.

>>6859054
So doing whatever is handed to you without questioning it or making a deliberate effort to escape it is authentic then? Because it sounds terrible.
Besides, what difference does the motivation really make? Rimbaud was probably an insufferable dweeb inside his own head, he still lived an exciting life.

>>6858876
>Caring about what other people want
I just want my life to be authentic.

Now I can respect that.
>>6859033

He's approaching the acceptance stage though. You know how many stages you gotta get before that? Why ruin the progress?!
>>6859054
>arguing over poorly chosen semantics this hard.

Sounds like to me he rather live things than read about them.

>>6859076
>So doing whatever is handed to you without questioning it or making a deliberate effort to escape it is authentic then? Because it sounds terrible.
Well it depends on the way you use the word, of course. When I say authentic I use it as a label in the sense of "an authentic Trappist ale" or "an authentic Sicilian shepherd" or something. If you set out to become an authentic Sicilian shepherd you won't become one, you would just be that guy trying to be a Sicilian shepherd. Of course you can also use the phrase in a sort of "true to yourself" way, but that's profoundly spooky and problematic since it implies an essential self to which you can either comply or rebel against and does so unconvincingly.

>Besides, what difference does the motivation really make? Rimbaud was probably an insufferable dweeb inside his own head, he still lived an exciting life.
Very little as far as I'm concerned, which is part of the reason I find a 'desire for authenticity' curious/nonsensical/self-defeating.

>>6859104
>Sounds like to me he rather live things than read about them.
Then he should just say "I wish I didn't read books" or something.

>>6859194
When I use the word authentic I mean I want to play by my own rules instead of those of society and work towards goals I sincerely want to accomplish rather than just working through the university game for 4 years, not learning nearly as much as I'd like to, then taking whatever middle class job best pays off my debts for the rest of my life.

I want to be "authentically myself", if that makes sense, instead of just existing.

I don't really see why it matters though. Why would you care enough to try and weakly try and deconstruct other people's desires into something base and undesirable? Are you not happy with your own life or something?

>Very little as far as I'm concerned, which is part of the reason I find a 'desire for authenticity' curious/nonsensical/self-defeating.
I guess anything that exists is 'authentic', but if your own existence contradicts your pure will, it doesn't feel authentic.

>Then he should just say "I wish I didn't read books" or something.
Civilization is a conversation, if you're sitting on the sidelines absorbing the thoughts of other people without anything to add yourself, you may as well not exist.

>>6859245
Even outside of your comfort zone you are still shrouded in the halo of being an ex-pat. Look around you, at all those people, now imagine how many of them will ever get the chance to leave their country and 'find their true selves' somewhere else. None. That is a luxury the same as sitting in your mom's basement drawing off the dole.

You are a fraud. You condescend to people in the developing world but are arch-smug in the presence of your family and friends from back home because you think you're now party to this secret knowledge held only by poor people in rural countries.

>>6858876
I'm gonna be that guy and defend studying at university (not necessariy straight out of high school, but at some point).

>if you need a professor to grade everything... distinguish crap from quality...

That's not what they're there for. If you think professors are all like Harold Bloom, building their own canons and decrying what they don't personally like, that just shows how little you know. Grades are for employers. Being an autodidact might sound romantic but it's much quicker and more effective to become friends with a few people who've already spent decades studying your fields of interest and learn from them. You'll find that professors not only have their own areas of knowledge, but also vasty differing opinions and approaches that you can use to place yourself. If you come into a university classroom eager to learn you can engage with the professors in a way that will certainly challenge everything your highschool-failing ass thinks it knows.

It's fine to delay studying at a University, but you're absolutely robbing yourself if you don't fight for entrance/scholarship at a decent one in a few years.

If you're going to let some "uninteresting middle class cuntbags" decide what you can and can't do, then I suspect you just aren't cut out for success by any route.

I went to a good school in the Boston area and was able to engage with brilliant people, both in the student bodies and faculties of the local universities, who each contributed far more to my worldview and education than the grade-grubbing side of things. Definitely would not have met them if I just fell back into the blue collar world I grew up in.

If there's something inauthentic or uninteresting about postcoital conversations about Shakespeare in a Harvard house overlooking the Charles river in the fall then I don't want to be authentic.

>>6859245
>I want to be "authentically myself", if that makes sense, instead of just existing.
Well the thing is, it doesn't make sense, sincere there is no coherent self to which you can conform. What you mean is simply "I want to do what I want and not other things". So in this case authenticity is merely a noble word for egoism. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

>I don't really see why it matters though. Why would you care enough to try and weakly try and deconstruct other people's desires into something base and undesirable? Are you not happy with your own life or something?
There's nothing base and undesirable about trying to get your way and wanting to live as you please. In fact, I think owning up to this will ultimately benefit you more than trying to dress it up with wishy washy individualist ideology about some true self you have that you can live up to or not.

>I guess anything that exists is 'authentic', but if your own existence contradicts your pure will, it doesn't feel authentic.
I'm not sure if that's even a possibility. How can you live in a way that is against your will? Circumstances can be shitty of course, but isn't how you deal with them your will?

>Civilization is a conversation, if you're sitting on the sidelines absorbing the thoughts of other people without anything to add yourself, you may as well not exist.
There is no sitting on the sideline. We are all in the game. Someone who reads books and walks his dog in between isn't "less alive" than someone who smokes epic rocks of crack in Albania, he just lives differently. The notion that being alive is somehow quantifiable is silly, and especially tiresome if combined with some trite notion of down and out bohemianism as being the pinnacle of liveliness.

>>6859299
I've already more or less lived as an expat, first living as an immigrant in the country I'm in now, secondly as an exchange student in highschool. It's not at all as bad an experience as you make it sound.

>That is a luxury the same as sitting in your mom's basement drawing off the dole
I've raised the money to move to SA myself, and a big reason for me moving there is because most of the people around me have become drug addicts living on skid row and I'm trying to escape from that and find a better life for myself.
Instead of being a smug prick, you should be asking yourself why people doing things with their lives is so offensive to you.

>>6859386
Fair enough, I'll probably go to university in a few years anyways. Most of my negativity is just self rationalization around the fact that I screwed up big towards the end of highschool and my future's looking pretty dim.
There's a huge difference between going to Harvard and going to a third-tier profit driven university too.
>If you come into a university classroom eager to learn you can engage with the professors in a way that will certainly challenge everything your highschool-failing ass thinks it knows.
First of all, ouch. Secondly, most of my school experience so far has been being told to sit down and shut up by the teachers when I try discussing the material being studied. Obviously you've had a different experience with education than I have, but there's reasons I feel the way I do.

>>6859388
Sometimes people ascribe different meanings to different words, and you'll need to try to figure out the subtleties through context.
You got it at:"What you mean is simply "I want to do what I want and not other things"."
Making long ass posts about semantics after the fact is just a waste of everyone's time.

>There is no sitting on the sideline. We are all in the game
I'm not talking about life, I'm talking about civilization: art, literature, politics, and so on. If you don't engage with these things, you aren't in the game. I like reading books btw, but they're there to be reacted to

>>6860430
There is an ideological difference between the phrasings "I want to do what I want" and "I want to live authentically" that is worth addressing. It's not a waste of time anon, I'm engaging in dialogue and participating in civilisation by noting the implications present in the lingo of mainstream Western individualism.

Love this thread

Turns out the harvard grad has a few valuable thoughts on life and the Bohemian dropouts already have all the answers

Bump bcuz i like i'm sitting here rubbing my nips

>>6860461
Touché anon, but isn't being authentic to my desires authenticity itself?
The example you gave, the "authentic Sicilian shepherd", is defined by several external characteristics, but when he relates to himself it's not as an outsider looking for forms of quantification. If his life and actions don't at least try to keep in step with his desires and aspirations, he'll see himself in comparison to that idealized form he's constructed for himself, and feel lacking for it.
To everyone else, he's a Sicilian shepherd, but if tends his fields while daydreaming of being a great opera singer, he's going to feel like a phoney.

>>6860609
There's generally two uses of the phrase I think, one being 'the real thing', which is really merely saying 'this thing conforms to my preconceived notion of said thing' (for example authentic Trappist ale) from an external perspective (regarding both people and objects, since from an external perspective people are in a sense objects) and the other one being 'being true to oneself' from a first person perspective.

So yes, the Shepherd may be 'the real thing' in the eye of a tourist while not being true to himself from his own perspective.

I still think the notion of authenticity from a personal perspective is problematic though. When you say "being authentic to my desires" you supposedly mean 'to live in accordance with what you want'. But I'd argue it's impossible not to live in accordance with what you want, given that of course some circumstances are outside of your control.

For example, if you would spent your days taking care of your elderly grandmother and would say 'what I really want to do is to travel to Albania' it may seem like your 'true desire' is to do the latter, but I'd say that is a mistake. When someone says 'what I really want to do' actually means 'what I would really want to do under hypothetical different circumstances'. In reality, your desire to take care of your grandmother is obviously greater seeing as that is what you actually choose to do. So I'd say that everyone is already living authentically since one can't not be true to oneself. People only think that they can because they view hypothetical options as being part of the equation, which they are not. Wishing to be authentic is wishing for something you already are, but think you are not based on a misunderstanding.

>>6859076

To be authentic, live in accordance with your morals unapologetically. This doesn't mean you have to be dogmatic, but you should have a set of core values you believe in wholly. As Nietzsche put it, "Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate."

>>6860705
I believe Nietzsche also said that freedom is not doing what you want but being able to obey yourself, which fits nicely with that.

>>6860703
just BE entirely entirely entirely entirely entirely entirely entirely entirely entirely entirely entirely yourself.

>You rarely, if ever, have sex with complete strangers. You abstain from drugs
thank christ for that

>following my example and living life to its fullest
holy shit

I want adventure and a real life, but I feel a lot of guilt. I feel like I'm letting my parents and brothers down for it. I've always been different from them, yet, every time I am acting like "myself" I notice it, and I feel an absolute guilt. I feel also a strange pain in the head. Sometimes I've thought it is because of their narcissistic nature that they've fucked my head up. I was the youngest and they vented their feelings on me. They made me quite insecure.
Feel like I'm not doing what I should be doing. I just want to do whatever the fuck I want. Zero commitments. Real life. I used to understand people a lot. Used to know how to get into them. Now I feel mute, dead inside. Feel like dying. Can't live like this. I have lost what made me me.

>>6858562
Indonesia is great, been here 6 years now. Some things can get depressing, especially the religion. Also, the big cities where you have to live are shit holes, but the holiday destinations are amazing.
I get bored if I'm home more than a week now, but I'm starting to feel like I've been here too long. South America might be on the cards after this next contract.

>>6861180
>thank christ for that
I think he was making fun of colleges "hookup culture" and the fact that occasionally having sex with total strangers is considered a substitute for fulfilling relationships.
At least, I hope that's how it was intended.

>>6860703
I guess you could argue that being authentic to desires comes at the cost of being in-authentic to your fears, or your day to day life, but I'm sure many people don't really "feel" they're where they want to be.

>So I'd say that everyone is already living authentically since one can't not be true to oneself
Good point, but isn't that all the better a reason to have wild adventures?

>>6861435
>Good point, but isn't that all the better a reason to have wild adventures?
It's not a reason to do anything, but it's not a reason to not do anything either. If you want wild adventures there's no reason not to, but there's also no reason to not be a homebody for decades doing fuck all if that's what you like.

>>6860430
I'm >>6859386
The difference between professors at Harvard (didn't go to Harvard, btw, just fucked a of girls there) and the professors at a reputable state school isn't that great. Professors have all invested much more in their fields than any seconday school teacher, and they're dying for students who actually want to learn from them. They're just as sick of boring kids warming seats in their lectures that they're massively overquaified to teach as you are of teachers who don't know shit and don't care to find out.

Not trying to put you down by pointing out shortcomings you're aready aware of, but I agree that you seem to be protecting yourself psychologically, and doing what it takes to get into university (and getting the most out of it when you get there) will require facing those shortcomings head on, because people are going to ask about it no matter what you do. You're probably going to have to absolutely maul the SAT or ACT (which will require a lot of work) before they'll make an exception or even consider scholarship opportunities for a high school record as weak as you're claiming.

I say all this assuming you have a thirst for knowledge, but if you legitimately don't I guess that's fine, but I can't empathize or help.

because

>Europe
No thanks tbh

>>6857928
I know youre lying, you didnt specify the country, eastern europe isnt the wild west you nigger.
there is no crack here, when coke gets here its to expensive for it to be profitable from crack conversion, so they just sell coke to rich people.
And pedophilia isnt prevelant here i doubt youd be going around fucking random kids.

t. eastern european

>tfw my parents are paying my way through college
>tfw I'm not autistic enough for STEM
>tfw i'm gonna end up wasting over $60,000 of their money on a useless degree
TEFL is my only route, I can't see anything else. That, or suicide.

Boring is a subjective term. I prefer to think my life is chill

>>6861582
If you can't get into a good enough school that your liberal arts degree will get you a job you're one of the people who shouldn't be in university in the first place.

>>6861565
What about that one movie "Hostel" bro?

>>6861543
Thanks for the advice, I really do appreciate it.

i did alright on the SAT, 2140, and I've got a lot of extra-curricular stuff to boot, but I'm bitter about not having the grades to back it up, despite classes being mindnumbingly simple. It's easy to tell myself I'll sleep around South America getting drunk and cursing society. Convincing myself of going back to school and being surrounded by the same kind of people I went to highschool with for four years and 40,000$ really isn't.

>>6858876
how is it that you are going to teach english without a degree?

>>6857928
i bet you think william burroughs is a good writer