Why am I incapable of maturing?

Lately, I ve been depressed and more or less absolutely hating myself. I try to set goals for myself but never see them through. I m lazy and can t find the determination to start new habits and break old ones, like brushing my teeth in the morning and at night, or waking up on time, or even keeping my room clean. I m 19 and live with my mother and step father and attended almost a semester of community college but the work is too much and I don t do it despite being intelligent. My diet is terrible and I m too underweight for my height and age. I ve had 3 jobs but nothing in my savings even though I don t pay any bills at all. I go to bed at 4 and wake up at 1 because I don t have a job. I need to grow up but I have no clue how. I d like to grow up and learn to live by myself and follow my dreams, while saving money and being hygienic, strong, and healthy but I ve no clue how to help myself. Any real advice would be extremely appreciated. Thank you.

 

It's because you're a boy not a man

 

No duh sherlock, teach me to be manly with your cowboy hat and the name BeatinFeet69. I'm asking for advice, not criticism.

 

here's my hint: you DO have a clue how. That's all I'm goiing to say. I wish you the best...

 

Medication?

 

You may want to take a look at the first post in this thread
Treating Depression and Anxiety

If you don't know where your money goes, you should try to figure that out and cut out unnecessary expenses if you want to save money

You should probably try to get up in the morning with an alarm, if necessary. Keeping regular hours is probably better for your health, and may help you get and keep a job

There are dietary recommendations in the link. Improving your diet isn't that hard. If you get a bag of mixed frozen vegetables and put about half of it in a microwave-safe dish and zap it for 8 minutes or so on high, you'll get a cheap, nutritious meal for cheap. They have some cloth microwave cooker bags for potatoes. You can also microwave whole rolled oats. Canned beans are easy to heat up, and pressure cooking beans freshly isn't that hard.

A lot of guys your age jerk off a lot. I'm not sure if that's the case for you or not, but try to keep to once every three days, at least until your energy and motivation improve.

 

get a haircut and get a real job

 

Step one
Get out of bed before 8am and make the bed. First task of the day has been accomplished. Then get your bathroom chores done. Shit, shave, shower and brush your teeth.
Get a nice haircut and keep it that way.
Leave the house. No television or internet until later in the day. Limit the electronic distraction to less than an hour a day.
There is a start. Do that for a month or so and a routine will develop and you will begin to feel better about yourself.
FYI it takes me three or four days to watch a 45 minutes program on Netflix. I have better things to do with myself. Tonight I am changing the oil In our Tahoe, fixing the drywall in the kitchen so we can paint and grabbing some great sex before I go to bed. That’s just how we roll.
Good luck and get a healthy routine started.

 

Get a nice haircut.

 

Certainly cutting out doing stuff that is a waste of time will help you do more productive things. Also not watching screens 3 hours before bedtime might help you to get to sleep earlier

 

There are several factors adding up to this malaise of yours. It's a cascade of issues, some you control, some roll over you. At 19 you only lack experience, you've been educated for over a decade of your life. But schools don't teach life skills at the human level, only at the provisioning level.

I'd suggest 2 books and a short story. The first is "The Peter Pan Syndrome" By Dan Kiley. The second is "Games Alcoholics Play" by Claude Steiner. The last is a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald called "The Lost Decade".

The first book does an excellent job of describing the ways men's lives change and how so many of them never mature. It's inspired all kinds of plots for plays, film and articles. I suggest it because it explained a great deal to me about why I was such a spazz on some things and that I was holding myself to a standard, demanded by my family, that was no longer livable in the modern world. It also showed me that way out of worrying about the stupid shit in my life.

The second book is suggested not because I think you're an alcoholic/addict. There's no way I'd know such a thing so I don't assume it (even in this place). The book itself gives amazing insight into people who have self-programmed into the lives of their own bullshit. While the aim is to inform the victims of alcoholics, you'd be amazed how many non-drinkers act in many of the same ways. But like silk, once you get that end strand, you end up owning the whole length.

The short story is an interesting study of a guy who simply lost interest in almost everything. He rationalized all kinds of reasons he couldn't socialize, work regular hours, eat normally etc. I can't write a short synopsis of this short story because you really have to get all the words coming at once, the whole silk thread so to speak.

Lastly, I'd suggest you adopt a contrarian position to your norm for the next year. I did this back in the late 80s when I found myself homeless after breaking up (getting dumped) with a fiance of 5 years. Before that I had a string of breakups as well as a string of firings by disgruntled employers who didn't care for my continually disgruntled posture. So I decided to do something totally different for employment. I hate sales work and I hate dealing with the public. So I took a retail job with a major electronics company (that no longer exists) selling personal computers (I seriously hated doing computer support work).

I immersed myself in the kind of working environment that barely allowed a social life. I rented a garage that had a bathroom for $165 a month. I joined a gym, at first so I could get regular showers, I really hate going to the gym, like, to exercise. But I forced that as well as surviving the Fit for Life diet. I wasn't particularly overweight then, but I was also staying awake artificially to keep on selling and feeding the greed machine. I was not able to shelve my addictions, but I could barely afford them. Regardless, I was doing the opposite of my comfort zones.

Selling to the public meant that I'd have to be really nice to people I'd rather be thrashing with several lengths of Monster Cable. But the worst, was when it was a woman I could only think about naked and impaled on what I hoped could behave while I showed her a computer, I mean calculator, oh wait, it's a phone. See, I wasn't hanging out in bars looking for love, that was the old me. While I knew the game very well, it caused me to create a fantasy that couldn't hold itself together, so it was one of the main things I was really trying to change.

So naturally I met a girl who worked at the mall. It wasn't difficult, there was only 1 bar in the mall. And it was small, but always packed with mall workers after the big doors finally closed for the night. She sold cheap clothing for the middle class masses that fanned out for miles. For extra cash I started installing cheap stereos connected to massive amps, subwoofers and loosened fillings. So I asked her out, we went out, and all was good. For 3 months. Then she realized I was not going up as fast as she wanted, so she took a job at another mall, in Dallas. And like a fart in the wind, she was gone.

My contrarian year lasted a total of 4 years. Then I met Jane, my wife. The woman who didn't dump me when she found out I was an old school addict and pervasive con artist (even timeshares). But once I saw the ultrasound of our first child, I realized I couldn't be another one of those strung-out "dads". That happened to many of my friends. So I put the hard stuff behind (after trip #89). Then I got an excellent job, put my wife through college and bought her a house. And a sports car.

/<tangent>

 

Don't try to change everything at once. Pick something small at first, and do it for a week. Then add something else small, wait a week, and so on.

If you try to change everything at once, you're likely going to fail and just feel worse. Slow and steady.

 

Baby steps is best. Taking on to much at once is a recipe for failure.

 

I tried the incremental approach, it didn't work out so well for me. So I jumped into the pool with no idea how cold it would be. I think it brought balance. Especially after so many years of chaos (which seemed to follow me around).

 

The best advice is often criticism. Still here's some less critical advice.....but only slightly.

1: Get off your ass & get a real hard working job. Perhaps apprentice at a farm or work in a factory. The best way to mature is to sweat the boy out of you.

2: Remember that you are blessed to be alive & to get to live everyday & never forget to be grateful for it.

3: When life punches punch back twice as fuckin' hard

4: Always stand up for what you know is right come hell or high water.

5: Be a trustworthy & honorable man.

6: Always treat a lady with respect & if you don't someone aught to kick your ass six ways to Sunday.

7: Always stand back up & dust yourself off.

8: The devil's only gonna catch you if you hang round hell too damn long.

9: Just cause you can fuck don't mean you always should fuck.

10: You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away, & know when to run. You never count your money while you're sittin' at the table. There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

 

^^^^......Nice Post......



Cheers Glen.

 

Don't mature too fast, you're young youth is something you don't get back.

 

Real men never fully mature :cheers2:

 

^^^
This.

OP, you're still 19. When I was your age, I didn't even worry about being mature. I was immature as fuck, and that was fine for the most part. Now, 20+ years later, I like to think that I'm a bit more mature than I was when I was 19. BUT, at the same time, I absolutely would hate to think that I've matured too much to the point where I've turned into some completely boring jaded "adult". It seems like you already know which areas in your life you wish to rectify. So that's totally fine. I say work on those things. But remember, a truly mature being will be the first to enjoy the most child-like(however, I shall refrain from using the term "childish" or "immature") activities and be proud of the fact. Never lose that innocent part of you.

All the best,
#80

 

i cant see myself any different to when i was 18 really, I am still into all the things I was ever into as a kid from dragons to the music.
I look at maturity as understanding and learning from things as you go through life. Just life experience. If you aren't learning or keep falling into the same holes then yeah maybe you aren't maturing in those areas.
Other than physically aging, I cannot see myself at this stage settling down from maturity.