I often want to feel like shit thinking it will help me eventually to get what I want

I have episodes now and then where I feel like shit and I in some sense want to feel like shit. Explanations rarely help. When I search for an explanation I will come up with ten reasonable explanations that nevertheless feel like bullshit. Eventually maybe I come up with one that feels like a match: "I'm worried I'm never going to find my girl." And then what? Well, for some reason, I want to feel like shit about that, it feels like a good idea.

I wonder why it would feel like a good idea to feel like shit over the possibility I'm never going to find my girl. Logically, it seems like a bad idea — if she's out there where I may find her, I'm less likely to appeal to her if I'm feeling like shit. So why would it nevertheless be a good idea to feel like shit?

Well, maybe the reason I'm "never going to find my girl" is some character flaw I can work on. Maybe it's that I'm out of shape, or rather I am in the shape of an egg rather than a more appealing shape. Maybe it's that I am clinging to my hair and my familiar visual identity instead of shaving my head despite my obvious (especially in photos) bald patch. Maybe it's my cowardice, the way I hold back my questions and feelings and thoughts and opinions and interests for fear of others' reactions, like how I sometimes notice, "This girl's cute, and I find her interesting," but suppress my attraction to her because for some reason or another I think I can't get her — she's too young, or too pretty, or too cool to get with a guy like me, or she's probably not compatible in ways X, Y, or Z. And if I'm "never going to find my girl" because of a character flaw, that's bad and I want to feel bad about it so I can change my character so that I will find my girl.

Feeling bad is the fuel to get in shape, shave my head, and get a spine. Except it isn't because I keep feeling that way and not doing any of those things.

Still, even if it's not helping in itself, at least it's keeping me aware that I want to do something about getting in shape, shaving my head, and getting a spine. That's reason enough to feel like shit, right? If I didn't feel like shit then I might forget that I care about that, and then I'd be screwed, I'd never remember to do the thing and I'd die alone.

And that would suck because it would prove I'm a loser who doesn't have what it takes to get what I want, despite billions of people with objectively fewer resources/worse situations finding something along those lines. That would make me an idiot, that I can't figure out how to use my greater resources to get what I want. I really don't want to be an idiot.

Not wanting to be an idiot is probably something to do with why I learned Haskell as a teenager. Some mix of curiosity and insecurity. Haskell was known as the biggest baddest intellectual challenge in the room of mainstream-name programming languages so that's what I threw myself at. I did also, foolishly, think it would be useful for video games because people kept saying that — that was very very wrong.

Back to the idiot thing, and why I don't want to be an idiot. I don't want to be an idiot because that would mean I don't get what I want even though in theory I have the right conditions to get it. But now we're starting to run in circles and I'm getting bored with this. I still pretty much want to feel like shit. I don't like feeling like shit but it seems to be the way to eventually get what I want and I want to get what I want more than I want to feel a way that I want to feel. Or, so it seems right now.

Maybe I could stop feeling like shit and still care about getting fit, shaving my head, and growing a spine? That might just be possible. I might even have managed it once or twice.

Man, this happiness thing is hard.