I AM Pessimistic

I thought what I wanted was so simple yet every step I took towards it was so difficult and the outcome was always less ideal or rather disappointing for many occasions. Being an atheist, I could only believe it was somewhat fate. Fate is, however, such a tricky idea. It is rather sarcastic for some atheists like me who believes no supreme power beyond our mind but think there is such matter as fate somewhere controls our uncontrollable existences. I too found it foolish and had endeavoured to actively challenge it but I was less convinced by the results of my efforts. Therefore I concluded that it must have been my expectations being so high that I ended up unsatisfied.

As a consequence, and also as a result of brought up by my father, I have grown this habit of picturing the worst outcomes of things all the time and getting myself repaired for such scenarios. In short, I am very realistic, although most of my friends disagree and crown me as pessimistic. In my defence, this is simply a form of self-protection mechanism. Equipping myself with imaginable least ideal consequences prevent me from being upset from less ideal results. A friend of mine once told me that all I was enjoying was the surprise given by the outcome of something, which at the end was proven better than I had expected. He might be right.

It is actually just a strong form of insecurity. It might be, in fact, caused by my strong desires of the best outcomes, which led to my disappointment and not being able to believe myself again. It does sound sad and it probably makes it sadder when I am, now, speaking of it out loud, not very proudly though. But of course I am not such a sad little thing in all respects. I am extremely confident about the utterly odd Neural Network online learning framework I proposed in my PhD research. Well, I am confident that it is odd enough, at the very least. So, the light of hope is there somewhere after all, and I will propose to my PhD thesis tomorrow. I’d have to get a ring tonight somewhere.

By the way, happy Chinese New year. It is going to a splendid year of rat.