Making this thread as a general place to put all my ramblings down, something in the vein of pic related but hopefully not as schizophrenic/autistic, and in the vague hope that someone can help me figure things out. If you don't like walls of text just post the Duke Nukem image now.
I think my biggest struggle in life right now is that I don't really know what I'm doing. It's a sad and pathetic cycle that goes something like this:
>decide at the start of the week that I am going to adhere to a strict schedule of what I want to do each day, finding a good balance between games, doing productive work, and exercising
>day one usually goes well, stick to the schedule I made, feel good about myself
>day two I let one or two things slip, but make excuses that it was ok, you had a long day at work, it's understandable, you can make up for it tomorrow
>day three the schedule is a distant memory, bulk of my free time that day is playing games or staring at the dozen or so threads I have open waiting for new posts
This also leads into my next problem, that between everything I want to do, I can bring myself to do all but one of them. For example, each week I tell myself that I will exercise, work on my game, stay away from soda/sugar/alcohol, and practice drawing. My brain appears to only be capable of doing three of those at a time, which is the point where my schedule collapses. I can exercise, work on my game, and abstain from sweets, but by the end of the day when it's time to draw, my brain is so exhausted that I cannot bring myself to do so and I just go to bed. Then the next day a mentality of "welp you failed too bad, time to play vidya all week" sets in and I accomplish nothing, and get depressed. Or I will stay with the schedule for a day or two, but then something almost ALWAYS happens later that week that is entirely out of my control and completely trashes it (such as my parents wanting to do something together that screws up my schedule for the day, so afterwards the mentality of "why bother" sets in again, a family member dying so I have to go out of town for the funeral, or some other batshit insane event that you couldn't have predicted in a thousand years, like your neighbor drives through your apartment and leaves you homeless and depressed for a month. I do have discipline though, I am on 10+ months of nofap, I did it for over a year in 2019-20, and this time it's been even easier. Quitting porn has been harder, I went about two months without watching it, but even glancing at anime tiddies on boards is hard to avoid, and I can't resist looking at spoilered images. Never though that quitting sugar would be harder than quitting jerking off, or that doing something productive would be harder than not doing something unproductive, but here I am.
Exercising is something I struggle with, even though there is absolutely no excuse for it. When I still had my gym membership, I would try to go in three times a week, but almost always ended up going once or twice at most, and I can narrow it down to one simple reason: fear of failure. As my lifts progressed and I'd increase weight each week, I panic and have anxiety about lifting, especially if I barely succeeded on the last lift. This was mostly an issue with squats, and the thought of doing them makes me panic. It was not always like this; at my peak in my sophomore year of college I could squat 240+ lbs, but the past year I could barely manage 140 at the most, and I have no idea why. My diet was very high protein, moderate fat, low carbs (not keto), so it wasn't what I was or was not eating. The mentality of "Why am I not progressing, I used to be able to do this, why is it hard now" sets in hard, and with each week when you can't break through the plateau it grates against my sanity and I become embroiled in self-doubt, which takes a toll on other aspects of my life including the aforementioned schedule. Since I will be moving "soon" I cancelled my gym membership (they only offer one-year memberships, and fuck Planet Fitness), and am now trying to maintain or at least delay losing my gains until I move and get a real gym membership again by doing a home workout routine of squats and pushups, but I can't even manage that, as the same panic sets in as before, even without any extra weight on me. I am not a skele by any means, but I am nowhere near swole either. My forearms are pathetically small (I can wrap my thumb and pointer finger around my wrist and have them touch), and I struggled with arm gainz for a very long time, always failing at a pathetically low weight (overhead press never went above 40 lbs. without the bar). I've been told my whole life that I have a runner's body, that I am built for endurance rather than strength, but I refuse to believe that I can't fail that hard and not put in some amount of effort into my upper body.
My social life is also a large problem. I have about five people that I hang out with regularly, and they have nothing much to offer me. They are not bad people by any means, and I do enjoy their company, but our interests don't align as much as I wish they would, and they don't offer much in terms of personal growth. It seems as if every week we do the same things, make the same jokes, and play the same games. It also doesn't help that getting them to do anything new is next to impossible for various frustrating reasons. I have made a few attempts at expanding my friend group, primarily through apps but absolutely not Dicksword, and I have met a couple of guys that seem cool (minus one that turned out to be a complete freak, which I made the mistake of meeting IRL when I should've seen the warning signs), but I don't know if I should even bother going further because I will be moving away in a short time. Living on my own is also beginning to toil against my sanity. I find myself talking to myself, speaking random thoughts out loud without warning, and painful memories coming back at random moments like a bullet through my head. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and find it hard to comprehend that all of this is actually happening, that I am actually on my own, that I am where I am now. This is a normalnigger reference but there's a Family Guy sketch where Brian gets kicked out and moves into a ghetto apartment, and the experience he has there is just about what I'm feeling now. Sad, lonely, and isolated.
My dating life is nonexistent. I have not had a gf or gone on a date in 4+ years. There is no scenario where I see myself meeting a woman in a social situtation where it is not weird. For example:
>see cute girl in grocery store
>???
I can envision no scenario where I can start talking to her that is not autistic, retarded, rude, or idiotic.
My friends don't do anything, so there are no parties or social events that I can go to to meet people. This leaves dating apps, which are an excellent way to destroy your self-image and self-worth. I have swiped right on hundreds of women, and have not received one match. When you are competing against literal 7'0" gigachads with the world's most powerful chins that can bench press a bus, you look like a faggot by comparison. Add in that with each time you like a woman on there, you're just part of the endless stream of guys validating her endless void of need for social acceptance. It makes you feel like you're nothing more than a tool or a pawn in the womyn game, which you are. Using that as a catalyst to improve your gains is incredibly shallow; appeasing thots on the internet is not a motivator, yet when I fail at my gains it hurts even more because of it.