This past year has been a roller coaster of emotions for me.
I met a lot of new cool people, tried so many new things, and finally found and eventually lost my first love at 24 years old.
Yet I feel so numb.
I feel like I'm just an empty shell wandering around with no clear objective in my life and with no capacity to give back what has been given to me.

Especially today, being the last day of the year, it has been a day of reflection. While everyone else is getting ready to party, I've been crying or sitting in silence, thinking about who I really am and who I want to be.

This question has been haunting me for years now.
Growing up, I have never seemed to be like the other people: I envied so much how they had passions, enjoyment for food, activities, whatever.
For me, I always lived by only experiencing things if forced or pushed by others instead of seeking them actively.

Even today, while I can't say I don't enjoy anything, because that would be lying to myself,
I can't really say I LOVE anything,
I can't really say I live fully,
and I'm still envious of those people who seem to take everything so passionately and at heart.

Even family relationships feel like a burden to me. I have no interest in talking to my parents, to my grandpa, to my brother... even though I know every moment could be the last moment I have to do so.

It's like everything eventually becomes a chore for me, and the first thing to have become so was my family. That's also why I pushed so hard to find a job outside of home and why I rarely come back.

I've been researching this state of mind, and I came across potential reasons as to why I may have become like this, because I wasn't always like this.
For example, I can remember the passion I had as a kid for videogames, for construction games, for drawing, for science, for creating in general, and for being a leader of my friends.

1. My surroundings

Since high school started, I lost most of my old friendships, which led me to find new ones in the class I was attending.
Being a weird kid, and being in a place where groups had already formed in the class, I ended up becoming friends with the other weird kids.
The issue with that is that the interests of the weird kids were not the interests I had.
Sure, I liked talks about science, physics, and crazy hypotheticals, but I also wanted to live like a normal guy: play sports, have a girlfriend, go to parties, etc. I have always felt trapped by my surroundings, and I never acted to get out of them.
After all, it was a safe space.
This is not only my friends, but also my family, which, even though they would support me no matter what, I still see as a limiting factor in what I could do and want to do.

2. Social Media

I came across a research paper that correlates loss of cognitive capability with the use of social media, particularly when engaging in "Doom Scrolling".
The constant feed of dopamine to the brain while scrolling plummets the dopamine baseline of the brain, making everything seem numb and gray.
To the point where every dead moment in a day has to be filled by staring at the screen, by consuming and not creating, a.k.a., finding out what to do.
It's much more convenient to just have an algorithm who knows you better than you do, tell you what to watch, knowing that you'll most likely "enjoy" it, even if temporarily. Going deeper into research, I found out that the effects of social media are very similar to what I've been feeling these past years.
I might go back to this more in depth in the future.

3. The use of AI

Just like I've been offloading the burden of thinking about what to do in a not-so exciting city and company, I've also been offloading the very act of thought to AI. I notice myself asking it the most ridiculous and dumb questions, when it would be so much more beneficial to think about them myself.
The issue with AI for me is that I could have any answer (right or wrong) at my fingertips, even for slightly more complicated queries that could just be answered easily by a search engine:
this, combined with my dopamine addiction from social media, ends up in a terrible symbiosis that prevents any proactive use of the brain throughout the day.
Thinking has become very foggy and difficult, with my mind always losing itself in the process of a very simple thought.

(I remember at work one time it was very hot and the AC was turned off.
I was thinking in my brain: "The AC is off, because people feel cold or hot?"
This question, which is so stupid, it's literally just one step away from the answer, was so hard to reply to myself at the time.
I spent 5 minutes thinking about it and I had to WRITE DOWN the boolean hot/cold operation with a NOT to understand if the person that turned it off was feeling too cold or too hot.
This episode made me finally find out how terrible the AI has been on my cognitive capabilities.)

My good proposals for 2026

I'm leaving 2025 with a lot of good, bad memories and questions behind, but I also want to have some answers.
This is why in 2026 I will challenge myself to:

• Go to a psychologist: I need to have peace in my mind if I want to become the person I always wanted to be.
• Start the gym / a fighting sport: There can't be a strong mind inside of a weak body.
• Cut down on social media: I'm seriously debating on whether to buy a flip phone and just be forced to use that on a day to day basis.
• Utilize AI more consciously: I need to get back on track and take hold of the things I do myself.
  Being a programmer, many of the routine tasks could be offloaded to AI, but all the hard decisions should be left to me, and I still have to write from time to time to not forget how to do it.
• Force myself to meet new people: I need to do this.
  I know I can find people that align to me and better me as a person.
  This year I found out I can experience real love, even though it was for a short while.
  This is proof that there's someone out there who is compatible with me.
• Meditate: I have been kind of experimenting with this the past months after my breakup, which by the way I believe was also caused by how these issues make me behave, but that's for another post in the future maybe.
  I have been going for walks by myself, just for the sake of walking and thinking.
  I found it works very well, and it's one of the only moments in the day where I could actually have clarity.
  This year I would like to meditate better and with criteria.
  I need to get informed on this still.
• Strive to learn: I have bought a guitar but have rarely played it.
  I was mostly just driven, yet again, by someone else's passions (my ex lol).
  This time, I want to actually go ahead and bring myself to learn something for myself.
  Doesn't have to be only guitar, could be a new concept, a new recipe, anything.
• Train memory: I need to force myself to remember things without the aid of my phone. My memory has been severely impaired these past years.
• Additional goals: There's probably much more I'm missing, but in the meanwhile, I leave this blog post here as a way to remind myself that this is what I arrived at, this was my state of mind on that day, and this is what I don't want to be. I hope myself of the future will look back at this with a changed perspective, and a better outlook on life.

If anyone has been reading this, I hope I didn't scare you with my thoughts,
just know that I know and I'm sure that I'm strong enough to hold on and better myself and not let this shit win me.

Love you all,
- Federico