19
votes
What are you optimistic about?
It's all too easy to fall into pessimism and cynicism these days. What's something you genuinely believe in, look forward to, or hope for? It can be large or small, personal or global. I'm interested to hear what your bright spots are.
This is great. I think self-affirmation (especially when done publicly) can be really tough for people to do because we fear it may come across as bragging or being arrogant. Nevertheless, I think more people could use a positive and supportive view of themselves like the one you show here. Keep kicking ass!
Hopefully organized, industrial society keeps going for at least a few more decades. If Mars colonization ever really gets going, the spinoff technologies are going to be a massive boon to communities and individuals seeking comfortable, high-tech self sufficiency.
Humans are intrinsically good. The world is full of art and is getting even fuller every day. In some ways our lives are so advanced and comfortable that's it's like living in the future already. Every morning I and many many other people wake up to experience the great power of humanity that's way too easy to take for granted. The internet is a groundbreaking thing many of us witnessed emerging since childhood, and the difference is stark, only in few scifi books of the past it was predicted well. Surprisingly muscles really do grow somewhat if you exercise them and eat accordingly. Finally, the world is full of potential to share different kinds of love with others.
This is my first encounter with the word "sonder." Thanks for introducing it to me.
I love this.
And this.
Also, thanks for the reminder that the internet is amazing. The focus these days is usually on its downsides (and, admittedly, there are many). I also think it's easy for me to take for granted just how valuable it is to me, day in and day out. My life would be so much more limited without it.
This one seems kind of weak compared to the others here, but personally I'm really looking forward to more chapters of Delta Rune. I'm optimistic about it because the first chapter (here, avaliable for Windows and MacOS, runs flawlessly under WINE.) is absolutely fantastic. I don't want to put any spoilers in here, it's a 'sequel' to Undertale - which (despite it's odd fanbase) is a fantastic game in its own right.
Optimism is not a competition! Something worth looking forward to doesn't have to be huge or life-altering; the small things are also worth the attention. I'm personally jazzed for the upcoming release of the Katamari Damacy remaster.
I haven't played Undertale, but I do think it's neat how Deltarune's release was a surprise. I also saw comments that the game seems to pull info or do something with your data from the original game, which is pretty cool.
I didn't know that, I can't get Undertale running under Linux, so I guess anything fromt he old save file won't count. I've never played Katamari Damacy - care to give a brief review?
Katamari Damacy is an old cult-classic that came out on the Playstation 2. The game involves simply rolling around a ball, and objects with less approximate size than your ball will stick to it. This causes the ball to grow in size, which allows it to pick up bigger objects, which causes it to grow, which allows it to pick up bigger objects, and so on, and so on.
What probably elevated the game from neat idea to cult classic is the game's presentation. It has a lot of quirky charm. It's colorful and flamboyant, and it has a very odd yet very interesting soundtrack. The "King of All Cosmos" (the player character's dad) is iconic. Furthermore, the game is viscerally satisfying in a way that other games haven't even really attempted to capture. It feels great to start a level as, say, a tiny pea-sized ball on a dinner plate and slowly work your way up until you can pick up not only the plate, but the table it was sitting on. And then the house it was sitting in.
I can't give a blanket recommendation for the game as, if you look past the quirks and my potent nostalgia, the game is little more than a beat-the-clock score attack game, albeit delivered in a novel way. Nevertheless, it's one of my all-time favorites, and I'm excited to play it again for the first time in over a decade.
I'll say future too, like Bishop, but with a bit of a different backstory. I am from a quite poor background, our family and myself have been through quite a bit of drama for many years, which pushed me in to a sorts of depression throughout my teens (not diagnosed, but would surely have been if I visited a doctor). But then I wanted to become a programmer, I studied and learned some programming, and even worked as a Python/JS dev for a very short period. I then left that beind and went on to pursue some other things, but in the meantime I learned / discovered that once someone wants to do something, and puts enough time in it, they can do almost anything. This has taught me to let me to explore myself and the world, to allow me to learn more and more and to be open to, to not fear and to embrace change, current, or somewhere in the future. I've learned that I have the future, and it's the best thing to have, and that I must not avoid change just because it's change. And also that time spent doing something I don't desire to do anymore and am shifting my focus away from is not time lost, it's time spent truly enriching myself. It gives me many options now and many alternatives for the future. And all thanks to not shying away from change, and not giving in to people who told me that I'd have lost all those years spent doing the old thing. This willingness to change, to search the best has helped me to go from a poor, timid, depressive guy that can't help himself to a still poor (less so, and I can start earning money whenever I want), but content, peaceful, confident, knowledgeable, open and healthy one in a bunch of years. I taught myself how to live properly, how to love and care for myself, how to not lie to myself, and most importantly, hot to embrace and accept myself. I started becoming happier immediately, people started liking me more and respecting me, I started enjoying life. The bulk of that happened in a couple years. Then I kept on learning and changing. These days I'm quite happy with myself, feel like I've arrived to important conclusions that shape my worldview, came to terms with myself, and explored myself deeply. I think in linguistics I've found a nice place to express myself, my desire to learn and explore, my curiosity. I have enough alternative potential careers that I've guaranteed my future economically. There are two things I have to fix: one, I hate dayjobs, but I need to get one soon and earn some money, and two, I need to socialise more, take initiatives and make friends (something I have very little of). I think there are two reasons for these: I'm way too selfish with my time, and I kinda like being alone doing my thing (I can also be quite arrogant at times, a vice I can't ever fix, but I'm trying to tame it). But the future is mine, I will fix those to some extent.
Maybe when I said future, I meant my future, or maybe I meant myself. Maybe that's a bit selfish, but I feel quite optimistic about myself and my future, I'll go to greener pastures, and I feel like I'll do some big things. Big for myself definitely, but maybe for other people too.
Love and embrace thyselves, guys. That's the best thing you can do. Tell yourself that "normal" is bullshit, that it's less than you. That's the single best thing I've ever done for myself, ever. Fuck normal.
I'm optimistic about the future of the web. I love the tools, libraries, transpilers, and language support. I love the web as a platform as it's inherently shareable, and allows nearly-instant access without installers. I love the cooperation that happens between browser vendors to push standards forwards, and how open those developers are to feedback.
I see so much doom and gloom that I just can't wrap my head around. Gone are the days of table-based layouts. Gone are the days of quirks mode. It's actually a lot of fun to build websites now. It makes me excited to be a web developer, and I'm optimistic for what the future holds.
I have two big job interviews coming up, I’m hopeful at least one (one in particular) goes well! I’m optimistic about my chances for one, not so much for the other.
Energy. I think we are moving in a net positive direction in a huge way currently. Even big companies who mine oil and destroy Earth are moving toward a more renewable infrastructure because fossil fuels are unsustainable and they don't want to be the ones on a sinking ship 10-50 years from now. They're doing it for totally selfish reasons but that doesn't stop it from being good, just good hearted.
Although other parts of the environment I still worry, at least Energy is getting a lot of good attention. It affects many parts of the environment and not just emissions.