Stats for nerds
2recommend
3mentions
3people
2021–2025years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I found this quote in "Notes On A Nervous planet" by the wonderful Matt Haig a few years ago. It was the first time I felt "seen" and like someone else could articulate this weird feeling I sometimes had...
"People who have never had a period of living with anxiety and panic don’t understand that the realness of you is an actual feeling that you can lose. People take it for granted. You don’t get up in the morning and think, as you spread peanut butter onto your toast, ‘Ah, good, my sense of self is still intact, and the world is still real, I can now get on with my day.’ It’s just there. Until it isn’t. Until you are in the cereal aisle, feeling inexplicable terror. When trying to express what a panic attack feels like it’s easy to talk about the obvious symptoms: the racing thoughts, the palpitations, the tightness of the chest, the breathlessness, the nausea, the tingling sensations inside your skull or your arms and legs. But there is another more complicated symptom I used to get. One which I have come to realise is at the heart of what my panic attacks have always been about. It is the one called, tellingly, derealisation. Within a feeling of derealisation, I still knew I was me. I just didn’t feel I was me. It is a feeling of disintegration. Like a sand sculpture crumbling away. And there is a paradox about this sensation. Because it feels like both an extreme intensity of self and a nothingness of self. A feeling of no return, as if you have suddenly lost something that you didn’t know you had to look after, and that the thing you had to look after was you."
- With the year coming to an end, what's on your reading list for the year ahead that you're excited to get stuck into? Here's a few of my own to start things off -
- Finish reading "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software". I'm hoping as I look to take an extended break from the 9-5 grind, I'll be able to spend more time creating some fun projects off the back of the book, cementing what is taught.
- "Project Hail Mary" by Andy Weir. After enjoyed "Martians", I'm keen to keep extending my fiction library (after largely focusing on non-fiction for the past few years).
- "Exhalation" by Ted Chiang. Last year I read "Stories of your life and others", and can see the reason behind the hype for his work (his writing style is very unique), I'd like to continue to explore more work by Ted.
- "Notes on a nervous planet" by Matt Haig. Very relatable books so far (such as "midsummer library"), I'm looking forward to continue working through his catalogue.
- > I was seeking the external gratification of getting likes just like everyone else.
“You will be happy to look okay. You will be happy to turn heads. You will be happy with smoother skin. You will be happy with a flat stomach. You will be happy with a six-pack. You will be happy with an eight-pack. You will be happy when every photo of yourself gets 10,000 likes on Instagram. You will be happy when you have transcended earthly woes. You will be happy when you are at one with the universe. You will be happy when you are the universe. You will be happy when you are a god. You will be happy when you are the god to rule all gods. You will be happy when you are Zeus. In the clouds above Mount Olympus, commanding the sky. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.”
― Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet , Shortened version of the many-paragraphs-long quote found on: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10913632-you-will-be-happy-...
