I am not doing well again, and this is my best effort to put it all to words.
I have been struggling with school assignments, I am feeling depressed again, and feel a lot of chronic pain.
The saddening began after finishing my big watch project. I was yet to present my watch design to the company board, and tried to prepare the best I could. I could barely keep myself without shaking and crying and when it was time to present I could not properly follow my planned outline. I couldn’t stop stuttering and looking at the floor. I was stopped and called out by my low volume by the CEO, something I was warned would happen. At some point we crossed gazes and he immediately scoffed loudly, looking away and shaking his head. I couldn’t look at the rest of the room, but I knew I was letting people down. Other classmates had amazing designs too, yet somehow I was picked.
After it was done, I felt relieved, but also overwhelmed by the many assignments I had neglected from focusing too much on one subject. Honestly, I barely tried getting those assignments done in the end, I was so exhausted and uninspired that I couldn’t do it. I decided to take the L and fail two classes…
During winter break I attended a wedding, and decided to wear eye makeup, which I hadn’t in months. The mascara was quite old by that point, and I don’t know if it was contaminated, or maybe I crimped my eyelashes with a bit of the eyelid, but I began developing a large lump on my eyelid. Everything is blurry out of that eye; reading what’s on my phone is impossible until I hold it 10 cm away from my face. This makes sketching really difficult. It’s been there since, and my vision has not improved.
Returning to school, I was surprised the two classes had not been failed yet, they were marked incomplete, and one of them I must complete in order to be registered for a new class this semester. I spent most of January working on those assignments, the interior design of a car. During this time however, I should have been working on my new classes, designing an impact wrench, as well as the exterior of the previously mentioned car, in addition to other assignments for general requirement classes.
When I was done with the car interior, I moved on to the impact wrench. But I was not feeling inspired to draw anything. I was having some ideas on how to move buttons around, and how to improve user experience with the whole air compressor system, but in terms of how to make the tool look “good”, I was drawing a blank. This terrifies me, I’m supposed to be a designer. I can think of solutions to user problems, but thinking about how a modern power tool should look, it would simply not happen.
Days went by without any ideas until presentation day. With nothing, I didn’t present, but I kept working on it. There’s some ideas emerging, but when I try sketching them, I just can’t seem to do it well enough. I’m also supposed to have superb sketching skills, but right now I just can’t.
Assignments are piling up again, with the next impact wrench presentation coming next week, as well as physical models, a poster, and multiple speeches.
I also need to finish my portfolio, one of those two classes I neglected. I have several projects I can show, but I feel like they all need improvement, there’s just no time, and with everything else going on, I feel too discouraged to work on that. I need to though. I need an internship and they are all hiring right now.
I feel so scared about a job, I’ve honestly never done anything like that before, and when I can’t even greet people without feeling extremely anxious, or give a very important presentation, or walk around in public without feeling paranoid, how can I think about being in an interview.
The job outlook for industrial design is also terrible. I can’t stop hearing from other classmates and professionals online that they just can’t find a job, or even interviews. Frankly, it’s making me scared about the future, I wonder if I’ll be safe and have access to healthcare.
The instruction at school is not what it once was. With the program shut down, teachers are leaving since they have no one else to teach. We are left with the program director, who always pushes us to do our best, but sometimes leaves things to be desired. He has been understanding though, and has allowed me extra time to complete the missing assignments. He can be very vague when talking to me, while he spends a lot of time talking to other students. At some point he was looking at images of futuristic car designs and was amazed by some, which were AI, while a real sketch made him say “this one is not quite there.”
At least one classmate used AI for the previous air wrench class, and while the idea is interesting, a wearable harness containing the hose for the tool, the images generated, delivered as final design, are just stupid. It could not be manufactured, it has pointless lines and cables; I can’t imagine how it was allowed. And so, should I just write whatever and use a generated image to just get the assignment over with? Well, of course fucking not, but, the barrier I’m hitting right now, the look of the tool, not the ergonomics, or user interaction elements, just the aesthetic part; that is something that a single prompt can solve, and then what am I good for? It is not right to think this way, but I can’t help it.
All the garbage being produced with generative AI, all the aggressive marketing and implementation, lots and lots of money put into hardware for data centers, price hikes for consumers, information poisoning, intellectual property scrapping, all for what? This is only destroying our minds, the environment, the economy. I am sick of this obsession with an unregulated technology that keeps messing with how we live.
Trans rights keep being eradicated in many places. It is genuinely dangerous, even illegal, to exist as a trans person in some parts of the US. I may follow bills and laws too closely, perhaps not the best for my mental health, but I want to make sure that I can keep me and others safe.
I have started crying randomly again, and flashes of self harm flood my mind constantly. I don’t want to lose hope.
This post is all over the place, but I’m beginning to feel like breaking again, and instead of sleeping, I tried to finally pen down some reasons why. I wish I didn’t feel this way.
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