Feeling of "demodernization/being outdated", can anyone else relate?

[zentropa]

Could this be a sign of emerging mental illness? You are the age when bipolar, paranoid schizophrenia etc begins to show. I'd keep an eye on that. Your posts seem to reveal an increasingly troubled mind.

[TheShadow]

I think the word OP might be looking for is angst.

angst (æŋst; German aŋst)
n
1. an acute but nonspecific sense of anxiety or remorse

I think most young adults go through at least one period of angst about their place in the world. For some, it passes as they find fulfillment in their career, or meet their life-mates and form a new family apart from their family of origin. For others, it's more free-floating anxiety that sticks with them for much longer. Humans seek a feeling of belonging. If you feel out of step with your peers, or you feel like everyone else is moving on to the next phase and you aren't, it's fairly common. You might talk with trusted friends about it, or maybe an older sympathetic relative, or even a therapist.

[elyn02]

It makes me happy when people are motivated or inspired by trends. Not keeping up with trends does not concern me because the people who influence me are not dumb. They are not going to follow a trend just because everyone else is doing it but that doesn't mean they won't follow a trend. I also avoid people who take world news or even US news way too personally. Instead, energy is invested in the people I know or in those who come in contact with me daily. Finally, I only buy clothes that look good on me and this has worked well for me since college when people assumed I used a lot of time putting myself together every morning. Nope. The energy was spent buying the clothes.

[TamaraSavannah]

Originally Posted by zentropa

Could this be a sign of emerging mental illness? You are the age when bipolar, paranoid schizophrenia etc begins to show. I'd keep an eye on that. Your posts seem to reveal an increasingly troubled mind.

Or maybe it is just denial to a world that bombards us with the way it thinks we are suppose to be.

Ie, like for me, a world that constantly tells me that I am suppose to be married and have children. It is maddening enough to be away from the media.....and think how it is when one is submerged in it.

I have a friend who is watching something on Youtube about wars in Europe because the issue in Ukraine got him interested. If he asked me what I thought, I would say I don't, don't pay attention to it, to what's going on, to the feelings.....because there is nothing I can do about it and why worry about what you can do nothing about.

So I turn away from so much technology that wants to keep me linked in......because I don't need that stress.

[mordant]

At your point in life, obsession with (not) belonging or being (un)popular is pretty typical. You'll most likely outgrow it.

At your age I was also unmoved by fads / trends, although I got away with it, living as I did in rural (read: "backwards") areas during my adolescence where all the latest crazes were viewed by everyone as stuff that happened in faraway places and thus were irrelevant.

This mindset has served me well in software development, which is a very fad-driven field. At least it has in terms of actually producing quality software. At the moment it's causing me some difficulty getting taken seriously by some potential clients because they've been bamboozled into thinking that I can't possibly be getting good results without [insert latest hot technology or tool or methodology here]. But I am not feeling alienated about it. In fact there are a lot of my colleagues who feel the same way: that software is often grotesquely over-engineered and buzzword-driven. One just has to patiently wait for the right opportunity / "fit".

Many times in life you will have to stand at least partly alone, if you're remotely self-aware and rational and strategic. It is not an unusual state of affairs, and in fact, if you strive to always "fit in", it's very limiting.