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  • The Young Man Trap

    Young adults today are increasingly falling into the trap of escaping the processing of their emotions by obsessive internet usage. This essay is part one of a two-part series on how I, as a young adult, have realized this trap and how I escaped its drastically negative consequences.

    To begin, let me take you to the catalyst for this quite simple observation. For the past two months I switched my daily phone to a flip phone. I use this fliphone to make calls and text people. I also occasionally carry around my regular iPhone that’s connected to WiFi for apps like slack, outlook, and grubhub (My campus runs on grubhub). Now what that means is that when I’m outside, or in certain areas of buildings that don’t have wifi, I’m left completely alone with the flip phone. Which is basically useless at anything except for calling or texting. So why do I bring this up.

    Well I want to ask you, the reader, when was the last time you had a meal completely alone with no phone. When was the last time you went to the bathroom without bringing your phone in. Or the last time you’ve sat completely alone with your thoughts for longer than 10 minutes. If you asked me the last time I consistently spent time alone with no external simulation, the answer would’ve been years ago. Maybe its different for you, but for most young men and women it’s not too much different. None of us can bear to stand our own thoughts for too long.

    Let’s go back to third grade Ashwin, when I last spent time consistently unstimulated. This was frankly a great time for me. My biggest problems were about what route to run during recess football and finishing my Kumon homework. My day-to-day life would be waking up around 7:00 AM and getting ready for school. My mom would come and wake me but at that point I’d get ready myself. Then it’s off to the bus where I’d spend the morning commute talking to my friends on the bus. I’d get through school and when I came home, I was greeted with some food and one hour of glorious TV time. If the weather permitted, I’d play outside for an hour or two instead of watching TV. After that I’d clean up, eat dinner, do homework, read, and be off to bed.

    Technology wasn’t that huge in 2014/2015 for an 8-9 year old. We had like 5 laptops per classroom and we only used them in limited scenarios. Everything was done on paper and you really didn’t need a phone. Some kids did, others had a flip-phone, but most didn’t.  

    Why I narrate my day to day life is because you can see there was very little screen time. Phones and computers weren’t too popular and I didn’t need to use them. This meant a lot of the time I was in my own head. My imagination was firing on all cylinders to keep me entertained and any negative emotions that came up I had to deal with it myself or talk it out with my parents. While third grade was generally great the following elementary school years were not as. I was increasingly lonely and on my own (I was a weird kid). Throughout this though there was no internet I could delve into to distract myself or numb the negative emotions. Instead, I’d read books, sit with my thoughts, and try my best to be around other people.

    Now let’s look at high school life. In the span of five – six years everything changed. Keep in mind this is after a year and a half of COVID shenanigans. The actual school days are mostly the same except with a laptop in class, I’d more often than not be distracted. Then after school would be hugely different. I’d sit blasting short form content or jumping from video to video on YouTube for around a hour to an hour and a half just to decompress from a busy or stressful school day. Then after cleaning up, I’d sit down to do school work. My classes were not easy, and I’d usually eat dinner while studying. For bedtime I’d scroll through more short form content or videos until I felt my eyes were too tired and go to bed.

    The differences I want to highlight here are that I’d never spend time outside. Maybe the occasional walk on a good day but usually I’d be stuck indoors. Also take note how I never spent time alone and in solitude with my thoughts. I’d listen to music or watch Netflix on the commute to school. I had a phone by then and could be entertained when I wanted. Every micro moment I used to have as a child in silence were spent on a phone. Even when waiting in line for a vending machine I (and everybody else) would be on their phones. Finally, when it was time to go to bed I couldn’t even sit still with my thoughts long enough to fall asleep. I’d have to be in bed scrolling until I went to sleep.

    Now in a year and a half of college this has catapulted into entirely new levels. I’m embarrassed to admit this but there’s even times I’d whip out my phone while at the urinals. My bedtime procrastination got so bad I’d be in bed at 11PM but would be up online till 5AM. During every meal my phone would be out. I even switched from scrolling to reading the news to try and be healthier, but it did little to change me. Doing any amount of homework felt impossible without stopping every 15 minutes to scroll Reels or Reddit.

    It was at this point that things got bad. I wasn’t doing well and after transferring schools, and this obsessive internet usage got worse because I was dealing with stronger feelings of loneliness, anxiety, and a little depression.

    I’ve come to realize that I couldn’t handle any sort of negative emotions entering my mind. I had become so dependent on numbing the negative emotions by doing anything but processing them. I’d even go back to reading books like I did in third grade. However, in college I’d stay up till 4AM as a way to avoid these anxious thoughts I’d been having about school and life (it was a rough semester ngl.) I’m not even joking when I say I’d be in bed at 10PM but instead of being with my thoughts for enough of a time to fall asleep I’d instead read till super late into the night just to escape into whatever book I was reading.

    “A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.” For me it took close to five years to realize it was processing my negative emotions I was running from.

    It works like this. You go on with your life and BAM a thought comes up. It may be a thought of boredom, anxiety, confusion, or something else. This may led to subsequent thoughts that may walk you down a narrow and dark road. You may face these sorts of things hundreds of times a day. Sometimes they may be loops. It may not be that melancholy. It may be a thought of boredom or restlessness. Whatever it may be, these thoughts and your mishandling of them gives way to emotions that you do not want to deal with. That you want to run away from. So what happens? What did I do. I scrolled, I binged TV, I read, I escaped. If you stay aware of your thoughts and what’s going on in your mind before and after you use the internet you’ll realize that before you use the internet your mind is a choppy sea of thoughts and emotions. And after? Your mind goes blank. Its calm. But its not. Its really numb. These tech companies have not made their tech addictive just to exploit you. They’ve made their tech an escape to numb you from the pain of within. You may think that you do process and sort through your thoughts and emotions. However, it may not be the emotions you think of that lead you to obsessive internet usage. It may be boredom, shame, guilt, inadequacy, or insecurity. You may even have a mix of coping with more healthy strategies and obsessive internet usage. These platforms will pull on the slightest twitches of any emotion to suck you in.

    Okay so now that I detailed my story, I want to present some research so that you know I’m not talking out of my ass.

    [1] shows that those who have a higher belief in their ability to effectively manage their own emotions (known as RESE) “showed significant negative correlations with both psychache and smartphone addiction”

    Psychache is intense psychological pain.

    There’s even results in this study about those raised in an Invalidating Environment, essentially a childhood where one’s emotions, experiences, and feelings are consistently rejected, being positively correlated to smartphone addiction and even predicting smartphone addiction.

     Another study backs this claim up: “RESE was found to have a significant negative influence on mobile phone addiction” [2].

    This prospective study surveyed 324 college students in China ages 20-30 (mostly millennial) about their emotional regulation skills and internet addiction two times, one year apart. They categorized the students to initially be internet addicts (IA) or not internet addicts (no IA). Then a year later the IA group was sorted into persistent IA (PIA), basically no change or worse internet addiction a year later; and remitted IA (RIA), internet addicts who became sober after the year. For the no IA group, they were sorted into new IA (NIA), those who newly became internet addicts within the year; and the persistent no IA (PNIA), those who still don’t have an internet addiction a year later.

    Here’s what they found:

    “Of the 268 participants in the PNIA and NIA groups who had no IA at Stage 1, 20 were deemed to have IA at Stage 2 (the NIA group), resulting in an incidence rate of 7.5%” [3].

    “The results revealed that compared with the PNIA group, the NIA group had more severe impulse control difficulties on the DERS at Stage 1, revealing that impulse control difficulties at Stage 1 predicted the incidence of IA at Stage 2 during the follow-up period of 1 year” [3].

    So this is an interesting conclusion. Firstly, there’s a incidence rate of ~8%. Meaning 8% of the respondents who didn’t have an internet addiction initially developed one a year later. That’s crazy to me. Another is that impulse control difficulties could predict the incidence of IA one year out from it happening. Someone with poor impulse control is predisposed in a way to internet addiction.

    This other study looks at young Italian men ages 18-35 and wanted to see how IA, emotional dysregulation, FOMO (fear of missing out), and social media addiction related [4]. They got the following results:

    “The total effect of the DERS score on the IAT score was significant” [4]. DERS is a sense of one’s emotional dysregulation, a higher DERS score meaning greater difficulty in emotional regulation. The IAT is a internet addiction test.  

    “IA was found to correlate with all the investigated variables, demonstrating a strong and positive relation to social media addiction, FOMO, emotional (dys)regulation, and neuroticism; and a weak and negative relation to conscientiousness” [4].

    What’s worse is that being online makes the cycle and framework worse for your internet addiction. “Moreover, all variables were found to significantly relate to each other, supporting the frame of a vicious circle whereby underlying emotional (dys)regulation exacerbates problematic social media use and the pervasive apprehension that others are engaged in exclusive positive activities, resulting in severe IA” [4].

    Now one last study on this topic I want to bring up is this paper published by a person way smarter than me almost 13 years covering the same principle [5]. He presents this model of compensatory use. That IA is not from compulsion but. That IA “can be better understood as a coping strategy grounded in understandable (but not always healthy) motivations” [5]. That the crux of the issue is a negative life situation being reacted upon with internet usage. That there is no real compulsion to use the internet, but instead its compensation to alleviate negative feelings. Take for example the link between stress and excessive online gaming by MMO players. The excessive gaming was mediated by escapism, the motivation to play is to escape from the stress [6].

    Okay, so now that this link between emotional regulation and internet usage is more defined let me show you that gen z is on the internet a lot more.

    According to Pew Research, 20% of teens say they are on TikTok and YouTube “Almost constantly” [7].

    US Teens spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on across seven popular social media websites according to a 2023 Gallup poll [8].

    Gen Z as a whole has lower emotional intelligence than other generations. [9, p19-20]. Navigating emotions was one of the biggest declines for Gen Z.

    Okay so I’ve established bad emotional regulation leads/correlates/and to some extent predicts internet addiction. I’ve also established we’re more internet addicted than any other generation. I’ve also established that we’re worse off at emotional regulation than any other generation.

    Now, what I argue is that our poor emotional regulation skills lead us to compensate by problematic internet usage, usually social media. Here, a chicken-egg problem may arise. Was it the social media first that causes us to have such poor emotional regulation skills or was it the initially poor emotional regulation that made us susceptible to internet addiction. To me this doesn’t matter. The mechanism to improve is the same. Strengthen the way you cope so you don’t have to compensate by numbing yourself with the internet.

    Now, a note I want to make is that these social media (SM) companies are malicious and have made their platforms addictive. To me though the key difference between people who are addicted to SM and not is very solid and even extraordinary emotional regulation skills. Once you can cope without reaching for your phone a huge internal trigger for you has largely been eliminated. When a “negative life experience” comes up you no longer need to compensate with escapism into the internet.

    For me, in my life switching to the flip-phone has slowly provided me with a shield from letting “negative life experience” motivate me to rot on the internet. I spend a lot more time alone and in my own head. This is purely from not being able to “numb” myself with my smartphone because I have no reception, and I really cannot distract myself with my flip phone.

    For the first time in years, it finally feels like I’m living a life instead of just witnessing it. Every bit of work is that much easier to get into because I’m not as restless and because I don’t need to compensate for the annoying feeling of starting work by scrolling. I can just sit through it. I eat a whole bunch of my meals in complete silence just observing what’s around me. I walk in between my classes without any stimulation. Any bit of transition time, I spend just bored without taking out my smart phone. I look at sunsets, ducks, architecture… everything. I’m in the present a lot more. I’m in my own head a lot more and this time I’ve found a home within it.

    You see now how this was a trap. Without realizing, as I was growing up the initial emotional regulation skills I was building got completely disrupted by the boom in my internet usage, and without realizing I had come out of adolescence with sub-par emotional coping skills. I had to escape the trap by rebuilding these skills I once had. I don’t believe this is unique to me, I think this phenomenon is occurring the world over, and it’s only getting worse. Thus, is called “The Young Man Trap”

    Expect Part 2 around Q3/4 of this year with more detail on how exactly to escape this trap without switching to a flip-phone.

    Thanks dearly to my friend Omkar for reading an early version of this essay and encouraging me to publish it.

    References

    [1] Bai, B., Meng, S. & Zhou, J. Invalidating environment and smartphone addiction: the chain mediating effect of regulatory emotional self-efficacy and psychache. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 12, 1981 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-06312-7

    [2] Xiao Z and Huang J (2022) The Relation Between College Students’ Social Anxiety and Mobile Phone Addiction: The Mediating Role of Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy and Subjective Well-Being. Front. Psychol. 13:861527. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.861527

    [3] Tsai, Jui-Kang et al. “Relationship between Difficulty in Emotion Regulation and Internet Addiction in College Students: A One-Year Prospective Study.” International journal of environmental research and public health vol. 17,13 4766. 2 Jul. 2020, doi:10.3390/ijerph17134766

    [4] Quaglieri, A.; Biondi, S.; Roma, P.; Varchetta, M.; Fraschetti, A.; Burrai, J.; Lausi, G.; Martí-Vilar, M.; González-Sala, F.; Di Domenico, A.; et al. From Emotional (Dys)Regulation to Internet Addiction: A Mediation Model of Problematic Social Media Use among Italian Young Adults. J. Clin. Med. 2022, 11, 188. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/jcm11010188

    [5] Daniel Kardefelt-Winther, A conceptual and methodological critique of internet addiction research: Towards a model of compensatory internet use, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 31, 2014, Pages 351-354, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.10.059.

    [6] Scott E Caplan, Problematic Internet use and psychosocial well-being: development of a theory-based cognitive–behavioral measurement instrument, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 18, Issue 5, 2002, Pages 553-575, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0747-5632(02)00004-3

    [7] Pew Research Center, December 2025, “Teens, Social Media and AI Chatbots 2025”

    [8] Gallup, October, 2023, “HOW PARENTING AND SELF-CONTROL MEDIATE THE LINK BETWEEN SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND YOUTH MENTAL HEALTH” https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/briefs/ifs-gallup-parentingsocialmediascreentime-october2023-1.pdf

    [9] Sixseconds, 2024, , STATE OF THE HEART, https://6secus.s3.amazonaws.com/SOH/SOH+2024+Global.pdf

  • A College Hustle Culture Rant

    Stop externalizing your hustle culture on to me. Stop documenting your journey to creating a startup, or your day in the lives, or whatever it may be. I don’t want to see it nor do I care for it. Stop making me feel behind or worse off for not grinding away my twenties. Stop fear mongering a potential future techno feudalism as fuel to work a hundred hour weeks building a “industry changing” AI product. Stop telling me to work harder, compare more, and compete. I’m not interested and I don’t want to see that.

                  Everything now a days is a competition to an absurd level. These things we once observed and let go are now internalized as deficiencies on a day to day basis. Earlier this year, we had “looksmaxxers” entering into the mainstream. They made popular the lense of comparing ones looks to others in a direct and abrasive way.  To “mog” and “accend” – to look way better than the rest of the group. Even coming up with rankings to sort their fellow man from just a glance (Chud, LTN, MTN, HTN, Chad lite, Chad…). Women became characterized as enemies with derogatory language entering the mainstream. This isn’t just blatant misogyny spreading, it’s a culture of comparison. To think that comparing the external beauty of others was reserved to models, celebrities, and pageants. Now every teen and young adult is, on a daily basis, aware of their looks and their peers. Uses these terms to rank each other, and pushes ways to improve their rankings.

    You may argue about the magnitude of this and if its really happening, but isn’t it entrenching our cultural zeitgeist enough to throw red flags.

    We have LinkedIn increasingly taking off as a way to flex career and professional accomplishments. Repeatedly, we see innate comparison here and competition laid out directly in a engaging and addicting format. What’s more is social media. What was once a place to post entirely novel, entertaining, and quirky content has quickly devolved into a singular strain of the same slop. The same formats, topics, and irregularities to maximize engagement and minimize actual thought. What makes it different now is that starting a social media or posting content feels less like a creative endeavor and more of another box to tick off on the long list of activities to further one’s career. You see people now promote starting a page as a way to build a personal brand, put your name out there, and help you find opportunities (as well as maximizing money from monetization). It may have been creative and different before but now there’s a prevalence of the same engagement gold repetitive content that dissolves one of the individuality that was supposed to come from posting in the first place. And the reason behind this “sloppification” is inherently a capitalistic one.

    Capitalism breeds inherent competition and comparison. As a worker you will be replaced immediately either by a new technology or worker who is more productive than you. What we’re seeing now is this manifesting itself in different ways. Young adults at the top schools shilling AI study tools, posting the same day in the lifes, and even working at the same prestigious companies.

    Marx has this utopia of us sitting back, relaxing, and being free to pursue different things. “to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner.” Sounds like a nice life. I think the inherent fervor behind all this hustle is an innate fear of the future. These students my age probably think that now is the time to work hard to secure their future.  Maybe some of this is fear of a permanent technocratic overclass subjecting those who don’t make it into a life time of serfdom. Maybe it’s a justifiable fear of a recession. It could be imposter syndrome, insecurity, and inadequacy fueling one to take a course of action not necessarily aligned with their inner values and beliefs. But whatever the reason may be, don’t make me feel bad for not pushing as hard as you or working as hard as you. I’m completely fine with the pace of my life and I want nothing to do with yours. I don’t believe in selling my life for a potential future where I have more money than I’d need. Not for a decade, or a year, or a month.

  • Its not real

    The comparisons you make in your mind are not real. Its a thought loop that’s controlling you. Those thoughts and comparisons mean nothing. You’re in a bubble. Forget about what others have and are doing.

    Case in point:

  • Lost Spark

    It’s gone, the embers are cold. The series of life led to a sequence of extinguishment. Only thing left in its wake is the monotony of assignments, exams, and artificial rest.

    I do feel like we’re slipping into this boring monotony that extinguishes us as students. I hope this is just student life but honestly, with how hard adulthood is I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets harder.

    With how easy it is to distract yourself from living I wouldn’t be surprised if people didn’t even realize they have no vitality in their life.

    So here’s a reminder. Put the fucking phone down. Eat in silence. Study undisrupted. Live through the difficult emotions, don’t just numb them. Be creative: read, write, draw, or create. Find your spark by living again.

  • Sisyphus

    At least he had something to do all day. I’m back home for the summer with no plans. It’s very disastrous for me to have nothing to do. At least Sisyphus had to push a boulder up a hill, even if he never made it up there.

  • Dear Blog

    Dear Blog,

    I have not forgotten about you. It’s finals week and I’ve been in crunch mode. In times like these I think about the idea of wartime vs peace time generals.

    Wartime generals have the guts to take massive bold action. They are focused and diligent on solving one problem – the war. The general moves with light speed, often making decisions that are morally reprehensible but there isn’t time to criticize. The peacetime general strategizes and plans. Puts into action plans that are carefully thought out and span years. This general can’t take quick action, is often focused on many things, and acts more morally. Right now I’m a wartime general. I don’t have the luxury of partaking in leisure activities. I need to study and sleep. That’s it. So for the time being this blog is going to be dead. Hope to update you soon.

  • Exploration Into Well-Being

    The next couple blog posts are going to be a dump about everything I know about living a life of fulfillment and increasing one’s Well-Being. These dumps will be on a separate page titled: “Explorations into Well-Being”. Stay Tuned

  • Standardization before Optimization

    I love this phrase. “Standardization before Optimization”. What this means to me is to do things correctly, consistently, and functionally before you move on to doing it perfectly. What does this look like in practice? In my personal life it means exercising consistently first before adding in a routine and supplements. It means meditating consistently first before exploring different variations and teachings of meditation. It means studying consistently first before looking at more optimal techniques. I fall into this optimization trap a lot. Optimize my workout routine whilst I haven’t worked out even semi-routinely in months. Spend time trying to learn different time management techniques when I don’t even have the simplest one set up that I use regularly.

    It’s easy to fall into this trap, that’s because its the ego talking. Telling you that you’re too good. You don’t need to waste your time with the little leagues. That you’re good for the pros. You are not. If you jump to optimizing first then you won’t stick with it. I have never once succeed at something when I did it the optimized and perfect way. That shoddy way that barley counts, that’s what matters. That’s what’s going to push the needle. Why? Because you’ll do it for years, and slowly you’ll do it better.

    Standardize first then optimize.

  • Hope

    Hope. It’s that feeling that the future will be favorable. That sense of comfort knowing whatever you are facing that it will be worked out. Throughout the past couple years, this emotion has gotten me through many many rough times. When I have multiple tests coming my way, when I have an uncertain future, and when my life seems out of my control hope has always been there.

    My two favorite sources to cite for the importance of hope are Viktor Frankl’s Man Search for Meaning and Lil Wayne’s Let it All Work Out.

    Frankl was a Jewish man who was sent to the Auschwitz during the Holocaust . He details his experiences being imprisoned and the observations he’s made in his book, “A Man’s Search for Meaning.” When I first read this two years ago the book resonated with me in a weird way. I wasn’t too interested in his exploration of the meaning of life, morality, and existential analysis. This was because I was scared of facing my own existential dread at the time, I was sixteen. Instead, I focused more on his message of hope and how that was what got him through the horrific pain he endured. He mentions how the hope that he would see his wife again got him through many days he felt like giving up. This resonated with me because I was going through a tough time then. I wasn’t doing well socially or academically in school, was going through the same cycle of bad habits, and felt like I was losing hope for what my future would be. This book was one of the core reasons I continue to keep hope in my heart. To make sure I don’t lose it and to always emphasize that whatever problems I’m facing I can get over it.

    The next source I more recently discovered was the song “Let it All Work Out”, by Lil Wayne. A bit jarring I know, to go from Frankl to Wayne. However, this was a song that hit the same heartstrings in me that Frankl did. In this Hip-hop song Wayne, or Carter, details his experiences with stimulants, fatherhood, relationships, success, and mental health struggles. The last act of the song is a narration of his attempted suicide when he was only twelve. A heartbreaking story. He raps, about thinking of himself as a monster, not being able to be happy, and writing a suicide letter. He tries to call his aunt but hung up before he got an answer. No one was around to stop him. He then recalls the moment where he woke up with blood all round him. Recounting this experience in an interview, he talks about his mental health struggles and his road from that. The verse narrating his suicide is immediately followed by the chorus, “Let it all work out.” Wayne here is following up with his wisdom from the present. His past struggles where he lost hope, and where he felt he had to end it all were very real, but after some time those troubles came to pass. To have hope that whatever tests or obstacles one is facing that life has a way to work itself out. That all one needs to know is that it will, and believe that it will be alright. That’s why I love hope. Because it’s often the only thing we can have and its the only thing that can get us through our lowest points.

    Second act of Let it All Work Out – Lil Wayne

    “Tunechi, you a monster
    Looked in the mirror
    But you wasn’t there, I couldn’t find ya
    I’m lookin’ for that big, old smile, full of diamonds
    Instead, I found this letter you ain’t finished writin’
    It read, “I’m sorry for even apologizing”
    I tried, compromising and went kamikaze

    I found my momma’s pistol where she always hide it
    I cry, put it to my head and thought about it
    Nobody was home to stop me, so I called my auntie
    Hung up, then put the gun up to my heart and pondered
    Too much was on my conscience to be smart about it
    Too torn apart about it, I aim where my heart was pounding

    I shot it, and I woke up with blood all around me
    It’s mine, I didn’t die, but as I was dying
    God, came to my side and we talked about it
    He sold me another life and he made a profit/prophet” – Lil Wayne

  • Sherlock Holmes

    I sometimes think about the BBC hit TV show Sherlock Holmes. The first three seasons are some of the most brilliant TV I’ve ever seen. In that show the way Sherlock works is inspiring to me. This is a guy who becomes obsessed with cases, he paces, takes copious amounts of nicotine, and plays the violin. He chews on problems. Then suddenly it clicks. The missing piece comes to him so trivially that it seems random and lucky. It never is though, he consistently solves cases others can’t.

    Some of that is talent and raw intelligence, but some of that is trained. We see later on that Watson picks up some deduction skills. Sherlock had trained him just by working cases with him. It can be deduced that this deep obsessive work is what leads to breakthroughs.

    This is inspiring to me but also scary. I’ve been obsessed with things before, but never to the extent of Sherlock. Can I even reach the points of obsession I’ve been told I need or will I turn away. Can I reach my dreams through obsession or am I not capable of such things? Also, how many people have gone crazy through obsession. Victor Frankenstein was obsessed with creating life, and look what happened to him. Is there a line in the sand? I hope so because I don’t want to be required to be obsessed to be successful and then later watch myself do something abhorrent .