After what seems like a year of near constant stress, disappointment, and loneliness, I decided to stop sitting at my computer all day and start making better choices for myself. This was a really hard thing to do for me since I work from home about two feet from my entertainment area. I would end up sitting at my desk all day and neglecting things that I wanted to do and I wasn’t sure why.
This month I have:
Set up the Ender 3 V2 that was sitting in my closet for two years and printed out a bunch of cool shit with my kid.
Exercised every other day to try to help myself with some vicious joint pain that has developed recently.
Kept the dishes from piling up on my desk.
Made doctor and dentist appointments.
Don’t get me wrong, things are still stressful and disappointing, but I feel a lot better than I have in a long time. What have you done to care for yourself lately? Digging yourself out of depression is hard and I want to hear your successes, no matter how small they are.
No phone or screen usage for 1 hour after I wake up.
I haven’t broken the addiction completely, but it’s progress.
Oh shit, that’s a really good one. I hate that I instinctually grab my phone and start doom scrolling. Getting rid of Twitter was a big one that helped for me.
When smartphones were new, I started dating a girl who would roll over in bed first thing in the morning, pick up her phone, and start scrolling. I thought it was incredibly weird. Why not life? Why computer? Now, I do the same thing, and it’s normal. Or rather it was until a couple of weeks ago.
The scary thing is that I’ll start to get antsy as the one-hour mark comes near. I’ll keep checking the clock for when I can pick it up and get my stimulation. So far it is working most days, though, and it feels like it improves the rest of the day for me.
I always feel like I’m going to miss something important, but honestly, there is nothing important happening that I can’t just hear from someone else. I really want to get to the point where I wake up, throw on some clothes, and go for a walk and leave my phone at home. I think if I can do this through the fall and winter, I can do it forever.
You can run down some of the clock by making yourself a good breakfast every morning! My wife got into a real tamagoyaki kick and I’ve been making her one pretty much every day and it makes me pretty happy to be cooking again.
Locking my account helped me cut down my Twitter usage a lot by making it pointless to reply in most cases.
I just found myself picking fights with locals on the opposite side of the political spectrum and it got bad enough that my handle was named in two different defamation lawsuits. 🤷. Luckily decent opsec made me harder to find IRL, but both cases were laughed out of court anyway.
I started responding to posts that start with “Heyo” so things are looking good so far.
I started learning a little about music theory. I’ve been interested for a while, but always thought I wouldn’t be able to understand it. But it’s doable, a little at a time.
And I’ve been going outside more. I spend too much time in front of the computer. It’s nice to have fresh air and read, listen to music, or just take in the surroundings.
Trying to mentally/emotionally distance myself from my “customer service” job. Like, pretending I’m not a CSR, but that I’m playing the role of a CSR in a show, or something. After over 10 years working jobs like this, and for multiple reasons, the stress and asshole customers have been making me even even more miserable than necessary lately.
At the very least, this is helping me stay cool-headed and friendly enough to piss off angriest/most condescending callers, which can be pretty cathartic sometimes. It’s not so effective when it’s overwhelmingly busy, though.
Also, calling my lawyer, which was extremely stressful to me for literally no logical reason. Actually, I had a reason to look forward to it.
I went to a couple social dances hosted by a local ballroom dance club. I like pretending I’m someone else, someone cool, since I don’t know anyone there.
