LostCause

Not sure if that is what you mean here, but when I was in University I started taking speed to try and keep up with studying despite my ADHD/depression.

And not just a bit either, but quite a lot and I must have overdone it and stayed up too many nights in a row once. I remember trying to go through my day, while I constantly spotted what could only be described as “shadow people”, whenever I tried to directly look at them they would be gone, but then I‘d see it again just near the edges of my field of view. It was one very creepy day and what led to me finally admitting I can‘t do it anymore.

So I ended up dropping out, found a job in IT and got therapy and some more reasonable ADHD meds too. Still, I imagine that is what being schizophrenic might be like and I did not enjoy that at all.

I read a lot of philosophy until I had an existential crisis, which ironically made me feel worse at first and then better later on, because I realised basically “nothing really matters” and the majority of things that stressed me out are so small. Sure, some stuff has negative consequences for me and messes with my emotions, but even that passes with time and much of it is simply in my head (I got a nice cocktail of ADHD with depression and anxiety and get stuck in feelings of dread and doom).

Well, I also go to therapy, and there I learned to focus on myself and what I need and like, with the goal to either distract myself or enjoy small pleasures. Like I walk to a quiet place somewhere when noise stresses me out or listen to music, I make myself a nice meal or some tea (iced tea in summer) or take a cool shower or sit down to draw something or write comments or talk to a person I like, all those small things that make me feel a bit like “I can live one day longer”.

Basically, instead of looking at the world and the things you can‘t change of affect like your past, look only at yourself in the here and now and ask “how could I make this a bit more bearable for myself?” and then I do that. Though there is some limit there like don‘t do drugs (which I DID do, it gave relief, but made me feel much worse over time! just a warning), but even outside of that there is usually something you can do.

Many desires are also artificially induced by marketing and peer pressure and the more I understood that, the less I felt like I had to do x or y or whatever everyone else is doing to be happy. That includes my comment and those of all others by the way, one or more points may resonate with you and help and others may be completely useless to you, what matters most here is finding what works for you and doing more of that. If you try some of this and have a moment where your mind calms down and you feel alright, take note of that and do that again.

Though I‘m not entirely well, this stuff comes back sometimes, but I got a bunch of ways to deal with it now which help me out.

If it‘s Windows, I usually do something similar to this: https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-remove-bloatware-from-windows-10/

Also in addition to the good Firefox + uBlock already mentioned, first things I install would be Windows Power Toys, Greenshot for screenshots and Obsidian for writing and note taking that‘s most of what comes to mind.

In German but “As long as they pretend to pay me, I pretend to work.” Probably one of the first pieces of wisdom I got way back as a wee apprentice.

Now, I work more than this quote may make one think of me, but it‘s influenced me insofar as I‘m aware of not overdoing it as my employers never overdo the pay part either.

I do feel like that gives an incentive to get people of the opposite party into prison to influence the election.

I got ADHD so I enjoy a lot of things, top of them are reading, drawing, writing, learning English and Japanese and various IT/tech tinkering.

I‘m working in SAP, though I see that only as a means to sustain myself and conform, but I refuse to see the work as part of my being or personality. I try to be pleasant and funny IRL, which I‘m told works well, but on the inside I‘m a depressed mess. I try to work on that in therapy, but it‘s not super effective for me. Well it helped a bit, as I now have more of a “try to find joy in little things” attitude, but the doom is still all there.

Online, I‘m mostly to offload some of my darker thoughts on the world, which haunt me if I don‘t let them out occasionally. Reddit was my main outlet for that as it had a large variety of “doomer” subs, now I got unleashed on the fediverse, right now looking for some anti-corporate instance or maybe something anarchist to fit into.

They did, but writing “the same as now, but worse”, would‘ve been a bit boring.

We can read about all the observations, predictions and all in here after all and the media is decently active about writing on it too:

https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf

I‘m just hopeless that the “policymakers” are honestly doing much to avert it. There is even a hint in there on that:

Vulnerable communities who have historically contributed the least to current climate change are disproportionately affected (high confidence).

Hot. Heat waves. Forest fires. Sea level rising. Floods. Droughts. Water shortages. Extinction of various animals and plants. Collapse of supply chains and resource shortages. Rising nationalism and distrust. Mass migration, mass starvation, mass casualty events.

Yeah fair point, I‘m actually writing comments like that sometimes which I feel like don‘t get my sarcasm across enough. I‘ve also misread sarcastic comments before myself.

I still don‘t like the /s, but it‘s up to the writers preference how important avoiding this is to them.

I think a better way to convey the intended sarcasm is to make it hyperbole or exaggerated. I saw your comment and one would have to be pretty dense to not see the sarcasm, so you did that well.

I have a few thoughts on that one. First, I‘d try and teach that changing one‘s opinion based on new information is good and admirable and that not knowing something or not having an opinion on something one doesn‘t understand is fine.

Specifically for media, something like this paper is excellent though obviously not child friendly, I think even way too little adults are aware of this sort of framing that media and companies regularly do:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334400431_Controlling_the_Narrative_An_Initial_Investigation_of_Doublespeak

So trying to show/explain, how does framing something differently change the perceptions of people?

Another important thing in my mind is teaching something like Plato‘s allegory of the cave, so how we are presented the world is how we see the world and nobody knows everything about it because we only see a small part of it. That ties back in with my point about it being good to question one‘s beliefs from time to time.

Not like they get money from that, they do get money from donations, but I don‘t think just using an open source product is support.

I use like hundreds of open source things and idk the ideology of any of the devs and I don‘t care, they could turn out to be serial killers, I don‘t see my use of their product as an issue. Monetary support is the difference to me.

Maybe I got some messed up morals though, wouldn’t be the first time.