Comment by uludag
6 days ago
Great article. "To be reliably able to focus on something, you need to be intuitively, emotionally invested in the outcome." This rings 100% true for me. I've succumbed to a sort of fatalism though, where I'm not confident at all I can control what I'm emotionally invested in and that they just arise out of the situations I find myself in along with seemingly random thoughts from the brain.
I've tried becoming a nicer person in order to expand my social circle because apparently that's the foundation of your mental health. The result is that I met lots of people whose presence I simply do not enjoy. The people whose presence I do enjoy have shit to do and I see them once every few months at best. My prospects of meeting a partner are epsilon, which a major source of frustration for me. I've tried having hobbies but everything gets boring after the initial phase of "wow I love doing this new thing". I've tried sticking to things out of pure discipline and I gained skills, but fuck, it's not enjoyable. I'm not invested in my career because getting a significant raise at my company is pretty much impossible, and if I want to switch companies, I'd need to leave local maximum. I don't enjoy spending time with my family because they're not interested in getting to know me, they just want me to perform the theatre of "How's weather? Ah it's a nice day today".
It's not possible for me to be emotionally invested in anything because I'm profoundly disappointed in life. I want a refund.
If you want to change your life you'll have to leave your local maxima, I'm afraid. Just imagine 10 years passed and nothing has changed. What was the point in living, just saving for retirement?
Yes. I imagine that in 10 years I'll be very close to retirement. Once I retire I'll just dedicate my life to smoking weed all day every day.
I'm training to become a voluntary avalanche dog handler. Having a physical dog that I'm responsible for and who needs the training helps a lot. Having something like that in my professional life would have been immensely helpful.
I love how English leaves it ambiguous whether "avalanche" refers to you or the dog. And if it refers to the dog, does "voluntary" refer to it too?
Read once somewhere that both heaven and hell surround us and it's all about what we choose to pay attention to.
When nothing works, go for delusions (only if you're stable enough to not have them break apart the nature of your reality too much).
Also, go travel; be it on the other side of the city in a new coffee shop, in a new town for their town's day or sth, or in a new state/country/continent, travel somehow manages to shuffle the internals in one's brain enough to reboot to a different baseline; good trick for when current internal state is too meah.
Also moving through space was the default mode for our ancestors, so that I think a lot of latent despair arises out of the artificial confinements of our modern age. If you literally move your body while moving you're ready to heal.
Ok, if depressed maybe follow professional advice and all & ignore my blabbering.
Those are some heuristics I'm using for dealing with my own inner despair when it comes and they have only a sparse intersection with proper dealings of depression.
that just sounds like depression with a lot of extra steps.
Volunteering is also nice. People are there because they want to and at the end of the day it gives you a nice feeling of doing something good.
This is good advice, and it's something I also share with high school students who are struggling with relationships, uncertainty, or self-confidence.
For example, we visit our local hospital every weekend to hand out magazines, books, and toys to people whose lives have been affected by an accident or illness. It's rewarding, and the group of volunteers changes each month, so you get to help others and meet new people. Helping others is also a great way to help yourself. Afterwards, we usually spend an hour or two socialising at a bar near the hospital. The doctors know us, and they sometimes join our table.
If that doesn't work either, exercise and therapy have worked for some of my friends. Having a personal trainer two or three times a week is often better than going to the gym on your own, and seeing a life coach or therapist once a week can really help you move forward.
sounds like selffulfilling prophecy