My hyper focus makes me a good programmer. Unfortunately I only activate it every couple days. With their powers combined… I’m worth keeping employed. 👍🏻
Whatever your grew up with will always seem more intuitive for most people. But given that I grew up with Fahrenheit, the whole “0 is cold as fuck, 100 is hot as fuck” thing works for me.
It shows how stupid and against your own best interests this kind of thinking can be.
I am the full time worker in my family, and happy to be the provider for them. However, I would be a stay at home dad / house-husband so damn fast if my wife got some random job mom making a lot more than me. I do have my priorities in order, after all.
I just watched this episode a couple days ago. Some of it is way too applicable to current day, particularly the part about how it takes a huge tragedy for the population to realize that maybe we should make society nice for other people.
Mobile games for kids are the worst. Those and any self-help mental health apps.
It’s $10 a month to access the features of a basic game that runs on the local device, or the subscription renews weekly, or you can get a 7-day free trial after which it charges you for the entire year. And in the latter case, you usually have to sign up for the free trial before you are allowed to see ANY content.
A cheap subscription makes sense for some things, especially those using cloud based resources. But so much of that business model seems to rely on making money by screwing people that forgot they were paying you.
I’ve gotten decent at this, but it has taken years of practicing the skill, plus trying various medications. Not to mention a couple of job losses during covid.
The fun combo of adhd and anxiety made this a necessity if I wanted to generally enjoy life.
The ability to not worry about shit sounds simple, but it is much easier said than done. It’s like a muscle that you have to exercise and build up.
Here are the elevator pitched for three topics that helped me:
Mediation/mindfulness: I listened to some Buddhist talks, and liked the way some of them explained focusing on your breath and stepping back to observe your own emotions without embracing those feelings at the time. And you have compassion for yourself, and not judge things negatively. Just observe what is. It’s something you can practice at any time, and the more you do it, the more you can stay in that state while doing other things. There is also a big component of controlling your desires, because those are often a big component of suffering.
Philosophy: around the same time, I was reading stoic philosophy. Marcus Aurelius is the big name there. The bottom line is that regardless of what happens to you, the way that you internally process it and react to it is what really determines how it affects your life & mental state. So with practice, time, and sometimes medication, you are more and more in control of your mental state and how things affect you.
Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT): The world around you is what it is, so instead of worrying about things you can’t control, you accept the true state of things and then filter that through your personal values to decide how to act.
Some common themes here, to be sure. Along with being able to better control your thoughts and emotions, it’s about finding contentment and tranquility in whatever your life looks like. Not because everything is great, but because your mental state is much more important than reacting how you “should” react.
Maybe this is why I’ve been so ready to fully embrace Lemmy for my internetting. It’s the opposite of enshittified, as FOSS often is.
I’ll admit though, I pay for YouTube and get more bang for the buck than any other money I spend on entertainment. I’ve had it for a while though, and did not sign up because of their renewed war on ad blocking. Plus it’s nice that the creators get paid from my view, even though it’s not much.
That’s pretty much the process I went through ~20 years ago. The individual has to care about actual evidence and truth rather than the “truth = agree with me” crap that is common.
I think a big, big part of it is realizing that the people on your side are not necessarily arguing in good faith just because they’re on the “correct” team.
And that’s a pretty big deal when “just ignore that, it’s not real” is a deep core practice of your team.