I hold similar views(obviously), but I find something comforting in it. Like, rather than living in a ruined paradise lost by us or our parents, we live in a complicated world where we share the work of trying to make something better with our ancestors.
(Of course, we also have to figure out how to do that, and, in a complicated world, that can be challenging and lead to conflict)
More likely it was when they were kids and without adult responsibilities, or narrow/whitewashed views of the past(as from stories and shows from before their birth)
You are so wound up in a rote shutting down of OP that you aren’t listening.
One can be antisemitic and not be a nazi. The pogroms that harried my ancestors were not practiced by nazis. The expulsions of Jews from various countries over the centuries were not practiced by nazis. The “no blacks, no dogs, no Jews” signs my grandfather saw were not put up by nazis.
Antisemitism is a thing we’ve been living with for a long, long time. I would appreciate it if you didn’t condescend to tell us how you know better about who does or can hate us.
The current situation is certainly making that clear.
It’s an uncomfortable time, certainly. The left seems to think we’re monsters, and the right has a weird fetishisation thing going on. Neither one feels good, and it ends up feeling very isolating.
A nazi is an antisemite, but an antisemite is not necessarily a Nazi. Downpunxx never used the word “Nazi”, and the two are not the same. Plenty of non-nazis over the years have persecuted or tried to kill us. Hitler didn’t invent the idea.
Additional points for having the panels work according to the original scene.
I am not a bit, but I might be a cat
What works for you is going to be specific to you. That, and a few other points I’ll echo from other comments here:
Some kind of regular exercise is frequently helpful
Regular exposure to sunlight and fresh air is usually helpful.
Depending on your own form of neurodivergence, they may or may not act like they do for the general populace. They may have the opposite effect and make things worse, or they may work extra well. This brings me to my next important point:
This is another way journaling can be helpful— it’s easy to miss the ways we are affected by different stimulus throughout the day, but by writing about it, you’re forced to pay attention to what alters your mood.
Some things that bring you down or entrench the depression might be unavoidable, and that’s okay. Not everything bad will be unavoidable, and there will be room to either increase the number of good things, or be better aware of them that they might better be savored.
I remember being helped quite a bit by this. There was a time I felt rather trapped while helping a family member through their fight with cancer.(caretaking is hard, yo). I distinctly remember one night, reflecting on it, and explicitly choosing to be where I was, doing what I was doing, and how much that shifted my perspective.
Even if doing anything but what you are doing would be an anathema to you, you could still have chosen to do something else. At its core is the idea that there are many choices we make and ignore because none of the other options were remotely palatable.
The habitual paths of my brain will follow their familiar courses, and if I react in my usual, expected ways, I’ll see my usual, expected outcomes. But what if I did something silly instead?
If your brain is looking to take you for a ride, throw up your arms and go “whee!” Like you’re on a roller coaster.This, of course, works best if you’re by yourself, but you can get somewhat of the effect by doing it in your head.
Or do something else that’s a bit silly, and a non-sequitur to the pattern of worry, melancholy, or dread. The point is to break out of those familiar courses, so that you can form new ones.
The additional trick of this is learning to notice the arcs of your attitude. The earlier in the course of a downturn you can interrupt the pattern, the better chance you have of pulling out of it quickly.
When the sorts of intrusive thoughts that might send me into an existential crisis creep about, I invent an imaginary source for them. I give that source a name, different every time, and I imagine they’re perched atop a large speaker that’s emitting the unwanted thought.
In my head, I address them, tell them I’m not interested right now, and imagine turning the volume down on the speaker.
It might be that this is more silliness, but it helps me to envision a source outside myself for these thoughts that are both mine and not.
If anything in this long ramble helps, or if anything from anyone else is the secret sauce that gets you through, that’s awesome. I really hope you find some relief in this thread.
But I want you to remember that, just as one good day doesn’t mean you’re cured, one bad day doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Even a string of one or the other.
Each new day is a new opportunity to have a better day than yesterday.
This.
Put more explicitly:
3rd party apps bring more people to the site, or keep them there longer.
Those people create content in the forms of posts proper and comments— hell, even down to just voting— that feeds the site engagement for users through 1st party interfaces(the ones getting ads), keeping them there longer, and seeing more ads.
Better moderation tools help mods keep online communities healthy, and the kinds of places we are happy to spend unhealthy amounts of time on.
They also say to do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life. They say lots of things, many of them contradictory.
I think your advice of intentionally setting aside time is wise, though. I believe that too often we take for granted that things will just happen, and also overestimate the chilling effect of “not being spontaneous”.