What sort of psycho puts them blades up? That’s crazy.

I’m not sure if they’re what you’re looking for, but their are various little mental exercises you can do depending on what your trying to achieve.

Relaxing visualisations - if I’m trying to sleep and I’m too worked up about something to relax, I close my eyes and visualise a peaceful scene, e.g. being on a warm tropical beach, the heat of the sun lulling me to sleep, the gentle lapping of the ocean… It doesn’t always put me immediately to sleep, but it helps get my brain out of the problem-solving stress mode.

Sensory engagement - if I’m feeling anxious and getting stuck in a panicky loop, I try to engage my senses. Notice four things around you that you can see, three you can hear, two that you can smell, and a texture you can touch (a stone wall, your jacket’s fabric). This works well because when I’m stressed my brain doesn’t want to be told to “calm down”, it’s trying to warn me of danger. So instead of forcing some relaxation, I engage my senses, checking my surroundings, and generally there is no danger, just the hubub of normal life. This reminds my lizard brain that although being worried about missing a deadline is stressful, I’m not in immediate physical danger and should calm tf down.

Sense of perspective - when we are in an emergency our sense of time shrinks so we only focus on the immediate problem. As we relax, we become better able to consider the larger future. This is great in a crisis, but also leads to dumb overreactions. So, if something goes wrong, and in the grand scheme of things it’s actually not a big deal, but to me right now it feels like the worst, I use this technique. I visualise my surroundings and then begin zooming out, viewing my self from above, seing the room and then the building, the pulling out like a map tool, seeing the area, the country, the globe. I sometimes continue, visualising the solar system and the milky way. After that, it feels a lot easier to shrug and accept that whatever embaressment or frustration felt like it was going to ruin my day is, in fact, just not that important.

I enjoyed Wolfenstein 3D’s quitting messages, “Chickening out already?” or “Press N for more carnage. Press Y to be a weenie.” and the like.

Sometimes, a hard stare is the only appropriate response

Depends what you’re comparing to. One of the ways I deal with stuff I’m finding unpleasant is to compare the experience to a worse situation. My work can be stressful, but at least I don’t work 9to5, 48 weeks a year like so many people do. I’m renovating a house and it’s exhausting and such a long commitment, but at least I’m in good health. Many of my friends have health problems that would make heavy labour and climbing on roofs impossible, so when I’m tired and achy at the end of a day I try and see it as a sign of my good health and strength.

Obviously, if I compared myself to a younger and fitter person, whose knees wouldn’t hurt and didn’t need to wear wrist braces, that could make me feel bad or envious and that would be dumb. Only make comparisons that highlight how lucky you are to be you.

Doing ‘nothing much’ while stoned can be good fun, but is miserable sober. Youre probably not going to feel happy without alcohol / thc if you’re just remove them and don’t change your lifestyle. Think about activities that weed doesn’t go that well with and try and get into those. That’s why ‘sober’ people are often the folks going for early morning runs or playing in sports clubs, or their taking on lots of projects and creating /renovating / etc. What interests you is personal, but reading, gardening, outdoor walks, climbing, community activitivism, learning a language, etc are all good choice.

Was hearing something from an English literature professor recently. He was arguing that we were on track to have a new cultural renaissance, because historically cultural transformations have come when the ‘guardians of culture’ (the tastesetters, the academy, etc) spend all their time in ever increasing arcane and self-referential debates. Then groups from outside of the cultural institutional power start doing something very new and vibrant and it ends up transforming cultural expression.

I guess the downside is that even ‘soon’ in this context could be 50 years, and it’s quite likely you won’t recognise or like what the new art when it emerges. Renaissance art is beautiful, but at the time it was seen as base and anti-intellectual, taking the abstract symbolism of medieval art and replacing it with “this statue of a guy looks reeeealllly like a irl guy doesn’t it!” Uhh, well done Michaelangelo, I can see a naked guy whenever I go to the baths, what does your ‘art’ say about his place is the cosmic order, his eternal destiny and the state of his soul?

Ahh. Thanks, I hate it. Sounds horrendous and exactly like EA .

Very much not a sports guy. What’s the ultimate team? And what’s the problem with it?

Having read through your other post that person was being weird, got heavily downvoted and it’s perfectly reasonable that you got offended. It’s not even clear what his point was, because your post wasn’t about money. So, they were presumably jumping to a lot of conclusions and then responding to an imagined different post.

It’s hugely valuable. I love my partner deeply, but I often fall into a trap of imagining that life was simpler an dmore fun when I didn’t have to care about another person’s needs and could just be the goblin inside. But when I actually get the chance, the novelty wears off pretty quick and I’m so happy when they’re back.

Eat at arbitrary times when I’m hungry, and eat lots of spicy food. Smoke weed and play computer games. Feel a bit lonely.

Sleeping with a cuddly toy. My parter converted me and they’re great. Tbh, they actually make a lot of sense as a middleaged person. Now that I’m old and less flexible, I end up with a sore back or shoulder if I don’t have proper support when sleeping. And I’d much rather have a big lion buddy than some weird orthopedic pillow or Dutch wife.

I guess if that was the fundamental nature of reality, then stuff would be exactly as it is.

Descartes, and Protestantism.

Not sure your scenario is really about being friends. Choosing to take care of a child is more about my situation, than how much I might like them. If you are only taking care of a child because you like them, you are putting them at a lot of risk. Even great kids will be challenging, and a decent person cares for them even when they are unlikable or downright awful. That’s pretty much the definition of unconditional love (though, reading through the comments here it sounds like a lot of lemmings didn’t get that growing up).

As for, would I like myself? 10 year old me, sure! We share a lot of interests (I’d love to dm a game of dnd for him), and although a kid can be quite annoying, I think I’d be pretty fond of the little fella. I suspect I’d also gain a lot sympathy for my parents, and would love to try supporting him with some of his creative projects that he was always starting and never finishing.

20 year old me? Probably too wild to be close friends and I’d think he was an arrogant idiot at times, but probably find him kinda hot so I’d let it slide (my ‘type’ is pretty much younger me…). 30 year old me? Not all that different, could definitely be friends!

I think it’s a spectrum. I mostly hang out in fairly nerdy and middle-aged corners of YouTube, so I don’t see the worst of shitty clickbait. If a video from an unknown creator is suggested to me a clickbaity or ragebaity headline will probably make me avoid them.

But I don’t mind an attention grabbing title “These AWFUL ingredients were ESSENTIAL for medieval peasants” or “This IMPOSSIBLE theory lead to the discovery of oxygen”. It’s kinda lame, but it still says what the topic of video is. Worse, imho, are things like “Why do smart people keep believing this” which uses the mystery / anticipation to suck you in. From a creator I like, it won’t put me off (tbh, I probably won’t even think about it as clickbait because I know their work is usually good) but it’s not cool, and would put me off an unknown creator.

Basically, I don’t care that much about headlines (or the stupid YouTube faces), but I hate shitty, shallow content. And a lot of the time, a clickbaity headline indicates a shallow video, so it has a negative effect on my interest.

Well, my close friends and I felt similar when we were young. Now we’re middle aged and realised we had a mix of undiagnosed neurodiversity, and are now are now on doctor-prescribed cannabis and/or stimulants.

I know that if my adhd meds were stopped, I’d have to go back to self-medicating with booze, weed and street drugs. But having access to reliable clean stimulants that help me do the stuff I want to do, have hobbies and keep a steady job and long-term relationships, has been life transforming. I’ve had a jar of weed in my drawer for over a year, because I’ve gone from smoking weed everyday to once every few months. And it’s not because I think weed is bad, or not fun, but just because my life is so much more rich and satisfying and busy (in a good way) that I don’t need to get baked to make it manageable.

Edit: didn’t mean for that sound preachy. There’s no problem with not being ‘sober’ of it works for you. But if there’s some underlying issue that the intoxicants help you deal with, I just wanted to share that it can be amazing if you can sort the issue out rather than mask it. But there’s always space for a delicious cocktail, some fragrant bud or taking some mushrooms at a rave in the deep forest.

Had a quick search on Google scholar, lots of stuff comparing general rates of engagement with hobbies in different countries, especially linked to helping older people. Thiscompares some countries, and observes that both wealth and wealthy inequality lead to less engagement with hobbies (which is why the US is relatively low).

I found this one that discusses how covid impacted different types of hobbies in various countries, but I couldn’t see a quick table of hobby prevalence. Just comments about stuff like cooking being more affected by covid in anglophone and Hispanic countries.