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ceponatia

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On 8/8/2020 at 1:35 PM, BooksandTrees said:

I need to get a new chair as well. Mine is causing me lower back problems. Speaking of that, does the chiropractor help or do the same symptoms just keep re-occurring? I feel like they can fix you for a certain amount of time and then your body just goes back. It reminds me of getting braces put on your teeth, but if you don't wear a retainer the teeth go back to the original position.

Chiropractic adjustments aren't a permanent fix by any means. The way I look at them is as maintenance which keeps the pain away while you do more permanent things to heal yourself (back strengthening exercises and so on). A lot of people I talked to prior to trying it myself said they went once or twice and it didn't help, so they stopped going. You won't get any benefit after one or two visits I can say as a fact, lol. I've had back problems for over ten years, not excruciating, but it makes standing for long periods painful and will likely only get worse as I age if I don't do anything. When I went the first time my back was so tight, they could barely get anything to crack. After going a couple times a week for two months, my doctor managed to get my back to crack so massively that I felt my entire rib cage move. It was after this magical session that I had the most long-lasting benefits. I continued going once every couple of weeks for a while and my back pain never returned in any major way. Once lockdown began, though, I was unable to go and even once they reopened it just wasn't part of my routine so I kept delaying it. I'm almost back to square 1 pain-wise and once again the couple of times I've gone, they haven't really been able to get anything to move. It probably won't take as long to get me back to the sweet spot though.

I'm no expert of course but the way I understand it is it's not the actual cracking that does anything (although it does feel amazing at times) it's that moving your bones around that much causes all of the muscle that has locked into place around them to release. When you keep going consistently, they're never given the opportunity to sieze up like that again.

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3 hours ago, ceponatia said:

Chiropractic adjustments aren't a permanent fix by any means. The way I look at them is as maintenance which keeps the pain away while you do more permanent things to heal yourself (back strengthening exercises and so on). A lot of people I talked to prior to trying it myself said they went once or twice and it didn't help, so they stopped going. You won't get any benefit after one or two visits I can say as a fact, lol. I've had back problems for over ten years, not excruciating, but it makes standing for long periods painful and will likely only get worse as I age if I don't do anything. When I went the first time my back was so tight, they could barely get anything to crack. After going a couple times a week for two months, my doctor managed to get my back to crack so massively that I felt my entire rib cage move. It was after this magical session that I had the most long-lasting benefits. I continued going once every couple of weeks for a while and my back pain never returned in any major way. Once lockdown began, though, I was unable to go and even once they reopened it just wasn't part of my routine so I kept delaying it. I'm almost back to square 1 pain-wise and once again the couple of times I've gone, they haven't really been able to get anything to move. It probably won't take as long to get me back to the sweet spot though.

I'm no expert of course but the way I understand it is it's not the actual cracking that does anything (although it does feel amazing at times) it's that moving your bones around that much causes all of the muscle that has locked into place around them to release. When you keep going consistently, they're never given the opportunity to sieze up like that again.

Thank you. I'll take it into consideration and take a look. I'm genuinely interested in it and think they might even have good exercises for me to strengthen the area to limit future pain like you are saying. That's what I'm most interested in.

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12 hours ago, BooksandTrees said:

Thank you. I'll take it into consideration and take a look. I'm genuinely interested in it and think they might even have good exercises for me to strengthen the area to limit future pain like you are saying. That's what I'm most interested in.

They vary in quality like doctors but if you find a good one in your area I'm sure they can help! The place I go to also has a physical therapist so if you can find one like that they'll definitely be able to help you with exercises.

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Welp a generally rocky start to the week but as that is par for the course, it's not exceptional! Still, it's only mid-Wednesday and I'm pulling myself back on track so I can't be made. I just keep breaking my streak goals which sucks. The weekend continues to be my biggest struggle. I've noted that if I don't wake up with some sort of intention, the day is most likely a wash. Even if I have things written in my planner, I have to wake up wanting to get started on something. If I don't, it's all fast food, games, and Netflix. I could have easily finished both my Algebra and Cybersecurity classes last Saturday but I procrastinated. I finished Cyb on the last day... Monday... and I still have to do my final Algebra test but I'm relatively certain I'm going to do that as soon as I'm done writing this.

It's not crushing me because even when I "fail" I'm still doing far better than I was two years ago (or even 6 months ago, really) so overall I have to keep in mind that I'm winning. There's just so much that I want to do and not enough time to get to it all, especially when I waste two full days over the weekend... which actually turns into 4 days because I don't really get my act together until at least Wednesday. I think that's partially because Monday I work from home so it still feels like part of the weekend and then Tuesday I'm just getting everything caught up that I didn't do. But it's Wednesday now. All the pieces have started to fall back into place.

My chair still hasn't even shipped which is annoying. The one I have right now genuinely hurts to sit in all day and I have to sit in it all day when I'm working from home. My work chair isn't much better so it's not like I get much relief there.

Monday I did treat myself to a massage from the good one again. I say "treat" but really this is a scheduled thing I used to do every 2 weeks and I'm trying to get back into that now that they're open again. Combined with the chiropractor it really eliminates my pain long-term. There's only one good massage therapist at that spa though so I have to remember to schedule in advance or I get stuck with one of the people who obviously don't want to be working there.

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I had a much better weekend finally. Finished all of my classwork on Saturday and finished up all of Algebra. I want to continue taking math classes on my own, I really enjoyed learning that I'm not stupid. Although I do have to take Intro to Statistics for my degree, I don't really consider this to be math so I'll probably go on to Trigonometry and Calculus through something like Khan Academy. I'm sure Skillshare has something too but it's difficult to know which courses there are worth taking. I watched a few minutes of 3 different SEO courses there yesterday and only the last one was any good (the one with the most viewers, go figure). There are a lot of Indians in the visible IT world, probably because that is the quickest route out of poverty in their country, so I think there's an impulse to think that they know what they're talking about. From what I've seen, though, they are great at using a lot of big words to say nothing. This is of course a gross generalization but I tend to avoid any IT related literature if it was written by an Indian. Maybe I'm a bigot. Lol. The truly brilliant IT voices seem to come from Japan, China, and Germany (unsurprisingly). Of course someone's nationality has little to do with their intellectual ability but your culture and education system can give you a big head start. None of that means anything about quitting games or my routine, I am just frustrated with the amount of worthless links from moronic bloggers I see whenever I try to look something up.

My planner is getting pretty in-depth these days. I used to try to think of what needed to be done today and write that down but I'm learning to think more long-term. Usually at the beginning of the week I'll write down everything I can think of and whatever I don't get done Monday I'll write on Tuesday, then Wednesday, and so on. I try to have everything wrapped up by Sunday but if it carries over into the next week (some goals are very long-term) it's not a big deal. I also track annual goals which aren't written on daily pages but I break them down into weekly steps. I forget far fewer things now and haven't had a late payment or missed appointment in a while. I did miss a webinar last week (not an important one) because I slept in. Twice last week I slept for like 13 hours and I'm not sure why. I went to bed at 11:30 on Saturday and didn't wake up until almost 1:30 yesterday and I still felt exhausted all day.

I finally got a haircut though. Lol. I was contemplating growing it long but it was getting too annoying and gross. I hate waking up feeling like I dunked my head in a deep fryer.

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7 hours ago, ceponatia said:

My planner is getting pretty in-depth these days. I used to try to think of what needed to be done today and write that down but I'm learning to think more long-term. Usually at the beginning of the week I'll write down everything I can think of and whatever I don't get done Monday I'll write on Tuesday, then Wednesday, and so on. I try to have everything wrapped up by Sunday but if it carries over into the next week (some goals are very long-term) it's not a big deal. I also track annual goals which aren't written on daily pages but I break them down into weekly steps. I forget far fewer things now and haven't had a late payment or missed appointment in a while. I did miss a webinar last week (not an important one) because I slept in. Twice last week I slept for like 13 hours and I'm not sure why. I went to bed at 11:30 on Saturday and didn't wake up until almost 1:30 yesterday and I still felt exhausted all day.

I had that at first as well, but I found out some tasks can't be done this way efficiently. For example, for me it's easy to exercise, read and do a few chores and call it a day, despite the fact I wanted to work on my blog article. I'd usually knock out the easy tasks and leave the more difficult ones for tomorrow... ad infinitum. Planners and schedules are great, but I need to remember I can't use them as a tyrant would for a slave, otherwise I wouldn't do anything.

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3 hours ago, Ikar said:

I had that at first as well, but I found out some tasks can't be done this way efficiently. For example, for me it's easy to exercise, read and do a few chores and call it a day, despite the fact I wanted to work on my blog article. I'd usually knock out the easy tasks and leave the more difficult ones for tomorrow... ad infinitum. Planners and schedules are great, but I need to remember I can't use them as a tyrant would for a slave, otherwise I wouldn't do anything.

Thanks for saying that, that has given me pause. Maybe at the beginning of the week I need to find a list of to-do items and divvy them up throughout the days.

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What a week. I'm in some pretty bad back pain right now because nobody showed up to work yesterday (it was my day to work from home) and I'm working in the office alone today so I had to open and scan two days worth of mail. The table we use is at the proper height for the average 5'4" woman so I spent 4 hours hunched over. I'm done now so I can sit for a while (plus it's my lunch break and Chipotle is on the way...).

I've had a very good week otherwise. The only day I failed to stick to my planner was yesterday and that was because I drank caffeine in the evening on Wednesday which I specifically set goals to not do as it makes me feel terrible the next day. Just another reminder I guess! I've taken a note from @Ikar and have been more mindful of how I plan out my days. It's still a work in progress but I'm identifying the hobbies I want to focus on (at least for now) and the things I need to get done every week and I'm splitting them up on alternating days so I don't get burned out on something. While I do something music related every day, I alternate between piano lessons, production, and theory. Obviously if I want to practice piano for a couple minutes on a day that it's not scheduled I'm not going to force myself not to!

I've filled that empty time slot that completing Algebra left open with Statistics and Psychology. Once again I finished my Infrastructure Administration assignment early; I'm editing it today which is something I never have time to do so that's nice. I even read most of the course materials for the week which is also something I never do (and I even took notes, lol). My friend who is getting his PhD in Psychology mentioned that he takes notes in Power Point slide format which I might try, it sounds interesting and I am more of a visual thinker so it might help me more than writing things down in a notebook that I never look at again.

Watched a Jordan Peterson video this morning which appeared to be a private Q&A after an event he attended and he said a few interesting things that made me really think of things I could do in my life (as usual). One is that when you read something you should take some time to write about it afterward. I definitely need to do that more. So often I read something, even for class, and I have a fog in my mind when I try to imagine what the material I just read means to me. Even if it's something as simple as "Heterogeneous architectures can be more vulnerable to intrusion due to the rapid pace at which they are deployed". What does that mean? Well, I know now because that's an example of something I thought hard about and researched in depth for my assignment, but I need to do it more oftne.

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38 minutes ago, ceponatia said:

I've had a very good week otherwise. The only day I failed to stick to my planner was yesterday and that was because I drank caffeine in the evening on Wednesday which I specifically set goals to not do as it makes me feel terrible the next day. Just another reminder I guess! I've taken a note from @Ikar and have been more mindful of how I plan out my days. It's still a work in progress but I'm identifying the hobbies I want to focus on (at least for now) and the things I need to get done every week and I'm splitting them up on alternating days so I don't get burned out on something. While I do something music related every day, I alternate between piano lessons, production, and theory. Obviously if I want to practice piano for a couple minutes on a day that it's not scheduled I'm not going to force myself not to!

I am still in the process of planning my days and even weeks at the same time, but I know it is required to think longer-term. I'm getting hammered by the fact I can't do everything at once or that I have to let some activity go, while I spend the last year and a half finding activities I would do instead of gaming. I get terrified when I invest too much time into something; it reminds me of how poorly that went when I was gaming. I have a full-study day today with no obligations and I'm aiming "only" for 5 hours of studying.

40 minutes ago, ceponatia said:

Watched a Jordan Peterson video this morning which appeared to be a private Q&A after an event he attended and he said a few interesting things that made me really think of things I could do in my life (as usual). One is that when you read something you should take some time to write about it afterward. I definitely need to do that more. So often I read something, even for class, and I have a fog in my mind when I try to imagine what the material I just read means to me. Even if it's something as simple as "Heterogeneous architectures can be more vulnerable to intrusion due to the rapid pace at which they are deployed". What does that mean? Well, I know now because that's an example of something I thought hard about and researched in depth for my assignment, but I need to do it more oftne.

That's why I have my blog, write here and even meditate about things. It helps with sorting out thoughts immensely.

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On 8/21/2020 at 1:19 PM, Ikar said:

I am still in the process of planning my days and even weeks at the same time, but I know it is required to think longer-term. I'm getting hammered by the fact I can't do everything at once or that I have to let some activity go, while I spend the last year and a half finding activities I would do instead of gaming. I get terrified when I invest too much time into something; it reminds me of how poorly that went when I was gaming. I have a full-study day today with no obligations and I'm aiming "only" for 5 hours of studying.

It's difficult to think of long-term goals when I'm used to living for the moment. I laugh a little when self-help people say that we have to "live in the moment". That's what I did for 20 years... never caring once about what would happen to me tomorrow let alone in 10 years! I understand that the premise of that saying is to not get anxious about the future but maybe we should be anxious about the future sometimes. I can relate to your comment, though. I had a similar thing happen. I spent months looking for new activities to do and then all of a sudden I discovered that there really isn't enough time in the day to do everything you want to and should do! What is helpful to me is to make a list of everything I want to do and everything I must do. Then I try to split those things up into a pattern by days. The things I really want to learn or get better at I try to do at least every other day. Slightly less important things every three days, and so on. Being focused helps, too. Some tasks take dramatically less time than I thought they would if I just commit to them and get them done. Cleaning for example always seems like a daunting and oppressive task but realistically I can clean any room in my house in 20 minutes regardless of how disorganized it is.

On 8/21/2020 at 1:19 PM, Ikar said:

That's why I have my blog, write here and even meditate about things. It helps with sorting out thoughts immensely.

Same here. Really the only two reasons I come to Game Quitters is for the few people here I enjoy hearing from (yourself included) and to reflect on some feelings and thoughts I've had without it being too personal. Some people who read my blog know me in real life so I'm a bit more cautious of what I write there but the likelihood that I'll ever meet anyone from this site is relatively close to zero percent, lol.

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My chair still hasn't shipped. I received an email yesterday asking me to rate my purchase "now that you've had a chance to enjoy your new furniture". What? The survey was sent by a 3rd party company so I'm sure it's just automated to send after a certain amount of time but nevertheless I sent an email to the retailer asking what was up. They said 15-20 days and today is 20. I know things can be behind with COVID but they should at least send me a message letting me know I'm actually getting what I paid for at some point. Bad customer service really bothers me because it's so easy to have a machine do it these days. There's really no excuse.

Kinda fell back on my old ways this weekend, lol. Didn't finish up my homework ahead of time like I did last week but I did get 80% of it done so it'll be really easy to wrap up tomorrow. I did get back "in the studio" (the other side of my bedroom) and write some music for the first time in a long time. Picked up the upgrade of Komplete 12 this week so I have a lot of new audio toys to play with. Some of them are pretty insane. A lot of people hate on Native Instruments for being "popular" but they're usually just pretentious YouTube beatmakers who don't actually know what they're talking about. It's the same thing that makes "cool" scene kids hate pop music because it's too successful and too many people like to listen to it. "It's not real music like this edgy band in which none of the members has any background in theory and can barely play their instruments!" Western culture is so weird. We denigrate people with skill and praise people who have no clue what they're doing. There's a very real phenomenon in the music community in which most of the top producers and artists we see are extremely privileged rich kids and to be perfectly honest if you're not wealthy you're probably not going to ever be a famous musician. So people hate them for that but those rich kids also had thousands of hours in lessons while they were growing up so they do genuinely have a lot of musical skill. You need money to do anything in this world and if you don't have it you sadly aren't going to go far. There are always exceptions, true. But they're rare.

So I shot for the career that will make me the most money with my skill set, lol. I'm still terrified daily that I won't be able to find a job but I'm going to try. Maybe I'm too old for that kind of money to have an impact on my artistic endeavors but I can use it to help somebody else some day.

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On 8/23/2020 at 10:05 PM, BooksandTrees said:

You're making progress so keep it up. I wouldn't worry about not finding a job. I think everything falls into place to those who put in the effort. We all have those lull weekends. It's impossible to stay perfect. I could have studied this weekend but didn't. Idk. It happens. 

I appreciate the reassurance; I'm in agreement that if you do the work things will happen. I think what gives me a lot of anxiety about it is that I've never applied for a "real" job. Not that anything that doesn't require a college education isn't real but a job that I've actually worked towards and really wanted. Even my current job, though fairly decent in pay, benefits, security, etc was just handed to me because my whole family has worked for the local government here. The jobs in the government that I did really want, I didn't get. Not because I wasn't qualified or didn't interview well but because here they choose who they're going to hire or promote before they even post the job. It's unethical and technically illegal but that's just the way it is so there's no sense crying about it, lol.

But I know I'll be able to get a job when I graduate and that I'll probably be pretty good at it because I've been good at every job I've ever had. I work hard and go out of my way to learn things completely instead of just doing what I'm told and scraping by. I also have a lot of friends in the field who I'm sure could help me out once I'm ready. Some of them even say they could get me a job right now but I'd have to move across the country and that would be expensive to do and financially devastating if it didn't work out. Still, part of me wonders if I shouldn't just take the risk and go for it. That's the usual self-help advice, right?

No matter, really. I'm not living check to check like I used to so there's no rush. I don't know if this post sounds depressing, haha. I feel like it might a little but I'm not depressed at all, quite the contrary. I had a pretty good day. Third week of this class starts today; two more after this and then I'm on to more advanced classes.

I listened to part of an audiobook on Postmodernism today. I know Jordan Peterson, whom you'll know I'm a follower of if you've read much of this journal, really doesn't like postmodernism but I keep seeing critics of his claiming that he doesn't really understand what postmodernism is... so I figured I'd find out for myself. Even though I appreciate his wisdom and respect his ideas, I don't consider anybody to be completely right about anything... except for maybe math problems. Haha.

I'm not very far into the book but I can see some of the appeal of the ideas. The book is fortunately not taking a pro or con stance on it so it lays out some of the good ideas behind postmodernism and some of the ways you can use postmodernism to make some pretty stupid arguments (like those of famous radical feminist sea monster Andrea Dworkin). I don't know if I agree with the premise that anything you create can only be told through your own narrative and thus everything we use in Western society is the product of patriarchal white supremacy but I also am aware that some white men hear people like Jordan Peterson speak and breathe a sigh of relief and say "oh thank God, there's nothing wrong with being white or male, I don't have to reflect on my actions ever again". That's of course a foolish thing to take away from the notion that being white doesn't automatically infer that you're a racist. There are certainly truths in both sides of the argument and even the brightest people on either side seem to be incapable of understanding nuance or gradients.

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Ending the work week on a high note! Got a lot done today and I'm looking like I'll finish my homework tonight (for my main class) so I'll have an easy weekend. I'm thinking of trying something next week where I do my homework on the weekend... not to procrastinate but so that I have a reason to wake up at the same time I do for work during the week. Still debating with myself on it; it's not like I'm struggling to get it done now it'll just mean that during the week days I'll have more time to read and practice music and such.

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11 hours ago, ceponatia said:

Ending the work week on a high note! Got a lot done today and I'm looking like I'll finish my homework tonight (for my main class) so I'll have an easy weekend. I'm thinking of trying something next week where I do my homework on the weekend... not to procrastinate but so that I have a reason to wake up at the same time I do for work during the week. Still debating with myself on it; it's not like I'm struggling to get it done now it'll just mean that during the week days I'll have more time to read and practice music and such.

I get up at the same time every day - 0550, although this week my clock went on strike and on average I got up an hour later, but hopefully I have fixed it now. I do not have a real "job", so there is no need for me to "compensate" sleep during the weekend, because I stayed up late on workdays.

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On 8/29/2020 at 4:18 AM, Ikar said:

I get up at the same time every day - 0550, although this week my clock went on strike and on average I got up an hour later, but hopefully I have fixed it now. I do not have a real "job", so there is no need for me to "compensate" sleep during the weekend, because I stayed up late on workdays.

Even with a job there's no reason for me to stay up late; I just do it out of habit. I still have plenty of time before and after work to get everything done but then I lay in bed and watch a movie on my phone every night which is a really bad habit I've picked up lately. I get in bed by 10:30 every night as planned but then I'm up until 12 watching something I didn't even enjoy, haha.

Not a great weekend again so all of what I said above was fairly moot, lol. Still, every weekend is better than what my weekends were a year ago. Mainly bummed out because Ableton Live, my main music production suite, is now crashing any time I try to use one of my Native Instruments plugins. I've tried everything I can think of to try to fix it, even deleted registry entries and reinstalled everything. No dice. It's just the trial version that they're offering for 6 months due to COVID lockdown so I'm not even eligible for tech support. I'm not going to pay for something if it potentially might not work with the $3000 in plugins and hardware I have. 😛

So I've been getting more into Reason 11. I've owned it for a while but never had an opportunity to fully try it out. It's a completely different workflow from Ableton but that leads to different kinds of creativity in my experience. It simulates a modular rack with patch cables and everything whereas Ableton is like a virtual recording studio. Back when I torrented the original version of Reason in the early 00's (I no longer pirate anything) it was hot garbage but it's come a long way.

Wrapping up week 3 of Infrastructure Administration today and I did an entire chapter of Statistics in one day. My philosophy course (Ancient Greek Philosophers) is actually really short I just noticed earlier so I'll be able to get that all done in one day. Crazy... an entire course worth of credits for about 2 hours of work. What a time to be alive. I'm learning a lot though; that was one of the courses I was really looking forward to taking. It's remarkable that almost everything we believe and the way we live our lives traces back to 2,000 years ago and very little has changed since then. We pile more technology and toys on top of everything but at the core we're relatively the same. Recent technology, arguably, has started to drive us away from those ancient ideas of ethics and reason and many people, perhaps myself included, believe it is why everything seems to be circling the drain lately. I know there are tons of articles that say "every generation people say the world is worse than it used to be so that means they're always wrong" but it could also, logically, mean that the world is continually getting worse. I'm a positive person, don't get me wrong, and I try to be optimistic... but it seems like an objective truth. You can look at almost any aspect of our lives and find at least a dozen ways that it's gone wrong.

All we can do is try to be good dudes and dudettes ourselves, though. Or maybe not. Maybe we should try to get other people to do better. I'll have to think about that.

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12 hours ago, ceponatia said:

All we can do is try to be good dudes and dudettes ourselves, though. Or maybe not. Maybe we should try to get other people to do better. I'll have to think about that.

It's a controversial topic. I don't think it's always the case that being benevolent and actively encouraging (active positive interaction) or leading by example (passive interaction) is going to cut it. My father's friend kicked his son in his 20s out of the flat, because all he did was to eat, sleep and play games. He eventually got himself together, got a job and is welcome in the family again. That event was not pleasant by definition for any side, but it was just about making the decision, taking the chances and seeing what happens.

The incentive to make others do better (or something we want) has to come from someone emotionally close or someone whom we think can influence our life in a big way, just as @gargamel pointed out in the post here. I guess it could be a good exercise on finding out how many people care to have you/need you in their life, but don't get drunk on power! 😄

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14 hours ago, Ikar said:

It's a controversial topic. I don't think it's always the case that being benevolent and actively encouraging (active positive interaction) or leading by example (passive interaction) is going to cut it. My father's friend kicked his son in his 20s out of the flat, because all he did was to eat, sleep and play games. He eventually got himself together, got a job and is welcome in the family again. That event was not pleasant by definition for any side, but it was just about making the decision, taking the chances and seeing what happens.

The incentive to make others do better (or something we want) has to come from someone emotionally close or someone whom we think can influence our life in a big way, just as @gargamel pointed out in the post here. I guess it could be a good exercise on finding out how many people care to have you/need you in their life, but don't get drunk on power! 😄

 

I agree. It's been called "tough love" but I think that it's just what normal adults who have a healthy grip on reality would do to somebody who was wasting their life away and living off of their kindness for free. This is a situation close to my heart because it's how my entire family operates. It's easy to say now that I'm 38 and have my shit together but I really do wish that my parents had kicked me to the curb in my early twenties. I think I'm the kind of person who would have realized, eventually, why they did it and would have corrected my path. Instead they paid all my bills and never followed through on any of their threats. The 100th time you threaten to evict someone, it loses its sting. Lol

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been a little while! My half-brother died the weekend before this last one, apparently from suicide. We weren't close so it wasn't an emotional shock but there's still a lot to do. My mother and sister are pretending to be devastated so that people pay attention to them, as they do with every tragedy that has little to nothing to do with them. It is what it is. He's a bit of a cautionary tale. He's been an alcoholic his whole life; all my siblings and I have. Same shitty father. He temporarily had his shit together. I don't know how long that lasted because, like I said, we weren't close. He eventually started drinking again, lost his job at Starbucks, and gave up. He was older than me, from my father's first marriage. If you're pushing fifty and can't even hold a job at Starbucks, I can see why suicide would be an appealing alternative to living the rest of your life.

I don't think that I'm at risk but I'm always open to the possibility that my life will come crashing down and I'll return to drinking. He did a lot of things while he was "sober" that are red flags so even if he wasn't drinking or doing drugs at that point, it was a long time coming. He graduated from culinary school and then got a job as a manager of a Starbucks so it's obvious to me that something happened there that I don't know about. IDK. Doesn't really matter now, I suppose.

Last week of Infrastructure Administration. I believe I have some programming classes next and I'm looking forward to those!

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I sometimes wonder about our vices if we ever plunge back into them. It worries me. Although I'm calm and leading a good life I know I have a very bad temper so I am always afraid of losing it. Vices can bring it to the forefront. I think our demons never go away no matter what we do in life. You can always be resurrected. I'm wondering if his life got so stressful that his demons came back and the pain was just unbearable. I hope he wasn't suffering. Although you're not close I hope you're ok. It's tough to reflect on someone's suicide when you've battled depression. 

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4 hours ago, ceponatia said:

I don't think that I'm at risk but I'm always open to the possibility that my life will come crashing down and I'll return to drinking. He did a lot of things while he was "sober" that are red flags so even if he wasn't drinking or doing drugs at that point, it was a long time coming. He graduated from culinary school and then got a job as a manager of a Starbucks so it's obvious to me that something happened there that I don't know about. IDK. Doesn't really matter now, I suppose.

 

58 minutes ago, BooksandTrees said:

I sometimes wonder about our vices if we ever plunge back into them. It worries me.

I remember reading an article by James Good that gaming comes with a superpower - doing something for 10 hours a day consistently is quite the achievement, but it has to be aimed towards some valuable goal.

I think it led me to the point where I face the stigma of being paranoid and unable to do a lot of any activity for more than a few hours a day, because I know what happened the last time I decided to seriously dedicate myself to something. Yet I know to be truly good at something, I need to do that again.

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40 minutes ago, Ikar said:

I think it led me to the point where I face the stigma of being paranoid and unable to do a lot of any activity for more than a few hours a day, because I know what happened the last time I decided to seriously dedicate myself to something. Yet I know to be truly good at something, I need to do that again.

It's tough to think about for sure. It's such an investment. We know we can achieve amazing things, but at what cost is it worth that investment? That's the unending question and I think it has limited me from making that sacrifice to dedicate my time to activities.

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2 hours ago, BooksandTrees said:

It's tough to think about for sure. It's such an investment. We know we can achieve amazing things, but at what cost is it worth that investment? That's the unending question and I think it has limited me from making that sacrifice to dedicate my time to activities.

Exactly. I think it's best to start small for me again, maybe spend an hour related to X or two hours related to Y daily, since I am out of the loop of "having to be somewhere/doing one specific thing" for 6+ hours a day for two years (with some small exceptions). I need to learn how to negotiate with myself better.

Edited by Ikar
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I don't know if I agree completely with what James Good said because I can't do "something" for 10 hours at a time, I can play video games for 10 hours at a time. I can't do the same for studying or writing music. On the other hand, I have noticed that my ability to chunk out blocks of time to do something and stick to it is far above average. Most of the people I know in my age group don't have any real hobbies and they definitely don't spend their free time studying. I'm also the only person in my circle of friends who isn't married or a single parent so I have more free time to experiment with.

This week is going well; I set aside the above-mentioned chunks of time to get ahead on schoolwork tonight and I got further than I planned. I'm optimistic about the weekend.

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  • 3 weeks later...

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