Basically just "what's your happy place?"
For me, there's this obscure card game that I was really into years ago. It's out of print, the company shut down years ago. But there's still a very small online community that discusses it (and by small I mean like, maybe a post every two weeks on the message board) and it's kinda nice to see people still talking about it. And I have thousands of these cards I still need to sort so I can finally try and get at least a copy of every card before it becomes so obscure you can't even find copies.
Whenever I'm feeling doomer about the state of the world or even just mentally ground down by life, I get those cards out and start sorting. I can easily lose a few hours that way but I'm vibing the whole time. Just wish I had more time for it.
So what about you all? Just be careful not to dox yourself or anything.
the final stage of capitalism is a society completely consumed with addictions isn't it?
Look how dependent we are on coffee and alcohol to keep this shambolic juggernaut afloat.
and even that wasn't enough, so they're legalizing weed, and created a pharmaceutical way to get opioids to millions of people and kill them with it. cool healthy society hahahaha
I have been spending a lot of time gardening and doing things related to gardening. I've been cruising for clearance sales on bare roots and bulbs and I have like 1000 bulbs to plant within the next few weeks (some are super small like crocuses, though).
Also growing cannabis and shrooms in my basement, gives me something to tinker with on a daily basis. The pot took a long time to get going because it's my first time and I didn't do enough research, but I'm finally like two weeks away from putting it into flower and then it'll be 2-3 months until I have so much pot that I won't know what to do with it.
Gardening seems like such a neat hobby. Even if it's something simple like herbs for cooking.
I love web 1.0 stuff, I spend a lot of time going through sites on the internet archive, oocities, and this Japanese geocities archive called geolog. Personal home pages are such a treat and take me back to the late 90's to mid - aughts, in a time before social media, wikis and youtube. A lot of these sites, to me anyway, are like mini works of art in html form. The layouts are so quaint and it was a time before javascript really took over, where the cutting edge was flash animation and frames. It's just a shame that so many of these archived pages are broken with dead links and missing graphics, sadly they'll remain incomplete forever but it's still worth checking out.
When I'm not doing that I play video games or watch longplays on youtube.
I remember making a geocities site back in the day, it was a lot of fun. I do kinda miss personal web pages, I mean I know you can create one but it's not the same free-form thing you got with geocities.
Absolutely. Plus back then personal home pages would join web 1.0 social networking things like webrings, bulletin board systems, message boards, and generally link to one another. It made everything feel more connected than it does today wherein the internet is just homogenized into facebook, twitter, reddit and youtube. The wild west days where the internet just felt bigger and more optimistic are gone, sadly.
this is very true and is such a bummer. makes me even more doomer, capitalism recuperates and reifies all.
Hiking. Even if it's a hellscape below, and already the cities beneath the mountains are so toxic that it's an area infamous for its mass shootings, those rocks will still be there. It's done in poverty conditions and makes me appreciate simple things. Short of the fuel to get there and maybe permit fees, it's free. If I decide to stay there and camp, it's free. It makes me stronger, more resilient, and a better observer. I can practice carrying about 30lbs over rugged terrain and know where the bunkers are hidden amongst that terrain. I can forage for mushrooms and have a free, healthy, luxury food source while looking for ventilation and drainage systems or indicators that the cabins are survivalist homes. I can take photographs of wildflowers today and solar panels tomorrow, an endless bounty of nature.
I sometimes get around to writing a story about a little shithead g*mer 100 years in the future who makes me happy. He doesn't give a shit about politics, but he lives in this post-American empire world. It's often alluded to that America can no longer exert influence over the world. He knows his grandparents fucking hate the Eastern US who "treated labor badly" but cares very little about it. I sometimes imagine ways I can allude to some dramatic change, for instance, there are "classic 21st century maps with countries everywhere" because there are only 12 to 15 entities that declare statehood anymore. The Eastern US makes no bones that it has fused with the corporate world. The Western US is headed by a Chinese president whose sole responsibility is to reign in reactionary elements, but does very little to control or pay attention to "the sovereigns living in its borders". There's a landlord diaspora that the Eastern US will let make speeches. There's a Texan autonomous zone whose marauders once foiled a team of landlord insurrectionists trying to infiltrate the Western US. Some of these ideas you comrades came up with and I've been having fun trying to fit them into a narrative. The story is mostly about young adult drama in video games, so the copium is sprinkled throughout as background noise for a guy whose mostly concerned about being mean to people in online games
This sounds like a fucking awesome setting for some short stories!
Well, @CopsDyingIsGood , first, your name is correct and good. Second, I'm just starting to realize the potential for this world. If done properly, you could spend your while life talking about it. At present, I'm writing with two POVs. One to talk about the MC and the other to be antagonized by him. But inside a world where states are only necessary for antagonizing reactionary states who are wanting in power, there's certainly some stories there. The problem with writing outside of the video game is that I don't have any lore as to why the world is in late stage communism 100 years from now. That's the trick of a politically agnostic MC; the world is moving around him and he never stops to ask why. He just enjoys his functional society, futuristic tech, and the actualization of labor around him.
Hmmm yeah having an intentionally ignorant MC does make exploring the lore a bit more difficult, it would take a lot more craft to make even the broad strokes of the history clear and interesting without allowing the MC to know about any of it lol
I don't really feel like a doomer. I think things will work out for the world and I'm glad I can look to places like China that, if literally nothing else, are pointed in the right direction. I just don't things will work out for me. Not in my lifetime. So all I can really do is try and stay informed but not be what people would call extremely online. I don't like to obsess over what some tool said on Twitter or some news story no one will remember in an hour. I just try to make the most of life as is, but that's really not much and I don't have much capacity to make it better right now. Being poor and mentally ill in the southern states really sucks, y'all!
cannabis, video games (mostly rocket league), riding bikes (preferably with other cool folks), jamming music, nature hikes
when I'm super tweaked on anxiety trying to fall asleep, I'll imagination-design an-comm solar-punk communities to help me drift away
I like to tinker with my 3d printer. It's in a back corner of the basement, away from everyone and everything. I always have a backlog of little doodads that my friends asked me to design and print for their projects. Plus, designing and printing things to make your printer better is always an option.
Just a few days ago I caused a "maintenance cascade" where I was trying to fix something that required me to fix something that required me to fix something that required me to fix something. We like to refere to it as a "Hal moment" in our house.
"Yak shaving" feels like a Ren and Stimpy reference. Lol
Now that I live with my parents in a godforsaken suburb i dedicate all my spare brainpower to learning Chinese. Other than that I go to the gym for an hour every day. The combination has improved my mental health considerably, and I think it'll get better once my TEFL certification class starts
Where are you looking to go for TEFL? I remember looking into that when I was looking for ways to get out of the US at the beginning of the pandemic but I’ve basically given up on ever leaving now.
I went with International TEFL Academy. It's expensive compared to some of their competitors but they have a full time staff dedicated to helping their alumni find a job, as well as alumni networks for basically every country on earth, so I figured it was worth spending the extra cash.
You should look into TEFL though. It's definitely the easiest way to escape America, provided you can afford the upfront costs
That’s great; Happy for you! I’m still on their email list. If my wife and I decide not to have any kids it’ll make that an easier call my parents would already be sad enough 🙈
Oh yeah if you're married then it's a lot harder to pull off logistically. But the alternative is... depressing, to say the least
We were fortunate enough to visit Scotland the fall before the pandemic and i fell in love hard for that country. Made me want to see more of the world but the fact that we don’t happen to have any Irish or Scottish grandparents hurts. Really hoping for Scottish independence even if we don’t get to go live there
What is the game that is that good? You can't leave us hanging like that.
I have been looking into getting some stuff going again now that covid is "over" but it is hard. Most the stuff I used to do has closed, or moved, or people have passed.
Problem is the community is so small that talking about it would be pretty doxxy. It's not even a great game, just one that means a lot to me.
