cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/3190048
I've been languishing in my comfort zone. Continuing to do so will have terrible effects for me. To quote Marx, I "[have] become a monster, a huge mass of flesh and fat, and [am] barely capable of walking any more." Ever since the pandemic started I've become a terminally online antisocial weirdo who barely ever leaves my room, let alone the house.
Of course, in addition to the damage this does to my personal life, it also makes me non - potentially even counter - revolutionary. As someone who wants to be a communist instead of just some internet poisoned middle class dilettante, I don't know how I can be expected to jeopardize the comfort of my parasitic labor aristocratic class position when I can't even get out of my comfort zone enough to go outside, eat real food, and do even the barest minimum of light exercise.
Lol depression is not counter-revolutionary, don't worry. It's hard to not to apply our protestant work ethic to our revolutionary politics, but depression is caused by a whole load of different things, none of which can be solved by being pissed at yourself. We don't call people unable to fight in a revolution because they have a broken leg "counterrevolutionary" for the same reasons.
It's definitely depression, although my habits do a lot to reinforce that depression.
Yoga and mindfulness exercises can be a good way to get more comfortable in your own skin. Being aware of your body and feelings might help you learn why you ‘escape reality’ by staying in your room all day. When you do get out of your comfort zone, try to find out what’s holding you back from doing it more often.
If you’re terminally online then it might be the case that you’re not allowing yourself to process your thoughts and feelings, because you’re constantly stimulating your brain with distractions. This can lower your tolerance to other stimuli, and make it more overwhelming to exercise or leave the house.
If you have the means, getting a therapist might be helpful in your transition to live a healthier life. Because not wanting to leave your room is a pretty clear indicator of being mentally unwell.
It’s a difficult journey that you need to take, you shouldn’t feel bad if progress is slow or if you lose some. As long as you keep trying, progress will come. I wish you the best.
Be more uncomfortable, but make it more comfortable to be uncomfortable. Yeah that's a confusing sentence. I have two and a half suggestions.
First, even if you've already dug your heels on consumerism, purchase a pair of comfortable shoes. My gold standard I can suggest to anybody is Adidas boost, specifically the Ultraboost. However it isn't worth it unless it's on sale. You can get them as low as $40, but I do suggest buying new. Boost is just better that way. Adidas has stock clearing sales on ebay, definitely worth checking out. There are shoes that you can get consistently cheaper. New Balance is great, but particularly evil politics, Asics are GREAT, probably better than UBs longterm, but extremely hard to get used to but UBs just work for anybody. Also UBs are worse than useless on a slippery floor.
Second, taper yourself onto eating better. Buy mirepoix or whatever your local veggie combo is, and a box grater. There are things you can add to make this easier, but a box grater is the only tool I'd consider absolutely necessary. Including knives or even pots and pans. If you're making most entrees, I promise it will taste better if you grate in a bunch of vegetables. Gravy? Grate carrot, onion and celery into it, it will be better and thicker. Soup? Yes. Picky kid? I'm a skilled professional chef, that's what grating is for. By the end, you'll be so used to vegetable, you will just automatically consider it in your hunger rotation. If you need any recipes for moving past the grating stage, let me know and I'll give you tons. Seriously, if you like the flavor and don't know how to cook it, just grate it and overcook it for flavor. Adding more vegetables into your diet is the gateway of realizing the rest of the world has been lying to you. That broccoli is actually one of the best vegetables, but simply isn't cooked well enough for most people to enjoy. Gateway vegetables. In the same way DARE says people go from smoking weed to crack, you also can go from eating tendies to broccoli and tendies.
My half (not a real suggestion) suggestion is to go homeless or extremely poor. Don't go homeless as an experiment unless you're REALLY able to stick to those sorts of things. I knew one person who was able to stick with it hard enough to be valuable, but that's the most minor example of them being an insanely contradictory anomaly. Otherwise, it just happens to many working class people, an event that brings them over any sort of comfortable delusions they hold. You have 8 hours of space a night, where you sleep, and that's if you're lucky. While I'm no longer homeless, those moments of homelessness/pure poverty have made me appreciate what I worked up to far much more. Comfort is hard to come by when you have no where to go, and you learn to take solace in the few moments of comfort you do have. It's (literally) how air conditioning and TV are things that you probably don't think about actively. Once you're out in 100+ degree heat for hours at a time, A/C all of a sudden becomes an oasis in the desert of national austerity.
The only real way to adjust your feelings is by drastic change that simply makes you appreciate what you want so much. Putting yourself in a spot where you have to decide when you do and don't have the good stuff. The way you deal with this is by changing your idea of good stuff (veggie suggestion, comfy shoes) Or by changing what is bad (the FEW working class/slaves who just learned to be happy with their conditions).
mirepoix or whatever your local veggie combo
There’s such a thing as a local veggie combo?
Yep! Pretty much every culture has a base of a few veggies they use that define their food's flavor, usually done with a specific technique. Examples
British veg: Onion, mushroom, cheese, rosemary fried in butter or lard
Celtic veg: Leek, Parsnip, Mushroom, Carrot, fried in butter or lard
French mirepoix; Diced Onion, Carrot, Celery, usually fried in butter
Italian sofrito: Diced Onion, Carrot, Celery, fennel if available fried in olive oil
Spanish sofrito: Diced Onion, bell peppers, tomato, fried in olive oil
Hispanic sofrito: Quartered Onions, whole jalapeno, whole tomato, and whole corn charred without any oil over an open flame.
Cajun holy "trinity:" Bell pepper, Celery, Onion, garlic fried in a thin, dark lard based roux
Creole holy "trinity": Bell pepper, Celery, onion, okra fried in lard (no roux)
German Suppengrun: Carrot, Celery Roots, and Leeks
Chinese food base: Green onion, ginger, garlic cooked with any oil
Indian: Onion, ginger, garlic, chilis and garam masala fried in ghee
Haitian epis: Parsley, scallions, garlic, citrus juice and fish peppers
Moroccan Chermoula: Diced onion, parsley, cilantro, garlic
Polish Włoszczyzna: Leek, carrot, celery root, parsley
Czech trinity: Onions, carrot, leek, parsnip
I could keep digging fore more, but I'm sure that gives you a lot of new stuff to work with. If you can think of a culture, they have a few veggies they use as a culinary base. I know this is a very west-centric list, but unfortunately the cooking side of the internet is extremely western centric.
Might need to hit you up for some of those staple veggie recipes
Few things of note. I am a chef, so some of these ingredients may not be attainable. If you can't get something I recommend, don't worry about it. If I say chili flake, I mean pretty much any dried chili seeds. I usually use pasilla or guajillo when I have them. You can get a bag of either of these dried chiles for a couple bucks in the "ethnic" section of the grocery store. Cheapest and best chili powder in the store is buying those dried chilis and blending them. Any of these recipes can be added to pretty easily, these aren't set in stone recipes, rather bases for you to explore further. For example, I hate most common dried seasonings as far as veggies go. Garlic, onion powder, dried herbs and such, all those take away from the fresh flavor I like in veggies, so I don't use them much. However, you may find that you love onion and garlic powder on your food. You may find that you like a different oil in a recipe than me, and that's cool! Also, these aren't vegan recipes, but could easily be converted
Roasted brusselsprouts
-
Get a flat baking sheet. A warped baking sheet will actually mess with this recipe quite a bit. Put it in your oven and preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
-
Stem and half your brusselsprouts, keep them in a bowl for later. Mince/grate/slice a shallot and toss it in the same bowl. Chop the shallot however you prefer them. If you like garlic, DO NOT add it at this stage, otherwise your garlic will all burn in the oven. For this reason, I don't add garlic to my brusselsprouts, and just lean on the shallot to give the onion/garlic flavor.
-
Pour in olive oil or any other good tasting oil, and gently toss. Don't wanna break all the leaves off, you just want the oil to be evenly distributed.
-
Season brusselsprouts with salt, ground pepper, paprika, and chili flakes, and toss the bowl. Do this after oiling, otherwise it's way harder to get everything even.
-
Pull out your hot oven pan, and set your brusselsprouts down on the pan face side down. This is labor intensive, but makes the final sprout way better.
-
Throw it back in the oven for 20 minute or so, you want to pull them out when they're looking nice and brown.
-
Finish with a light drizzle of olive oil and paprika
Also, a note on brusselsprouts. You will find recipes online telling you to deep fry brusselsprouts. Deep frying brusselsprouts at home is a god awful idea, they have too much water in them. It's a great way to have oil covering your entire kitchen and be dissapointed because it's still not as good as roasting like this.
Steamed brocolli
- Frozen or fresh, doesn't matter. Boil some water and throw your brocolli over it with a steamer basket. Let steam for 7 minutes or so. Finish by tossing them in olive oil and/or butter, salt, pepper, paprika, and mushroom powder if you have any dried mushrooms. You can add more to these, I really enjoy adding lemon pepper seasoning. Cheesy broccoli is also better this way since it maintains the crunch. One of my favorite ways to flavor this is making either a lemon-honey emulsion (Honey, lemon juice, salt, pepper, a sweet pink\white wine, a touch of soy sauce, shake the shit out of it in a bottle.) Another variant of this is lime, agave, cumin and a pinch of those ground up flying ants. Yes, some bugs really are worth adding to your cooking if you can get them. The flying ants are a popular ingredient in Oaxaca for a reason. It has a citrusy yet strongly umami taste, kinda like chinese fermented black beans, it's great. Very cheap, and an ingredient that once you try it you love eating bugs.
Roasted carrots
-
Rinse fresh carrots and cut them into coins. You can peel them, but I find that the skin bitterness works with the rest of the flavor I put down. Also, frozen carrots aren't worth trying to roast. Just microwave them if they're not fresh.
-
Toss in butter, salt, pepper, chili flakes, some dried microplaned chiles, brown sugar and dried ant powder if you have it. If you happen to be eating any fruit in the moment, squeeze some of that juice in, it's tasty and different.
-
Roast carrots at 425 degrees for 25 minutes
-
Pull carrots out of the oven, and finish with honey or agave. If you use agave, skip the brown sugar. But definitely use agave if you're using any dried ant powder. Agave is like 5x sweeter than honey, so it can work really well.
Spinach
I don't recomend making spinach on its own, it's just too hard to get truly right imo. HOWEVER, adding it as an ingredient to something else is a great idea. Toss spinach in with your pasta when you finish cooking it and cook it with your sauce. However, IF you're going to, this is a decent way.
-
Butter in a pan, fry off some garlic, a bit of shallots, and red pepper flakes in the pan. I'd recommend using processed chili flakes for smaller red pieces, the red and white of the aromatics makes it look way better and taste better too. Try not to soften anything, you want them kinda fried. Add a splash of soy sauce and salt at this point.
-
Add a shit ton of spinach. Shit shrinks like crazy, so use a big pan.
-
Cook with the aromatic butter for 2 minutes and pull off the heat. Finish with pepper.
Potatoes
This is a necessary food prep thing. You start doing it and you never go back. Either bake and/or boil your potatoes for the week and keep them in your fridge to be used when needed. Example of this is baking off 8 potatoes for me and my partner to eat throughout the week. Now, I have a baked potato that all I have to do for it to be ready is microwave it. If they're smaller potatoes, I can make smashed potatoes at a moments notice and those are the absolute shit. You can instantly roast off boiled potatoes, or mash them and have a 3 minutes mashed potato throughout the week. Same thing goes for sweet potatoes. Also, longer you bake potatoes, the better they taste, so you can get really good baked potatoes really easy.
Sweet potato fries
-
Chop sweet potato into fries
-
(optional) toss sweet potatoes in potato or corn starch. This will give you normal potato fry crunch if you do this
-
Season with salt, pepper, chili flake, a proportionally small amount of cumin, and olive oil.
-
Roast at 425 degrees for 20 minutes. If you have an air fryer or a convection oven, take off 5 minutes. Longer you cook these, the more your sweet potatoes will release sweetness.
-
Check sweet potatoes for texture. If you tossed them in starch, they're probably done at this point. No matter what, let them cool for about 5 minutes on a cooling rack, and throw your empty pan back in the oven to heat up. If you're still going, raise your oven temperature to 450 degrees.
-
Pull out your pan again and throw your sweet potatoes back in for another 10-15 minutes to crisp up, replenishing the oil in the pan. Doing a double bake like this makes the sweet potatoes crispier. You can repeat the process as much as you'd like, but it stops being useful after about 4 passes. You can do this with pretty much any starch to make them crispier.
Arugula/rocket
I don't cook this one, I'm just picky with raw greens. Arugula is related to spinach, but has this really pleasant black pepper flavor that makes me enjoy having it on my sandwiches or even for salads. This is a more expensive green, but it can be had at decent prices in the right time and place.
Sauteed green Beans
This is for fresh green beans, if your green beans are canned or frozen, don't bother trying this because there's no way to make the texture right
-
Butter in pan, fry shallots, garlic, and red bell pepper, and chili flakes with salt and soy sauce/worcherster sauce in a pan. Thinly sliced sun dried tomatoes also make a pleasant addition at this point if you have them.
-
Crank the heat on your pan and add fresh green beans. Fry them aggressively, you wanna keep them moving. The high heat brings a lot of good flavors out of the green beans quickly. Sautee for about 5 minutes or until your green beans are cooked through but still have a pleasant crunch.
-
Remove from heat, finish with white pepper and a very light sprinkle of Parmesan cheese. Cheese is optional, but the white on top makes it look really pretty and if you use a SMALL amount, it's a good flavor additive.
I could probably come up with more, but my arthritis hands are telling me to stop typing so
-
I find putting on shoes puts me in a more active mindset, and it's easier to start and complete tasks.
I think that's a Pave-loave per-sychololology. I wear shoes at work, so when I'm wearing shoes it must be so I can get work done.
I find putting on shoes puts me in a more active mindset, and it’s easier to start and complete tasks.
That makes sense, although I've gotten to the point where positioning myself to put my shoes on and mantaining the position to tie them leaves me out of breath. I could stick to sandals though probably.
I think that’s a Pave-loave per-sychololology.
A what? Are you talking about Pavlov's behavioral conditioning?
Yeah, but I wanted to communicate that it was little more than a pop-psychology understanding of it.
You have to find something you want to motivate you. If you really truely want to just vibe all day that is what you will get. You have to want somwthing, to have some Intrinsic motivation to force yourself to move towards a goal. Which, in some way just vibing and taking care of yourself is important. If nothing else find a club to join. Just having a routine for getting out and having fun will start building your capacity to get out and do more. Play is important
no, they’re not depressed because they “don’t care about communism enough”
Is that the point I made? Let me try again. If they are feeling complacent and have difficulty going out they need to practice the skill of going out. They will probbably have to bribe themselves by going and having fun doing something they like. Eventually they will get good at going out and can use that practice to community stuff.
Like, say they they go to sex parties. They get real good at talking to strangers in weird situations. They make new friends that are into sharing and cna be talked to about comunism. And they they can take their new sticky friends and their new found confidence to help form a mass line.
Consider that you may be depressed. Being depressed is not something that can be hand waved away by anyone. It's real, and it has a heavy effect on you.
I recommend forcing oneself to go outside at least one point in the day for a week, try it out. Its encouraging to myself to see that I can get going like that. Its small but it really does help. Find audio-books with a podcast or theory book (It gives me that good productive feeling). Play it on your phone while walking. You don't have to even walk, just sit down outside. I like to take it easy, if its too hard at the beginning my brain will talk myself out of it.
Just some offhand advice, try it or don't. Different methods work for different people.
I think most people dont accomplish things without being a part of a community somehow and I think you have to force yourself to get out there. Othello had a good point but in absence of that there are tons of good things you can do if you're wary about joining a political party.
You sound very depressed. Your self-criticism can either drive you to become a better revolutionary, but it can also turn into masochistic self-destruction, where you end up wallowing in self-pity/-hatred. There are no revolutionaries driven by great feelings of self-hatred. Putting it into metaphors: Kick yourself in the ass, but don't end up landing face-down in the dirt.
I found it helpful to turn anger into more productive feelings. E.g., I clean my place when I am mad. You might want to delete social media and games from your devices if they end up being eating your time.
There is no shame in getting a therapist if you have the means, but be careful: There are very bad therapists out there.
you join a club for birdwatching . So you have company , get forced out of your house and you see birds ...
The all-purpose suggestion is to make your "default options" the right choice. E.g. if I only have apples on hand, when I want to idly snack I'll eat the apple instead of going to the store for cookies. You want to expend as little willpower as possible. Habit and routine help a lot but it is difficult to build that quickly.
Last year I read The Flinch by Julien Smith, which is a shit book you shouldn't read. But it has a good concept: a built-in propensity to flinch away from difficult things that becomes a general reflex. The feeling of not wanting to get into the shower, or not wanting to get out of the shower, or not wanting to get out of bed, etc. Smith says that this is a pretty general pattern of behavior, and if you can practice pushing through the hump in one area it will extend to other areas. Personally I've noticed that my mental state before I get into a cold shower does seem similar to that before I deadlift or do some other difficult thing.
So in addition to the default options thing, I suggest you schedule one unpleasant but achievable thing in the morning. Maybe a cold shower. Anyone can start there. It can't hurt you, it just sucks. There's no reason to do it other than to prove that you can do hard things. But with that proof you will find it a lot easier to believe that you ARE a revolutionary communist and you can get shit done.
Also last year, I realized that I was spending like 8h a day on my phone and it was affecting my life. I sat down and took some notes and wrote up my theory of why I thought I was doing that, which I will reproduce:
original notes doc
goal: reduce compulsive phone use dopamine hit -> compulsive phone use long term, reduce need for dopamine hit
phone use triggers:
- boredom
- do something else dumbass
- escape from difficult task
- willpower/discipline
strategies:
- make phone use inconvenient.
- leave it off except for scheduled hours
- replace some functions with other things
- bathroom / smart home spotify?
- wear watches more often
- paper to-do lists
- replace some functions with other things
- delete social media apps
- greyscale
- leave it off except for scheduled hours
- replace with some other dopamine hit
- seems bad?
- replace with good "mode shift" activity?
- every pomodoro, go put something away / play with cat / walk around block
Said I was either going to fix this myself, really try, or pay for therapy. After I identified the problem I took a long weekend where my phone was completely off and I tried to "detox" a little and push through it. The specific actions I ended up taking were
actions
- Got smart home speakers for kitchen and bathroom. Now I can select and listen to music with my phone in the other room. Temptation much reduced. This has been helpful, but I do have to take my phone into the kitchen to look at recipes sometimes.
- Keep my phone charging in the bedroom when I'm in my office, and in the office when I'm out of the office.
- Wear watches more, leave the house without my phone sometimes. I can only do this for short trips though since I want google maps if I'm going far.
- Use paper to-do lists instead of the notes app on my phone
- Limit social media apps to 20/30 minutes each with the built-in controls
- Install an app to lock down my phone outside of certain hours, or more than an hour a day. This also helps me stick to my daily schedule, because if don't stick to it I miss the scheduled "fix" of screen time.
I'm down to 1-2h phone daily. It hasn't been a monotonic improvement, and some of that has been shifted to bullshit internet time on the computer* like I'm doing now, but even though I feel pretty online I think I've improved a bit overall. If you want to lose weight or get offline I think you need to analyze how you have gained weight and gotten online and why, and then use that info to come up with some actionable strategies. If you're ordering takeout too often the strategy will be different than if you're eating too many snacks or genuinely just really sedentary. I have found that I cannot implement goals like "check my phone less" or "eat healthier". They HAVE to be discrete actions or they won't get done, no matter how much I beat myself up.
Good luck comrade.
*like you i'm a programmer. being extremely online is a genuine workplace hazard for us
- boredom
Last year I read The Flinch by Julien Smith, which is a shit book you shouldn't read.
Lol, someone recommended that to me some years ago and while I still haven't read it, somewhere from it I picked up hopping into my showers before they get warm. Not all the time, especially in the middle of winter, but most of them. It's interesting how you can breathe yourself to a kind of tolerance if you just get in there and hold still under the cold. And then as soon as you move, you gotta deal with the shock again.
No go, on the rest of the book though?
the only saving grace is it's short. basically a polemic, not a lot of content. he gives stupid ass reasons for overcoming your flinch reflex, like cops and soldiers do this to make decisions quickly. meaning shooting kids lol
I think @Othello@hexbear.net had a sick ass suggestion in feeding the homeless. That seems like the north star to feeling better about yourself.
If I might offer some advice in addition to this, I would want you to ask yourself what is different at this point that you've made a thread about it compared to any other time since the pandemic started. What caused this post? Plenty of people are antisocial weirdos and get along relatively fine. I would posture to guess that the person you want to be wouldn't be suffering the damage to their personal life or at least would only be doing it in exchange for revolutionary praxis. Like you're getting a bad deal on the suffering and see no end to the bad deal unless you do something. If that's the case, then there'd be a sick irony to knowing that doing these nice things like eating real food would simply be a superior experience, but struggling to move towards it. All that to say is if moving towards an image of yourself that you like isn't cutting it, then maybe remembering that you're getting a dog deal on suffering without helping others would motivate you. What if you went out, fed the homeless, and asked them what they'd do around town if they had $20? Then go do that with them. I just don't think the opposite of your comfort zone is some kind of languishing in acid rain - you're still on a pursuit of happiness. You might find purpose that makes being a middle class dilettante seem boring.
If finding an actual therapist doesn't work for you, you could try to set yourself a small goal, post about it here and see if any of our comrades' can help give you some sort of psychological support.
Set a small goal, "Walk in the park for an hour" or "Just sit somewhere where people are like a Library or the Park and just let yourself 'Be'". From there, look around for signs advertising for things like reading groups or flower planting or something that are open to the public and make yourself attend. Think about some things to say when you're asked to introduce yourself to others.
since you have low energy levels, my advice is to start off not even worrying about your diet, just go on walks sometimes or do some pushups and squats once or twice a week (doing it 3 or more times a week might over-train you or cause burnout). you actually need a surplus of caloric intake to build muscle, it's almost impossible to build muscle while losing weight unless you use steroids or something but i'm not familiar with the specifics. getting your body used to more activity will eventually give you more energy for whatever else you might want to do. and once you have that muscle, it might make it easier to lose weight if you decide you still want to.
idk how to solve social anxiety or be the ideal communism builder but i do like 30 or so pushups and squats once or twice a week and i've been adding one rep each time. i eat like 2 'mega bowl' microwave meals a day and have 2 'ghost' energy drinks with reese's cups in between as snacks if that tells you how crappy my diet is lol.
oh yeah and drink a bunch of water, more than you probably think you need, it helps with digestion, helps prevent heartburn/indigestion, all kinds of stuff.