things are in fact going extremely badly but we’ll see if they pick up starting tomorrow night for reasons that will preclude me being here for about a week (seeing my SO)
Been super busy this past month, finally done with my backlog and have time to enjoy myself again.
It’s going ok!
My sons daycare had to close for the week because of a COVID outbreak so I’ve been daddy-day care all week. It’s nice to spend quality time with him, but man 2-year-olds are a lot.
Aside from working overnight, I’m putting together furniture in my new apartment, looking for more decor, figuring out how to lay everything out… just chipping away until everything is the way I want it. Got some things to fix/replace as well.
I’ve been in a very dark place, mentally. I tried posting about it on a mental health community, and I attracted downvotes and trolls, so not good (some helpful people too, but not worth it imo)
I need to find a therapist, but I haven’t had much luck in the past (had one who went on an unprovoked rant about how there’s a MLK Day but no White People Day, and another who was obsessed with being so vocally anti-cannabis that I felt I couldn’t be honest)
I’m thinking about staying with my parents for a while, but I can’t afford to take time off work to go
I don’t have any words of consolement, but I’d just like to say that you were one of the first lemmy users I found on beehaw and I’ve enjoyed your comments and posts.
<3
Thank you, that really does mean something to me
I hope things get better for you!
My week is starting off alright tbh. Been having bad neck pains. Work feels stale, home feels stale, gym feels stale, personal life feels stale.
I recently stopped talking to one of my best friends and after that, our group disbanded. Luckily I have a girlfriend and she keeps me sane, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss going out and getting drunk as a group of like 6 of us lol
Sorry to hear that bud. I recently stopped talking to my best friend and our friend group after their response to my wife’s pregnancy and miscarriage. Basically made us feel like a burden while she was pregnant, and with two exceptions, the other 10 people said nothing after the miscarriage.
Sucks to cut contact after 15 years, but he still did nothing after I talked to him about this. Ultimately, I think it was for the best, but it still blows when your supposed support system fails you.
I’m so sorry you all had to go through that. I hope you and your wife are doing well.
I had to stop talking to him because he SA’d two (maybe three) of my female friends and he attempted to do the same to my girlfriend. It was on my birthday and I invited all of my friends to drink, play board games, and just chill out.
I feel bad that such a bad thing happened to my friends at my party, and I regret not noticing he was like that earlier. Looking back, he had some red flags but I didn’t know he was capable of something like that. Maybe I was just being naive.
Ultimately, I think it was for the best, but it still blows when your supposed support system fails you.
I really agree with that. Thank you for your response
Thank you, doing better with time.
That’s fucked man. I wouldn’t blame yourself for trusting someone not to be a piece of shit. I’m glad you acted when you found out, and hopefully he faces consequence for his actions
I just found out that my car insurance was cancelled due to a billing error and now I’m driving uninsured until next week… My anxiety has been through the roof for a week now because of this and so so many other things. I feel like my life is teetering on the edge right now. But honestly it’s probably not that bad. What I really need is a med adjustment for anxiety… I am catastrophizing everything lately. I just need to get calm.
Hang in there chief. The insurance lapse will be merely a blip in the future, so, try to stay focused on number one. Breathe, and make sure you take time to care for your damn self. Nobody can benefit from your awesomeness if you worry yourself to death.
my budget is finally back on track. i’ve owed my partner money for awhile (new to us house repairs and such), and i finally had enough of a cushion to pay him back + have enough for the rest of the month, including our first property tax bill. feels good, man.
seeing a concert tonight, which i’m very excited about!
I’m at the airport right now, about to leave for a week long vacation to Hawaii! I’ve never been before so it’ll be a super fun way to celebrate my one year anniversary with my wife!
Sorry to hear about the rough times OP. From one human being to another, keep doing your best and know that there’s another human somewhere hoping you are well. Cheers.
Sorry to hear about the rough times OP. From one human being to another, keep doing your best and know that there’s another human somewhere hoping you are well. Cheers.
i’m not very optimistic but we’ll see. a fundamental problem is i’m locked into my living situation for the foreseeable future unless something crazy happens, and my current living situation is constant and droning suicide fuel. also not really in a position to seek mental health professionals
My week has been pretty good, I work in a library so I spend my lunch digitizing any book I want or at least feel that it should be saved digitally.
That’s cool! I used to work in a bookstore but always felt like it was trying to put a price on reading. Library would feel a lot homier for me I feel. Thank you for what you do! If it weren’t for Libraries as a kid I probably would have never fallen in love with reading.
Still unemployed. Still in the middle of a depressive episode because of this.
Well, that sucks. Don’t give up on the job applications. It’s a real pain in the rear looking for jobs. Don’t let the no people discourage you. I hope something inspires you a little to take away some of the blahs. Feeling depressed is just… what is the adequate adjective to describe it? It sucks and I hate feeling it. I’m sure you don’t like it either. We’ll leave it at that.
Sorry to hear this friend, I hope things get better for you!
I just started a new job not too long ago after a year of being unemployed…
It’s hard and the whole recruitment process is soooo bullshit 90% of the time.
You can’t force someone to give you a job and most of the time that you don’t land a job it’s not because of you. I know I blamed myself for not having a job many days, but in reality the circumstances are not in your control.
Some HR take months to move their arse on a requisition, stringing you along with boilerplate responses to followups for months. Some months I got no bites, other months I got 3 interviews.
Get references, study (whether in a school, books at the library in areas of interest), figure out what kind of jobs you want, apply to whatever jobs you think you want, get people you know to refer you to their work, take certifications, go to industry conferences of your interest, join professional groups. Get a recruiting agency to help you. Go to employment counseling.
It took me a year despite doing every single one of these things. Some days it was easy for me, other days it was hard even without any specific disability. Do your best, be the best yourself you can be, don’t let being without a job define yourself. Look more towards the person you want to be, and start with changing the things you can change rather than what you can’t.
The real problem I have with conditions embedding themselves in how I define myself is with the depression rather than the unemployment. I’ve only been unemployed a little over thirteen months. The depression is a chronic problem I’ve experienced on one level or another for roughly twenty years. Between the two, the depression definitely strikes deeper to the core. It’s just that the current episode is pretty tough to deal with as long as I am dealing with the isolation created by this unemployment.
Very good point about it not being about you. I didn’t really understand that until I was on the other side and doing some hiring. Sometimes we’d have no qualified applicants for months (like, we had a junior dev position and got people applying that knew nothing about code), and other times we’d have 10+ applicants that were perfect and we wanted to take all of them.
I used to think if I didn’t get a job it was on me. Turns out it’s a numbers game (assuming you’re not applying for something like a junior dev position with only cust service experience).
Doing OK. Found out last week that I don’t have cancer, so that’s always a plus.
That’s wonderful news! I hope that you’re feeling okay otherwise and that it wasn’t a scare based on symptoms that you don’t have answers for yet.
Nope, just a weird bump in my chest that turned out to be scar tissue :)
A bit stressful, but I can manage it. I manage to get work done and slowly gain my ability to enjoy my hobby and making thing for myself again, which is nice!(For context, I have dysthymia, so I kinda lose my enjoyment in my hobby for a long while now) I’m new at beehaw as well, so hi everyone! I hope thing will get better for everyone here and have a good day. 😊
Welcome! Hope you’re enjoying it here 🙂
so, so tired… no matter how much I sleep. I think I’m sick?
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It’s great you’re visiting a professional. Perhaps it might be nacrolepsy? Also try sleeping without light and sound by using the proper curtains and ear plugs. No alcohol or caffeine. Try sleeping a multiple of 1.5 hours, there’s apps for that. Look into other kinds of sleep hygiene.
Thanks for the advice. I saw a doctor today and he suggested doing some exams to narrow down the possibilities. Also got a prescription for a drug “in case I really needed”, but I suppose I should try with improving my sleep quality first.
Which drug did you get prescribed, if you don’t mind me asking?
As someone with years and years of, err, experience with sleep issues, I’ve learned a thing or two about sleep aid medication. Most of the ones that fool with your GABA receptors tend to be pretty terrible for sleep quality and cause dependence and all sorts of other issues. Pretty much one of the only sleep aid medications that won’t fuck you up with longer term use is mirtazapine, which is an antidepressant but also inhibits your histamine H1 receptors (like older-type antihistamine drugs) so it’ll make you very sleepy. Used in super low doses (something like 3.5mg, where the lowest used for depression is usually 15mg) its SSRI effects don’t really kick in and it can actually increase sleep quality, and for most people at these low doses its only downside is that if you take it too late in the evening you’ll have a hell of a time wrenching yourself out of bed. It can lead to the H1 receptors getting desensitized in longer term use, meaning you can build up tolerance to the sleep aid effects, but that’s solved by taking a few weeks off of it if you do notice it getting less effective.
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Ohhh right, you meant medication for the drowsiness and not to help you sleep. Huh, surprising that he started with modafinil instead of a sleep aid, but yeah it’ll definitely get rid of your drowsiness. It’s a weird “wakefulness promoting” drug and not a regular stimulant, and it doesn’t have many of the downsides of something like amphetamines, but I’d still assume it’d be better for you to try and fix your sleep quality first before going for the stimulants. But then again, I’m absolutely not a doctor of any kind 😄
That’s great. Yes as I mentioned look up sleep hygiene. People underestimate it and often ignore my advice. I had to learn it due to some meds I took a long time ago that kept we super awake.
Ear plugs require some practice, and there’s many different kinds. I prefer wax. And if you have curtains that let any light through it is really worth the investment. IKEA has good ones for like 50 eur.
If you must drink coffee, just take a single cup in the morning. You can also replace it with decaf like I did. Tea you can replace with ginger and mint. And like I said avoid alcohol. Like even a beer before bed will have negative effects.
Of course your tech usage matters too. At least start using the blue filter setting on your phone and pc.
Then regularity goes without question.
There’s a bunch of other things that help if you look it up. It’s really a matter of trying everything out.
Finally you might want to look into meditation. Stress means bad sleep. Even a simple body scan can help here.
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That’s great to hear. Who knows maybe this is enough. It can be annoying to change those pesky habits.
Well I am quite active on my phone actually before I sleep and it’s OK for me. I’d say experiment with it. At least turn on the blue light filter and keep the light down in your room. Avoid blue light. You might also want to avoid intense news and images and focus on longer texts. For example Wikipedia or librera/kindle. Or longer posts here.
A more extreme approach (extreme by today’s standards) would be not to have your phone in bed with you at all. Grab a book instead. It’s basically just a really long post from someone I think :)
Also when you get that sleepy feeling, go for it. Ignoring it will make it disappear for quite a while. At least that’s what I read and it applies to me.
If your ryrhm is screwed you can fix it by skipping a night or by doing lots of exercise.
And meditation. Well there’s countless ways. If you’ve never tried it before you might want to start with a body scan or with a breathing exercise. You can do this at any point during the day, even in meetings and during presentations.
There’s a lot of info online and also many apps. A lot of them are paid but are worth it. If you have Netflix, I believe it also has a course called mind space. There’s also a paid app by that name.
In short, meditation is about identifying with your awareness. More practically speaking, take the body scan. You focus on your big toe. Maybe even wiggle that baby. Then move up to the arch and the ankle, the lower leg. All the way up. You can even try to wiggle your nose, maybe your colleagues will notice! The point is that you are selectively focusing on a part of your body and moving that focus slowly and patiently.
The breathing one is just like it. But you focus on your breathing this time. Try taking in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Just doing that will reduce your stress, and focusing on it will help even more.
Ya it’s really that simple. All the deeper stuff is basically just playing around more with your ability to focus and be aware.
Less hot. I had an interview today.
Hope it went ok
It did. Thanks.
