vingtcinqunvingtcinq's recent activity

  1. Comment on The “loneliness epidemic” myth in ~life

    vingtcinqunvingtcinq
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    This was an ironic link to see: I was at home stress-eating because I didn't want to go to a social outing. And I didn't want to go because, although I knew everyone, there was only one person I...

    This was an ironic link to see: I was at home stress-eating because I didn't want to go to a social outing. And I didn't want to go because, although I knew everyone, there was only one person I felt I could talk freely with and had interest in catching up with. Everyone else, however nice, I just didn't want to talk to right now today. I didn't want to go through the song and dance of "hi how are you hows your partner hows work hows life wow you look great" for an hour. To his point, I felt like I was walking into a situation where I didn't really belong.

    • I also agree with the dude's "would you ever bother if a third place were there?" because I've spent a lot of time realizing no, I'm full up usually. Sometimes you like to meet to talk, sometimes you need an activity; I generally need an activity for my third place because it's a lot of pressure to have to put on my affable face. My third place– and maybe this is selfish– needs to be something where I'm there for myself first, and for others second.
    • The "high-maintenance" friendship has high resonance with me. I'm not extroverted, and admittedly stingy with time and energy. I'm the type that wants to be there for a lot of people– some, more than others– in the bad times. The good times, you'll probably not see me so much, I'd rather be spending time alone. The bad times– your bad times– I want to try and be there for you, because I dislike the idea that you might be feeling alone and hopeless when you don't need to be. I'd love to be part of a community where it was normal for people to want to give to each other in some way without having to make sure you were "hanging out enough" and "talking enough" in between. If I like someone, I like them. As long as I know you don't have beef with me, I'll like you just as much 3, 6, 12 months from now. I have a lot of room for the small talk as I live my life (grabbing my coffee, jogging, the gym, whatever) and for favors of explicit scope. I have minimal room for high-intention relationships– I'd say max 2, 3 if the relationships are efficient (e.g. a live in partner, a nearby best friend). I've been reflecting a lot recently on how it can be hard to have multiple female friendships for this reason too (much higher expectations than with men).
    • I also generally agree with his statement that loneliness is a sort of intrinsic condition. Recently, I was quite upset. It was the sort of upset that was in the body. The brain– my brain– could only scramble to try and decipher meaning. Why was I slouchy, terse, short, teary? I had to clarify: I'm not consciously upset, but I'm feeling upset, and it's just how I'm feeling. It wasn't for lack of friends or health or anything, or even a mourning of an outcome. I probably could have hopped on a plane somewhere, prompted a few people for drinks, something. But nothing would have helped. It didn't need a label or cause; it's just a feeling, like taking an emotional dump. The best I could come up with was that it was some kind of perennial loneliness. I wondered how cavemen were able to decipher mutual emotion; what in the world did it take for sad cavemen to realize they were feeling the same kind of sad? Did they define sad and then define lonely? Or was one lonely and the other was something else and they agreed to call it some collective feeling of 'sad'?
    3 votes

  2. Comment on Is it time to get offline? in ~tech

    vingtcinqunvingtcinq
    (edited )
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    I've had this top of mind. Recently I've been spending a bit more time just muscle-memory refreshing forums (Reddit and otherwise), and binging on TV, which doesn't feel great. I am also a citizen...

    I've had this top of mind. Recently I've been spending a bit more time just muscle-memory refreshing forums (Reddit and otherwise), and binging on TV, which doesn't feel great. I am also a citizen of my country, but I'm concerned about the surveillance of opinions. I used to go online for weirdness, human authenticity, and the wild west of honesty. The internet once seemed like more of a place to be human, if your day-to-day was regimented and constrained. (In a weird way, I loved 4chan for what it once represented-- not most of it, but the unfettered, generally benign cesspool of being able to 'do anything' online.) I also enjoyed the control and tinkering that comes of computers, but more and more, enshittification just compromises the ability to take things at face value. The only way to gain control is to reduce their access to you.

    I've deleted social media (easy, minus letting go of relationships that were predicated on mutual use of it) and figured out what my alternative occupants could be: puzzles, baking, food prep. Things that busy the hands and occupy the mind without stress.

    I'm trying to stop browsing Reddit entirely, decouple my finances from tech (I work as a software engineer, so being both online and on a computer is advantageous; it's hard to feel like I'm allowed to coast if I have a rent or equivalent mortgage), and eventually figure out how to decouple my phone's functionalities into other means until it's basically a fancy brick for 2FA (and only because passkeys aren't universally accepted).

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Have your COVID relationships survived, five years out? in ~talk

    vingtcinqunvingtcinq
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    I thought they were! But maybe it's because I live in a city. People moved out enmasse, people eventually moved in enmasse. Every time things opened up for us to do, it was a new milestone /...

    I thought they were! But maybe it's because I live in a city. People moved out enmasse, people eventually moved in enmasse. Every time things opened up for us to do, it was a new milestone / opportunity.

    I also had old friends reach out during that time, because we were all indoors for the first chunk of it so it was easy to just send an email. I would say those also count as COVID relationships in a way, as they were triggered from the cluster of circumstances that arose from COVID.

    6 votes

  4. Have your COVID relationships survived, five years out?

    ~talk Ask (survey)
    Recently, my COVID-era friend circle has drifted apart. It was a lot of little things that changed our priorities. We had / lost partners, went sober, got in-person jobs, got stressful jobs, made...

    Recently, my COVID-era friend circle has drifted apart. It was a lot of little things that changed our priorities. We had / lost partners, went sober, got in-person jobs, got stressful jobs, made more / less money, etc. It was also the continual theme of realizing that after 3+ years, we hadn't necessarily broken the surface on our friendships with everyone in the groups.

    I tend to feel relationships are generally a little ephemeral, especially in our age group (late 20s / 30s -- which is to say, anything can happen). You drift apart, and sometimes back again, and sometimes apart again, and it's just life. I feel pretty okay about it, although it's a bit sad. Given that we're at the five year mark, I thought it might be an interesting prompt.

    24 votes

  5. Comment on High and dry: Sobriety and transcendence at Bonnaroo in ~life

    vingtcinqunvingtcinq
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    I recommend just setting aside time to read this; I think it opens up really well as you read it. But, here's a submission statement with slight spoilers. Submission Statement I couldn't find a...

    I recommend just setting aside time to read this; I think it opens up really well as you read it. But, here's a submission statement with slight spoilers.

    Submission Statement

    I couldn't find a better category than "life." The author, who has been maintaining sobriety for years, goes to a music festival. He touches on many different topics, from the festival itself, to consumerism, to escapism, to sobriety. It follows him throughout Bonarroo, so it's all told pretty linearly.

    Ultimately, I would say it's really an essay about "transcendence" vs. escapism. (Sobriety is a vehicle for this, but I think it's really about the aspect of transcendence where we see something we couldn't originally.)

    2 votes