Hey all,

Recently I've had a really dark period from (ab)using drugs to hide from the pain and feel good about myself. Friends noticed me becoming distant and needlessly shouting into the (social media) void.
One friend wrote me a long message about all these things and his conclusion was that he thought I might be a narcissist. I broke down entirely, the following days were a roller coaster ride of trying to deal with it with high and lows, talking to friends if they also noticed these things but ultimately I couldn't shake the feeling that I had to give in to my friend's accusation to mend our now wounded relationship. People pleasing is in my nature and putting others in front of my own needs is what I deal with and I cope with low self-esteem.

My therapists all said that the accusations is not something they can see myself in but regardless of this I ended up having a suicide attempt. I saw myself as a bad person and that feeling became over-encumbering.

I'm better now, and I feel closer to friends and family after some much needed talks and quitting drugs altogether.

That said, what are your takes on the overlapping diagnoses. It made myself very paranoid and made me spiral at a low point.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

There is mounting evidence the long-term effects of continuously getting re-infected with COVID-19 is something you would very much want to to avoid.

For this reason I wish to purchase a well-fitting facemask with replaceable filters. I managed to find two but none of them have economically feasible delivery options to Europe (shipping, import duties):

• https://www.flomaskeu.com/
• https://openstandardindustries.com/

Is there a mass-produced alternative to these boutique COVID-specific face masks offering replaceable filters? I don't mind looking like a non-conforming weirdo or someone from a building site.

If anybody would like to weigh in with their considerations I would appreciate it a lot. Personally I find it very weird that the mounting evidence from the mainstream scientific community for the prevalence and seriousoness "long COVID" is not reflected in official COVID-19 guidelines, even in the relatively well-functioning European (by todays standards) country I inhabit. I understand the economy is considered sacred and that it takes precedence over human life but still ... ?!?

Your thoughts on masks and in the situation in general is much appreciated.

Risk of developing long COVID-19 is accumulative, meaning the virus persists in your body like HIV/AIDS:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8883497/

All internal organs are impacted by COVID-19:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2400189

Immune system is permanently damaged:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-023-01601-2
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adg7942
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01113-x

Write-up from American doctors association with less science-heavy language:
https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-covid-19-reinfection

This is something I've been thinking on-and-off for years. I'm an ideologically driven person. I want to do good, create a more equal and better world. However, reality -being as is- makes this very hard to accomplish. This sometimes causes much strife and suffering for me, as I am demoralized by lack of, slow pace of, or loss of progress.

Often in times like this, I turn to what other people think. One of the most frequent advices is about "accepting the world". In my experience, this advice almost exclusively came from people who I see as subscribing to conformism. They too are of course people, and they are bothered by things too, but they don't try to effect change.

This is why I've had an incredibly difficult time with this widespread advice. At times I even felt as if I'm pathologically attached to my drive to effect change. Especially at the start of this questioning, I felt like it. I felt as if I was a spiritual masochist. But in time I realized how much meaning and eudaimonic happiness it brings to me. I've also realized how much conformism and "hedonism as the only legitimate way of happiness" diffused into everything. Many people can't seem to fathom struggling for a cause as a fulfilling and happy process, because their interpretation of happiness is based exclusively on a pleasure-principle.

However, I still felt like this advice had some kernel of truth. Today, I realized what I think is a better way of interpreting it: accepting the world doesn't mean giving up on effecting any significant change in wider society or the world, it just means you're better off accepting your feelings.

Put another way, the conditions of the world creates these emotional responses in you. Whether you strike back or not, you should not deny yourself the opportunity to feel these responses. These often include feelings of anxiety, fear, loss, hurt, loneliness, sadness, etc. When handling ideological topics, these can be buried under anger. While anger is not unhealthy or bad, and can be motivating to do good, it can also sometimes deny a person the chance to feel the situation to the fullest. This is what I mean by accepting the world. It means accepting what it evokes in you.

I decided to share this, because I think these topics are mostly handled from a perspective I see as too one-sided and alien (to people like me). They are often filled with advice that tells driven people to stop being driven, telling them to give up what causes them pain and instead to focus on personal things, enjoy a movie, etc. Basically telling them to be someone different. But that's not what makes them happy! They just need to figure out how to healthily engage with what drives them. And I think this is an important part of it.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with taking some time off, or reducing or stopping certain habits, learning to take care of yourself. But every time I read the "acceptance" argument, I was left completely unsatisfied, and even irritated, because I was feeling as if people were telling me to become an orange. Not only was it impossible, they didn't even realize how much these things meant to me. They were basically telling me to give up, and that -for me- was unacceptable at an existential level. More to the point, my ideological drive is a core part of my personality that enables me to cope with living with depression and numerous physical illnesses. It's a key motivator that energizes me to do things, even though I often feel like not doing anything. Without this drive, I'm a much less happy person. So, it was an advice that wasn't even remotely suitable for me, because our personalities and motivations in life were extremely different.

So, if there are others like me here, I thought I should share my two cents on this, and hope that it helps someone see things a bit differently. If you've had experiences with these things too, you're welcome to share them :)

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

Preface #1: I know the first response with something like this will be "go see a therapist" - I have been in therapy for over a decade now. There are a lot of things it has helped with (specifically trauma-focused), but nihilism is not something I've been able to get help with. The help has ranged from things like "focus on the micro over the macro" (which I think is probably the best advice, but also can be boiled down to "don't think" and I can't not think), to "find religion" (for me at least: religion doesn't breed hope, hope breeds religion), to "I don't know how to help, I can't relate to that" (...not all therapist are good).

Preface #2: I know the quick response to "life is meaningless" is "so make your own!" but I absolutely despise that logic. If everything is meaningless, than that means making your own meaning is meaningless. It's self-defeating in and of itself. That said, I don't really care about "meaning" anyway. I personally view things as "irrelevant", as if you dig deep enough you get to a point where everything is relevant to nothing. And the conclusion to draw from that is: "it's irrelevant that everything is irrelevant" - similar meaning, but checks out logically significantly better to me. But this has it's own problems that I will go in below.

Preface #3: I know the quick response to the inability to enjoy things is "you don't enjoy things because you are depressed." What I'm positing is the inverse, "I no longer enjoy things, and it's causing me to be depressed." I'm very much not saying the former doesn't happen and I've gone through time periods like that. What I am saying is that the latter is also true, and I'm sure that other people who have dealt with depression for decades understands both "My depression is causing this to happen" and "This is causing my depression to flare" happen.

To give quick context for myself: I had become a nihilistic atheist by the time I graduated elementary school; I had a rather traumatic childhood and my official diagnosis is (C-)PTSD and all the offshoots that come from it like depression and anxiety (Bringing up as I recognize myself these are thoughts that, according to the DSM/ICD, would be from someone with mental disorders). This led to things like dropping out of high school and becoming a mute hikikomori. To make a long story short, in my late teens I got to a point of either suicide or completely revamping my life with the belief that enjoyment could be found via actually being social (friends and dating) and proper self-sufficiency/money. I chose the latter for one simple reason: there was nothing to lose, so just trust the process. It took over a decade of constant self improvement, but I became a sociable person part of different clubs and hosting my own parties/gatherings with a very active dating life. I also got my degree in comp sci and have done quite well for myself with that. And a lot on top of that just in terms of trying to make the most out of life.

Unfortunately, none of that actually helped. Having to mask to be able to be social/date is exhausting and frankly people suck, and wasting life working 9-5 one of the most depressing things to me. The reason I bring this up is because I did really fucking try, I tried the stuff that everyone says brings happiness - but it don't. And it's all just so irrelevant.

Over the last half decade or so, I just can't bring myself to care about anything. And I mean anything, even super simple things. I'll talk to people or listening to a song and think "why do I care what you have to say?". I'll watch a movie or read a book and can't keep focus because seriously who cares about these imaginary things some person thought up? People I know die and I'll just think "yeah that happens." And the absolute worst for me was when it came for knowledge. Because knowledge was the thing I always cared above all else. But what does "knowing things" matter if "things" don't matter to me?

Which brings me back to preface #2. Everything is irrelevant, but it's irrelevant that it's irrelevant. Except that society demands relevancy to justify ones own existence within it. It's not possible to live an irrelevant life and be part of society. I personally really only see two options: reject society or embrace absurdism.

Speaking strictly personally, I do not see rejecting society as a means of living an enjoyable life. Mostly because I know it will lead to me living out of my car again, spending my time embracing hedonism via drugs and alcohol to fuel escapism until the end comes. And if in the end I'm just going to fuel escapism, why not just escape to begin with?

Absurdism is mostly what I fed into while "turning my life around". But I do have issues with it. One is how much it feels like the "this is fine" fire meme; it recognizes the problem but then rejects that it's a problem. This is fine if "life" itself is not a problem and you are able to enjoy your time regardless (after all, the problem itself is irrelevant so yeah just reject it as a problem), but then that gets to my second and main issue: if you don't enjoy life, what defense against suicide does absurdism have? Yes there is the whole thing of "suicide just adds to the absurdity by claiming meaning is needed" but that's only if you are committing suicide because life has no meaning. I don't care that life is irrelevant, I care that life fucking sucks. Suicide then is not rejecting the lack of meaning, it's rejecting time spent unenjoyably.

I've been able to get through things being both meaningless and unenjoyable with the belief that things would become enjoyable. Now I'm nearly 40 years old, things have played out, and I do not buy into it anymore. Either life needs to be enjoyable, or there needs to be some relevancy to it. Which, I reject the later as even being knowable as a human. Which leaves the former.

Which then comes to the silly question, how do you just enjoy things?

I am able to recognize one of my issues with enjoying things: In order to raise my emotional floor, I have embraced being stoic. Things happen that are out of our control. Things are lost, hardships are had, people die. They are simply facts of life. The problem is that it also prevents enjoying things - enjoyable things are also out of your control, so do not embrace them for they will be gone. Which, moments in time then neither "good" or "bad", they simple are just moments in time. Every moment is simply some indefinite, irrelevant moment in time.

Which, kind of tied to that as well, but another issue I recognize: as I have understood my own trauma and how it's affected me, I've really understood just how much is deterministic in life. Which is especially sad in the case of trauma responses, and how much society basically double downs on the trauma (just easy eg of how "hysterical women" have been treated throughout history, but look at the overlap of BPD and traumatic childhoods).

But now these are not just moments in time, but determined yet irrelevant moments in time.

But that still doesn't preclude enjoying things. And I guess that's mostly what I'm for the search for in life, to figure out what things I actually enjoy/how to actually enjoy things I want to enjoy. Because enjoying life is certainly enough, but that requires life to be enjoyable.

And it's actually part of why I'm even posting this. With all the different ways I've changed my life and such, I've tried to look back at what was actually enjoyable. And long-form text communication is definitely the way I prefer to communicate (oh do I miss when 'social media' was forums). I also recognize the importance of being part of more smaller, tighter-knit communities compared to being a blob in a mass. So it's part looking for help, and part just trying to get back into posting on smaller communities.

But I also feel like I'm all over the place and I do apologize for that. I think to try to summarize to bring the points clearer...like I said before, life either needs to be enjoyable or there needs to be some kind of relevancy to it. So either how do you find relevancy/where am I wrong on that, or how do you find enjoyment (and I don't mean "try new hobbies until you find what you enjoy!" kind of stuff - I've already ran that gauntlet. I'm not asking where to find enjoyment, I'm asking how to feel enjoyment; how are you able to care about things might be a better war to phrase it)?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

EDIT: Album available here

Note: I'm writing this post as I go through my day, taking note of anything interesting. I try to do this with my diary, however for once I'll actually share my thoughts with strangers.

This was inspired by u/arqalite's post on the topic.

I'm not a journalist. I didn't even take a class on journalism in college. I'm also not a writer, but at least my text is human generated. I have an audiobook I need to catch up on and a day to spare, so I'm going to bitcoin town.

I'm not a crypto guy, but I'm not going because I think Bitcoin is bad (even though it is). I'm going because I'm curious: how loud is this bitcoin mine really? When I read the initial post I wondered about the nocebo effect, Havana Syndrome, sociogenic illness, etc. Most of the reports are anecdotes of locals, and the null hypothesis doesn't make for a sharable news article.

I'm using this app "Sound Meter" to see how loud it is in my small suburban house. It peaks at 40dB. If you, like me, don't think in decibels, Google says that's as loud as a refrigerator hum. I'm skeptical about the accuracy of a phone app, but it's what I have.

Outside my house there are some birds loudly chirping. I would have missed their song if I wasn't writing this. I decide that I should take a measurement. The app reads 55dB. Google says it's the loudness of a residential street. Spot on.

I'm entering Granbury, TX and a massive American flag hanging from a crane greets me along with a pro-Trump billboard. There's a large lake running through the town. Seems like every house has a dock. Lot's of folks on boats and jet skis are visible.

Downtown is an old court building with a clock tower. The streets are lined with mom-and-pop shops for furniture, clothing, and trinkets. To my surprise, there are a lot of shoppers here with arms full of bags. They seem cheerful. They are all white.

The GPS takes me outside the city limits. I stop at a gas station a half-mile from the mine. I ask a couple of people about the mine while I grab a water. They've never heard of a bitcoin mine, and didn't know there was one around here.

As I approach the destination, the bitcoin mine looms over the horizon. The sheer size of the facility cannot be overstated. This facility looks like it should be pursuing some massive scientific endeavor. I wouldn't guess in a million years that all of this infrastructure exists to mine bitcoin. My car reads 98°F (what I expected based on forecast.) I imagine cooling systems will be as loud as one can expect on a day like today. And yes, it is loud.

Across the way, I see signs saying "Bitcoin sux" and "Bitcoin Noisehood". I take a lot of photos. I pull out "Sound Meter" and take measurements. It consistently reads 81-83dB, peaking at 88dB. Google says 85dB is the limit of safe hearing, and is comparable to the sound of a snowblower. This seems perfectly accurate to me. I'd be pissed if I lived across from this place.

I'll be in Granbury for the next hour or so, if anyone has a specific question about the mine I'll see if I can answer it. I took a lot of photos if there is interest.

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?