I get very confused and urgent and it can be many minutes before I understand that I'm arguing from nothing but internal stress. It's a maddening habit that everyone around me finds repulsive. I have thought that it would be possible to make friends who could help to intervene when I am losing polite perspective, but I am not sure if this expectation has ever really functioned. I don't want to disavow any responsibility in telling my friends they have to jump in on my frequent malfunctions, that sounds unfair. But I'm not making much progress on getting over myself by myself. What to do.

Everything indicates that the continuous tinnitus I've had for the past 20 years cannot be cured. Up until very recently, I was able to live relatively well with it. White noise was only required when things got too quiet and before going to sleep. In the last month or so, my tinnitus got much worse. It is hard to quantify this, but it went from a nuisance, something I'm reminded of every once in a while, to an overwhelming presence.

I now listen to white noise for hours several times a day, sometimes even while watching TV. I try to avoid this, but the feeling of despair is sometimes inescapable. I will make a doctor's appointment tomorrow, but I gotta be honest, I'm not very hopeful.

A Brazilian celebrity said his tinnitus went way when he stopped eating sugar, so I'm controlling my sugar intake. I sometimes wonder if I could just remove the freaking ear canal altogether, and become half deaf. But then I would be just one ear way from becoming completely deaf. My grandpa was deaf in one ear, and all his brothers were completely deaf. So genetics is against me. Oh, well...

I'm constantly torn between things. It's like I never have a strong opinion or stance on things. It's like I don't have an identity or values. This has become difficult to sustain mentally.

Example #1. I despise Instagram because of the way it transformed people's behavior and because of its privacy abuses. For these reasons, I refuse to have an Instagram account and I don't participate in it. At the same time, Instagram is admittedly essential in today's social life, so I feel I am missing out.

Example #2. Sometime in the past, I got interested in climate change. I read books, papers, articles... You name it. I changed my lifestyle to better align with the values I had internalized. I started preaching others about the real threat of climate change, about the need for action by everyone. Now, years later, I don't care about all that any more. I believe doom is inevitable, and that there's nothing we can do about it. So I stopped pretending.

Example #3. I've been an open source enthusiast for quite some time now. This means I run open source software wherever I can. This idea got to the point where I refused to use any software that was not open source, much like a vegan does with food. No WhatsApp, Spotify, Microsoft Office, ...basically any popular software that everybody uses. Over time, I got tired, and stopped caring about open source that much. I'm even thinking about going all-in Apple now (yes, one of the worst enemies of open source you can think of).

You should have a general idea of how it works by now. One day I'm a diehard Linux enthusiast, the next I don't care at all. One day I delete my social media accounts, the next I create them anew. Not literally the next day, but there's always an internal conflict or a straight U-turn with regard to what I believe in, or what I stand for.

Especially examples #2 and #3 could be generalized to any hobby, habit or interest I pick up. They eventually fade out or are replaced by other things. Things I strongly believe in suddenly lose their meaning or value.

I don't know who I am, or what I stand for. What's wrong with me?

_{I'm not even sure I'm saying something that makes sense. Maybe I'm just conflating totally unrelated issues about myself in one single post.}

I keep reading about people getting "covid insomnia". You could say, it's keeping me up at night.

Really though, it's been getting pretty regular for me. I take xanax once in a while but keeping it to an absolute minimum (no more than 0.25mg, once a week or so).

I tried the Sleep With Me podcast mentioned by @noblepath. It sort of helped. I kind of like the experience of it, the mindlessness, but I didn't continue past the second night.

It did give me the idea to just run a youtube video of rain sounds on my tv though, a lot better than what I used to do (leave netflix on some rewatches I know by heart). This is the one I'm currently enjoying: https://youtu.be/_x3hVRSIe2g