Not like, casual "Hi, how are you?" but seriously, how are you? Are you sleeping okay, is everything in your personal life going all right? And if not, can Internet strangers do anything to help?
I'm Canadian and middle aged. I was braced for a rough Trump 2.0, but the last month has truly exceeded expectations for suck. Our country is under economic attack by our biggest trading partner. Human rights and trying to help and support each other are suddenly considered bad things. Our window to address climate change is snapping shut as our leaders around the world move in the wrong direction. I'm feeling really good about my decision to not have kids at least.
On the plus side, my sick cat is responding to treatment, and my partner and I have just set up a nursery - we're going to start fostering wee kiddos whose families are going through rough spots. I've got some financial flexibility so I'm treating myself to a stack of coffee gift cards each week that I hand out to folks who look like they could use it. Sorta makes my day to be able to make sure someone unhoused gets a warm drink and some food.
I'm definitely expecting a lot of fear, I know I'm pretty terrified myself.
I'm so sorry, you just shouldn't have to worry about your healthcare being dropped randomly, especially not in the middle of treating something. I hate that I can't make your situation any better, I'm just sorry you're facing that.
I'm in the USA, I've been seeing this harrowing bullshit for a long time. Long before it affected me personally. I've been angry about it for a long time. Nothing changes, everything gets worse. I'm just a statistic. It is what it is.
Thank you for the kindness, however. The kindness does matter.
I don't make fast enough progress with what I'm currently doing in my job (VM images with distrobuilder and cloud-init to call ansible-pull, if you're into that kind of masochist thing), I get too little sleep because my body insists in waking me up 1h early every day, my 4yo sleeps in bed with my wife instead of me and I miss her terribly, and though we do make good money, it's still kind of tight.
OTOH, we're having a spontaneous long weekend getaway with my brother's family and for friends in a mountain cottage coming up that we're all really looking forward to, so there's that. There will be multiple dogs, we're gonna light a fire and make bread on sticks and marshmallows, and we'll have a wonderful view over Saxon Switzerland.
Too little sleep is rough, I was up at midnight tonight so that really resonates with me right now lol. Maybe the kid'll get comfortable sleeping alone soon so you can get your bed back?
Long weekend, multiple dogs, and nice views though? That sounds fantastic, I hope you enjoy it!
Edit oops: I'm doing okay, actually! I've been getting treated for depression and it seems to be working, I've been having an easier time kinda dealing with life despite the whole everything.
I also totally have a concert coming up, I'm gonna see my favorite band (Delain) next month and my husband's gonna gonna drive me so I don't have to park or stay sober or anything, I'm looking forward to it :D
Oh shit, I forgot about the whole everything! We've had elections here in Germany and it's going as you would expect, with fascists making massive gains everywhere, and them there's the US and the environment and the war in Ukraine (which is not very far away from here), well, the whole everything. We even have a German word for it: Gesamtscheiße (roughly translates to "the overall shit")
You can and should be very proud for getting help for your depression. Good job on surviving, I'm glad to hear that therapy is working. From what I understand, it's a never ending fight against an enemy that gets stronger while you blink, so don't give up. Have a meme:
I just bought my first home and I move in tomorrow. So really good. I come from a buttfuck nowhere conservative town and I own property on vancouver island now. Hell yeah!
Congratulations! That's hella frickin exciting! After you get it all furnished and everything it's gonna be fantastic, not having a landlord to pay rent to is so nice.
Yeah my place is going to look like Rust Cohle's house for a bit here. I have nothing left to buy furniture. All I have is my computer and desk, a futon, a tv, and a mattress. LOL
Every day hearing stuff about Trump is eating away at me. I remember four years ago. Depression settled in. I’m afraid for the next four years of this. It’s only been like 5 weeks.
I envy the blissful ignorance of teenage me. I didn't understand much of what was going on during the last presidency of mr. orange. I hope you and me find some way of coping. I fear it will be a long 4 years. Maybe I'm wrong, I'd love to be wrong.
I'm thankful to be alive, did my oil change in my car today, my new ramps that were supposed to be good for 10k lbs snapped as I was driving off them with my 3k lbs Malibu. Least I was behind the wheel and not under the car.
Amazon didn't even bother having me return them, they were like "oh shit OK yea going to skip offering a replacement and sending the old ones back, here's your money back".
Other than that though, feeling accomplished, I haven't been doom-scrolling as much lately and I've started straying away from more political posting's because I found that there isn't much I could do regarding everything and it was starting to dampen the mood.
Looking at the brighter things in life I have found helps tremendously in keeping positivity alive.
Please, please keep safety first when working with these heavy vehicles. And don't cheap out when your life is on the line (jacks, ramps, brakes, steering components, ...)
I looked at the reviews and black widow was supposed to be an amazing brand, it was 60 bucks but like every review was five stars, but yeah needless to say I don't plan on buying them again
I am quite unwell for the most part. I spend most of my time alone. I'm either at home playing games in a filthy room (because I never have the energy to clean it) or I'm at the low-paying job I hate surrounded by people I'm either indifferent to or despise. As for a personal life, that's about it. The only person I'm close to is my sister and we don't even want to talk to eachother at least fifty percent of the time. I'm in my mid-twenties, can't drive, and I live with my parents who I believe would have kicked me out if they didn't feel sorry for me. Mental illness runs in my family so I don't bother talking to them about it because they're all dealing with their own shit. I feel no excitment for anything. I spend most of my time bored and alone which I hate to admit. I know it's not, but it feels almost shameful. I'm not going to jump off anything in case anyone is worried, I just wanted to take this opportunity to vent.
I've been sleeping like shit. The air mattress I sleep on has a slow leak and deflates halfway through the night. It's also been cold af for the last 3 months and the baseboard heater isn't enough to heat the room.
On the bright side I finally found a job, so the threat of homelessness is subsiding. I'm looking forward to getting a real bed, now that I know I'll have a place to keep it.
Relative to the last several months, I'm doing amazing. Thanks for asking.
On an upward trend is awesome, glad to hear it and congrats on the new job! I'm looking forward to you getting a real bed too, air mattresses are awful.
Living on public housing only with food stamps and little money from my aging mother, can't afford anything, barley can eat, disabled and can't work although been applying everywhere but disabilities means I'm disabled. But government says I don't exist, wants to take the little things I have away like food and shelter, government says I can work because I can checks notes "fold laundry" and "work a telephone switchboard".
Been like this for the last 10 years battling every day to just exist
Oh and don't forget the government internment camps that I probably will be forcefully joining next couple years because I'm different
got hit by a basketball a week ago on my left thumb and it still hurts, but whatever, luckily if it gets worse I can just go to the town hospital and get it fixed for free
I do worry for all that's happening in the USA and for what that means for us Europeans, but there's not much I can do apart from voting
Parents are still on the far right ideology, I made the accident of mentioning politics and they said Zelenskyy is a dictator put in power by Biden, and that Putin is right by attacking them because they tried to join NATO...
Whatever. I just hope I get old enough to not get drafted when Putin decides to invade us.
I'm slowly prepping for whatever is to come, but money is tight, and nothing's helping.
I'm sleeping decently thanks to meds, but I still have many issues at home and at work because of ADHD, and I often end up lying on my bed with many things to do, no energy to do them, and at the same time too much energy to rest, which only fuels my frustration.
I have a couple hobbies I do when I'm not terribly down, but they don't involve leaving my home and my social circle reflects that, I have a couple of distant friends left and even just the thought of a partner is light years away
Sleep is like it's always been. Tired in the morning and awake in the evening. The lack of daylight in the winter is getting worse and worse the older I get.
Other than that quite good and slowly getting better.
It's a mix. The heating is out on my apartment, so it's currently 55 degrees in here, and i have no clue when the furnace will be fixed. My kitties don't seem to mind, but it's definitely feeling frigid. On the plus side, i sign a lease for a new apartment walking distance from my job on Friday, so won't be a problem for long. I had to get an advance on my pay, but it will be worth it to be able to walk to work everyday. Financially i am fucked, but that's been no different for the past year, so I'll just have to accept that
Honestly, I'm worried about my job and how difficult it will be to get another if I get laid off (I work in Tech) due to business shenanigans and things out of my control. My mental health is at an all time low because of the anxiety; last month it was due to Trump and Elon's attack on the integrity of US Govt Services, and before that the looming climate crisis. It's affecting my sleep and recently I get slight headaches throughout the day. I'm so tired of feeling anxious all the time.
I'm burnt out mentally; if I get laid off this year I'm just going to activate my NZ Working Holiday Visa (applied in advance in expectation of layoffs) and just chill.
Pretty good! Doing things that feel meaningful and interesting. Able to follow global politics and read in ways that couldn't 3 years ago due to work stress. Life situation is excellent. I feel very lucky, and trying to use that to make myself useful.
An actual list of the "problems everyone hopes they never have" category of our various problems is pretty long right now, and many of them are more personal than I want to share.
Shit's not the worst it's ever been for us currently, but financially it's closer than my wife realizes it is (because she's got enough to deal with right now), and (gestures around at everything Trump related) I'm figuring several of our problems are going to get worse before they get better.
I've got long and medium term plans to sort most of it out, but like all such plans they depend on the short term stuff going at least more or less as I hope, and on the complete collapse of US society not actually happening.
Glib sounding yet serious response in meme-form because this really is how it's looking so far in my mid-late 50s:
OP sounds like a nice person for posting such a thread, and I hope you are doing well sir or madam. 🙂
I get not wanting to share anything too personal, totally no worries. I'm glad you have plans at least! I think we're all crossing our fingers that the US doesn't totally collapse, it's interesting times to say the least. Hopefully whatever happens doesn't hit you two too hard. I think as long we get through this mess things can start getting better.
I am doing better as I realize a lot of things are out of my hands.
I voted, show up to protests when I can, boycott the companies at Trump's inauguration.
So I joined a gym to go to classes to force myself out of the house and trying to read more to deprogram the effects of social media on my attention span.
But overall im exhausted and have this underlying worry of what dreams I've been having lately. I don't believe that much in messages received in dreams but I've had some trippy moments lately.
I'm barely getting by. Too burnt and overwhelmed out to do things that make living feel more worth it, or to get on top of the backlog that's dragging me down. I've just been in survival mode for too long, and I feel like I've forgotten how to live — how to be me. I desperately need some aims that can give me a sense of forward momentum and act as a thread that connects different days, but my capacity is so low that even the basics of daily living are too ambitious for me to reliably do right now.
I've got a long history of struggling with suicidal ideation and I do worry that some day, I'll just break and won't be able to stop myself from making an attempt. In the past, when I have struggled and made attempts on my life, it was because I chose to stop being alive. This feels different because even when I'm at my lowest, I do desperately want to live, but I feel like it isn't my choice. Either I will or won't be enough, and to some extent, all I can do is wait and see. That limbo is what's getting to me though; it's why goals are good for me — they keep me focussed on where I want to be heading and this grounds me.
In terms of how people could help, I don't think they're is anything, besides continuing to be the lovely people y'all are. The world is grim, but I'm actually in a pretty healthy place re: social media usage — the people here remind me of the power of human connection. Anyone reading this doesn't need to direct me to mental health resources, because I have actually started receiving support on that front. It's just that unpicking a heckton of trauma and rebuilding a life from scratch is a lot of pressure; it's hard to feel like life itself isn't just saying "git gud, scrub", when the ordeal of getting on top of everything is so arduous.
I'm doing good, though I spent the whole last 48 hours working on a tiny, tiny writing project so I could get it exact, and it might not even lead to anything. The things I do when I need to sleep.
My sleep has been off the last few nights. Waking up every couple hours. And I take sleeping meds to boot. I have a big audit Friday (I’m the lead auditor and it’s my first major one) so I’m hoping the next few nights are better so I’m on top of my game.
Any fellow insomniacs or any neurologists have some obscure wisdom? I truly don’t sleep. Since 2015, likely earlier, my sleep latency is forever, I keep waking up if I do fall asleep, and I wake up too early. When I do sleep, according to an inpatient sleep study, I barely get to stage 3 sleep for a few minutes and hang out in stage 1 & 2. There is no REM sleep happening. I have limb movement multiple times a minute. I was prescribed a CPAP a few years ago and it hasn’t helped, even with strict adherence to use. The AHI is only between 0 and 0.4 any night of the week. You name a medication, on and off label use, and I’ve tried it. My sleep hygiene is impeccable. I keep thinking one good night’s sleep will fix me, but at this point, I’ve lost hope.
Great suggestions! This is known as “sleep hygiene” and I follow it religiously, but still can’t quite get sleep unfortunately. My spouse thought I was crazy when I taped over all the little lights lol
That last one I heard from a psych. They also said: if you're in bed and you can't sleep, get up. Go back to bed only when you feel tired again. That way you train your brain that bed=sleep.
I've been there, people just telling "go to bed and close your eyes", etc etc, finally solved it with Seroquel 25mg (50mg on the first nights) taken at 20:30, works like wonders
I have tried seroquel, and it’s a great drug for a coma. Unfortunately I started powering through it somehow at multiple strengths. Thanks for the suggestion though!
Besides worrying that my country might be invaded by the US in the not so distant future, I'm doing good! 😃 I've got everything I need and my health is good. I've got some slight art block going on at the moment, so I'm mostly playing videogames in my free time which usually tends to inspire me haha.
Stressed about finances, I splurged on a few things that were not essential, but were wanted for varying reasons, some sentimental, some out of sheer practicality in that treating myself is a good thing every once in a while. Now my budgets blown for at least a month or so until I can rebuild the savings I dipped into.
I had my first manic episode a couple weeks ago that put me in the hospital. Honestly it was terrifying, but I'm very thankful for my friends, family, med team, and some Internet strangers that made me reevaluate my lemmy instance. I've been recovering and truthfully feeling a lot better. I'm working on getting decent sleep again, but otherwise feeling good
Thank you for asking, sincerely, but if Internet strangers tear into me for just having my comments have licensing footer text, there's no way I'm going to start stating any of my real issues that I'm dealing with, for them to judge.
Really not trying to be rude, but it's like going out dressed up like a clown, and then wondering why no one takes you seriously.
The person dressed as a clown could still have cancer, but people aren't gonna ask about your health because you're dressed like a clown. Perception sets expectations.
To a lot of us, the licensing text is silly and superfluous, sorry. The courts the world over prioritize corporations over individuals and if you try to sue an AI company for scraping your comments... no offense but you'll probably lose unless you're a secret billionaire. That's why it's silly and superfluous, because the likelihood of you actually being able to protect them as intellectual property is near zero.
You literally put it in every comment, and thus, people look at you like you're dressed like a clown.
You're defeatist attitude, and being so readily willing to give up your rights and protections, is disturbing to see.
Metaphorically speaking, you don't have to suck corporate penis automatically. It's okay to push back, even if you fail, at least you can look at yourself in the mirror the next morning.
Believe more in yourself, and of those other citizens around you. Don't give in to the despair.
Thanks, I appreciate the support. And don't worry I won't. This isn't my first rodeo with those who don't like it. I just wish there was more moderation on Lemmy to combat it, so I can spend more time just interacting with others on posts content itself.
My point was just to say that while I'm sure there's good and decent human beings who may disagree but be able to debate issues online with each other, there's a whole other bunch that would rather just see things burn, if it doesn't line up exactly to their personal belief system, and that makes it problematic for someone to expose their inner issues to everyone else, even when they desperately need their help.
And that's before throwing in conflict AI bots, and astroturfers trying to generate activity, that just pollutes the waters even more.
I support you in wanting to post whatever text you want that isn't hurting other people. I do not believe your footer text is hurting other people, so you should be able to post it.
However, I find it very annoying to read through comments and continuously have to re-read your footer because I believe it is text you are intending for your audience to read on the topic on the thread. This is my problem though, not yours.
So my solution is to block just your footer text from rendering in my browser. Using uBlock Origin I've added the following filter to my browser:
This completely removes your footer from all of your posts across the entirety of Lemmy.world while leaving the rest of your posts intact.
I believe you would support this action because you've communicated its for consumption by corporations and AI and not other readers of Lemmy. This may also be helpful to you, because you can refer other people like me that hate looking at your footer all the time. You get to keep your footer, and we don't have to ever see it again. Have a great day!
I believe you would support this action because you’ve communicated its for consumption by corporations and AI and not other readers of Lemmy.
This is not true.
The license declaration is supposed to be communicating to all readers, as it lets others know that my content is licensed for free use for open source purposes.
It's not just to prevent for-profit usage, it's also to notify that it's available for non-profit usage.
Also, generally speaking, there may be legal issues with stripping a license declaration from content.
People focus so much on “but it’s not enforceable” and “you don’t own what you say on the Internet” that they forget it’s a statement of intention.
My inner tinfoil hat persona thinks its just corporate bots/astroturfers trying to shape the narratived away from every adding a license to their comments, as it truly does hold legal power.
Regular people either agree to different degress, or think its harmless and don't care. Its only a few that REALLY REALLY REALLY get bent out of shape about it, for strange reasons (which goes back to fueling my inner tinfoil hat persona).
You’re sharing your support, however nominal, for good causes. I see nothing wrong with that ¯(ツ)/¯
Exactly, or moreso, additionally. My license allows for open-source/non-profit usage of my content, giving back to everybody else.
I just don't believe that Corporations should be able to make money off of my content without compensating me for it, as that is one of the fundamental tenants of Capitalism.
My work life although crazy I still love, my church and my friends there are the light of my life. I love my dogs, my elderly pug is having some problems but it is what it is, my other dog is perfection and pure badness. My beloved aunt didn't need any oncology treatment after a bowel resection for cancer and is back to her normal self and turns 87 soon and is totally independent and still leads backstage tours at the local theater. Those are the good things.
Bad:
I'm grateful I have my second job for the income and the flexibility and work from home, but I'm also so, so tired of having to work two jobs. It's been 20 years. While my asshole SO watches hockey for three hours a night.
I don't have any money, and I don't know how I'll ever retire.
My SO is a malignant narcissist and sociopath, and the only reason we're still living together is because of money, because he's fucked my finances so totally. He spends all his time trying to think of ways to torment me, to the pettiest degree. Last weekend he called me a deceptive little cunt and insisted I'm withholding money from my day job paycheck. I absolutely am not and it's just the way my benefits and union dues come off, one pay is about 150 less than the other. He only communicates with me when he has to, and he's psychotic about everything and almost hit me for changing the temperature setting in our car. I have no money to leave and it's so bad, I don't know how I can continue. I have nowhere to go.
Doing great, working hard at work and saving as much as I can. Helping my girlfriend come to the US for a year or two so we can pad the savings further and GTFO. Big plans for starting a business later on so we can get a bigger slice of the pie, and exercising/gaming for downtime.
Even if I don't like it here, I've worked out a good future plan filled with contingencies. Very lucky to have my opportunities, not gonna squander them 🙏
I've got a tweaked muscle in my back from helping my mom move some heavy furniture around last weekend still. Other than that I have no major complaints about life at the moment.
I do have the minor complaint that people like you think anyone who holds even one single stance that is slightly right of center is a full blown conservative (even when they have never voted red in their lives), but you walked away from that thread to make this post just like most people on this site do when they don't know what to say to me anymore.
So far Lemmy users seem to think there are "normal" people who are exactly like them (which is extremely far left) and then anyone who is even slightly right of that is considered a nazi conservative racist Republican shitbag that deserves to die.
But other than those things life is peachy. How about you?