[Jupiter]

Hey, nerds, it's been a while. I missed the last challenge, and honestly, I'm not really doing a challenge this time either. It's a non-challenge. I have no plans, no goals, no nothing, except for trying to be here. So, I guess I do have a goal, which is just to post every day. 

 

Spoiler

For those who don't know, I was laid off from my job a few weeks ago, so my main priority is looking for work. And trying not to spiral into anxiety and apathy, etc. 

 

So, yeah. That's all I've got. 

[Jupiter]

Note to self: self, no more mindlessly scrolling through Facebook. It is not as fun as you think it is. 

[Scaly Freak]

1 hour ago, Jupiter said:

Note to self: self, no more mindlessly scrolling through Facebook. It is not as fun as you think it is. 

 

It really isn't. You are wise to use your energy for other things. Non-challenges are perfectly valid "challenges", don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  

[sarakingdom]

I've done plenty of "just show up" challenges. Sometimes that's the one thing you need to keep treading water, which is plenty of life-leveling-up, and staying in the habit of showing up to try again is the key habit of all habits.

[WhiteGhost]

Here for whatever this is or isn't  

[Whisper]

On 9/11/2022 at 8:33 PM, Jupiter said:

I have no plans, no goals, no nothing, except for trying to be here.

Getting back and being here can be the biggest challenge of all. 

[Waanie]

"Stay part of a supportive social group" sounds like an excellent mental-health goal . Last challenge I also dropped all my goals except for showing up, and that might be the case for the last part of this challenge again as well .

[Jupiter]

On 9/11/2022 at 10:07 PM, Scaly Freak said:

 

It really isn't. You are wise to use your energy for other things. Non-challenges are perfectly valid "challenges", don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  

 

Thanks, and yes, ma'am.  

 

On 9/11/2022 at 10:52 PM, sarakingdom said:

I've done plenty of "just show up" challenges. Sometimes that's the one thing you need to keep treading water, which is plenty of life-leveling-up, and staying in the habit of showing up to try again is the key habit of all habits.

 

Yes, very true.  

 

On 9/12/2022 at 6:35 PM, WhiteGhost said:

Here for whatever this is or isn't  

 

Yay, glad to have you here.  

[Jupiter]

On 9/13/2022 at 5:00 AM, Whisper said:

Getting back and being here can be the biggest challenge of all. 

 

Yeah, that's very true. 

 

14 hours ago, Waanie said:

"Stay part of a supportive social group" sounds like an excellent mental-health goal . Last challenge I also dropped all my goals except for showing up, and that might be the case for the last part of this challenge again as well .

 

Thanks. And hey, we can be no-goal buddies.  

[Jupiter]

Spoiler

The days are starting to blur together, especially since I don't have much of a routine right now. Been doing lots of job research and application stuff, and it's seriously frying my brain. The last few days I've been trying to get an application ready for a part-time content writer position, which I really want and think I could be good at, but I don't think I'll get it. I don't have much experience and most of my writing samples are years old. I'm sprucing them up a little (I don't know if this is really the done thing, but I figure I might as well do my best to put my best foot forward, right?), but still. I'm sure there are applicants who are way more qualified than I am who have already applied. So, I'm probably not going to get it. I do have an interview for a different job that I'm way less excited about, but a job's a job, I guess. I'm not actually talking to them face to face, though, which is weird. I'm supposed to record a video of me answering their questions and then send them the video. I've never done an interview this way before. I don't like it already. I'm also still having issues with the unemployment agency and haven't been able to receive benefits yet, which is really frustrating.

 

So yeah, a lot's been going on. There's been some workouts and some cooking, too (I made roasted mini potatoes last week, soooo much better than the frozen stuff), but hardly any writing (outside of resume/application stuff). I may take a break tomorrow and just do some writing. 

 

[Chesire]

On 9/11/2022 at 10:33 PM, Jupiter said:

I have no plans, no goals, no nothing, except for trying to be here.

Looks like the perfect challenge. 

 

Hugs* if you want them.

[Jupiter]

On 9/17/2022 at 4:31 AM, Chesire said:

Looks like the perfect challenge. 

 

Hugs* if you want them.

 

Thanks, I will always accept hugs.  ❤️

[Jupiter]

So, the last few days I've been feeling pretty exhausted and apathetic about life and ended up doing nothing except binge-watching all the shows. I watched a few seasons of The Librarians, I watched most of the Sandman, all the episodes available so far of the new show Vampire Academy, and the new season of Fate: The Winx Saga. Oh, and I've been eating all the junk food in my pantry. 

[Kishi]

Sounds like a fine few days! People aren't supposed to be grinding all the time. Dunno what your rest as been looking like but maybe you were due for this.

[Scaly Freak]

1 hour ago, Jupiter said:

So, the last few days I've been feeling pretty exhausted and apathetic about life and ended up doing nothing except binge-watching all the shows. I watched a few seasons of The Librarians, I watched most of the Sandman, all the episodes available so far of the new show Vampire Academy, and the new season of Fate: The Winx Saga. Oh, and I've been eating all the junk food in my pantry. 

 

1 hour ago, Kishi said:

Sounds like a fine few days! People aren't supposed to be grinding all the time. Dunno what your rest as been looking like but maybe you were due for this.

 

Kishi is right. Replace binge-watching with binge-reading, and you get what I been doing this entire weekend. Sometimes our minds and emotions need this kind of break, and we are lucky to be able to get it.

[sarakingdom]

On 9/18/2022 at 9:42 PM, Scaly Freak said:

Kishi is right. Replace binge-watching with binge-reading, and you get what I been doing this entire weekend. Sometimes our minds and emotions need this kind of break, and we are lucky to be able to get it.

 

Honestly, I question a lot of the conventional wisdom about binge watching and mental junk food or mental health. I increasingly think they've mixed up correlation and causation. I think there's a role for using narrative as a way to manage mental or emotional fatigue, or retrain good emotional and mental habits. It's not that it's "just escapism" (and I put that in quotes, because there are many situations where studies indicate distraction is far healthier and linked to better outcomes than continuing the rumination). Human brains respond to narrative as if it's reality, and it's a very controlled reality, where we can be sure to find the meaning we want to find.

 

If there's binge watching during a time of stress, there may be a reason. There may be an emotional tone or life skill or social reinforcement that we're applying to our brain. Using narrative to do that may be fairly effective. And it may not be stuff we'd consider High Quality, for the precise reason that it's not being used as pure entertainment - it's not a time when one has the luxury to get hit in all the feels or hit hard by realism. The brain is getting kept on the rails, where it's gonna be retrained to see the humor in things, feel a certain found family camaraderie and support, feel capable of conquering challenging but safely unrealistic problems, and definitely not be allowed to spiral into certain trains of thought. Or watch some detective carefully bring order to a disordered world. Or just watch people working competently. Or tons of boring documentaries as a backdrop to our own work. It's functional.

[juliebarkley]

On 9/18/2022 at 8:29 PM, Jupiter said:

So, the last few days I've been feeling pretty exhausted and apathetic about life and ended up doing nothing except binge-watching all the shows. I watched a few seasons of The Librarians, I watched most of the Sandman, all the episodes available so far of the new show Vampire Academy, and the new season of Fate: The Winx Saga. Oh, and I've been eating all the junk food in my pantry. 

I'm gonna echo what everyone else said. Perhaps you really needed this.

 

Looking back at your previous challenges, you've been under a lot of stress for a long time. You may be in need of a destress time to get your joy and energy back. We have an idea in the homeschool community that if you pull a child out of school, especially if that was a stressful and even traumatic place for them, you should let them have about one month per year spent in school where you do no formal lessons. The idea is to disassociate "learning" from "school" from "stress/trauma/thing other people are making me do" and let them rediscover their natural spark of curiosity so they want to learn again for themselves. For the first couple of weeks, this often looks an awful lot like what you are describing - binging TV or video games - and parents get scared. Sometimes it stays there (and parents need to intervene), but usually it is a temporary healing period. I have faith that you won't let it become unhealthy. But do give yourself a chance to recover from your past (and present) stresses.

[Waanie]

On 9/20/2022 at 8:06 AM, sarakingdom said:

Honestly, I question a lot of the conventional wisdom about binge watching and mental junk food or mental health. I increasingly think they've mixed up correlation and causation. I think there's a role for using narrative as a way to manage mental or emotional fatigue, or retrain good emotional and mental habits.

I mostly agree with this statement, although I do think that having breaks for (light) exercise and decent food is probably healthier. It's a bit of a spiral thing for me personally, where one or two days of binging is nice and relaxing, but if I do more than that then it affects my mental health negatively. Especially when I was in a burn-out, it was better for me to have a fixed structure and read 14 hours per day than to read 16-18 hours per day and sleep whenever. YMMV though, and it should be kept in mind that my autistic brain might be atypical in this regard. I strongly dislike the "productivity" podcasts/books/blogs/whatever that say you just have to push through or be stronger mentally or whatever, since that's just not how it works for most people and they make me only more depressed if I'm in a bad mental space.

[Jupiter]

On 9/18/2022 at 5:34 PM, Kishi said:

Sounds like a fine few days! People aren't supposed to be grinding all the time. Dunno what your rest as been looking like but maybe you were due for this.

 

Yeah, probably. It's been pretty stressful the past few weeks, for obvious reasons, so I'm not surprised that I crashed. It's just not always very convenient lol. 

 

On 9/18/2022 at 6:42 PM, Scaly Freak said:

 

 

Kishi is right. Replace binge-watching with binge-reading, and you get what I been doing this entire weekend. Sometimes our minds and emotions need this kind of break, and we are lucky to be able to get it.

 

Yeah, very true. I need to learn to take more breaks and appreciate them more. I hope you had a good restful weekend.  

[Jupiter]

On 9/19/2022 at 11:06 PM, sarakingdom said:

 

Honestly, I question a lot of the conventional wisdom about binge watching and mental junk food or mental health. I increasingly think they've mixed up correlation and causation. I think there's a role for using narrative as a way to manage mental or emotional fatigue, or retrain good emotional and mental habits. It's not that it's "just escapism" (and I put that in quotes, because there are many situations where studies indicate distraction is far healthier and linked to better outcomes than continuing the rumination). Human brains respond to narrative as if it's reality, and it's a very controlled reality, where we can be sure to find the meaning we want to find.

 

If there's binge watching during a time of stress, there may be a reason. There may be an emotional tone or life skill or social reinforcement that we're applying to our brain. Using narrative to do that may be fairly effective. And it may not be stuff we'd consider High Quality, for the precise reason that it's not being used as pure entertainment - it's not a time when one has the luxury to get hit in all the feels or hit hard by realism. The brain is getting kept on the rails, where it's gonna be retrained to see the humor in things, feel a certain found family camaraderie and support, feel capable of conquering challenging but safely unrealistic problems, and definitely not be allowed to spiral into certain trains of thought. Or watch some detective carefully bring order to a disordered world. Or just watch people working competently. Or tons of boring documentaries as a backdrop to our own work. It's functional.

 

6 hours ago, Waanie said:

I mostly agree with this statement, although I do think that having breaks for (light) exercise and decent food is probably healthier. It's a bit of a spiral thing for me personally, where one or two days of binging is nice and relaxing, but if I do more than that then it affects my mental health negatively. Especially when I was in a burn-out, it was better for me to have a fixed structure and read 14 hours per day than to read 16-18 hours per day and sleep whenever. YMMV though, and it should be kept in mind that my autistic brain might be atypical in this regard. I strongly dislike the "productivity" podcasts/books/blogs/whatever that say you just have to push through or be stronger mentally or whatever, since that's just not how it works for most people and they make me only more depressed if I'm in a bad mental space.

 

Well, for me binge-watching and binge-reading only tend to happen when my brain just completely stops working or if I need to refill my emotional and/or creative well or if I'm just overall feeling drained. If I let it run its course it will usually just stop on its own and I'll go back to doing everyday things with more energy than I had before. But I'm with Waanie, if it goes on too long then it usually starts to affect my mental health in a negative way. 

[Jupiter]

22 hours ago, juliebarkley said:

I'm gonna echo what everyone else said. Perhaps you really needed this.

 

Looking back at your previous challenges, you've been under a lot of stress for a long time. You may be in need of a destress time to get your joy and energy back. We have an idea in the homeschool community that if you pull a child out of school, especially if that was a stressful and even traumatic place for them, you should let them have about one month per year spent in school where you do no formal lessons. The idea is to disassociate "learning" from "school" from "stress/trauma/thing other people are making me do" and let them rediscover their natural spark of curiosity so they want to learn again for themselves. For the first couple of weeks, this often looks an awful lot like what you are describing - binging TV or video games - and parents get scared. Sometimes it stays there (and parents need to intervene), but usually it is a temporary healing period. I have faith that you won't let it become unhealthy. But do give yourself a chance to recover from your past (and present) stresses.

 

Oh, that's interesting, I didn't know about that. And thanks, I've come out of it (for now) and I'm doing okay.  

[Jupiter]

Thanks for the comments and support, guys. You're awesome.  

 

Spoiler

The crash period is over and the past few days have been busy. I've been putting together my application package for this part time writer job. Had to write a new cover letter, intro email, gather my writing samples together and revise them (and revise them and revise them...and revise them...), etc. and then finally sent it off yesterday. I'm pretty sure I messed up though and I'm not going to get the job. I also did my interview, which took a few hours because I did some research, then I did a few practice rounds. Then when I did the official interview I got different questions so it took me a bit to think through them and come up with my responses, and then I sent that off too. Though I'm pretty sure I messed that up too and I'm not going to get that job either. But at least they're done and I feel somewhat accomplished. I also filed my weekly claim and it didn't give me the usual "we can't do this because of issues" message this time, so hopefully that means I'll start getting UI benefits soon. I also sent out another job application and I wrote almost 1000 words.  I haven't been able to write anything in days, so that made my brain happy. I also started plotting out some articles I want to write, because why not? So yeah, I've been a very productive worker bee. 

 

Also, today I did my first strength training workout in... two weeks? And I was not terrible. I only did half of what I usually do, but still. 

[sarakingdom]

On 9/21/2022 at 3:57 PM, Waanie said:

I mostly agree with this statement, although I do think that having breaks for (light) exercise and decent food is probably healthier.

 

I dont think I recommended it as the only self-care one does. For one thing, it has low caloric value, and is a poor substitute for sleep. Fortunately, healthy meals can be eaten in front of the TV, and even prepared in front of the TV, and that can help during periods where they otherwise aren't high on the list of things that are happening.

 

On 9/20/2022 at 11:23 PM, juliebarkley said:

We have an idea in the homeschool community that if you pull a child out of school, especially if that was a stressful and even traumatic place for them, you should let them have about one month per year spent in school where you do no formal lessons. The idea is to disassociate "learning" from "school" from "stress/trauma/thing other people are making me do" and let them rediscover their natural spark of curiosity so they want to learn again for themselves. For the first couple of weeks, this often looks an awful lot like what you are describing - binging TV or video games - and parents get scared.

 

I had a week in the depths of lockdown where I basically parented myself the same way. Normally I'd be on my own case about being productive or keeping a normal schedule, and instead I just decided that there were reasons I was so tired or binging TV, and I was just going to sleep when I wanted sleep and watch ten episodes of murder shows when I wanted ten episodes of murder shows, because I was processing a lot of stuff at the time, and I'd probably get through it a lot faster and more effectively by honoring that fatigue than by getting scared about enforcing a normal schedule. And I think basically it worked; my brain processed stuff, and I got on with things.

 

It can, I think, be hard to tell when you're on track and just not yet seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and when you're off the rails. But I think we're quick to assume the latter when the former is the case.

[Jupiter]

Spoiler

Well, the last few days were a bit of a bust. I did not get the job I interviewed for, and I still can't get my unemployment benefits because of issues. So now this week I get to call them and hope I can get in touch with someone. I tried calling a few times already, but no such luck, so I'll be trying again this week. I also had another interview on Friday, but it's 50/50 on whether I will get the job or not. I feel like I didn't do too badly, but at the same time I know I messed up on a few questions. So, we'll see. I also have a short story I'm writing that is never-ending. I keep trying to get to the end, but I keep thinking of things that need to go in before the end, so it just keeps going and going...I'm hoping to knock it out in the next couple days. Crossing my fingers. Oh, and the other night I walked into a wall and cut my toe on a sharp corner of the baseboard and bled everywhere. That will teach me to walk around in the dark. 

 

[WhiteGhost]

Ugh, I hope the unemployment office gets their ducks in order so you can start getting your benefits