| Not great. My partner has been out of work and I was recently laid off. I greatly struggle with (treatment resistant) depression, so losing healthcare is huge. Corporate America is draining, will run you into the ground, and strip all your humanity. Doing the job isn't enough. You need big yearly goals (which you're never given time for), take overtime, use Newspeak, worship "leadership", and put on a face like you care about _The Mission_. It's such a joke. The you get canned once profits, while increasing, aren't increasing fast enough. The world feels like it's on fire. Political violence appears to be on the rise and many people respond to it by pulling out a scorecard. The president (US) is increasingly erratic. His base continues to cheer him on. Recently I was told that Democrats have _never_ expanded presidential power. Quite a bold claim. This is from a person I never thought of as treating political parties as team sports. I have friends and acquaintances who are targets of the current administration. I can't fathom what it must feel like for them. How long until one of them disappears? Is it crazy to think that could happen? Politically, I know deep-down what I believe to be our best path forward as the human race. Big picture. On the daily and weekly scale things are so upside down, flipped around, and twisted that it feels like my head is spinning. Have I lost my mind? Eveyone else too? My family - well they voted for this. They are extreme religious fundamentalists and I thought that reducing contact to near-zero and moving away would get me a life free from their beliefs. They can do their thing and I would do mine. Instead they helped put a guy in charge that can reach me and those close to me from thousands of miles away. Climate change is something we collectively decided to do nothing about. There's no going back. The changes to our planet are in motion. That I'm somewhat calm about. I hate that we're this stupid but the battle has been lost. The only thing to do now is let it happen. I'm lonely and isolated. The vast majority of my time is spent with my partner. They're great but it's not enough. Society feels closed off. Add on top that I'm introverted. Good male role models are hard to come by. It's concerning that my fellow brethren seem to be taken in en masse by radical right-wing influencers. On the upside of things. Working out consistently has been the one of the best things for me in all this. My strength has dramatically increased, phsyical health is the best it's been, mental health is impacted positively, and it forces my mind to shutup for a few hours a week. Cutting out social media (aside from HN) several years back was the right choice. Except in cases where I follow a link to Twitter/Reddit/etc. and see just how insane online discourse has become. Based on this thread a lot of people are in the same virtual boat. It's somewhat comforting. |