I stopped reading the news, and I block any and all feeds that relate to politics.

I know, I know…staying informed and all that. Except I’m hard pressed to name a news outlet that informs. What I see is so driven by the engagement metrics, rage baiting, if-it-bleeds-it-leads mentality that any modicum of facts or truth gets lost. Journalists seem to have forsaken their obligation to hold leaders accountable and have become complicit in the problems they’ve created.

I’m old, I’m jaded, and my activist days are far behind me. I’m just done with that shit. My own mental and physical health are my top priority at my age and switching off the never ending River of Doom has improved both.

What is the most relieving thing you've done for yourself?

That doesn't involve either masturbating or going to the bathroom.

For me, it was giving up sports. About 30 years ago, I got laid off from my dream job, and it broke my heart. I was determined to never let a corporation do that to me again, so I decided to become self-employed.

I needed to carve out more time to spend on my new business, but I didn't want to have to take time away from my wife and new baby. I realized how much time I spent on sports, and I wasn't even a particularly big sports fan. I lived in a city with major league football, baseball, and basketball teams, so sports was a big year-round thing for my city, and even a casual follower like me ended up spending hours a week talking about sports, reading about sports, listening to sports on the radio, reading the sports scores every day, and of course, watching the games. Sports fanatics I knew spent far more time on it, morning to night.

And yet, none of it means anything. Win or lose, it doesn't affect my life at all, except for a bit of a bad mood for a minute if my team lost. And yet I spent hours a week on something totally meaningless to my life.

Many people address that issue by making it "more interesting" by betting on sports, but I've always hated gambling, so I ended the sports immersion, and never looked back.

These days, sports is such a shiny commercial circus that it's lost most of its interest for me anyway. It feels more like entertainment for billionaires, that they grudgingly let us watch on TV, just to shut us up. Gambling has made the sports environment even worse, and now it looks like the NBA is going to have their own gambling scandal to tarnish sports.

The only sports I watch any more is the Olympics. I can afford to make the sacrifice of time every 4 years.

I walked 13 miles around manhattan while tripping on acid to show my former friend as much of NYC as possible in a single night. When I got back to the hotel, I laid flat on the bed and relieved all the pressure in my back. If a spine could have an orgasm, that would have been it.

Quit heroin. No longer a slave to my own body. 16 years down, more to come.

Also, fuck NA, I am my own higher power. I did that shit because I wanted to live a good life, not because I fear some JuJu man in the sky. All NA did was introduce me to more users. 12 steps is trash. At least for me it was

Quitting my previous job as an HVAC service technician. The pay was way better than I'm making now and it probably was a mistake, but I was miserable every single day...

I had no set schedule and my weekends weren't my own because I was almost always on call. I live in an overpopulated area so every day was just sitting in hours and hours of traffic which just adds to the length of my day, there's no 9-5, it was "if I need to be at X by 8 then I need to leave at Y" and the day wasn't over until the work was done. Then add on the hours of traffic and worst case scenario pull into the driveway and get a call saying you need to go back out... Then there was the wonder of never knowing what's coming up next. Start in Connecticut, ok next call is in Brooklyn NY... Ughh... Ok done in Brooklyn, ok surprise now go to NJ! Ughhh....

Now I work in a factory doing 8-4:45 and it's so much better. I know what the day will bring and I know when I'm done. I'll just never be able to afford a house lol

Went no contact with my Mom. Total weight off my shoulders. Sometimes a little part of still feels a tiny bit guilty. Internally the guilty voice goes "well people can change maybe give her another chance"? This is immediately met with deafening laughter from every other cell of my being saying "LMAO no she is such a piece of shit".

If you're considering going no contact with your parents or someone, maybe give it a try. You can always talk to them later. Cutting out toxic ppl from your life is a gift you can give yourself everyday.

Building up a good emergency savings fund. When things break I don't even have to think about if I can afford to fix or replace them. I may have to make decisions on how nice of a version I can have, but I never have to worry I won't have a car or may have to take a quick loan. Financial worries have become "how long can I be unemployed without issue" or "can I upgrade this thing" or "what's our budget for a car/apartment/house".

As much as I dislike what Facebook has become, the reason I left was because virtually nobody I knew was posting anymore. WhatsApp took over as the default amongst family and friends, so I basically just use that now.

Relieving things though... the only thing I can think of is helping get someone fired from my work. Socially they were fine, fun even, but in the office when it came to working with them, they were patronising, haughty and a bit sinister. Always a chore, never a pleasure to do work for them.

The day they left, my own days all felt 20% better than they had been before

Getting rid of Windows, Instagram and Reddit, switching to Linux, Mastodon (not a direct comparison) and Lemmy.

Nice headphones. Life is too short to be using shit headphones.

Fitness.

I had been getting more frequent backpains and just a general feeling of being unfit. Walking uo stairs would leave me breathless. I couldn't run for more than 200 meters without gasping for air.

Now I started going to the gym, 3 years ago and I feel fit now. Sometimes I still get pains, sometimes I even get pains because of cardio of lifting, but those arent as bad. I feel more alive and more comfortable because I'm fit now. I'm still fat and ugly, but also fit.

I was going to say masturbate. I can't say masturbate? I'll just say masturbate. Doesn't have to be physical! I can masturbate online, too. I can masturbate in my mind, in my thoughts, in my dreams, in my social interactions, I can masturbate in a thousand ways and more. We all can! We all do.

An extra hard drive for offline backup of my home server. Just knowing I have a cold, unplugged copy of my data in my drawer has made me less paranoid about accidentally "rm -rf"-ing my computer and taking all the mount points with it or my dog getting her paw caught on a wire (she likes to run around haphazardly and is pretty clumsy) and dragging the entire hard drive enclosure down with it.

Ideally I wouldn't keep that drive in my house but I don't have anywhere else to put it. Maybe someday I'll get a safe deposit box or something but then my lazy ass probably wouldn't bother to retrieve and sync my data nearly as often.

Switching from gas cars to EVs and having chargers at home. Always leaving the house with a “full tank of gas” and never needing to stop at a gas station again. I did stop by one to clean my windshield a while back and there was ground in trash around the pump, the wiper had no fluid, it was overall disgusting. I don’t remember them being that bad.

Last year I left town for Christmas. Family is always rushing to church, then to photos, then to lunch/dinner.

Rush rush rush.

Apparently its tradition. (I thought family time is more important, no matter if its 8am in a church, or 11am at the beach)

Go by myself to the Big City. Got to sleep in on Christmas day. Peace. Quiet. Best Christmas ever.

I took a week off work to burn some PTO I can’t carry over. I stayed busy the entire time, it was exhausting. But I was doing something ELSE.

It’s amazing what removing yourself from work for a week can do. Even though I was super busy the entire time, first day back at work felt calm.

Finding a good therapist. Within those sessions, some moments stand out: the ACT exercises that were experiential. Those exercises transformed many fucked up beliefs. I went from “the world is shit and I’m fucked” to “the world’s complex but I commit to be a kind person”.

I can’t recommend it enough: experiential ACT exercises.

I left a toxic workplace (for another more toxic workplace, then left that one too) and found an actual good job with nice people who provide proper pay and time off. Been there almost 3 years now. My blood pressure went down by 20 points, I fall asleep easier (without supplements or medicine) my commute went from 70 minutes to 5, and I get to see my kids at lunch and early after school now.

There are better things out there, don't stay somewhere that sucks because you are used to it. It's not worth your health. Even if you find another shitty place, you don't give up and settle. The place I landed after I left the first one was bad and I felt really dumb for falling for the sales pitch on it but I stuck around until I found my current gig and bailed on them. Once you realize that you can just leave it's really freeing.

Got my three remaining wisdom teeth out last week. It's been quite a few years since I could chew without biting the inside of my cheek. Being able to chew properly is a highly underrated ability.

Asking for a divorce.

hot bath.

getting over my weirdness and finally getting a massage. It's comforting being naked in a safe place without sexual pressure. Also my neck was soo tight.

leaving TikTok. I miss being informed about nuance news and memes/trends, but I have more time to do other hobbies (which is just Being Bored atm)

Cutting toxicity out if my life in general.

I've blocked, unsubscribe, and filtered most email. I've completely reduced my physical mail to nothing because I don't need spam every day. I've cut out ads on my devices, I don't need to be constantly manipulated by companies. Speaking of, I left Windows like 2 years ago and it's been great. I also filtered most news out of my life because it enrages me and I don't need that stress.

Switching from a car commute to ebike + train. I don't get pissed off easily, but the traffic where I live can easily get you stuck for over an hour traveling 2-3 miles. And it was just inevitable that I'd finally get home in a shit mood. Biking and chilling in public transit is the exact opposite experience, especially if I manage to catch my usual train. I feel refreshed.

Completely getting off of social media and going no contact with my family. My wife and I are happier than ever.

Ears cleaned

I was just so tired of all of this degradation that [it] has become over the years to where it was outweighing whatever use I thought that there was with it.

This is my take on society as a whole.

Fuckin zone out lol

i felt relief when i dropped all social media and tv news; including facebook.

then i've selectively adding in new platforms one-at-a-time ensuring that each one wasn't controlled by the same forces that have gamified and/or manufactured narratives like facebook/reddit/bluesky/etc. does.

lemmy, rednote, and tiktok are the only things to pass muster so far, but i suspect i'm going to have to drop tiktok eventually considering its new ownership.