What do you miss about Reddit?

submitted by medium_tomato from (self.AskSaidIt)

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[–][deleted] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Yeah I'm feeling pretty "internet homeless" these days. It's weird.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Exercise helped me quite a lot. I wish I could do more things, but adult life sucks. You work all the time, and it never feels like you can really commit to doing anything for yourself. A down side of growing older is if you've tried a lot of things, and realize you suck at all of them. What do you do then? Being a mediocre person and realizing it is horrible, and having nowhere to go to enjoy mediocrity with others is even worse.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I bounced from one thing to another looking for the one thing I'd be good at. Every time it would be easy to learn the basics, then I'd hit a wall and be frustrated with it. The flaw in my thinking was that - if it gets hard at any point, then it's not my thing. What I learned was that the walls can be broken through with patience and persistence. I'm pretty much convinced that everything gets hard at some point, and you just have to grind through it slowly, until you come out the other side. It's hard to push yourself through that. When the learning/discovery grinds to a halt, the fun/motivation really dries up. And in my case a lot of negativity and frustration set in. The only thing that kept me going was being able to make a small amount of money on my hobby... that gave me the motivation to stick to one thing and build on my skills over the course of years.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I've lived a very hard life. A very, in my view, unfair one at that. Of course being unable to see it any other way, it's like a rot that sets in. You become very comfortable in it and give up trying to fight it, especially if it's nothing but failures for decades. Then you just grow old. If anything I really wish I had devoted time to some kind of expressive skill, maybe art or music, but I find I have an affinity for neither. I love them, but can't do them, or at least can't seem to. I don't mean I haven't tried, I certainly can draw a bit, but can't stick to it to develop.

Having depression most of my life, and I mean real depression of the "I just spent 6 months kind of staring at a wall" sort of anhedonia (inability to feel pleasure), that problem you outline is impossible for me. I feel everything is pointless and without purpose, because I just cannot feel it worthwhile to do. I think you'd be horrified how many days you find you've spent just kind of staring at a wall in your bed. It's actually worse when you get better, because you see how many years you've lost and how little time you have left, and get caught in a circular cycle that paralyzes you. Especially knowing it comes back, and it'll be pointless.

I can't count how many times I picked back up something, only to be unable to stick to it again, then next year I try again. Over, and over, and over. The futility is torture. That's what'll drive me to tears. Just being flatly unable to keep doing it consistently, and being unable to find some way to fix that, and tortured with some days being better enough that it fools you into thinking now will be different. Then it comes back anyway, and you just can't finish the last drawing you started. Or start new ones. And then you go back to bed.

I don't really have anyone to talk to about it. Or expect there to be some magical line of reasoning or wisdom to fix it. I've already tried that, among many other things. Just how it is for me. I don't get to be lucky enough to really enjoy life.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That sucks. I've less-severe depression, which I go in and out of. When the episode runs its course, I realize I've been doing nothing but playing World of Warcraft 14 hours a day, every day for the past 3 months, and I'm basically sitting in filth.

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is the 1% improvements added up, and I didn't notice how much progress I'd made until I looked back... it didn't feel like I was improving at the time, but one day I noticed it and shocked me. I don't know what it's like for drawing, but for me there were small specific things I could work on, and I made it only about that thing. Maybe for drawing it's just drilling light & shade on different primitive shapes... I don't really know drawing, but breaking it up into tiny projects and limiting the scope of things can take a lot of the pressure off. But those smaller projects can inform the bigger ones.

[–]Papitas 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think one of the most precious things one loses as an adult is the capacity to not giving a shit.

Who cares if you are bad at things you enjoy?