Any way to be optimistic these days without isolating?

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Personally, I would say that the pandemic is now on the way out.
The UK news project that social distancing thing will be over by the end of June, at least in the UK.

So slowly but surely, things will start to improve.
That's good news right?

At least locally, especially for 1st world countries.
And then they will work out which countries you can travel to.
Not sure what impact this is going to have on costs of travel.

I am sure you can be creative however, what ever the impact is on costs.
Personally i think we are all at the end of the pandemic, so. All good.

For me individually, I actually don't even mind the pandemic all that much. The only ways how it has impacted me directly is that my parents are home all the time (which hasn't been nearly as bad as I expected), and that I can't travel (which isn't that bad either since I've actually been getting along just fine with my parents. I don't have an urge to escape). And the complete absence of pressure to go anywhere or do anything is actually pretty nice.

Vaccination isn't going as fast here as in the UK or US, but, all things considered, it's not going so bad either. My parents will probably get vaccinated in the next couple months or so. I don't expect to be vaccinated this year, but who knows, I might. Doesn't matter much, I'm always home anyway, and it's not like I'll be traveling right away.

So in short I'm really not very concerned with the pandemic itself, thankfully. My thoughts are more on an "existential questioning" sort of level (I've learned to accept that my mind will always go back to it, better not fight it too much).


Oh with very few exceptions (that I feel are justified) I barely even register that those sorts of comments are there. They're just as much a lost cause as religious fundamentalists. As long as they don't dominate the landscape, I am thoroughly convinced that they're best ignored.

About "doom-scrolling", yes, I guess I've been doing it here without realizing it (this is the only platform I participate in or am a member of at all though). I get drawn to topics involving [meta-]politics and philosophy because I do like to discuss them and form my own opinions in the process (I think some discussions about race issues that I've participated in, for example, have actually been productive at times, even if most of it wasn't). But in the end I guess I just need to weigh the pros and cons, and, sad as it is, "this is the internet", which means trolls always have the upper hand in those kinds of discussions. Probably best if I stay out of it entirely.

I guess I failed to consider how the pandemic is the number one thing in everyone else's minds when I said that "you could take the last two paragraphs as a TL;DR"...

Gotta count our blessings, right?

But yeah, that was what inspired me to actually go ahead and post this thread.

By the way, thanks to everyone who has replied so far. This is helpful.

prego

I try to have my own world too, ignoring the new and the surroundings. The people around are not the same anymore, their brain is Covid infected and it seems like connections depends on our stance about Covid-19. I try to distract myself at home, to only do minimal outings, but it's tough nonetheless. I try to box myself from the negative influences around, but I also miss some human interaction, at least, sometimes. I don't go on manstream social media platforms, except for something "important" like contacting a business or a close one.

You know, even your wildly misguided interpretation here of what problem I'm actually talking about kinda helps me too. Because it turns out this is the Haven. I can invite you to refrain from posting further replies to this or other threads of mine in this section. And I hereby do so. I feel better already.



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Edit: On second thought, I guess that was a bit too harsh. I guess your intention was good. I don't want to hear about that stuff though (which is pretty much the whole point).

Last edited by toadsnail on 07 Mar 2021, 8:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Back on the topic of "using the forum sustainably", I think I need to post this as a reminder to myself: I should probably choose one or two specific days a week when I'll check the forum, and avoid it completely the rest of the week. I can see that it will just keep taking way up too much of my headspace and consuming way too much of my mental energy if I just let myself come here anytime any day indefinitely. It hits the "sweet" spot of enough activity to keep me hooked but low activity enough to keep me checking if there's something new more than actually seeing or contributing something new. Red flags all over. I'm opening loot boxes here...

Hm... I think this right here ^ may be one of the main reasons why these thoughts upset me so much. I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt and/or look for common ground, and I generally end up feeling bad when I don't. It's a matter of principle to me. But it's a really hard principle to uphold, and it just seems to get harder and harder each year. My ethics clash with reality and I don't really know what to make of it.