I made it two weeks without drinking more than a half bottle of wine a night. Then I finished my project and now, yeah. Fuck it. And fuck the bbc and the guardian as well. They just contribute to the general feeling of everything you could possibly think of having already been controlled for. We're living in a desperate state, ladies and gentlemen. Almost all of our autonomy has been taken away. You can't travel to another country, or get back, and at times you can't leave the house. Wherever you go, you're surrounded by the same stew of idiocracy that's exploded from being an American backwoods hillbilly sociopathic mania into a generalized trend where everyone is constantly expecting the apocalypse, all the time, everywhere. And you can't escape the idiots because there is literally no other outlet except this ludicrous online world, largely run and managed by botnets, whose primary purpose is to keep you agitated and off-balance most of the day. For what reasons we might speculate but it would behoove no one to claim to know. Nonetheless, that's there. The ever-present, constant, unceasing, morning-to-night traumatization of you and me as individuals by this machine of fear and panic and rumor. Which even if we don't subscribe to, gets to us because our boomer parents subscribe to it and call us and tell us the latest insane ideas they've fallen victim to. And we're living as a really traumatized group of people now. I feel it and see it all around me. Literally everyone I know has PTSD as a result of this pandemic.
So thanks a lot, Guardian, for telling us how embracing my messy life is a form of self-improvement. Seriously, go fuck yourself.
I know the pandemic is stressful, but to the point of flashbacks, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, panic attacks, significant avoidance behavior, etc. That’s a pretty tall claim.
I feel you. It's been a very hard 2 years, and it's easy to get angry at a variety of people or institutions that seem to be, or are, responsible for it. And I've done more than my share of drinking, too.
What has helped me is to first, try to be compassionate to those around me.
And second, it's a little weird, but I try to wish others well and feel compassionate towards them, even those who are far away and who I haven't met. It would be like "praying" for their well-being, even though I'm an atheist and don't think there's anything mystical about it. But if I do it for others, then I have a rational basis for thinking someone else might be doing it for me.
People who are striving for self-improvement are just trying to get some control of their out-of-control lives. It's just one of many possible coping mechanisms.
So thanks a lot, Guardian, for telling us how embracing my messy life is a form of self-improvement. Seriously, go fuck yourself.