supercritical

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I expect nothing less from someone whose profile picture is an anime child smelling feet.

Nah, above is photographic proof of where wind comes from.

It's definitely a crutch for me. I've used exercise several times recently to give myself an attitude adjustment.

There’s someone at my work who really needs to see this…

People will spend hours learning things that save them seconds.

Check out gear by GL.iNet. They’re pretty cheap, albeit low specced, but they come with OpenWRT flavor preinstalled. They’re an unbelievable value proposition and I’ve been running mine with no noticeable issues since September. For you I would look at something like their GL-AX1800. Poke around on their store, but that AX1800 is just shy of $100 in the US.

I got mine specifically because of my home lab set up and them being recommended by my work’s cybersec manager.

We have also seen the budget range improve in quality and affordability. There will always be cheap junk TVs and overly expensive TVs, but that midrange, where most people buy, has become rock solid. There just isn’t much region to upgrade at the moment.

I can't believe just how called out by this post I feel. There are lots of good tips and recommendations throughout this thread, but this one in particular seems to sum up not only my behaviors that I described above, but with a lot of oddities in how I do things. In particular, these are some notable items you mentioned that I do on a regular basis:

• "...the reason I (for example) restart video games instead of playing to the end is because my stress response is messed up, and my solution to a fun game going sour is to “reboot” and seek a redo (just like how I left home, or quit some jobs to get away from stressful people!)."
• "Set up entire websites and message forums just to get away from IRL stuff that sucked."
• "You sound like you’re in tech, maybe a programmer..."
• "Things turn black and white–either everything is absolutely 100% perfect, or you’ve failed and you’re going to burn in hell with all the other failures!"

I really appreciate this comment. It's one of the few that are really emphasizing that these are habits that seem more design, subconsciously, to pull me away from true feelings. Some feelings I tend to experience in connection with these episodes lack of purpose, imposter syndrome, hurt, etc. I've been responding to commenters throughout that I think therapy and mindfulness of these behaviors is my most logical next steps, but I'm really appreciative of the recommendations and personal experiences you've shared with us. It definitely makes me feel like I'm not alone in this world.

A few of my coworkers swear by it but I've never given it much attention. I'm going to download it this morning and play around with it - see what all the hype is about.

Thanks! I really appreciate seeing that. I try to be as kind to myself as I can, and to others. Cheers.

I think this is a really good point… I have been struggling a lot lately with purpose. I bet that’s a component to all this. I’ll be taking some extra time to evaluate how I’m doing.