i have been struggling with this too, i am still so frightened all of the time and i know it is part of what prevents me from forming connections with others.

art is helping me a lot, i think, though i don’t fully understand how yet. maybe it is letting me figure out little pieces of things that are in me and express them, or maybe it’s the experimentation and play that i felt like i wasn’t allowed to do earlier in life, or some combination of things. perhaps there is something like that for you.

i really hope you have access to some good support systems. and please do be kind to yourself. our poor brains are so tired. i wish i could offer some better advice but i am stumbling in the darkness myself.

for appliances, probably a tie between kettle, rice cooker, and air fryer.

for gadgets, my phin filter (it’s a vietnamese coffee brewing tool, cost me like $2 and i have used it every morning for over 5 years!)

hell yeah, seconded, Spawn soundtrack is full of bangers!

really a lot of 90’s movies had top-notch soundtracks, i will even go out on a heretical limb and say i liked the soundtrack for The Crow more than the movie.

🔧 disco’s tracking post where i do not think i will get them all but let’s try 🔧

progress: 5/10

1. (Freebie) Make a shitpost. 1, 2, 3
2. Make a post about something other than technology or politics or a shitpost. 1
3. Make a post showcasing a thing or topic you find interesting.
4. Make a post to a community with fewer than 100 subscribers. 1
5. Make a post to a community in a small instance. 1 (our instance is p small i think?)
6. Make a post featuring a human-made piece of art. 1
7. Make an on-topic comment to a post in a small community.
8. Make a comment or post sharing news about a location relevant to you.
9. Make a high-quality long form text post or comment.
10. Post or comment a link from another part of the Fediverse.

almost always, i don’t have anyone to spend it with and it also isn’t something i have much emotional attachment to, so other than sending out a few “merry xmas” type messages i just treat it as a normal day. if there are pretty lights in the park or a cute market or something around that time of year, i will go along to that (but i also do that alone). i don’t really know much other way to do it tbh, when i was growing up it was always a hugely stressful thing with everyone angry or upset, so i like mine a lot better now :bc_smilomsweat:

for 6, i would love to encourage people to post something they made themselves, no matter what you may think of your skill level!

some comms that might suit for this (but of course browse around for others too!):

• !artshare@lemmy.world
• !inktober@sh.itjust.works
• !art_alchemist_guild@lemmy.today
• !imadethis@lemmy.zip
• !shitty_art_share@piefed.social (not a judgment on anyone here! i post there myself too :bc_smilomsweat:)

ideal struggle meal coincides with when i end up with an amount of leftovers that isnt enough to be a meal on its own, in which case i either:

• mix it with an egg or two to create some sort of unholy omelet/pancake
• put them into a big sandwich (extras + toasted optional)
• put it as toppings on “pizza” (in quotes because this is almost never done with an actual pizza base)

but if i don’t have leftovers i do my Quickie Noods, which is frozen veggies, whatever noodle can be cooked through in <5mins (usually rice noodle or thin egg noodle), and scrambly egg/tofu all mixed up in a hot pan or wok. i do the veggies & egg/tofu while the noodles are cooking so i can just wham them in fast when they are done! i also usually throw in a bit of curry powder, soy sauce & sesame oil but doing it with just minced garlic + red pepper flakes is also good! i fucking hate cooking but this takes less than 10 mins and is reasonably balanced (compared to a grilly chee anyway) so it is very much a go-to for me.

i will have upheaval because of moving but will try to do my best for threadtember 🫡 a couple of the suggested categories are things i already do so that takes a little pressure off

yes, especially when it seems like there isn’t much reason for the website to even have accounts (other than blatant data harvesting i guess).

sounds very interesting! i am moving to a new city next month so i would love finding some localised stuff more easily :D

i picked up Blindsight recently as well, we must have seen the same post :)

Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak and…Conquest (1983)

i dont even want to think about what that would look like 😂

i am still going on House of the Wolfings! still enjoying it! i am about halfway through now.

i took a little break from it to read Soft Targets by Carson Winter, a novella i picked up on a whim because Tenebrous Press was having an ebook sale. i liked it and it is the first contemporary thing i have tried to read since coming back to reading. it was fucked up but in a satisfying way, if that makes sense. i picked up another novella and some short story collections from that sale too so i really do have plenty to get on with!

i don’t actually have any friends right now so thats why i say that. :)

yes, ideally i would love for many local city councils to set up their own instances that local orgs, council services, businesses, and individuals can have relatively stable accounts on without having to worry about inter-instance fedi lore or trying to work out hosting for themselves when they aren’t confident in technical matters. but unfortunately that’s quite pie-in-the-sky dreaming right now!

i’m a non-technical user and it is a pretty awkward position to be in tbh. i have been floating around various fediverse platforms for quite some years now and it is just very isolating. i can do all the right things in terms of curation and maybe find a tiny handful of cool people but i am still missing out on things like information about local community events, because a huge proportion of those pretty much only get posted on instagram.

so for me it is not even about friends being on there or needing to yap at brands but like…when is the popup art market on, oh there is a call for volunteers for beach cleanup, there is a blood drive on, the tattoo shop i like has a flash day coming up. and before someone yells at me: i dont currently have an instagram account and havent for a while now. but like…i do miss having access to that sort of information because it would get me out of the apartment and involved in local community events. and now i never know what is going on in my city and don’t go out as much. :/

so yay for not using evil meta bullshit that is increasingly janky and many kinds of fucked up. but like. if i had friends over on insta as well, it would make switching to a fedi platform a very hard sell: “come to this place where your friends are not, and probably no local information is available, and people will be continually pissy at you for not caring enough about technical things, and almost nobody wants to hear about the things you are interested in, and people dont want you there anyway because the low userbase is considered a feature not a bug”. ya know? it is just a non-starter.

there are good things about fedi platforms too, but some of those good things are things normal people will simply not understand or care about no matter how frustrated it makes technical users. i wouldnt tell a friend to come here, i would simply tell them to use what they are using less often. and i am sure there will be people in this very thread thinking “good, we dont want idiots like you here”, and that is indeed another part of why it is isolating for me to be here. :)

ahh, i really want to re-read this, i read it when i was a teenager and i think a revisit would be interesting!

ahhh he is so cute 😭

on the short stories front i started & finished Fifty-One Tales by Lord Dunsany, which i enjoyed very much. i liked how lean his writing was, just enough detail to set a picture in the mind but not enough to overwhelm, and there were some lovely stories. now i am on an Arthur Machen collection, from it i have only read The Great God Pan so far and it’s one of those situations where i can see why it was influential but simultaneously didn’t like it as much as it gets lauded. i will keep trucking along with the collection for now but if i end up dropping this one, so be it.

i am also reading The House of the Wolfings by William Morris, a little over a third of the way through and enjoying it very much, i know there is a lot more of Morris to explore so i am excited. it is very enchanting and vivid, and i like how he pops a bit of verse in there. a few archaic words i have needed to look up as i could not quite discern from context, but that is fun too :)