A not very epic poem about smart appliance FOMO, to be sung to a tune played on the world’s smallest violin

I’m devastated my fridge is old and does nothing
but keep my food cold.
I feel so poor and left out,
having no access to these value-strengthening promotions and curated advertisements.
My dumb fridge just
stands in a corner of the kitchen, not talking to me!
I feel so alone among my silent appliances.
Please speak to me washing machine
say something sweet space heater
profess your undying love to me dish washer

• Gardening. I’ve had no gardening land until yesterday so I have filled my terrace with pots and bags of soil. Very proud of my (admittedly shitty) beans and tomatoes. I’ve made raised beds out of rubble in my backyard. A friend has offered me to use some of her land, so that will be next to plant.

• Cat. I was really awfully depressed so I adopted a sickly kitten to have someone else to care for. It helps. The cat doesn’t give a shit about world politics. It’s now growing more healthy and becoming too powerful for my furniture. When I wallow in bad moods it will let me know without delay. It’s currently sitting on my lap making sure I don’t get too much screen time.

• Community. The local community is poor, rural and divided into (very conservative) locals and foreigners (who come here to live in more natural settings than where they come from). Since I’ve turn woefully old I feel like I am now the adult in the room, so I try to work on bringing people together, and a few others are doing the same. That’s how we fight the fascists and xenophobes who seem to be everywhere these days. There was a small group of at least four different nationalities banging pots for Gaza in our tiny town yesterday. When it feels that there is not enough community I will come up with some way to create it through common activities. Two or three people meeting and doing something together is a success!

• Bread. I bake sourdough bread because the local bread sucks. Some people buy it from me and enjoy it very much, and that makes me happy.

That said I am often nearly succumbing to all the doom out there. There have been days in the last few months when I was really not wanting to live anymore. I then return to one of the points above and carry on, and the doom passes. I’ll keep doing that, sometimes out of spite, till I’m booted out of this place or this life.

All of the points I wrote down connect with caring for human and non-human life (even the sourdough is a friend!). One more point I should add is ceremony/prayer, which sounds stupid to the average anarchist/atheist, but it has become important to me and connects me to ancestors and landscape. The land is alive and my work is to participate in caring for the land and its inhabitants - a lot of that philosophy is borrowed from native and indigenous people. I’m not caring for others because some god tells me to, but because being a good neighbor to people, plants and animals makes everyone involved more happy.

All I do is purposefully small. No big ambitions that would eat me (been there, done that). Just my tiny self doing my best. Plans and ideas don’t have to be - shouldn’t be - big and sparkling.

Don’t use AI. Huge negative environmental and social impact just to create slop. Not going to play your games, sorry.

Touch grass is what we need to do. I do as much as I can in my surroundings - raised beds, gardening, and sharing stuff with people. I work as much as I can in my local community. That’s how we beat this shit and keep our souls alive.

I feel you, I know what you mean. End of the world - as we know it. I hope that while everything comes tumbling down we re-learn how to be in community with others, humans and non-humans. I hope we re-learn how to be and not spend so much energy. The tiredness people feel these days seems to indicate that the great mother is taking care of that for us - nothing we have to do, just give in to feeling tired. In the meantime, I am coming to accept that together with many others I might die in this process of unraveling, but that’s not important.

Slow down, do less, achieve less, buy less, worry less. More casual hanging out with trees, birds and lizards in my neighborhood. Eat the rich.

I believe a lot of the wellness stuff is to keep us functional in a sick world (I have used mindfulness to be more productive before and it has driven me into burnout), so I really don’t want to get obsessed about the wellness or fitness game. I also don’t want to be a fucking wreck at 55. Not always as chill as it seems. 😅

I’ve been looking into local plants as coffee substitutes, and made my own malt coffee once by sprouting and roasting grain. At the moment these are too time consuming for me, but I might get there at some point. I really don’t like being addicted to this colonial stuff, it’s wrong on so many levels, not just health.

I’d say it’s a solid 50/50 these days. If I force myself to follow ambitious plans, anything to do with what others might think of me, or socialize too much when I actually should be resting I will certainly regret it. I try to access my feelings and find out what really matters to me. Those are the things that make me feel more alive. Hard to find the difference but I’m getting better at it. Most FOMO can go fuck itself these days.

To create is even more important now. To fight this machine, this soul-less destruction. I’m more of a crafts person and only rarely a writer. Everything I do can be done by a machine faster and cheaper, so there is seems to be no reason to keep making it. A lot of the time I stare at my little felt figurines and my plant-dyed yarns and wonder why I even bother, and lately have stayed alive only because it would make my dad and my kid sad. But every now and then someone’s eyes get a certain sparkle when they see what I do. There’s life in it. My wonky basket contains life and love - the plastic basket with the fake wicker pattern does not. People at the moment can’t afford to buy my basket instead of the plastic one, but it has to exist to keep the real craft alive. We crafters, writers, artists, musicians need to keep alive the knowledge of how to make the real things. Some day it will matter again, I believe at some point the machine will eat itself.

Not very well, to be honest. I have replaced one or two of the many coffees I drink every day with herbal infusion because my joints have started rattling in the last few years. I add vegetables to my food often, and also use the herbs I grow on my balcony. I pray to the goddess that she permits my coffee habit for another few years. But also, I very rarely touch ultra processed foods, don’t drink soda or any other sugary drink, avoid stress (even most stuff considered ‘fun’ stress, like holidays and events) and try to not pollute my mind with too much bullshit. I don’t like being obsessed or make myself feel guilty about living in a very healthy way. Most of my wellness practice consists of doing whatever I feel like doing without worrying too much about it.

Got some of this as well, started with pain in the throat last week, I slept a lot for two days, came down with migraine a day after that, and the last week I have been mentally really unwell feeling more anxious and depressed than usual. Something is going round.

“Invasive seaweed” is not a very nice name to call UK tourists.

Oh it looks a bit hopeless in this thread, I’m so sorry it is so hard for you all!

Here’s a bit of hope, maybe it nudges someone in a brighter direction (or if you are not spiritually inclined at least me having lost it completely might entertain you):

I’m finding hope in my animist faith. Ever since I’ve started talking to the landscape a few years ago, and overcame the fear of being a complete nutter sliding into psychosis, I have had guidance about what I can do next to make things better - it sometimes arrives in the shape of an animal visiting me, or the wind picking up as I entertain certain thoughts, or a book with relevant information.

This week I’m visiting friends and in their library I found a book about landscape healing by connecting to nature spirits, a lot of which corresponds to what I’ve experienced myself when trying to reconnect. The landscape around us has not given up on us yet, and wants to re-balance things, and we are invited to help. Destroyed water sources, sad forests, forgotten mountains can be helped not just by fierce activism, but by extending our love towards them and connecting with them as friends and neighbours.

I believe the real revolution is already happening in the hearts of millions of witches, who start connecting with each other and with all the life out there, and this movement is becoming more powerful every day. Finding back towards balance is the work of many generations, so in our current incarnations we might not see the end of it, but the work towards it is something we can do today, even in the bleakest of times. So I guess go hug a tree or speak to a rock, and I really wish that things get better for you soon!

Lots of good advice here already, especially regarding IFS, which is a therapy approach that works with splitting one’s inner monologue into a conversation between different voices.

Since a lot of commenters seem to equate inner voices with schizophrenia or psychosis I’d like to let you (and them) know it’s not that unusual to have inner voices with different personalities! I found my inner voices very helpful to deal with my mental challenges and this never turned into anything uncontrollable. I had a similar very critical inner voice which I then recognized as mainly being my mother’s way of criticizing me - even after I went no contact with mom, she was still occupying space in my head telling me everything I did wrong.

The way out was really simple, CBT-based: a therapist reminded me to be kind to myself and I just practised - like giving myself an inner hug every time I used the unkind voice and remembering that kindness to myself is important (not beating myself up for being unkind!), and to avoid self-deprecating humour. It just took some time, maybe a year, and now I see clear improvements. The voice is pretty much gone. At the moment I have no need to separate into different voices and feel quite at home within myself. Hope you get there soon, you seem a be on a good path towards it!

Not knowing what number 3 is

What the fuck, that looks absolutely desperate! I’m sure it will have the opposite effect. Fuck reddit.

I found it easier after understanding that everyone else is also struggling, everybody feels like they don’t have their shit together, and everybody needs help. There might be a few people who claim they have it all figured out, they are not the ones I want to take advice from because they are full of shit (often they are some guru type and/or just want your money).

Also helps to realize that a lot of people feel bad because things are bleak - we struggle with climate change, alienation at work, being disrooted, at the brink of yet another war … it’s objectively hard to live during these times. The only thing that makes it easier is talking to each other. A woman visited me yesterday, told me about her problems with her health and her main problem seemed to be that she feels unproductive and too tired to get the things done she believes she should be able to do. After telling her that on most days I was pleased with myself for simply getting up, feeding the cat and brushing my teeth, and that I know so many more people who tell me they feel like this, she was visibly relieved, and I was as well.

So when we talk to each other it helps to realize there’s nothing wrong with us personally - we are not failing at being a person, we are just reacting to the best of our abilities to an onslaught of trouble around us. Plus, when we talk to each other we often find out how we can help each other out in very practical ways - like sharing resources, supporting each other with our different strengths, ganging up together against the hardship. Community is how we can survive the hard times!

So is there someone in your life you can ask for help? Are you thinking about enlisting professional help like a doctor or therapist? What do you need right now?

Do you expect some longer term benefits? Are you planning to repeat the experience?

Not taking it as a joke - I feel the same about it. I guess every screen does fuck with the mind at some point, be it an algorithm making me feel in a prescribed way, the obsession to find the fake people in an online discussion, or just turning into a zombie watching TV - all is stuff that makes me sad or angry when I overdo it, so I’m careful to get outside enough and meet actual humans (and non-humans) and the sadness goes away. It can be difficult when living alone and working a screen job, but my self preservation instincts are improving with time!

The internet is devouring itself - I hope some of the useful parts remain, but I wouldn’t be too sad to return to my local library for information and slow down the flow of information again.