AE's Journal Round 4

[AnalyticalEngine]

Eternal Wednesday
Working from home feels like an eternal Wednesday. It's just an endless grind of exactly the same thing everyday. It's not Monday because that implies a beginning, and it's definitely not Friday. It's just Wednesday, everyday, even the weekends. It's way harder to focus than it was during the office. I find myself sometimes extremely distraught because I just cannot literally focus on work for the life of me. This lack of focus is a new problem for me. I normally have no trouble focusing at all. But what I'm working on is just extremely boring. I just literally cannot bring myself to care. It's like being paid to watch paint dry, day after day. Maybe it sounds nice at first because it's easy, but you start to feel like your entire life is slipping away. And the bureaucracy of software development is like this everywhere. It's just moving complexity from one part of the system into another part of the system without questioning why anyone is doing anything[1].

The thing is, I could probably get my job done in 4 hours a day if I could just sit down and do it. And if I could just actually manage to manage my time, I would get it done in 4 hours and then use the rest of my day to fix my life/develop web-of-goals type habits. But I can't focus on it. And so instead I procrastinate doing useless things, and then I'm more stressed, and then the stress adds to the depression and the cycle continues.

It probably doesn't help that I've become pretty social isolated during CV-19. I live alone, and work was my main source of social interaction. I've tried to schedule phone calls with friends who live out of state, but it's just not the same. So now my job is just all the downsides (boring, bureaucratic) with none of the upsides (social interaction, structure).

I have hobbies that I want to feel good enough to work on. I have goals that I want to be able to work toward. But everyday is Wednesday. Everything feels so exhausting and impossible.

I think if I could just enforce some type of strict schedule on myself, maybe it would help. If I work in one room, sleep in another room, relax in the other room, maybe it'd be enough context to help me focus. I just don't know if work is making me depressed or depression is making it hard to function at work. I have so much "free" time yet no ability to use it.

[1] Rant on DevSecOps/Agile/Scaled Agile/"automation" coming soon.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Getting back on track
Sorry about the level of melodrama in that last post. I don't regret it because it helped me get my thoughts organized, but I'm trying really hard to not get caught in the trap of thinking that way.

I sat down and made a list of everything I want to do. It ended up being pretty long, and it included a lot of hobbies. The top ones were cycling, learning ham radio, getting into writing again, and getting back into drawing again. It made me realize there's a lot I want to do but I'm currently not doing it due to lack of time and lack of good routine/organization.

So I'm going to pick one and try to work on it 30 minutes a day. I used to get a lot done in addition to working FT, but I think I require more structure to make it happen.

On Work
I think instead of feeling bad about myself for not enjoying work, or projecting my dislike of work onto the broader consumer capitalist system, or gaslighting myself into attempting to like work, it's okay for me to just admit that my job/career is no longer a good fit for me. The people I work with are great, I have no complaints about my current boss/management, but the fact is, software development is just no longer interesting. I need to be learning new things in order to stay engaged with something, and I have a terrible time staying interested if I feel like my skills are plateauing. My brain seems to work either in on or off mode. If it's on, I'll do whatever it takes to get things done and learn new things. If it's off, then asking me to do the task invokes existential dread. Instead of wringing my hands over this, I've realized I need to just accept this is who I am. I like learning, I like having a wide range of interests, and I like working on challenging projects. I don't like doing the same thing over and over again like a code monkey.

I have two options here. I can either master ERE skills to the point I can peace out of the workforce. That could happen either while I work or after I quit. Or I can try to find a new job that's interesting. Unfortunately the job market is...not ideal right now, but it's still not impossible.

Opportunity Cost
The problem for all of this is that I'm limited in both time and energy right now. It's incredibly hard to """sacrifice""" by giving up an expensive food habit when eating a variety of food is the one thing I look forward to after tolerating demoralizing work all day. It's hard to want to cook dinner when it feels like I have no time/energy and want to work on a hobby instead. There's so much I want to do yet so little time to do any of it.

I actually think this anxiety over opportunity cost is a good thing because I was largely ignoring opportunity cost before and wasting my time on stuff that wasn't "sparking joy." It's just sometimes difficult to orient myself toward working on things that will bring the most return in furthering my goals or sparking joy.

On depression
I think some of the recent spike in my depression is due to attempting to go off caffeine. As I've mentioned before, I seem to be extremely sensitive to it. And last time I tried to quit caffeine, I ended up going back because it's the one thing that makes me feel consistently better.

I'm also reading a book: "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" by David Burns. It's the foundation of cognitive behavioral therapy. I recommend it for everyone, but I think it's especially effective if you have more the INTJ-type personality type due to its significant focus on science/methodology. It's good because it gets really granular into symptoms and how to treat them.

[AxelHeyst]

I somehow missed your Eternal Wednesday post - that super resonated with me, particularly the whole "I could do this in 4hrs/day, but I don't care anymore, so I just spend way more time sitting at the computer and not doing the other stuff I could be doing". That described the last 2+ years of my FT career to a T. Also, thinking that I just needed to implement a strict schedule/routine to snap/work myself out of it. The 30min a day thing will help, give it a go, but for me that sort of thing was at best a temporary band-aid, that I'd inevitably stop doing due to a fire at work, a fire in my personal life, or just having a string of bad days (low energy, IDGAFanymore-itis, etc), and then I'd feel bad about myself for "failing" at my routine.

In the beginning of my career I got a lot done in addition to working (way too much). There is no way I could pull that off now, and it's why I think FT work just steadily depleted my life-energy battery. I refuse to accept the story that I'm just "older" now - I'm only 34, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to do a ton of stuff. I'm just (was) burnt out. You know what I think the real solution is - even if it's only a "gap year" or a temporary break, you don't have to decide to go 'semiERE' forever.

I experimented with going off caffeine once. I happily went back on because life just sucked intolerably without it. Maybe once I've totally recovered from burnout/FT work I'll take another crack at it, but it was very clear to me that it wasn't healthy for me to be off (a moderate amount of) caffeine.

[ertyu]

It's incredibly hard to """sacrifice""" by giving up an expensive food habit when eating a variety of food is the one thing I look forward to after tolerating demoralizing work all day.

Been here also. Wishing you strength.

Also.

So, I have an extreme prejudice against CBT. CBT is, essentially, trying to logic yourself out of your truth. One giant exercise in being invalidated. The book seems to be something that hits the spot for you, so I'm not going to expostulate on why I hate CBT any further, but my theory is that when CBT works, it works not because of its substance as a therapy but because one of its key tenets is (1) breaking state - short circuiting the process of rumination. There's worksheets and other bullshit to fill in from there, arguing with the thoughts, whatever, but all of that is BS. The valuable moment here is that the person caught themselves ruminating, stopped, and redirected their attention. (2) Planned action + accountability. Those tables that it has you do; predict what it would be like then go do it then go back and rate what it was actually like. Well, guess what, it's a system for getting you off your butt, and then you talk about your experiences with someone (your therapist) afterwards. Someone cared about what your experiences were like for you. Of course you'd have an easier time getting off your ass.

CBT works wonders for people who want to escape their own vulnerability, and as a result, can only get one so far. Aaaaanyway. While I dislike CBT with a burning passion, I do hope there are aspects of it that would work for you. Depression sucks sore, so anything that works is a yay, even if it seems to clash with me personally.

I guess the take-away here is, if one ends up trying the book, it's quite possible that it won't be suited to every personality type. When I first read it, it disagreed with me but everyone kept recommending it so I thought that it's somehow my fault and I could maybe hate myself into having it work. Spoiler: nope. Not for everyone. But I guess no therapy system is. But since then, whenever I see it recommended I feel compelled to add, "yeah check it out but don't be too hard on yourself if it doesn't work for you."

[Egg]

I have hobbies that I want to feel good enough to work on. I have goals that I want to be able to work toward. But everyday is Wednesday. Everything feels so exhausting and impossible.

Ah, man. Hope you're feeling okay. My situation isn't boredom at an easy work life - kinda the opposite - but I feel you on the general underlying sense of burnout, which I share. Seems COVID-19 has been bringing ennui out of a lot of people. Hang in there, whatever you decide to do on the work front.

[classical_Liberal]

I think your self-realization about how you operate is great. I think the dichotomy of finding new work or learning more ERE is a false one. You can literally do whatever you want. Some combination of the above, or neither of the above. The ONLY thing you aren't is passively FI, which means the only thing you can't do is quit your job and sit on your butt for more than a couple decades in the face of a diminishing nest egg. I hope when you get out of your depression you are able to realize all the options you have!

I missed the previous post too, interesting that you miss the social interactions. Tyler9000 quit his job for the exact same reasons after COVID forced him to WFH.

[Smashter]

Getting back on track
Sorry about the level of melodrama in that last post.

Nothing wrong with venting in your own journal! I for one appreciate the candor.

I've been having very similar feelings about my work lately so I'm living vicariously through the journal entries of folks like you who are taking the courageous steps of actually changing things up.

It sounds like you are taking all the right steps to get yourself out of the funk, I'm excited to watch your progress.

[Jin+Guice]

Hey AE,

I've recently read your entire round 4 journal. I've really enjoyed it. Sorry you're depressed. I've dealt with depression since I was a teenager. What's worked for me has been exercising more, making sure I'm sleeping enough, improving my diet and making sure I'm both socializing enough and getting enough alone time. Not sure if that would work for you or not. If you've got bad habits in any of those areas already (I've had bad habits in all of these areas at some point) undoing them takes years, which can lead to more depression as you struggle in the short run. Just remember it's alright to be nice to yourself. I find some light drug use to be helpful as well, but it's a slippery slope that will lead to a lifetime of pain if you fuck up.

I think having a full-time job is probably bad for depression. We learn that "being productive" and working full-time are somehow natural and necessary states, but they are in fact neither. That doesn't mean these values are wrong, but if they don't work for you, it's helpful to remember that they aren't de facto right either.

[AnalyticalEngine]

@AH - Thanks for sharing your insights. I think we're both experiencing a similar form of burnout, so your insights are always valuable. I definitely relate to the depleting life battery problem. I'm only 30, and yet I feel like I have less energy right now than a lot of people in their 60s. It does help to know part of the problem may be as simple as only burnout.

You also convinced me to go back on caffeine. I want to get off it eventually, but right now is probably not the best time when going off it seems to make my depression a lot worse, even once the headache/similar symptoms go away.

I do also think I'd benefit from GTD/more structure generally, so I'll be looking into that too.

@ertyu - I think the horrible thing about depression is that it's both a symptom and original cause. It can also be cause dozens of different things. So attempting to treat it usually involves throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. To that end, CBT may not be for everyone. I don't think there's anything wrong in deciding it's not a good treatment fit. Ultimately it is about breaking rumination and focusing on concrete actions. There's no "deeper truth" to depression, but it's incredibly hard to put that into practice/understand it when you are depressed. So in my experience, a lot of therapy is simply about trying to keep you grounded. Therapists are only human and have their own biases. I've definitely ran into situations where people want you to argue against your own truth. But knowing what is your truth and what is depression is sometimes hard.

Regardless, I do wish you luck. Let us know what things do work for you. It's always valuable to hear other's experiences with depression, and we're all rooting for you.

@Egg - Thank you, I appreciate the support. I do think covid has a lot of people on edge right now. It is one reason I'm hesitant to make too many changes. I'm not sure what's a valid feeling and what's covid-induced ennui. The only thing for it is to try my best!

@c_L - You're definitely right. I have more options than I think, and I try to tell myself that routinely. I'm starting to see it a little more too, although it's still sometimes hard. Realistically, I don't think I'll ever not """work""" in some capacity because I enjoy being engaged. So I can't let myself get stuck in livingaFI-never-quit-syndrome.

@Smashter - Thanks for your support! I hope your own situation at work improves at well. We're living through a strange moment with the economy/work right now. It seems to be making everything that was already bad worse and getting rid of the few things that were good at work. Such is the daily struggle of the bizarre moment in history we find ourselves in.

@J+G - Thanks for sharing your insights. I think all four of these problems (exercise, sleep, diet, socialization) are definitely a large part of my problem. I think it can be easy to romanticize depression and act like some kind of tragic Byronic hero, but the reality is that it can sometimes be as simple as burn out and poor lifestyle habits. I try to remind myself that I didn't get into this problem overnight, and so I won't get out of it overnight either. But at least, now, I realize just how much I need to change. Before, I was living in more ignorance I think, so that's progress.

You're right on work too. The notion of "being productive" is a very modern one. I'm reminded of something Ran Prieur said recently in his blog:

It's hard to remember that none of this is real. Your job, your debt, your Twitter feed, are all just a game we're playing that's not fun anymore. If the politicians and bureaucrats can just do one thing, if they can keep us from going hungry through economic collapse, then we can come up with a better game.

[AnalyticalEngine]

On the Internet
The Internet and I grew up together. When I was a kid, I would hack together those crazy HTML sites where your cursor would turn into a bunch of stars and music would play. The Internet was smaller back then too. If you wanted to discuss a niche hobby, you had to find an independent site for it. And if one didn't exist, you'd have to make one yourself.

It made the Internet more creative. With less financial incentive, people put up what they were genuinely interested in. People would write and animate Flash cartoons that were simply what they wanted to see. There was no mass marketing, no chopping it up into ad-optimized 10 minute segments. People wanted to see something zany, and they made it.

But more importantly than all of that was the fact Real Life still existed. When you got off the Internet, the rest of the world was still there for you. You'd just turn off the computer and go outside, where everyone else was. This gave you the benefit of having space to be a weirdo and space to be a productive citizen.

The Internet used to be an escape from Real Life, but now Real Life is an escape from the Internet. With the invention of social media and the smartphone, the muggles invaded the entire Internet in a singular, nightmarish Eternal September. The effect this had on society was profound. Not only did it ruin real life, but it also ruined the Internet. It's harder now to find good Internet spaces than it was in the 2000s. They still exist (like this forum), but they are fewer in number.

The Internet feels dystopian now. It's addictive and pervasive. Memes ruined the political conversation, and the political conversation ruined memes.

But the worst part is just how unsustainable this all is. The sheer ecological and human cost of mining materials to build smartfridges makes the movie Wall-E look optimistic. We're tearing up the Earth and turning a blind eye to the squalor the people who make these devices live in so that we can play Fortnite and scream at people who disagree with our interpretation of a fictional character.

Sometimes I can't wait for the day when the rare earth metals do run out. A return to 1970s-level telecommunications would amount to some kind of divine intervention to save humanity.

[AnalyticalEngine]

Work Update
What I've decided is that my current role is not a good fit for me. It's really as simple as that. The main development work is done, and now all we do is small enhancements and bug fixes. Additionally, they won't hire more QA due to the CV-19 hiring freeze, and so now I'm doing testing too. This stuff is incredibly boring, and it's not what I want to do.

Now don't get me wrong, there are still other problems in software, but at the very least I don't have to subject myself to this. It is possible for me to at least solve interesting technical problems for money instead of writing garbage-tier test cases for money.

So I reached out to my various old colleagues from years past, and some of them are on teams that are hiring in spite of corona. This will at least let me work on stuff that isn't as painful. It's not a complete solution to my problem, but at least I know I don't have to spend my entire life writing test cases.

This decision to find another job is already making me feel better, and even making it easier to focus on work now. I want to leave on a good note, so hopefully I'm able to do that and find a better position.

[AnalyticalEngine]

I realize I keep posting here a lot, but writing here helps me organize my thoughts, and I've had some realizations lately.

On Collapse
I was watching this lecture on YouTube, and one of the points the speaker makes is that you can't expect anyone else to notice collapse. You just can't. Denial is too strong. So there's no use wringing your hands over it because you can and will be alone in your observations.

This really resonated with me. I think I've had the opportunity to witness humanity in action during the CV-19 dumpster fire. Because the thing about CV-19 is that it's not even about the disease. It's about the way humanity handles risk and the utter lack of understanding members of the public have on how their leaders and institutions work behind the scene.

Case and point: the whole debate over the lockdown/masks/how worried we should be, etc. Again, at this point, I don't even care about the disease. It's the lack of awareness about the entire ecosystem of industrial society that has me tearing my hair out.

For example, it's really easy to have an opinion like "the lockdown in unnecessary. We killed the economy for no reason." But the problem with this chain of reasoning is it misses some basic facts such as:

A large amount of the population still remains concerned about the disease. Even if their concern is entirely unfounded, they will still act accordingly. This means people may voluntarily choose to consume less, which is indeed something we saw. If people choose to consume less, the economy will slow. Therefore by attempting to manage the disease, or at least appear like you're managing the disease, is the only way to handle this mass of people. Again, it doesn't matter what anyone's individual opinion on the severity of the disease is. Elected leaders will act on what the majority thinks. You can disagree with leaders, that's fine, but it's important to at least understand they're going to act that way and plan your own life accordingly.

Then there was the goalpost moving. At first, there was the panic. You saw that with travel bans, quarantining ships, etc, which all proved to be utterly moot because the disease was already here. But banning travel makes the population feel safe, and it gives the illusion of the elected officials actually doing something. So travel bans happened even though they clearly didn't work.

Plus the supply chain disruptions. Again, we can all argue that our governor shouldn't lockdown the state. But none of that matters if country X locks down and we depend on country X for supplies. We commoners have absolutely no sway on what country X does. But even now, the supply chains are still messed up.

Anyway, my point isn't to start a debate. At this point, I really don't care about debating CV-19. Everyone's entitled to their opinion. But I think what we can agree on is that humanity is bad at handling a crisis, and knowing how other people will react is probably more important than being """right.""" It's also become clear to me that the general human response to a disaster is as follows:
1. Denial
2. Panic
3. Goalpost moving
4. Forget what happened two weeks ago
5. Normalcy bias

Collapse is basically living through 2020 again, except worse and every year into the future. And if I learned anything about 2020, I can't expect anyone to notice. Like literally, I just cannot expect anyone else to grok what is happening, remember how things used to be, and try to plan for 2nd and 3rd order system effects.

I think a part of my depression was having to come to terms with this. It's incredibly lonely watching all of this happen and then watching everyone you know oscillate between denial/panic/goalpost moving/then back to denial.

I also think there was an element of my own cognitive biases at work too. I've been aware of """collapse""" for awhile, but I've done nothing for it personally aside from hoarding money. But having lived through a small sample of what collapse will actually be like, I feel like some of the cognitive dissonance has lifted and I've finally come to terms with accepting this. For the first time in a long time, I actually feel more motivate to make the personal changes I need to make. It's pretty clear from CV-19 that money won't always save you but skills just might.

And before it sounds like I'm judging people too harshly, I want to say that I don't want to do that either. I don't know how much an ordinary person can help it. It's probably best to just try my best and give other people some grace rather than getting hung up on what humanity could have been vs what it actually is.

So the sad reality is that collapse is coming. Our biggest challenge is not technological but getting 8 billion people to agree on something and act in coordination, which will not happen. Therefore I need to give myself and other people grace as the coming disaster worsens.

Anyway, this whole rambling novel leads into my next point:

Giving up on "FIRE" and getting more serious about ERE
I've officially decided I'm done with FIRE. No more hoarding money and praying to the index fund gods that someday they let me retire to a life of video games. That vision for the future is seductive because it's simple, but it's simplicity is deceiving. There's a lot of bad habits I've let creep into my life because I was under the illusion that someday I would FIRE and somehow these things wouldn't be a problem any more.

So staying at a job that's making me unfulfilled in order to hoard money is giving up the time I have now. There's opportunity cost to it that I'm overlooking simply in the name of an easy paycheck.

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do about work/my career, but I do know that I either need to get engaged with software development OR find another job. Quitting for a sabbatical is not out of the question either. I have to give it some thought about what I actually want here and then take steps to pursue it. Phoning it in while I write sad test cases is a life that there's no point in living.

I do need to get more serious with the skills-aspect of ERE as well. Again, the goal is to build skills because that creates interesting opportunities. I know what I need to do here but I've had a hard time making it stick. I'm thinking I need to be more diligent in recording and measuring these things so I can see I'm actually making progress and not just procrastinating.

As far as concrete ERE goals go, this is what I have so far:
1. Finish decluttering
2. Ride bike to grocery store
3. Cook more healthy/keep grocery budget sub $200/mo
4. Better physical fitness routine
5. Buy nothing month

I think I'll try to work on these next month and force myself to plan/record my progress everyday so that I'm holding myself accountable to actual actions.

[classical_Liberal]

I've been trying to realize why so many people here seem to be expressing this melancholy or depression as of late. I mean, 2020 has been a s**t-show, even worse in the US with BLM rioting/protests added on top of COVID, which exacerbated the already percolating 2020 election culture wars. So I "grok" that things are unstable at the moment, and some parts of life have had to change. But I think you have just articulated why the people experiencing this depression feel the way they do. They see it as part of of a longer-term collapse. Whether logically or intuitively, it doesn't matter. It's still there. Before collapse was a like a splinter in the back of mind, now it's happening in front of eyes.

I have been, serendipitously, in a situation where my ERE life had been progressing at a good clip, and happened into a very stable socio-political geographic area (by comparison). So that my life just hasn't been impacted much in the day-to-day. I've found it hard to understand all the sadness, because I've been thinking about how lucky I am.

Even though I do believe that we will see wave after wave of 2020-esque crap continually getting worse over time, I also think there will be quite a bit of "normalcy" in between. So if there are things that modern life allows for, that one wants to do, the next period of post COVID "normal" would be a good time to do them. All the while taking action on the ERE front, which I think is the point of your post. It's a good one, IMO

One positive that has come out of COVID/social unrest is that it should be pretty clear to people whether the place they call home is more on the stable or unstable end of the spectrum. Also whether individual preparedness on a household level has been adequate to keep you sane in the event of large scale change. One really couldn't have asked for a better "proving ground" so to speak. I think this can really help all of us going forward. By looking at which part of this was the worst for our particular situations. IOW, stay positive and take actions that make you feel better.

[AxelHeyst]

That’s really insightful AE, I hadn’t put some of that together, particularly the part that there isn’t going to be a point where everyone suddenly “gets it”. And accepting that is huge.

Somewhat related, I was having a call with a colleague and good friend, who was having a hard time emotionally with all of it, and they’re also in California sucking down the smoke on top of everything else. This person hadnt achieved buyin on the collapse narrative until this year. They was grieving, I realized. And I also realized that I wasn’t, haven’t been this whole year. Why? Because, I think, I thought (correctly as it happens) that all this sort of stuff was going to happen, and I essentially pre-grieved. I already went through a lot of the emotional processing of living through collapse, because I believed it was going to happen. That has to be some kind of advantage, as I can deal with living through this crap with a little less emotional intensity. I spread it out already.

Also: I’m planning on <$200 food and no-buy September as well! We can be in the same Club. Fun.

[jacob]

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

This quote describes very well what it feels like on the other side. Initial awareness often leads to some kind of non-clinical depression---for me it took 6 months to work through, but that was almost 20 years ago! The second or third time, one wonders what all the brouhaha is about, like "is this really news to you?", but of course it is. Here many will tend to move from complacency to panic ... which will eventually pass as the world renormalizes either subjectively or objectively ... as the expected calamity didn't happen in short order despite initial impressions. If you stay focused, it begins to feel like you're being gas-lighted by reality as well as most other people. "What's the timing on something that has a 10%/yr probability of happening?"/"How long can this apparent obliviousness go on?" The answer is years and decades depending on the issue... like the market, it's longer than you can stay "mentally solvent", because obliviousness is the preferred human way to live and some things happen risk-time rather than clock-time. Insofar you look beyond the immediate problems of yourself and your family, you're not entirely normal. This is good to keep in mind. Once it finally happens (as predicted), you'll have to bear the "nobody knew/nobody could have predicted"-comments stoically. They aren't handing out "I told you so" awards. Rewards are personal satisfaction/preparation. Worse, once X happens, it might not even be recognized as a thing. We see this with CV but it's also typical for 500-year storms, etc. Instead, humans will just do human. Come together briefly and remind each other than no one could have done/foreseen anything. It's all bad luck, wicked gods, etc.

Insofar you get involved with people who engage and feel it more deeply, there will be various levels of Kuebler-Ross going on. Expect that to be a recurring theme. Denial, anger, bargaining, etc. (People in the depression/acceptance stages usually don't draw as much attention to themselves as the angry ones.) You'll become familiar with this: https://carolynbaker.net/2012/10/20/cli ... -chefurka/ while mostly interacting with muggles who are either dead asleep or is only "aware of one fundamental problem" thinking that there's one fundamental solution usually according to whatever druthers drive them. For me as an NT, the solution is/was clearly individual competence. For people-people, it's building community. For others it's political activism. For educators, it's usually raising awareness. This can be annoying to observe---it can also be frustrating because this is likely to be about as much as humanity is able to organize a coherent response. We're way in over our heads on this one.

[jennypenny]

Insofar you get involved with people who engage and feel it more deeply, there will be various levels of Kuebler-Ross going on.

Jacob explained a lot of this to me a few years ago when he red-pilled me on these issues. I read Leopold, Lovelock, et al. I tried to work through it as if it were grief as he suggested. The approach was helpful but ultimately didn't work for me.

The metaphor of death didn't quite work because collapse is about dying but not death. There's no finale where, afterword, you can start the process of healing. This is more like being told someone you love is terminal and you're told the details of how they will deteriorate ... but then you spend the rest of your life watching them come closer and closer to death yet never actually dying. Anyone who's been through this with a loved one knows that you can brace yourself for what's going to happen, and get over the initial shock and grief, but the healing doesn't start until after the person has died.

That won't happen with collapse. We'll all watch the dying -- sometimes a slow decline and sometimes in sudden jolts -- but we'll never reach the conclusion and find a way to move on. To me, in that way it's worse than grief. If you study how people deal with disabilities and other lifelong issues, you can try to learn how to deal with it and almost force yourself to act as if the death has already happened. It's basically about letting your world view die and forming a new one, albeit with lowered expectations. And then doing it again. And again. And again.

[ZAFCorrection]

I have been confused how slow collapse is considered some despair/depression-inducing idea, but that Paul Chefurka article cleared it up for me. If the so-called inner path is considered some extra thing one may or may not walk, then ya, collapse and its origin in human behavior is going to kick us right in the scientific materialism feels.

[AxelHeyst]

It's basically about letting your world view die and forming a new one, albeit with lowered expectations. And then doing it again. And again. And again.

This is how the metaphor of death works for me: I grieved not civilization, but my idea/worldview about civilization. I’m not sure why it needs to die and be reformed over and over? Is once not enough?

[jennypenny]

Is once not enough?

I don't think so because we don't know exactly what will happen. That means the world views we form will never quite match up with future realities and we'll have to adjust our thinking multiple times. Maybe the trick is to avoid forming a world view at all. Try to be prepared for as many eventualities as possible but then live your life in an almost short-sighted way. Dunno.

Even though I've spent the last couple of years actively trying to learn ways to deal with this, I still get teary at least once a week over something lost to (or crushed by) humanity. And as much as I'd like to be numb to it sometimes, I don't think I want to be the kind of person who is numb to it. So I let myself grieve.

[jacob]

For me it was also the death of a strongly held worldview (techno-optimism) and the "depression" was having to rewire and form an entirely new worldview. I think that's why it took so long. This might be a Ni vs Ti thing. For Ni the entire outlook is always fuzzy and so it can easily match up with reality as long as the right components/structure (worldview) is there (probabilistically inductive). ("I know what will happen well enough that there are no shockers.") Ti prefers the structure and details to be exact (logically deductive).

The "grieving" for me was more of a process of "I gotta rethink everything" ripping out old components and putting in new ones. I think different temperaments respond differently. SJs who are very tied to the past (historical data points) tend to get emotional by memory triggers like anniversaries or concrete items. I don't do that at all. This leads me to think that there's no "one process fits all" here.