higgsboshark The thing about knitting is it’s much harder to fear the existential futility of all your actions while you’re doing it LIke ok, sure, sometimes it’s hard to believe you’ve made any positive impact on the wortd. But It’s pretty easy to believe you’ve made a sock. Look at it. There it is. Put it on, now your foot’s warm Checkmate, nihilism.
cheskamouse This is a powerful positive message.
pluckyredhead I’m literally reading a book right now (Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski) that says this is scientiically sound.
There have been studies done on rats and dogs where they develop learned helplessness in the animals by giving them impossible tasks. Eventually the animals stop trying, even when the task stops being impossible. (.e. put a rat in a maze with cheese it can’t get to until it develops learned helplessness, then put the cheese somewhere it can get to it and it won’t even try ) But once they show the animals they CAN do something - i.e. physicaly moving the rat to the cheese-the learned helplessness goes away.
No one can move you to your cheese for you, but the book says DOING something - which they define as “anything that isn’t nothing” can help. Make a food. Work in the garden. Clean a thing Do a favor for a fiend. Call your elected officials.
Knit a sock.
If you feel overwhelmed by existential despair, do something. It doesn’t have to be big It just has to be anything that isn’t nothing.
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Two weeks ago I downloaded Godot and started using YouTube to teach myself game dev.
Made some tranquil grass with a wind effect. Downloaded a 2D pixel sprite and made an animation state machine. Watched couple more videos and then decided to try out 3D modeling. I now have my first low poly character sketch done and am working on animating the rigging.
My depression has dropped significantly as actively working on building new skills and giving myself the ability to express ideas I have had kicking around in my head for the past 15 years is incredibly empowering.
Go find your thing.
As someone who has survived the last 15 years by throwing myself into various creative and offline things, I will say that there is a limit to how much it can help.
This is very wholesome. I should really do the same or something similar in my field. It’s hard to recapture the magic when you are exhausted from work all the time.
Make some grass. No seriously if you can play pause and follow this along you can expand from there. There are so many amazing devs out there sharing everything you could possibly want to do in a game.
I expect updates.
Man. I’ve been meaning to learn gamedev for the past decade, but just never actually got around to doing it. I can do regular software dev and produce music, though lmao. Game engines just seem very difficult to learn, and Godot is basically my only choice because I have a strict FOSS requirement.
I was considering making a SNES game instead, since I already know 6502 ASM (65816 is basically just built on top of 6502), but that doesn’t seem like the skill is as transferrable as a modern game engine.
I still don’t even know what a shader is exactly lmao.
We’re having a small yarn / wool dying shop here in northern Germany, it’s the best thing you can get into. We don’t even see it as a business, it’s a a beautiful, colorful service. The best community, breathtaking customers, awesome materials from happy creatures. Just a wonderful product. People come here, sit down and knit. And you hear many stories how that bit of “doing something” actually helps. There’s a simple honesty in it, nothing was ended, no creature gave it’s life, just their hair, we put a bit color on it and after quite some years we are regularly stunned what people create from it. It is therapy, definitely. For us too.
I have to post a warning: If you think about starting to knit or crochet be aware that you will begin with a 2 dolar hook/needle and a 1 dolar yarn and suddenly, out of nowhere, your credit card will have 300 dolars in yarn and tools and you’ll have to give away your clothes to be able to store all of it. Crazy shit
Is yarn math similar to chicken math?
Jfc, it is. I know several knitters and crocheters.
And I’m fighting everyone I bloody know to prevent another chicken or three being added too ours.
It’s bloody crazy lol
300 bucks is pretty tame as hobbies go
I also have a resin and a filament 3d printers. But that’s not a very calming hobbie lol. More like masochism
Funny that’s the next hobby I’m trying to let my wife let me get into. It’s only supposed to be to help fix up the crappy marble run we got for my son for Christmas that’s already falling apart, but I’m sure I’ll find more reasons to torment myself.
That really explains why I’ve been getting into Paracord work so much recently. Been dealing with a lot of work stress, so making Paracord braids on a monkeys fist and just zoning out to do the work is so satisfying .
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This is similar to an old behavior therapy technique called Behavioral Activation. In essence I get you to engage with an activity and once you’re doing that the intrinsic rewards of doing that activity cause you to feel more willing to engage.
Those in the textile arts are creators of entropy. A stitch, in time, saves nine it’s true. But time wins in the end. It’s fun to impose a little order on the universe for a bit.
I don’t know if “call your elected officials” is a good example of “anything that isn’t nothing.” Seems like anytime I’ve been motivated enough to contact one of my reps to oppose specific legislation, it turns out they’re one of the bill’s co-sponsors. It definitely feels much closer to the learned helplessness scenario.
The idea is that it’s a task with no buyin and, realistically, no failure state. Don’t try to change their mind, just put your voice out there. Advocating for yourself and those around you, even if it doesn’t affect any changes, is still a powerful something.
Yeah, that one really had some ‘one of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong’ vibes.
Yeah I saw that part and laughed, they don’t give a shit unless you’re rich
That does explain why working and then being denied any kind of reward for completing it sucks so bad. “Yes, two years of stressful work and overtime, but it’s done and it’s marv-” - “That’s great, here’s the next one.”
My wife knits and sews. When she is done with one project, she starts another.
“clean your room”
-Jordan Peterson
