For me it was running. Went from couch potato to regular runner for whom HMs don’t need any planning. Running always makes the day better. Physically I think exercise releases endorphins, mentally it’s my one win for the day.
Wondering what works.
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I'm partial to Japan so my favorite channel has been Rambalac [1], and I recently also started watching another channel with the very creative name JAPAN 4K [2]. There are tons of other channels and places too, for example I recently watched a few in Lisbon [3] and Seoul [4] and Copenhagen [5]. They're very relaxing and fun to watch and going from place to place with no cuts captures the usual tourist experience quite well. If you like traveling you can probably find some that are interesting to you!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/Rambalac/videos
[2] https://www.youtube.com/user/keikaikeikaikeikai/videos
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXlFDpaQ1ec
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqj7l0Xk0Ho
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl69sN5PtgM
Here are my favorite[4] video[5] walks[6] from Japan. Hope you like it. As for other places, here's two from NYC[7][8] and another from Olympic National Park[9] which is not a video walk per se, but would appeal to folks who love the wilderness.
Last but not least, thank you for videos you shared :)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/NomadicAmbience/videos
[2] https://www.youtube.com/c/NIPPONWANDERINGTV/videos
[3] https://www.youtube.com/c/IURETAe/videos
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et7O5-CzJZg
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpxJSvgHysA
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JCNn_4-Ap4
[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HKaqA1rpo
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOan6RRvOi4
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jGX1oUADhg
Also, train ride videos, for example this one in Switzerland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw9qiV7XlFs
I also like going on “walks” on VR, on Google Earth VR, especially via Google Street View. I like going to my old stomping grounds but I also like seeing new places. I also have used it to scope out new neighborhoods when moving, which is extremely useful.
As a viewer I'd want there to be zero cuts: If your video puts me on a train I want to experience the whole train journey. Some train videos record audio from the train cars, maybe to avoid recording radio traffic in the engine but this also makes the experience somehow worse.
[1] https://www.twitch.tv/ADanaLife_
Worthy of a mention is "Smarter Every Day" has a channel called The Sound Traveller, where Dustin explores places with a binaural audio setup.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0tq0g5u2bo-TErZt7SJM6w
not judging what makes you happy (that would be stupid on many levels) but genuinely wondering if you don't need the endorphines and flowing juices of at least some form of physical movement (even just walking) to get the feeling you describe?
The places I walk around lose their charm after a while, since I don't drive or live in a large city. It feels like a wasteland at times. A pretty wasteland. But it's pretty empty and alone at tim
And especially when it comes to Japan, I just can't get over the fact that I can't get enough time to see the country. No company is going to hire you on the basis that you'd prefer to live overseas, and of course the pandemic has set back the process by a couple of years. But each time I went to Japan, I wondered why I wasn't living there yet, personally. It's a stupid feeling that refuses to exit my mind, no matter how much I debate myself over it. They don't prefer to hire people above age 30, and they cancelled last year's JLPT, so every time I'm reminded of the fact that I'm quickly running out of time to accomplish one of my goals, it stresses me out, big time. I believe I possess a lot of the things that specifically make it hard to gain entry, like a college degree and reasonable proficiency in the language, but not... connections.
https://escapista.app
It's like a live TV that streams this kind of videos 24h/day. Just tune in, choose what category you prefer and enjoy :)
(disclaimer: it's completely free, open source and all views and ad revenue goes to original content creators. I earn nothing with it, it's all for the love for this kind of content and the potential positive impact it can have in all of us stuck at home at these challenging times)
I always feel like watching walking tour videos is my kind of meditation, feel-good video or AMSR kind of activity.
on a lazy day, a lazy weekend afternoon evening that you just want to chill out, I think nothing is more comfort than watching walking tour videos. you can just lay down, sit back, have a snack and travel with your eyes, you can "visit" places you had never been before. Wouldn't that feel great?
I curated a link of my personal favorite walking tour YouTube channel, especially in Japan: https://github.com/vinhnx/life-notes/issues/15
https://craigmod.com/ridgeline/
It has provided me endless entertainment over the years.
I have started a small side project which is somewhat related. I started it because I saw the beneficial aspects of walks and wellness from my own journey over the last few years. It is something I wish existed in the world but does not. The idea seemed so small and inconsequential that i thought it could make a good non-profit that has a significantly positive impact on wellness. There is a model in where it would be self-sustaining. If anyone is keen to chat about the intersection of wellness, physical activity and walking drop me a message!
Edit: Punctuation
Here is another Japan-focused channel. There are walks either with or without audio commenting. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGfM15CKSjHl8bGp16P6P8g/fea...
[1] https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCBkcw8h7epT_bK0QzuY2Bmg
Usually gets some good results. Sometimes the camera person is too chatty, but you can always mute them.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5SdRE9IQeZs7e1vepRvn4w
This! It's been such a game changer for me too. My career has been turbo charged over the last year. The change has been so dramatic that I won't switch to a company that doesnt have a remote-first policy. I'll forego money and promotion opportunities for it. The stress and anxiety reduction is more a personal thing but the freedom to choose, the fact that I'm not mandated to be at a particular place at a particular time, is such a revolution. It seems oppressive to not allow flexibility where the job allows. Most people I know seem to feel the same.
Flexibility in producing the "right" work product is really key. In many large corporate environments, figuring out what is the right work product is possibly more work than the work itself. I have a feeling we may even see different models between different types of companies (nimble startups vs small companies vs large corps). In my personal org, what you are describing can be viewed as an engineer "phoning it in" .. as the engineer is depending on their manager or team lead to assign them the right work. An IC who phones it in may think they are a top producer but will get surprised when it comes to their career progression.
Working from home I don't care about anything and just get things done.
In-person interactions add stress on top of my normal work stress. I think I can objectively prove I've been more productive at home than at work too. I'm really hoping I can find a way to stay at home.
And I regret I will probably never experience the combination when I work from home, but kids are at school. Instead of colleagues, spending the breaks with the wife I love.
The soul killing of commuting is underrated. Just the sheer amount of time lost in your day is huge and that loss builds up over time.
And that's not even counting increased health problems, sleeping less (well), increased stress from anxiety or just basic public transport bullshit.
I used to say I didn't mind my daily ~2.5 hours in trains and trams. Right now I will fight _hard_ to keep it out of my life.
1- the threat of Covid is not going away in the next 2-3 years. I am no risking it!
2- I and everyone in my team have been more effective, less stressed working from home for more than a year now. Why would I go back to a less efficient way of work?
It could depend on your field too - in mine (IT) it feels like there’s a shift to remote and many organizations will keep allowing it even when they are able to go back to the office.
Sadly, not for everyone. For the company I'm with, before covid we were allowed to spend up to three days out of the week remote as long as we came in for at least the two required days (Monday and Thursday). Then, right before covid, we were told that even this policy was going away and we had to be in the office four days out of the week and could remote on Wednesdays. That policy never took effect because covid hit right before the transition date, so now we're "remote until July 1st 2021, after which we'll reassess the threat and plan on everyone being in the office five days out of the week."
I've been so spoiled by WFH, I am not looking forward to going back to two hours of commuting per day.
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Unfortunately, most of the western, first-world companies who are offering nice salaries for international remote workers ($60-80k after tax and above) do not trust them and require insane control, with screen recording, constant zoom presence, etc. But just as remote work has finally won over the industry, async communication will too — if for nothing else than what a boost to productivity it is.
It took a lot of reflection and was cause for a lot of growth. But now I'm not only mentally happier, I'm taking better care of my body because it finally feels like it's my own.
Transitioning has enabled all that. I wouldn't have gotten cats alone, I didn't experience romantic feelings prior to taking hormones.
Am so so much happier now
It feels like the Pandemic has left a lot of people worse off, but there are also a lot who are a lot better off now. Kinda weird?
If you told me back in February that I'd buy a home in 2020, I'd have told you to get lost. I lived alone in a small apartment, with a "necessities" mentality, and homeownership was on my radar for 5-10 years out. Why invest in exercise equipment when I go to a gym, a decent WFH setup when I work in an office, or kitchenware when most of my meals are eaten at work or meetups? Why buy a home, if I seem to just use home for a place to sleep?
The pandemic rapidly changed that mentality. "Necessities" was now synonymous with "going without".
The straw that broke the camel's back was the big trees out back being chainsawed down all day over three days (they needed to; they were hanging out by a transmission line). That changed the view from my porch from something resembling nature (and for much of the pandemic, that was my "nature"), to industrial buildings puking out vapor.
So I didn't buy a home for a partner, pets, kids, or otherwise - I still have none of those. But my overall health has increased considerably by having a backyard that won't change unless I want it to, a small home gym to prevent dropping even more muscle, a dedicated office space to delineate when WFH starts and ends, and an open-plan kitchen. And with the interest rates the way they are, I figure I've just saved future-me a ton of money anyway.
Going from a 1-bedroom apartment to a house has been huge during the pandemic. I actually have different rooms I can use to help break up the monotony. I think I would've gone crazy having to work from home in my old place since it was so small.
It was definitely something I considered heavily when buying - and is actually the reason I chose to eat the cost of staying close to the city, rather than move to some far-flung place where the cost of living is three or four times cheaper. Yes, I got less space. Yes, my mortgage is larger than it could have been. But my quality of life will _continue_ to be much higher next year - it's not a short-term personal gain for a long-term social loss.
I did spend some time time making myself a map of the surrounding area, and choosing to buy within some geographic criteria: 1-mile radius of public transit (that doesn't end at 8pm, which some lines here do); 1-mile radius of a grocery store; sub-1hr commute to work. By sheer luck, I'm now closer to my gym than I was before. And while I'm now on the opposite side of the city from many social opportunities, getting home at 11 versus 10 afterwards doesn't faze me much.
My own family experience wasn't great. I now realise to have a wife who actively cares for you, looks out for you, is probably the most meaningful thing that can happen to you in your life. I am going to invest a bit more effort in my own family and a little less on fringe friendships.
Isn't it possible some of them are thinking the same in reverse, avoiding contact with you because you haven't contacted them in 9 months? Friendships often come out of being stuck together in some way, either work or school or sport or locality or social routine, and they can be hard to maintain when those things disintegrate. I know that I'm guilty of not working hard enough to maintain some relationships in the last year, and I want to do better.
Not because I wanted to test my friendships, I was just too depressed to interact with other human beings.
I now have a grand total of 2 close friends outside of my family, even though I enjoy social remote events with people I kind of know.
It's sort of like that scene from That 70's Show where the mom says that that the dad doesn't have friend's or talk to them. He replies by saying the one guy is his best friend and saved his life, but that they said all they needed to on the boat home from Korea. Some friendships withstand time even in the absence of interaction.
Men should always be on their purpose and improving their life, including cultivating your own friends and family.
Note that during any divorce, your ex-wife will actively and immediately poison mutual friends and family as part of her playbook to make it look like it's all your fault (female shaming tactics) and that she's virtuous. Many men lose their own side of their family as a result, much to their surprise.
I get that this looks misogynistic, but what parent describes is exactly my experience. It literally describes my post break-up relationship with my wife. the meddling of her led to poisoning of my relationship with the kids. she was the one who was hitting me any time there was an argument, threw plates and glass, or became physical in other ways that I had no choice than call the police because I was scared of further escalation. When the police came to the house they said it was protocol to remove the male from the home for a night so that the woman can look after the kids. Once, when my son was playing with my daughter in their room and we were in the kitchen (I made coffee standing ~4m away from her) she started screaming hysterically my son's name and saying "quick please come your father is hitting me" (despite me never once raising my hand to her). My son until this day thinks I hit her. At other times (when I was severely depressed for months and couldn't get out of bed) my daughter asked why I wasn't at the dinner table with them she said to them "he is just lazy". Once I got sick and fainted so she left me lying unconscious in the bathroom for a whole night without calling 911 ... I have hundreds of memories like this, and later realized a lot of it was an attempt to implant memories on our kids that didn't happen. Once I was brave enough to talk about it to others I noticed there are many men like myself who refuse to engage in physical violence towards women and are actually at the receiving end of it.
I never spoke up because I was too embarrassed and nobody among my family or friends would have understood (and I knew that I wasn't able to give up my kids because this would have been the result of a break-up so I rather went to work with a bruised face claiming I fell of the bike or the snowboard - again!)
My problem was that she might actually be bi-polar or suffer from some kind of undiagnosed mental condition (at least to me this was the only explanation for such level of "evil"). In the end it doesn't matter what's the cause what counts is that I got out of it. Oddly having the responsibility of children was the reason I put up with this for so long. When I asked myself if this is the template I want to pass on to them I walked because I hope that if they ever find themselves in such a place they should walk regardless of how many kids they have.
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I enjoy spending time doing work on the house and since we moved to [redacted] in 2018 I do a few small volunteer jobs such as teaching IT, programming, and helping people improve their conversational English at coffee meet-ups or picnics in the park. Nothing special as I’m not properly trained but it keeps me active and social.
I should probably look at making some money from it but I also don’t really care and like how it’s something I want to do rather than have to do because money is involved.
There was even this Swiss recruiter that scours HN, but after he finds out you’re a recent college grad he vanishes. At least, in my case. Maybe not in other cases.
Do not be very hard on you (or him). Every job opening I interview candidates for we receive piles and piles of academia refugees, mostly postgrads fleeing their postdocs. They tend to know very little about software (or domain knowledge of our field) but they will try anything: junior, senior and even managerial roles. Signal to noise tends to be very low, so any competitive places ignore most of them. It is a problem for competent people in this life situation, because they get ignored too.
It's much harder to get a job as a non-Swiss/non-EU.
I'm able to say "this is something that happened to me" and address it as such -- It isn't a thing I push to the back of my brain to deal with later, or an isolating trauma I'm afraid of losing friends over, or an overshadowing fixation I'm worried has changed me.
It's in the front row now, being processed piece by piece.
Over the past year I've been initiating more conversations with friends, opening up more, and taking much better care of myself. I feel better; I feel happier, and the trajectory is set for that to continue.
But for me this is only about inner peace, not convincing others to feel sorry for me. I've found Stoicism which has greatly improved my life. Even though I have a partner who loves me, I understand that one should never rely on another for happiness. I've begun to do all the things I love doing again. Computers, electronics, programming, cycling. All these things that stopped during my recovery while I hopelessly sought someone to fill a void they couldn't possibly fill.
According to some CDC studies, more men are victims of domestic abuse than women are. It's just that men do not report much of it, and there are more cases of severe injuries when it comes to women (40/60 split). I think one of those CDC studies even said that men are more likely to have a deadly weapon used against them in a domestic abuse situation than women are. A little shocking how different this is from the typical narrative.
At age 45, having been addicted since first finding I could download over 1200 baud dialup on my parents phone line and watching Cinemax late night through the static, it has just been a thing in my life almost daily and honestly I'd given up on caring whether it was a bad thing or not.
I'd felt guilty about it sometimes, and sure, tried to quit on a number of occasions, but always ended up back within a week or two.
Finally one day early last year I just decided to quit, and for whatever reason, that time it worked. And even though day to day I don't think it's made any objective change in my life, every time I think about it, I'm so happy to be done with it.
From an outsider’s perspective, I’m wondering why spending time watching porn is ultimately much different from time spent with any other sedentary pastime?
You could argue the same about entertainment. But seeking it is not a prime directive on an organic level opposed to reproduction.
As far as why right then ended up being the time, it's hard to say. I think maybe it was that I made it more about improving myself as a whole rather than rooting out some insidious evil. More of a picking something off my bucket list and doing it.
Did it make me better? IDK, I still find other ways to slack off when I can. But I definitely feel better when I think about it. Much more than I'd expected to. And very possibly it's just some air of a superiority complex above my former self. Which is a stupid reason, but who cares: I'd assume in most people's view it's a positive to at-worst-neutral turn whatever the reason. And of course it's nice to know that I'll never have to worry about getting caught again.
If you are referring to drugs, despite the general perception I think it's quite harmless.
If you are referring to smoking, despite the general perception I think it's quite harmless.
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