Berttheduck

Well that's nightmare fuel. Cudos to you for sorting it.

I've been journaling for a few years, starting with a Mind Journal in COVID which I found really useful. It's built to ease you into it, get you reflecting more and introspecting as well as build the habit by making it as easy as possible to note something down each day.

I don't use their products any more as they are quite expensive but I'd definitely recommend looking into them for trying to turn journaling into a habit. I do use the system though which is for each day you note your feelings, 3 (or more) achievements which can be anything from got up and showered to got a promotion, 3 (or more) things your grateful for and a happy hour where you have or plan to do something good for yourself.

This is a really useful prompt I find because those bits only take a few minutes and are a great way to track things over time. For example looking back at my COVID journal I can spot when I started getting burned out by having feeling: tired every day for several months. Noting down what you're grateful for is also proven to help your mood, basically you start looking for positive things more and it's a happy feedback loop.

Once I've done those bits I write stream of consciousness style, anything that's playing on my mind, details of my day, stuff I hope might or might not happen, things that made me angry. For me it's a really useful medicine practice which has definitely helped keep my mental health more stable over the years.

I like having a nice book and pen to write in too, I'm looking forward to finishing this journal so I can upgrade the book to something more fancy, maybe going leather bound next time.

My main advice would be to stick with it, habits take a good 3 months or so to bed in. The mind journal is good for this as it makes it really easy to journal something and gradually builds you up to more free form writing.

Good luck with your journalling I hope you find something which works for you. There are loads of methods out there from billet journaling which helps like a load of work to me but looks amazing like an art project, to the VOMIT method to just get your thoughts onto the page. Keep at it, try to find what works for you and build the habit, but don't stress if you miss a day or two.

I got myself an Onyx boox e ink tablet for note taking. I don't know if it's what you're looking for but it runs android and writes beautifully. Good battery life with the e ink. I love mine. It is more expensive than an equivalent standard tablet though and no back light on my model.

I think a lot of this is due to colonialism. Back when the Brits were sailing around pointing cannons at people and being delightful they didn't respect local culture and dialects enough to bother with a "tricky" word so replaced it with an easier version. Unfortunately due to that expansion and the proliferation of English as the most common trade language the English versions tend to stick.

You can't take the sky from me.

Excellent theme tune.

Both are good. Cats are definitely less effort than a dog (as someone who's never owned a cat at least) as they don't need walking or training particularly, if you don't train a dog it will be a menace, cats just do their own thing. I've got a dog and wouldn't change that for anything, the love and entertainment they give and the fact you have to go outside with them and exercise is great for your mental health. If I couldn't have a dog, due to not being able to exercise them properly cuz of work etc, I'd happily have cats.

I'd also like to recommend rats as alternatives, they are super sweet pets, very clever and social critters. The only downside is they don't live very long.

Yup yup. This is perfect. Sends me right to sleep.

Oh definitely it's terrifying how good the algorithm is at sucking people in and dumping them in an echo chamber where only those awful views are normalised.

I mean that's kinda fair enough. Gotta be a boundary somewhere right.

Not anymore. I dunno exactly when it happened but after I left for uni I no longer see eye to eye with my folks.

They raised me and I feel they did a good job: respect others, be kind, help people, everyone is equal. All the good stuff.

Nowadays though my dad has gone hard into conspiracy theories proper tinfoil hat stuff, moon landings fake, vaccines cause autism and have microchips, fluorinated water causes something, COVID was a Chinese plot or fake or just flu (despite half his kids working in healthcare and telling him first hand experiences). He's gone proper racist Britain for the British bullshit, hates immigrants and anyone not white. He's dragging my mum into it as well but she's not exactly innocent in her views either. I'm glad they live at the other end of the country now so I can choose how much I see them, holidays used to involve staying with my parents but now we camp kinda close and just have a meal out together a couple times.

I struggled a lot with coming to terms with the huge change, our relationship used to be fantastic especially with my mum, could talk for hours about anything. Now we have a very very narrow range of safe topics and I have to say no I'm not talking about that with you quite regularly.

I even debated cutting contact because of some of the horrible stuff my dad was posting online, fortunately he's stopped that and now just consumes the hate instead of tagging me in it. I decided that I wanted to keep my parents in my life but set some firm boundaries and just don't engage with any of the delusions.

Be excellent to each other and party on dudes.

A good reminder to be kind and enjoy the time I've got.

I played this for a few hours on a laptop a decent number of years ago. Such a weird game. I had no idea what was going on in the story despite all the exposition. I'm pretty sure you are in a cult but could be totally wrong. There were a load of options for gear and upgrades. It was definitely interesting and had potential. I think I stopped playing and didn't finish it because I didn't really understand why I was doing anything and I think I struggled to recognise any of the characters between scenes, if there were any persistent characters.