"I've got new socks on."
ZDL
Pick up a new language. A whole language in the course of a normal hospital stage is not really plausible, so narrow the goals. Like only learn how to swear in another language, say. Or learn how to say all the sexual acts you can think of in another language fluently.
Pick up a solo RPG and start playing when you get bored.
Edit Thanks for the report @lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone I tried not to frame this in a controversial manner.
Dude! If anything were to show that this post was done in bad faith, doing what you just did was beyond the pale in proving it!
In an armchair, sipping some high quality tea, and reading. That's my happy space. As an option, you can replace "reading" with "playing a solo RPG".
A secondary happy space is at the table with friends playing a game (RPG or otherwise), drinking, chattering, and generally enjoying the Hell out of each other's company. This is secondary because I'm an introvert and there's limits I have to place on socialization if I want to remain balanced.
A friend has an eastern European neighbor move in. He says he’s glad they are that instead of American white.
Have you ever been in a gathering with just plain, white-as-in-bread Americans (especially the middle class on up, but not exclusively so)? They are boring as all fuck! They eat boring food, have boring conversations and are in general just tedious to be around when that's all that's present. (Part of this is, naturally, contempt for the familiar, but the other part is that yes they really are that boring!).
I'd much rather live in a neighbourhood that has a dozen different cultures (note: I'm not saying "races" here because "races" are nonsense) than a bunch of middle-class, white-as-in-bread Americans. So if I'm living in a neighbourhood that is mostly just plain-as-pancakes (minus the syrup) white folk, I'll celebrate an Eastern European family moving in too!
Feeling they are individually responsible for what their ancestors and/or rich and politically affluent white people did in the past.
If they genuinely feel individually responsible, that's just idiocy. The kind of idiocy that the privileged can express because there's no real cost to them, in fact.
If they are, however, just acknowledging that they have privilege based on their artificial elevation over others (c.f. "redlining") through systematic racism, and you're interpreting this as feeling individually responsible, you likely need to have an awareness adjustment.
Acting as if white people anything is bad.
This is just stupid with no qualifiers like the previous one.
Making jokes at their own expense but won’t dare say the same thing to another ethnicity.
Well fucking duh! Self-aware, self-directed humour is the high road. Punching down on someone else for their differences is the low road. (Punching up is the middle road.) I'll take it from my angle:
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German jokes: I'm half-German ethnically, and spent some of the most important formative years of my life living in Germany. When I'm making jokes about Germans, it comes from an informed position with at least a degree of sympathy for the targets of my jokes. When some American dude from the middle of Montana does the same, they come at it from a position of ignorance and stereotype that is usually a) ignorant, and b) hostile, rather than sympathetic.
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Chinese jokes: Where Americans (not of German descent, and even many who are) make German jokes have at least some cultural warrants in common, there are almost zero cultural warrants in common with Chinese people. White Americans are so incredibly ignorant of Chinese culture, society, behaviour, and beliefs that they think "Ching Chong" sounds like Chinese (protip: not even fucking close!) and they think "Confucius say" jokes¹ are a) plausibly real, and b) funny (protip: neither is true). Use either of these in my presence and you're going to get the stink-eye and a confrontation you will not enjoy. Yet ... I can tell jokes about Chinese people because, again, I'm ethnically half-Chinese, I've lived in China for almost a quarter of a century now, and my jokes will actually a) be based on knowledge, and b) be based on sympathetic sharing of values while poking fun at idiosyncrasies.
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Jokes about white folk: Here's where you're going to probably find it "unfair", but the fact is that white folk are the dominant folk in Europe and North America. All y'all's culture is everywhere, overriding everybody else's. And all y'all're the culture with the greatest proportion of money. And here's the thing: minorities punching up is fine. Indeed laudable. Every king needs his jester to prick his ego and make fun of his excesses. The jester making fun of the king is laudable and brave. The king beating down the jester is not. So like it or not, not only is it bad for white folk to be making fun of minorities, it's cowardly. And the reverse, however, is fine (and brave). I already know from the nature of your question that you're absolutely going to hate that I said that, but it's true nonetheless. Punching down is mean-spirited. Punching up is not.
¹ Consider how typical Americans would react to someone making "Yeshua ben Yusuf" jokes about Christ's purported sayings that are as offensive as these "Confucius say" jokes are. Now flip the script. Yeah. That.
Never compare your circumstances to those of others because you can always find someone who has it better than you do and this will make you unhappy. Compare your circumstances to your past self.
This way instead of "keeping up with the Jones" you can "improve yourself" which is psychologically far healthier.
Millions died of a preventable disease, and somehow this wasn't the worst thing that happened.
Because the human mind is adaptable and further, adapts early to what's "normal" around it.
This is why poor countries have children who laugh and enjoy life by floating twigs in puddles while in western countries children scream like stuck pigs if they don't have the latest video game.
You start entertaining thoughts of suicide when things change for the worse, not start at the worst. Or if you start comparing yourself to other people who have it better than you do instead of your own circumstance. (And in the west you get a lot of pressure to compare yourself to other people. All the time. It's called "advertising" and it can be both overt and covert.)
This right here. I love the feeling of a drink or two inside of me. I can't stand being drunk.
I've never actually had a hangover. I have no idea what they feel like other than, from inference, bad.
And I drink.
I have been drunk in the past too, though I really don't like the sensation so try to avoid it.
Perhaps instead of age there's something else that's causing your hangover?
I would ban horns on cars. (The "beep beep" variety, not like cow horns.)
Corporations, if they want to be treated like "human beings" must also be punishable like human beings, including prison time and execution.
Speaking of punishments, fines should be a proportion of your net worth. (Net worth, not cash on hand.) Having set fines is basically just giving rich folk a paid license to do whatever they like.
No CEO shall make more than 50 times what their lowest-paid employee is paid, including through backdoors like stock options, bonuses, perquisites, etc.
Salaries shall be open knowledge, routinely posted at places of employment.
Universities are free to all who pass entrance exams, but before you can write the entrance exam you must spend a year abroad. The more wealthy your background, the poorer the place you must spend your year in.
Tipping is banned. Pay your workers properly.
Slavery is illegal. Period. Including through sneaky back doors like "prison employment."
Taxation is 100% voluntary. The proportion of your net worth you elect to pay in taxes, however, is published in your neighbourhood's bulletin boards, etc. as well as on government web sites.
Elections are replaced by lotteries. If your number comes up in the electoral lottery you MUST serve in government.