[Game] Last one to post wins!

[TurboSimmie]

Good evening everyone! 😁 Sorry I have been absent the last few days, host life stuff you know.

 

A few days ago I had a dream for the first time in a while! It was short and strange: I dreamed that I joined the Army, and then I was at some kind of orientation, and the whole time I was worried what would happen when they discovered I was a tulpa. Which is weird right, because in the dream I fully bodily existed and everything. 🤔

 

I'm really happy to see you @Ranger! 😁 Even if you're not super active anymore I still really like talking to you when I can!

 

Also I'm thinking that in October I might pick a new profile pic and then possibly pick a new one each month. Still undecided on that though!

Edited September 19, 2023 by TurboSimmie

[TB]

Hi Simmie 

 

Are you well?

[Reisen]

35 minutes ago, TB said:

Also if I get SSI can I quit my job without them taking it away? Will they increase the payment to me since I have no income then?

 

I believe you just check in every so often and go over what you're doing in life & how much money you're making if any, and it adjusts each time after that, probably (our brother has it, not us)

Again, supposedly you get paid $1 less for every $2 more you make, to encourage still having a job/aiming for a better one with SSI

 

Also I would recommend keeping the job for your mental health just as well as anything (and hey, summer's over), I think it's super important for you to keep out of your comfort zone as much as possible

---

(Hi Simmie)

---

 

I've pinpointed our exact problem as far as "in-effect" goes (not "what's causing it", that's still to the best of our knowledge anhedonia + just natural resistance everyone has) - "resistance to change/learning new things"

 

Now, that's something pretty much everyone has by default. And it's not the "cause" of our ~motivation/effort problems, it's just the effect that is happening, but it's still helpful to pin it down. Here's a couple articles about the concept, really doesn't matter which you read as tons of places have covered it but here's two

 

We've been observing this from ourselves pretty much the whole year, especially around video games. As we've gotten way, way more critical of our game-playing, we've paid a lot of attention to why certain activities or games seem "desirable" and which do not, and again and again from every game that sounds good to us, it nearly always boils down to "We can get a lot of reward from a little effort", but with special focus on games we're already familiar with, and even more importantly, we stop wanting to play games we previously had fun with when they become difficult for us. That's the big one here - we'll play plenty of things, but we have plenty of games either not totally finished or just with different challenges or content still to do, but that doesn't appeal to us. And when we observe why we feel that way, it's always because it'll require thinking effort, we can't just coast on what we already know. That's left us playing very, very few games the last few months, but now we've got the "resistance to the mental effort of learning new things" aspect in our scope, which lets us focus our efforts better than just avoiding some games or whatnot

 

As the articles will say, you can learn to be more okay with change/the mental effort of learning new things (and we've actually known this since our self-help/personal-development reading days, notice the advice I've been giving TB!), and doing so is also associated in studies with all sorts of brain health (ie staving off dementia, and generally just living longer), but I imagine it's even more associated with being successful at doing new things lol. Not getting stuck in a single job you don't like, for example..

 

Soo, yeah! We're gonna start looking for opportunities to challenge our brain's resistance to things "just because they're mental effort to learn". Obviously "Doing the things we want to do" like learning 3D modeling/texturing/programming would qualify as that lol, but obviously we've not been able to "just do that". I think a more life-wide approach would work better, attacking this problem from many fronts (including those ones, of course)

 

So what I've been saying! Keep having new experiences outside your mental comfort zone, learning and experiencing new things keeps your brain healthy and seems like it'd help with "motivation issues" too!

Edited September 19, 2023 by Reisen

[TB]

Cool. Seems you are making progress 

 

Sorry for the lame response to your text wall

Edited September 19, 2023 by TB

[Reisen]

You're making progress too!

[TB]

Thanks

[TurboSimmie]

I don't really have anything to say to all of this, but it makes me happy to see everyone making progress! 😊

[Guest]

Dreamt I had a really long conversation with my therapist (I have appointment today) and I very vividly remember her saying 'I don't recommend Code Lyoko to disturbed children' 

 

So random

[Reisen]

Dream therapist only recommends Code Lyoko to kids who really have their lives together

[Guest]

😢