Created: 2024-01-31
Recently I found myself in another funk in both my work and personal life, in a period of time I'd consider as post-burnout. Where I was making progress digging myself out of a "burnout mode" of just doing what I need to, and more regularly wanting to do more, I suddenly found myself exhibiting some behaviors and falling into some routines that upon retrospect would appear to be negative feedback loops.
Obvious, right? Well I don't "use" social media; No Facebook, no Twitter, no TikTok, and I haven't been using my Mastodon profile since I created it. But what I was doing was feeding a gaping hole in my soul (and lack of social life) with a constant stream of YouTube content. Just like the majority of 'social' platforms there's an algorithm manipulating what you see and how much of it, and while my watching habits started with engineering, development, and dashcam videos I still managed to find myself "forced" into watching more social commentary content on top of having to skim and scroll more frequently just to find content I wanted to watch.
So, doomscrolling through negative, political, or politically loaded garbage until some of it manages to get a watch. Slowly continuing my time wasting and negative mood. I'll comment a bit more on this in my final statement of this post.
I love to cycle, specifically ass-on-bike rides outdoors (not the boring stationary type), and cardio gives me that healthy/alive feeling that weight lifting doesn't. This is something I find difficult to do when the weather, or specifically the winter season, is holding me back. So I could say the stagnation in physical activity would drive a change in eating habits, which affects gut biome, which drives more unhealthy eating habits (both volume and quality).. so another negative feedback loop. This one is difficult, I attempted to offset this with weight lifting but I have an inability to form a habit so matching my caloric intake with physical expendature (without having to involve math) just resulted in mediocre results and an increase in body fat. But I noticed it, and made adjustments.
More accurately, personal satisfaction. I work from home, I visit family a few times a month but my friends are all distant enough I just don't get out much beyond my workouts and shopping; I don't feel lonely though. This isn't a consequence of burnout but definitely a contributing factor, despite being a happy home body, but I see this as a gap in the construct of things that provide value to life (and probably keeping one sane). I've been evaluating this one for a while now. I can and should get back into dating, should be taking attempts at making new friends, but it's difficult when you don't have social circles such as school, work, sports, or collaborative hobbies. Since I'm not thrilled about dating apps I'm actually thinking about moving from my idea of paradise to a worse area just so I can be closer to work. There's always crazy things going on at work, tons of interesting people, and access to both small town and big city (Austin) shenanigans.
Let me start by saying I bounced out of the funk shortly after realizing what was going on. It's odd to have a quick response to an acknowledgement, but I was so offended by the realization of my poison consumption (YouTube) that I stopped doing that and went back to listening to music all day on Spotify, avoiding music that lacked upbeat or energetic tone. I spiced up my meal prepping to include healthy food that would satisfy, specifically some Korean stir-fry, sardines on toast, chicken soft tacos; and getting rid of and not purchasing junk food (I cook all my meals, it's been years since I've had fast-food, I go to restaurants twice a month at most with family). And between the rain and odd weather I've been sneaking in more bike rides.
The take-away for me was to expand my end of day mindfulness. I started feeling self conscious aobut how much I was accomplishing at work and what to do next (with my limited mental bandwidth) that I considered my home activities as a form of relaxation or downtime when I was really making compounding mistakes that were holding me back from being able to see or solve my problems.