I hope you are able to make the cycle.

Under appreciate them right back. Try to keep work about funding your lifestyle.

I don’t know how intense or emotional your job is, so that advice might not be practical. But I do think everyone needs to set boundaries, but also emotional boundaries. Please make sure work isn’t wearing you down when you aren’t there. Try taking a few minutes to reset after clocking out, and close the door on your work day.

Most banks allow you to pay bills online and they’ll send a check on your behalf to your landlord. You can set it up to go automatically every month too.

If you’re in a hurry and can’t wait for a checkbook you might be able to get a money order. Banks and even some grocery stores will do this for a fee (it was like 0.50 last time I did this… Like 16 years ago omg what happened)

See if your bank does “bill pay” where you can add bills and they mail a check for you. It’s usually free.

I am not hopeful about our future. But something I came to terms with is that I am going to die. It might be in 40 years or it might be sooner, it could be next year. But it will happen. Also, it’s possible that I don’t just die but life becomes incredibly unpleasant. All the same to me in this current point in time, where I am able and I have means to do interesting things.

I know this is hand-wavy but I heard someone say something along the lines “we need to stop worrying about putting more years in our life, but work on putting more life in our years.”

This sort of mantra helps keep me grounded when I’m deciding what to do with myself and my family on a day to day basis.

I mostly use distractions as a way clearing my head.

The best thing to distract myself when I was really depressed was Geoguessr, it takes focus and is fun.

If you need a free alternative, look at Geotastic.

Life doesn’t come with a manual, but it does come with an author for its manual.

I like to keep a small size binder (I hate notebooks because I’m very fickle about organization). Like A5 size with some line ruled paper and some grid paper. I keep some in the back for random notes and extra fill. I use dividers, and the very front page I keep a to-do list of things that really need to happen now. The next page are to-dos that i don’t want to forget but aren’t really critical.

Then I have a section where I keep one page for any major problem in my life. I’ll try to do a root cause analysis. “Just keep asking why”. Then I’ll sort of journal some observations over time until I solve my problem.

These can be as simple as being flustered in the grocery store or as serious as co-parenting problems. You need to know what parts of your life you can control, and harmonize with the parts you cannot.

Then, I have a section of sort of “how-to’s”. Simple things can make a big difference, like what order works best for me to get myself ready in the morning… Like start the water kettle before I wash up and get dressed so I can have my coffee while I make breakfast. A lot of these pages will be written (or rewritten!) after I’m ready to throw away my problem solving pages from the other section.

But on a day by day and hour by hour basis, focus on triage. What can you do for yourself and your people that will have the most impact in the shortest amount of time? What can you do that will bring you a little joy, what can you do that will reduce a little irritation? Then do that.

I hope it calms down, I cannot even imagine what that must be like. Do you have access to people with experience with this? Support groups, or even one mentor?

Would you consider trying a meditation app? A medical professional recently recommended “insight timer”, which has guided meditations and somatic tracking programs and things.

Just a caution, if you do check it out, it will ask you to start a free 7-day trial for their “plus” version, you have to find the “skip” button, and avoid starting the trial so you don’t get charged. I can see how that bit might not be anxiety relieving! But otherwise she had a lot of praise for it. I haven’t tried it myself, but I have it ready to go. I’m in a pretty good place at the moment… I hope I remember it’s there when I need it.

Wow how do you normally deal with that?

It’s hard but you are doing it. Don’t forget to find away to enjoy yourself, is there a friend you haven’t talked to in a long time?

I hope you find what you’re looking for

I don’t know anything about it. Can you tell me about what you would want to do there and why?

This sounds to me like an ADHD cycle of failing to know how to prioritize. Focus on your immediate needs and take this step by step. First, find something to eat. Pasta with ketchup if you have to. Now figure out how to do a round of shopping. Just one. Not how to do them the best way forever, just once poorly to get some easy to eat foods in your house. Step by step.

When everything is precious nothing is precious, and that intermingled list of demands is pretty cluttery. No offense!

“Reliance” is a risk to mitigate, but mitigating risks shouldn’t come at the expense of taking on more risk.

All the things you want to do are worthy and valuable but like you said, you just cannot do them at the same time, and I doubt they are quite as cyclically dependant as you think they are.

(For example, if you’re in a pinch for transportation and you’re willing to bike but cannot get one yet, you could try a bike share or scooter for a few dollars for a few hours… I have done this to get me home from dropping the car at the mechanic).

Try to organize those things into a clear roadmap, where things that cause more things to become easier are done first. Where you have cyclical dependencies, think outside the list to solve that problem.

Yuck! Did you you get it taken care of?