I don’t want to be totally uninformed about what’s going on, but I also don’t want to fall into doomscrolling.
I know that I could very easily just avoid any news sites and only find out about these things secondhand from people I talk to whether in real life or online. I also know that it’s not good to bury your head in the sand quite that far.
I could also very easily doomscroll different news sites and actively seek out more depressing news when I’m done scrolling one site. I’ve been doing more of this option lately, and as a reaction to that I’ve started doing total avoidance, which I know isn’t good.
So how and where did you strike a healthy balance between reading enough news to stay informed, but not enough to be in a constant state of anxiety about the world?
I’m looking for genuine advice here. I don’t want to be mean but I’m not too sure else how to say the following: I don’t want to come back to a lot of replies about “I didn’t find a balance lol I just doomscroll/stick my head in the sand” and “I feel this, same.” Not really sure if that’s going against the spirit of the chatting community, but seeing a lot of “same problem” and zero advice tends to make me feel more in despair. I already know this is a common problem, so what would usually be the correct social move of saying you relate in order to empathize and let the other know they’re not alone isn’t helpful for me in this particular instance.
I still struggle with this one. I feel like my life lacks meaning without having some kind of external interaction. It used to be building a small community, then a random poly disaster came flying through and revealed a lot of problems with half of my friend group, including three of the 7 saying “I’m not a transman because men and transmen are toxic” (to me, a transman). So I dropped that half of the friend group, fortunately the other half also saw that as a red flag. I feel like they’re the only external interaction I have that’s worthwhile but I don’t really ‘build’ anything anymore, and that makes me feel like I’m wasting my life.
Then I tried activism, but I hate feeling angry and sad all the time, because there’s certainly no good news and probably never will be.
I try engaging with the pre-existing queer communities around me, but they’re massively fem/enby skewed so even when there aren’t any problems with misandry (which is rare), I end up feeling like I’m a weird relic of the past that shouldn’t exist anymore. Plus they’re heavily skewed towards unstable poly so it’s just a constant ongoing orgy/disaster all the time.
It feels like regular society doesn’t want men who are anything left of far right. Conservatives don’t want you because you don’t agree with them, moderates are rare and often have their own problems, the left doesn’t want you because you’re a man and men are guilty unless proven otherwise (if there’s even a way to prove otherwise). I just don’t know.
I’m sorry you’ve had that experience.
I grew up in a huge family so, for me, having a handful of really great friendships has always been perfect because I spent two decades being vastly overstimulated.
With that said, I know enough of the trans experience to know that, for transmen, it can be very jarring to experience the existence of manhood and how society in general treats us. Forming friendships can become significantly more challenging post-transition, and I wish it weren’t that way.