I need love, can you get to me now? (week notes 022)

Doing

I bought a space heater — primarily for my office, which is uninsulated — and it’s a revelation. I took a fat nap in front of it on Friday night. I can’t believe it took me this long to get one (I thought the were way more expensive than they actually are and that Joe was morally opposed to them for some reason).

I’m working on decreasing my use of big social media apps and focusing instead on indieweb spaces. I cut my Twitter habit a long time ago and only keep it around for Los Campesinos! updates (would love to see them move to another platform — seems incongruous with their politics that they’re still on there almost exclusively). I’m tapering off on Facebook and Instagram. I could delete my Facebook today without another thought, but I have a few friends on Instagram that aren’t active elsewhere that I’d hate to lose contact with — but that becomes less and less worth it to me as Meta continues to slide into active evil. I know this doesn’t sound like someone trying to get off of social media, but as a once daily user of all these platforms, I’m making a lot of progress.

In general, though, the depression and anhedonia are continuing. I’ve been trying to go to the gym whenever I feel desperate and lost because at least then I’m doing something healthy while feeling desperate and lost, but the horrors persist.

Reading

On Sunday, ashamed of having yet another week note with Pride & Prejudice still in progress, I finally sat (laid) down and finished off the last twenty pages. I love the book just as much (maybe more? is this recency bias speaking?) as I did years ago and feel once again confident calling it one of my favorite books. Next up is Brontë’s Villette — I haven’t cracked the cover yet despite carrying it around with me.

Watching

I’m continuing on with Euphoria, but I’m undecided on it. Maybe I was a loser in high school¹, but these plotlines seem absurd (and gross and exploitative) for sixteen year olds. I also think some of the characters’ motivations and actions — particularly Nate’s — make absolutely no sense. There are also plot threads that dominate the show but then seem to be abandoned; in general, I just feel there’s a few too many characters that the show is split between. Regardless, though, I still feel compelled to keep going.

Playing

I bought Fields of Mistria and have been playing that. Joe and I have kept up with Mistria Mondays on Friends at the Table, and he started playing it a few weeks ago. I’m still very early on in it. I like it, but it has yet to fill me with the same joy and wonder that Stardew Valley did. I do think it’s a little unfair that it is constantly compared to Stardew — it should be allowed to exist and be discussed on its own merits, and Stardew is far from the first to do a lot of what it does — but the comparison is sort of inevitable. Stardew saw me through a pretty intense period of depression years ago, so I think I sought out Mistria for the same reasons.²

Listening

I’m trying out, when I got to the gym to run, listening through entire albums. So far it’s been just ones I know I love (Mac Miller’s GO:OD AM and Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm). I need to listen to music when I run to keep my mind distracted, but my gym playlists get stale so quickly. We’ll see how this works for me.

I heard Laura Les’s “Haunted” on an episode of Euphoria and really loved it — it’s an awesome pull for Jules’s character. I’ve never had contact with 100 gecs despite being the target audience for them. I downloaded 1000 gecs to listen to and generally enjoyed it; it’s a weird album and one I’d definitely have to be in the mood for — not really stuff I could play on car rides with friends. Regardless, though, I think it’s a fucking cool album — big nightcore AMV vibes.

It is probably worth noting that, on my second listen through, my audio interface fucked up and was outputting everything with a distorted static and I sort of just assumed that was how the album sounded.