Same. For me, I think the discomfort comes from perfectionism, and anxiety about job-hunting ("I need to fill in all my weaknesses"), and fear of missing out on some cool niche.
I love Safari's link preview feature (on iPad, at least). Tap and hold a link, and see the target page preload in a widget. I prefer that, previewing the actual page, rather than seeing a header image and a generated summary.
Not OP, but seeing a therapist, journaling, breathing exercises, and spending time lingering outside (e.g. walking), helped me regulate emotions and access peaceful states. Anxiety is the source of lots of problems for me, including doomscrolling, and unmanaged thoughts and feelings are a big source of anxiety for me. So once I learned some techniques for tending to those thoughts and feelings (instead of ignoring them), everything got a bit better.
So I guess keep reading, keep breathing, find more techniques that help you, and consider finding a professional if you need more help.
Yeah, I've noticed that when I have lots of stressors, I don't have any creative energy. I have to give myself permission to let go, that it's ok to forget about a side project. It's more important to focus on self-care and tackling irl problems at that point.
But when life is good, it's hard to stop tinkering. Weekend-sized projects are the best. For me, it's an urge to create and see the core 20% come to life, not to maintain the boring parts over time.
Hormonal fluctuations is an interesting theory. I always thought it's just a need for variety -- sometimes consuming (i.e. developing taste, curating, exploring), sometimes creating, sometimes relaxing. For me the cycle is months at a time.
One of the hallmarks of people who get stressed, and especially people with burnout is that they don’t have any creative or any relaxive or active outlet anymore. They get kind of stuck in their stressloop.
Say a people who enjoyed playing an instrument stops playing, etc.
The best companies I worked allowed for a bit of game/social activity between work sessions.
My current problem is that I feel like I’m only barely managing to not completely burn out via relaxation at night. I used to have a ton of excitement over my side project, but for the past several months, I can’t muster the energy. I play a board game on Steam (Wingspan: 10/10 would recommend the physical and digital version) that has a soundtrack I like, and that’s about it. This keeps me sane, but I often find myself wishing I felt confident enough to extend myself further.
Hopefully when my current large work project wraps up I’ll be able to take a breather.
I played this computer game "eliza" by zachtronics and it had this very interesting solitaire mini-game inside it. I liked it so much I bought the zachtronics solitaire collection. And wow, I would launch it "between things" for a moment and it could easily spin the clock forward an hour or more.
I had to delete it from my computer.
I think there are some things you have to just say no to and go through the pain of making yourself bored so something better will fill in.
I’ve noticed this trend in my life where during winter times my consumption goes way up and as soon as spring time is here then my creativity crawls back from hibernation and I quickly regain motivation to continue my side projects. I wish I could be 100% focus year round but for some reason it very hard to keep the inner flame of creativity going during winter times. At least I did noticed this pattern and being aware is the first step to remedy this problem.
Oh wow! I’ve noticed a definitely cycle to my creativity as well definitely correlated with stress. I’ve never thought about hormonal changes. I’ve recently started taking lots vitamins and keeping track of my motivation via a spreadsheet each day. No conclusions yet, but I’m curious to see what will show up
I think it's about laying foundations at the beginning, not the length of the text at the beginning. The first sentence/paragraph is the foundation of everything beneath it, whereas the base of a normal pyramid is the foundation of everything above it.
I think you'll find that ASCII-only is very limiting, and a few Unicode symbols like the Braille dots would make a big difference. That's been my experience anyways making ASCII things.
Wagon wheels in particular seem like a very tough ASCII challenge -- I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with.
Yes the site was inspired by plaintextsports.com and I have credited them as well!
One thing I decided was I will use only ASCII and will stay away from unicode chars. But now when I’m trying to plot a wagon wheel or a heatmap, it’s becoming tricky. i will update you once I have something solid!
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