
How is everyone's mental health at the moment? - karimford
With a 1&#x2F;100 year pandemic sweeping through the world, recent progress with the #BlackLivesMatter movement and one of the worst economic recessions since the great depression, I think it&#x27;s okay and appropriate to ask this right now. The goal is to provide emotional and psychological support to those that may be struggling in this unknown chapter of human history and through these challenging times.
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662587649495439
I have been suffering from anxiety and depression for the majority of my adult
life. Recent events have had an interesting effect on this. I was following
the COVID-19 news in early January and I felt very anxious all the time.
Strangely, my anxiety felt lighter when my country of residence locked down.
I've seen this reported elsewhere too. I think seeing everyone reacting to the
outbreak was almost comforting to me. For the first time in my life, people
were reacting to an event with anxiety in the same way that I was. I no longer
felt that anxiety was a disability but rather a reasonable response to events.
Purchases of supplies slowly over a period of 8 weeks before lockdown proved a
wise move and family members commented on my sensible reactions. Behavior that
I have been trying to eradicate with therapy and medication for many years had
proven to be the right choice.

This experience seems to have confused my brain. I am questioning old patterns
of thinking and having to establish boundaries for negative thought-patterns
again. It feels very odd and I feel I have gone backwards many years in my
mental health development. My thoughts go out to the many people suffering
from these problems, indeed many much worse than I.

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dyingkneepad
Horrible!

Even before Covid I was already going through a bad phase, I think I will
never be as good as I once was in my job. I make stupid mistakes, I have a
hard time focusing, I used to be one of the top performers of the team and now
I struggle to do basic tasks without making mistakes. I stop and check my
phone or the news every 15 minutes.

I have a partner, a baby and a small kid and absolutely no family members to
help with anything in an 8.000km radius. Kids can't go to school so wife is
even more miserable by being stuck taking care of them the whole day while I
attempt to work and fail miserably. I feel horrible that she has to take care
of the kids while I'm here in the office absolutely failing to do my work.

My mother just did a Covid test yesterday and she is also showing sign of
Alzheimer's. I can't travel to the country where she lives to see or help her.

I am honestly afraid of losing my job for being so unproductive. I even like
what I do, I get excited thinking about the things I have to learn, but when
it's time to sit down 9am to try to do work, I am just mentally exhausted to
even begin to start. Then I check my phone.

I can't just quit my job due to the need for money. I don't think switching
jobs will be any more helpful since I am in such a bad productivity stage
right now that the new employer will probably fire me upon realizing how
crappy I am.

I feel I will never be the productive programmer I once was, and this scares
me.

Thanks for the attention.

~~~
pestaa
Hang in there, buddy! Once the fire burns again, you'll be cranking out code
like a freshman. Do you have a separate room for home office? Changing it a
bit might help. Ask your kid to make a painting to put on the wall (actually,
I should do this too!).

I think switching jobs does not help because it's the not thing demotivating
us.

It's so hard to break the spell called daily routine. I know because I'm in
the same spot you're in.

------
kleer001
Fan-fing-tastic.

Coming to the table with low inherent trait extroversion and even lower trait
neuroticism I was primed to do just fine.

Mix in a decent home office space coincidentally already setup, a job that
lets me work from home, a great wage, absurdly low rent, decent savings, a
caring partner also fine working from home, and top it all off with living in
a country with a more help-others than individualistic culture that happens to
be in a more progressive swing of the political pendulum, and I feel like a
right lucky S.O.B.

~~~
dondawest
Where u at bro

~~~
kleer001
I'm in the pacific northwest in the entertainment industry. There's a bit of
footage we're milking and it seems like things are going to slowly turn back
on with higher restrictions of on set production. But long term? I think we'll
keep working.

------
nscmnto
I’ve transitioned to working full time as a software engineer after running
two startups, right before the lockdowns started (February).

While I’m extremely lucky, I’m also at a very uncertain period in my life - as
I assume most of us are.

Working from home (not being able to go to a coffee shop or co-working space)
makes it hard to transition in and out of work, so days just feel a bit of a
blur.

I know there are people doing way worse, going for months without jobs, so I
don’t mean to diminish their situation - but this whole period just feels like
waiting.

~~~
user_agent
Sometimes it's just harder to appreciate and enjoy freedom we've generated for
ourselves than actually to make all that work leading to that freedom.

It's a self-resolving paradox though. Later in life we're wiser, and most of
us can better understand our life thru complex layers of abstract models. Like
how good are we with diminishing risks and what kind of and how many options
we can generate for ourselves. Life is good after that. You trust yourself,
you have control. For now just enjoy the ride!

------
yhavr
Well, surprisingly good. Assuming I have no job, stuck alone in an asocial
country, miss my home, and had a much worse mental state before entering
pandemics.

TL;DR: stoicism rocks. the best thing I've adopted ever.

Secret? First of all, stoicism. When COVID started, I got into and quickly
merged into my philosophy. I still have a lot to learn, read and internalize
(finish the big 3 stoics, yudkovsky, taleb, kahneman), but even now it works
pretty well. It successfully moves away from the orthodox version, so I'd
recommend you to meditate a lot about the statements it gives instead of just
accepting them. For example, I think I started to understand how all this "you
can shape reality with your mind" stuff works. Nothing magical, just a proper
mindset which is surprisingly similar to the stoic one.

Second - of course, I have savings. I anticipated a crisis long before so I
started to stash money. In the best case, I have a couple of years of runaway
(and even more if I return home).

Third - I have some ideas to build. So I plan to enrich my github / cv and in
the meantime apply to interesting jobs (yes, I'm still picky). I planned to
build the stuff anyway, so why not do it in a comfortable manner (and not
tired after day job in the evenings). Plus, I can rehearse the proper escape
to full-time tinkering which I hope the future will allow me to do.

Fourth - the upside of being a small asocial country is that it has already
removed the quarantine. So I've already started going to coworking and got an
awesome boost to productivity.

~~~
dondawest
I almost spit out my coffee when you mentioned TALEB as a stoic, much less a
member of the “big three”

He’s as far from stoic as I can possibly imagine. His hairtrigger easily
offended argumentative twitter presence is maybe even more sensitive and
reactive and thin skinned than trump.

~~~
user_agent
The most basic definition of stoicism is "indifference to fate". In that scope
Taleb definitely is a stoic. His approach toward stoicism, though, is less
philosophy focused and more (that's kind of unique) targeted toward
statistics. Ancient stoics don't write about their philosophy in such a way,
but the logic remains similar. The whole concept of antifragility Taleb has
promoted is pure "opportunistic" stoicism. Taleb is like a Seneca the Younger,
minus some charm ;)

Regarding his online presence, anyone knowing his works also knows that he's
using Twitter purely to mess with people. He stated that many times in his
Incerto series.

Sometimes it's easy to forget what is the actual core of a given philosophy /
enterprise / etc. Hence my whole comment. It's worthwhile to know, I think,
that stoicism has a very important component comprised of pure logic, which
Taleb seems to be hyped about (not without a reason).

I wouldn't call Taleb a member of the top-3 stoics though. He's balancing on
the verge of being an outcast rather than hanging out with mainstream stoic
crowds.

~~~
dondawest
He reminds me of Ayn Rand hating on government handouts while taking them. He
promotes stoicism while practicing the opposite.

You can say he’s promoting “logical stoicism” just like Ayn Rand fans can say
that “it’s okay to be ideologically against handouts while taking them,” but
we both know deep down that these people aren’t practicing what they preach.

I like Taleb a lot but it took me a little while to understand that he was
writing an idealized version of himself and his philosophy that is frankly
fictional but still has great value.

~~~
yhavr
He promotes stoic-ish things, not stoicism.

> "but we both know deep down that these people aren’t practicing what they
> preach"

Actually, it's one of core tenets of his philosophy. "don't tell what to do,
show me what you did in the same situation".

------
mettamage
I was looking for a job for 12+ months as I am bad at interviewing. I found
one during the height of covid at a startup that seems to be unaffected.

Finally got a chance to prove myself which is going well.

The lockdown gave me time to reflect and reset my habits. I am much more into
exercise and yoga.

I got more time to talk to my grandparents as I moved in with them during my
miserable job hunt.

So yea, pretty good! The only thing I can’t shake is my job hunt experience. I
am pretty mad for working so hard at university and people simply brushing me
off as inexperienced and later brushing me off as “missing the hiring cycle”

I wish I partied a shit ton more and I regret doing my best, except for the
courses that taught something useful. Like the courses on hacking and that one
course where they left us all free to learn whatever we wanted (I learned
objective-C). But the UML course, bad intro to programming course or the
“pervasive computing” course, what a waste of my years.

~~~
shahbaby
I'm currently in the job hunt and also starting to question why I got a
degree. I definitely learned some useful stuff but no one cares. Instead of 4
years on a degree I could have spent 1 year learning on my own. I wouldn't be
as well prepared but everyone is looking for shallow signals anyway.

Spending a few weeks following a tutorial to build some crappy web app will
look more impressive to a recruiter than spending a few years going through
grueling coursework.

It's not hard to build that crappy web app but it's just weird how it matters
more.

I guess being able to showcase what you can do matters a lot more than what
you can actually do.

~~~
mettamage
I feel like I'm reading my own words right now. Since I currently have a job
at a company that pays slightly below average, but _other than that_ is pretty
amazing (I have no stress there and partially get to work on open-source),
I'll give you some pro's as to why you have your degree:

1\. It's easy to get up to speed. This has 2 consequences (see 2 and 3).

2\. It doesn't feel particurlarly challenging, so you can focus on having a
chill life.

An aside: if you live in a country where you're taxed highly, then I
definitely recommend taking a 4 day work week as free days don't get taxed. To
me, it almost strikes the right balance. I'm learning that I want a mix
between a 4 day work weeks and 8 to 12 week vacations per year. I'd get there
if I'd go to 3.5 days per week and use 26 free days as vacation days. For me,
being able to work 3.5 days per week is similar to being rich and doing
whatever the hell you want. Career progress is tougher (depending on what you
do in your free time), but you're living life _right now_ instead of later.

3\. If it does feel challenging (had this with a previous gig before the 12
months), you have the confidence of having been through something much more
grueling before.

Is that worth 4 years of your life? Probably not, but it's better than the
psychology degree that I also happen to have :P

------
Forgotmypass101
Dreadful. I am in a country far from anything I know. I had been applying to
jobs everywhere in the EU, only to be refused every time. That was before the
plague hit, and the UK officially withdrew from the EU. My local job teaching
English died with the pandemic (I'm sure it will come back up when the
pandemic stops, but for now I have no income).

I had been making games for mobile since no one else wants to hire me as a
programmer, but between making roughly $1.00 on that venture, and the stresses
of life, I haven't been able to keep focused on that. Some times I feel that
the world feels I am useless, and the problem with feeling like that is that I
struggle to keep it from being a self fulfilling prophecy.

------
giantg2
I hate my job, but that was existing before all this stuff started.

~~~
maps7
What is it and do you have an option to change jobs?

~~~
giantg2
Software engineer for a large financial company.

I don't really have the option to change. I became an expert (acting tech
lead) in our Filenet based application, then they outsourced it. Then I worked
with a Neoxam application including ASC work for a couple years (terrible
management). I'm on an AWS team working with Python (sort of). The work is
boring, the business can't describe their business process well, and we spend
more time doing reports or troubleshooting than building anything.

The company doesn't follow it's own policies. I see people get promoted
because they meet diversity metrics and work 12 hour days (policy is 7.5
hours). I put in extra hours as an acting tech lead, got my masters, and I'm
still a mid level after 8 years. I feel this same sort of stuff will happen at
other big companies as the one I'm at is ranked in the top 20 Computerworld
best places to work. I'm a mid level developer and would need to find an entry
level position. I have a kid now, so I can't afford to take a lower salary.
I'm stuck.

~~~
maps7
I expect you're not alone in your position. Since it sounds like you can't do
anything in work, is there anything outside work that can make it better?

~~~
giantg2
Not that I've been able to think of.

------
duxup
It's not the virus directly or other issues.

It's the side effects.

Most of all my kids have been home and my happy working from home world for
me, is horrible. Young kids don't understand working from home, and that's
100% understandable... but then I end up working after they go to bed, and
before they get up.

My wife has to work from home.

In the meantime it's summer and there's no baseball, no fairs, no other things
:(

~~~
godot
You mentioned you end up working after they go to bed, and before they get up;
and then left it at that. Is that necessarily a bad thing?

I ask since I do something similar semi-regularly now, and I don't find it to
be a negative thing for myself. I was always remote even before COVID (and it
sounds like you are too). There are parts of my job that aren't time-flexible
(meetings) and parts that are (coding). I just tend to code before kid wakes
up, when kid is napping, or after her bed time. For meetings, they have to
happen in the morning of the work day and that's fine. Overall, I don't really
mind the whole bending of my coding hours to work with my family's schedule. I
actually kind of enjoy it this way because I know that when I'm coding, I'm
undisturbed.

~~~
duxup
It's not a terrible pattern by itself but it can be a bit hard on sleep and
such.

------
robotichead
Weird - there have been both good and bad things for my mental health. For
example working from home has been great and bad at the same time.

\- Great because I have more time to myself, am able to relax faster, I have
more time to work on my side project or play video games.

\- Bad because my routine is really out of wack now. My sleeping patterns are
non-existent at times. I feel extremely tired most of the time.

~~~
muzani
I think part of the exhaustion is that there's no in-between phase from work
to home. A commute helps, because I have time to mentally cool down after
ending the day. WFH, I get jumped by my kids as soon as I leave my office, but
my brain is still working on that software architecture design document.

What helped me was to aim to stop working about 30 minutes before leaving the
home office. During that time, just read a book, post on HN, answer/delete
emails, all this lighter behavior.

