I am...
.... not doing well.
@bluknight In tough times, find comfort in small pleasures to carry you through to better times.
@billiegrace That's just it... the small pleasures I was taking comfort in aren't any more.
@bluknight After I got my stage 4 diagnosis last summer, I felt I could see no further than a simple candle could light before me. In those times I took comfort in my morning coffee ritual, in the videos of CuriousMarc on Youtube repairing vintage harwdare, and the tweets of Ken Shirriff and Eric Schlaepfer explaining old circuits and things... I took comfort in the weekly NYC Resistor member meetings over Zoom where we chat aimlessly for an hour... Most of these emerged around that time...
@bluknight I'd been following them all more or less passively for awhile, and NYCR meetings could be more or less engaging when I had longer range to think about. I had good days and bad days with my optimism, and I cultivated other small pleasures, some very small indeed, but they formed a space where I could feel safe among the uncertainty. The uncertainty remains, though less so, and time has paved over much of the fear. YMMV, but small pleasures helped me through a very dark time.
Really, the only thing those small pleasures did for me was distract me while time did its work, and to the next treatment, the next scan, the next prognosis. They didn't heal. A bomb shelter for my mind I guess. I went to the gym and for walks around my neighborhood. Routines and rituals. Friends were good to have around, but they worried too, and that worry didn't help. So I didn't seek them out on the bad days. Those days were spent in the mental bomb shelter.
I don't think telling you my experience is going to provide any useful advice -- I'm just adding context to my original reply to you. Everyone's experiences must be calibrated relative to their perspective and what they have to face. These are just the small pleasures that sustained me when I was not doing well.
@bluknight I'm sorry. :/
@billiegrace Thanks -- it's appreciated.
@billiegrace Thank you for sharing. I appreciate it, even if I'm unable to do what you've been able to.
There was something that happened last night that made it worse. Much worse.