How was it? What was the good? The bad? The ugly?

(Slightly underwhelming thread but I have a feeling I'll just remember negative things and not include any good things..it'll take a while to think of it anyway)

The good thing about my year was that I actually put together an action plan to work on my SAD and improve it. Started at the end of May and still going strong! Of course, this was also the first time in my life when my SAD was bad enough that I couldn't avoid working on it anymore, but still. I spent the first half of 2020 faffing around and not doing much of anything, as far as I can remember, so having a path forward is a definite improvement, even if I am still making stuff up as I go.
The bad thing about my year was that in order to feel more comfortable around strangers, you actually have to practice interacting with strangers. And I'm not allowed to do that. Yay COVID!
But that's why you guys are here! Hooray for interacting with strangers in a way where we don't breathe germs on each other!

The good was I was locked down for all of it (and still am sort of) so I couldn't fly off anywhere and spend all my money - so I now have quite a lot of it. (ready for the next trip)

The bad was everything else - the pandemic, being locked down, the isolation etc.

quarantine, work, quarantine (currently)

I'm grateful we could at least have a nice Christmas at the end of it all, plus I had some very good sales early in the year. I'd forgotten about that.

The good: Excellent social progress in the first month plus of the year. Gained more appreciation of some local sights while not traveling. Good books. Good online friends.

The bad: Isolation, back to months between spoken words. Grandpa died. Income dropped yet another 40%. Spent a lot of time being bored and failing to motivate myself to try anything. Discovered that people I thought were friends enjoy attempting negligent manslaughter. An interminable February cold. Turning old and gray.

But thanks to the magic of comparison with how bad everybody else's year was, it was a good year for me.

That must be an interesting story. Care to share?

Not very interesting in a year when millions of people have taken to flagrantly attempting negligent manslaughter in violation of their local health laws. 2020 was simply an opportunity for people to show how little they're willing to do to protect each other.

Oh okay violating Covid restrictions. I thought maybe they were driving drunk all over town or being reckless with firearms! lol

I think the only good was that I was able to still find a new job that somehow paid me more than my last job even during COVID. Career-wise, I didn't make much progress (professionally or otherwise).

The bad was that I did have some people close to me pass away during this whole thing. Also, I didn't meet my goal of getting in shape due to fear of going out (which was already bad as it was pre-COVID).

I did happen to make a minuscule effort towards trying to woo someone but that ended in me coming off as annoying and so I really only have myself to blame for that outcome. Live and learn?

I think if anything, COVID allowed for me to do what I normally do without any backlash or criticism from people. I didn't have to lie or come up with something lavish like what most people do apparently. However, because of this I didn't really do much to get out of my comfort zone aside from that one failure mentioned above. The year definitely had it's downs but in small ways it also had ups. Overall, I feel like the year pretty much left me in the same spot I was last year: feeling alone, living with parents, no drive to really get myself out there, no friends, not being liked at work, not understanding people, etc.

The year had pretty bad highlights, yes, but the events that I personally experienced could've happened any other year and the impact would've been the same. Therefore, not really the worst year.

I'm just glad I don't have to take public transport anymore. The rails in the states are pathetic.

Happy New Year!

All considering, 2020 has not been horrible for me. The good, the bad, the ugly, they all get mashed together, it is one huge pile of mishmash. I think, at some point in the near future, I will wish I could be in this moment I am now, and live accordingly.. I'm here now, and I may as well appreciate it.. but of course, by the time I responded it is 2021 ;p


2020, my loved ones were still with me, I had a shelter over my head, I had food in my cabinets, and things were much better than they could be. I can only hope the same can be said in the next several years. I will say, I feel bad for those who have had hardship this year, those who have lost loved ones, those that struggled, but I feel bad for them every year.

Bad: no gym, no late night grocery shopping, suppressed shopping in general, haven't met up with the very few friends I have left, one of them went on/off suicidal, haven't seen my niece and nephew for a year which was a miracle they were even a bit close to me to begin with (pretty sure our relationship is now estranged beyond repair), sister decided to mysteriously sever contact from me, have yet to meet my sister's newborn due to previous point, dad decided to sever contact from me due to my constant venting, always having housemates being home (rarely get the house to myself), not being able to travel, lacking the routine structure of having to be on the go, lost the motivation to venture out too far for hikes.

Good: employment remained stable despite covid, more time spent at home due to working from home, got another side income, more time with my dog, dog remained relatively healthy at her age, more outdoor exercises, one friend still made effort to keep touch with me (thankful for her), got closer to stepdad, decorated my room and outdoor space pretty much to the way I want now, found new housemates to fill the vacant bedrooms, experimented more with cooking.

Pretty much a year with up/downs. But having my dad and sister sever contact with me I felt overwhelm the ups. Meanwhile the constant anticipating stress and worries will always remain. Just gotta take things by bits and really enjoy and take in the small moments as they go just to try to suppress and keep my bad thoughts at bay. It's kind of like living as an active patrolling soldier or a survivor in an apocalypse.

Hmmm. Well...just in terms of how I lived during 2020, not a whole lot changed other than wearing the mask if and when I did go out (which I consider to be no big deal to wear a mask in a store where everyone is wearing one).

Of course there were some bad things. My mother and dad were always germophobes before this. They have always been the types of people who were "disinfecting" everything using various (sometimes dubious) methods. Which I can recall when I was growing up they would sometimes go through a can of Lysol spray in like a couple of weeks because they would just spray it out into the air until the stench of it would stink up the whole house and you couldn't breathe without the taste of it lingering in your mouth for hours.

So of course their paranoia has gotten much worse now. And while obviously you do have to be very careful right now with the way things are, they have a tendency to listen to those snake oil people, which worries me because a lot of that stuff is not proven to do anything but waste money (at best) and could be dangerous to someone's health.

I know my mother has been buying that colloidal silver stuff. She was buying it from time to time before but I think she is buying a lot more of it now than she used to. And it just creeps me out. I would not knowingly put that stuff in my body for any amount of money. I don't know what she does with it except I have seen her put it in a spray bottle and spray it all over my dad's mask before he goes out. Which maybe it's harmless but it probably isn't doing anything good even if it isn't doing anything bad. And it still creeps me out. I worry that she might be sneaking and putting it in my food because she has tried to get me to take it. I would not put it past her. And I know from past things that she has done that she absolutely would do it.

I think she also might be spraying it into the furnace filter (believe it or not) because she runs the furnace on fan only sometimes for hours on end like she's trying to accomplish something. Like if she's got some weird idea that blowing it all though the house will disinfect everything, she would definitely try to make it happen. I have had to replace the metal furnace intake grate twice in the past few years due to it having developed a big rust spot in the center of it from her spraying various things into it. Often she will put essential oils into water and spray that in there (which smells as bad as it sounds like it does). And it makes a mess in side there too and clogs up and ruins the expensive filters she buys faster. She has also sprayed Lysol into it often enough to where I have started to sneak and throw the lysol away when I can find it.

Anyway, yeah. Stuff like that has made things a bit more bizarre than they were for me. Just the way my parents react to something like COVID is different than what is typical. They don't listen to experts. They listen to snake oil people. So far they haven't done anything terribly bizarre (as far as I know) but it is probably only because they haven't found anything more bizarre than the silver thing on youtube.

I guess my mentality was more worry than usual because obviously I don't want the virus and I don't want anyone in my family to get it and I want it over with so that people will stop dying and things can sort of start to get straightened out again.

My mom and few of my aunts does that. From the circulating misformation in their group texts. Mostly from video posters who intentionally flat out lie just for attention and views. Not really snake oil per say, but the concept is very similar.

Oh yeah. In the case of my parents, it's all coming from Youtube. They each have a Roku stick on their respective TVs and so they watch Youtube constantly. I kind of regret the decision to install the Roku devices but I felt bad for my dad because my mom decided to turn off the cable because she's a tightwad (she will waste money but only if she deems it to be worthy and she seemed to think cable was a waste of money and they didn't need it even though they both watched TV constantly).

Anyway, I felt bad for my dad because it wasn't his decision to turn off the cable and he just went along with it because he knew she was determined to do it and there would be a big argument if he tried to stop her.

I didn't think about it at the time because I thought giving them access to Youtube would be good for them. Because if you use it right, Youtube can be educational and open up the world as far as the variety of stuff you can find on there. But my parents are attracted to crackpots and zealots like a moth to flame and they immediately started to gravitate to people like Paul Begley. I did everything I could to steer them towards things that would give them more variety and help them explore and find new interests but they weren't having it. If I look at their watch history, they just watch the same old stuff constantly (Like the Paul Begley guy. People like him). There isn't a bit of variety in there to be found even if I go back for months in what they have watched.

I have even tried putting stuff that I know my dad used to be interested in on there and subscribing him to variety channels but he doesn't watch them. Out of everything on Youtube, they had to pick some of the most malignant garbage on there.

I started a very unsuccessful gaming YouTube channel (I think the video viewcount is probably about average, but my subscriber count is very low.) A few family members died. Those are the main things I guess. Most other stuff is just ongoing issues.

This is the first time I haven't had to go out on Christmas which was nice, still had a zoom call though. Going to have to talk to people at my nan's funeral soon probably. I'm hoping covid minimises that. Also since my sleeping pattern was messed up I just went to bed at 10pm in my time zone after staying up for over 24 hours, and then woke up briefly at midnight because people were letting off a **** ton of fireworks, and then back to sleep again.

same with my mom according my stepdad. She watches youtube quacks too, and then asserts what she learns from them onto her and his lifestyle. Then she circulates it amongst her texting group and my aunts. Yet she ignores all of the legit informational sources.

I could also relate to the good thoughtful gifts backfiring. My stepdad also recently had heart and blood pressure issues, and I got him a blood pressure wrist monitors for him as a xmas gift. It was a perfect gift for him. And then my mom saw and started logging his results. Whenever it results gets to the "not so good" range she stresses out and guilts him for it. Eventually my stepdad told me he wishes I never got him the wrist bp monitor as now it's stressing him out a lot due to my mom. Stress ironically will affect his BP negatively too... so yeah.

Does he go straight to the channel pages? I think the best way is to try to manipulate the YouTube algorithm so it constantly suggests things that are contrary to what they normally watch but it might also help to find superficially similar people who are saying different things since some people are drawn to certain personalities or other traits. Although in saying that you can still watch people while disagreeing with them since I do that often so it doesn't really matter.

The good... I was able to stay home most of the year, and I still managed A's in two very difficult and intensive computer science courses. The bad... My dad's stroke and its aftereffects, especially the terminal cancer diagnosis and treatment. The ugly... Having to deal with my mom's regular breakdowns and constant negativity on top of my own problems.

And yet I have the sinking feeling that 2021 will be worse.

I don't really know how he browses but whatever he is doing, he apparently ignores anything that is offered to him that is not what he wants.

I have tried sometimes logging into his youtube account and searching for and browsing and watching videos that would distract him from the other stuff but it doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever. I have even added things to his favorites and watched them and liked them myself to try and make Youtube recommend him stuff that is healthier but if I go back into his history a couple weeks later, I can look back and see that absolutely nothing changed in his viewing and the last time any of those videos were watched was when I watched them.

Granted, I did not put an enormous amount of effort into this because I'm kind of an ADD type of person myself and really probably can't focus on the goal of doing that for long enough to make it work.

But yeah. That's one of the bad things about Youtube. I think some of these people have taken his mind in directions it wouldn't have gone if he'd have been watching cable TV instead. Some people can't handle unlimited choice (and I'm not really immune to that myself). He does get obsessed with things easily and he could have just as easily gotten obsessed with something else if he had encountered something else first. But once he locks in like that, there's not much you can do.

Ironically, that was why I didn't build him a PC instead. I thought youtube would kind of limit this kind of thing.

I even tried gradually unsubscribing him from some of the ones he didn't watch as often but I looked later and saw he'd put them back on there.