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So Saturday is very nearly over here in Japan. I slept until about 10 A.M., though I awakened a handful of times through the night, considering rousing to try and find some entertainment. I just thought it would be better to let my eyes rest because I had a sort of pressure-ache around them. Which was strange, as I hadn't really done anything that involved eye strain. I hardly get to look at a computer for an hour a day during the week, most days. That has been a good thing in a way in terms of dependency/addiction, but at the same time - given my lack of engagement offline - it is sort of soul-crushing too.
My best friend is a lawyer, and I am really proud of her. She has started taking art classes to help her mental health, and I feel like the person that I knew a few years ago would have written that off as unnecessary. She has grown a lot, and I am glad to have known her for like ten years now. Yesterday, she encouraged me to find small things to enrich my life outside of my job, and she was pretty convincing that the whole "not having time" thing isn't really valid as she usually reads novels in five minute bursts in the bathroom.
And she is right, of course. These are things I know objectively speaking. However, here in Japan (and with less than a month until I go back home) it seems like the effort involved in "having a life" outside of work would be just a disastrous affair. I don't live in a major city (though Yokohama is about 45 minutes away and parts of Tokyo about an hour) which I actually prefer but it means that the expat community here is pretty small. I don't often run into random English-speakers.
More than that, it is the crushing exhaustion that gets to me. Throughout the day at work, I have moments where I feel like myself. Sometimes I have whole, huge fic ideas or other itches to create. Last weekend, I somehow found the motivation to get started on a fanvid, just barely, but I haven't been able to work on it all week, and at the moment I don't much feel like it.
I thought I might come home Monday or Tuesday and work on it, but neither day did I feel like doing much of anything. I would turn on my computer, and I think one night I played MTGA for an hour or something, but every other night this week, I have basically just fallen face-first onto my futon before 9:00 P.M. and slept through until nearly morning. I was at least in the habit of going to the bathroom around 12:00 or 1:00, but lately if I awaken at all to pee or get water or whatever it tends to be much closer on to daylight. I just completely lack the stamina to do anything outside those ten hours I spend at work every day. I only work for about seven or eight of them, but I have to be there the whole time. I recently had a conversation during our sort of free conversation period with two of my best students who seem pretty attached to me about work-life balance and how it basically doesn't exist here. They think it should, and I'm told there are reforms in the works, which might be more than can be said for the state of the American economy. It feels like an impossible catch-22. Either you live in a country where jobs are available and do nothing but those jobs, or you live in a country where you can hardly find a job to sell your life to.
So yeah that kind of has been making me sad. I have been looking for jobs to apply for near home for starting sometime in January, but so far there hasn't really been anything, and I am getting worried a bit.
Anyway, the point of this post other than just catching up with things was to mention that in listening to a podcast called Female Criminals, they were discussing an old psychological study called The pathology of boredom. As I understood it, it was a study where the volunteers were subjected to social isolation and sensory deprivation for days at a time. They were allowed to leave at any time that they could no longer bear it, but they were incentivized to stay by being paid $20 (about $200, adjusted for inflation) per day for as long as they stayed.
I didn't get figures on how long the average volunteer stayed or anything. It wasn't relevant to how it was relevant to the podcast story. But basically they were saying that the volunteers went in with ideas for how they would fill the time. Some planned to mentally work on coursework or plan papers. Others planned to plot novels or to imagine other things that they wanted to do in the future. They had "food for thought" going in. However, all the participants reported consistently that they were not able to get very far with this because under such circumstances, they were unable to maintain coherent thought on any one topic for very long at all.
Boredom, in mild doses, can be a catalyst for creativity. However, there is a kind of soul-sick boredom that sets in when there is a lot of it that actively combats what even makes us ourselves. That particular study is so old because since then no one has felt ethically right about repeating it, not because the people were physically harmed or complained much or anything, but because the volunteers were found to have suffered damage to their cognitive abilities, even though said damage was temporary. They performed poorly on elementary school-level tasks having to do with cognition after that experience, and it took them a while to recover.
And that's basically how I feel on the weekends. Like, my main goals for this weekend were to work on some fandom stuff and to clean my apartment floor of shed hair. So far, I have done neither of those things and literally spent most of the day in and out of my futon. And I am considering going back right now. I think part of this might have had to do with a low-grade migraine that I finally took some of my meds for and the aftermath making me a bit drowsy, but I am just so frustrated that when I do have "time" to myself, I can't do anything but just kind of coast along and exist. I feel the most personal motivation and inspiration when I am trapped at work.
I have started to carry a notebook again when I can remember it. This was a habit I had as a child, pre-mobile phone days. It has come in handy a couple of times, but the thing is that this kind of impact seems cumulative and to really have a negative impact on my confidence in my ability to work on anything going forward. It makes me just sort of give up.
If any of you have gone through similar things, how did you cope with it? I feel this way when I go through bouts of unemployment, too.
My best friend is a lawyer, and I am really proud of her. She has started taking art classes to help her mental health, and I feel like the person that I knew a few years ago would have written that off as unnecessary. She has grown a lot, and I am glad to have known her for like ten years now. Yesterday, she encouraged me to find small things to enrich my life outside of my job, and she was pretty convincing that the whole "not having time" thing isn't really valid as she usually reads novels in five minute bursts in the bathroom.
And she is right, of course. These are things I know objectively speaking. However, here in Japan (and with less than a month until I go back home) it seems like the effort involved in "having a life" outside of work would be just a disastrous affair. I don't live in a major city (though Yokohama is about 45 minutes away and parts of Tokyo about an hour) which I actually prefer but it means that the expat community here is pretty small. I don't often run into random English-speakers.
More than that, it is the crushing exhaustion that gets to me. Throughout the day at work, I have moments where I feel like myself. Sometimes I have whole, huge fic ideas or other itches to create. Last weekend, I somehow found the motivation to get started on a fanvid, just barely, but I haven't been able to work on it all week, and at the moment I don't much feel like it.
I thought I might come home Monday or Tuesday and work on it, but neither day did I feel like doing much of anything. I would turn on my computer, and I think one night I played MTGA for an hour or something, but every other night this week, I have basically just fallen face-first onto my futon before 9:00 P.M. and slept through until nearly morning. I was at least in the habit of going to the bathroom around 12:00 or 1:00, but lately if I awaken at all to pee or get water or whatever it tends to be much closer on to daylight. I just completely lack the stamina to do anything outside those ten hours I spend at work every day. I only work for about seven or eight of them, but I have to be there the whole time. I recently had a conversation during our sort of free conversation period with two of my best students who seem pretty attached to me about work-life balance and how it basically doesn't exist here. They think it should, and I'm told there are reforms in the works, which might be more than can be said for the state of the American economy. It feels like an impossible catch-22. Either you live in a country where jobs are available and do nothing but those jobs, or you live in a country where you can hardly find a job to sell your life to.
So yeah that kind of has been making me sad. I have been looking for jobs to apply for near home for starting sometime in January, but so far there hasn't really been anything, and I am getting worried a bit.
Anyway, the point of this post other than just catching up with things was to mention that in listening to a podcast called Female Criminals, they were discussing an old psychological study called The pathology of boredom. As I understood it, it was a study where the volunteers were subjected to social isolation and sensory deprivation for days at a time. They were allowed to leave at any time that they could no longer bear it, but they were incentivized to stay by being paid $20 (about $200, adjusted for inflation) per day for as long as they stayed.
I didn't get figures on how long the average volunteer stayed or anything. It wasn't relevant to how it was relevant to the podcast story. But basically they were saying that the volunteers went in with ideas for how they would fill the time. Some planned to mentally work on coursework or plan papers. Others planned to plot novels or to imagine other things that they wanted to do in the future. They had "food for thought" going in. However, all the participants reported consistently that they were not able to get very far with this because under such circumstances, they were unable to maintain coherent thought on any one topic for very long at all.
Boredom, in mild doses, can be a catalyst for creativity. However, there is a kind of soul-sick boredom that sets in when there is a lot of it that actively combats what even makes us ourselves. That particular study is so old because since then no one has felt ethically right about repeating it, not because the people were physically harmed or complained much or anything, but because the volunteers were found to have suffered damage to their cognitive abilities, even though said damage was temporary. They performed poorly on elementary school-level tasks having to do with cognition after that experience, and it took them a while to recover.
And that's basically how I feel on the weekends. Like, my main goals for this weekend were to work on some fandom stuff and to clean my apartment floor of shed hair. So far, I have done neither of those things and literally spent most of the day in and out of my futon. And I am considering going back right now. I think part of this might have had to do with a low-grade migraine that I finally took some of my meds for and the aftermath making me a bit drowsy, but I am just so frustrated that when I do have "time" to myself, I can't do anything but just kind of coast along and exist. I feel the most personal motivation and inspiration when I am trapped at work.
I have started to carry a notebook again when I can remember it. This was a habit I had as a child, pre-mobile phone days. It has come in handy a couple of times, but the thing is that this kind of impact seems cumulative and to really have a negative impact on my confidence in my ability to work on anything going forward. It makes me just sort of give up.
If any of you have gone through similar things, how did you cope with it? I feel this way when I go through bouts of unemployment, too.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-16 01:48 pm (UTC)From:I guess the Internet wasn't enough? I dunno.
Right now my days are pretty full with exploration and events, but I'm not working at all, let alone a 10 hour job.
I've had ideas, like a checklist of "do at least 10 minutes of X, Y, and Z" every day, but haven't kept up with everything on it. OTOH have kept up with some -- Spanish study via Duolingo and Anki flash cards, in particular. So the idea doesn't magically solve executive deficits.
The idea had seemed sound, though. It's hard to commit to a big chunk of something, but if you start doing something it's easier to continue, so if you can do 10 minutes, or even 1 minute of something, you're more likely to do more. And 10 minutes of study a day is 90 hours a year, which is like a course.
Anyway. Sounds like you might be some level of depressed, what with overwork or social isolation or maybe even shrinking day length. Dunno what to say other than I'm sorry, and maybe try to get *some* sort of diversity and stimulus or self-maintenance in? Anything really is better than nothing, and disproportionately so if you manage to keep going.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-16 03:23 pm (UTC)From:And yeah, I have diagnosed depression. I've been on an antidepressant since about 2016. I have, lately, been skipping doses from time to time because I have been trying to cope with that mask of survivable numbness that long-term use of them brings about, which actually does give my brain and emotions more range... when they elect to work at all.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-16 03:49 pm (UTC)From:That study is interesting. I think they need to repeat it, despite ethical concerns. It's a topic that doesn't get much attention, and especially with so many people being isolated for various reasons, it needs study.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-17 02:14 pm (UTC)From:I actually think that you're sort of an inspirational story that you have started to come out of that kind of fog and reclaim your interest and engagement in things, even if I know that it probably feels like a catch-22 in terms of needing a job. I'm going to be in that boat soon.
I have made so many of my relationships online. I'm socially isolated apart from my family most of the time. I have a very social sort of job as a teacher, but outside my job I don't interact with anyone. I don't even speak the language here so I can't even make small-talk with service employees. I just kind of have to point and smile and apologize and thank until I get what I need done.
I have a friend who's hoping to go into grad school to become a therapist, and recently she and I had a conversation about how she thinks the pharmacological model of treating depression is irresponsible. She said that it may have the benefit of keeping someone from committing suicide or something in the short term but that long-term use of antidepressants just floods your brain with a bunch of chemicals that shouldn't be there to the degree that they are. I read some stuff about how antidepressants affect libido (weird but not as personal as you might imagine story) because I'm a nerd who gets things on my mind and must google it. But basically it was saying how long-term use of antidepressants, specifically SSRIs, kind of denies the brain chemicals OTHER than serotonin and reduces one's ability to feel certain emotions and drives related to desire, sexuality, bonding, etc. But in that case it goes beyond libido and has to do with like one's ability to really bond with ANYONE in any way or to experience things like motivation. I have found that skipping some doses with my antidepressant has actually helped me to just... feel emotions generally, but I know that's only part of a solution.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-18 05:31 pm (UTC)From:I agree that often the medical profession in general is too quick to push pills on people, but next time I have the opportunity to go on medication (no insurance or money now), I will gladly try another. I've battled this all my life, and sometimes all the therapy and whatnot in the world just doesn't help. I've had success before, for me the problem is that the effects don't last beyond a year or so. My body seems to get used to the medication and it stops working. Same goes for herbal supplements. I've been on over half a dozen things in my life, and not all of them dampen the emotions. Some work that way, but in my experience they all affect me differently. Even the difference between ER and IR has been significant. But that's just me.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-19 04:54 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-11-21 02:50 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-11-21 03:00 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-11-21 06:53 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-11-17 07:28 am (UTC)From:Since I've been back to work I have been forcing myself to actually take a book to work with me and read a chapter while I eat lunch. I typically eat at my desk for various reasons and I would feel like I wanted to do something (like write or read), but since I was at work, I couldn't. But then when I was home and supposedly had the time to do those things, I wouldn't. It's not a fix for everyday, but I'm really finding I feel less like... (this sounds dramatic but,) despondent about work and home when I'm taking time out for something I like during the day.
I don't know if this helps either, but I've also learned that if I let myself sit when I'm home and tired, I give in way more to just watching television or YT or whatever and then going to sleep. I turned autoplay off on all my streaming apps so I have to choose something to watch and if I have to get up for the bathroom or a drink or something, I might pick up a book instead of going back to my show. It's made me be a lot more conscious of both my time and my actual levels of fatigue vs. what's just boredom/ennui or even depression.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-17 02:19 pm (UTC)From:But no I totally get you about the work thing. I have to spend ten hours at my workplace every day, and it has been a BIT better since I have been entertaining myself more during breaks in which I am fairly finished with things. I also have been just trying to motivate myself to just watch more narrative-based things other than youtube. I find that I watch certain youtubers as a way to combat loneliness, and while that can be a good palliative, I miss engaging with fiction and stuff. Like I really need to do some stuff for
no subject
Date: 2019-11-19 02:26 am (UTC)From:Face time was the worst. Ugh.
I used to play a ton of video games in similar circumstances, which wasn't really something that helped a lot. I guess it provided a sense of accomplishment, and I was able to talk about it with people, and since one of the games I played was World of Warcraft I could still use it as a group activity...but I've barely played any games for a month now because I've been taking social opportunities, but that's less of an option for you.
A lot of people seem to just binge-watch shows they've already seen before as a way to pass the time, and for some reason society considers that totally normal and not a sign of dysfunction.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-19 04:59 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2019-11-19 09:32 pm (UTC)From: