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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Autumnal" data-source="post: 9779654" data-attributes="member: 6671663">I’ve been reviewing everything I know about stress reduction lately, since I’m having problems with critically bad cardiac conditions and have to be doing all I can on all fronts. One is relevant to both dining and gaming.If it’s wildly unlikely that you will ever have fun with something, get away from it. Don’t talk about it. As far as you can, don’t read about it. (In my experience, 100% withdrawal is very hard. Cut way back, at least.) Don’t give it your time. If you’ve been trying to play it or eat it even though you’re sure it will make you miserable, knock it off.There are two possibilities, once you start doing that.1. You may have options you like within the same field. There’s a cuisine you like to read about, to eat, and to talk about. Do that. Look up subreddits and YouTube channels and Substack whatever-they-ares you may not have heard about. There may be a game you enjoy playing and thinking about. Same deal.Reexamine options you haven’t taken seriously before. Maybe you could experiment with fixing crockpot pot pies or GMless games, if these are outside your orbit. Thinking about choices you haven’t thought about is often hard, but it’s doable, and you may find something that works well for you.2. There isn’t any particularly viable alternative that, after some experimentation, suits you. In the case of food, this gets far too complicated for me to say anything meaningful about - I have large unusual constraints on diet that mean I have no experience of a lot of otherwise good options. But I can say something about when no gaming in reach seems worth pursuing.Go ahead and do something else already. Paint minis, maybe. It’s fun, soaks up time well, gives you opportunities for developing mastery, and people talk a lot about it. Study an academic subject that interests you. If it calls for developing new skills, so much the better. Places like Khan Academy will help you with math for free, and some of the best universities in the world have syllabuses and lectures online. Take up an art, or music. Become a birdwatcher or field naturalist. Become of a fan of a sport team and learn about th game. (If you’re an American, do this in hard mode: become a fan of a cricket team.) become an informed fan of a prose or poetry genre. Read Victorian novel, and relevant histories and biographies. These all offer the same kinds of advantages.I’ve lived on fixed and limited income and with big health problems, so I have no experience of traveling, or bicycling or running, or other activities that require more dough and/or bod. But they’re popular options for less constrained people. Becoming informed about fashion is cheap, and refurbishing a wardrobe is cheaper than many people think - becoming dapper or otherwise distinctive in appearance is a thing you can do surprisingly cheaply.But it all starts with determining to put down and get away from what brings you misery, frustration, sadness, regret, and the like. Spit it out, already!Jean-Paul Sartre observed that being precedes essence. That is, we are living creatures, people, before we have a clear identity - anything where you say “I’m an ___”, a Christian, a Democrat, an Angeleno, a vegan, a role player, a guru, a cowtipper. Identities accumulate out of actions and thoughts. And identities can and do change.It may feel horrible to contemplate not being something you are now. But people have such things forced on them all the time and survive. They have to move, become disabled, have experiences they cannot be honest about without changing their worldview, find that they cannot tolerate (or must begin tolerating) something crucial to their political faction, find themselves in love without someone of a type they’ve never loved before, and on and on. Their identity changes but they don’t cease to exist or change in every way. And same deal with changes we choose.It takes time. I don’t think it ever goes entirely smoothly and without any relapses. But it goes, and take you toward more happiness and less unhappiness.</blockquote>

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