copes

I’ve settled on /copes/ as the page that I’m going to use as the cornerstone or anchor post for a bunch of other posts in the 2copes category. Posts include…

  1. why were you late
  2. safety rituals
  3. /archives/taskmaster
  4. we turn our lives into mostly-predictable sitcoms
  5. a theory of pissbabies
  6. how i rebuilt my trust in myself
  7. emotional knottedness
  8. rugpulls

These aren’t all the posts, but I’m putting them here to look at them a certain way, to see if they spark some realization for me in a way that makes it work out.

(2025jan14) now updating the list to include everything in reverse order:

  1. beating yourself up is egotistic — it’s my fault and that’s a good thing —
  2. transmuting the 7 sins
  3. sitcoms
  4. learn to laugh at yourself
  5. how to be more optimistic
  6. my experience of depression — how i rebuilt my trust in myself — earning self-respect
  7. the prestige trap
  8. notes on narcissism — notes on shame — on holding yourself hostage —
  9. a theory of pissbabies
  10. exhaustion funnels — why so tired?
  11. emotional knottedness — likely related to the above
  12. narrow utilitarianism — just a youtube video for now, but I expect to revisit it
  13. “I’m such a failure” – youtube vids for now
  14. “shouldn’t I want to make the world a better place?” — start with yourself and the garden that you can tend to
  15. imposter syndrome – the solution is not in your head, it requires knowledge of the interiority of others
  16. write your memoirs
  17. happiness
  18. self-worth
  19. baby steps – section 2.5 of introspect
  20. advanced stupid
  21. safety rituals
  22. why were you late
  23. What does it mean to “process” an experience?
  24. rugpulls

to be further updated and consolidated

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trying to reduce reliance on a cope (cigarettes, screentime, etc) is v difficult. it gets much easier if you define an outcome that you’d like to inhabit, and focus on that. eg if you focus on wanting to get fit, run a 5k, etc you’ll likely find yourself smoking less as you progress

similarly something like “I should spend less time on twitter” rarely ever works, I keep hearing from people beating themselves up over this. when i ask them “why do you wanna do that?” they often have vague answers. a strong answer will displace the cope. focus on what you want

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it’s very rare that you actually need to have a focus on reducing X in order to increase Y. i’d go so far as to say that people often overfixate on reducing X *at the expense of increasing Y*. you end up seeing people impose all sorts of weird self-flagellate-y restrictions…

someone once DM’d me about wanting to be less overanalytical. n i’m like… why? “because it’s getting in the way of my life”. how? what does that mean? articulate it. precisely, what specific things are you not doing, bc of your overanalysis? prioritize the actual thing u want

someone else said, “i want to spend less time doomscrolling”. it’s the same thing. what do you actually want? until you articulate something you actually want, doomscrolling will win! if it were as easy as “stop doing X” everyone would’ve done it by now.

i went looking for a transcript of a chat i had with a friend about something similar the interesting thing to me is how people will… when they don’t have clarity about their goals, will often switch to “taskmaster mode”, and get mad at themselves about little imperfections

imho, generally speaking, the problem with most people isn’t what they’re doing wrong, but what they’re not doing right someone out there is doing everything you’re doing wrong, 10x worse, harder, and still way more successful and happy despite it because they’re doing Y right

suppose you listen to podcasts 4 hours a day and you feel like shit about it somewhere out there is a guy who listens to podcasts 6-8 hours a day, and somehow has a great life (ish? maybe?) despite it i’m not saying you should be like the second guy, but he’s worth considering

text I sent the doomscrolling friend: “if you 2x’d your output on the thing that mattered the most to you, you wouldn’t mind scrolling 8 hours a day” in his case he’s a writer, so i’m asking him to consider how it would feel to write a 2x better essay than anything he’s done

problem is that people get so acclimated to their circumstances that they struggle to imagine big wins and so they end up nickel-and-diming all the little fucken nonsense that doesn’t really matter, and then feel doubly shitty for it

to be updated

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