#MyJam https://yewtu.be/watch?v=uFzPW2mlg28&list=PLh4Eme5gACZHaNOYGUuj_wFO0IR5x54Ad&index=16 liking Rimworld quite a bit these days and this one from its soundtrack is constantly in my head

Lamp-post with hedge climbing up it. I can see the very top of this on one my usual walks and took a little detour to find out how the greenery is getting up there. Still think it’s quite strange and cool.

Images loading on here have been super slow the last few days. Not sure if it’s something going on with Ivory or with Universeodon? Is it time to change instance?

🎮 Vampire Survivors (2022) - ★★★★★

I played this for about 7 hours on Steam, then saw that it was on the Nintendo Switch, bought it again (for £4 how could I not), and I’ve played at least 15 hours on the Switch. This game is awesome. Super simple, you only use the left analogue stick to have your dude wander around the screen, and they auto-attack the hordes of monsters that head towards you. As time goes on you find new weapons and abilities, you level up and upgrade these, and your auto-attacks get sillier and sillier and more and more monsters turn up until you have no idea what’s going on. If you survive for 30 minutes then Death turns up and insta-kills you like the yeti on SkiFree, it’s hilarious.

There’s tons and tons to unlock and the game has this weird sense of humour. I’m also obsessed with the music from Stage 2. Not sure how much longer I’ll play it because I suppose it does get a little bit repetitive after a while but those 20-odd hours absoutely flew by (I was actually a bit shocked when I looked up how long I’d played it) and it’s super cheap so absolutely recommended

I'm a bit obsessed with #VampireSurvivors on the Switch at the moment, and can't get the Inlaid Library music out of my head, I love it. Best £4 I ever spent #MyJam https://youtu.be/dwx2DtyqSLc?si=dtg8-MnHy78UUrld

I’m coming up to the three-week mark of being on Sertraline (which I think is known as Zoloft in the US) and thought I would share how things are going. I wanted to share this as I was feeling apprehensive when I was first prescribed it, and I went online looking for other people’s experiences and oddly didn’t find an awful lot, and the stuff I did find seemed to be from people who had terrible experiences.

For me, it’s been fine. I wanted to share this because I want the perspective for myself but also if anyone else is looking for information like I was, maybe this could help.

I’ve been feeling quite anxious and depressed for about 18 months to 2 years, and I tried (and still do) a load of things to try and help like journalling, yoga videos on YouTube, going for walks, meditating, making sure I get enough sleep, and doing relaxing stuff like reading, colouring, puzzle books, listening to podcasts, having a bath etc. All of this helps me cope I think, but I didn’t really seem to be getting better. The worst part - outwardly speaking - was feeling teary all the time to the point where I would start crying in the car park at work and not be able to stop and, well, no-one can work like that.

So my GP gave me a month’s prescription for 50mg of Sertraline and I’m now three weeks in. My GP told me that I could feel worse before I feel better as the tablets take time to properly take effect, and that common side effects are getting headaches and feeling nauseous, although these tend to go away after a couple of days.

You can take these tablets at any time of day but you’re supposed to try and be consistent, so I thought I’d aim for 7:30 each morning, where I’d have less chance of forgetting.

I had a week off work when I started taking them (not part of the plan, just when my time off happened to be) which is lucky as I don’t think I got any headaches but I did get… let’s say… stomach problems two hours after taking the first tablet, and this lasted the rest of the morning. I had the same… issue… the next morning although not quite so bad, and I think things got back to normal steadily after that. It’s hard to gauge in a way as the anxiety can mess with my stomach anyway but it seemed to be back to the way things usually are after that third day.

I think I did feel a little nauseous for about a week but nothing major. It mostly seemed like I had a bit of an aversion to the smell and taste of coffee (I usually have 2 cups a day), so I found myself drinking less coffee, which was probably a good thing because I also found that drinking a cup sent my energy levels skyrocketing that first week!

I had a little bit of a dry mouth but nothing too annoying, if anything it probably prompted me to drink more without having to think about it. I also think I felt a little less hungry this week maybe, but again I could probably benefit from eating better so I don’t think this was a bad thing for me.

But wow, they say that it’s supposed to take several weeks to take effect so I think this was a combination of a week off work plus placebo effect, but I felt better from that first day! I felt like I had energy to get things done. I was on top of housework. I needed to get my hair cut and making the appointment was fine, and I didn’t stress about leaving the house to get there on time. And I managed a little small talk while I was there.

I spent my time off doing relaxing things and for the first time in ages I actually felt that I benefitted from them. I finished that week off feeling like I actually did have a week off work, something that I hadn’t felt in months and months.

Week two and week three have been tougher as I’ve been back at work. All of the side effects seem to have disappeared at this stage, and coffee’s effects seem to have returned to normal. I feel as though I have more energy though, so I’ve cut down to just one cup a day now because why not.

I do feel as though I can think a little more optomistically now though, I’m not bursting into tears over small things, and not feeling as though everything has gone terribly wrong all the time. I still feel stress at work, I still get to Friday evening and feel wiped out and ready for my weekend, and I did have one morning where I had a few tears in the car before work but I recovered before I headed in so even that was a big improvement. This feels like ‘normal’ levels of stress to me?

I know these things can take four to six weeks to really start taking effect. I’m sure a lot of my experience here has been down to having a nice week off and probably some placebo effect but honestly, I’m glad I started on the tablets. I don’t think I’d be feeling awywhere like I do know if I hadn’t. I think I’d still be ‘muddling through’ but still living under that cloud. I am pretty hopeful that this might actually be the way forward.

#Wordle 787 4/6

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Guess number 3 though, wow!

#3GoodThings

1) First day back at work after a week off. I thought I would be really nervous but actually it was fine.

2) Had to drive to work a different way due to a road closure. Again, I thought this would have me feeling really anxious this morning and I was a little nervous, but I did it, and it was fine

3) My friend at work has been ill so not been at work for a few weeks. I got to see them again today and it was lovely to catch up.

So all in all, today was... fine! I am wondering if some of this is thanks to my new medication?

@3goodthings

Finished reading: Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett 📚

I feel like getting back into Discworld again so thought I’d start near the start. The first few books are definitely a little bit different to the rest, as if he hasn’t quite found the way he wants to do things properly yet. Still very funny though. Granny Weatherwax is one of my favourite characters although I think, again, you can tell this is an early book and she’s not quite fully ‘Granny’ yet. She’s still cool though 😂. I liked Esk a lot too.

Overall I liked reading this one a lot more than the first time I tried it, maybe because I knew before I started that it wasn’t quite as polished as the later books in the series.

I think Mort is next if you go in chronological order and Death is my other favourite character so I’ll be reading that one next

#wordle

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Wordle 784 5/6

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Good one today! I mean getting it in 5 isn’t good but kept me on my toes today

💊 Had a GP appointment today, probably long overdue to talk about depression/anxiety. Been given a prescription for some medication. I feel like I’ve tried everything I can try on my own so this is good?

☀️ The walk to collect my prescription was lovely actually, nice and warm and sunny but with a nice breeze. My 3 year old niece walked the whole way too

🎸 My new ukulele just sounds so damn nice

I have a week off work and I think I want to try and spend the time with the mindset of doing some nice things, but ultimately remembering that there's nothing really pressing that needs doing. No major plan but also making that little extra effort to do things that I want to do. Not just sitting on my iPad all day

So this arrived on Friday, my new Kala KA-B baritone #ukulele! Have been having tons of fun with it so far - C’s are now G’s and G’s are now D’s and it just sounds so cool!

The case for “dusking”: In a world of light and noise, embracing the dark can be healing - Big Think - I think this sounds like a cool idea and I might give it a go this evening.

I think one of the issues that I have with anxiety is that I worry that I’m not relaxing ‘well enough’, which totally cancels out any relaxing I might actually have otherwise been doing. When I get in from work I maybe have 4 hours to get myself fed, do a ... https://jaymy.micro.blog/2023/08/05/the-case-for.html

The case for “dusking”: In a world of light and noise, embracing the dark can be healing - Big Think - I think this sounds like a cool idea and I might give it a go this evening.

I think one of the issues that I have with anxiety is that I worry that I’m not relaxing ‘well enough’, which totally cancels out any relaxing I might actually have otherwise been doing. When I get in from work I maybe have 4 hours to get myself fed, do a little housework and relax and recharge myself ready to do it all again the next day. But when I’m trying to chill out, I’ll be kind of worrying that I’m not getting the most value out of that time? Like, if I’m sitting watching Star Trek TNG, I might be thinking ‘this is fine, but would I be having more fun if I was playing Zelda? Am I setting myself up for a crummy day tomorrow by wasting my time watching this? But I’m already 20 minutes into the episode, I can’t just drop it now’ etc.

I think one way out is to try and learn to just do nothing again, and that unless there really is somewhere that I need to be or something that I need to get prepared for, then who cares? Just do whatever. I wonder if looking out of the window might be a good way to try this out.

It’s a bit of a shame that it’s basically impossible to do this all year round. In winter it gets dark long before I’m finished work. Maybe that just means I’ve got a chance to do this now and if I want to check it out and enjoy it, I can?

#wordle

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Wordle 777 3/6

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Solved pretty quickly, again another day with lucky guesses

A walk near where I live. This is just a strange spot because you’ll be walking down a quiet road with a row of houses alongside, turn left and you see this - it’s like you’re instantly transported to the middle of nowhere. I always like part of the walk

#Wordle

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Wordle 776 2/6

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Appreciated the nice gentle one today after a couple of tricky words this week!

#Wordle

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Wordle 772 2/6

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Very lucky/easy today. Not that I time myself but I bet this is the fastest I ever solved a wordle

Today I’m quite strongly considering getting a baritone #ukulele. I like my little Makala Dolphin but I think I prefer the way the bigger ones sound?