Comment by dQw4w9WgXcQ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dQw4w9WgXcQ | Hacker News Reader

As someone in a "rut" recently, one of the things I realized was I needed to stop telling myself the story that I'm in a rut, because describing it as a "rut" focuses on a lot of externals I can't control.

When you get a flat tire you can catastrophically repeat over and over to yourself that "I've got a flat!" and point at it and run circles around the car and wonder what you're going to do and "omg I've got a flat this is terrible", or you can start telling yourself the story of the actions you're taking to fix the flat: 1) I'm finding the jack, 2) I'm loosening the lugs 3) I've got the spare ready, 4) you get the idea...

Reclaim your power and focus on the positive actions you are taking as minute as those seem in the moment. Meditate deeply on those, maybe even journal them daily so you force your brain to stare at the evidence that while you might feel like you're in a rut you are logically taking good steps through this rut experience.

Btw, don't underestimate the impact of the stresses of coming fatherhood, you've got a lot going on unconsciously that's less a "rut" and more like your entire biology reconfiguring itself for a new daily role. You do need to make some changes, ideally make a list of what your brain is telling you to change, but you'll be OK man.

This. Right. Here.

Struggling with anxiety and depression for 20+ years, I find little activities help show my brain I’m not in a rut, I’m finding progress every day. Start with good sleep to refresh yourself, better nutrition to power your body, daily exercise to burn off stress and being mindful of the little moments. Having those four wheels spinning is needed for daily traction.

And now as a Dad, those little activities involve making pancakes or pushing a swing. Hard to see the rut when your kid is smiling back. Prioritize that time with them, it goes fast!

I really appreciate this because it's effectively the same advice as the "it's on you, stop complaining, stop feeling sorry for yourself, etc" stuff, except it's not at all condescending or demeaning, and it has more specific useful steps. I'm no longer in the rut I was in mid-to-late pandemic but this seems like a useful attitude for other areas in which I feel stuck.

> I'm no longer in the rut I was in mid-to-late pandemic

I don’t want to get too meta, or say you’re wrong, but there’s a lot of us that are very much right in the middle of this pandemic. And it contributes to the rut.

If you live in a household that is collectively protecting a loved one who is immunocompromised, this pandemic hasn’t gone anywhere in the past two and a half years.

Shoot- even if you just don’t want to get covid, or long covid, or spread it through the community. It’s been a hard experience being part of the minority not pretending things are ‘back to normal’.

That’ll put ya in a rut.

COVID is never going to be over. So at some point it becomes your decision to move on with your life. And if you decide to continue being protective of a vulnerable loved one, then it’s not the pandemic— it’s the burden of caring for a loved one that many others have to deal with outside of COVID. This is not to disavow your personal difficulties. It’s just that I struggle to understand what else we can do as a society to fight a pandemic that is now endemic. I don’t think there is anything else left.

Still a pandemic, not an endemic. No scientific body has declared we have moved past the pandemic.

Now our health care systems are at the edge of their breaking point, people disregard spreading it through the community. We’re likely hitting another wave soon. Not good.

In the US, we have had a sustained 400-500 dying a day. The 4th leading cause of death, on average. That’s a huge deal for something that didn’t exist a few years ago, but no one cares.

Then there’s an economy that is being hit hard by millions of people with long covid symptoms that can’t work anymore. We don’t have an answer for that yet. But who cares.

But the sad part is I think you’re probably right. At least in the US, we are rugged individualists. Public health takes a back seat to that, because it would mean changing one’s one behavior for the good of many. So yeah, what else is there to do as a society.

> In the US, we have had a sustained 400-500 dying a day.

Are you saying this is still currently happening? If so, I'm curious where you're getting this number from. The CDC says the current 21 day rolling average is 358 deaths[0].

Edit: I just wanted to add, if this is the case then the deaths per 100,000 is approximately 358/300,000,000*100,000 = 0.1193 over that 21 day period. If I did those calculations correctly and the statistics don't fail if I try to calculate a deaths per 100K based off a rolling average, then this means you're about 100 times more likely to die from a car crash[1] then covid right now.

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covidvi...

[1]: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

Sorry, I’m not seeing how you figured that.

Ok, so 2566 weekly deaths from covid: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home

That’s 366 per day currently. The crash stats you linked to say 36,096 deaths from crashes in 2019.

366 x 365 = 133,798

So what I see is there’s currently 3.7 times as many people dying from covid in US that from crashes.

You can even just ask Google how many road deaths a day there are in the US, and it responds with a sentence from wikipedia including the phrase "an average of 102 per day".

Not sure why this was downvoted, besides it being an unpopular perspective. If you’re curious, pay attention to what epidemiologists are saying- they are society’s experts on the topic.

I don't think the problem is how you narrate it to yourself. I agree you have to stop saying you are in some kind of rut at some point to start acting to get out of it but the reason why that difficult to do when you are in a rut is because unlike in case of "I've got a flat", the end result is not in sight.

Changing a flat has been done a million times so it a known blueprint you can follow, its easier to do such things even when you don't feel like doing it as it requires very little (mental)energy to do something you are instructed to do without the burden of responsibility, consequences and the certain nature of conclusion from it.

Whereas when it comes to your own life, vague steps are given and each of your action leads to some consequence which you have to tackle. You could face uncertainty in every step. You can lay down the steps other people take to get out of rut but you can be certain your path and your journey will be different from theirs which is scary and likely to add more stress.

So your point of claiming your power and focus is the real key imo, you gain that which gives you to confidence and the will power to handle uncertainty even when you are scared.

I apologize if this came out very confusing as I feel I could write a blog post about it with my scattered thoughts so its hard to condense my thought process into a smaller message.

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