How are you able to continue going to work/school/have any long term goals in this hellscape?

21 comments

1. Love my family, get a block of land and be self sustained. Escape capitalism and have a great sex life.

   Work helps me get that money together hahaha

2. I mean, think of it this way, how will discontinuing what I need to do make things better? What benefits are there to stop moving forward?

   ..none. Most of the time, not doing what I’m supposed to will make my life harder and worse.

   Besides that, I do what I can to help (work within a helping profession) and then fuck off and chill outside my work. I rollerblade, read, paint, and spend time with people I care about.

3. Just keep pushing through. Sometimes we have to hold on for dear life.

4. I do it not because I want to, but if I don’t I’d probably have a worse life. Being homeless doesn’t sound great. Not being able to afford food or clothes doesn’t sound great either. Until I can afford to have my cottage on a 4 acre land with no care in the world I’ll keep doing it.

5. Im still alive and will continue to live until I don’t live anymore. I have the option to be as happy as I can in the meantime. Sitting and doing nothing would be a waste. As for long term goals, my long term is 5 years.

6. I just go at it day by day and hope I die sooner rather than later.

7. It’s rough some days. But therapy helps, and I have summer projects and volunteer work to keep me occupied outside of my 9-5. I write/call my reps, scream into the digital void, and try to make my circle a little bit better. I try (with only some success) to recognize that there’s only so much I can control.

8. I have a beautiful life, surrounded by loving friends and family. Both the terminally ill patients that I work with and myself have been victim to horrible things, but we all agree that the world is mostly filled with good people. The handful of bad ones are just very loud and in positions of power. My friends and I do our part to fix important issues—everything from developing technology for carbon capture, fighting cancer, building safer infrastructure, etc. There are a lot of bright minds working on meaningful problems.

9. I have kids, this the long term is personal for me. So I’m fighting the good fight for myself, my partner and for them/our collective long term prospects. Who knows if it’ll make any difference, but I can’t stand by and do nothing.

10. I just think “I somehow got through all of them. I can survive this too.” I got past the time I couldn’t afford a loaf a bread, my dad isn’t abusive towards my mom anymore, I survived that unspoken incident happened to me as a child. Thanks to my mom and my counsellor I turned out fine ig. Ofc there gon be more in the future. I want that happiness I couldn’t have. So I don’t mind dealing with shit anymore.

11. Hellscape or not, i still have bills to pay and kids to feed. The world doesn’t stop turning just because you live in a dystopia.

12. I’m not. I just quit my job today with no next job. There’s no point in buying the hybrid truck I wanted or the condo I live in. I’ll just keep renting and drive my old Civic.

13. Prescription medication

14. I work in a field that serves people affected by the hellscape, so that definitely helps. It’s fulfilling work and makes me feel like I’m helping.

    Otherwise, I like staying informed, but know when it’s time to turn reality off for a bit and try to distract myself.

15. My goals include developing an escape from the hellscape. Land. A place for my friends/family. Growing food.

16. I don’t see why I wouldn’t. The world might be burning, but my little corner of it is doing pretty okay. 🙂

17. I am 40 and we are by far not living in the worst year/years of my life.

    Post 2001 was worse. We were going to war after terrorist attacks, the economy was in rough shape, kids were dying in IED explosions in Iraq and Afghanistan, our nation was just trying to get over columbine and the similar attacks that followed. We had financial disasters looming if not underway.

    I guess for me, it is just a different day but with slightly alternate actors in place.

    I also grew up in a part of the Midwest where we had regular outbreaks of things like measels and eventually death by heroin/pills so epidemics were just a part of life before covid even happened.

18. I’m not sure if you’re talking about the US (I’m not from there) or the pandemic life or just life in general in a philosophical sense.

    Evolution takes time and the modern society right now in a grand scheme of things is nothing but a blink of an eye. I don’t think we are yet programmed to deal with the hamster on a wheel type of lifestyle where we go to school or work everyday and then, we die.

    I often crave to live in the wilds even though it’s a laughable fantasy since I have no survival skills. There’s also this pull to escape from all this and be with nature. Many people luckily find goals and meanings in having a partner and kids. You could try that. I thought it would make me happy to have an SO and it didn’t. The same emptiness and dread is still there. I don’t know. I think some of us aren’t made for this world. Is that clinical depression or just being a human being who’s not programmed for this lifestyle? Might be too pessimistic but that’s just how I feel.

19. “Do not go gently into that long night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

20. God

21. No matter what’s going on, I have a responsibility to my family, friends, pets, and the world itself. No one can replace you, so you hang on and step up. I subscribe to Victor Frankl’s Logotherapy he developed before/during his time in the concentration camps– “…being human is nothing other than being conscious and being responsible!”