@travelyan.bsky.social Dearest Trav, love the new album. You have probably already heard of old demoscene shit but in case you haven't, I highly recommend giving it some listening. www.demovibes.org

I agree, leveling can be as much of a distraction as it is a main goal in a game. RPing to me is about making choices that have consequences, and if you put a sort of sharp Yes or No distinction on games based on this rule, a lot of "RPGs" aren't very good RPGs at all.

Ultimately I've found that D&D stands out to its credit in this catalogue of games. It's a game that knows its a game within it's story and it plays out like a weird 4th wall-breaking simulation.

Having then played custom d100 systems, Zweihänder, Cthulhu and having looked at Burning Wheel, Mörk Borg and Praedor among others, I've gotten used to the feeling of playing characters who live in a much more dangerous and real world compared to that of D&D.

I find leveling to be a piece of world lore in D&D especially. The world is Vancian, functioning on magic instead of tech and the lust for power, what accumulating more of it causes, and what living with that power looks like, are a constant meta commentary in the background.

So the scope of "what you must do" increases with these things. The better you know yourself the better you can limit the things you want and need. And from then on, it's like Gandalf says "all you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you."

Insignificance appears to be negative but this is an incomplete truth. The less you invest in the world and the less capable you are, the less you need to do. Power and will are responsibilities. Not to the world but to yourself. And the less you respect your power and will the unhappier you are.

I'm grateful for having a roof over my head. I can only imagine being homeless during the winter in Finland. I'm grateful for my grandmother. She is 94 and won't be here forever. I'm grateful for dialysis. Machines keep me alive.

I'm grateful for today.

The person I am in the future - whether it's tomorrow or ten years from now - is not me. I get one day, one moment. Therefore I am not entitled to the fruits of my labor - it is a gift for that future person.

Do not work for the respect of future others but for the respect of future 'you'.

Let's play a game of Ice or No Ice.
If you guess right you get 10 points and keep standing and if you guess wrong you get no points and face-plant on the ground.

I recommend checking out Barry Schwartz's book on this topic. It's called The Paradox of Choice. It illustrates well the problem of freedom of choice. To paraphrase him directly "while some choice is better than no choice, it doesn't necessarily follow that more choice is better than some choice."

The great magic of limiting the scope of your life, having less things you need and want, is that the brain adapts to it. Once this happens, the dopamine circuitry adapts too and you start gaining pleasure from these simple things. And you know what builds habits? Enjoying the things you do.

For people who are still struggling with the tutorial zone of life, limiting the things you want and need is crucial. Instead of establishing a purpose for your life of "becoming an engineer" you need to think smaller. Decrease the scope. "My purpose for today is taking out the trash."

You don't adopt your best ideal self through subscribing to ideals and living up to them - you rise to the challenges of the present. And it happens from the ground up, through careful moderation of focus and values.

If you are unable to control the basics, you can't move to the next level.

This is all an extremely long-winded way of saying that one needs to increase their ability to focus (yes, even if you have ADHD) and prioritize focusing on your internal states of mind and body.

Give yourself moments during the day when you do literally nothing and just focus on the internal.

Things are not *quite* as simple as this because not all the systems of the body and brain fall under your awareness.

Awareness/focus -> what's deemed "important" by the brain -> strengthens brain circuitry needed for said things -> filtering of stimuli based on the strongest circuitry

Meaning if you meditate you'll start seeing your focus on things as literally meaning your appreciation for those things. Control of your mind, body and ultimately your life is about focus.

Focus dictates reality. What you focus on exists, and everything else gets ignored.

To focus on nice-to-haves you need to get need-to-haves in order.

The imbalance of needs is due to mainly two things - 1. lack of appreciation for the needs and 2. lack of focus on the body's messaging of the needs. And if you meditate, the second reason matters more - first is just a side-effect.

You need to get the body running better first. The mind-body link is strong - so strong that I'd argue the distinction between the two is merely platonic - in reality there is only oneness with complex chains of cause and effect - no "two-ness".

This introduces another layer of complexity here.

My understanding from second-hand, out-of-my-arse conclusions on therapy and clinical psychiatry is that even with really difficult life problems the focus for the therapy is improving the basic needs first. This includes more or less: sleep, diet, fitness and social needs.

The problem is that people living in the modern world have excessive psychological load - being neuro-atypical is just the cherry on top of this vexing psychological cake.

You can't focus on the habit method if you have trouble just getting out of bed and surviving your job.

I do this all the time, both to build good habits and deconstruct bad ones.

It works brilliantly because starting is the hardest part and it's the part that gives you the most psychological stress - which is at the crux of why change is hard. Attitude is everything.

James Clear's Atomic Habits is interesting. One of, if not *the*, top-sold self-help books today.

The logic of Clear's minimal viable change seems solid - figure out the smallest possible action you can take towards the habit and start from there. This makes beginning things as easy as possible.

My favorite thing: pillow - my second favorite thing: blanket.

The brain creates its own reality.

I'm not claiming that the table I'm looking at doesn't exist. I'm merely saying that there is no discernable way to separate what is (noumena) from what appears to be (phenomena).

The brain is a filter and you have control of that filter.

The conceptual self is a construct of everything you focus on. What you focus on is a choice. You choose the conceptual self. Adopting an identity is a choice. Regardless of pain or pleasure, joy or sadness, you choose who you are. The world may victimize you but you choose to be a victim.

The brain will deem the things we focus on more important. The pathways connecting those sensory memories get stronger, the information is more readily accessible. The emotional associations with that subject are easier to trigger. If that subject *was* an emotion, it gets stronger.

The brain and our awareness have an interesting feature and correlation - the more you focus on something, the more you become the target of your focus. Now, you may stare at a table all day but never become flat and four-legged. But the sensory experience of focusing on that table does get intenser

May your road lead you to warm sands.