I was bored as hell, sitting in a hotel room with literally nothingbto do for three days (waiting to get my passport back from visa processing), so I looked up the phone number of someone I used to know before we moved to opposite ends of the country years ago. I ended up getting an invite to a discord, and we now have two nights per week set aside for gaming together. Not just him, but the others on the discord too, so I'm not as socially isolated anymore.

And when there's no gaming going on, just hanging out in VoIP is still nice. I might be baking stuff in blender or perl, while someone else is painting minifigs or planning a D&D campaign. It's not easy having a social life when I'm a family man with four kids, living in the middle of nowhere with no shared interests with anyone nearby. This is my remedy.

My cat decided to live at a neighbor's 3 doors down. One day I thought "I'll invite her to the barbecue party". Six years later, we're married and have a 2 year old boy (and five more cats).

About 15 years ago I decided not to be in a hurry when I’m driving, and also to not get frustrated with any other drivers. I just figured I’m gonna be spending too much time of my life in a car I might as well not be getting upset about it. For aggressive drivers I make up a story about how they have explosive diarrhea or something else urgent to attend to. It has made a profound and permanent improvement to my life. Would recommend to a friend.

Oh, I got a good one. I started leaving earlier and driving slower. It’s way safer and I get great mileage. It’s also more relaxing to not be so worried about making good time.

Started putting powdered fiber in my morning coffee and now I have fantastic poops. I also bought a bidet which is nice too.

Did a sleep study. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about a month ago because of it and got a machine. Now even if I have a short sleep, I feel more rested that I ever did sleeping a full 8 or even 9 hours.

6 years ago: messaging a person on reddit. Tomorrow is our wedding

I got hacked on Facebook (2018), stopped using Instagram (2019), quit Reddit (2023) & Xitter (2025).

Now I have only books (lots of audiobooks), Google Keep (own thoughts and pics), Lemmy (random thoughts), and Bluesky (microblog).

My input and output are much healthier, the people I interact with (when actually people) are nicer, and I generally don't feel doomed.

Well, yes, I realize the world is fucked, fucked up, and fucking crazy. I've reduced by orders of magnitude how toxic it is to my headspace because I'm cutting out the worst of the dreck and engaging with more objectively real information. I'm not in screaming echo chambers populated in the millions. I'm happy if I get 10 responses to a post. Updoots are incidental.

Its like leaving L.A. to settle down in Schitt's Creek.

I made the conscious decision to mask my autism less in private and stand up for my needs more openly.
6 months later my wife left me, telling me she can't take it anymore.

After she had moved out and I realized this was final, a great wave of relief washed over me.
Now I have to pay the rent alone, pay her $1k/month in alimony on top, and somehow still have more money left over than during the marriage, lol.
And I got to keep the cats!

I started doing a tiny little injection of estrogen once a week and it totally changed my life. My productivity is through the roof, my confidence has skyrocketed, I'm grinding like there's no tomorrow and I've never felt better. All the techbros should try it if they want to level up their game. Just 5mg/week, it's basically nothing bro. Try it bro you'll never regret taking estrogen once a week. Took me from 0.5x to 10x overnight.

Left school in Boston. Got a job in Rhode Island. Nine months in and I got bored. Started looking at jobs on Craigslist. Didn't find anything local. Started scrolling down the cities in the right column. Made it alphabetically down to Seattle. Never been.

Got the job, moved.

Lived here for 15 years. Bought a house, met my wife. Found a place where I feel like I always belonged.

joined mastodon back in 2017

it made me the person i am today, in every way

it was a critical moment in my gender identity journey and finding the place definitely steered me in the right direction

over the years i've escaped my abusive family and came to seattle thanks to fedi, met my best friend and joyfriend both through fedi, and formed a strong sense of community on the servers i host there

i was even in a book about fedi thanks to the work i've done!!!

i owe everything good in my life presently to the fediverse 🥹

At some point my struggle with the bible culminated in me making my own conclusion away from anyone else: I am done with this god.

The following years I reclaimed my life.

https://leisureguy.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/rcaf_xbx_5bx_exercise_plans_text.pdf

15 minute a day exercise program.

When I rolled my character on that WoW server, I didn't expect to move so far from home and spend the rest of my life with someone I'd meet online.

I started putting bananas in the fridges crisper drawer. They keep a heck of a lot longer in there. It's almost as if that's what a fridge is meant for... :O

Now I can buy 14 bananas and they'll be good for weeks.

I started some kind of anime themed browser game one day with the intent of wanting to see what kind of people would play such weeb trash.

Turns out the kind of people to play that were loyal friends to stay in touch with for over a decade and my future wife, too!

Went sober.

For me it was a small change. I was having a drink here and there, maximum 3 beers a night. I just found that it made me feel like shit the next morning even after having one, and I no longer enjoyed the feeling of even a mild buzz. There was also a huge relief at not having to figure out which situation to drink in or not. Do I have a drink at this birthday party? After a hard day? While barbecuing? If I am just sober the answer is always no, so it eliminates one choice.

I live in a small city, the kind there is not much to do but go out to eat. But i started joining clubs with specific interest, membership fees are pretty minimal most of them, and now there is always something interesting to do.

I joined a random Deep Rock Galactic lobby once. Usually I host them so it was odd for me join one idk why I even did that. Ended up becoming friends with one of the people in there and they're one of the best most caring people I know. We talk almost every day now

joined an "adult band program" at a music school.

after being vaguely musically inclined since early childhood, 24 years of playing bass, 20 years guitar, six years seriously on keyboards, I've only ever really played by myself along to music that I like.

after a few months rehearsing with the group weekly and taking weekly keyboard lessons, I played four songs on keyboard on stage at a bar with the group. Feels like a monumental leap forward for me. I'm still basically just covering other peoples' music, but now with others and having a blast doing it. This next round I'm also doing a few songs on bass on top of doing some songs on keys.

And now one of the folks from that group invited me to join his band outside of the music school.

Lines up so well with losing my job and having a lot more free time. Keeps me feeling good about myself, gives me stuff to look forward to. And helps me not just wallow in grief and avoidance after our beloved dog of 12 years died late last year (been almost six months and I still cry almost every night thinking about him).

Can't recommend this "adult band program" sorta thing enough if you got some ability with a guitar, bass, synth, drums, or vocals! I'm doing it through a local School Of Rock franchise but there's other places that do the same sorta thing

Getting a computer, back when that was not a thing (early 80s). Changed so many things that wouldn't have happened without it.

Finally said yes when a coworker kept asking if I'd like to sub on her co-ed low level team.

A dozen years later, I'm in better shape than ever, have made a whole bunch of great new friends from all walks of life and really look forward to most days. (I'm a glutton, so I play 3 times a week, so by definition almost half my nights are amazing.)

Started taking migraine meds. Instead of a three-day incapacitating pounder, I get an occasional throbbing headache - not even on the scale of a migraine.

I went to Critical Mass even though I was tired.

Set in motion meeting my wife.

Swapped drinking coffee for matcha. Energy levels are way more balanced now

So I've had two things that kinda go hand in hand that have really made a big improvement in my quality of life:

1. I started working out. During the pandemic lockdowns I picked up a basic fitness routine called Hybrid Calisthenics (they no longer list the basic 5 day routine I was doing but still brilliant explainers on that site for starting a new routine!), and went from struggling to lift 50lbs to being able to perform my first pullups ever. I changed jobs and lost my time for workouts but then I went and took my old bike for a tuneup to start riding it again with the goal of biking my kids to/from school and immediately realized how out of shape I was, so that became my new goal (and I rapidly fell in love with cycling) then I saw an ad for a 4th of July 5k and went "oh that's like a quarter of how far I ride my bike I should totally do that!" And now I run 5ks too! The old me could never do that and would never have dreamed of doing any of these things but now I have races to look forwards to!

2. I've started a long term process of reducing my screen time. I've noticed how no matter what I'm doing with screens it just isn't making me happy and everything off screen gets neglected. So I've started focusing more on trying to pick up more hobbies to do with my hands. I've started building a model railroad, I've been reading a ton of books (I think about a couple dozen books or more in just the last 12 months) and not spending as much time soaking in news and doomer takes on the internet has greatly helped me be a much happier and more realistic person. This one's an ongoing struggle though. The screens are right there and offer so much momentary entertainment (such is why I'm typing this right now) and doing stuff like drawing is really hard as my hands struggle to draw what I have in my head since I haven't really drawn in a long time. My ultimate goal is a healthy balance of screen and non-screen time during my free time

Oh and a bonus item that I didn't even think of initially: going back to college. A few years ago I decided to go back to college at the worst possible time. I had a baby on the way and was working full time, but I made it work. Even when my wife had to quit her job and I was the sole income while going to school full time, I threw all of my irons into the fire, pumped the bellows as hard as they'd go and worked myself to the brink of burnout and got a degree, immediately landed a job paying twice what I was making before with way better benefits and coworkers, a super chill work environment and through an insane series of events I now only work about 30 hours a week fully remotely and make enough money that not only can my wife be a stay at home mom but I could afford to go on my first international trip last month and have 2 more (much smaller in scope!) trips planned for this year still. I seriously never thought I'd be able to realistically afford intercontinental travel before, and now it might well be a thing we do every year or two!

After unsuccessfully trying different budget managers over the years, I payed a considerable (at the time) amount for one that uses the envelope system (YNAB) and that is exactly the kind that works for me. Before that I always lived paycheck to paycheck, never had any money left and constantly ran into trouble. Now I have peace of mind with everything planned out and thinking a year or more ahead instead of in the moment.