#we humans tend to jump to extremes even though things are far more nuanced and complex

[idiosyncraticrednebula]

Can people stop the "Don't call yourself a feminist if-" crap? Y'all still believe in the blatant lies of that movement and ideology?

[amostimprobabledream]

And He Walks With Flames (Dabi x Reader) -Part Three

The old man is still talking, his voice flattening to a self-important drone, but Dabi isn’t listening.

He tends to pick and choose when he tuned into the miserable old fuck's ramblings, since he knew most of it would amount to nothing in the end. It would soon all be ashes. Since he'd been brought to this sterile shithole, he'd entertained himself with fantasies of exactly how he was going to kill the old man and those crawling little assistants of his - and oh, didn't Dabi have so many options to choose from? The thought makes his fingers twitch with excitement, like they are flexing of their own accord in anticipation of the event.

But that, too, has eventually gotten boring. That was something they didn't often mention about captivity – its fucking tedious whenever you don't have humans in white coats poking at you or running their little tests with their precious machines. If Dabi wasn’t keenly aware of how temporary this all was, and since he knows he’s too powerful for them to really be able to hurt him, he probably would have lost it a long time ago. He never did take too kindly to being…restrained.

So imagine his joy, his fucking glee, when the idiot humans had actually done as he demanded and brought you here to him, like a lamb to the slaughter. Oh, Dabi may be behind a barrier and have those magitech guns pointed at his head, just waiting for an excuse to open fire, but that doesn’t matter. Just as long as he can see you again, he was prepared to tolerate doing so with restrictions in place.

For now.

You stood there, gazing up at him with a dark scowl forming on your pretty little face at the pet name, just as he'd suspected you would. Yet it felt quite natural to him, wrapping around you in a veil of false intimacy he knew would make you squirm.

The very fact he wasn't supposed to have even laid eyes on someone like you made it all the more hilarious to Dabi that he'd been able to demand your presence here before him, all with the threat of sinking back into his unresponsive state if not properly indulged. Even behind this barrier and with all the little enchantments cast on the place, he held plenty of sway. Getting humans to dance to his tune was something he never tired of doing. Their false sense of superiority over him would be their undoing.

"Don't call me that." you snap at him in a bitchy tone, narrowing your eyes a fraction. He wonders if that’s supposed to be intimidating.

"Mm? You don't like that?" Dabi asks in a mock-apologetic tone, his smile nothing less than scornful as he tilts his head. "What should I call you? Angel? Baby? Honey? I'm all ears, princess."

You open your mouth to bite back at him and he wants to laugh - you're clearly not accustomed to being spoken to like that and it only makes him want to do it more. Such a spoiled little thing. Getting you all huffy and flustered, such a sharp contrast to your smart, academic clothing and attempts at maintaining a detached demeanour, is the best entertainment he's had in weeks. You’re so damn cute when you’re annoyed.

"We brought the girl as you asked, demon," interrupts Fuji, and Dabi feels a vein of irritation puncture his pleasure at teasing you. He's had enough of the Director's voice to last him a lifetime, which is unfortunate since the old fuck seems disinclined to shut his mouth any time soon - he does like to hear himself talk. "Now will you co-operate with us?"

"You really are interested in me, aren't you?" Dabi hums, tail swaying laconically behind him. "How flattering. Or...could it be you're hamstrung by your lack of options? Hmm? Seems like I'm the only demon you've got in here. How pitiful."

"That's awfully confident talk, considering you're the one currently being held captive." Director Fuji replies casually, and Dabi snorts softly but with derision. "And here I thought demons could sense one another - either this facility is better fortified than I had thought, or you're overestimating your powers."

"Perhaps." Dabi replies lazily, as if this is of no concern to him.

You bite your lip as you watch this exchange.

You had expected Dabi to fly into a rage at that. Weren't demons supposed to be famously volatile? Either he's unusually composed for his species, or the ancient depictions of demons have a rather more extreme point of view than previously thought. Then again, no doubt Dabi knows that excessively aggressive behaviour on his part will result in some pretty painful magical retaliation and doesn't care to risk it, or he just doesn't think the Director is worthy of his rage. And no doubt the humans who used to fight demons in the history books would certainly see them far more monstrous than the detached viewpoint of a scholar who has likely never even seen one.

Yet even with all these safety measures, you cannot help but feel uneasy with Director Fuji casually divulging this information to Dabi. Knowing that he has potential allies somewhere in the building may well encourage him to act out, maybe even mount an escape attempt. From what Father has said, of all the demon specimens the facility has managed to acquire, Dabi is the anomaly. Is it because he's the strongest of all of them, or merely the most human-like? For all you know, there could be a horde of the terrifying, red-skinned beings depicted in your textbooks chained up in the basement. The thought makes a shiver crawl down your spine.

Dabi’s eyes turn back to yours and you stiffen.

“Why did you want me here?” you say, deciding to cut him off before something else obnoxious spills from his mouth, which seems to be an occupational hazard when it comes to this guy. “What’s the point?”

Dabi shrugs elegantly, tail flicking.

“Why not? You weren’t supposed to be in here at all, were you? Yet in you marched like you had every right. It made me curious. Plus, it’s nice to see a decent pair of tits around here.”

You know he expects you to squawk and flounce out in a huff, so you stays rooted to the spot, still scowling at him. The urge to cover your chest is strong, but you manage to overpower it, aware of how still the room has gone. It’s like only you and Dabi exist, and the thought is both frightening and oddly exhilarating – among all these scientists and supposed brilliant minds, you’re the only one he cares to speak to. He answered Dr. Fuji’s questions, yes, but he barely even looked at him. You’re the one he directly spoke to. That gives you some modicum of power, even if you’re not sure how best to use it just yet. “You don’t frighten me, demon.” You make sure to tell him calmly.

Dabi quirks an eyebrow at that.

“Oh?”

The word is loaded with tension, a little hiss on the syllable that makes you shiver, but you know he can’t do anything to you in his cage. So, you tilt your head back and offer him a bland, beatific smile.

“Sure, you might have some strong demon magic. That’s par the course for demons as humanoid-looking as you. I know quite a bit about demonology, you see. Not like these scientists with their tests and machines, but in other ways. It’s an interesting subject, and one you interrupted me from by making me come here with some pathetic attempts to get under my skin.”

You give a shrug.

“But you’ve overplayed your hand. Now everyone here knows you can speak and understand everything they say. No more treating you with kid gloves, so I guess that means there’s a lot more tests coming your way now. But really, how powerful can you be?”

Your smile widens into a smirk as you go in for the kill. He wanted you to come here? Then that was exactly what he’d get – you weren’t some trembling coward who would stand there like a deer in headlights just because a big bad demon spoke to you. You were your mother’s daughter, after all.

“After all, you’re the one behind bars.”

There’s silence. A silence that blankets the lab like snow, and Dabi’s smile remains in place, but his eyes are cold and piercing as they stare at you. You feel tingles erupting through your body, like you’ve narrowly avoided being bitten by a wolf and are only inches away from its jaw still. One of the assistant researchers is outright staring at you, open-mouthed, like you’ve suddenly sprouted a tail, or your skin has turned blue or something else miraculous and inexplicable.

"Director, we'll be taking our leave now." Father says beside you, making you jump.

To be honest, you had completely forgotten he was there. Evidently, he isn’t comfortable with the way the demon behind bars is looking at you either, even if you think it’s a little late for that. Still, he’s glaring at his boss with an unusually fierce look of disapproval on his face.

"Our part in this is over."

"Hmm? Oh, yes, yes, fine." Director Fuji says, not even glancing at the pair of you, far too excited that he’s gotten the response he wanted from Dabi to care. "You may leave."

Relief washes over you and you risk a grateful glance at Father. Perhaps he feels bad that his forgetfulness caused this in the first place, and it's spurred him to go against the Director's whims for once, but he's right, you hardly need to be here now that Dabi is apparently feeling conversational and you're only too happy to get back out into the afternoon air.

The rush of relief doesn't last long, though, and you mourn its absence because, as you turn to go, a voice calls out to you, lashing around you like a lasso. Despite yourself, perhaps because you don't want it to look like Dabi frightens you - don't want to admit he does - you look back.

Those eyes. Whenever you look at Dabi you can see he's powerful, but you don't spend a lot of time thinking about the various forms power can take, the nuances of it. But when your gaze meets his, you feel like you've been pulled under by a whirlpool. Everything around you, the lab, the director, your father, all of it disappears and only he remains. Only he is what matters. That look burns everything else away, whispering promises to you that you don't want to hear.

So why are you listening?

"I'll be seeing you again soon, sweetheart." Dabi says in a low voice, like it's meant exclusively for you. "Real soon."

Anger unfurls inside you like a flower. Who does this…specimen think he is? He certainly can talk big, but the reality isn't looking so good for him - poked and prodded at by plenty of magically gifted humans and a container built specifically to hold creatures like him. The only reason he got his way today is because the Director couldn't help but indulge his scientific curiosity. But he’s an arrogant bastard to assume he'll be indulged a second time.

That thought in your mind, you sneer and flick your hair back.

"Don't count on it, demon."

Is it your imagination, or did a flicker of something cross his face when he took note of your refusal to call him by name? Maybe you only saw what you wanted to see, but either way it makes you feel a little better, to know something you said bothered him.

You stride out of the lab, knowing he's watching you, that he has no choice but to stand there and watch you disappear from his sight, without knowing if you'll return or not now that the scientists have finally gotten him to speak. He can hardly pretend not to understand them now.

~

Mother was right.

Anybody who is anybody seems to have shown up to the fundraiser tonight.

You smooth down the skirt of your dress, vaguely aware of your palms being a bit on the damp side. It’s not just the amount of people in the room, either - the entire room feels stiflingly humid and you’re glad somebody thought to open the doors to the balcony.

Ribbons of gold are hanging from the ceiling, attached to dozens of balloons. The tables are also draped in gold-coloured tablecloths and everywhere seems to have been polished to within an inch of its life. The dinner won’t start for a while yet and you didn’t eat anything before hand, worried about spilling it or your stomach sticking out unflatteringly. So, you remind yourself to take it easy on the champagne as you snatch up a flute of it from a passing waiter. Still, the drink does taste good as it goes down, bubbles fizzing on your tongue. You press your fingers to your lips with a little smile.

You hear your name being called and glance over to see a figure manoeuvring through the crowd towards you and your smile morphs into a grin.

“Momo!”

She looks ravishing, of course. She always does, in a silver gown that sparkles like a diamond. Her jewellery is simple and understated, but you can tell from a glance that it’s expensive. It’s odd to see her without her trademark ponytail, but it looks great on her. You hate yourself for it, but you can’t help but instantly compare yourself, your clothes, your hair, your style, to hers and wonder how you measure up. You suspect you may be lacking.

You do your best to push those thoughts away – you’re Momo’s friend and you shouldn’t view her looking amazing as some kind of failing on your end. Anyway, it wouldn’t do to get all maudlin right now, not when you have so many people to talk to and things to see.

“You look amazing!” you tell her, giving her a hug. “Is that dress new?”

“Oh…sort of,” Momo shrugs, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, beaming shyly at you. Ah, so she used her magic to make it, then. Usually, Momo buys her clothing like everyone else – she’s certainly rich enough to afford it. But every once in a while, she’ll use her magic to create an outfit and it looks like that’s the case tonight. It’s good to know Momo sees this event as important to, that you and Mother aren’t just making a big deal out of nothing. “You look great too, I’ve always liked that necklace on you.”

You touch it, pleased, but you can’t help give her a playful nudge.

“And of course, I bet your parents are looking forward to the auction, right? They could probably afford to buy every lot here, if they wanted to.”

“Don’t be silly!” Momo replies, but she’s giggling. “Though mother did hear about some sort of rare lamp that might have belonged to a djinn that she was fascinated about. And I’m sure there are other things that would be so useful for our magical studies, I hope there are some representatives of the academy here who can participate in the bidding!”

You hadn’t even thought of that – trust the genius Momo to be thinking about the potential of the academy getting their hands on some magical oddities.

“That’s a good point. I’m sure we’ll run into a professor or two,” you say, risking another sip of your champagne. “They party hard, these intellectual types.”

Momo laughs again, and you do too, the mental image of Professor Nedzu getting drunk a pretty hilarious one. You don’t even know if he can drink, but maybe tonight you’ll find out for sure-

“Look!” Momo suddenly whispers.

You hear gasps near the entrance to the building and turn around, eyes widening when you realise who has just walked in. Your mouth falls open.

“It’s him.”

The rumours were true. You don’t know how Mother pulled it off, but when some of the crowd parts, you spot the unmistakable red-and-white head of Prince Shouto Todoroki.

Thought it’s strange for the youngest child to be the heir to the throne, you can admit that there’s an aura to him, a certain stoic regalness to his features. It’s common knowledge that of King Enji’s children, only Prince Shouto is able to use both fire and ice magic, the perfect combination of elements, and it is this reason that he is considered the ‘true heir’. What Princess Fuyumi and Prince Natsuo’s opinions are on being passed over for their supposedly weak magical ability has never been discussed publicly, and the less said of Queen Rei (or ‘the Mad Queen’, as some circles call her in whispers), the better. You did hear a rumour once about someone else. A firstborn Prince who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, but you’ve never put much thought into it. How can a Prince just go missing? Wouldn’t people be looking for him if that were the case? It just seems too farfetched to be true.

“Should we go talk to him?” you blurt out without thinking, yet the idea of inconveniencing the prince in any way fills you with dread.

“Well…” Momo says, also glancing Prince Shouto’s way, and you know it’s not a trick of the light that her cheeks hold the faintest hint of a blush. “Perhaps later, when he isn’t busy? We wouldn’t want to be rude and interrupt him when he’s speaking with important people…”

Right. You wouldn’t want to be rude.

Still, excitement fizzes through you veins as reality hits you full force. You’d been viewing this evening as having a chat with a bunch of stuffy old academics older than your father, but now you’re beginning to understand why Mother had been so insistent on you dressing up and brushing up on conversational topics. Not that you’re out to catch yourself a husband or anything – you’re way too interested in your academic career and honing your magic for that – but that doesn’t mean you’re not interested in doing other things. Especially with people who look like Prince Shouto.

“Momo!” calls a voice, and you make a face. Ugh.

“Oh, it’s Iida and his family!” Momo says, glancing at you, knowing your distaste for your classmate very well. He’s just so pompous and annoying and he always makes lectures drag on far longer than they need to by asking unnecessary questions. “I’ll just go say hello, okay?”

You nod, knowing that a family as well-connected as Momo Yaoyozoru’s means she’s probably going to have to say hello to a lot of people tonight.

“No problem, I’ll catch up to you later.”

She nods at you, a grateful smile on her face, before she moves over to speak to what looks like Iida’s older brother, Tensei. You quickly slip away before the younger brother can spot you, which is easy enough with this many people here. You mill around the room, taking another sip from your champagne. You feel a bit like an actress playing a role, perhaps ‘girl at the party’. As you walk, you pass by a mirror and glance at it, making sure you haven’t smudged your make-up or something.

You have to admit, the dress you’re wearing looks good on you. You found it in the back of your wardrobe after seemingly throwing everything else you own onto your bed. But the searing shade of blue complements your skin tone well, and the style of the dress flatters your figure without being too revealing. You’ve seen a couple of people glance your way, and it feels nice when it’s in a place as wonderful as this. And it’s only for tonight, so there’s no pressure on you to look like this every evening.

Soon the auction for magical artefacts will start, though you’re not planning on buying anything – your parents might not be struggling to make ends meet, but you have student loans to think about. Plus, there’s no way you could afford any of them, especially not with the lords and ladies here when they want something.

As you move further into the hallway, you notice there seem to be stalls and tables, probably merchants flogging their wares. Curious, you move to inspect them. Strange objects lie on a bed of black velvet, some of it recognisable to you, others you’ve never even heard of. The intellectual in you is dying to know more. “Are you enjoying the party?”

You glance up at a voice.

A man, you’d guess he’s in his mid-thirties or so, is watching you from a stall right at the end of the hallway. It’s a bit bigger than the others and you suddenly realise he’s actually sitting in front of a tent of some sort.

“I am, yes,” you reply, moving a little closer to have a look at what he might be selling – just because you have no intention in participating in the auction doesn’t mean you won’t buy anything. “Are you?”

The man smiles and there’s something about him…it’s hard to explain, but you’re both curious and wary. Like every word you’re saying to him is being weighed and measured for every possible meaning, even ones you didn’t intend. Yet he doesn’t look like a merchant trying to sell his wares to rich patrons. There’s something else going on here, and you want to know more.

“I am,” you say, making your tone light and pleasant as you look over the items on the table in front of you. One of them is a crystal ball, and it seems to be the real deal, not one of those knockoffs you sometimes see. “What is it that you’re selling here?”

“I’m a fortune teller of sorts,” the man replies, still wearing that charming smile. “I tell people what may lie ahead. Though I should say for clarity purposes that it is not an exact science.”

“Oh, Tarot cards?” you say, delighted. “I’ve never had my cards read before. Are you still offering readings?”

It might seem a little bit of a strange thing to indulge in at a party, but until you can reunite with Momo, you’re on your own and the auction doesn’t start for a little while yet. Though you know you were invited here, it’s still a little intimidating to walk around among such giants in their respective fields. Especially in such an outfit as the one you’re wearing – usually you dress nicely but comfortably, since you spend most of your time either studying, attending lectures or occasionally going out with your friends. Nobody needs to wear high heels while they’re listening to the origin of magic, for example.

Anyway, you’ve always wanted to do this, why waste the opportunity?

“Certainly,” the fortune teller says, standing up and gesturing. “Please, come inside. I find atmosphere is rather important to properly do a reading and it’s far too noisy out here for appropriate mystique.”

You laugh slightly at that and follow him inside the tent. It’s much bigger inside than it is on the outside – you presume some sort of illusion spell is at work, or perhaps the tent itself is enchanted. It’s dark in here, candles sitting all around the perimeter of the tent. Normally you’d be wary of that being a fire hazard, but looking closer, the flames have an unnaturally white tint to them instead of the usual cheerful yellow, so you assume they’re enchanted to not burn in case of accidents. Anyway, you know enough magic to conjure water if there is one.

“Let’s do this at the table,” the fortune teller says, sitting down and gesturing to the chair opposite. “Would you care for some herbal tea?”

“Oh, no thank you,” you say, relieved to have a good excuse to refuse, holding up your champagne flute. “I don’t think herbal tea and champagne mix.”

He chuckles, bowing his head in acknowledgement.

“I suppose not.”

You sit down opposite the fortune teller, breathing in the fug of incense, a pleasant, slightly spicy smell lingering in the air. The table is covered with a purple cloth, and you notice there are various posters and tapestries covering the walls of the tent, though the lighting isn’t bright enough to make them out well.

You slide over some coins, uncertain of the amount, but your guess is either accurate or the fortune teller judges it fair, because he accepts them with a small smile and a nod but doesn’t comment any further. Instead, he reaches for a black pouch sitting on the table and begins to shuffle the cards in elegant hands, and you notice he’s wearing a ring, a dark pink gemstone winking at you in the candlelight as his hand moves.

He’s right about atmosphere, there’s an ambience here that would have been lost if you had sat down for the reading outside in the loud, crowded, white and gold decorated hallway. In here, in the dark, a secretive hush falls over you and the fortune teller that makes you wriggle in anticipation in your seat. This is the kind of place that goes beyond magical, like something truly mystical could happen here, even if you’re aware that this is just a bit of fun, nothing more. But you don’t want to offend him by not taking it seriously.

He smiles, and spreads the cards across the table, face down. The pattern on the back is pretty, black and silver and faintly gleaming in the dim. The flames atop the candles around the tent flicker, as if they want to lean in to listen to what’s about to unfold. The fortune teller looks at you and his eyes hold yours.

“Shall we begin?”

[andrewdburton]

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

She and I enjoy sharing funny animal videos with each other (from subreddits like /r/animalsbeinggenisuses, /r/happycowgifs, and /r/petthedamndog). Kim dives deep into /r/mapporn and /r/documentaries. I read about comics and computer games and financial independence.

But here's the thing. After browsing Reddit for thirty minutes or an hour, I'm left feeling unsatisfied. In fact, I'm often in a bad mood. After browsing Reddit, I have a negative attitude. My view of the world has deteriorated. Why? Because for all the fun and interesting things on Reddit, it's also filled with a bunch of crap.

You see, I also subscribe to /r/idiotsincars and /r/publicfreakout and /r/choosingbeggars — and dozens more like these. These subreddits highlight the worst in human behavior. And while viewing one or two posts from forums like these can be entertaining and/or interesting, consuming mass quantities of this stuff leaves me feeling dirty. (Plus, there's the Reddit comments which tend to be juvenile, dogmatic, and myopic. Reddit comments are so bad that Kim refuses to read them.)

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

I've been thinking about his concept a lot lately. Behind the scenes, I've been making many small, subtle changes to my environment and daily routine. My aim is to decrease my depression and anxiety by removing people, things, and experiences that are net negatives and replacing them with people, things, and experiences that are net positives.

What Do I Mean by “Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

These concepts are simple to understand when we're talking about things are easily quantifiable. In sports, for instance, you can crunch numbers to determine whether an individual player helps or hurts her team when she's on the field. In personal finance, you can track stats in order to see which habits increase your net worth and which cause it to drop. The same is true with fitness or any other activity that can be measured.

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

The fundamental problem, of course, is that in most cases we don't have a way to quantify this stuff. How can you tell whether a hobby is a net negative or a net positive? How do you quantify the good and the bad of social media? Of computer games? Of your career? Of your relationships?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Still, I think most of the time — if we're honest with ourselves — we can tell whether something is helping or hindering us. Does browsing Reddit make me a better person? Does it make me feel better? Does it keep me better informed? No, not really. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. I may not be able to prove this with numbers (or any other objective measure) but I can sense it. So can you.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

There's another problem that arises when trying to evaluate whether something is harmful or beneficial to your well-being. Few things are 100% good or 100% bad. Most have a mix of positive and negative elements.

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Watching television is a mindless passive activity. It can be a complete waste of time. That said, TV can also be an entertaining escape — or a great source of information. Plus, TV can provide a shared experience that sparks conversation with family and friends.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

If we could quantify the people and objects and experiences in your life, most would probably have “scores” close to zero — close to “break even” — but a few of these scores would be extremely positive or extremely negative.

Looking at my life, some of my habits and possessions are clearly detrimental. Others are clearly beneficial. In many cases, it's easy to identify what should stay and what should go. Candy and potato chips? Talk radio? News media? These are all clearly negative and have no place in my life. Exercise? Time with friends? Reading? The music of Taylor Swift? These are all clearly positive and I want more of them.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

There is no doubt that alcohol relaxes me. By two o'clock every afternoon, I've become tense and anxious. I can eliminate this anxiety by drinking a couple of beers. For a long time, that's what I did. That's a positive side of consuming beer.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

Ultimately, I decided that if I were to quantify alcohol's effects on my life, the negatives would far outweigh the positives, so I've given it up for now. (I stopped drinking on Independence Day and my goal is to go a year without alcohol. Or a year drinking as little of the stuff as possible.)

But what about pot? Marijuana is legal here in Oregon. During my fifty years on Earth, I've had some exposure to pot but not a lot. (Mostly I've used it as a sleep aid.) Over the past two months, though, I've been experimenting with it as a replacement for alcohol, and I can see that it does offer some advantages. But I've come to believe that pot too is a net negative for me.

No, pot doesn't contain calories. No, it doesn't give me a hangover the next day. No, it doesn't cost an arm an a leg. But pot does make me dumb — both in the present and the future. It saps my motivation. And there doesn't seem to be a middle ground with it. I can drink a couple of beers and enjoy a gentle, pleasant buzz. When I consume pot, it's all or nothing and I don't like that.

Worse, sometimes pot makes me paranoid. When that happens, it sucks. Plus, just as alcohol helps with short-term anxiety while exacerbating long-term anxiety, pot seems to help with short-term depression while increasing long-term depression. Yikes!

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

For more than a decade now, I've been active on Facebook. I like what Facebook used to be. It was a way for me to stay connected with my friends, to see updates on their kids and pets and travel and careers. More to the point, it was (and is) a way for me to share what's going on in my life. (The real reason my personal blog died? Facebook. I use my Facebook feed as a personal blog.)

Over the past five years, however, the platform has changed. People increasingly use Facebook as a place to espouse their political beliefs. (Why? Why? Why? Why? Has anyone ever been swayed by a political post on Facebook? Ever?) Ads on the platform are invasive and annoying. And the Facebook algorithms seem hell-bent on showing me posts from the same people over and over and over again. (YouTube does the same thing and it drives me nuts.)

Just as I'm considering altering my relationship with Reddit and with alcohol, I'm also considering a change to how I use Facebook because more and more, I feel like it's a net negative in my life. And the more time that passes, the greater a net negative Facebook becomes.

To me, it's easier to evaluate Twitter. Twitter is a huge net negative. There's no room for nuance on Twitter. There's too much noise. The platform is filled with all of the bad things about social media (brigading, bullying, jumping to conclusions, etc.) and none of the good things. So, I mostly avoid the place.

For somebody like me, someone who believes that people are generally good and that the world is a complicated place filled with nuance, social media is deeply problematic. It's not inherently bad — I can envision useful, productive social-media platforms — but the way the major players have opted to implement their functionality fosters groupthink, negativity, and the spread of misinformation.

There's another huge problem with social media, including Reddit. It's killing my attention span. Pre-Facebook — meaning before I joined in October 2007 — I engaged in a lot of activities that required deep focus. I read novels and non-fiction for pleasure. I wrote long articles. I created websites and even wrote rudimentary computer programs to improve my life.

Today, my attention span is practically zero. It's tough for me to sit through a 23-minute sitcom let alone an entire movie. I can muster the focus to read a blog post, but an entire book? Well, that's difficult. If I do sit down to read a book, I become restless after only ten or twenty minutes. I have no patience.

I believe this problem is directly tied to how much time I spend on social media. Social media has conditioned me to have a short attention span, and that's a huge negative in my life. I crave the capacity to dive deep once more.

Keeping the Net Positives

As long-time readers know, I'm a fan of the KonMari method of cleaning and organizing. Marie Kondo argues that you should buy, own, and keep only those things that “spark joy” in your life. Each of your possessions should be a treasure.

What she's really asking people to do is to examine their belongings to determine whether they're net positives or net negatives. A shirt that “sparks joy” — such as Jerry Seinfeld's “Golden Boy”, say — is a net positive in your life, and you should keep it.

What I've been doing for the past couple of months is evaluating everything in my life to find what sparks joy and, conversely, what deepens despair. I want more of the former and less of the latter. (Plenty of things are neutral, of course. My toothbrush neither sparks joy nor deepens despair but it is something I choose to keep.)

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

Develop awareness of how people, things, and experiences affect me. I write a lot about mindful spending. Too many people spend without thinking. I want them to be more deliberate about how they use their money. Well, the same idea applies to how we use our time and our energy. I want to pay attention to which of my habits make me feel good and which make feel bad. I want to notice which of my possessions make my life better and which make it worse.

Change my relationship with the problematic items and behaviors. Is it possible to reduce or minimize the negative elements and/or increase the positive elements? Reddit is a great example. If some subreddits bring joy to my life and others make me feel bad, then the obvious solution is to stop reading the forums that contribute to the negative energy. On Facebook, I could stop following the folks who insist on using it as a platform for espousing political beliefs and/or complaining.

Seek a replacement that sparks joy instead of deepening despair. I use alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with anxiety and depression. I tried to replace beer with pot, but that presented its own set of problems. Next, I'm going to try to explore meditation. If that doesn't work, I'll continue searching for something that will help — without bringing on a bunch of baggage.

Accentuate the positive! There's so much that I love about my life but too often I get distracted by the bad stuff. That's dumb. My thought is that if I can devote more time and attention to the good stuff, that'll naturally crowd out the negative. Right? Right?

Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

Over the next few months, I'll try to answer these questions (and more!) as I explore which aspects of my life are net negatives and which are net positives. Fortunately, most of this process is fun. I enjoy it. The tough part comes when I have to decide how to address the things that are both good and bad. Then the decisions become much more difficult…

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[andrewdburton]

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

She and I enjoy sharing funny animal videos with each other (from subreddits like /r/animalsbeinggenisuses, /r/happycowgifs, and /r/petthedamndog). Kim dives deep into /r/mapporn and /r/documentaries. I read about comics and computer games and financial independence.

But here's the thing. After browsing Reddit for thirty minutes or an hour, I'm left feeling unsatisfied. In fact, I'm often in a bad mood. After browsing Reddit, I have a negative attitude. My view of the world has deteriorated. Why? Because for all the fun and interesting things on Reddit, it's also filled with a bunch of crap.

You see, I also subscribe to /r/idiotsincars and /r/publicfreakout and /r/choosingbeggars — and dozens more like these. These subreddits highlight the worst in human behavior. And while viewing one or two posts from forums like these can be entertaining and/or interesting, consuming mass quantities of this stuff leaves me feeling dirty. (Plus, there's the Reddit comments which tend to be juvenile, dogmatic, and myopic. Reddit comments are so bad that Kim refuses to read them.)

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

I've been thinking about his concept a lot lately. Behind the scenes, I've been making many small, subtle changes to my environment and daily routine. My aim is to decrease my depression and anxiety by removing people, things, and experiences that are net negatives and replacing them with people, things, and experiences that are net positives.

What Do I Mean by “Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

These concepts are simple to understand when we're talking about things are easily quantifiable. In sports, for instance, you can crunch numbers to determine whether an individual player helps or hurts her team when she's on the field. In personal finance, you can track stats in order to see which habits increase your net worth and which cause it to drop. The same is true with fitness or any other activity that can be measured.

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

The fundamental problem, of course, is that in most cases we don't have a way to quantify this stuff. How can you tell whether a hobby is a net negative or a net positive? How do you quantify the good and the bad of social media? Of computer games? Of your career? Of your relationships?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Still, I think most of the time — if we're honest with ourselves — we can tell whether something is helping or hindering us. Does browsing Reddit make me a better person? Does it make me feel better? Does it keep me better informed? No, not really. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. I may not be able to prove this with numbers (or any other objective measure) but I can sense it. So can you.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

There's another problem that arises when trying to evaluate whether something is harmful or beneficial to your well-being. Few things are 100% good or 100% bad. Most have a mix of positive and negative elements.

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Watching television is a mindless passive activity. It can be a complete waste of time. That said, TV can also be an entertaining escape — or a great source of information. Plus, TV can provide a shared experience that sparks conversation with family and friends.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

If we could quantify the people and objects and experiences in your life, most would probably have “scores” close to zero — close to “break even” — but a few of these scores would be extremely positive or extremely negative.

Looking at my life, some of my habits and possessions are clearly detrimental. Others are clearly beneficial. In many cases, it's easy to identify what should stay and what should go. Candy and potato chips? Talk radio? News media? These are all clearly negative and have no place in my life. Exercise? Time with friends? Reading? The music of Taylor Swift? These are all clearly positive and I want more of them.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

There is no doubt that alcohol relaxes me. By two o'clock every afternoon, I've become tense and anxious. I can eliminate this anxiety by drinking a couple of beers. For a long time, that's what I did. That's a positive side of consuming beer.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

Ultimately, I decided that if I were to quantify alcohol's effects on my life, the negatives would far outweigh the positives, so I've given it up for now. (I stopped drinking on Independence Day and my goal is to go a year without alcohol. Or a year drinking as little of the stuff as possible.)

But what about pot? Marijuana is legal here in Oregon. During my fifty years on Earth, I've had some exposure to pot but not a lot. (Mostly I've used it as a sleep aid.) Over the past two months, though, I've been experimenting with it as a replacement for alcohol, and I can see that it does offer some advantages. But I've come to believe that pot too is a net negative for me.

No, pot doesn't contain calories. No, it doesn't give me a hangover the next day. No, it doesn't cost an arm an a leg. But pot does make me dumb — both in the present and the future. It saps my motivation. And there doesn't seem to be a middle ground with it. I can drink a couple of beers and enjoy a gentle, pleasant buzz. When I consume pot, it's all or nothing and I don't like that.

Worse, sometimes pot makes me paranoid. When that happens, it sucks. Plus, just as alcohol helps with short-term anxiety while exacerbating long-term anxiety, pot seems to help with short-term depression while increasing long-term depression. Yikes!

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

For more than a decade now, I've been active on Facebook. I like what Facebook used to be. It was a way for me to stay connected with my friends, to see updates on their kids and pets and travel and careers. More to the point, it was (and is) a way for me to share what's going on in my life. (The real reason my personal blog died? Facebook. I use my Facebook feed as a personal blog.)

Over the past five years, however, the platform has changed. People increasingly use Facebook as a place to espouse their political beliefs. (Why? Why? Why? Why? Has anyone ever been swayed by a political post on Facebook? Ever?) Ads on the platform are invasive and annoying. And the Facebook algorithms seem hell-bent on showing me posts from the same people over and over and over again. (YouTube does the same thing and it drives me nuts.)

Just as I'm considering altering my relationship with Reddit and with alcohol, I'm also considering a change to how I use Facebook because more and more, I feel like it's a net negative in my life. And the more time that passes, the greater a net negative Facebook becomes.

To me, it's easier to evaluate Twitter. Twitter is a huge net negative. There's no room for nuance on Twitter. There's too much noise. The platform is filled with all of the bad things about social media (brigading, bullying, jumping to conclusions, etc.) and none of the good things. So, I mostly avoid the place.

For somebody like me, someone who believes that people are generally good and that the world is a complicated place filled with nuance, social media is deeply problematic. It's not inherently bad — I can envision useful, productive social-media platforms — but the way the major players have opted to implement their functionality fosters groupthink, negativity, and the spread of misinformation.

There's another huge problem with social media, including Reddit. It's killing my attention span. Pre-Facebook — meaning before I joined in October 2007 — I engaged in a lot of activities that required deep focus. I read novels and non-fiction for pleasure. I wrote long articles. I created websites and even wrote rudimentary computer programs to improve my life.

Today, my attention span is practically zero. It's tough for me to sit through a 23-minute sitcom let alone an entire movie. I can muster the focus to read a blog post, but an entire book? Well, that's difficult. If I do sit down to read a book, I become restless after only ten or twenty minutes. I have no patience.

I believe this problem is directly tied to how much time I spend on social media. Social media has conditioned me to have a short attention span, and that's a huge negative in my life. I crave the capacity to dive deep once more.

Keeping the Net Positives

As long-time readers know, I'm a fan of the KonMari method of cleaning and organizing. Marie Kondo argues that you should buy, own, and keep only those things that “spark joy” in your life. Each of your possessions should be a treasure.

What she's really asking people to do is to examine their belongings to determine whether they're net positives or net negatives. A shirt that “sparks joy” — such as Jerry Seinfeld's “Golden Boy”, say — is a net positive in your life, and you should keep it.

What I've been doing for the past couple of months is evaluating everything in my life to find what sparks joy and, conversely, what deepens despair. I want more of the former and less of the latter. (Plenty of things are neutral, of course. My toothbrush neither sparks joy nor deepens despair but it is something I choose to keep.)

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

Develop awareness of how people, things, and experiences affect me. I write a lot about mindful spending. Too many people spend without thinking. I want them to be more deliberate about how they use their money. Well, the same idea applies to how we use our time and our energy. I want to pay attention to which of my habits make me feel good and which make feel bad. I want to notice which of my possessions make my life better and which make it worse.

Change my relationship with the problematic items and behaviors. Is it possible to reduce or minimize the negative elements and/or increase the positive elements? Reddit is a great example. If some subreddits bring joy to my life and others make me feel bad, then the obvious solution is to stop reading the forums that contribute to the negative energy. On Facebook, I could stop following the folks who insist on using it as a platform for espousing political beliefs and/or complaining.

Seek a replacement that sparks joy instead of deepening despair. I use alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with anxiety and depression. I tried to replace beer with pot, but that presented its own set of problems. Next, I'm going to try to explore meditation. If that doesn't work, I'll continue searching for something that will help — without bringing on a bunch of baggage.

Accentuate the positive! There's so much that I love about my life but too often I get distracted by the bad stuff. That's dumb. My thought is that if I can devote more time and attention to the good stuff, that'll naturally crowd out the negative. Right? Right?

Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

Over the next few months, I'll try to answer these questions (and more!) as I explore which aspects of my life are net negatives and which are net positives. Fortunately, most of this process is fun. I enjoy it. The tough part comes when I have to decide how to address the things that are both good and bad. Then the decisions become much more difficult…

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[andrewdburton]

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

She and I enjoy sharing funny animal videos with each other (from subreddits like /r/animalsbeinggenisuses, /r/happycowgifs, and /r/petthedamndog). Kim dives deep into /r/mapporn and /r/documentaries. I read about comics and computer games and financial independence.

But here's the thing. After browsing Reddit for thirty minutes or an hour, I'm left feeling unsatisfied. In fact, I'm often in a bad mood. After browsing Reddit, I have a negative attitude. My view of the world has deteriorated. Why? Because for all the fun and interesting things on Reddit, it's also filled with a bunch of crap.

You see, I also subscribe to /r/idiotsincars and /r/publicfreakout and /r/choosingbeggars — and dozens more like these. These subreddits highlight the worst in human behavior. And while viewing one or two posts from forums like these can be entertaining and/or interesting, consuming mass quantities of this stuff leaves me feeling dirty. (Plus, there's the Reddit comments which tend to be juvenile, dogmatic, and myopic. Reddit comments are so bad that Kim refuses to read them.)

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

I've been thinking about his concept a lot lately. Behind the scenes, I've been making many small, subtle changes to my environment and daily routine. My aim is to decrease my depression and anxiety by removing people, things, and experiences that are net negatives and replacing them with people, things, and experiences that are net positives.

What Do I Mean by “Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

These concepts are simple to understand when we're talking about things are easily quantifiable. In sports, for instance, you can crunch numbers to determine whether an individual player helps or hurts her team when she's on the field. In personal finance, you can track stats in order to see which habits increase your net worth and which cause it to drop. The same is true with fitness or any other activity that can be measured.

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

The fundamental problem, of course, is that in most cases we don't have a way to quantify this stuff. How can you tell whether a hobby is a net negative or a net positive? How do you quantify the good and the bad of social media? Of computer games? Of your career? Of your relationships?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Still, I think most of the time — if we're honest with ourselves — we can tell whether something is helping or hindering us. Does browsing Reddit make me a better person? Does it make me feel better? Does it keep me better informed? No, not really. In fact, the opposite seems to be true. I may not be able to prove this with numbers (or any other objective measure) but I can sense it. So can you.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

There's another problem that arises when trying to evaluate whether something is harmful or beneficial to your well-being. Few things are 100% good or 100% bad. Most have a mix of positive and negative elements.

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Watching television is a mindless passive activity. It can be a complete waste of time. That said, TV can also be an entertaining escape — or a great source of information. Plus, TV can provide a shared experience that sparks conversation with family and friends.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

If we could quantify the people and objects and experiences in your life, most would probably have “scores” close to zero — close to “break even” — but a few of these scores would be extremely positive or extremely negative.

Looking at my life, some of my habits and possessions are clearly detrimental. Others are clearly beneficial. In many cases, it's easy to identify what should stay and what should go. Candy and potato chips? Talk radio? News media? These are all clearly negative and have no place in my life. Exercise? Time with friends? Reading? The music of Taylor Swift? These are all clearly positive and I want more of them.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

There is no doubt that alcohol relaxes me. By two o'clock every afternoon, I've become tense and anxious. I can eliminate this anxiety by drinking a couple of beers. For a long time, that's what I did. That's a positive side of consuming beer.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

Ultimately, I decided that if I were to quantify alcohol's effects on my life, the negatives would far outweigh the positives, so I've given it up for now. (I stopped drinking on Independence Day and my goal is to go a year without alcohol. Or a year drinking as little of the stuff as possible.)

But what about pot? Marijuana is legal here in Oregon. During my fifty years on Earth, I've had some exposure to pot but not a lot. (Mostly I've used it as a sleep aid.) Over the past two months, though, I've been experimenting with it as a replacement for alcohol, and I can see that it does offer some advantages. But I've come to believe that pot too is a net negative for me.

No, pot doesn't contain calories. No, it doesn't give me a hangover the next day. No, it doesn't cost an arm an a leg. But pot does make me dumb — both in the present and the future. It saps my motivation. And there doesn't seem to be a middle ground with it. I can drink a couple of beers and enjoy a gentle, pleasant buzz. When I consume pot, it's all or nothing and I don't like that.

Worse, sometimes pot makes me paranoid. When that happens, it sucks. Plus, just as alcohol helps with short-term anxiety while exacerbating long-term anxiety, pot seems to help with short-term depression while increasing long-term depression. Yikes!

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

For more than a decade now, I've been active on Facebook. I like what Facebook used to be. It was a way for me to stay connected with my friends, to see updates on their kids and pets and travel and careers. More to the point, it was (and is) a way for me to share what's going on in my life. (The real reason my personal blog died? Facebook. I use my Facebook feed as a personal blog.)

Over the past five years, however, the platform has changed. People increasingly use Facebook as a place to espouse their political beliefs. (Why? Why? Why? Why? Has anyone ever been swayed by a political post on Facebook? Ever?) Ads on the platform are invasive and annoying. And the Facebook algorithms seem hell-bent on showing me posts from the same people over and over and over again. (YouTube does the same thing and it drives me nuts.)

Just as I'm considering altering my relationship with Reddit and with alcohol, I'm also considering a change to how I use Facebook because more and more, I feel like it's a net negative in my life. And the more time that passes, the greater a net negative Facebook becomes.

To me, it's easier to evaluate Twitter. Twitter is a huge net negative. There's no room for nuance on Twitter. There's too much noise. The platform is filled with all of the bad things about social media (brigading, bullying, jumping to conclusions, etc.) and none of the good things. So, I mostly avoid the place.

For somebody like me, someone who believes that people are generally good and that the world is a complicated place filled with nuance, social media is deeply problematic. It's not inherently bad — I can envision useful, productive social-media platforms — but the way the major players have opted to implement their functionality fosters groupthink, negativity, and the spread of misinformation.

There's another huge problem with social media, including Reddit. It's killing my attention span. Pre-Facebook — meaning before I joined in October 2007 — I engaged in a lot of activities that required deep focus. I read novels and non-fiction for pleasure. I wrote long articles. I created websites and even wrote rudimentary computer programs to improve my life.

Today, my attention span is practically zero. It's tough for me to sit through a 23-minute sitcom let alone an entire movie. I can muster the focus to read a blog post, but an entire book? Well, that's difficult. If I do sit down to read a book, I become restless after only ten or twenty minutes. I have no patience.

I believe this problem is directly tied to how much time I spend on social media. Social media has conditioned me to have a short attention span, and that's a huge negative in my life. I crave the capacity to dive deep once more.

Keeping the Net Positives

As long-time readers know, I'm a fan of the KonMari method of cleaning and organizing. Marie Kondo argues that you should buy, own, and keep only those things that “spark joy” in your life. Each of your possessions should be a treasure.

What she's really asking people to do is to examine their belongings to determine whether they're net positives or net negatives. A shirt that “sparks joy” — such as Jerry Seinfeld's “Golden Boy”, say — is a net positive in your life, and you should keep it.

What I've been doing for the past couple of months is evaluating everything in my life to find what sparks joy and, conversely, what deepens despair. I want more of the former and less of the latter. (Plenty of things are neutral, of course. My toothbrush neither sparks joy nor deepens despair but it is something I choose to keep.)

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

Develop awareness of how people, things, and experiences affect me. I write a lot about mindful spending. Too many people spend without thinking. I want them to be more deliberate about how they use their money. Well, the same idea applies to how we use our time and our energy. I want to pay attention to which of my habits make me feel good and which make feel bad. I want to notice which of my possessions make my life better and which make it worse.

Change my relationship with the problematic items and behaviors. Is it possible to reduce or minimize the negative elements and/or increase the positive elements? Reddit is a great example. If some subreddits bring joy to my life and others make me feel bad, then the obvious solution is to stop reading the forums that contribute to the negative energy. On Facebook, I could stop following the folks who insist on using it as a platform for espousing political beliefs and/or complaining.

Seek a replacement that sparks joy instead of deepening despair. I use alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with anxiety and depression. I tried to replace beer with pot, but that presented its own set of problems. Next, I'm going to try to explore meditation. If that doesn't work, I'll continue searching for something that will help — without bringing on a bunch of baggage.

Accentuate the positive! There's so much that I love about my life but too often I get distracted by the bad stuff. That's dumb. My thought is that if I can devote more time and attention to the good stuff, that'll naturally crowd out the negative. Right? Right?

Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

Over the next few months, I'll try to answer these questions (and more!) as I explore which aspects of my life are net negatives and which are net positives. Fortunately, most of this process is fun. I enjoy it. The tough part comes when I have to decide how to address the things that are both good and bad. Then the decisions become much more difficult…

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[andrewdburton]

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

She and I enjoy sharing funny animal videos with each other (from subreddits like /r/animalsbeinggenisuses, /r/happycowgifs, and /r/petthedamndog). Kim dives deep into /r/mapporn and /r/documentaries. I read about comics and computer games and financial independence.

But here's the thing. After browsing Reddit for thirty minutes or an hour, I'm left feeling unsatisfied. In fact, I'm often in a bad mood. After browsing Reddit, I have a negative attitude. My view of the world has deteriorated. Why? Because for all the fun and interesting things on Reddit, it's also filled with a bunch of crap.

You see, I also subscribe to /r/idiotsincars and /r/publicfreakout and /r/choosingbeggars — and dozens more like these. These subreddits highlight the worst in human behavior. And while viewing one or two posts from forums like these can be entertaining and/or interesting, consuming mass quantities of this stuff leaves me feeling dirty. (Plus, there's the Reddit comments which tend to be juvenile, dogmatic, and myopic. Reddit comments are so bad that Kim refuses to read them.)

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

I've been thinking about his concept a lot lately. Behind the scenes, I've been making many small, subtle changes to my environment and daily routine. My aim is to decrease my depression and anxiety by removing people, things, and experiences that are net negatives and replacing them with people, things, and experiences that are net positives.

What Do I Mean by “Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

These concepts are simple to understand when we're talking about things are easily quantifiable. In sports, for instance, you can crunch numbers to determine whether an individual player helps or hurts her team when she's on the field. In personal finance, you can track stats in order to see which habits increase your net worth and which cause it to drop. The same is true with fitness or any other activity that can be measured.

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

The fundamental problem, of course, is that in most cases we don't have a way to quantify this stuff. How can you tell whether a hobby is a net negative or a net positive? How do you quantify the good and the bad of social media? Of computer games? Of your career? Of your relationships?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Still, I think most of the time — if we're honest with ourselves — we can tell whether something is helping or hindering us. Does browsing Reddit make me a better person? Does it make me feel better? Does it keep me better informed? No, not really. In fact, the opposte seems to be true. I may not be able to prove this with numbers (or any other objective measure) but I can sense it. So can you.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

There's another problem that arises when trying to evaluate whether something is harmful or beneficial to your well-being. Few things are 100% good or 100% bad. Most have a mix of positive and negative elements.

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Watching television is a mindless passive activity. It can be a complete waste of time. That said, TV can also be an entertaining escape — or a great source of information. Plus, TV can provide a shared experience that sparks conversation with family and friends.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

If we could quantify the people and objects and experiences in your life, most would probably have “scores” close to zero — close to “break even” — but a few of these scores would be extremely positive or extremely negative.

Looking at my life, some of my habits and possessions are clearly detrimental. Others are clearly beneficial. In many cases, it's easy to identify what should stay and what should go. Candy and potato chips? Talk radio? News media? These are all clearly negative and have no place in my life. Exercise? Time with friends? Reading? The music of Taylor Swift? These are all clearly positive and I want more of them.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

There is no doubt that alcohol relaxes me. By two o'clock every afternoon, I've become tense and anxious. I can eliminate this anxiety by drinking a couple of beers. For a long time, that's what I did. That's a positive side of consuming beer.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

Ultimately, I decided that if I were to quantify alcohol's effects on my life, the negatives would far outweigh the positives, so I've given it up for now. (I stopped drinking on Independence Day and my goal is to go a year without alcohol. Or a year drinking as little of the stuff as possible.)

But what about pot? Marijuana is legal here in Oregon. During my fifty years on Earth, I've had some exposure to pot but not a lot. (Mostly I've used it as a sleep aid.) Over the past two months, though, I've been experimenting with it as a replacement for alcohol, and I can see that it does offer some advantages. But I've come to believe that pot too is a net negative for me.

No, pot doesn't contain calories. No, it doesn't give me a hangover the next day. No, it doesn't cost an arm an a leg. But pot does make me dumb — both in the present and the future. It saps my motivation. And there doesn't seem to be a middle ground with it. I can drink a couple of beers and enjoy a gentle, pleasant buzz. When I consume pot, it's all or nothing and I don't like that.

Worse, sometimes pot makes me paranoid. When that happens, it sucks. Plus, just as alcohol helps with short-term anxiety while exacerbating long-term anxiety, pot seems to help with short-term depression while increasing long-term depression. Yikes!

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

For more than a decade now, I've been active on Facebook. I like what Facebook used to be. It was a way for me to stay connected with my friends, to see updates on their kids and pets and travel and careers. More to the point, it was (and is) a way for me to share what's going on in my life. (The real reason my personal blog died? Facebook. I use my Facebook feed as a personal blog.)

Over the past five years, however, the platform has changed. People increasingly use Facebook as a place to espouse their political beliefs. (Why? Why? Why? Why? Has anyone ever been swayed by a political post on Facebook? Ever?) Ads on the platform are invasive and annoying. And the Facebook algorithms seem hell-bent on showing me posts from the same people over and over and over again. (YouTube does the same thing and it drives me nuts.)

Just as I'm considering altering my relationship with Reddit and with alcohol, I'm also considering a change to how I use Facebook because more and more, I feel like it's a net negative in my life. And the more time that passes, the greater a net negative Facebook becomes.

To me, it's easier to evaluate Twitter. Twitter is a huge net negative. There's no room for nuance on Twitter. There's too much noise. The platform is filled with all of the bad things about social media (brigading, bullying, jumping to conclusions, etc.) and none of the good things. So, I mostly avoid the place.

For somebody like me, someone who believes that people are generally good and that the world is a complicated place filled with nuance, social media is deeply problematic. It's not inherently bad — I can envision useful, productive social-media platforms — but the way the major players have opted to implement their functionality fosters groupthink, negativity, and the spread of misinformation.

There's another huge problem with social media, including Reddit. It's killing my attention span. Pre-Facebook — meaning before I joined in October 2007 — I engaged in a lot of activities that required deep focus. I read novels and non-fiction for pleasure. I wrote long articles. I created websites and even wrote rudimentary computer programs to improve my life.

Today, my attention span is practically zero. It's tough for me to sit through a 23-minute sitcom let alone an entire movie. I can muster the focus to read a blog post, but an entire book? Well, that's difficult. If I do sit down to read a book, I become restless after only ten or twenty minutes. I have no patience.

I believe this problem is directly tied to how much time I spend on social media. Social media has conditioned me to have a short attention span, and that's a huge negative in my life. I crave the capacity to dive deep once more.

Keeping the Net Positives

As long-time readers know, I'm a fan of the KonMari method of cleaning and organizing. Marie Kondo argues that you should buy, own, and keep only those things that “spark joy” in your life. Each of your possessions should be a treasure.

What she's really asking people to do is to examine their belongings to determine whether they're net positives or net negatives. A shirt that “sparks joy” — such as Jerry Seinfeld's “Golden Boy”, say — is a net positive in your life, and you should keep it.

What I've been doing for the past couple of months is evaluating everything in my life to find what sparks joy and, conversely, what deepens despair. I want more of the former and less of the latter. (Plenty of things are neutral, of course. My toothbrush neither sparks joy nor deepens despair but it is something I choose to keep.)

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

Develop awareness of how people, things, and experiences effect me. I write a lot about mindful spending. Too many people spend without thinking. I want them to be more deliberate about how they use their money. Well, the same idea applies to how we use our time and our energy. I want to pay attention to which of my habits make me feel good and which make feel bad. I want to notice which of my possessions make my life better and which make it worse.

Change my relationship with the problematic items and behaviors. Is it possible to reduce or minimize the negative elements and/or increase the positive elements? Reddit is a great example. If some subreddits bring joy to my life and others make me feel bad, then the obvious solution is to stop reading the forums that contribute to the negative energy. On Facebook, I could stop following the folks who insist on using it as a platform for espousing political beliefs and/or complaining.

Seek a replacement that sparks joy instead of deepening despair. I use alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with anxiety and depression. I tried to replace beer with pot, but that presented its own set of problems. Next, I'm going to try to explore meditation. If that doesn't work, I'll continue searching for something that will help — without bringing on a bunch of baggage.

Accentuate the positive! There's so much that I love about my life but too often I get distracted by the bad stuff. That's dumb. My thought is that if I can devote more time and attention to the good stuff, that'll naturally crowd out the negative. Right? Right?

Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

Over the next few months, I'll try to answer these questions (and more!) as I explore which aspects of my life are net negatives and which are net positives. Fortunately, most of this process is fun. I enjoy it. The tough part comes when I have to decide how to address the things that are both good and bad. Then the decisions become much more difficult…

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[andrewdburton]

Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative

When Kim and I go to bed each night, we spend time casually browsing Reddit on our iPads. It's fun. Mostly.

She and I enjoy sharing funny animal videos with each other (from subreddits like /r/animalsbeinggenisuses, /r/happycowgifs, and /r/petthedamndog). Kim dives deep into /r/mapporn and /r/documentaries. I read about comics and computer games and financial independence.

But here's the thing. After browsing Reddit for thirty minutes or an hour, I'm left feeling unsatisfied. In fact, I'm often in a bad mood. After browsing Reddit, I have a negative attitude. My view of the world has deteriorated. Why? Because for all the fun and interesting things on Reddit, it's also filled with a bunch of crap.

You see, I also subscribe to /r/idiotsincars and /r/publicfreakout and /r/choosingbeggars — and dozens more like these. These subreddits highlight the worst in human behavior. And while viewing one or two posts from forums like these can be entertaining and/or interesting, consuming mass quantities of this stuff leaves me feeling dirty. (Plus, there's the Reddit comments which tend to be juvenile, dogmatic, and myopic. Reddit comments are so bad that Kim refuses to read them.)

It's taken a while, but I've come to believe that Reddit — or the way that I use Reddit, anyhow — is a net negative in my life. It causes more harm than good.

I've been thinking about his concept a lot lately. Behind the scenes, I've been making many small, subtle changes to my environment and daily routine. My aim is to decrease my depression and anxiety by removing people, things, and experiences that are net negatives and replacing them with people, things, and experiences that are net positives.

What Do I Mean by “Net Negative”?

What do I mean by this? What do I mean by “net negative” and “net positive”?

These concepts are simple to understand when we're talking about things are easily quantifiable. In sports, for instance, you can crunch numbers to determine whether an individual player helps or hurts her team when she's on the field. In personal finance, you can track stats in order to see which habits increase your net worth and which cause it to drop. The same is true with fitness or any other activity that can be measured.

But how do you measure Reddit? How can I quantify its effect on my life?

The fundamental problem, of course, is that in most cases we don't have a way to quantify this stuff. How can you tell whether a hobby is a net negative or a net positive? How do you quantify the good and the bad of social media? Of computer games? Of your career? Of your relationships?

You can't.

This isn't a scientific process with actual measurable metrics. When evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of the things in your life, you have to use intuition. You have to guess.

Still, I think most of the time — if we're honest with ourselves — we can tell whether something is helping or hindering us. Does browsing Reddit make me a better person? Does it make me feel better? Does it keep me better informed? No, not really. In fact, the opposte seems to be true. I may not be able to prove this with numbers (or any other objective measure) but I can sense it. So can you.

Nothing is All Good or All Bad

There's another problem that arises when trying to evaluate whether something is harmful or beneficial to your well-being. Few things are 100% good or 100% bad. Most have a mix of positive and negative elements.

Yes, owning a dog is a pain in the ass — but having a canine companion also brings a great deal of joy. For me, the pros outweigh the cons.

Watching television is a mindless passive activity. It can be a complete waste of time. That said, TV can also be an entertaining escape — or a great source of information. Plus, TV can provide a shared experience that sparks conversation with family and friends.

Even politicians that I find frustrating aren't completely misguided; even the worst elected official does some good. (And conversely, even the best representative does things I disagree with.)

As I said, few things are 100% good or 100% bad.

If we could quantify the people and objects and experiences in your life, most would probably have “scores” close to zero — close to “break even” — but a few of these scores would be extremely positive or extremely negative.

Looking at my life, some of my habits and possessions are clearly detrimental. Others are clearly beneficial. In many cases, it's easy to identify what should stay and what should go. Candy and potato chips? Talk radio? News media? These are all clearly negative and have no place in my life. Exercise? Time with friends? Reading? The music of Taylor Swift? These are all clearly positive and I want more of them.

The challenge comes when something is a net negative — but it also comes with some positive aspect that fills a fundamental need. In cases like this, it's tough to figure out what to do.

Alcohol as Net Negative

Take alcohol, for instance.

There is no doubt that alcohol relaxes me. By two o'clock every afternoon, I've become tense and anxious. I can eliminate this anxiety by drinking a couple of beers. For a long time, that's what I did. That's a positive side of consuming beer.

But while drinking alcohol provides some small short-term benefits, the long-term downsides have become too great for me.

Alcohol quells the immediate anxiety…but induces more long-term generalized anxiety. It makes me fat. It interferes with my ability to get things done. It damages my liver. And so on.

Ultimately, I decided that if I were to quantify alcohol's effects on my life, the negatives would far outweigh the positives, so I've given it up for now. (I stopped drinking on Independence Day and my goal is to go a year without alcohol. Or a year drinking as little of the stuff as possible.)

But what about pot? Marijuana is legal here in Oregon. During my fifty years on Earth, I've had some exposure to pot but not a lot. (Mostly I've used it as a sleep aid.) Over the past two months, though, I've been experimenting with it as a replacement for alcohol, and I can see that it does offer some advantages. But I've come to believe that pot too is a net negative for me.

No, pot doesn't contain calories. No, it doesn't give me a hangover the next day. No, it doesn't cost an arm an a leg. But pot does make me dumb — both in the present and the future. It saps my motivation. And there doesn't seem to be a middle ground with it. I can drink a couple of beers and enjoy a gentle, pleasant buzz. When I consume pot, it's all or nothing and I don't like that.

Worse, sometimes pot makes me paranoid. When that happens, it sucks. Plus, just as alcohol helps with short-term anxiety while exacerbating long-term anxiety, pot seems to help with short-term depression while increasing long-term depression. Yikes!

So, I think my experiment with marijuana has nearly run its course. Next, I'm going to play with mindfulness and meditation as a way to manage depression and anxiety.

Re-Thinking Social Media

It's tougher to evaluate things like social media.

For more than a decade now, I've been active on Facebook. I like what Facebook used to be. It was a way for me to stay connected with my friends, to see updates on their kids and pets and travel and careers. More to the point, it was (and is) a way for me to share what's going on in my life. (The real reason my personal blog died? Facebook. I use my Facebook feed as a personal blog.)

Over the past five years, however, the platform has changed. People increasingly use Facebook as a place to espouse their political beliefs. (Why? Why? Why? Why? Has anyone ever been swayed by a political post on Facebook? Ever?) Ads on the platform are invasive and annoying. And the Facebook algorithms seem hell-bent on showing me posts from the same people over and over and over again. (YouTube does the same thing and it drives me nuts.)

Just as I'm considering altering my relationship with Reddit and with alcohol, I'm also considering a change to how I use Facebook because more and more, I feel like it's a net negative in my life. And the more time that passes, the greater a net negative Facebook becomes.

To me, it's easier to evaluate Twitter. Twitter is a huge net negative. There's no room for nuance on Twitter. There's too much noise. The platform is filled with all of the bad things about social media (brigading, bullying, jumping to conclusions, etc.) and none of the good things. So, I mostly avoid the place.

For somebody like me, someone who believes that people are generally good and that the world is a complicated place filled with nuance, social media is deeply problematic. It's not inherently bad — I can envision useful, productive social-media platforms — but the way the major players have opted to implement their functionality fosters groupthink, negativity, and the spread of misinformation.

There's another huge problem with social media, including Reddit. It's killing my attention span. Pre-Facebook — meaning before I joined in October 2007 — I engaged in a lot of activities that required deep focus. I read novels and non-fiction for pleasure. I wrote long articles. I created websites and even wrote rudimentary computer programs to improve my life.

Today, my attention span is practically zero. It's tough for me to sit through a 23-minute sitcom let alone an entire movie. I can muster the focus to read a blog post, but an entire book? Well, that's difficult. If I do sit down to read a book, I become restless after only ten or twenty minutes. I have no patience.

I believe this problem is directly tied to how much time I spend on social media. Social media has conditioned me to have a short attention span, and that's a huge negative in my life. I crave the capacity to dive deep once more.

Keeping the Net Positives

As long-time readers know, I'm a fan of the KonMari method of cleaning and organizing. Marie Kondo argues that you should buy, own, and keep only those things that “spark joy” in your life. Each of your possessions should be a treasure.

What she's really asking people to do is to examine their belongings to determine whether they're net positives or net negatives. A shirt that “sparks joy” — such as Jerry Seinfeld's “Golden Boy”, say — is a net positive in your life, and you should keep it.

What I've been doing for the past couple of months is evaluating everything in my life to find what sparks joy and, conversely, what deepens despair. I want more of the former and less of the latter. (Plenty of things are neutral, of course. My toothbrush neither sparks joy nor deepens despair but it is something I choose to keep.)

Here are some of the strategies I'm employing during this process:

Develop awareness of how people, things, and experiences effect me. I write a lot about mindful spending. Too many people spend without thinking. I want them to be more deliberate about how they use their money. Well, the same idea applies to how we use our time and our energy. I want to pay attention to which of my habits make me feel good and which make feel bad. I want to notice which of my possessions make my life better and which make it worse.

Change my relationship with the problematic items and behaviors. Is it possible to reduce or minimize the negative elements and/or increase the positive elements? Reddit is a great example. If some subreddits bring joy to my life and others make me feel bad, then the obvious solution is to stop reading the forums that contribute to the negative energy. On Facebook, I could stop following the folks who insist on using it as a platform for espousing political beliefs and/or complaining.

Seek a replacement that sparks joy instead of deepening despair. I use alcohol as a maladaptive coping mechanism to deal with anxiety and depression. I tried to replace beer with pot, but that presented its own set of problems. Next, I'm going to try to explore meditation. If that doesn't work, I'll continue searching for something that will help — without bringing on a bunch of baggage.

Accentuate the positive! There's so much that I love about my life but too often I get distracted by the bad stuff. That's dumb. My thought is that if I can devote more time and attention to the good stuff, that'll naturally crowd out the negative. Right? Right?

Will I resume drinking alcohol? Will I ditch Facebook? Reddit? What role do computer games have in my life? How much time should I devote to reading? To television? To exercise? To blogging?

Over the next few months, I'll try to answer these questions (and more!) as I explore which aspects of my life are net negatives and which are net positives. Fortunately, most of this process is fun. I enjoy it. The tough part comes when I have to decide how to address the things that are both good and bad. Then the decisions become much more difficult…

from Finance https://www.getrichslowly.org/net-negatives/ via http://www.rssmix.com/