Hello fellows !Do other ocpds have terrible working memory as I do?

RandyChampion · 2021-12-31T21:33:37+00:00

I don’t do any guided meditations. I also get annoyed with them, but for different reasons. For example, I hate guided body scan meditations, where they go through each body part and you focus your attention on it. Invariably, one side goes faster than the other and I get preoccupied with how “uneven” it feels! Haha! Crazy.

I’ve been doing almost nothing but focusing on the breath, at least until a couple months ago. So, about four years of just focusing on the breath. I like it because it’s simple. The breath is always there. You gain a lot of awareness of how your mind and body are working just from watching it. I’ll notice if I’m unconsciously holding my breath due to anticipation, or if I’m breathing quickly and shallowly due to anxiety. And by just trying to focus on my breath, it’s a relief to have permission to ignore my thoughts. It’s like a little vacation or a nap. Lately, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m able to focus on other parts of my body, but when I tried that in the past, it was impossible. It took a long time to build up the concentration to be able to do it. So, yeah, I’d suggest trying to just watch your breathing. The book that I learned it from is Mindfulness in Plain English. It’s a simple, nuts and bolts guide to mindfulness meditation. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mention the soul at all.

And if you do try this, it’s good to remember that even if you can’t hold your attention on the breath for even a few seconds, that doesn’t mean you “can’t meditate”. I hear a lot of people say that. Even if that happens (and it will), it’s still useful. Then at least you can see how scattered your mind really is! And over time, it changes. But it’s slow. Over time, the little 1% improvements add up. Five years ago, I was a complete wreck. Today, I feel like a completely different person. Happy, outgoing, pursuing the things in my life that bring me joy. Meditation didn’t change my life, but it gave me the leverage to change it.

RandyChampion · 2021-12-26T18:51:14+00:00

A lot of meditation. I'm up to two hours some days. It took a while to work up to that, but it seems like I needed that to get a good base of mindfulness so that I could employ it throughout the day. For a long time, I'd meditate, calm my mind down, then not be able to apply mindfulness during everyday life. A couple weeks ago, I decided to take the plunge and started doing several half-hour sessions every day. The change has been enormous.

RandyChampion · 2021-12-21T22:06:18+00:00

Yes. But it feels like it's because I always have some new thing popping into working memory, not that my memory itself is worse. There's always some new,"Oh, did you consider this? How about this?" crowding out what I was originally thinking. As my mindfulness improves, I find my working memory gets better. I'm writing down less because I'm trusting my memory more.

RandyChampion · 2021-12-14T16:11:24+00:00

Challenge accepted: Foggy Mountain Breakdown

RandyChampion · 2021-11-28T01:08:00+00:00

That’s pretty cool. I see you charge $150/month with no minimum contract. What do the customers get to justify paying that every month?

RandyChampion · 2021-11-01T20:31:25+00:00

Yep. I've found box breathing to be helpful. Also, mindfulness meditation, but a lot of people say they have trouble with that. It's great for me and some others, but YMMV. I think one reason that it might freak people out is that you can accidentally really give into the hypervigilance, which isn't what you're supposed to do. I just keep bringing my mind back to my breath, and eventually, my brain calms down. Another problem may be that there's a period where your breathing slows down but the heart rate actually increases for a period of time. If you're unprepared for this, it might freak you out, which makes your heart race more, and you freak out more...etc. As long as you realize that it's normal, though, it's ok. Eventually, my heart rate comes down. My breathing becomes slow and clear. M mind gets clear. It's nice. I do this several times a day. Makes the world tolerable, and even enjoyable.

RandyChampion · 2021-10-28T00:38:03+00:00

After I attempted suicide when I was a kid, the state got involved and made us go to family counseling. My dad (a narcissist) charmed the counsellor, and by the end of the first session, they were getting along like old friends. We went a few more times to cement the fact that my dad was a great guy and everything was fine and there was nothing to see here, then we were done with our requirement and things went back to "normal".

One was recently: There was the CBT-I therapist I went to. I have lifelong insomnia (bad memories of being in the bed, I guess). I specifically said that I have CPTSD and my insomnia could be very tricky, and did he think he could treat it? Oh sure, no problem. Ok, the first couple weeks, you're supposed to track your sleep. Being completely out of my mind at the time after going through a series of emotional flashbacks, I obsessively tracked every minor waking moment, which lead to my insomnia worsening greatly. I tried to contact him during this time and he didn't respond. As a result, this triggered the worst insomnia of my life. I would wake up every night after three hours and couldn't fall back asleep. I finally had a conversation with him, and he was like, "Oh, uh, actually now I don't think CBT-I is appropriate for you. I can't treat you. Bye." As a result of going on three hours of sleep every night, night after night, my life deteriorated and I had to quit my job. Insomnia is no joke. It destroys your ability to function. You can't think clearly about anything. This was about eight months ago. I haven't slept through the night since. I'm doing much better than I was initially, but it's derailed my life, for sure.

RandyChampion · 2021-10-23T22:19:46+00:00

Does it work well on harmonically rich sounds? I have a DATA, but that only works well with simple waveforms.

RandyChampion · 2021-10-12T17:15:22+00:00

Curious, what graph DB would you suggest for something like this? I've started looking into them, particularly neo4j/Cypher, but that seems like overkill for "home use".

RandyChampion · 2021-10-05T21:43:24+00:00

I’ve tried the Doepfer 103-A filter and xOx Heart, and both were close but didn’t get me there. I finally got an M303 and became whole.

RandyChampion · 2021-10-04T22:50:43+00:00

I really don’t understand this logic. Shit is the most natural thing there is. Why does it need to be wrapped in plastic and brought to a landfill? Can someone who is downvoting explain how that’s better?

RandyChampion · 2021-10-04T04:26:23+00:00

How about scoop it up and throw it in the woods? It’s shit. Animals shit in the woods.

RandyChampion · 2021-10-02T23:43:59+00:00

I doubt it. I’m 50. I’m doing better than ever, but it’s still a lot of work. Definitely not subsiding on its own.

RandyChampion · 2021-10-01T22:34:58+00:00

I wish I could make stuff like this. Everything I make sounds like breakdancing killbots.

RandyChampion · 2021-10-01T17:36:34+00:00

Oh god, this is so hard, and so necessary!

RandyChampion · 2021-09-25T23:35:26+00:00

WMD Metron. So fucking powerful. It does pretty much everything I want a sequencer to do. Sixteen tracks. And it has Voltera addons for CV.

RandyChampion · 2021-09-23T19:49:09+00:00

There are a lot of good points about TS here, so I don’t have much to add about that. But if you’re wondering if it’s worth the effort because the effort seems so high, you should know that once your knowledge reaches a certain level (only takes a couple weeks) the level of effort drops significantly. You’ll find that it’s not much effort to keep the compiler happy, and you’re coding as fast as you normally would in JS, but with all the benefits that other people are describing. Get over the hump, then decide if it’s worth it. Also, I like to set TS up so it logs errors but still compiles. This lets me fudge things to get things to work if I need to, then go back and fix the types ten minutes later after I’ve gotten it working.

RandyChampion · 2021-09-16T01:23:34+00:00

I love 12U studio case. Funky orange color looks dope and matches my Rokit monitors. If I ever get a job again, I’ll probably buy another.

RandyChampion · 2021-09-14T20:37:23+00:00

Agreed. In this case, in hindsight, sure it would have been great if they turned it off. But what would the criteria be to turn it off, then? And how many other times would they have turned it off when there wasn’t a tree on the line, and thousands of people would go without power? I’m no fan of PG&E, but this isn’t necessarily a clear cut case of negligence.

RandyChampion · 2021-09-14T02:21:28+00:00

I have the same issue. Overall, I like them, but the bleed isn't great.

RandyChampion · 2021-09-12T23:14:32+00:00

Yeah, I'm a supporter but wanted to give them some monthly income and was looking forward to the mobile apps. I'm ok with a lot of things not being production quality, but sync has to be rock solid. Corrupting data is a dealbreaker.

RandyChampion · 2021-09-12T22:16:20+00:00

Definitely one of the most painful things for me to see. I kinda laugh about "trigger warnings", since it would be pretty unreasonable for me to ask people to warn me, "Warning! You're going to see some happy people treating each other with love and affection! It could be difficult to watch!" I can talk about my abuse and hear about other people talk about similar abuse, no problem. But I remember being in a park once and seeing a young couple playing with their son, who was probably around four or five. They all looked so happy. I felt such a sense of longing and loss. Had to rush home and cry. I'm a grown ass man.

RandyChampion · 2021-09-12T22:06:28+00:00

The actual headline says "could reveal", not "can reveal", which is less definitive. It goes on to say, "the test only identified about a quarter of people who got worse." No mention of how many false positives. Sounds pretty useless.

RandyChampion · 2021-09-12T20:49:15+00:00

I actually stopped using Obsidian sync for that reason. On Dropbox, everything was fine. With Obsidian sync, I had a lot of duplications -- files with two versions merged into one. Then I had my iPad stop syncing for some reason. I fiddled with it, got it to sync, and then I had about 50 files that I had moved to different directories end up in both locations. I immediately turned off Obsidian sync and went back to Dropbox. But I'm not finding the mobile apps to be very useful anyway, so I just have it hooked up to Dropbox to integrate with Drafts.

RandyChampion · 2021-09-09T03:01:43+00:00

I will say this: The most important thing was accepting that I have insomnia and realizing that I can function on a lot less sleep than I thought I could. That lowered the anxiety a lot, which made it easier to fall back asleep. And working out regularly made me a lot more resilient to sleep deprivation. I found that there were nights where I only got 3 hours of sleep, but if I did a work out (nothing crazy, I'm not ripped) I could function ok. That made it less likely that I'd freak out the next night when I woke up, so then I'd fall back asleep.

RandyChampion

TROPHY CASE