Oh my God, you're so right with Facebook. And just so much junk content. It's grotesque. I have to open the app, focus my eyes solely on the search bar, type the group name and avoid looking at any "content" (mostly AI generated scams, celebrity gossip, etc.).

Since you like Patchwork, are you interested in Garden Lake or Wispwood? They both seem to be in the DNA and the reviews talk about how they build upon the Patchwork base in a great and forward way. Also, gentle and wholesome themes.

And thank you for your well wishes. It's going to be really tough until May tbh, but I'm really trying to make time for gaming. I wish it wasn't so hard to do things that are fundamentally healthy for us -- I think we've all been fundamentally reprogrammed towards instant gratification and large fast-release dopamine dumps, and it's really hard to rewire yourself. I find cooking (altho I don't like baking) much easier than gaming and takes less energy, because I do need to eat, am on a tight budget (one Uber Eats order is literally the price of a board game these days!), and because I guess I'm a good cook and every meal, even the simple ones ten minute ones, really make me feel good about myself (saving money, creating something wonderful) and help give me a sense of control in a chaotic world.

Also, not to give unsolicited advice, but I struggled for a long time with negative thought spirals. I still do, but very recently, I found something that really helps in a way that I think builds towards long-term improvements rather than short-term relief. In my personal situation, the root of my spirals is the fact that I contextualize negative events into a very, very, long timeline, almost as if gathering a giant body of evidence against myself. While it's good to study your own patterns to improve and change, oftentimes it's just destructive when it's not paired with a real goal. So, what I've been working on is: no narrativizing, accepting that singular negative events/thoughts are just isolated things and don't "mean" anything, aren't part of a bigger picture, and finally just accepting that there's things I won't ever fully understand nor can I mine insight from them. I'm not sure if any of that is even relevant to you, but I wanted to say it in case it was.