My mindfulness practice has recently sort of fallen to the wayside. I try to meditate twice a day but as I’ve been struggling with psychosis/paranoia, I find a lot of the time that I sit to meditate instead ends up being spent ruminating. I’m trying to gradually get back into it though, making more of an effort each session to spend more of the time actually meditating vs caught up in worried thoughts.

Something I used to do that I think could be useful to start up again was “slow mornings”, basically I’m very much internet/computer addicted so what I would do sometimes is when I wake up, rather than checking my PC, avoid all technology for as long as I could. It was usually just a few hours, but being unable to check my PC or my phone during that time meant I spent the time doing other things like meditation, exercise, reading, or just sitting and enjoying the silence. I found it had a massively positive effect on my mental health when I was doing it. Maybe this is my cue to restart it.

Mu online. Damn that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long while. I was never any good at it but remember me and a few school friends played it for a while back in like 2006ish.

I’ve only briefly dabbled with Linux, but during the time I did I felt similarly. I (not sure if autism or ADHD causing it) hyperfixate on one hobby for a bit, then move onto another, and repeat.

Based on what you said about viewing music as a kind of language that can be written down and understood, I actually want to suggest something maybe a little less conventional: Making music in a DAW (digital audio workstation - basically software to make music) on a computer. Depending on the keyboard you have, you may be able to plug it in and use it to control instruments in the DAW.

The reason I think you might actually enjoy getting started there is because it’s a great way to dip your toes in different areas of music without much experience.

Your very first song attempt will likely have you learning about creating melodies, scales, chords, bass, effects, song structure, etc. You won’t necessarily learn a LOT during that first song, but you’ll learn a tiny little bit about many different musical things. And you’ll get to experiment and make something fun in the process. Your first songs will probably sound a little goofy, but they’ll be your very own creation - rather than just someone else’s song you’ve learned to play.

As you make songs, you can search up tutorials on each of the things you want to learn, like “drum patterns for [genre]” or “how to make a catchy melody for [genre]”, or “how to use reverb properly” or “how to structure a song”, just search up things as you run into the need for them. Or even follow complete tutorials for making a song from start to finish, and then experiment and add your own spin on things.

With each song you’ll get progressively better, and learn more about music, and all of these lessons can translate into learning musical instruments too. You’ll get understandings of things like scales, and chords, and basic music theory. Then if you learn any instrument you can even record it and incorporate it into one of your tracks!

Just thought I’d suggest this because like you I very much view music as like a language to learn, and I struggled to learn various instruments with little initial success - but then found myself drawn to making music on my computer and have fallen in love with it!

19,483 here, and that’s just my main email. 💀

For what it’s worth I think it’s just because I use email in my browser and with no notifications, so I don’t feel the urge to clear my notifications like I would with a phone app. Also at some point once it got stupidly large I decided I wanted to see how high it could get just for fun.

I worry about it being a single dev. Feels like that’s going to be a lot of pressure and could cause trouble scaling the platform to accomodate for a growing userbase. That said, the more I read about Fluxer, the more I’m convinced it could be the most fitting contender to actually replace Discord, and not just be an alternative.

E2EE and federation are both in the roadmap, and if it gets those, you’d have the conveniences and bells and whistles of a Discord like app, with the security and freedom from interference of an app like Matrix. To me that sounds like the app a lot of us have been dreaming of.

Right now it’s still just a pipe dream, especially with just one dev, but I’m hoping if it picks up in popularity that maybe it has a chance of coming to fruition.

I still remember my rather embarrassing attempts at learning K-Style back in the day. I learned a tiny bit, enough to actually have an advantage against the pray-and-sprayers that didn’t yet know about it, but I was absolutely trash against any experienced player.

Was a blast though, part of me is tempted to check it out again, but I imagine there’s fewer noobs to practice against and it’s mostly more skilled players now.

I have horrible social anxiety so it’s not just the phone, but I actually sometimes find phone calls/voice chats more scary than even face to face interactions.

Also weirdly enough I’m actually less anxious about a video call than a regular phone call. When I can’t see the person I’m speaking to I feel under this immense amount of pressure to constantly be saying something - can’t handle a pause or silence. So I get into a real panic.

I can touch type. A typing teacher would probably be horrified at my form because I followed absolutely no rules about finger placement whatsoever, but I hit a peak 138wpm before so I feel zero need to change to a more conventional style.

For what it’s worth, funny story but I learned both to touch type and to type so fast from playing Runescape.

Back before they added a central auction house you used to have to sit and type like “white:wave2:selling rune scimmy 25k - camel” amongst a sea of people doing the same thing when looking to buy/sell items. And your text disappeared after a few seconds so you had to keep repeating it over and over. I used to trade like that for hours every day and that repetition of just typing things over and over really quickly taught me to type like I do now.

Out of curiosity, does Fluxer have any sort of directory/server list that you’re aware of? I’ve always been very reliant on Disboard to find servers with Discord, and both Stoat and Matrix seem to have similar sites but I couldn’t find one for Fluxer. Wonder if I’m just searching poorly or if one hasn’t been made yet.

Aside from wanting to use it to find servers I was curious to get a gauge on how many people are actually using it too.

Oh yeah I was looking at Fluxer too, though haven’t made an account yet.

In the “What’s coming next” section on the website it mentions opt-in E2EE. So maybe it is actually on the roadmap? Unless the listed features aren’t actually on the roadmap or I’m misunderstanding.

I hope it is anyway, I accepted no E2EE with Discord just because every single person I knew was using it, but I’m crossing my fingers to not have to make that compromise again if possible.

I’ll probably give Fluxer a try as well then and give all three a go and see which one sticks, hell maybe I’ll end up on more than one.

I’ve made Stoat and Matrix accounts.

Matrix because it seems like the most logical choice - largest platform that’s federated/decentralised and has end-to-end encryption.

Stoat because realistically being more similar to Discord I know more users are going to go there. So I thought I’d hedge my bets. Just hope it also gets end-to-end encryption, the lack of that on Discord was always one of my gripes with the platform.