And libro.fm for audiobooks. It’s harder and harder to own media. Just look at movies and television. Got to support it if we want it to stick around.

Wanted to 2nd and add to some of the comments, and ask a question (no expectation of an answer).

Spiraling. Many, if not all, have been there and it’s an awful place to be. It will pass. You say you feel toxic, in that state you can be toxic to yourself, hence the suggestions for positive affirmations. It’s a way to form a habit of not beating yourself up; getting stuck in- or compounding- your lows. If every time you make a mistake you think of all the things you do right, instead of all the things you do wrong, that mistake feels like a fluke rather than confirmation of a negative self image.

Focus on the basics: eat, sleep, move. Adhd is much worse when you’re forget about the basics. I’ve been developing a habit of having low-effort healthy snacks around and eating more frequently and it helps (saying this now reminds me I should have some fruit and a protein).

Journaling can give a sense of relief, like what you wrote here. In time you may notice your triggers or common struggles and that can help develop systems to mitigate those issues. You mentioned not prepping your safety glasses or prepping lunch. Evening prep the night before is a great wind-down activity. You probably know this and just forgot or got distracted. It happens. Writing/reflecting like you did serves as a good reminder and can help build that habit (another downside to negative self talk: it can bury that info).

You mentioned you’re losing hope medication can help. Are you currently taking medication? You may want to talk to your dr. I started medicating recently and the first one i tried took me in the opposite direction. The 2nd medication was good as i was increasing, but then introduced some issues (so I’m now trying a lower dose and if that doesn’t help I’ll have to try a 3rd med). The journal can also help recognize patterns, timing, when you took what and how much.

Thank you for sharing your struggle. It’s not unfamiliar. Good luck on your journey. Wishing you the best. It’ll get better. Keep at it.

Edit: typo

Same. Lots of systems and a place for everything. EG if I leave the room and want to remember what I was doing when I got back, it’ll be the one thing that’s out of place and somewhere obvious. Unfortunately, it’s easily thrown off by others who forget to put stuff back.

What’s your relationship with travel? I struggle to pack up and mobilize so many systems. It’s been getting better as I develop travel-specific solutions (like having a dedicated toiletries bag that remains packed).

Side note: the game “Baba is you” was named after this effect, and features a character named kiki.

From my research, Patreon takes a smaller cut than YouTube Premium. Comparing YouTube Premium to its own ad model is a “Worst Negates the Bad” fallacy. From what I gathered (not easy to find and has changed over time) YT takes 30% from the former and 45% from latter. Seems insanely high. More than taxes. May be why so many creators need sponsors and hawk merch.

YouTube never supporting 3rd party apps seems like a negative.

Lots of suitable alternatives to youtube: read a book, listen to music, go for a walk, hang with friends, play games, etc, but to your point, sounds like a monopoly. Their search was once great, then ubiquitous, now terrible. YouTube Premium is just in the “entice users and creators” phase of its inevitable enshittification.

Don’t mean to dump on something you like, just disagree with the reasoning. If you’re not fine with Premium and hate giving money to google, sounds like you’ll eventually seek out alternatives when they go into profit maximization mode. Hopefully enough resources will have been invested in viable alternatives by that time.

[edit: break wall of text]

Happy to see it get love and spread the word. alternativeto.net is my go to. Worthy of muscle memory. I’ve also found great options in the awesome lists on github. Especially awesome self-hosted if we’re talking software. I thought I remember an alternativeto-like site geared towards cli, but I couldn’t find it last time I looked. LMK if that rings a bell for anyone.

I had a similar change of heart years ago, watching a docu-series on PBS and realizing I wanted more of that content in the world. Even though you can stream PBS for about $5 a month, I canceled Netflix so I could pay PBS $20 a month to start making up for all the time my money was flowing in the wrong direction.

We’re likely to get more of the things we invest in, and less of the things we don’t. That investment includes attention in ad-driven market, not only money.

I know I’m not the first person on lemmy to have this realization, it’s one of the many reasons I like it here.

I’ve had audio sync issues on kodi myself-- specifically osmc on Vero V which is optimized for playback. I tried checking my notes, because it was some time ago. Nothing definitive, but it may have been related to a random crashing issue that turned out to be a bad hdmi port-- which was the last thing I considered checking after triple checking everything else. Anyway, good luck with the troubleshooting. Audio sync issues are a pain but I can also attest yt-dlp has been solid.

downvotes? I’m guessing you may have offended some folks by badmouthing their favorite toy.

I’ve enjoyed Zim in the past but not being able to access it on mobile caused me to migrate. Do you have a way to access your notes on the go?

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts. My only source of income for more than a decade has been creating media that people stream or watch in theaters, so I must disagree. Under the current capitalist system, people do get paid, but I’m with you that it’s exploitative. People commonly burnout and run themselves ragged trying to make ends meet. I know I did.

I’m skeptical that piracy hurts CEOs and shareholders as much as you think it does. Piracy is nothing new-- CEO wages and capitalism doesn’t seem to care. Those with power can increase prices on paying customers, decrease employee wages or headcounts, and/or start legally pursue pirates. The latter being least relevant to my point, but with digital steganography, watermarking, intrusive tracking, and corporate-friendly laws (see post)-- it’s worth making clear that CEOs and shareholders have plenty of tools already in place to make themselves whole. Heck, pirate from Prime Video and Bezos can increase AWS rates and extract it back from most folks via services they (or their families) do pay for.

Not to say it’s hopeless. I’d like to shine a gigantic spotlight on your last sentence:

indy games/music/etc bought directly from the creators

That’s the way forward. Heck, toss it on a jellyfin server and share it with a few close friends and family. The knowledge gap to do that is shrinking. When many folks know someone who knows how to host, they can start pooling their resources.

The false dichotomy of stream vs pirate mentioned in my first reply could be rephrased as: spending money and attention on media giants vs spending just attention on them. Why not spend neither money nor attention on media giants? Save it for individuals and small teams making cool things. That creates a market and draws in more people to make more cool things and does more damage than piracy. Personally, I don’t see anything on Disney+ (or prime, netflix, etc) worth prolonging the current state of media, so I don’t waste any time on it. I’ve come across a lot of good books, music, and inexpensive hobbies to fill the void in the meantime.

TL;DR: Current state of media sucks, but pays more than pirates. More pirates not paying is not as effective as retraining money and attention. If a pirate occasionally goes through the extra steps to pay someone instead of finding a torrent link, they’re still dedicating significant time engaging with the winners of the current capitalist system instead of seeking out and boosting better, lesser known options. It drags out the current state instead of nurturing existing solutions.

I agree with (and experience) the problems surrounding access to media that you described, but I would also describe myself as pretty anti-piracy. You can be anti-middleman and anti-rent-seeking without being pro-piracy. While piracy circumvents the problems you mentioned, the question it leaves unanswered is how the creator of the pirated media will afford basic necessities like food and shelter. Alternatives to streaming are scarce, but they do exist-- especially DRM-free music and books. These are not static systems. The market will follow the money, so if folks buy into the false dichotomy of stream vs pirate, industry will continue to invest in DRM and anti-piracy measures and creators will continue to submit to streaming services / media silos. I’d prefer a system with as few layers as possible between creator and consumer. Piracy only offers a solution for the latter.