I have been watching these year-end videos these YouTubers make and the moment they go "hope you have a great 2026" or "2025 has been amazing!", my brain goes "OH NO" and idk why.

Seriously I am not giving enough damn about the new year this year. My brain somehow stopped comprehending days and months this year. It doesn't feel to me like we are at the end of an year. It feels I'm stuck in some heavy brain fog that is unable to comprehend time. One of my friends say the same, and I'm struggling to understand why.

Now coming to year-end videos, I understand they're trying to push some positive vibes about the new year and all but my brain can't help but worry about the new year coming upon us and spiralling in the thoughts of "Did everyone else had a great year except me?". This happens only during these videos and I am not really worried about the new year coming on itself, as I have given up on giving importance to these arbitrary numbers humans created and which has barely any significance.

Maybe I should just sleep more. This year has been my worst year of sleeping due to various reasons, so yeah.

Sorry and not sorry for this rambling. I just needed to get it out there somewhere and I just posted it here and wanna know what other people think about this or the new year.

I have been finding more and more videos being recommended on my homepage which I search about even though my privacy paths I follow seem good enough. So this is how it goes:

• I come across a term I don't know on a Lemmy post.
• I open my browser, Cromite which has been set to priv.au, a searx instance, as the default search engine.
• Search the word and don't even open any links to know, just reading the meaning of this term out from the subtexts present on search results.
• And then I open YouTube and scroll a bit on homepage to find a video on that term.

This has happened to me twice in past few days and I am not understanding which service of mine is giving it away. To add more about my setup, I'm on mobile btw, using FUTO keyboard and using Duckduckgo VPN which blocks cross-app tracking. My mobile lemmy client is Voyager. I don't even interact with the post containing that term. I just open it up, read the post and the comments. No upvoting no commenting.

Who's the culprit here?

Your body is slowing breaking down. Your responsibilities only go keep going up as you age. Overall, things get harder.

I have constantly avoided using popular social media like Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat etc when I was on reddit. I thought I had best of all worlds being on reddit as it has cumulated posts from all social media. I was feeling that I'm being much more ahead of all the people around me by consuming qualify stuff and not algorithm driven stuff.

But since I have left reddit, I have been closed to all the stuff I used to follow and stuff which aren't there on lemmy yet. I don't usually follow mainstream news either, feeling if something is big enough iit will reach me some way or the other. After my exit from reddit, I have been closed from the news about my interests too. Currently my only source of any news is one small discord server where people share stuff from twitter and thats it.

Recently I have been starting to think if it's all worth it to live like a perfect outcast who has 0 relatable things to share with people irl. All people around me talk about that funny meme that's been trending, that news which got viral and that trendy song which got hype recently and I don't have any idea what they're talking about. I have been feeling very confused on what I've been doing till now. Idk if it's all worth it being the way I am.

Also since I have become a privacy freak too, it adds more repulsive feelings to use mainstream social media. And this also got me thinking maybe privacy thing is not something I should even fight for. Just blend into the public and just enjoy stuff.

Idk, I have constructed this "superior" all different character of mine only to find I just don't have the personality irl to back up the character I've created and was longing to have something to be relatable to people.

( I know lemmy has majority population who are older who would feel easy to say I'm doing great being way from normie media but I'd like to be more open and hear some thoughts from gen z people or a perspective from gen z a bit more. All views are welcome tho <3)

Tldr: Having mixed feelings about staying away from mainstream social media, being a privacy freak and feeling if it is all worth doing this all anymore.

I just realized I don't have many discussion communities on my feed. My feed is filled with all news articles and I rarely find any posts written by people to discuss stuff. The communities where they discuss normal life stuff or anything in particular, majorly with texts, is what I want, idk what you actually call them.

Thanks.

(I hope this is the right place to vent out my thoughts and feelings, idk who will read this though, but pls be kind (: )

I never had any huge crushes in my student days. I had one towards the end but I usually just observe from a distance and admire their beauty. Never felt I should talk to them or make them close.

Cometh my first job. I saw this woman, she was not amazing at first but caught my eyes. Everyday I would look at her as usual with my "crush protocol". Day after day, I felt she was becoming more amazing. This continued for months. Feelings only got thicker, so much so that I started to associate every love song with her. This is something I have never connected to in my whole life. Love songs never clicked to me, never felt attached to them. But this woman changed it all somehow with no word spoken between us.

But on some particular day, heavens have blessed me with an opportunity. She sat beside me during lunch out of sheer luck. Time for more context on my personality. I just don't talk to people. Idk if it's introversion or lack of social skills. Even with my colleagues I just talk when necessary. I just don't initiate any conversation irl until they do. Talking to strangers? Forget about it.

Let's come back to our glorious day. She sat beside me and all the time she was eating I battled within myself that I have to talk to her somehow. And after battling for some hard 10-15min, I went for it. I said "excuse me..." and fumbled my words towards some random question about her work. The conversation was quick and I couldn't carry it longer than a minute probably but much lesser ig. But this was a huge achievement for a someone like me - an introvert talking to their crush.

Days passed but we haven't talked a single conversation again. Here comes the villain. There came a shift in our work that we had to be in different places. Boom. I won't be seeing her ever again. I don't even know her name. Now I am regretting not knowing her name ever again. Fcuk man.

Bye my unknown queen.

I cannot do a damn thing. Be it easy, be it hard, be it rewarding, be it just pure pleasure. I cannot enjoy a thing thinking it is just waste of time. I cannot carry myself to do a hard task thinking about the high effort it requires. Even if I break it into small parts, I would only do the bare minimum for a day or two and stop it.

My entire life is being passed away coming back tired, hungry and yearning for sleep, from a job I dislike to the core.

I am not moving towards my goals. I cannot quit this job. Time is passing. I'm stuck. Weekends cometh, I use them all trying to catch up on sleep.

Every week I'm doing just the bare minimum to survive thinking I might do something on the weekend and I don't. How do I break out this cycle? There's a lot more I could unwind upon but this post is already long enough.

Argh

I don't get it. Everywhere I look there is this discussion about getting into a relationship, getting gfs/bfs and constantly chasing after it. And I'm not doing anything of it. I never paid attention to such stuff. During my teenage years, I thought it was normal attraction which people cave into and pursued such things. But now in my 20s, the same thing I observe, if not a little bit more than I used it. People getting sad because they are not finding someone. People being happy because they have one for themselves.

I'm not that career focused either. I just mind my own business. If it's studying or working, I just mind that. I do nothing like checking out girls in my school/workplace like my peers do. Maybe I'm just scared to pursue such things. I also think having a relationship is a huge headache too. Meeting them, making them happy, going out with them regularly. (I don't go out myself where will I take her to?). All of this while doing your daily stuff.

Am I wrong thinking to put career first before I get into relationships and stuff?

I am not a guy who used to pay attention to clothing fashion because I felt it was expensive and hard to follow those ever changing trends. But I am seeing lot and lot people keeping up well with trend. I feel like I am falling behind and I need to stay up with the trend too.

So how do I stay up with the clothing trends with not spending too much time on it? How do you stay up to date with it?

Last year, out of nowhere I got this impulsion to deal with my addictions, gaming and watching sports. Quitting gaming was hard but I was able to do it. Quitting watching sports was way easier.

Now with two big time killers out of my way, everything in my life has become boring. Entire New Year day was boring. Now I'm literally dreading getting free time. I dread my time at work and now dreading it in my free time too. Makes me think I got myself into an awful situation. I don't use Instagram or tiktok, never did. In this time period where I have quit these both addictions, people have asked what the heck do I do in my free time and I don't have any answer besides "I watch YouTube haha".

I really need something fun to do that I enjoy. I mostly stay home and don't go outside home except for work, so please recommend something inside my comfort zone. I know, I should go outside to places for fun but that's for another time when I feel motivated to try something out of comfort zone. Thanks.

Edit: Thank you all for taking your time and writing me so many things. Some of the things are ones which I always wanted to do and some of the things which are very new to me. Will try bunch of them and see how it goes 👍

I prefer to have same things all the days of the year. This extra pressure to celebrate on occasions feels so forced. I like the extra time I have for myself on holidays and don't have it waste on things on obligatory celebrations.

Just let me be with me and my PC.

This is the vibe I'm feeling on this new year's eve. Does anybody else feel this way?

Every group chat seems to die the moment I send 1-2 texts there. Every single one. Old, new, offline friends, online friends, everywhere. What's going on? Are my jokes bad? Have you ever experienced this? If yes, what was the issue you found out?