Music Banter - View Single Post - Emerging From the Vinyl Collector Passion

innerspaceboy · 02-22-2023, 12:54 PM

Thanks everyone who offers their insight. On top of my aforementioned efforts I am taking steps to begin an apprenticeship where hopefully I can master the material and become a network engineer and start a new career to end my unemployment.

I recognize that this is a transitional stage. As an INTJ I've made sure to do everything I possibly can to be productive. That is critical to my mental and emotional wellness.

I joined a new social community and am proactively participating in their regional events. I offered my design skills and writing skills for their newsletter and to develop a line of merch for their events. Last night I was surprised to be greeted by an old acquaintance from nearly a decade ago in that group and she reached out and offered her friendship today, so I'm already reaping positive rewards from those efforts.

It's just challenging for me to have done all I can and still have so much idle time on my hands. I'm not in the right psychological frame of mind to engage my extensive libraries of books, 1980s television archives, and music despite my having carefully constructed a meticulously indexed archive of over a million media objects. (It's more the act of cataloging than consuming the media which brings me joy.)

I reach out to my network of friends around the world to maintain those relationships. I'm so grateful for their support. The next few months will be enormously challenging. I really hope I can succeed. But the waiting might prove to be the most difficult part of all of this.

I need to feel productive at all times. I treated myself to a little something special in celebration of being accepted to the apprenticeship. It's en route in the weeks ahead so I'll share it if all goes well. That act will bring me some joy.

I'd love to hear how others navigate transitional phases like these. Having never owned a television, I find it tedious to watch movies or shows to pass the time. So I'm exploring previously untapped sectors of my music library. That provides at least some comfort.

I've read that exercise and sunlight are beneficial to positive mental health, but I'm in Buffalo, where we have daily forecasts like today's which reads, "Extreme Travel Danger" and we notoriously have little to no sunlight for months at a time.

Let me know if you have any other ideas to preserve my sanity. I'll keep reciting my positive mantras and verbally articulating my gratitude each day. That seems to help.

Thanks.