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astrid · 8 answers · 9mo

what do you do when you're depressed and unmotivated?

Honestly, most of the time I just stay depressed and unmotivated because I don't even have any kind of spark that tells me to try in any way to do something to change this state.

When I do somehow manage to try to do something, I go for very low effort activities, like scrolling on Tumblr. I have a Tumblr account specifically so I can look at coffee shop pics, pretty notebook pages, retro computing screenshots, etc., because that's easy to do and doesn't trigger super bad feelings.

That scrolling might motivate me to go have a warm drink, which is easy, gives me an instant reward, and makes me move around and use some physical objects, and also might just get me out of bed. Or I might open up one of my notebooks and write, like just the one daily line I try to write in my journal when I don't remember my dreams: I just put the date, and "I don't remember my dreams". Or I might start my Win98SE or Win2K virtual machines, which might motivate me to start my XP laptop and mess around with it, and maybe find something entertaining to do there.

Or I might be able to talk to the one online friend that I talk to regularly now and that I have things in common with, as she'll relate to the depresso and try to cheer me up, or will accidentally cheer me up just by being absolutely adorable, or might motivate me to use my notebooks by talking about her own.

I know going for a walk can work well, especially if during the walk I get the motivation to go do something like visit a public library, go to a coffee shop, or take my camera with me and shoot some pics. But during bad days like these, it's a lot more work to get the courage to go outside, unless there is some kind of external pressure like having to go somewhere for an appointment.

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