I’ve been languishing in my comfort zone. Continuing to do so will have terrible effects for me. To quote Marx, I “[have] become a monster, a huge mass of flesh and fat, and [am] barely capable of walking any more.” Ever since the pandemic started I’ve become a terminally online antisocial weirdo who barely ever leaves my room, let alone the house.
Of course, in addition to the damage this does to my personal life, it also makes me non - potentially even counter - revolutionary. As someone who wants to be a communist instead of just some internet poisoned middle class dilettante, I don’t know how I can be expected to jeopardize the comfort of my parasitic labor aristocratic class position when I can’t even get out of my comfort zone enough to go outside, eat real food, and do even the barest minimum of light exercise.
spoiler
Treating the internet like a cocktail drug addiction has been good for me. Don’t try and quit xanax, heroin, alcohol and meth at the same time. Start by just trying to quit one, suffer the withdrawals, and don’t let one of your other vices grow worse to compensate. They say of course the best way to kick a bad habit is to replace it with a good one, but sometimes when you’re kicking heroin all you you can do for a few days is vomit and shit yourself. However, when you are not immobilized by withdrawal, doing something to shake things up in life is paramount, it forces you into an unfamiliar mindset where you will be more pliable to new changes.
Small victories are the key, as is persistence in the face of small failures. Building a habit of trying is more important at first than building an actual successful habit. Keep streaks as long as you can but don’t self flagellate if you stumble or fall.
I think light exercise is a great place to start, you will in a short time frame feel a little better and, if kept up, it will slowly snowball to positively affect all your other ventures.
Everybody works different of course. Me personally, when I was battling depression for so long, it helped to externalize it. You can see it as capitalism as an entity trying to render you, a valuable asset to socialism, inert, but concocting a pernicious psychological system to keep you trapped and hopefully kill you entirely. The stakes in essence are that high, no? There are other frameworks too; for example nowadays I have a sort of imaginary drill sergeant in my head who speaks none to nicely to me, and I also find myself using spite and revenge as a motivator. I find it key to force myself to do things even when I hate them and don’t necessarily believe they will bear fruit.
Whatever way ends up working best for you, just know that ultimately you won’t know until you start throwing some spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Don’t wait for the perfect answer! Put down this shit phone, close all the screens, go take a walk, and a longer one than you think you can do! Force it!
By any means necessary.
And good luck to you and anyone else on your redemption arc :)