Ah, you mean what do we do to cope with the crushing existential pressures of modern existence?

In order from productive to not productive:

Hike, photography, walking, playing music, writing music, editing photos/videos, producing music, cooking, playing videogames, Lemmy, porn.

That about accounts for all the time I'm not sleeping, working, shitting, showering, or shaving,

Cycling. It's the only way I can relax.

I have two:

• Lichess vs computer, easiest setting, trying to promote as many pawns to queens as I can before checkmating.
• Civ 5, duel, Shoshone vs. Venice. No city-States, the only winning condition is time. Farming generals until Venice is reduced to a single hex.

Walking and running

Lemmy. Lol. And a nice walk with my favourite music is good too

Hah, I do the same in AoE 2 as well, though I put the AI to standard and like to give them grief, like build towers around their base early in the game, or use an army of monks to convert every unit they send towards my base, and build up my own army of converted units; or lure them into my base by deliberately leaving a gap in my walls, except the path to my tc is lined with towers along the way - sometimes I even make a maze of walls and towers and it's fun picking them off one by one as they make their way towards my tc.

But lately though, I've been doing all of that in 0 A.D., an opensource RTS like AoE. One of the cool things about 0 A.D. is the soundtrack, it's really, really done well, especially considering it's a free game; and I also like the customisable AI - in addition to difficulty, you can set their behavior to defensive/aggressive/balanced etc, and you can have a ceasefire period where the enemy doesn't attack you at all for x minutes after the game starts, which gives you enough time to build up your base.

These comments are more safe for work than I expected.

Replaying old games that I have fond memories of. We're in an incredible renaissance of classic games getting source ports or updates that bring them up to modern standards, and I'm loving it. Daggerfall, Blade of Darkness, Jagged Alliance 2, Morrowind, Jedi Knight, Caesar 3... I'm sure I'm forgetting ~~some~~ many. They let me forget the present and pretend that I'm back in simpler, happier times, at least for a little while.

Whenever I feel like I need a breather, I ride my bike. Just ride, not hard or fast, just spinning the cranks. Feels amazing.

Getting near blackout drunk and then hating myself for doing so for a couple days with a hangover.

A nap.

Watching cartoons from my childhood. Not quite as so early it's Nick Jr level. But like I've watched Hey Arnold so many times at this point(my favorite), Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the Angry Beavers, Ahhh Real Monsters, Pete and Pete. I was so happy to hear Paramount+ had a bunch of those shows... but then all the striking stuff happened so I just went back to my hard drive with a bunch of the shows.

I found this post while playing AoE2. I enjoy playing the campaign a lot because there are so many and because of the sandbox gameplay.

So I can pretty much infinitely play them and have done so from time to time since it launched :)

Walking, watching lets plays, playing minecraft

I like driving around in open world games like Forza Horizon and Watch Dogs. Not even doing anything, just exploring the streets.

I like to cross stitch. It's calming and satisfying when a project is finally finished.

Riding a bicycle, browsing forums, drinking, fishing, hiking, and vidya games.

Recently it's listening to audiobooks. Makes commuting or doing chores great.

Factorio. Hands down. I have a few other games that I self-soothe with, mostly colony builders, idle games, or automation games, but Factorio is my go-to when I get into a bad headspace. To the point that my "end of world" plan includes immediately scraping the entire mod database to a portable hard drive, along with Rimworld's entire collection. If I have those + my Steam Deck, I feel like I would be able to manage in a full social collapse and Mad Max-esque world. I know how to build a variety of generators and the proliferation of solar panels has made post-collapse planning a lot easier.

I am also regularly doing mirror backups of the whole of Wikipedia. I am thinking of adding Wikihow to that automated task. Wikipedia is only like 20GB for the aggregate knowledge of most of humanity, so well worth keeping for research after the internet dies.

Beat Saber, currently. Get me in that music zone and let me wave my arms around like an idiot.

Sleep. I like sleep. It's incredibly soothing to switch off from reality and often my dreams are vivid and interesting.

Making TTRPG maps. I just put on some music, throw down a background and a grid and start doodling. Thinking about details to add in here or what kinds of encounters could go there is pretty meditative.

Watching old Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. They never showed on tv where I’m from, so I got in to them about 10 years ago.
There’s something comforting about watching an old movie with dated pop culture jokes being made in the background. I don’t really focus on either one and just enjoy the coziness.

surprised nobody put down the classic yet...

Depending on the weather, go for a walk while listening to some music

Stellaris, so similar vein as AOE2 lol.

Sleep

I watch the anime gurren lagann. It's a stupidly chaotic optimistic show that basically asks "but what if humanity really could do anything?"

Answer: we would throw around galaxys like frisbees in giant space robots.

So when I'm down I like to watch it and think maybe I can do anything if I believe.

Meditation

Doing dumb runs in EU4 while cheating. I give myself a few techs at the beginning of the game to be stronger than everyone else and focus on my objective.

For example, Hindu Hungary, Jewish Arabia, Totemist England, Tengri Russia, Protestant Ottoman Empire, destroying France as a small East Asian country and forming it again by culture converting, being Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by starting with an African country etc.

I play heroes of the storm vs AI. It's pretty fun.

I like wandering around skyrim and doing occasional side quest

Fountain pens. And brawlhalla.

Recently, playing Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead on my steam deck.

I excuse it by convincing myself it's preparation for TEOTWAWKI which can't be far off now.