One thing I learned in life is that you have to replace negative and frustrating topics with something positive, something that gives you back strength, something that overlays the frustrating topics when you are in bed, trying to fall asleep.
Whatever it is for you, it has to be something achievable, something that does not struggle to infinity, something that gives you a good feeling when conquered. For me it is running races and tackling digestible projects on computers. I am not counting horse riding, as horse riding is one reason why I wrote this article. Running takes care of body and mind (not in this order, though), programming on computers helps me with stimulating left-brain functions.
In the age of artificial intelligence and agents that take over our work, and ChatGPT that knows everything, I deliberately chose to work on „obsolete technology“ from my childhood and the time I was a university student (but did not always pay enough attention and did not put in the time). One example is programming in C. Not in Rust, not in Python, not in Go.
Someone on Reddit the other day could not understand why I still bother to learn C. The answer is simple: While thousands and thousands of people chase the latest technology hipe, with Assembler and C it is different. With C, all I need is the book „The C Programming Language“ from 1978 (or the 2nd edition from 1988) by my side. The examples and exercises will keep you busy for a long, long time. Programming C on old hardware like the MOS 6502/6510 CPU is even more relaxed. It is like time is slowing down, the constant information overflow comes to a halt, and eventually you get to know the small amount of people having the same hobby by name. BTW, time is not only slowing down because the system is sooo slow, which it is. For me this a perfect balance to a sometimes hectic – and frustrating- life.