Everything is making me pessimistic and kind of extreme. How do you live with all of this?

TL;DR: The news and my social media feed are making my views darker and more extreme. I'm quitting Instagram this week and I started a small balcony garden, but I still feel hopeless about the future. How do you get through the days? And if you've found some kind of peace with it, what does that look like?

Hi everyone. I'm posting here because I need to hear from people who've been carrying this feeling longer than me.

I've noticed something about myself that I don't like. My views are getting more extreme. More "us vs them". I don't know the right word for it. Maybe tribalist. And I think a big part of it is what I see on Instagram every day.

My feed is full of wars. Palestine being wiped out. Climate disasters. Tech billionaires buying up everything and fighting for our attention with their algorithms. Data centers eating up land and water. Rich people buying farmland and patenting seeds. Ultra-processed food everywhere. And a lot of content about immigration and crime in Europe, which I notice is pushing me to think in a very black and white way, and I don't like where that's going in my head.

I know the algorithm picks this stuff for me. I also see beautiful things there, gardening, homesteading, motorcycle trips. But overall it has made my thoughts very dark. I open my phone and it's a forest fire in my country, or another corruption scandal, and I just feel like nothing is going to get better.

The ironic part: I'm a software engineer at an AI startup. I use AI every day because the job requires it, and the workload is huge. Outside of work I really don't like where AI is going. The flood of AI content, the data centers, all of it. I'd leave but the job market is bad and I need the money. So I'm stuck for now.

I live alone in a rented apartment in the Balkans. There's almost no sense of community here. I sometimes dream about places like Denmark or Japan, where the social contract seems strong and people actually trust each other.

I'm not scared of dying or anything like that. I'm just really pessimistic about the future. And I feel like I can't do anything about any of it. Climate change, wars, the tech guys running everything. It feels too big.

So here's what I'm doing. I'm deleting Instagram this week. And I just started a small garden on my balcony. Some herbs, a few tomatoes, some flowers. Trying to focus on the small things.

But I don't think that's enough on its own, so I'm asking you:

How do you get through the days when you've already accepted things are bad?
What do you do with the hopelessness so it doesn't eat you?
And if you've found some kind of peace with it, what does that look like?

Thanks for reading.