THINGS I'M MAKING My very first sweater, which I sadly don't think I have enough yarn to finish yet. More rings. Been working on some hammered finishes. Getting more consistently good seams. DOG CODA I've been getting updates from the rescue place that took in my old dog, and apparently he's doing great there. He's comfortable enough around other dogs that he can just chill out in the same room as them for the duration of a movie, no barking, no scratching. He's getting tons of exercise, and can just run around in the yard for as long as he wants. I think he's going on his first hunting trip this weekend, which will be a lot of fun for him. Really happy that he's making progress, it makes me feel good about my decision.
Leave the sweater as is. It's avantgarde fashion.
Still no home. I start my job tomorrow. The owner of the building doesn't consider my buddy's freelance income as sufficient enough, so we now need someone else to guarantee his part of the rent. That means they need to hand over multiple income and employer statements as well as proof of residences. It's solely so the company can proof we're good renters on paper, so it's a lot of work for basically nothing, but we've found a buddy willing to help us out. (Parents were not an option for us.) But it's super stressful and I probably will have to commute 4 hours/day starting next week because I can't even plan temporary housing with this level of uncertainty. Stressssssfulllll. The good part is that I had my first company meetings this week. I'm stoked to get started. The more colleagues I talk to, the more I realize that it's a unique, ambitious and motivated bunch of people that I will hopefully do great things with. On my first workday (tomorrow) we're driving to Austria to ski, so I could not have wished for a better start! (I'm getting lessons. Wish me luck.)
We're kinda-kinda in the same boat right now. No advice from me, just a show of empathy and of the wish to stay well despite bad circumstance. Best of luck. Once you're on the other side, it'll get easier.But it's super stressful and I probably will have to commute 4 hours/day starting next week because I can't even plan temporary housing with this level of uncertainty. Stressssssfulllll.
How's about both of you move to America, get an apartment together here, and turn it into a reality show? Cameras will follow you around all day as you try to navigate your way through all aspects of American life. You can call it something topical, controversial, and possibly misleading, like "Undocumented."
Thanks, it's appreciated. Good luck to you too! I keep telling myself doubt must come to an end, but it's not easy when that end keeps getting pushed back a week or two.
Thank you. I think doubt never ends. With fear, the question is not how to not be afraid — it's how to act on my values despite being afraid. It's a matter of getting used to it and overcoming it. Doubt is fear.
I used to be the kid who wanted to know exactly how the day was planned so I wouldn't be caught off-guard by any kind of surprise. I'd call going from that to "I may or may not have a home, we'll see", progress.It's a matter of getting used to it and overcoming it.
It's been a while. doing my Artists's Diploma in early music in Toronto. It's going okay. I did an audition for a local baroque group, and they liked me. hopefully I'll get some work out of that. Went to a poetry writing workshop series for femmes and trans femmes last november. I've been writing a lot of poetry since. I think Lil is sick of reading it, tbh. Hope all is well with y'all.
I did end up submitting one to a poetry collection - I haven't heard back positive or negative yet. I was mostly making a joke at myself that I keep on sending you stuff unsolicited. I sent you one a while back, though I just looked at it and the formatting is all borked up. I'll have to resend with better formatting. Or maybe I'll just post it.
Work Business requirements and project management have become my life at work. Health I'm allergic to peanuts! It's good to know what keeps causing my throat to swell! Tried some peanut M&Ms earlier and had swollen throat, racing heartbeat, etc. etc. within ten minutes. Fucking sucks. Time to find new protein sources... Life outside of work, great. My ankle is kind of fucked but it should be something which can be fixed with physical therapy. Seeing basically the best in PT in town as far as running injuries goes. Time to buy a bike (I have no idea what to look for when it comes to buying one, help???) and climb more... Climbing and Girls Hit my first indoor 5.11 climbing yesterday, which considering I'm two months in is pretty fucking fast progress. Stoked, and can't wait to climb outdoors for the first time this weekend!!! When a girl says "hope you're okay with lots of climbing dates" you know you've found someone great. Or, at least I know that she's great for me.
Any good ideas? I think I eat too much beef jerky. I'm going to buy some peanuts, even though I don't really like them. I'm trying to replace baked goods with hard boiled eggs with some success. I still love a morning scone, but if I swap them with eggs a few times, I figure I'm slightly better off. Congrats about climbing and girls! Sounds great!Time to find new protein sources...
Pumpkin seeds are surprisingly good. I'm vegetarian, so losing peanuts and almonds is a problem...I've also purchased both pea based and whey based protein powders to see how I handle both of those. Hard boiled eggs are something I've been trying to get into for a while, but I hate cooking in the morning before work.
Dude hard boiled eggs you can do two dozen at a time like two weeks ahead. https://www.marthastewart.com/354061/perfect-hard-boiled-eggs
Ditto kleinbl00 on this. I make them six at a time and keep them refrigerated. I'll peel three before work and take them in a little plastic dish. Works pretty well and keeps me away from carbs two mornings each week.
These things are the shit Egg in one, a little ranch in another
Eleven dollars? I'm still using generic plasticware I got free when I opened a bank account in 2003.
Update for you and WanderingEng. Tried it out last night. Now have two eggs, a tomato, spinach, and grape salad as a lunch. Looks really good, probably going to make it more of a regular occurrence.
Can't have almonds anymore because I'm allergic to those, too :(
Yeah. Those aren't as bad as peanuts, but they make my mouth tingly and dry and cause nasal congestion. Too many almonds and it starts to replicate the peanut symptoms, which are much worse. Losing tolerance to a food sux, for sure.
I eat peanuts a lot. They get good. Get the cajun ones if you can. I also eat a lot of eggs. If you're fancy you can do egg whites; that way MyFitnessPal doesn't nag you about your cholesterol. Wanna be impressive? Look up "omelet mouselline" and make that. Yummmmmmy. One of my tricks is I'll buy one of those big family trays of chicken tenders, throw 'em in a big ziploc bag with a couple tablespoons of rub and throw 'em on the grill. Then I'll eat them all week. You can also buy some greek yogurt and a thing of yogurt dip. Put that in a wrap/tortilla? With like a shit-ton of scallions? Maybe a celery stick or some spinach? Yeah my nutritionist told me to up my protein by a factor of like four.
Bought some store brand hot and spicy peanuts last night. The only reason I didn't eat the whole tin is because I have a kitchen scale. These are way better than I remember.
Shooting my first ever corporate photo shoot today! I realized too late I MASSIVELY undercharged them, but then again I don’t really know what I’m doing and I get to chill in Quebec City for a couple days on their dime :) It’s not like I have much else going on anyway
Flu sucks. This year I got the flu shot for the first time and I'm halfway through a prescription of Tamiflu but I still gave up two days work. Sunday was entirely in bed. Monday was mostly in bed. Yesterday I progressed to video games and Netflix and bitching about Krakauer-style adventurists. It's that annoying stage where you're too exhausted to focus but not physically tired enough to sleep. I have to be back at work Saturday. It's really hard, in theory, to lie around all day doing nothing. It's really hard, in practice, to do anything other than lie around all day doing nothing. Okay now I'm exhausted. Back to bed.
I started Into The Wild today. I'm not quite sure where to insert this but figure I'll just do it here. I'm not sure if I hate McCandless or Krakauer here, but I definitely hate at least one of them (this is page 66; I already hated McCandless about fifty pages ago). "Rough congress with nature" pisses me off. Nature has no fucks to give about anyone. What I hate about McCandless is he seemed to think of himself as some sort of individualist, but so far at page 66 all he's done is bounce from one person who helps him out a bit to another person who helps him out a bit. We know how this ends: he leaves a note asking for someone to help him, and when nobody happens by to help him, he dies.it paled beside the prospect of rough congress with nature
I've never read Into the Wild. Well, not the book, anyway. I read the article. Two things struck me: 1) Krakauer never met McCandless, and never interacted with anyone enough to know McCandless. 2) Krakauer's shtick was to tell the world exactly who McCandless was. innocent and seemingly insignificant blunders he would have walked out of the Alaskan woods in July or August as anonymously as he walked into them in April. Instead, the name of Chris McCandless has become the stuff of tabloid headlines, and his bewildered family is left clutching the shards of a fierce and painful love. I've known guys like Christopher McCandless. They're goofs. They fuck around until they decide shit's gotten a little too real and then they peel it back. Christopher McCandless hung it out past the point where he could reconsider and he's dead now. That's it. That's the only difference. McCandless eschewed the safety net and it took him four months to starve. That Krakauer has been obsessed with this failure and ways to make it not Chris McCandless' fault says a lot: Krakauer really wants this to be the cruel fate of the universe conspiring to take down a seasoned outdoorsman, not a goofy 24-year-old kid who didn't have the sense to bring a map. Then shit got fuckin' meta when Outside published a lengthy article about people who risk their lives paying homage to Chris McCandless. I can't hate Christopher McCandless. He was a dumb kid who didn't get a chance to learn from his mistakes, who read too much Tolstoy and not enough Jack London. Krakauer? Krakauer is a hagiographer.For most of 16 weeks McCandless more than held his own. Indeed, were it not for one or two
The troopers told me that 75 percent of all of the rescues they perform in the area happen on the Stampede Trail. “Obviously, there’s something that draws these people out here,” one of the troopers, who asked not to be named, told me. “It’s some kind of internal thing within them that makes them go out to that bus. I don’t know what it is. I don’t understand. What would possess a person to follow in the tracks of someone who died because he was unprepared?”
innocent and seemingly insignificant blunders he would have walked out of the Alaskan woods in July or August as anonymously as he walked into them in April. Yeah, Krakauer is an idiot for saying that. His blunder was not walking out after four or eight weeks. My take isn't that Krakauer wanted to make McCandless an accomplished outdoorsman but that he wanted to make him out to be the type of person who would find a solution to overcome whatever came his way with the suggestion that we all should try to do the same. Then the "fates conspired against" stuff I agree. I've never known anyone quite like McCandless. The closest I can think of is a high school friend who once told us, "I have a great idea to make a lot of money, all we need is a dead body." He was the type who did ok at stuff but never really went anywhere. He didn't necessarily blame the world, but the impression was his break was just around the corner. One more complaint I should have said originally: for all his desired independence, McCandless still relied on the bus for his shelter, a bus other people had hauled out there.For most of 16 weeks McCandless more than held his own. Indeed, were it not for one or two
I wonder if it's generational. McCandless was six years older than me. That means he was in 10th grade when Challenger happened, 8th grade at the Sarajevo Olympics, 7th Grade in the Lebanon barracks bombing and 22 when we bombed Iraq the first time. We were all right in that formative era when the world changed - in 9th grade debate class I argued against the reunification of Germany. It was the kind of crazy time where Fukuyama was arguing for "the end of history." And I knew lots of guys like this. It was the original GenX "fuck this shit" approach that led to characterization in Slacker, Reality Bites, etc. McCandless is 100% a character out of Douglas Coupland's Generation X (which came out the year before he died). It wasn't that they were accomplished outdoorsmen. It was that they didn't care, couldn't be made to care, and were busy opting out of society 100% because they had no faith that it could be improved or engaged with in anything but a negative way. They weren't "off-the-gridders" so much as they were burnouts. Maybe it had something to do with how much more common acid was back then. That, I believe, is the thing that Krakauer worships. It's the fatalistic attitude that if this life isn't worth living you're better off dying than trying to adapt. Krakauer wants McCandless to be a countercultural hero, not a poacher burnout that doesn't believe in maps. If his struggle is noble his life isn't in vain; if his struggle is ignoble then The Man was right all along and The Man must never be right. Richard Proenneke's book had been out 19 years by the time McCandless headed out. It was a thing. Dick Proenneke basically proved it could be done - and that with aplomb - if you knew what you were doing. But if you know what you're doing, you're not pure of heart or some shit.
McCandless was twelve years older than me. My generation was around for the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union, but I think I was too young to understand the significance of either. My generation saw world events like the impeachment of a president over a blow job. I read Generation X in college, and I agree McCandless would fit in perfectly. I'll have to go back and re-read it. My generation had its share of burnouts but not in a GenX sort of way. Our burnouts smoked pot or because alcoholics and worked dead end jobs, walking away from society only metaphorically. I completely agree with your assessment of Krakauer and the idea that McCandless's ignorance was somehow more noble. It isn't just that a book about a well prepared person spending for months in the woods wouldn't be as compelling, I think Krakauer would be almost disappointed.
I would love to see a Krakauer book about a bunch of guys who have their shit together and triumph over adversity through planning and foresight. But then, that would be a Michael Lewis book. I remember precisely the moment when the world ended. It wasn't the fall of the Berlin Wall in '89. It wasn't the dissolution of the Soviet Union in '91. It was Sotheby's auction of the Soviet space program in '93. Only 45 years elapsed between the first terrifying beeps of Sputnik and the first hit of the gavel dispatching the crown jewels of Soviet technology to the highest bidder but those 45 years defined our lives. My great grandparents escaped the Tsar. We had friends whose grandparents got out of Moldova just in time, taking with them the crown jewels of some lesser duchy. Non-Iron-Curtain Europe was generations back to us and there it was, a blip in the back pages of Newsweek, a human interest story about Gagarin's space suit available to the highest bidder. They shelled the Kremlin and nothing happened. Everything we knew was wrong and there was a lot of searching. it would be facetious for me to argue Christopher McCandless was at all interested in the Cold War but there was a very real sense that the universe was changing if you were young and impressionable in the early '90s.
I hope I helped you feel engaged and doing something yesterday. I hope you feel better, too. Not to reopen a debate, but does Krakauer-style mean people like Krakauer or people Krakauer wrote about? I think his experience on Everest put him in your boat about high altitude climbing. I think in the afterward of Into Thin Air he spoke harshly of it. Somewhere I saw an interview of Beck Weathers where he said probably no one has done more to discourage high altitude climbing than he and Jon. Beck was the client who was left for dead, lost both hands and his nose, escorted down the mountain by the IMAX climbers, and helicoptered out from Camp I.
Krakauer sees exactly one paradigm: the Aristotelian Tragic Hero. Regardless of the circumstances, Krakauer will arrange the narrative such that death is preordained, fates conspire and nobility is stamped out by an unthinking universe. This is one of the reasons he had to leave Seattle (his own assessment of the situation, also in the afterward of Into Thin Air): he turned one of the most independent, individualist pursuits people can take on into a predetermined game of bridge where the proudest adventurer is nothing more than a bridge partner to fate's lead. Fundamentally, it's an Amundson vs. Shackleton debate: be prepared, be skilled, be funded, be forgotten. Be adventurous, be brash, be romantic, be dead... but be legend. Crowdfund your way up a cheap "killer mountain" in Pakistan with no backup and hope for the best? The really stupid thing is Shackleton never said that. Never published it. It started showing up in 1944. But people so.want.that.tragic-fucking-nobility that an ill-fated expedition fraught with planning errors has become a mirror for people to admire their inner Icarus. Into Thin Air was a finalist for the Pulitzer in 1998. I'd say Beck and Krakauer have done a shitty job of discouraging climbing.Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success.
Huh. You're painfully right. It makes for a good story, but the mail carrier and the head guide that summited much, much too late weren't stupidly making fatal decisions (they were), but instead they were fated to keep going until they couldn't. Nobly (stupidly, because empathy) the guide stayed with the mail carrier to his demise. I hadn't thought about it, and you're clearly right.Regardless of the circumstances, Krakauer will arrange the narrative such that death is preordained, fates conspire and nobility is stamped out by an unthinking universe.
From a narrative standpoint it makes perfect sense. We want our lives to be interesting. We want everyone's lives to be interesting. Drama masks aren't "mild contentment" and "self-satisfied smugness" they're ecstasy and tragedy. Everyone has heard of The Perfect Storm. The characters they all remember, the characters at the center at the book, the characters we're all made to care about are the hapless fishermen who don't survive the storm. The couple in their known-to-be-unsinkable sailboat that (ohmygod) had to call the coast guard for rescue when the storm is so aggro their boat actually takes on water? Went and got the boat the next day. Fucker's still floating. Nobody has heard of Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, about plodding engineers that recover unrecoverable treasure from the deep ocean, even if they've heard of the SS Central America. Nerds read about success. Normies read about failure. Krakauer is just the greatest cheerleader for failure in modern literature.
That "Krakauer-style adventurists" conversation has been one of the best I've seen on Hubski as of late. Hope you get well soon.
Wow you got on it fast enough to use TamiFlu, good job its a bitch to get the timing on it because most of the time you already missed the window by the time you realize its the flu and get your prescriptionFlu sucks. This year I got the flu shot for the first time and I'm halfway through a prescription of Tamiflu but I still gave up two days work. Sunday was entirely in bed. Monday was mostly in bed. Yesterday I progressed to video games and Netflix and bitching about Krakauer-style adventurists. It's that annoying stage where you're too exhausted to focus but not physically tired enough to sleep.
I get that sometimes, when I'm not sick. Feels like you can't do shit anymore. Unsettling. Gesundheit.It's really hard, in practice, to do anything other than lie around all day doing nothing.
The Stormlight books are a great read. I think they are better than the first three Game of Thrones books. Sanderson's world building at first put me off as a bit "try-hard" but by the middle of the first book I was sold. His "magic" system is different than anything I've seen in decades. The books are hefty; I managed to do 5K pages read in about a week for the first three books. Supposed to be a 10 volume epic, but we will see as he has 3-4 other series going on. I need to stop being a tard and go and read The Wheel of Time. I think I read the first 2-3 books then forgot about them.
sanderson is a great systems writer: things like countries, ethnicities, magic, creatures... real nice the interpersonal stuff is bland but it's never bad, i think he was a great pick to finish the wheel of time because RJ was another great systems writer, except that when RJ wrote people, it was really hit or miss - his characters could be more interesting but could also be annoying/repetitive there's a reddit post out there where somebody counted the number of times a character "tugged her braid," "smoothed her skirts," or "crossed her arms" but i think there's spoilers in it so don't look for it he can lean on catchphrases (catchactions?) he doesn't write women too good, either, but at least he tried
That looks interesting. It might be something that would be up Dala's alley too. As an aside, is it just me, or are micro urls getting crazy ubiquitous these days? I remember when they first started coming around, maybe five or six years ago, maybe longer, and initially there were a lot of warnings to not click micro urls if they were from untrusted sources because you never knew what was at the other end. Now everyone seems to use them from Amazon and Youtube to newspapers to random joe websites.
Blame fucking twitter. URL shorteners have been around almost 20 years now. A quick look at wiki shows a 2000 date. I can recall using shorteners in AIM before 9/11 so that fits. Linking something to a dynamic API URl that is 100-150 characters long is simply too unwieldy. The direct link to that book was 163 characters long (yes I counted); the fucking twitter character limit was such that you could not link that URL without a shortener. If they had not been around since the early 'Aughts, they would have been invented to fix a problem. amazon, Google etc also use them to track what people are sharing and end user engagement. I'd not be shocked at all if there are people tracking where their short URL's are being posted and making marketing and acquisition decisions based on said tracking. In other news, Sanderson's universe has been optioned for a movie, and I dread what they will do with his world. So much of the story won't fit well unless they do a very long series. Book one by itself would be two seasons. Game of Thrones had 100+ characters that had to be condensed to save complexity but the stormlight series does not have that out, there are maybe 20-30 main characters.
Um. Ish? I don't constantly go around looking for fantasy stuff per se, but I enjoy it from time to time. Hard fantasy aside, I'd readily argue if you're absorbing any part of American pop culture, there's a good chance there's gonna be elements of fantasy in it. For instance, I'd readily argue that super hero comics and cartoons like Adventure Time or even Sponge Bob are modern fantasy. They do tick off a lot of boxes. As for this particular image? I'm just really into illustrations and engravings right now, because I'm just awestruck at how well some of these artists convey depth and shadows and such by varying the frequency and strength of the lines they use. Since a lot of these were made by artists for storybooks and such and a lot of those books have classic tales from folk lore to poetry to religion, there are a lot of images with knights, beasts, angels, elves, anthropomorphic animals, etc.
Ah: professional curiosity. The term you want is speculative fiction.because I'm just awestruck at how well some of these artists convey depth and shadows and such by varying the frequency and strength of the lines they use
I'd readily argue that super hero comics and cartoons like Adventure Time or even Sponge Bob are modern fantasy.
Something tells me you'd enjoy these two Wikipedia links. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson_classification_systems
The landlord lady clued me in: she only cares about the apartment, not the person living in it. A certain sign of that is her workers — cheap-labor Uzbeki young men — left a mess after renewing the apartment and messed up my cookware. My favorite pan still looks like pigeons shat in it. ...I know, I know. Worrying about his pan, that guy. But I love cooking, and I have no respect for people not taking care of their cookware. Others' cookware? Whole another level of dickery. Looking for a new apartment. Calling random people is stressful. Some people — even men — don't rent to single men here: they've had "experience" with it, meaning they had a young male student leave a big mess in their rented apartments. I take care of my living space, but with things like this, once you've had a bad taste of undisciplined young men breaking your shit, it's difficult to be persuaded otherwise. A quiet, lazy week of being stressed about about the state of my living space. That kinda vibe makes me want to hide in my shell and only try familiar things in my little corner. I'm terrified of nothing at all, and it makes going forward that much harder. There's only one way in which the reconciliation of the two worlds for Rosa works: if I imagine both of them being set somewhere like the Tyranny setting: a gritty, down-to-earth Middle Age-esque fantasy, except without the explicit magic and (possibly) with aliens. Excitingly enough, this kind of perspective helps me see the world wider: it's now bigger than I imagined, there are different peoples living on their own all around the known lands, and the world itself is breathing.
My best friend's older brother killed himself last week. Completely heartbroken. Stunned. I spent the next five days with the family. They were utterly beside themselves. People came from all over to hug, grieve, and pay their respects. It was a show of solidarity that I think improved the event from completely intolerable to the barest reed of tolerable, like maybe things will get better in a month, a year, then a... I suck at writing or talking about this sort of thing. School started Monday. Classes have taken my mind off of it some. Last night I stopped by my friend, who has been staying at a hotel (since her apartment is immediately above her brother's where his body was found). I hung out with her and her mom all night, gave her a back massage, and we watched a stupid movie. I hope it helps. I truly wonder if--somehow, in the moment before you kill yourself--you got a snapshot of the total chaos and grief that's inflicted, would it stay your hand? Or does that not even compute?
I'm sorry for your loss. Someone in a group project I did lost one of her best friends out of nowhere. Died in her sleep. It was gut wrenching to see the disbelief and grief in her and the family/friends involved. I don't know if realizing that would change people's minds - it often isn't a fully rational decision, I think. I can imagine despair already being off the charts so I don't see how guilt can improve that. At some point life has to go on. At some other point, even though it seems infinitely far away, you will have to give this event and his life a place in your heart to rest. It is, by all means, a difficult process but doing "normal" things is a good first step. It gives your mind some time to process it all. Best of luck, man.
https://www.taydaelectronics.com/ For those wondering what they are talking about.
That sounds like a good plan. It means that you aren't getting enough blood to your brain when you exercise. That puts you at risk for all kinds of stuff. I'm not a doc so I am limited in what I'm comfortable putting out there, but suffice to say that it's a problem. Have you thought about alternative forms of cardio? I use an exercise bike at home because I don't trust strangers to help me if I keel over out in public.
It's understandable you would be hesitant to give it up. I have never experienced 'runner's high' so I can't comment on it personally but those who like it seem to like it a lot. I have my bike set up in front of the TV connected to my computer. Bike time = Destiny/Overwatch time.
I think I have seen maybe 10-20 total hours of sunlight since the fall, I hear you. Get your hardcore exercise in a safe way, then maybe take a walk or something outside as a cooldown. I am enamored of 'constitutional' walks around the pond at my apartment complex. After that, the last thing I want to do is to sit indoors.
Bad. Ass. Sorry to hear about your corporeal troubles. What happened? Sorry about that, too. As an intellectual through and through, how do you feel about the mind-body balance? Do you feel like one is more important than the other, in general?I've passed everything with a word 'quantum' in it
can't even recall if anyone helped me.
Hope it all goes well for you. The world needs more active people. Might want to send Henry Rollins an e-mail. He's known to be intensely active: his 11-months-a-year schedule includes all kinds of public appearances, talking shows, writing, acting gigs etc.. Maybe you two would hit off.
I go to a Tuesday run group, and we almost always get a beer after. One former regular moved back, so there was some catching up. Another runner is dating someone new, her best friend of ten years. She said it's going great and made a casual comment like "we'll probably get married." It struck me as one of the more optimistic things I've heard in a while. It seemed very simple and very genuine.
Nearly cut the last two joints of my finger off on Sunday while I was prepping lunches for the week. With no one home and our car in the shop, I had the surreal experience of sitting in the back of a Lyft on the way to the ER. Turns out that's fairly common these day - yikes!
I dated a guy in HS for 2 years, we lost our virginities to each other, etc, etc. He's married now. He reached out to me on Facebook a few weeks ago. Just a "Hey, what's up, been thinking about you lately, wondering how you're doing." Innocuous? Sure. Could be. Could be if you weren't an ex, could be if we had ever socially/casually talked anytime in the past 8 years, could be if we had had a conversation deeper than "How's the weather" anytime in the past 11 years, and certainly especially could be innocuous if it weren't for the fact that literally, of all the people either of us could possibly talk to on this entire earth, I'm the only one who took his virginity and vice versa. So I waited a few days and thought about it and finally said, "Idk, how's your wife doing?" Because also, all of that "could be innocuous but for..." certainly includes "the fact that we're exes and you're married now but trying to privately slip into my DMs and chat out of nowhere without even mentioning your wife/you got married, SINCE you're supposedly trying to casually catch up with me after all this time." He took a few days. He came back to me with, essentially, 3 points: 1) You're right that first message probably make me seem like a fuckboi; 2) I'm reaching out to you because time has taught me the value of friendship. And when you were in my life, you made me feel more accepted, and understood, than most/almost everyone I've ever known since. Also you pushed me to be the best version of myself, too. I've lost friends over the past years. I need good friends, people like you, in my life. 3) I did tell my wife I messaged you and after I told her all my very good points in Part 2), she agrees with me! I need good friends. And you are a good friend! Because 12 years ago, I feel that you were! . . . I know often, things like this aren't worth feeding into. The guy clearly wants attention, and any of it is preferable to none. But his stupid comments had got under my skin. I said, "I'm sorry you feel you peaked in high school." I said "I'm sorry you're reaching out to me seeking, solely, as you've explicitly stated, your self-gratification and feel-goods." I said, "I'm sorry you think you're the same person you were 12 years ago, or that I am." I said, "I'm not." I said, "Other people don't bring out the best in me, I do." I said, "I don't grow when surrounded by utter, unquestioning acceptance." I said, "I'm not an old or good friend of yours." Because if we used to be friends in high school but now haven't talked for 10 years and you're hitting me up? Idc who you are. You used to be a friend, and I might be open to being friends again, but you don't get to skip in and out of my life every decade and maintain the same status. People change. Shit happens. I don't know who you are anymore. We aren't friends, person who came in out of nowhere trying to trade on past relationship karma and feelings which haven't been questioned or validated for literally years and years and years. I said "I'm glad to see you've managed some happiness; got your degree, got married, presumably have a career and success and so on in your life. I bear you no ill will. But that's the extent of how I feel, and how I want to feel, about you in relation to me in the current day." I said "Let go of the dead past and get rid of those double-thick rose-colored glasses you've got." Then finally, I said "Bye." - lil this feels like a lil talk thing
Took me 3 years to finally talk to someone, but as of this morning, I've been officially diagnosed with clinical depression. I'm starting an SSRI first thing tomorrow.
Well, that's kinda weird. I was diagnosed with dysthymia a few hours ago, and am going to be starting meds an SSRI either tonight or tomorrow. If you're interested, maybe we can compare notes of the results? (PM or e-mail?)
I had bomb ass tacos last night. There's a tex-mex joint in my city that deep-fries avocado wedges, slaps them in a corn tortilla with sour cabbage slaw and queso fresco and sells them for $2 a pop on taco tuesdays. Is there a culinary equivalent to the feeling of lust? Oh also, my mom offered to give me my (deceased) grandmothers engagement ring to use for my own matrimonial purposes. It's a sweet offer, and the ring itself is a humble little thing in keeping with what I'd like to think of as my values/our values. I told her I would think about it. The more the fiancee and I talk about it, the less we want anything other than plain, easily replaced, gold bands.
I have a bad habit of saying "I want to fuck this (food item)". Those tacos sound amazing
Realized I needed to replace my car this year. It's only a 2010, but has 185,000 miles on it, and once it hits 200,000 I expect Things Will Start To Go Wrong. (It's also a cheapass Pontiac Vibe. A fine basic car. But basic. No, I mean BASIC.) I don't really like cars. They are ok. They serve a function. But I won't miss the steaming mass of mediocrity and waste that is the modern automobile, when they are finally replaced by autonomous pods. (Note: Cars from before 1970? Good. Cars since 1970? Mostly meh.) So I started looking around at what's out there. Walked through parking lots. Talked to coworkers and friends who recently bought cars. What they bought. Why they bought it. Etc. CarMax was an EXCELLENT tool for me. I could put in "newer than 2013", and "less than 50,000 miles" and "hatchback", and "anywhere in the US", and come up with a really broad range of vehicles to scroll through. Links to customer reviews. Links to professional reviews. CarFax reports. All the data I needed to eliminate the "Definitely No" cars, and look closer at the "Maybes" and the "Oooh!s". And I bought a 2015 Chevy Volt with 8,000 miles on it. For about $5k less than market value. From a dealership. With a 7-year 85,000-mile bumper to bumper warranty. I hadn't planned on buying a car until late this year, but ... shit happens. This one came up, and I bought it. The Chevy Volt The Volt is an electric car. 100%, all the time. The plug-it-in-at-home-at-night kind of car. BUT. It also has a gas generator that can instantly produce 100kw of voltage. So when your batteries drain, the generator powers the electric motor. It's pretty cool. Looks like a generic car on the outside, and like a spaceship (or an iMac) inside. (I'd post a photo, but it's honestly too much work. Find a photo share site. Upload the photo from my phone. Get a link. Figure out how to get the link from my phone to my computer. Format it properly in the post... screw it. Google "White Chevy Volt". That's what I got.) I'm really happy with it. But am in a sales conference all week, so am typing surreptitiously between my PowerPoint presentations, so I'll just hit the "contribute" button now. Stay groovy Hubski.
