BougieBirdie

I used to suffer from a lot of existential dread. Like, not sleeping because time spent sleeping was bringing me closer to the time I’d no longer exist.

Whether you worry about it or you don’t, some day you will stop existing. Worrying about it frankly doesn’t help. In fact, it detracts from the dubious pleasure of existing. In my experience, not having fun existing makes me no longer want to exist.

A lot of people advocate for distraction, although personally I think that’s just a temporary escapism. I think we need to confront our eventual non-existence, accept it as a fact of life, and then move on by trying to find meaning in what we have left. Way easier said than done.

CBT is a school of therapy about restructuring our thoughts, and it has a lot to say about confronting the fear of the unknown. Cultivating spiritualism and religion is a traditional way of approaching the problem, although I’d encourage people to seek out and learn what other cultures are saying instead of blindly accepting what their parents’ church says.

Personally, I had a religious experience while accidentally tripping balls on psychedelics. I’m not sure I’d specifically recommend that, it could just as easily backfire, but it helped me and you can find lots of testimonials with a similar story. Maybe it’s better to start with therapy and religion

I think bringing the cart to the corral is the bare minimum, and generally people will try to get away with the minimum for most tasks and social obligations. If you don’t at least bring it to the corral you’re deranged, but beyond that I’d rather a job is done half-assed than not at all.

If I get to the corral and there’s two or three loose carts I’ll stack them with mine. If there’s six or seven I won’t fix them all but I’ll still be as neat as I can.

If the store has different sized carts, this is always a bigger problem. People generally are uncoordinated at figuring that out.

My grocer has one of those schemes where the carts are unlocked by putting a coin in them, and you get the coin back when you return the cart. It works pretty well for keeping things tidy.

Temporarily out of stock

“Inadvertently” does a lot of heavy lifting here. I believe the intentions behind people’s actions usually matter more than the outcome. This probably doesn’t scale well to large organizations or government, but on the individual level it goes pretty far.

Now that said, the feeling of betrayal from a loved one probably hurts more than from an enemy: from an enemy it’s expected. Although I suppose your enemy is motivated to hurt you more grievously than your loved ones are

It was recommended by my psychiatrist, and I’m glad I read it, but I hated Feeling Good.

It’s got good advice, and the the techniques are sound, or supposedly clinically backed or whatever. But Burns’ style of presenting a patient and then solving all their problems with one quirky treatment really rubbed me the wrong way.

Legally, I’m sure each patient in his book is probably a composite of patients with similar problems. And I’m sure that it’s probably more narratively pleasing to show each trial as a success. But I don’t know, it just felt so dismissive of the actual struggles of my life and I worry that it gives unrealistic expectations to people who need help.

I felt like I had to try a dozen techniques before I found one that seemed to help. And when I did, it wasn’t the overnight cure to my anxiety that he presented, it’s been a slow, gradual thing. It was hopeful to find something that helped, but overall I think the book was discouraging because it made me feel like there must be something wrong with me that I’m not having the immediate success that Burns seemed so confident of.

So I don’t know. Overall I think it’s a useful book, I just wish it was presented differently. I also worry that if it was required reading, you’d get this influx of well-meaning but dismissive people who think that any problem can be solved by whatever the thing their teacher vibed most with. For a lot of people, until they go through their own struggle with mental health it’s like it doesn’t exist for them. Perhaps doubly true for teenagers with an undeveloped sense of empathy.

Aside, I liked Dr Faith Harper’s Unfuck Your Life series. It’s got the same bones as Feeling Good, but it’s more modern, her style is more grounded, and I think it’s important that she sets expectations by telling the reader that not everything in psychiatry is a magic bullet solution.

I also think the Unfuck series is neat because each book is smaller but tailored to a specific focus. Unfuck your Anxiety has different exercises than Unfuck your Depression. I think that makes it more accessible for people who are going through it, although perhaps it does lessen the depth that a required reading list would need from a single book. Not that they’d ever teach Unfuck your Life in school because swear words are bad even though teenagers literally wouldn’t care.

Anyway, long story long, I think they absolutely should teach this stuff in school but gosh I hate that specific book

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/loss

You take a four panel comic, have one line stand up, two panels with two lines standing up, and one panel with two lines perpendicular to each other. Congratulations! It’s a joke about miscarriage

When you wrestle with a pig, you both get muddy and the pig likes it

Showing her you’re interested isn’t about making you more attractive to her. It’s more about signalling that you’re receptive if she’s also attracted to you.

If she’s attracted and knows you’re attracted, the relationship can proceed.

If she’s attracted and doesn’t know you’re attracted, she’ll either be in the same position you’re in now, conclude that you only want to be friends, or move on to someone who’s attracted to her.

If she’s unattracted and knows you’re attracted, everyone can get in front of their feelings before you feel like you’re wasting your time or she feels like she’d be losing a friendship by not being romantically interested in you. The longer you withhold your feelings from her, the more difficult you can be making things for both of you.

All that said, I think it’s totally reasonable to hang out with her a few times to see if you like hanging out with each other first.

If writing is an option, then keeping pen and paper handy can facilitate communication.

An abundance of patience is useful. You can never really be sure what’s going on in someone else’s head, and that’s doubly true for someone who can’t tell you if they wanted to. People tend to mirror other people’s energies though, so if you remain calm and relaxed that can keep things smooth.

Something to consider: if you can’t speak, then body language becomes your primary method of communication. I wouldn’t be surprised if expressions and emotions become exaggerated because it helps get your point across. Mild annoyance could be perceived as anger if you’re sensitive to it.

Something else to consider: being able to lower the price is one of the easiest tools for pleasing a customer, but if you start at the lowest possible price then you’ve got nowhere to go lower if your customer already had reason to be irate. Plus if haggling is expected then your customer might not really know that you’ve started at the lowest price and might think that you’re refusing to haggle with them. It can be a tough nut to crack - I’d also want to give them the best price. If you have additional discounts, coupons, or gifts you can add to the transaction then that might be an option.

To be honest, muteness is a pretty rare condition here. I’ve worked retail for many years and can probably count on one hand how many mute customers I’ve had. But I have had a couple of regulars and we seem to get along. Treating other human beings how you’d like to be treated is usually the best way forward.

I’ve seen enough Christmas specials to know that richness from spending times with your loved ones, cultivating relationships with your community, and enjoying what you have.

If you somehow don’t feel rich with your fabulously wealthy lifestyle, then I’m afraid you never will. In fact, you probably have too much stuff to feel rich, because richness doesn’t come from the pursuit of things.

Don’t despair friend, I have a solution. Send me the deeds to your houses and factory and I’ll make sure someone who can appreciate them will enjoy them. Working through an agent like me will be far less scary than being visited by three ghosts tonight.

I’m having a hard time finding a job that aligns with my ethics. I was a software developer, and it seems that everything that’s hiring right now is stuff that would make me feel like garbage.

I considered taking a job as a help desk for an advertising library. I figure I could do a really bad job of it, and take a big chunk of my salary to donate to adblockers.

I earn about 30% of what I did five years ago, and prices have only gone up. I’ll probably become homeless if things continue, that’s pretty darn inconvenient.

I just want to make dumb little video games to feed my family, but I’m too burnt out from my soul crushing minimum wage job to make dinner.

I’m of the opinion that anyone who supports the police probably hasn’t had an interaction with the police.

Like seriously, any time I’ve been the victim of a crime, the police have been the worst part of it. I guess I’m probably biased, maybe there’s some place where cops don’t suck, but I don’t live there

I think people probably like the idea of the police: someone you can call in an emergency when you’re in danger. But their response does not reflect their branding

I pay over a thousand dollars per year for water in canada.

The water in town would not be safe to consume without treatment (lots of heavy industry here) and it’s nice to know that my toilet flows somewhere else

I know you wanted the parents’ perspective, but this is something I struggle with regarding my own suicidality. There’s even a meme that people don’t kill themselves because “mom would be sad”

I often think of the family I’d be leaving behind. Mom would never understand. Dad would probably get it, but suicide has a funny way of being contagious and I’d worry it would push him over the edge. My wife says she’d hate me forever.

Grief is really fucking hard, and when people kill themselves the survivors play the blame game with themselves. Surviving your child is probably the most difficult thing a parent can do, and to torture yourself with the fantasy that you could have saved them seems like a special kind of hell.

When I’m at my lowest, it feels like bullshit. Like honestly, my life has been so terrible that I want to end it, and yet people will carry on like they’d be the victim if I did. Maybe if you blame yourself and think you could have helped me, you could do it while I’m alive and asking for help.

When I’m calmer I realize that nothing they could do probably would have helped. It still burns me up though - people talk about suicide like it’s the most selfish thing a person can do. When you’re already miserable it sure isn’t great being made to feel miserabler. It makes me feel like I deserve to suffer - and that means continuing to live.

Anyway, I’ve been suicidal for just about thirty years. I figure I’ll give it another thirty, by then I’ll have outlasted my parents. Plenty of time to find meaning before then

I would generally lean towards nay, but I know there’s reasonable exceptions.

The biggest issue comes with the dynamics of the workplace. The most obvious one is that the workplace is usually hierarchical, and if you’re ever on different levels of the org chart that opens the door to problems.

Hitting on your subordinate puts them in a situation where they might not feel they can refuse because it could impact their job. Hitting on your supervisor could put them in a situation where they start worrying about a sexual harassment suit, or that it might bring on scrutiny where your coworkers start thinking you’ll get preferential treatment.

Even if you both hold the same title, it can become problematic. What happens when one of you get promoted? What happens when HR is aware of the relationship and will skip over you for promotion because of the risk? What happens when your employer unjustly terminates your partner and they pressure you to also leave your job because your employer is a bastard?

Those questions are assuming you enter a relationship. But what happens when you keep flirting with a coworker who does not reciprocate your feelings, but feels they have to keep the peace because of they reject you they still have to see you forty hours each week?

Depending on your job, if you do start up a relationship you might get sick of seeing each other all the time. Or you might have opposite shifts and then never see each other even outside of work. What happens when the relationship implodes and you still have to work with your ex?

Pretty much the only situation where I think it’d be worth the risk is if it’s a very casual job that you wouldn’t mind leaving if things got ugly. That could maybe apply to a casual relationship instead, but people often have very different ideas about what that means and it’s not uncommon to for people to get unhealthy in their relationships no matter how “casual” they say they wanted to be.

If your boss had to tell you to stop, then it’s clearly a problem. Heed that warning

I have a hard time feeling sympathetic for farmers who are protesting that the government won’t let them sell diseased livestock.

Interestingly, the farmers mention that vaccination would be preferable to culling. I don’t see any reason to disagree with that. But it does beg the question: if they’d rather vaccinate their livestock against disease, then why didn’t they?

It sounds to me like they gambled with their herd’s health to cut costs and lost. Now they’re looking for someone to blame

My professor tried to teach us that one too, but a classmate came up with an unforgettable mnemonic. Very cursed

The professor hadn’t heard that one before

I really enjoy the explosion at the end.

Through the rest of the movie the effects are timeless and suck you into the movie. Then you get that finale and remember this movie came out in the 70s

To hang out together intentionally, outside of work, more than once. If you no longer ever want to hang out, they’re probably not friends anymore.

I have a few coworkers I’m tempted to call friends. At the very least, we’re friendly. But I also know that once either of us leave the job, we probably won’t see each other anymore.

In a more general sense, I call a lot of people “friend” without necessarily considering us friends. Mostly strangers and customers, and it’s meant in a disarming way, like “Sorry friend, we’re sold out.”

I’m friendly with most people, but then to consider someone a friend feels like taking the relationship to a new level.

I don’t think I could be a police officer either. I’d have a hard time restraining myself from popping a smart-mouthed, troublesome, and reckless cop in the face.