I’ve just stripped and primed 6 kitchen drawers. They need 2 coats of paint after that. I have to silicone around the new bath panel later on and maybe make a start at replacing the curtain rails. The old rails and baton need to come down, new wood cut, finished, routed, painted then afixed to the wall. It’ll look good when done, but I’m not looking forward to it.
Nice. I tore out my weird rotten cabinets last spring…my plan is to try my hand at building custom cabinets here. I know it will probably cost me more in time and frustration and possibly even materials and tools than ordering some, but it’s something I want to try.
I got rear ended and I think I may have a concussion.
My finances are so tight right now. I’m at an ER right now, because everyone I know says to get any symptoms documented ASAP.
Rear ended at a stop light two nights ago (Thursday). Tried to work last night (Uber driver), but whereas I usually do 4-5 hours before a break no problem, I could only go about 1 hour before being too exhausted and feeling my attention slip.
I really, really need to make money this weekend. I hope there’s some kind of lost wages support I can get, because I’m afraid if I drive (a) I could be unsafe and/or (b) I could prevent my brain from recovering by not resting enough.
I don’t have any buffer to cover me for now, even if I’m awarded some kind of lost wages judgment later. I’m worried, overwhelmed. Don’t know what to do.
On top of this, my nephew who’s in a rough spot in life just showed up in town unannounced. He didn’t ask, but I offered to let him stay with me. He’s homeless. He says his plan was to just stay on the street or at a shelter.
He’s a good kid, but he’s a total spaz. He found some gig work today, but he botched getting up on time and I woke myself up early to drive him to this job.
I really, really need my sleep. When I wake up there’s like a 30 second window for me to go back to sleep. But I rolled out of bed and drove him to the job site. Because he didn’t plan well enough for getting there.
I grilled him the whole way on how he can avoid making that mistake in the future. His answers were vague at first. He literally just said “discipline” when I asked how he can avoid this in the future. I was like “no, I’m asking what specific steps you can take to avoid this”.
He’s got a seizure disorder. He’s in and out of mental hospitals. He’s been on the street in Oregon. Got OR gov’t to provide him a train ticket to Denver.
I feel for him, but I really really need solitude and rest if I’m gonna recover from a concussion.
Fuck.
He’s got really bad adhd. I keep finding food he took out of fridge then just forgot.
I’m in my 40s, he’s in his 20s. This is my first apartment ever. I’m struggling to survive. Living week to week doing uber with a rented car. But the shelters are full as far as I’ve heard. Meaning he’d be on the literal street.
I’m praying. My own father is helping me out.
The fucking timing on this is crazy. Was heading to the train station to meet him, stopped at a red light, when the other car just ran into mine. Like, just sitting there then bam, my world is changed.
Nephew is weirdly childlike. He’s turning 30 this year, but he talks like a teenager. Thinks like one. I find myself naturally fathering him, like “Did you remember your coat?”. Shit like that.
When I lived on the street it made me grow up. I don’t understand how it hasn’t made him grow up. Or if I’m mistaking mental illness for childishness (as others have done with me).
I’m sitting in an ER waiting room right now. Staff giving me dirty looks like I’m a drug seeker. Don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do.
My own father, in his late 70s, is offering to lend me a little money to get through this. I’ve got shame issues around accepting that. Trying not to let the shame control me.
I might just tell the nephew that he’s got to go out for the next four or five days. Figure out other housing or sleep on the street. I simply cannot rest my mind unless I’m alone. It took me until my fucking 40s to secure an apartment that was mine, where I could be alone. Then when I really need the solitude, in order to let my neurons relax and recover from the fogginess of this concussion, is literally the same day (out of the approx 15,000 days of my life) that my nephew drops out of the ether needing help.
I don’t even know what kind of help I need. I guess I need clarity and courage. Clarity to know exactly what I need to do, and the courage to do it.
I think the right move is:
- Accept the loan from Dad
- Kick Nephew to the curb (at least for a week while I recover)
But I feel no certainty about that. It feels wrong. My mind and my heart are out of alignment.
Your dad loves you and wants you to do well… Honor that by letting him help you out.
Regarding your nephew, it sounds highly likely that your house is not his final stop in life. If you don’t have the capacity to take him in there’s no sense in letting his one homelessness become two homelessnesses. You can support him in other ways, maybe as a role model and a mentor, but if he needs a parent you might not be it. Parents grow into that role alongside their infants.
Do you have any interest in doing something other than Uber, or doing Uber just on the side?
Not today, but recently at work, I, a DevOps engineer specializing in Linux and other Unix/Unix-like systems, was given the task of doing some admin and maintenance work on a few Windows servers…
I FUCKING HATE WINDOWS
THIS OS MAKES NO SENSE AND ADMINISTERING IT IS A NIGHTMARE
FUCK MICROSOFT!
I used to work in IT.
Having to make promises about things with so many uncertain variables was really bad for my mental health.
Don’t forget about ChatGPT, which is pretty good about giving (mostly accurate) answers to tech questions.
Kicking my ex out. I’m terrible at any kind of confrontation and at this point I do have the option of calling the police to assist. I just know that I am a doormat and am afraid I will cave if he gives me a sob story. He’s had over two years to get his shit together and leave but it’s come to forcefully removing him. I could use someone besides the police with a firm voice to convince him to get up and moving.
You can’t help anyone else if you can’t take care of yourself first. That’s a really hard position to be in, but you have to do it for your benefit and eventually for his too.
In fact, if I found out my lady wanted me out but didn’t flip the switch, I would be pretty upset about the time we lost living in that state. That time could have been spent rediscovering myself or finding my next partner. What a missed opportunity!
I first informed him I wanted him to move over 2 years ago, but he never left. Hopefully this will finally be resolved in the next week. I’m at the end of my rope, barely surviving in my own home. I hide in my bedroom, while he roams the house making a mess…I want him to be happy and healthy but that won’t happen while he’s in my house. We’re both miserable.
Psoriatic arthritis flared up in my entire body that has made it impossible to sleep or even really exist for the last week and a half.
It would be awesome to just not hurt for a few hours.
I hope it calms down, I cannot even imagine what that must be like. Do you have access to people with experience with this? Support groups, or even one mentor?
I could probably find one with a little effort but the fatigue is crazy. I can barely keep myself awake during the day and can’t sleep at night.
I think it’s starting to calm down a bit now at least.
I hope that when you’re feeling better you can use that time to find a way to get more support. But more than all, I hope you’re feeling better. Lean on your friends, they love you.
I know nothing about psoriatic arthritis but I do know a little about joint inflammation. I read about how an imbalance of omega fatty acids can cause inflammation and after taking a fish oil pill most of the pain went away in my knees. Would that be something you could try?
Diet changes are one of the major things I’ve been working on that has made the last little bit rough. I’ve been cooking a lot more, primarily oily fishes which I love, but I did cut out the trash sugars and caffeine that I use as a crutch.
Almost daily mackerel and salmon has been awesome though. Saba shioyaki is probably my favorite comfort food and I never realized how easy it was to make. I’ll have to give the actual fish oil pills a try though, thanks!
My work. We’re understaffed and underappreciated.
Under appreciate them right back. Try to keep work about funding your lifestyle.
I don’t know how intense or emotional your job is, so that advice might not be practical. But I do think everyone needs to set boundaries, but also emotional boundaries. Please make sure work isn’t wearing you down when you aren’t there. Try taking a few minutes to reset after clocking out, and close the door on your work day.
Thanks. I don’t take my work home as such but I also do have a partner that lends a sympathetic ear when I need it. So I’m lucky in that regard. Truthfully, I get to focus on my home life the moment I’m off the clock.
At the time of answering though, we could have used a few extra hands.
Assuming that you don’t work somewhere where people’s safety isn’t in your hands, just try to remember that every system, including each person in it has finite capacity.
Can you use recent history for workload capacities to make the case to your leadership that they either need to hire more workers or rethink their resource planning?
Maybe a checking account with more than a $2,000 daily debit limit so I can pay a fortune to live in a 60’s-era shithole (but it’s “aesthetic”). Or a landlord that accepts modern payment methods.
Gonna have to buy a checkbook probably. What century is this?
Most banks allow you to pay bills online and they’ll send a check on your behalf to your landlord. You can set it up to go automatically every month too.
I bank mainly online but I did have a shared account with my wife at a traditional bank with that service. Unfortunately they started taking 2-3 weeks to mail it to my landlord two miles away, so I gave up on that.
If you’re in a hurry and can’t wait for a checkbook you might be able to get a money order. Banks and even some grocery stores will do this for a fee (it was like 0.50 last time I did this… Like 16 years ago omg what happened)
I’ve resorted to that, but I had to buy money orders on different days due to the debit daily transaction limit.
Any y’all got any tips for getting worries about the future out of your head?
I am not hopeful about our future. But something I came to terms with is that I am going to die. It might be in 40 years or it might be sooner, it could be next year. But it will happen. Also, it’s possible that I don’t just die but life becomes incredibly unpleasant. All the same to me in this current point in time, where I am able and I have means to do interesting things.
I know this is hand-wavy but I heard someone say something along the lines “we need to stop worrying about putting more years in our life, but work on putting more life in our years.”
This sort of mantra helps keep me grounded when I’m deciding what to do with myself and my family on a day to day basis.
I mostly use distractions as a way clearing my head.
The best thing to distract myself when I was really depressed was Geoguessr, it takes focus and is fun.
If you need a free alternative, look at Geotastic.
What I’ve found that helps me with this is follow through on the worry. For example, maybe I’m worried my boyfriend will leave me, and to follow through on that I think “then what happens?” Well, I would be depressed for awhile, and then eventually get over it. I’ll go through the stages of grief for the death of the relationship but I will survive and move on. This Follow Through thought pattern works best on situations you have actual control over in your day to day life.
Another thought is “you can’t control everything but you can control how you react to things”.
Life.
Life doesn’t come with a manual, but it does come with an author for its manual.
I like to keep a small size binder (I hate notebooks because I’m very fickle about organization). Like A5 size with some line ruled paper and some grid paper. I keep some in the back for random notes and extra fill. I use dividers, and the very front page I keep a to-do list of things that really need to happen now. The next page are to-dos that i don’t want to forget but aren’t really critical.
Then I have a section where I keep one page for any major problem in my life. I’ll try to do a root cause analysis. “Just keep asking why”. Then I’ll sort of journal some observations over time until I solve my problem.
These can be as simple as being flustered in the grocery store or as serious as co-parenting problems. You need to know what parts of your life you can control, and harmonize with the parts you cannot.
Then, I have a section of sort of “how-to’s”. Simple things can make a big difference, like what order works best for me to get myself ready in the morning… Like start the water kettle before I wash up and get dressed so I can have my coffee while I make breakfast. A lot of these pages will be written (or rewritten!) after I’m ready to throw away my problem solving pages from the other section.
But on a day by day and hour by hour basis, focus on triage. What can you do for yourself and your people that will have the most impact in the shortest amount of time? What can you do that will bring you a little joy, what can you do that will reduce a little irritation? Then do that.
I’m a software developer but a lot of the work is ambiguous and the instructions are lacking sometimes. My company puts no pressure on me and is amazing with my neuroticism and ADHD. Yet I can’t not wreck my mental state by worrying about things and thinking I’m not cut out for this. This issue is worst Mon-Tue and then gets better towards the weekend. It’s also dependent on the work load and client emails.
Also, crashed my mums car last night by not paying attention and rear ended someone. Then they tried to fight me cause I asked them to all stop screaming as nobody is hurt and it’s only material objects and I’m fully comp so they’ll be fine. Fucking cavemen. I’m not adverse to hitting someone, but it would have to be over something more serious than a minor accident.
Oof… Yeah it is hard to deescalate with a person who is primally furious with you. It was probably really scary for them, and it sounds like they might not have been emotionally intelligent enough to handle it. I’m glad you and everyone are ok.
I’m also in software and, yes, depending on what kind of business you’re in people often have no idea what they want. Do you like reading? One thing that helped me in those situations is Don Norman’s book, the design of everyday things. It helps me get into a big picture mindset.
Thanks for the response.
Yeah I agree they were just people not cut out to handle the stress of the accident and just got mad. It was my fault and I owned up to that instantly, I’m just more a chill guy as things could always be worse and no body was injured thankfully.
Thanks for the book recommendation I’m have a look for it.
Yes we are consultants and we write extensive spec that clearly the clients don’t read and then we have to go back and redo a lot of work as “it’s not what they want” but they can’t articulate what they want so you have to infer it and then when it’s wrong they’re like bruh. This is what I struggle with, the ambiguity of it all. I like to know what I’m doing and when, whereas this small company is incredibly chill and don’t expect a lot which I find hard as I’m used to being worked to death in crappy jobs and here it’s like the staff come first the code is second after we are all happy. I am blessed in that regard.
Let me follow up, that that lack of direction is also a great opportunity for you too. If they afford it, take your time and weigh different ideas, different technology stacks or different designs, try to get the costs together (development and maintenance), and make a presentation to them. But most importantly learn as much as you can in the process every time
Someone to talk to about the Adastra visual novel because I can’t get it out of my head and it’s making me depressed wanting to be in that world instead of the real one so, so fucking much.
I don’t know anything about it. Can you tell me about what you would want to do there and why?
It’s more about being with the people of the story than anything else, really. It’s a romance story. But also very Game of Thrones-ish, while having a sci-fi kick.
Can you cultivate the traits you like from the people in the story?
Good morning ELIZA, it has to be very hard empathizing and communicating with everyone if all they don’t keep the conversation going.
Sorry
In all seriousness though, I’d like to hear as well.
I think I’m missing a puzzle piece on that one 🫠.
I guess I was more wondering what you like about the characters, and what makes you want to be around them. Can you learn things from them and apply them to your life? If you do, then you will be around them when you’re around yourself!
ELIZA is an early natural language processing computer program developed from 1964 to 1967 at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum. Created to explore communication between humans and machines, ELIZA simulated conversation by using a pattern matching and substitution methodology that gave users an illusion of understanding on the part of the program, but had no representation that could be considered really understanding what was being said by either party.
ELIZA - Wikipedia (modified)
Oh…
I answered you from my inbox rather than the thread, so I didn’t notice you weren’t the same person I was responding to. I figured Eliza was a character in their novel 🤦.
I guess now I wish I didn’t sound like a chat bot.
A fap session.
I hope you find what you’re looking for
“That’s not a good thing for a taxi driver to say.”
Everything. Or just this.
I need to get my car fixed so I can leave.
I need to empty out my car so I can get it fixed.
I need my car fixed so I can empty it out.
I need to go shopping so I have food.
I need to bike to go shopping.
I need to eat to bike.
I need food to eat.
I need to get paniers and a rack for a bike so I’m not so reliant on my car.
I need to get my car fixed so I’m not so reliant on a bike.
I need to find a therapist to feel safe.
I need to set up a computer to email every provider in a whole state to try to find one.
I need to set up a computer so I can work.
I need to feel safe to set up a computer.Everything seems like the most important thing to do right now. I know the actual only important thing to do today is get food for at least 3 days so I can have at least 1 day when that’s not a problem. I need someone to tell that to even though I’d already thought of that and thought that I have nobody to tell it to, so thank you for asking.
You might not need to empty out your car to get it fixed.
I’ve fixed some cars that are between “hoarder” and “they probably live in here”. It’s not the most pleasant thing, but it’s possible.
This sounds to me like an ADHD cycle of failing to know how to prioritize. Focus on your immediate needs and take this step by step. First, find something to eat. Pasta with ketchup if you have to. Now figure out how to do a round of shopping. Just one. Not how to do them the best way forever, just once poorly to get some easy to eat foods in your house. Step by step.
When everything is precious nothing is precious, and that intermingled list of demands is pretty cluttery. No offense!
“Reliance” is a risk to mitigate, but mitigating risks shouldn’t come at the expense of taking on more risk.
All the things you want to do are worthy and valuable but like you said, you just cannot do them at the same time, and I doubt they are quite as cyclically dependant as you think they are.
(For example, if you’re in a pinch for transportation and you’re willing to bike but cannot get one yet, you could try a bike share or scooter for a few dollars for a few hours… I have done this to get me home from dropping the car at the mechanic).
Try to organize those things into a clear roadmap, where things that cause more things to become easier are done first. Where you have cyclical dependencies, think outside the list to solve that problem.
