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(Thread IKs: Josherino)
 
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petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Just checked in on this thread because I started crying uncontrollably for several hours and that's something I haven't done in many years. Reading just a few pages I'm really humbled at seeing how much worse some people have things and I don't feel like I have any right to feel bad. FWIW I'm crying for you, I'm crying for my species, my planet and all of our good intentions that have wound us up electing fascists and only caring about money even as our own people are dying. My wife has been trying to talk me out of bumping myself off and so forth and I probably don't have the nerve to do it anyway, for her sake even though I'm nothing but a liability to her at this point. I feel like I've had a good run but my all friends and family have given up on me years ago and let me tell you folks, I'm not real chipper this morning. I'm a bad person in a nation of bad people.

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petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Hey, I wanted to give my heartfelt thanks for your responses to my venting the other day. I have been really loving heartbroken over how things are going for my country and for the whole world, but I'm not often capable of very much emotion so I really felt pretty ill when I started crying and couldn't stop. Thank you for giving a drat about a stranger. I hope to be able to pass on the favor of your thoughtfulness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylLpplWSrNk

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Zeroisanumber posted:

Meds, light boozing, and some love & drug use have been keeping me but this new thing about CPB kidnapping people off the streets of Portland has got me all spun around with fury.

Is this sanity? I feel like being beyond furious about this is a sane thing to feel. But I don't know what to do with it.

Maybe try to help build a resilient community? But how do I start? I have guns, but not enough for anyone but me and I don't know how to help other people be strong together.

It sure is a good thing that all those protesters haven't gotten hip the fact that protests are nearly useless and started carrying around a pair of wirecutters and discreetly killing the combine one paper cut at a time.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Feeling really angry pretty much all the time RN, just getting pissed over the most trivial poo poo. I think it's growing old, plus some bad allergy/hay fever, and I'm suspecting that this is how CHUDs are made. I have some temptation to curl up into a ball of whining aggrieved self-pity and I'm constantly pulling back and telling myself to stop being so angry and hateful. I'm having trouble not thinking about how much humanity sucks and how much my race and country sucks. I'm just a whirling vortex of hatred and cynicism RN.

On a slightly healthier note, I think I've got a job in a bike shop starting next week. I'm sure it's no job for somebody my age but after being a court reporter for 15 years and being treated like pond scum by lawyers and judges just because they know they can get away with it, I just want to work with my hands and do something less ugly for a living. And no longer be called "boy" and "Madame Court Reporter" by old "southern gentlemen." Or listen to old sheriffs telling judges how Hillary needs to be locked up, and complaining about "Bomma."

petit choux has issued a correction as of 22:06 on Mar 26, 2021

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

empty whippet box posted:

I'm so tired of the miserable nightmare my life has become. Brief moments of things being ok or being able to distract myself punctuated by gut punch after gut punch. I just want a few good days, I just want to feel secure or ok. I feel disgusting and fat and gross on top of it and I can't do anything about it. My button business died and hasn't gotten an order in months and I am a failure on every level possible and the only thing that stops me from killing myself is how much it would hurt my wife. I hate my life and I wish it were over and I don't want to do it all anymore. If our stimulus and tax return would just get here maybe we would be ok but it will very likely be multiple months before either does and when they do it'll just be a brief respite from abject poverty before it all bleeds away again. Posting this is probably dumb too and will probably get me in trouble somehow too but I am in the waiting room of the emergency vet for the thousandth time this month waiting to hear if my cat is going to die, again. AGAIN. Everything I was supposed to be in life, I'm not, every opportunity I ever had, I squandered and I don't think there's any hope of it ever getting better. I'm just a total failure on every conceivable level and I wish I was dead but I can't even be that because i have obligations to other people and my cats. I hate this, I hate myself , I wish I wasn't this pathetic sack if poo poo but I am

I feel you. Don't be so sad, you can't be more of a loser than me. :-) I've had one or two or more dumb business plans fall through and yet here I am fudging another one together. So oy, you are one of us. Don't loving bump yourself off because then there will be one less of us and we can use every one.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Chuka Umana posted:

I think I'm getting kinda terrified of psychiatrists now that I'm watching a bunch of Frontline stuff on the satanic abuse stuff in the 80s and the controversy over MPD and repressed memory theory. These were some of the premier psychiatrists in the world, and they believed that average people were programmed by satanic cults to have multiple personalities to be triggered like the Manchurian candidate!! We're told to be listening to the experts and the science!!

So we've had lobotomies, electroshock, homosexuality as disease and the satanic abuse cult theories, and psychiatry has left a huge amount of wreckage in its wake. I really hope there isn't anything today that we'll look back on and think wtf were we doing?

I'm not saying don't see a psychiatrist but I've been pretty disillusioned with the whole practice outside of the medications which work.

Yeah, I told my last shrink I didn't need a therapist, and that I was having a legit, sensible response to knowledge that our planet is dying and nobody with any power gives a poo poo, combined with seeing my country elect Donald Trump into the white house. She never did take me that seriously but she was pleasant enough and would prescribe anything.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

AceOfFlames posted:

The panic was kicked off by a book written by a woman who married the psychiatrist who treated her, and said husband's position was used to give it legitimacy. No way would poo poo like that fly today.

Not to say psychiatry can't be used for misguided or sinister aims but these days I think the biggest problem is how it and psychology are getting more and more geared towards making people ignore (or be "mindful" of) the realities of hellworld and capitalism so they can keep the system running until it inevitably falls apart. And even that heavily depends on individual therapists. Seek help until you find one that works for you.

Yup, just keep people manning the pumps while insurance companies and millionaire lobbyists decide their fate.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

I've been having intrusive thoughts telling me to bump myself off a lot over the past few days. Haven't managed to get that bike mechanic job after all, the shop owner called and told me he decided to give the job to one of his old buddies after he had promised it to me, NBD. Just selling a few hundred bucks worth of stuff every week on ebay, taking care of my now-cancer-survivor wife, trying not to post in CSPAM so my nerves calm down, that's a good part of my life RN. I haven't been able to make friends with anybody yet, the few times I've tried I've gotten brushed off. So yeah, feeling pretty useless and meaningless here. Trying to remind myself that "nothing matters" also means I can do whatever I want, but still not happy about that.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Hey, thanks for all the supportive words. I really appreciate it. I might as well admit that I have been spotty in taking my antidepressants and that's part of the reason I'm getting a lot of negative emotions going on. Just getting these inarticulate pangs of sorrow and pain kind of randomly. Trying to get that Zoloft rictus back.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Hey Josharoni and all, just wanted to say thanks for being there.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Segata Sanshiro posted:

CONSTANT religious ptsd and memories of being inside churches and being forced to listen to religious figures, also I just ended up homeless. I feel like I’m losing my mind.

Hang in there Champ, don't loving go dying on us, you are one of us. We need you.

Somebody has issued a correction as of 03:26 on May 26, 2021

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

titty_baby_ posted:

Just wanted to share this here because this is something I'm kind of ashamed about IRL. Only a few friends know about it, and not my gf or family. Earlier this year I ended up on antibiotics for a month, which coincided with me desperately looking for a new job and stopping smoking weed in case of a drug test. I didnt drink the whole month but ended up smoking again towards the end.

Its the longest time I've been sober from alcohol for a decade. I wasn't necessarily drinking heavily, but I'd usually have 2 or 3 drinks a night on weekdays, more on weekends. In the first week of my sobriety I called out sick to work because I couldn't sleep, felt a bit shakey, got the chills, etc, and I assumed these were side effects of the antibiotics (most of them fit) but I realized after it was also likely alcohol withdrawals.

As soon as I was finished I started drinking again, and im basically back up the to frequency I was before. I dont think I've spent a day without alcohol since I finished the antiobiotics. I intended to just drink on weekends, but I'd find excuses to drink during the week, every day. Ive been meaning to start working out again but have been hitting the brewery immediately after work instead.

Today I woke up saying I wouldn't drink and by the end of the day I drove to the brewery on the way back from work. Lucky me, every table is full, and the bar seating is closed because of covid. I came home and started working out instead. Its a small victory, but I've found just getting that first day through makes all the difference. I hope I can keep it up tomorrow as well.

In the small chance it's helpful, I instituted a rule for myself years ago because I felt I was drinking excessively. I only allowed myself to drink if I worked out. Now at first it was a problem because I worked out a lot anyway, but eventually I got more into the workout than the drink and became really determined to lose some weight and reduced my drinking after doing it this way for a while. Not because the drinking was bad, but because I wanted to look better. And in fact it was the only thing I ever did that noticeably affected my weight. So where virtue failed, vanity helped.

And I am coming off of a year-long high on weed and it's put me in some very, horribly bad moods. I've been self-medicating and all the poo poo that I've been numbing myself about has all come back, but at least I have the compassion of my wife, who has been a real support. I was high as gently caress for a year straight for a number of reasons (TRUMP!), including constant pain from arthritis and two damaged rotator cuffs, and now that I'm getting my second inoculation tomorrow I will actually be able to get medical attention, finally.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

ricecult posted:

Hey all, would it be possible to get on the support discord? I know I don't post in this thread often, I think I might feel more comfortable posting somewhere a little less public though.

:same: not feeling so well.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

blatman posted:

hello mental health thread, I have discovered that one of my meds was transforming me into a ball of white-hot unyielding rage

I discovered this by trying to figure out why the heck I was getting angrier and angrier every day for months then digging into side effects for the meds i'm taking, followed by cold-turkey discontinuation of the one with big red "this can cause severe agitation" flags without talking to my psychiatrist

it's been a couple of weeks now and i've calmed down considerably, but how do I tell him that I did this without being fired as a patient? I have an appointment in like a month but I feel like I should probably give him a call sooner

Wish I could just stop taking my meds and the anger would go away. Congrats.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Sanguinary Novel posted:

In that same vein, leave space for the grief that comes with never really getting any justice for any abuse, no matter the size or severity. It's CSPAM and we all intellectually know that fuckers will never get their due, and will 99.9% of the time "ah, well, nevertheless" off into the sunset. But I found out the really hard way that it's much different when you have to internalize that. It feels dumb to type out because it's so obvious, but there's a real grief in knowing the damage done to you will take so much to heal, and for the abuser "It was Tuesday" (hah). Especially when you know any speaking out will be met with disbelief at best, retaliation at worst. In the grand scheme of things, your pain means nothing to the world, even if it consumes your entire life.

If you don't reconcile with it, in my experience it's turned into a deep self loathing, under the guise of "you need to harden the gently caress up so no one can do this to you again" or "this is what you truly deserved for being such a gullible Pollyanna". You're the only one you can yell at, the only one who has to listen, so you create an avatar of an unjust system in your image and beat the gently caress out of it in hopes there will be relief. Letting all of that go is hard.

This has been on my mind for the last few days, so it's a little rambly, thanks for reading.

Yeah, this is the right stuff, or somewhere in the general proximity. But if you think you are rambly, let me show you how it's done.

I was in a pretty bad way yesterday, I had to drive 150 miles to purchase a piano and was sitting in the car fuming at everything and nothing, trying to just address the fact that I was somehow bitter and angry at pretty much everything and everyone, all day. That, coupled with a recurring urge to do myself in. As my 2 1/2 hour drive turned into a 4 hour drive and I watched the deadline for showing up at the store go by while sitting in gridlock traffic I got really unhinged, saying to myself, every good thing I've ever tried to do has gone the exact opposite way, everybody I've tried to influence, no matter how dear, has completely ignored what I try to say; maybe it would be a better world without me in it, what the hell, I knew things might end badly, I've had a good life and I could at least have the courage to bow out as gracefully as possible, what the gently caress, clearly I've just gotten bogged down in the mud. So I'll make a wager with God, if I don't show up in time to pick up this loving piano I'll not be a ridiculous failure in life any further, I'll just drive off somewhere quietly after I get home and put the wife to bed, make the world a little less miserable a place without me in it. Obviously nobody wants what I'm selling.

Then I put on my mp3 player, having completely forgotten what was on it, and immediately heard these guys railing on about how there's always something to live for, you should never commit suicide. It was an old episode of Chapo Trap House, apparently come down from heaven to talk me out of offing myself. I love those guys.

Then I put on Leviathan by Mastodon, and started thinking about Captain Ahab and his white whale, thinking how you can't make what's going on in the loving crooked government into your personal white whale. Human depravity and sin are a force of nature, not something you can defeat. Jesus couldn't do it, Buddha couldn't do it, and I'm no Jesus or Bodhisattva.

I arrived at the store 15 minutes after closing feeling almost relieved that I wasn't going to have to go on much further, when a nice old lady came out and personally escorted me to the back room, telling me if I'd been any later there would have been no one left to sell me the piano, LOL. I took it home, apparently God won this round, and wasn't quite done with my sorry rear end. And I got the piano.

I love the piano. I stayed up until about 3:00 in the morning playing around with it, marveling at how great it sounded. I finally went to bed and tossed and turned all night, falling to sleep after dawn. I started dreaming, and in the dream I was confronted by the spirit of meanness, pettiness, and everything that makes a man destroy his children's futures for his own sole benefit, the spirit that animates people into knowingly lying and doubling down on their lies, and doing it gleefully. He was sort of a hybrid of a chubby little blonde cherub and a weasel. Sort of a plump, furry Pat Boone.

And in my dream I crushed his skull with my foot. I suddenly woke, having frightened the hell out of the cat with my violent kicking. I've got to confess that despite mixed feelings, I felt good about killing him and felt a little better all day. And glad as hell I didn't kick the cat.

So I hope this was the slightest bit entertaining. Cheers.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

skaboomizzy posted:

Nah, I'm kinda living so that I might keel over dead suddenly in the next 20-30 years instead of making it to what used to be "retirement age" because I will never be able to save enough to live much longer than that and also my house on the FL Gulf Coast might be swallowed by the sea by then.

I got no wife, no kids, no interest in either. Nobody will miss me when I die other than whatever cat I happen to own at the time and my employer (because of the paperwork). I talk to my sister like 5-6 times a year. My dad is playing with house money since his Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis two years ago, along with his blood sepsis infection right around that time because someone hosed up a biopsy.

It's fine. I will do enough work to get paid enough to exist and play video games badly and get various foods delivered to me by gig drivers. If I get a promotion and raise I might go play poker more at the dog track or the horse track or the Seminole casino. Maybe I will bet more on football if my state really does legalize sports betting.

Fill your time with what you want to do.

Oh hey, a post I can really relate to. You're all right in my book, skaboomizzy. But as a BTW, your username really sounds like something Bill Cosby would have said. Is that where you got it?

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Oolb posted:

The climate change thread wrecked my mental health today. I read it in the morning, instead of my usual meditation practice - so kicking around at the base of my thoughts that day was: you will die of starvation or cancer before you turn fifty while homeless or worse probably worse definitely worse, you know... except probably sooner because specific points in my insides have been hurting nonstop for the past year? I don't know. I'm loving terrified of the future.

I have to stop reading c-spam entirely, I think, because I've kind of realized that goons like to reach a consensus and dance around it and their ego instead of you know actually providing insight into the topics, for the most part. I mean, A+ for attitude, this world and human society are loving disgusting in it's present configuration, I agree otherwise I wouldn't be here but while I'm here I'm learning maybe 10% of the time and the rest just getting my mind filled with absolute loving poison.

:same: Doesn't help that there are a few pretty malicious people posting now and then, and a few of the biggest posters are professional or aspiring writers looking out for material, or spooks, American and otherwise. They have an agenda, and it's not always helpful. But that notwithstanding, just contemplating the evil people driving these times is enough to throw you into despair if you look into the dark too much.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

I just think that a lot of LF and FYAD bleeds over into other forums a lot. And as said above, ego issues. And agents for the CIA and KGB and so forth posing as regular posters.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

No. 6 posted:

Living alone sucks.

Cooking for one sucks.

Paying 100% of monthly rent and utilities sucks.

Having no family sucks.

Spending the vast majority of the past 16 months without in-person human interaction sucks.

I've not had a holiday, birthday, vacation, or special event in years.

I sit and look at the walls. Sometimes play music or videogames.

Alone. Sucks.

Yeah, it does. Been there. Still there to some degree. Which is why I spend so much time up here. So as Bowie said, you are not alone.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

No. 6 posted:

Sorry to say that Bowie is cancelled. A man in his 40s cannot have a 3-some with two underage people (one 16 and one 15) and remain an icon.

While the victims publicly shared they do not feel negative (in regards to the experience), a crime still occurred and Bowie abused his power.

I think that's probably one of his lesser offences really. I've got mixed feelings about cancelling an artist's work because of their sins though. My goto for that is either Gustav Klimt or TH White, author of Once and Future King. Every one of the beautiful models in Klimt's paintings probably died later of the syphilis he carried, and White's bio notes include that he couldn't resist boys, just imagine a stately college dean loving his students, why I never. Oh, and how about the father of modern computing, Alan Turing and his thing for public bathroom sex w/ strangers. It goes on forever.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

No. 6 posted:

Enjoy the art, but let's make sure not to elevate those who don't deserve it.

A great, but very biased movie about Bowie, Velvet Goldmine. Highly recommended, if you can take it with a grain of salt.

ED: very, very biased. Extremely biased.

ED2; And a big, big grain of salt. Big grain.

petit choux has issued a correction as of 22:20 on Jun 17, 2021

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Solidarity, brothers! Actually I started wearing my mask again this week because I'm not sure the epidemic is finished with us.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

No. 6 posted:

I've been off meds for months. I practically eliminated alcohol from my diet. I still feel awful most days.

Some days worse than that too.

I'm trying to have hope, but it feels like faith. You know, a lie we tell ourselves to feel better.

My life is empty and I feel broken.

I can't advise you when I don't know your individual situation, but I can tell you that creating something, however simple, is always uplifting for me.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Ball Tazeman posted:

Turned 30 today. Started out alright, then began to have bad vibes while at work. Now I feel like useless sack of poo poo with no friends. poo poo sucks.

Hey ball tazeman, are you spending much time in cspam these days? Is there still a Trump thread? I had to GTFO, it was making me crazy. Happy birthday, you little poo poo! You and me are in the same boat, you may not have friends but you have online friendos, for what it's worth. Remember that you may not have many friends but at least 1/3rd of the population (Trump voters and the like) are definitely people you're better off for not being friends with, and that is not your fault. It is the times and the nation that we live in. Not you, probably, or at least not all you.

Happy birthday!

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

skaboomizzy posted:

My parents are due to arrive Friday evening for probably a week-long visit after driving 20 hours in 2 days.

I explicitly flew up there in mid-April to see them (after we were all vaxxed) because I was worried my dad would not be able to travel. It has been nearly 2 years since his Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis, and he nearly died a couple months after that due to blood sepsis after a biopsy.

When I flew up, he was just barely able to walk to the baggage claim to meet me and back to the car in a handicapped parking spot. He can barely navigate the stairs at his home and now he's going to be here for a week, and I am loving terrified that something will happen to/with him 1100 miles from his team of oncologists who have frankly been god drat incredible. The short notice of this adventure meant that I had to clean out 18 months of pandemic / depressive / bachelor squalor filth in two weeks. The cleaning crew I hired nearly walked out even after I had filled the big city trashcan four times before they arrived.

I am doing two full-time jobs at work every day and being paid for one. My original team workers resent me because I'm not helping them as much as they think I should. I am making enemies with the second job because they keep loving things up and try to blame me and I have receipts to prove them wrong every time. The director of my department left in Feb and has been replaced by someone in the org who just took the job title for the raise and has no day-to-day involvement or even any idea of how we operate. Yes, I interviewed for that job and am probably a little salty about not getting it. It's all falling apart every day. I can't even justify taking time off because I know all I'll do with it is drink all night and sleep all day. I'm stockpiling PTO in anticipation of flying home if/when things go bad with my dad and I have to watch him die and help with the arrangements.

Gonna eat some peanut butter cups and maybe pet the cat before I pass out.

Wow, last time I was under so much stress on such a sustained basis I quit my job, congrats on being able to handle it all.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

No. 6 posted:

I ended up doing some much needed automotive maintenence. It is nice to compete tasks. Thanks.

For real. The guy that did Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance had that much right. Fixing something always feels good. It makes it seem more possible that you can fix other things. And simply putting your mind in a mode to put something together by its nature takes you further from a state of despair.

Part of what has been bothering me lately, as I recover from a year-long bender, is my difficulty in completing anything. I have been telling myself I'm going to finish a list of tasks and every time I'd get distracted by some other one. Now, they cumulatively move toward completion, but without a specific one that I can call "done" my sense of self worth suffers. I think in all likelihood I'm undiagnosed ADD or ADHD, which would help explain my short attention span and difficulty remembering things, which I've experienced since my earliest childhood. But I'm pretty old and when I was a child those kind of things were viewed as a character flaw requiring discipline and punishment, rather than a problem to solve.

But I finally found all the parts for my guitar, managed to solder the pickups back in and play it enough to determine that it's working, and it felt really good. And same for a pretty trivial project, making a small rack to store vinyl records out of discarded record jackets. It was really easy and unimportant, and the pleasure at having finished it was completely disproportionate to its value, but I was proud of it. I had envisioned a simple task, completed it and it was a clever re-use of trash, and I felt good at having finished it. As for now, that's one of the best ways of buoying up my emotional state.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

I mean the soundtrack to my life over the past two years may well have been Nirvana's "Something's in the Way," so getting something done has been a really good antidote to that feeling.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Ball Tazeman posted:

cw: graphic suicide mention

I was having issues with mice getting in to the house again and that kind of set me off the other day. My partner also is having all his high high school group of friends stay over for a kind of reunion and I have been horribly stressed out cleaning after everybody and also feel lovely because they just talk about people from their hometown and I have nothing to offer.

We went out to a brewery and I was already feeling shaky, anxious and tired while kind of being bored, and his friend begins to talk about a neighbor who attempted suicide. He said the guy survived but was completely brain damaged and that he had gone to the house and there was still blood and brain splatter on the ceiling and wall. Well, that completely set me off and I was able to exit the brewery and go to my car before having a complete panic attack. I sat in my car panicking for a half hour before I could collect myself and they were ready to leave. I was the DD. It was a very uncomfortable drive back to the house.

Wow, that reminds me, I used to have a roommate whose father had committed suicide. We went to see the premier of Natural Born Killers, he had to leave the theater then and there. I don't think I was all that sympathetic, I mean I was in kind of a perfunctory way but I wasn't too helpful. He was all right, and has gone on to become fairly well to do (he and I started off as homeless together) and has a successful business, a wife and kids; I.e; , he's made himself whole and fulfilled all his dreams. Unlike YT.

I have moved out of suicide ideation and somehow am feeling more hopeful. I've quit smoking weed, or at least for the time being because it wasn't bringing any relief any longer, and I try to surround myself with things that I love. It helps a lot that I have the support of my wife, both emotionally and financially, as I've kind of sacrificed my career for hers since she was making 3 times what I did before I quit my job as a whipping boy for crusty old farts, and I don't expect you can probably do that. So here is some unconventional advice, probably bad, I don't know.

Buy your partner flowers. Make a habit of it. Or just bring home some wildflowers. If you prefer, buy blooming flowering plants from the hardware store, and then you can plant them somewhere later. They're also cheaper than cut flowers. You may be skeptical, but it's a loving gesture and they're pretty.

Pay attention to your appearance, don't dress like a slob, make sure to shave and so forth if you're a he. People are very judgmental about appearance and will treat you worse if you don't look good. It's one of the unfortunate facts of life. And people treating you like poo poo over your appearance definitely contributes to your emotional state.

Have hedonistic, self-indulgent sex with your partner if possible. That's always good for a little emotional uplift, however brief. I can't remember the soft porn movie I heard it, but I agree 100%: An O a day will keep the shrink away. That is, unless it's compulsive jacking off, which isn't as helpful, possibly harmful.

Get some sun, or go tanning. It's self-care, it's a little horny, and it simply feels good. Same for exercise. Sometimes it feels like a waste of time but getting your blood really moving a few times a week really helps, and it gets those feel-good endorphins up in your blood. Swimming is a great one, so is hiking.

And find something you love doing and immerse yourself in it. And make or create or fix something. Everything that you fix is an enduring material reminder that you are capable of doing good.

And I guess finally, remember hat you don't know what the future will be, and that the entire sum of all the good you can do in your life is less than a grain of sand relative to the size of the magnificent, lifeless cosmos and that we are nothing but a collection of moments, which are all gone like smoke as soon as they arrive. We have nothing but those moments ultimately and having a few of them that you can think of as good moments is what keeps us going. So think of the good moments, keep their memory alive, and try to make more of them.

And that's my rant for the day.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

And also, don't go to Taco Bell, they no longer have the grilled stuffed burritos or the potato burritos and that was the only two good things on the menu. I went without eating all day yesterday, was just about to pass out when I went to Taco Bell to eat my shame burrito in the car, and starving as I was it still tasted like poo poo. And also, get real Mexican wherever and whenever you can.

petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

thotsky posted:

They've invested a lot in hiring you, even if they could easily get rid of you they're not very likely to say goodbye to that investment after only a month.

Agreed. The break-in period for most professional jobs is more like a year. Just keep chipping away, it's not over till it's over, and that ain't for a while yet.

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petit choux
Feb 24, 2016

Pillowpants posted:

first time in here - I’ve been taking Zoloft for a long time but the past 5 years have REALLY hosed me up. right before Trump got elected I lost my whole friend group in some stupid debacle, and then Trump got elected and I was so stressed out a disease I had flared up and I was almost fired from my job because it caused me to not sleep and I was clumsy as a result.

The good thing there was that I channeled this all into writing about politics, until I got sued for defamation and was afraid to write anymore.

Covid hitting (any pandemic like this really) has been my biggest fear since high school and it really messed me up. I had to go up on my meds, but I’ve also lost all faith in humanity as a result of the last 15 months and then my youngest was diagnosed with autism at the end of last year..

Now, because i suck at office politics my HR rep (who hates me) was able to convince upper management that the external temp i have working for me should be my boss…and i just dont know what the gently caress to do with myself.

Wow, that is rough. I don't know how to encourage you going forward but I think I was a subscriber or reader of yours and I wanted to say I appreciate what you've done, and I had no idea you got sued for defamation. Personally, having gotten my job with the government during the Obama presidency, in a red state, and then having to work for CHUD politicians and lawyers all through the Trump insurgency and having lost my job in part due to not being a CHUD, I think I can relate a little bit. You really should write professionally, though that's probably one of the harder jobs to find without being a total quisling in this confederacy of dunces. You've been strong, you will continue to be strong. Just my opinion.

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