Shingles fucking sucks and fuck all the parents in the 80s that wanted us all to get chicken pox to “get it over with”. Shingles gets ignored as some “old person” thing but I’m just getting over having it for the first time at 42 and I’m so glad that I caught it on time to get the antiviral started quickly enough for it to work.
What were your symptoms?
My mother wanted to put $30k towards me getting a house 40 minutes from where I work. Sounds awesome right? But then she’s know where I live and would have reasonable excuse to have access. Currently she doesn’t know where I live and I like it that way even if I’m spending significantly more for that privilege.
Man
My dog isn’t doing so well. Glaucoma got his other eye now I worry he’s living in the dark. It’s hard to pull the plug, he’s still eager to get treats and wants to scurry outside when I have the door cracked open but it’s hard. I’ve had him for so long and he’s such a great pal.
We just got his other eye corrected but it didn’t seem there’s much visibility left. I have been mourning him for days now yet he’s still sleeping at my feet tonight.
These big sloppy titties
I dislike my boss’s lack of empathy and autistic-like ways. I have a safe, secure job and I am very fortunate; plus, I have adapted to his ways, so it does not take much effort to navigate at this stage—I have learned to try not to take it personally. However, the clumsy social interactions and irritated hostility he displays irk me. He is a bright guy, but sometimes he is confidently wrong, and then, months later, when a decision he made has a negative impact, he acts like it was not his. In our interactions, he holds the power, and I just kind of wish that the gloves could come off, as they would in a level social situation, where i could retort with impunity and ultimately punch the prick out. Not that violence is ever the answer. But God it would be satisfying.
Ive had no safety net for 18 years and I’m tired. I went to a scam school. Ive been homeless, Im chronically ill and have a brain malformation that impacts my quality of life, I’m trans, and i fled the US. I live in a country where I’m trying to learn the language, and its all hard. I have no family connections, and my only living parent has gone full antivax conspiracy theorist. I’m married, and i love my husband, hes very supportive, but i wish I had family. I wish I had a mom or dad I could call and cry on the phone with. I wish I had siblings I could confide in. I wish I had someone I could call for advice, or even just to bitch to. But i have none of that and ive been pulling myself up by the bootstraps through bankruptcy (medical debt), homelessness, and chronic illness.
I often get told how “strong” I am. I dont want to be strong. I want to be vulnerable and have someone take these responsibilities from me occasionally.
i assume scam school would be one of those for-profit online "colleges.
Art institute. In person. Got my debt cancelled after the lawsuit though which is nice.
I have ended up in a really weird place in my life. I remember all the decisions I made that got me here, and none of them seemed like particularly good decisions, but it has worked out to the point that if I were to tell everyone here about it, it would look like a lie to make myself feel better. Life is not perfect for me but the problems I have are things I can solve.
I’m not entirely comfortable about where we’re going with the decline of journalism.
I’m not saying that it’ll be a worse world. But it could be.
The press has got flaws and imperfections, but modern democracy has had it around and relied on it.
Shifts like the rise of 24/7 cable news eliminating local news, social media rising, and magazines and newspapers going into serious decline are changes that could have a lot of hard-to-assess impact on society.
I think that we’ll work out fixes for some of the things. And we’ve had benefits of new media. But…I feel like maybe we could wind up seriously regretting having a lot of the press go away. It won’t be easy to rebuild if we wanted to do so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers
United States
From 2005 to 2021, about 2,200 American local print newspapers closed.[20] From 2008 to 2020, the number of American newspaper journalists fell by more than half.[20]
Where once the ability to disseminate information was restricted to those with printing presses or broadcast mechanisms, the Internet has enabled thousands of individual commentators to communicate directly with others through blogs or instant message services.[64] Even open journalism projects like Wikipedia have contributed to the reordering of the media landscape, as readers are no longer restricted to established print organs for information.[65]
With profits falling, many newspapers have cut back on their most expensive reporting projects—overseas bureaus and investigative journalism.[92] Some investigative projects often take months, with their payoff uncertain. In the past, larger newspapers often devoted a portion of their editorial budget to such efforts, but with ad dollars drying up, many papers are looking closer at the productivity of individual reporters, and judging speculative investments in investigative reports as non-essential.[83]
Observers point out that the reliability and accountability of newspapers is being replaced by a sea of anonymous bloggers, many with uncertain credentials and points of view. Where once the reader of a daily newspaper might consume reporting, for instance, by an established Cairo bureau chief for a major newspaper, today that same reader might be directed by a search engine to an anonymous blogger with cloudy allegiances, training or ability.[95]
The closure of local newspapers has created a phenomenon of news deserts. A June 2022 report estimates that approximately 70 million Americans live in a county with one or no local news organization.[97]
Decline in political neutrality
The shift from news coverage in geographical regions to online markets likely contributed to increased political polarization in the 2000s and 2010s.[106] Research has linked the closures of newspapers to declines in civic engagement of citizens,[4][5] increases in government waste,[6] and increases in political polarization.[7] The decline of local news has also been linked to the increased “nationalization” of local elections.[8][9] As citizens have fewer opportunities to read about local politics, they are attracted to national sources (such as cable news) and begin to interpret local politics via national politics.[7][107]
Yep. I was listening to NPR the other day and the journalist was mocking and deriding the interviewee. It was appalled.
How this person wasn’t fired is beyond me. But that’s the world we live in today. Even NPR has shitty reporters and reporting and their days of neutrality and fact-seeking are long gone. Many of their news programs are now just pandering bullshit reporting. It’s about making the target audience feel good above all else.
It sucks. Everything is about pushing an agenda, and there seem to be only a handful of boomer reporters left who even remotely attempt to value neutrality, and seek facts and truth. The only place I find any sort of neutrality and truth seeking is academia… and that has been eroding for well over a decade now too. Increasingly I am moving over to amateur podcasts and such because they seem to have better standards, but they lack the institutions fact-checking and legal stuff and they can’t really do a lot of primary sourcing, it’s mostly secondary sources… but they are at least open about that…
Truth is people just want to hear what they want to hear and they will pay a lot of money for it. And they won’t pay any money to hear things they don’t want to hear.
Echo chambers are a huge problem only made worse by the internet full of dysfunctional and lonely men who uphold the patriarchy and propagate that everyone is out to get you (especially all those minorities that don’t actually affect your life that much or at all) and it protects the rich due to infighting and overworking the majority of Americans. Nobody wants to be thrown in jail and risk their family not having necessities. And it just keeps escalating it seems. Something will collapse eventually and ideally everyone would have solidarity and make a difference in their local community so nobody has to worry about going without basic necessities for survival. But who knows what could happen. Best to enjoy things as much as possible in case it gets taken away.
Chronic pain is so difficult.
There are no words in any language to sufficiently communicate how difficult it is.
It is post operative surgery waking up in agony levels of pain, every day, forever.
It breaks you mentally. It stunts your activity levels. It robs you of patience and kindness.
It is torture, performed by no one, where you would do anything to make it stop. Anything.
Being a compassionate, energy giving, productive, and present person in the lives of others whilst carrying the invisible caustic agony of chronic pain is a sysaphean task the is harder every degeneratively waking day.
Doing the right things (2 hours of PT and exercises every day, cognitive behavioral therapeutic techniques, biofeedback tools, purposefully doing what is painful to prevent classic conditioning avoidance, and no medication for pain) is so fucking hard. Every single day.
There is no vacation. There is no rest.
Did you try lsd/shrooms or mdma? If its psychologically induced they might help. Also there is a anti anxiety thing called Imidazenil with no known side effects or tolerance issues. Try them
I totally get what you’re saying. I’ve had the pleasure of having a intramedullary rod put in. I was mean to the nurse but it was wearing off from drugs, I always say fuck off to whoever wakes me up after surgery. Asked what’s your pain level out of 10… 14. I got to keep my leg, and the titanium finally fused with my bone so it’s not as bad as it was when I got it. A month after surgery, I almost threw up from the pain when a car door touched a screw. It’s a different kind of pain.
Everyone sees me as a normal person and gives me shit all the time. But the reality is, I’ve got like probably twenty concussions, broke a collar bone, my entire spine is fucked especially the lumbar section, had multiple rib fractures, broken tailbone, broken xiphoid (part of sternum), broke my nose a lot to the point where I only breathe out of one side, skull fractures, fractures from being punched and kicked in the face, and the list goes on. Everything I don’t do gets blamed on me drinking beer. Like I’ll give you a week in my body and then tell me what to do. Tylenol will kill your liver faster than alcohol and ibuprofen will make you shit blood eventually. Can’t get opiates anymore.
I’m just trying to say no one has a solution and everyone has a complaint. So I just stopped listening to everyone or answer them sarcastically. Why is diesel $10 a gallon? Oh it’s cause I drank beer last night.
I never contemplated this before last summer. I reconnected with an old acquaintance who has a spine issue and essentially lives in pain. He mentioned taking his own life jokingly maybe four or five times during the couple hours I spent at his place. His description of the pain and circumstances in which it can flare up shook me awake. He’s a good natured, very generous and composed man otherwise, and this is breaking him. All this to say I empathize as much as I can yet feel very powerless. Take care,
I’m really proud of you for being you and for fighting for today and tomorrow. I’m sorry for your pain. I don’t understand your struggles, I know what it’s like for a different reason to feel demotivated and tortured but you still treat everyone with compassion as much as you can. It’s so exhausting when there’s always something you have to worry about and it seems like it will never get better. I hope it isn’t like that forever.
I can’t imagine what that is like, but I am very grateful for you sharing. I have only ever had a couple of surgeries and knowing the pain would end was what I was grasping at the entire time.
I am wondering if I ever meet a person suffering with chronic pain, what can I do to help them? Supporting them through their treatment is definitely a good idea. Being compassionate is a good idea on the surface, but I am not sure if I would be even capable of doing that when I have no idea what it is really like. Is it about understanding their suffering and accepting that their actions are effected by it?
When I try to think of things to say to them, I think of what I say to people who are suffering like “I hope you feel better.” and it just sounds insensitive.
One of the lessons from the chronic pain clinic at Mayo Hospital I learned was how to get friends and family to interact with you as a chronic pain sufferer.
A lot of what we were focusing on while in the chronic pain program was to prevent ourselves from classical conditioning ourselves with pain behaviors. Preventing that signaling can also be useful for friends and family. Paradoxically, the most empathetic thing you can do is to not acknowledge pain but to focus in on progress, process, and future plans.
You can both make it clear you wish to help, and that you don’t wish to treat them like the sum of their symptoms instead of a person.
It will vary in nuance for every person, which is why you sit down and talk to them about what is the best way ahownup for them. Unfortunately many patients have not had the 3 weeks of 8 hour days in the hospital getting the best possible cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain that I did, and what they ask for may be maladaptive.
It’s so difficult to be both your own advocate and temper natural desires with what NEEDS to be done. I would say almost impossible to navigate without professional help. If someone is going through that chronic pain, the best thing would be to gently guide them to professional resources for it. After that, the patient can more reliably give adaptive advocacy for themselves.
I try to say things like, “I know I don’t understand your pain but I wish you peace and know that your efforts are not wasted.”
It is also bad if it’s just nagging pain. Even sciatica is not that bad most of the time but it just seems to never stop. It’s not something you can explain to someone. It’s like being married or having kids or losing someone close to you (etc etc): you might think you understand it, but you dont really get it until you live it.
That said, I changed my activities I do for fun and it did slow way down.
My parents flew in for a two week visit and good god I cannot wait for them to leave. Distance has not made this heart grow fonder and despite years of therapy, it’s still so hard to deal with this or set boundaries before them.
They’re unbelievably selfish. Ridiculous alcoholics. They hate each other but won’t break up, which just means they’re both so annoying. And they are so, so childish.
My younger self deserves so many hugs for going through life with them. And my adult self is struggling but doing the best they can. But they’ll be gone soon. Thank goodness
did they expect you to fix thier problem? when they retire do they expect you to take them in, that would be worst.
Just because they bumped uglies and you fell out, didn’t mean you owe then anything. If they’re making your life hard, the best boundary is a closed door. I say this as someone who excommunicated the only parent they have, because they were making me miserable. I miss them, but I can’t have them in my life. I’ve tried.
I wish it was 2012 again. When I could go out, talk to people face to face, and have good conversations. All of that is gone. And anytime I attempt it I am met with violent and negative reactions.
I used to go out and meet people and talk about books, movies, politics, and it was all civil and enjoyable and fun. Oftentimes they didn’t share my views, but either of us was angry or hateful. Now as soon as I try to talk about any of that I get some lecture about how enjoying movies is privileged and awful and pretensions and I’m a stupid horrible person for supporting evil racist Hollywood.
Now it’s impossible to do that. It sucks so much ass and I hate it and it makes me not want to socialize at all anymore. I don’t enjoy socializing with a bunch of people who just repeat the same platitudes over and over, I miss meeting people from different walks of life who were interested in learning from each other. That shit doesn’t exist anymore and I hate it so much.
I miss a world in which facts existed and were largely agreed upon.
Sounds like you run with the wrong clique. I have not experianced what you are describing.
It’s not a clique, it’s society.
My work/life balance is waaaaaay off.
I like my actual job. I like the people I work with. But when it’s a 55-hour work week with a 1-hour one-way commute, it’s exhausting. I’m missing out on time to be a dad, to engage in hobbies and self-care, home, social life, etc, because the down time I do have is usually spent resting and summoning the energy to go back to the grind the next day. Yeah I use my PTO and sick days, of course. The downside to that is that for an hourly employee that translates to a pretty big chunk out of my paycheck.
We’ve recently had a leadership shakeup here and our new boss is a younger millennial who supposedly has a more enlightened approach to running a business and taking care of its employees. We keep hearing rumors of increased PTO and promises to address work hours but we don’t expect to actually see any changes until after the new year.
I’ve looked for other jobs and generally what I’ve found is sites with toxic work cultures and/or negligible increases in pay and it’s not worth it for me. And I don’t want to take a job in another state that takes me even further away from my kid. So for now, odious as it is, I’ll stick with it and see how things shake out next year.
I’m not going to pretend that I’m the only one with this problem, and I’m not looking for advice, so if you’re about to post advice I’m going to ignore it. I just wanted to get it off my chest.
I’m an unpaid intern who has 45 hours work week alongside a 2hrs 15 min one way commute, if that helps you feel better about your life.
I fucked up my landing on my 67the skydiving jump, and got a spiral fracture of both my tibia, and fibula. My foot was pointing 90 degrees from where it was supposed to. I received a surgery that implanted a titanium nail through the channel for my marrow in my tibia along with 4 screws and some plates.
I’m 45 and this recovery is the single most grindingly long, and humiliating thing I’ve ever had to go through. I’m so utterly dependent on others. Which is something that is anathema to me, for which I’ve been going to therapy for years for.
And I’m lucky with clean breaks where they occurred (one at the bottom of the tibia, one at the top of the fibula.) This is supposed to be a quick recovery. I don’t even have a cast anymore after 3 weeks.
I guess I’m just incredibily tired, embarrassed and feeling bad for myself. And throwing this out into the void since I literally can’t really do anything other than go to the bathroom and shower by myself. Which, make no mistake, were huge victories.
Just went through something similar, 8 screws and a plate in my ankle. I highly recommend a knee scooter as it made me so much less dependent on others around the house. I didn’t fully realize how much it would help. I bought two one for the upstairs and one for the downstairs, and only used crutches on the stairs.
With the scooter I was able to make dinner for the family because I could carry plates or pans in one hand while steering the scooter and propelling with my good leg. With crutches I felt so helpless.
The scooters came with bags but I just used a backpack anyways so that my stuff would migrate with me between scooters.
Thanks, I’ll definitely keep that in mind.
Sadly my knee is not weight bearing, at least not yet. They had to go in above the knee to implant the titanium nail because the break was too close to the joint to go in underneath the knee. Anyways, my nail has very little flexibility right now. I’ll probably recover that faster than anything else, so once I can bend my knee and bear weight on it, I’ll get a knee scooter.
That fucking sucks, I’m sorry you found yourself in this position. Congrats on showering today and I hope tomorrow is a little easier as is the day after that. 67 sky dives? It’s pretty impressive you didn’t break anything before now!
Do you think you’ll sky dive again after healing?
Thanks for your kind words.
And yeah, there is something ineffable about hanging onto the outside of a plane at 15,000 ft. Also free fall is the closest you can come to flying outside of wing suits.
I fucked up the landing in two ways that combined to hurt me. You flare right before landing and that converts your downward momentum into forward momentum. I flared a couple feet too low. I also was trying to counter a slight crosswind with harness input, which put my body sort of into a 45 degree angle from the direction of travel with my feet first. Because I planed out about 2 ft off the ground, I didn’t have time to straighten out (and I should have been straight before I even flared, but I was new to harness input and trying to not use toggle input to correct for the crosswind). As a result, I was going 29 mph forward and wasn’t going down really at all.(I have a fly sight which is basically a 3d tracker, hence how I know) when the inside of my right foot, pointed closer to perpendicular to my direction of travel hit the ground.
I remember feeling my foot first glide a bit through the grass tops just after flaring and having time to think “shit” before I hit.
If I flared higher I would have been fine. If it been using toggle inputs rather than harness input, I could have still slid it in on my padded butt. Both together? Ouch.
Ouch that sounds unbearable. I’m proud of you for fighting for today and tomorrow considering everything you went through
Plus side: you did it as an adult. I’m sure the dependence sucks way worse, but I did the same thing (mountain biking though) when I was 14. They fixed mine with closed reduction, no surgery. It hit a growth plate and now I’ve got one short leg and some neat back pain!
I remember needing help to go to the bathroom to be the worst part, since it hurt so bad to let my leg down, but it really did heal fast. Hang in there.
Hate mouth breathing. Im all stuffed up and it feels so much more effort breathing through the mouth plus it dries it out.
I’ve got a deviated septum, and going to have a surgery in a month. I can’t wait to be able to breathe through my nose!
You can resolve the past and create your own future, you are never stuck anywhere regardless of what happened to you.
this sentiment isn’t acceptable on this platform, as far as I can tell.
People here seem committed to the idea they have no agency and are hapless victims and anyone else who made their life better only did so because of extraordinary privileges.
shit’s wild.
That’s why I had to get it off my chest
