I think we’re a bit overdue for another open thread for personal stuff. As per usual, no trolls, no flames, no being a butthead.
I’ll paste in some recent personal comments from other threads.
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Open Thread for Personal Stuff: November Rain Edition
And when you’ve been away from him for a while, maybe for a long time, you’ll see these feelings for what they are. They’re about the loss of hope.
The fact that you have memories of good things and see flashes indicating the possibilities for a good relationship are basically like water on your dying pot plant called love and hope. Every tiny leaf struggling towards the light prompts a little new hope, a little reminder of the picture on the label that said “Love”, that this time it could be the beginning of something better. It hasn’t been so far.
Once you have time and distance between yourself and this relationship, you’ll have new feelings. Regret for what might have been if only your dad had the capacity to return love for love. Pity for the man who couldn’t make the most of what was right in front of him for decades. Remember, it’s not just his relationship with you that he’s wrecked – it’s all those others. You know that he’ll continue wrecking every thing around him and complaining about the wreckage … forever … unless and until he’s willing to look clearly at his own behaviour.
You need to get away for your own benefit. Eventually it might also be for his benefit – but that’s up to him not to you. You can’t turn him into a loving dad, or even a polite conversationalist, only he can do that for himself. And he won’t unless he wants to.
@LBT
This has been my experience, too. I no longer hate my mother. I’m not even mad most of the time. And when we get together for holidays, she and I can chat and be friendly, if not close. I realize that’s not possible or desirable for everyone, of course.
@discordia,
I have panic attacks about global warming, too. I used to love post-apocalyptic novels/movies, but I’ve started treating them like predictions, and I really can’t read/watch them any more unless I’m in the right emotional state. Don’t even get me started on the news – I understand that in the US, it’s essential to keep banging on about how bad it might get so that the deniers will wise the hell up, but it can be really distressing. Sometimes, when it’s really bad, I start reading survival books or worrying about whether my career choice is teaching me any skills I can use WTSHTF (as the doomsday preppers say).
Not only is the beagle back, but so is the blockquote monster. Here is some offerings for the monster:
http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/45/39/97/453997b44cff9385b4275d0efb72dfbb.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/d5/fb/83/d5fb83af0afe2681bed0613431e25ce6.jpg
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b7/0c/0e/b70c0ee613155349968bce1776ae1c02.jpg
I wonder if the blockquote monster is an agent of the Furrinati, or one of their weapons? All those humans, sitting typing when they should be scritching ears/ feeding/ being sat on/ feeding/ cuddling/ feeding …
Get the unemployed to work in areas that are harder to code for. Like, anything. Robot teachers may sound impressive, but it’s a terrible idea given the state of robotics. Sure, it works for standardized tests where you just have a vague, human-like thing repeat a soundbite that people then write down, and then later test them on that soundbite. Anything can do that. I can set up a system like that with a tape recorder and a Skype connection.
Anything else that a teacher does, like the entire teaching profession, is much, much harder to code for (Here’s a fun assignment: Design me a robot that can console a crying child. Furbies don’t count.) The idea that robots will “take jobs away”, because there’s a finite amount of employment available at any given time is a bit of a misnomer. The world / job market doesn’t actually quite work like that, it’s a product of it being more statistically easy to say “Employment rose by XX.XX this quarter, and now we’re at 3% unemployment”. Jobs are infinite, payment for them are not. Anyway! They’ll replace some aspects, but because of the limits of adaption, and the fact that robots are basically mechnical (Assigned to do a set of things within a certain set of parameters), they’ll never replace humans. Anyone who claims that is making a mild misunderstanding of how robots actually work. So don’t worry about SuperBot 30030 taking over your math class, it literally cannot, because the moment someone in class throws a paper plane or someone has a bad day and cries, it’s programming runs short.
What is likely to happen is that automatization moves stuff around and makes people more concentrated in other areas. Japan is heavily investing in those specific areas (nursing, so on) exactly because of their rapidly aging population and the lack of younger people to shunt into caring for that aging group further down the line. Because… being grown just to provide care for someone else is kind of a terrible thing. It’s a fascinating area.
And surprisingly, a lot of surgery can actually be done by robots, as long as they remember to scan your body and be aware of problems. The mechanical / physical interaction of “Surgery here” or “Cut here” is actually not the hardest part of doctoring. It’s the people’s aspect, and the possible complications, and the variables that goes into it, and the multitudes of interactions between symptoms and illness. Like emilygoddess says. Don’t think people want to be told they have cancer by some synthesized, mechanical voice. Still! Advancement in drone technology is amazing.
As for the extinction of the human race and global warming…. I’ve got nothing. The world’s been ending for nigh on two-hundred thousand years. The world’ll be fine. Humans, perhaps not so much, but then again, humans are tough and there’s a lot of us. Global climate change won’t result in a sudden, massive explosion of Death.
Just what I was thinking! Especially since the only way to appease the monster is with pictures of the Furrinati on the internet.
The Cute… it Controls.
On robots, basically, what Fibinachi said.
Has anyone here seen “Robot and Frank”? That was pretty good. But I think a near-future robot able to interact with people as well as the robot in that movie is probably unrealistic.
I don’t usually get too depressed about stuff like that, but I did one time recently. A couple of coworkers across the room from me were having a conversation that I heard about half of (which I most definitely did not want to join). First they were talking about the Knockout Game, then they were talking about some sort of breakdown-of-civilization scenario, and one was talking about her bow-hunting skills (I think she does some deer hunting) and the other was talking about how he has a fair amount of dry beans stored, and probably some other similar stuff that I didn’t hear. I think those were basically the stories they were telling themselves to make themselves feel safe. I kinda felt like telling them that any given person was likely to die in the event of the collapse of civilization. But then I was thinking that my plan was that if things looked too bad my plan was to kill myself. (Basically, “looked too bad” means that it looked like I would die in worse way than killing myself, or would be a de facto slave). And I was getting kind of depressed about it, even though I think that this whole scenario is pretty far-fetched. And then I was thinking that if I’m going to kill myself, I really should also kill my dog, and I wasn’t sure if I could do that. (I don’t think I have the necessary skills to be able to snap his neck like in “I Am Legend”. Why did I watch that movie? Why did I have myself watch something where a dog has to be killed?) Now I’m getting sad about it again. I think it’s just because it’s a sad thing to think about even though I think it’s extremely unlikely to happen.
Because of anxiety, it has been difficult for me to care about or try hard at succeeding in school, and so now I’m close to failing both of my classes. I know that academic achievement isn’t a yardstick for how good or bad someone is, but I still feel horrible. Every time I go to a lecture, I either distract myself with something else or just sit there feeling gloomy.
I walked out of my vector calculus lecture early yesterday because I just kept thinking to myself “Even if you understand what the teacher is saying, you’re already doomed to fail.” And my negative self-talk is partially right, because I failed my last vector calculus exam. I could barely even answer half of the questions because I was so damn nervous and because I’ve been focusing more on coping with my internal issues than anything else (including studying). I can’t shake off the “I’m a huge failure” feeling, even though I know it’s not true.
One nice thing did happen recently, though – another trans girl came out to me. She’s the third trans girl to come out to me; she asked for all kinds of advice in a private message on a forum both she and I visit from time to time. I’m not entirely sure why, but I feel happy every time a trans person comes out to me. Unfortunately, she can’t come out to the entire forum because some people (none of whom know she is trans) are being kind of mean to her.
TeacherBot 30030, now with Tranquo-Spray!
Self-fulfilling prophecy, Ally. It’s jerkbrain setting you up to fail, not a reflection of your intelligence or abilities.
I really hope you can find a good therapist when you escape. You need help breaking out of this vicious circle.
Fun moments at Home the other night: we had Louis’s parents, stepmother and sons/spouses over for a sort of informal eat-in-front-of-the-fire lunch, complete with mulled wine, yum! I wore my Aston coat and MiL – as in, Marie de Medici – was admiring it and wanted to know where I got it. I told her I knitted it earthside.
Marie fixes gimlet-like gaze on her son. “Why did you not tell me my daughter has these skills?”
“You didn’t ask!” Louis protests.
Marie rolls eyes, mutters something in Italian.
I made her a copy of my coat, though by mind, not actual knitting. She’s into very rich, coloured robes these days, sort of like kaftans but in velvets and embroidery, so this is a slobbing-around-the-house casual. 🙂
I’m sorry you’re dealing with similar stuff, auggz. :<
This kind of feeling I'm having is like how I felt when I was 16 and being pressured to study for the SAT. Nothing helped me – not even tutoring and various study techniques. I was just a broken mess. I only lifted myself (partially) from that mess by trying to cope and tell myself that I was still worthy of love and respect no matter how much I failed. These days, I find myself needing to do the same thing – this time on a more profound scale. IDK if that makes sense, and I'm sorry if it doesn't.
“Some racist idiot just asked why there were so many brown people in his psych textbook… FFS dude, white people aren’t the center of the universe.”
I can’t even wrap my head around why someone would get upset about that.
Some racist idiot just asked why there were so many brown people in his psych textbook…
Because brown people have minds. SHOCK!
Also, I’ve been in crap shape lately, so I want to share some good news: me and hubby got to celebrate our anniversary on a llama farm! We got lost hiking in the woods, played with the farmers’ floppy galumphing dog, and watched gay movies. It was fabo.
Way cool, Rogan!
Also, I sold a comic to KATE BORNSTEIN! (She’s a big trans activist.) I feel like I sold to freakin’ Stan Lee or something.
Wow, arguing with my brother while he’s stoned is one of the worst things ever. He went on this stupid rant about how people “shouldn’t take words seriously.” And when I said it’s good to respect how people want to be identified, he was like “Why does that matter, though?” I swear, arguing with him is like arguing with an MRA sometimes – minus the bigotry.
@auggz
I’m so sorry. I never got a score higher than 1780 on the SAT – and I was trying to apply to Stanford, MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and UC Berkeley. Even after my uncle forced me to follow a strict study schedule (16 hours for studying, 8 hours for everything else), I still performed poorly. It was a horrible time in my mid teens.
@LBT
I’m jealous! =O That’s awesome that you sold a comic to Kate Bornstein.
Yeah, we got to see her perform here yesterday, and she signed our book and she insisted on paying me for a copy of Feeling Worthless and *flail*
Also, OMG guys, my depression seems to have finally let up tonight! HUZZAH I AM A HUMAN AGAIN! 😀
Yay, LBT, for llamas and comics and depression lifting and all!
More hugs to anyone who needs one.
Then he’ll be like “So what? I don’t care about labels.” Ugh, I don’t know how to get through him. I know he has a good heart, but good god he’s dense.
There’s nothing wrong with getting stoned in order to cope with depression. I love getting stoned and then eating copious amounts of food in order to make myself feel better (although it is expensive). And public transit rides are way more fun while high.
But I suggest you be careful with weed. When I’m depressed, it’s easy for me to smoke too much – at one point I was smoking twice a day 7 days a week, and that’s just terrible. After a while, it stops being helpful, too – like it just makes your sense dull and feel calm. Of course, everyone is different and I hope I’m not being patronizing (I apologize if I am), but those are my 2 cents.
FUUUUUUUUCK.
I’m in a cooking frenzy, prepping stuff so that I can get through the week without falling off my diet (which I’m now aware has some serious consequences for me). Multi-tasking, as feeeeemales do.
I roasted a bunch of chicken feet and veg, and then put them in the stock pot to make broth. Done. Cleaned the swiss chard and set it aside to drain. Done. Cleaned the sweet potatoes and stabbed them with a knife to roast — and broke the tip of my roomie’s chef’s knife off in the sweet potato. Fuck #1.
Got the metal-embedded sweet potato in the oven to roast, mucked about with something else, noticed a kind of rotten/sweet smell emanating from somewhere. Sniffed around the kitchen, paying attention to the wood stove, which we finally got going today after the roomie installed a new chimney. Couldn’t see anything wrong. Smell kept getting stronger.
Somehow, my plastic cutting board stuck to the bottom of my baking sheet when I put it in the oven. So I had green plastic ooblek on the oven floor. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Fuck #2.
I got it out, and managed to get most of the mess contained, but I have a hard green coating on my oven racks, and several blisters on my left thumb (Fuck #3). And only a faint idea of how I’m going to get the fucking plastic off the fucking rack (it involves a fire outside, but it’s bloody cold this weekend).
And then I somehow managed to hook my hoodie on a fishing hook hanging from the christmas card frame and needed the roomie to rescue me, while he chastised for ruining his knife, his oven, and his evening in general.
Anyway, wah. I’m feeling all stupid and clumsy and sorry for myself. And my thumb hurts.
Lots of hugs, Unimaginative! 🙁
Thanks, Kittehs. I have to say, though, essential oil of lavender is fantastic for burns! If I’m careful how I move, my thumb only has a dull, ignorable pain rather than a YOWBURRRRN! Lavender oil is the shit.
MOAR HUGS! Sorry your day has been craptastic; hope it gets better.