Hambeast, disorderly she-tornado and breaker of windows
7 years ago
Francesca – You never have to steal hugs ’round here! *throws more hugs into the hug barrel*
IP – I also enjoy your posts and I hope you feel better very soon! *throws even more hugs into the barrel*
guest – I’ve been experimenting with the same thing; yesterday, I got off my butt for a hot minute and cleaned half the bathtub before my back said “fuck off!” It looks so good, I think I’m gonna finish it as soon as I finish my lunch. (and post this comment)
Banananana dakry – What’s this? Period talk with nary a troll in sight? Okay! I had the same thing for about two years before real menopause. Wonky, unpredictable periods suck; I had supplies on me constantly that whole time period (see what I did there?)
There’s a YouTuber (Slice of Otaku) I follow for his SU videos and he ends every video with such a heartfelt “Have a great day, I LOVE you!” it always makes me smile cuz I believe him!
I’m at the end of page one here and since I’m done with my lunch, I’m gonna post and maybe finish my bathtub; that way I’ll have page two to look forward to.
Is this a good time to do a shameless plug? I’ve started actually doing blog entries again. If you’re a fan of ASOIAF and/or Game of Thrones, click on the link in my name and read!
Don’t feel obligated if you’re not a fan though. No guilt trip here.
Imaginary Petal
7 years ago
@wwth
I’m caught up on the show, and I’m about 10 chapters into book 4. Do I need to worry about spoilers?
Banananana dakry: Fat, Short-Haired, and Deranged
7 years ago
@Hambeast
Holy shit, no trolls? I could die of shock.
I’ve been dealing with periods of flu-like illness for about fifteen years now coinciding with– surprise– my hormonal cycle. Or at least what I think it is, since I had a hysterectomy several years ago but my ovaries are still in and apparently love doing stupid shit to me anyways even sans uterus. Suffice to say I still feel like shit, in the thin ugly headache and innards stuffed with glass insulation way. Not enough to technically prevent you from working, but you feel like hell every second of it. At least with the bleedybleedy I knew the end of the misery was in sight.
I called in sick this morning for my shift because of it and because other stressors (including my country’s so-called ‘administration’) have pushed me over the line into ‘fuck you, universe’ territory. Fortunately I have the sick time and live in a state (CA) which while technically at will also has plenty of safeguards against firing on a whim. I also have a lovely husband who doesn’t doubt the veracity of my feelings, because he deals with mental stuff too. Because right now, I just don’t have the energy to care about the fallout.
Banananana dakry: Fat, Short-Haired, and Deranged
7 years ago
@Lysistrata
I hope you’re right about menopause. I’m scared of it because of the stuff leading up to it I’m imagining will be even worse, and because I can’t take HRT due to heterozygous Factor V Leiden, which leads to all kinds of clotting fun if external hormones get involved.
I’ve also got osteoarthritis in both knees and am on the heavy side (and yes doctors LOSE WEIGHT STOP WITH THE SUGAR I KNOW ALREADY fuck you) and am terrified of how loss of bone mass will fuck with all that. And of course it’s my fault. It’s always my goddamned fault.
That aside, thank for the kind words on my handle. I think Pratchett taught us a lot more about humanity with smiles than all the lecturers in the world have.
I wouldn’t mind being a Nanny Ogg, but my past er, romantic history pre-spouse was more on the Weatherwaxian side and with my luck I probably am more the Magrat or Agnes Nitt. *wry look*
I’m also glad I lent a little smile to the forums here, as I’m no WWTH, IP, Alan , or Scildfreja and my responses to troll fuckery or the idiocy David has to sift through is incoherent screaming with rage and getting out the nailed two by fours. Or at the best, snide commentary about the most blatant of the stupid.
..Imma go back to bed now. Energy level in crapper.
So far, no. I’m still on a Storm of Swords. Just before Joffrey’s wedding. When I recap Feast for Crows and Dance of Dragons, I’m probably going to go with a recommended chapter order that combines the two books and puts everything in chronological order. At the rate I’m going, it’ll be some time before I get to that but all of the major events in the books have already happened in the show. The books mainly just have additional details and more characters.
Policy of Madness
7 years ago
@Jesalin
I took Wellbutrin for about two years. I have an atypical reaction to antidepressants, however, because my problem is not depression at all, it is bipolar. But for decades nobody knew that so I was treated with antidepressants.
Wellbutrin was one of the more interesting of the drugs I tried. When I first got on it, I couldn’t get to sleep for days, and I never did sleep very deeply while I was taking it. I have a complicated history with sleep, and getting poor-quality sleep didn’t do me any favors. It was the first antidepressant I took that didn’t have any effect on my sex drive. I’m told that some people get MASSIVELY horny on it, but that was not my personal experience.
I feel like I had a lot of energy on it, but I had just come off Zoloft, which made me feel like a zombie, so that could be real or it could be illusory. I think it tended to exacerbate my irritability, which was my hidden bipolar talking so it was difficult to control that.
Is that helpful at all?
Pavlovs House
7 years ago
@EJ (Marxist Jazz Weazel)
sorry for the delay in responding….been a long day
RE: Malenkov and Yagoda, can you give me a bit more time? I need to did around a little more
RE: Yezhov: I did manage to dig around. Were you looking for something im English? The problem with finding a single volume to hit in the English-language scholarly historiography on Yezhov is that the two most recent solid works really need to go together….if you believe the reviewers. Here they are:
Getty, J. Arch and Naumov, Oleg V., with assistance of Nadezhda V. Muraveva. Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin’s “Iron Fist”. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
Jansen, Mark and Petrov, N. V. Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2002.
OK, disclaimer….I have not read either, and my academic specialty in military history actually isn’t Soviet history (I just have the Stalingrad-reference nick out of general Russophilia 😉 and as an anti-fascist reference). That being said, from teaching upper-division military history classes, I can usually get a base handle on the historiography of a subject like this. Both of these got at least o.k. reviews by Soviet history specialists in the major academic journals when they came out. Journal of Modern History (whose reviews I trust) thought some of the sources that Jansen and Petrov used a little problematic, but a Journal of Modern History review liked Getty and Naumov and said that a reader interested in Yezhov should really use the two books together. If I had to go with one, I’d probably take the one by Getty and Naumov…but if you can, maybe at least look at both.
Sorry if I misled you by making everyone on here think I’m a Russian/Soviet specialist….I know my comments might suggest that…I do love the field, and my beloved, the gorgeous and brilliant Ms. Pavlov’s House is Russian-American, but my actual specialty in which I publish is in a different period; I try to keep a little quiet about that on WHTM, lest a troll who thinks he’s clever figure me out and bother me at work (!)
Pavlovs House
7 years ago
@Jayne
Not ignoring you…project sounds fascinating and I do have some suggestions. May I plead for more time?
Hambeast, disorderly she-tornado and breaker of windows
7 years ago
Now that my sciatica has firmly told me off about the tub cleaning:
wwth – I’ve been toying with the idea of getting into GOT, but can’t get past deciding whether to start with the books or the series. Any thoughts?
re: menopause – I can’t say whether or not I was just one of the lucky few or not, but I never had any hot flashes. I had been taking Amberen (a supplement; not to be confused with the prescription sleep aid Ambien) before and throughout menopause, but it took a bit of work to find the right dosage for me. Turned out that one of each (one orange and one white) capsule every other day was it; if I took the recommended dosage of one of each cap every day, I felt premenstrual all the damn time.
Z&T
7 years ago
Hi, I’m new here 🙂
Thought this was a good spot to say something. I asked my friend to come over and help me with this, she reads here too.
We have both had run ins with these type of men. Gah. I could go on and on. That’s how I wound up here, I began to research all this from a remark she made about a past jerk listening to Tom Leykis on the radio. I started reading. Eventually wound up here.
Aha. Now I know where they get these ideas. What bothers me the most is, and this is the part that’s hard to put into words….
How can you know what sort of a person you are dealing with? I really don’t foresee myself getting involved with any men, maybe, I don’t know, but it also applies to those you just might know or come across.
Or – you could spot one of these MRAs or PUAs pretty easily if they were, you know, “full on” with it. But what about the guy who seems OK but still harbors *some of these ideas*?
Well, I decided to give up on it all anyway. Not out of bitterness, I stopped caring. I had ‘life issues’ too, and upheaval, which kind of forced me to be work focused so that’s what I did.
My friend here too. We are both divorced. It’s been a long string of (failed) relationships for us. Men get controlling with me, I can’t take it.
I could go on at length about jerk men, I find it bizarre that they listen to this “advice”. And of course you can avoid it by being single, but then there’s just the ‘every day jerks’ you have to deal with – who seem to want to act like an asshole – they seem to think this is the way to deal with women.
I will quit here, I have read this site for awhile, did read the comments policy, I worry that I might offend someone. (Friend just read this over and says it looks OK.)
I watched season one and then read the books. That seemed to work for me. A lot of people who read the books first get cranky about every adaptation change and hate the show. I’m kind of glad I started with the show. But the show has a lot of characters and locations. The books have even more, but I personally find it easier to keep track of a complex fictional universe in book form. So I’m also glad that I read the books between season one and two. It’s made it easy to enjoy both. But that could just be me.
The books are long. So I’d say it depends on whether you enjoy long fantasies with their own lands, histories and myths. I’d say if you the length of LOTR didn’t put you off, you’ll be fine. I know people who like the show better because it’s more condensed.
Idk, I’d say do what I did. Watch the first season to see if the story grabs you. If it does, read the books. YMMV though.
@Viscaria try not to be too disheartened. Difficult conversations are difficult (hey-ahh!) but even if you don’t get the immediate reaction you’re hoping for, the other party could still be thinking about it. Even if they got defensive or minimized what they did — things we all do when we’re embarrassed — many of us continue to turn it over in our minds. When you’re having an uncomfortable conversation you just want it to end. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t hearing it.
dreemr
7 years ago
Seconding wwth on her strategy with ASoIaF, I did the same and I think it worked fine. Watched the first season then read through the books (“A Dance With Dragons” had just come out).
Both are good. I personally like when a movie/series/video game adaptation is not a slavish retread of the source material. I enjoy the different strengths that different media bring forth in narrative ideas.
PeeVee the (Timber-Rattling Booger Slut, But Noice) Sarcastic
How can you know what sort of a person you are dealing with? I
Regulars here will know that I never miss an opportunity to plug Gavin DeBecker’s ‘Gift of Fear’.
I’m not on commission or anything; I just think it’s a great book. TBH, I don’t think it’ll teach you anything you don’t know. It’s just one of those books that articulates what you may already be thinking.
In essence its message is to trust your instincts and, perhaps more importantly, don’t let considerations of things like politeness or how others may pressure you into overriding staying safe when you feel someone’s a bit dodgy.
dreemr
7 years ago
@Z&T – welcome!
I’ve read “The Gift of Fear” and I remember it being all right. My big takeaway wasn’t so much “trust your instincts” although that is a big part of it.
For me the bigger message was, “Don’t be afraid of everything without reason” which is kind of important to me here in the US since our news cycle does just about everything it can to make us terrified of stepping out our front door. The idea is that, if you’re always afraid of everything, no matter how remote the possibility, when something really is wrong, you won’t recognize it and your fear response will be too fatigued to kick in.
Z&T, I would extend a welcoming hand, where I not myself merely a mouthy interloper at this juncture. But I’ll second Alan’s recommendation of The Gift of Fear. But a basic notion is this: A red flag is red and also a flag for a reason.
Your feelings are valid, and if you feel that someone is skeevy, pushy or in any other way off: Listen to your feelings.
No matter what you’ve been told, you are under no obligation to quash your feelings for the sake of other people’s feelings.
Stay away from people who make you feel unsafe, even a little bit.
Because there’s this:
I have never gotten to know men I’ve heard that women around me found skeevy and found them to be anything other than skeevy, or worse. And every time a man in a social circle I’ve been a part of has been outed as skeevier than is acceptable, there’s been knowing nods among a majority of the women, either because they saw the red flags or because they’ve experienced it but nobody important was willing to listen to them. Or because they listened, of course.
Overly Long Name
7 years ago
Hey do you guys know where it would be appropriate to talk about my depression in relation to social justice? and my relationship with my racial identity? I feel like depression would be appropriate for here but bringing in social justice makes it more appropriate for the politics/social stuff thread. For the racial identity stuff it feels personal but again it’s a racial so it may be more appropriate in the other thread.
Shartheheretic
7 years ago
@Jesalin,
I’ve been on Wellbutrin since it first came out. It basically is a miracle drug for me. No longer irrationally rageful, but still able to feel things (unlike many of the other antidepressants I tried), though if you have any anxiety issues it can make it worse. I also have been extremely happy that it doesn’t kill my libido like many others do.
My only issue is that I have to take the name brand because the generic XL doesn’t work well WRT the extended time release aspect and can make me feel somewhat bipolar. And my insurance only covers the generic. I used to be in a reduced price program with the pharmaceutical company, but they cancelled it this year. Now I’m exploring other options to get the actual brand name drug.
@Overly Long Name
I don’t see why not, feel free to speak.
Francesca Torpedo, Femoid Special Forces Major
7 years ago
Re: ASOIAF
I started reading it back in 2002 when I was 12 and had gotten bored of Robert Jordan’s WoT and how it wasn’t going anywhere.
Yes, 12.
Back then I found his sex scenes really titillating.
I actually like the TV series, but it’s nothing like how I imagined it.
Everyone is so much older.
I think Danaerys was like 16 years old when she married Khal Drogo.
Policy of Madness
7 years ago
@Overly Long Name
The other open thread is probably a better place but nobody is going to slam you if you do it here. We don’t police on-topic off-topic much here. If it’s a non-Trump thread and you start talking about Trump, people will be annoyed with you, for instance, but I don’t see where your topic is going to be controversial here.
NickNameNick
7 years ago
Speaking of reading, I’ve been trying to do so with more books these days. I just finished Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon and, unsurprisingly, enjoyed it a lot – I’m quite fond of neo-noir with sci-fi trappings (it’s one reason why Blade Runner is my favorite movie). So I started Max Berry’s Jennifer Government and I’ll probably be done with that soon enough.
It’s just that, these days, I’m finding myself incredibly bored with the internet when not simply infuriated by it – whether it’s an inane conversations with obtuse shitheads or more news about politics that give me chest pains. I noticed how much time I waste just being on it and how it’s more of a habit than anything else.
When looking at my shelves, I notice how many books I’ve brought but still haven’t read. When looking at the games I’ve purchased for my PS4 or on Steam doe my desktop, I notice how many of them have gone untouched (or at least barely touched).
So, I decided – especially so I’ll spend less this month – to try concentrating on those and limiting my internet usage significantly. It’d certainly help if I got called into work more often, as it’s been pretty quiet for the past couple of months, and it seems like I might need to find a second job. I need something to occupy myself with that also doesn’t put a hole in my wallet.
Francesca – You never have to steal hugs ’round here! *throws more hugs into the hug barrel*
IP – I also enjoy your posts and I hope you feel better very soon! *throws even more hugs into the barrel*
guest – I’ve been experimenting with the same thing; yesterday, I got off my butt for a hot minute and cleaned half the bathtub before my back said “fuck off!” It looks so good, I think I’m gonna finish it as soon as I finish my lunch. (and post this comment)
Banananana dakry – What’s this? Period talk with nary a troll in sight? Okay! I had the same thing for about two years before real menopause. Wonky, unpredictable periods suck; I had supplies on me constantly that whole time period (see what I did there?)
There’s a YouTuber (Slice of Otaku) I follow for his SU videos and he ends every video with such a heartfelt “Have a great day, I LOVE you!” it always makes me smile cuz I believe him!
https://youtu.be/ynM0UZXDAUY?t=17m15s
I’m at the end of page one here and since I’m done with my lunch, I’m gonna post and maybe finish my bathtub; that way I’ll have page two to look forward to.
Is this a good time to do a shameless plug? I’ve started actually doing blog entries again. If you’re a fan of ASOIAF and/or Game of Thrones, click on the link in my name and read!
Don’t feel obligated if you’re not a fan though. No guilt trip here.
@wwth
I’m caught up on the show, and I’m about 10 chapters into book 4. Do I need to worry about spoilers?
@Hambeast
Holy shit, no trolls? I could die of shock.
I’ve been dealing with periods of flu-like illness for about fifteen years now coinciding with– surprise– my hormonal cycle. Or at least what I think it is, since I had a hysterectomy several years ago but my ovaries are still in and apparently love doing stupid shit to me anyways even sans uterus. Suffice to say I still feel like shit, in the thin ugly headache and innards stuffed with glass insulation way. Not enough to technically prevent you from working, but you feel like hell every second of it. At least with the bleedybleedy I knew the end of the misery was in sight.
I called in sick this morning for my shift because of it and because other stressors (including my country’s so-called ‘administration’) have pushed me over the line into ‘fuck you, universe’ territory. Fortunately I have the sick time and live in a state (CA) which while technically at will also has plenty of safeguards against firing on a whim. I also have a lovely husband who doesn’t doubt the veracity of my feelings, because he deals with mental stuff too. Because right now, I just don’t have the energy to care about the fallout.
@Lysistrata
I hope you’re right about menopause. I’m scared of it because of the stuff leading up to it I’m imagining will be even worse, and because I can’t take HRT due to heterozygous Factor V Leiden, which leads to all kinds of clotting fun if external hormones get involved.
I’ve also got osteoarthritis in both knees and am on the heavy side (and yes doctors LOSE WEIGHT STOP WITH THE SUGAR I KNOW ALREADY fuck you) and am terrified of how loss of bone mass will fuck with all that. And of course it’s my fault. It’s always my goddamned fault.
That aside, thank for the kind words on my handle. I think Pratchett taught us a lot more about humanity with smiles than all the lecturers in the world have.
I wouldn’t mind being a Nanny Ogg, but my past er, romantic history pre-spouse was more on the Weatherwaxian side and with my luck I probably am more the Magrat or Agnes Nitt. *wry look*
I’m also glad I lent a little smile to the forums here, as I’m no WWTH, IP, Alan , or Scildfreja and my responses to troll fuckery or the idiocy David has to sift through is incoherent screaming with rage and getting out the nailed two by fours. Or at the best, snide commentary about the most blatant of the stupid.
..Imma go back to bed now. Energy level in crapper.
IP,
So far, no. I’m still on a Storm of Swords. Just before Joffrey’s wedding. When I recap Feast for Crows and Dance of Dragons, I’m probably going to go with a recommended chapter order that combines the two books and puts everything in chronological order. At the rate I’m going, it’ll be some time before I get to that but all of the major events in the books have already happened in the show. The books mainly just have additional details and more characters.
@Jesalin
I took Wellbutrin for about two years. I have an atypical reaction to antidepressants, however, because my problem is not depression at all, it is bipolar. But for decades nobody knew that so I was treated with antidepressants.
Wellbutrin was one of the more interesting of the drugs I tried. When I first got on it, I couldn’t get to sleep for days, and I never did sleep very deeply while I was taking it. I have a complicated history with sleep, and getting poor-quality sleep didn’t do me any favors. It was the first antidepressant I took that didn’t have any effect on my sex drive. I’m told that some people get MASSIVELY horny on it, but that was not my personal experience.
I feel like I had a lot of energy on it, but I had just come off Zoloft, which made me feel like a zombie, so that could be real or it could be illusory. I think it tended to exacerbate my irritability, which was my hidden bipolar talking so it was difficult to control that.
Is that helpful at all?
@EJ (Marxist Jazz Weazel)
sorry for the delay in responding….been a long day
RE: Malenkov and Yagoda, can you give me a bit more time? I need to did around a little more
RE: Yezhov: I did manage to dig around. Were you looking for something im English? The problem with finding a single volume to hit in the English-language scholarly historiography on Yezhov is that the two most recent solid works really need to go together….if you believe the reviewers. Here they are:
Getty, J. Arch and Naumov, Oleg V., with assistance of Nadezhda V. Muraveva. Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin’s “Iron Fist”. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
Jansen, Mark and Petrov, N. V. Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2002.
OK, disclaimer….I have not read either, and my academic specialty in military history actually isn’t Soviet history (I just have the Stalingrad-reference nick out of general Russophilia 😉 and as an anti-fascist reference). That being said, from teaching upper-division military history classes, I can usually get a base handle on the historiography of a subject like this. Both of these got at least o.k. reviews by Soviet history specialists in the major academic journals when they came out. Journal of Modern History (whose reviews I trust) thought some of the sources that Jansen and Petrov used a little problematic, but a Journal of Modern History review liked Getty and Naumov and said that a reader interested in Yezhov should really use the two books together. If I had to go with one, I’d probably take the one by Getty and Naumov…but if you can, maybe at least look at both.
Sorry if I misled you by making everyone on here think I’m a Russian/Soviet specialist….I know my comments might suggest that…I do love the field, and my beloved, the gorgeous and brilliant Ms. Pavlov’s House is Russian-American, but my actual specialty in which I publish is in a different period; I try to keep a little quiet about that on WHTM, lest a troll who thinks he’s clever figure me out and bother me at work (!)
@Jayne
Not ignoring you…project sounds fascinating and I do have some suggestions. May I plead for more time?
Now that my sciatica has firmly told me off about the tub cleaning:
wwth – I’ve been toying with the idea of getting into GOT, but can’t get past deciding whether to start with the books or the series. Any thoughts?
re: menopause – I can’t say whether or not I was just one of the lucky few or not, but I never had any hot flashes. I had been taking Amberen (a supplement; not to be confused with the prescription sleep aid Ambien) before and throughout menopause, but it took a bit of work to find the right dosage for me. Turned out that one of each (one orange and one white) capsule every other day was it; if I took the recommended dosage of one of each cap every day, I felt premenstrual all the damn time.
Hi, I’m new here 🙂
Thought this was a good spot to say something. I asked my friend to come over and help me with this, she reads here too.
We have both had run ins with these type of men. Gah. I could go on and on. That’s how I wound up here, I began to research all this from a remark she made about a past jerk listening to Tom Leykis on the radio. I started reading. Eventually wound up here.
Aha. Now I know where they get these ideas. What bothers me the most is, and this is the part that’s hard to put into words….
How can you know what sort of a person you are dealing with? I really don’t foresee myself getting involved with any men, maybe, I don’t know, but it also applies to those you just might know or come across.
Or – you could spot one of these MRAs or PUAs pretty easily if they were, you know, “full on” with it. But what about the guy who seems OK but still harbors *some of these ideas*?
Well, I decided to give up on it all anyway. Not out of bitterness, I stopped caring. I had ‘life issues’ too, and upheaval, which kind of forced me to be work focused so that’s what I did.
My friend here too. We are both divorced. It’s been a long string of (failed) relationships for us. Men get controlling with me, I can’t take it.
I could go on at length about jerk men, I find it bizarre that they listen to this “advice”. And of course you can avoid it by being single, but then there’s just the ‘every day jerks’ you have to deal with – who seem to want to act like an asshole – they seem to think this is the way to deal with women.
I will quit here, I have read this site for awhile, did read the comments policy, I worry that I might offend someone. (Friend just read this over and says it looks OK.)
OK.
We are glad to have found this site! 🙂
I watched season one and then read the books. That seemed to work for me. A lot of people who read the books first get cranky about every adaptation change and hate the show. I’m kind of glad I started with the show. But the show has a lot of characters and locations. The books have even more, but I personally find it easier to keep track of a complex fictional universe in book form. So I’m also glad that I read the books between season one and two. It’s made it easy to enjoy both. But that could just be me.
The books are long. So I’d say it depends on whether you enjoy long fantasies with their own lands, histories and myths. I’d say if you the length of LOTR didn’t put you off, you’ll be fine. I know people who like the show better because it’s more condensed.
Idk, I’d say do what I did. Watch the first season to see if the story grabs you. If it does, read the books. YMMV though.
@authorialAlchemy -congratulations! Fellow BFA fistbump!
@Viscaria try not to be too disheartened. Difficult conversations are difficult (hey-ahh!) but even if you don’t get the immediate reaction you’re hoping for, the other party could still be thinking about it. Even if they got defensive or minimized what they did — things we all do when we’re embarrassed — many of us continue to turn it over in our minds. When you’re having an uncomfortable conversation you just want it to end. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t hearing it.
Seconding wwth on her strategy with ASoIaF, I did the same and I think it worked fine. Watched the first season then read through the books (“A Dance With Dragons” had just come out).
Both are good. I personally like when a movie/series/video game adaptation is not a slavish retread of the source material. I enjoy the different strengths that different media bring forth in narrative ideas.
Hi, Z&T, welcome!
@ Z&T
Hi, and welcome.
Regulars here will know that I never miss an opportunity to plug Gavin DeBecker’s ‘Gift of Fear’.
I’m not on commission or anything; I just think it’s a great book. TBH, I don’t think it’ll teach you anything you don’t know. It’s just one of those books that articulates what you may already be thinking.
In essence its message is to trust your instincts and, perhaps more importantly, don’t let considerations of things like politeness or how others may pressure you into overriding staying safe when you feel someone’s a bit dodgy.
@Z&T – welcome!
I’ve read “The Gift of Fear” and I remember it being all right. My big takeaway wasn’t so much “trust your instincts” although that is a big part of it.
For me the bigger message was, “Don’t be afraid of everything without reason” which is kind of important to me here in the US since our news cycle does just about everything it can to make us terrified of stepping out our front door. The idea is that, if you’re always afraid of everything, no matter how remote the possibility, when something really is wrong, you won’t recognize it and your fear response will be too fatigued to kick in.
@Z&T
Welcome!
Z&T, I would extend a welcoming hand, where I not myself merely a mouthy interloper at this juncture. But I’ll second Alan’s recommendation of The Gift of Fear. But a basic notion is this: A red flag is red and also a flag for a reason.
Your feelings are valid, and if you feel that someone is skeevy, pushy or in any other way off: Listen to your feelings.
No matter what you’ve been told, you are under no obligation to quash your feelings for the sake of other people’s feelings.
Stay away from people who make you feel unsafe, even a little bit.
Because there’s this:
I have never gotten to know men I’ve heard that women around me found skeevy and found them to be anything other than skeevy, or worse. And every time a man in a social circle I’ve been a part of has been outed as skeevier than is acceptable, there’s been knowing nods among a majority of the women, either because they saw the red flags or because they’ve experienced it but nobody important was willing to listen to them. Or because they listened, of course.
Hey do you guys know where it would be appropriate to talk about my depression in relation to social justice? and my relationship with my racial identity? I feel like depression would be appropriate for here but bringing in social justice makes it more appropriate for the politics/social stuff thread. For the racial identity stuff it feels personal but again it’s a racial so it may be more appropriate in the other thread.
@Jesalin,
I’ve been on Wellbutrin since it first came out. It basically is a miracle drug for me. No longer irrationally rageful, but still able to feel things (unlike many of the other antidepressants I tried), though if you have any anxiety issues it can make it worse. I also have been extremely happy that it doesn’t kill my libido like many others do.
My only issue is that I have to take the name brand because the generic XL doesn’t work well WRT the extended time release aspect and can make me feel somewhat bipolar. And my insurance only covers the generic. I used to be in a reduced price program with the pharmaceutical company, but they cancelled it this year. Now I’m exploring other options to get the actual brand name drug.
@Overly Long Name
I don’t see why not, feel free to speak.
Re: ASOIAF
I started reading it back in 2002 when I was 12 and had gotten bored of Robert Jordan’s WoT and how it wasn’t going anywhere.
Yes, 12.
Back then I found his sex scenes really titillating.
I actually like the TV series, but it’s nothing like how I imagined it.
Everyone is so much older.
I think Danaerys was like 16 years old when she married Khal Drogo.
@Overly Long Name
The other open thread is probably a better place but nobody is going to slam you if you do it here. We don’t police on-topic off-topic much here. If it’s a non-Trump thread and you start talking about Trump, people will be annoyed with you, for instance, but I don’t see where your topic is going to be controversial here.
Speaking of reading, I’ve been trying to do so with more books these days. I just finished Richard Morgan’s Altered Carbon and, unsurprisingly, enjoyed it a lot – I’m quite fond of neo-noir with sci-fi trappings (it’s one reason why Blade Runner is my favorite movie). So I started Max Berry’s Jennifer Government and I’ll probably be done with that soon enough.
It’s just that, these days, I’m finding myself incredibly bored with the internet when not simply infuriated by it – whether it’s an inane conversations with obtuse shitheads or more news about politics that give me chest pains. I noticed how much time I waste just being on it and how it’s more of a habit than anything else.
When looking at my shelves, I notice how many books I’ve brought but still haven’t read. When looking at the games I’ve purchased for my PS4 or on Steam doe my desktop, I notice how many of them have gone untouched (or at least barely touched).
So, I decided – especially so I’ll spend less this month – to try concentrating on those and limiting my internet usage significantly. It’d certainly help if I got called into work more often, as it’s been pretty quiet for the past couple of months, and it seems like I might need to find a second job. I need something to occupy myself with that also doesn’t put a hole in my wallet.