i came out as female to my family and close friends and they have all been very supportive 🥺❤️
Congrats!! Coming out is never easy or fun.
The news has been so terrible, and I read so many sad stories, it’s good to hear something positive. Very happy for you.
Side topic, any plans to watch the Eras tour? It’s filling up my TikTok feed and looks like such a blast.
My mom who I haven't seen in like six years is coming to stay with me for a little under a week. She hasn't seen me in person since I transitioned but is supportive despite her conservative leanings. She's also visiting me in here in Portland from where she lives in Texas so there's a double layer of "everything is okay, the city is not on fire" plus all the new trans stuff she's going to be asking about. So it'll be a week of doing my best to be an LGBTQ encyclopedia and Portland advocate while catching up with my mom. It should be okay, but it's going to be stressful 🥲
I'm bad at self care but I went to the optometrist last week and... my eyeglass prescription doubled. Did you know road signs have words on them? Huh!
Madness. Next you'll be saying trees have individual leaves and not just big clumps.
My outside kitty ran away for 6 weeks and just came back on monday morning! I was getting into a bit of a depressive episode and had started mourning her, so having her back feels great.
Hooray! Now, when she came back was she happy to see you, or did she just do the cat thing and say "eh, you again", check out her food dish, and go to bed.
Kinda both lol. She has been very sweet the last few days, moreso than normal, but when she came back I was heading out the door to go to work so I just picked her up, put her inside and left for work (the photo I took is actually from my kitty camera in my living room). She is an old lady kitty though so she sleeps around 14 or so hours a day and doesnt eat a whole ton. Im just glad she is back because her previous caretakers had her declawed and we live on the border of suburbia and rural farms, so lots of coyotes and such linger about
Aww. Very nice that she's back.
I hear you on coyotes. I'm one house away from their territory and although it's nice to hear then every night, my fuzzball got out once and I was rightly panicked (he turned up after 2 days... nothing near your ordeal).
Doing pretty good now, just finally got it confirmed that I have ADHD which is a big relief to know since it means I can be put on medication in the next month or so.
Great news! Heard it can take ages to get a diagnosis, must be a weight off your mind
my first foster dog, chuck, is an absolute angel, and i don't say that lightly as somebody who is very realistic about a dog's personality. (my own two dogs are certified jerks, lol.) chuck gets along great with every dog he's met, loves kids, and the folks at the vet clinic said he just stood there while they did his exam, like nothing was even happening. i can attest to that, as i had to give him eye drops this evening. i've only had him about a week, and i doubt i'm going to have him much longer, because he's the dog everybody wants when they think of a great, chill pet.
Pretty bad, been feeling depressed for a while now and it feels like this week has been a new lowest low maybe. I made some progress in my mental health this week, along with just trying to enjoy spending time with my SO and not be so down all the time. There are some positives.
Just want to point out that it was perhaps your lowest low this week, and you STILL made progress. That's a hell of a showing of strength and resiliency!
Well, on Monday I was informed that I was not being moved to the next round of interviews for the “promotion” I had applied for. This is the third time I have put myself forward at this place - which practically has no paths for growth or career movement. I have been giving myself this week to grieve, then next week I start planning. I’m not desperate to leave, I still like my job, but I will be crafting my next steps. It will be a challenge, which for brevity’s sake I won’t expand on here, so that has me feeling a bit anxious, blue, and trapped, but this is the grieving week. It’s all part of the stew. On the positive side, my spouse is still my rock, and a friend surprised me with her level of support, and I feel closer to her. This is great because I have been wanting to be better friends.
I've been thinking about my career too and it caused an argument with my SO the other day. I like where I'm working but I don't get to do much programming or circuit design, things I went to school for. I just got to one year being here and now I feel like it's time to start thinking of where I should go next
One of the issues at hand is this: employers now have things structured where there are only so many roles and only so many people in those roles, and so someone has to leave before you can level up in any way. And even if you can demonstrate that a new role is needed and how you are the natural candidate to get that new role going and grow with it, in order “to be fair”, they have to open interviews because they no longer promote people just on merit, you have to apply for everything. I think that for some roles that’s a perfect strategy, but I think that giving people opportunities to grow based on their performance should also be a thing. Otherwise, you end up in a position like I am in.
This is the third time I have interviewed for another internal role. My boss knows I am seeking to grow. I am kickass in my current role (boss’s words) - so is the other person I suspect was my competition (they tried to play it off as though there were several candidates, but I’m pretty sure it was just one other) - but instead of being rewarded or given a growth opportunity of any kind, I was left the option of competing for the chance to grow. It makes me kind of resent the extra I put in that I didn’t have to because what was the point? The other person did not put in that extra, and they either have the job or are at least going forward.
My boss has offered a feedback meeting if I want one, but I wonder if there’s a point. There is no guarantee of a timetable for another position like this opening up in the near future, and even if it does, my implementation of their feedback won’t make that much difference (I’ve tried that track twice already) because I will have to compete for it anyway, and twice already those efforts seem to have no influence on their decision.
Companies complain about talent leaving, but then restrict all growth to singular paths gated by competition with one’s coworkers instead of a person’s own drive and abilities, even if it was that person’s efforts that showed the need for the position.
As I said, I am grief-staging right now. Bitterness is one, right?
I should also add that I’m sorry your situation has caused an argument with your SO. You don’t have to give more details if you’d prefer not to, but I am curious, I confess, how that happened. If your current place has no paths for growth or change, then there is nothing wrong with looking elsewhere or finding out what you need to acquire to make that change - whether it’s elsewhere or at the same company. Life is to short to stay in unhappy jobs; I believe it’s what has caused a lot of health problems in our parents’ generations.
It's a real-feel of 105 F in Philly. I am so hot. Please, somebody summon some rain.
It's been pretty awful, sadly. As Neil Gaiman says, "Events are cowards. They come in packs." It's been one blow after another all week, and I don't think I can handle any more bad news.
We don't have r/Random_Acts_of_Pizza but can I get you some food you like tonight if you're in the US?
That's incredibly sweet of you, alas I am in Canada and also would feel guilty because I don't know how to accept gifts or kindness lol
You deserve both gifts and kindness. I snooped through your profile, are you still in the running for or did you get the job? I also have agoraphobia so I'm super proud of you for going to at least the two rounds :)
I just got my rejection email for the job at the beginning of the week. Thank you, by the way! I'm proud of myself too for getting through several rounds of interviews despite my brain screaming to not step outside. I'll try again when they do another hiring round in November, I suppose. Maybe I'll get lucky the second try?
currently unemployed, with interviews coming up. Having a lot of fun and relaxing a lot, but funds are dwindling gradually.
Spending time with friends and watched a thunderstorm roll through a mountain valley last night. I try to really memorize moments like that because when life inevitably slides the other way, those are the things that help me carry on, hoping to be lucky enough for one more of those good days.
Sounds lovely! I love watching a storm move across the sky, really gives you a sense of how powerful nature can be
Trying to get back on track, from literally doing nothing.
Goin' aight. It was fun last week, but pretty busy for a summer week for me too. I had a friend over while they were in town for the summer, got to see Les Mis while there was a performance in SF, and was unexpectedly enlisted to help another friend practice for their driving test. All a great time, but maybe I'll get some more time this week to tend to some personal hobbies and projects.
Aw fun! I watch the 25th anniversary concert with Alfie Boe (and yes Nick Jonas lol) regularly ☺️
I'm very sleep deprived but doing alright. How about you @alyaza@beehaw.org?
Today has been the first day in a long time where I’ve been able just enjoy it and realise I am enjoying it in the moment. I took the day off work, had a therapy session and I went to gym. It’s been lovely so far + I made my therapist laugh so I won therapy
So happy for you! Being able to enjoy the moment is something I am very much struggling with right now, I'm really glad you've been able to make that happen.
I'm honestly losing my will to live. Not actively considering sucide, but in the "I wouldn't mind if that bus just swerved into me and this bullshit could finally end" phase. Physical and mental health's down the shitter, and I'm making the mental part worse by isolating myself from my friends and the outside world in general – partially because I'm just so tired due to health issues, and partially due to having picked up an old substance abuse problem that I tend to reach for every time I hit a rough spot, and which absolutely does not help. Haven't left my apartment in days now.
Everything feels so pointless. My immune system hates me, meaning my body has decided that everything starting from my eyes to my nervous system is the enemy, so now I'm slowly losing my eyesight and getting neuropathic pain from dying nerve fibers. After getting sick 3 or so years ago I've managed to cut almost all of my friends out of my life because I either honestly didn't have the energy to do stuff with them and keep in touch, or just spent my days sulking about how terrible I feel (and tbh there have been times I really did feel absolutely terrible, what with radiotherapy and surgery and all) instead of spending time with people who cared about me, so now nobody even asks me out to things anymore or gets in touch. Not that I had all that many friends in the first place, being a bit of a weirdo loner to start with, so it's no surprise that the few I had left evaporated when all I could talk about was how terrible I felt after getting an internal organ nuked or how I had to go to the emergency department again because of XYZ.
Slowly trying to come to terms and learn to live with chronic illness now that the acute stuff is over, but I've isolated myself so efficiently that it's hard to pick up my life from where I left it before I got sick. So right now the place I'm at is that I'm a bloated aging ruin of a person in a world that's rapidly going down the shitter, and I just feel so hopeless about, well, everything.
Hi there, I've been in that "wouldn't mind if something happened" phase for five years or so, with spurts of active ideation. I have chronic tonic clonic (lmfao) seizures (epilepsy), have chronic depression, I've developed agoraphobia and have been self-isolating similar to you. I've also lost 35lbs the past couple years from an already less-than-healthy weight. Every therapy session is about food and it's exhausting. Every week it's "what got in your way of eating?", "what am I missing?", "How can we make it easier to eat next week?"... (it's good therapy, just frustrating).
I'm a good friend but whenever my friends ask about me I feel like I never have anything but doom and gloom when they're off living l vibrant lives (not without their own struggles of course). So it's hard to feel like it's worth being my friend and like I'm doing them a favor pulling away.
Probably nothing helpful in there, just turned into my own venting... Lol. But if you don't currently see a psychologist or therapist please do look into it.
Just got through a major pain of a week...moving around places nearby due to work going on in the house plus stupidly busy period at work means I will do basically nothing this weekend and it will be glorious!
Moved to a small town earlier this year, tried to make friends, met some cool people, last month I found out one of the group was super openly transphobic, so I stopped hanging out with them. Tried to reconnect with some cousins, last week I found out one was a transphobe, homophobe, and racist, cut her off. Started to get close with a different one, found out yesterday that he was transphobic, cut him off. I'm not trans, but I don't want to be around idiots that think trans people are groomers. Feeling pretty goddamn isolated and terrible about myself. Wishing I could just stay inside and never see people for the rest of my life.
I understand that very well. I'm trans and have to worry about transphobic people all the time. We appreciate you avoiding transphobic people because you're less likely to become one if you don't hang out with one, but most of all because it basically deplatforms them in reality.
I also just wish I could stay inside and never go out there again. People are hard. And I'm worried about how I appear all the time. I never want strangers to know I'm trans so I avoid letting any of that show. So when they do realize that's always really awkward. But trans stuff aside, people are hard. Very hard. I'm now taking 6 psych pills a day. It helps but it's still not enough.
Pretty mixed, feel weirdly restless all the time since I dropped my medication at the end of the week before last week. Got a new vape which is keeping me company at least, a nice E-Elev8R ball vape. Kind of terrifying dealing with the red hot glowing metal heating as it gets up to temperature though.
Not that great.
Starting a new (internal) role tomorrow which got me a £4k payrise and is going to set me on a path to chartered accountancy, which is great when just three months ago my employer announced plans to lay off my whole department and outsource hundreds of jobs to India. After escaping redundancy and purchase ledger (I have been working in PL jobs for the past three years and desperately wanted an out), I should be feeling jubilant.
If anything I feel the opposite.
My sadness/frustration comes from the fact that my love life has all but flatlined. I grow sick of trying to use Tinder, Bumble, Okcupid, Hinge and pretty much any other dating app to exist and getting zero matches from legitimate people. I grow sick of being given false platitudes about how I'll find someone eventually, when I just know that I'm going to go through my thirties still a virgin.
Part of me seriously worries about success, that I'll soon each the point where I could command a high five figure, possibly a six figure salary, then suddenly have women flock to me not out of admiration but out of wanting my money.
My city has had a lot of unseasonable rain which has led to a ridiculous boom in mosquitos. I’m allergic to mosquitos. I have pulled a few all nighters because i’m so anxious… last night i killed one while in bed and it’s sort of ruined the idea of sleeping…
Last night I grabbed a bunch of audio files for country songs that contain the phrase "ice cold beer," then I edited them together so that all the "ice cold beer"s lined up amidst the cacophony of about 5 songs being played at the same time. I thought that would be funny but it just didn't sound as good as I thought it would. Maybe if each song faded in one by one... I dunno.
Good. And you?
My week's been quite the ride, just like any other week, you know? Ups and downs, twists and turns. But I'm hanging in there. And now that it's Friday and the weekend's just around the corner, I'm stoked to catch up with friends and leave the stress behind. How about you? [@alyaza@beehaw.org]
It's so hot outside 😫
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