I don't want to spoil anybody's party today and I don't think there's an easy way to do this, but I think I'm gonna head on out guys. I honestly and truly love and appreciate every last one of you, but the outside world is calling my name and I think that's where I need to be. Just know that you're all amazing people and you're all capable of amazing things. Be mindful, be compassionate, and be on your best behavior. The world is lucky to have each and every last one of you and I felt similarly lucky to share your friendship here on Hubski. ~rd95
Man, I’m gonna miss seeing you here rd95! You’re an awesome presence. If/when you find a semblance of balance between the “outside world” and the digital, come back by. Check in and let us know how you’re doing. Be well. Be awesome. Be you!
you've been really wonderful here and i'm sorry to see you go - good luck with the outside world, and i'd love to see you again someday
Thank for sharing your drawing and having spent time here. :)
UNEXPECTED STORY SEQUELS I was getting ready for work this morning, and I had all the way gotten dressed, accessorized, and even did my hair braided, in two french braids tied off at the nape of my neck, when by that point all the looking in the mirror which that entailed started getting to me. I started second-guessing my outfit (even despite my never-before-failed orderly-life strategy of picking out my work clothes every night beforehand). I started second-guessing how I looked. I started thinking about Instagram models and the bodies of the people I work with (typical Bank Ass office bodies, generally) and I started trying to think about female friends I have who are my age and how they looked, and how they looked compared to high school, and so on and so forth. I started to stare at the mirror and ask myself, "What do other people see when they look at me? What must I look like through the eyes of other people? Do I have a big ass? I don't think I do, but my last kind-of-boyfriend keeps vague-posting about me on facebook and one thing he shared was about how he's an ass man and the girl he likes has a huge one...I never thought I have a big ass, really, but do I?" I go through this whole exercise in pissing away thought and time into mirrors in exchange for racheting higher and higher levels of crippling gross feelings often enough. Pretty often. Maybe a lot. Depends on the week. So anyway I kept looking in the full body mirror in my room at myself and asking, “Is this how normal people think and feel and think and feel about their bodies?” Then I’d go to the bathroom for some other reason and find myself looking in the mirror there. I’d ask, “How do normal people feel about their bodies? Is the way I feel about my body normal? I don’t think so, I mean, what normal person does this in the morning, especially a morning when they took care and time to look a little more-than-average nice in ways that require a little more-than-average self-care and you’d think self-care meant doing so was good for one, wouldn’t it?” And then I’d walk through the kitchen to put something in my work bag or whatever and I’d pass the full body mirror on the way and at some point between all my askings about normal people I realized something. Maybe I had a breakthrough. I think it might be one, anyway. It feels like that, in my mind, honestly it feels like a literal break in the pattern and color of the thoughts I'd been weaving just as I'm using to weaving them all the time, and yes it feels like maybe now I can see through them. And there's light coming through over there. To explain what happened I need to talk about something else for a minute. I’m working on a 5-year plan. Early on, mid-January or earlier, while I was just starting the entire project and fleshing it out, I stopped at some point. I thought, you’re making all these plans for 1, 2, 5 years out, refugee, but why? And I stopped all my tasking and goal-orienting and sometimes-you-can-get-too-caught-up-on-projects-and-progress-and-miss-the-big-green-point-all-around you. I took a trusty notebook and I wrote down, What kind of person do you want to be? I gave it care and thought and came up with eleven words in the next hour or so. I didn’t let myself just rush to write down popular good virtues or etc; I asked myself, what kind of person is it important, to me, for me to be? and i weighed what i came up with until I decided I agreed with it. I didn’t tie any major life goals back to those words, not specifically, not concretely, only maybe if you stretch the meaning and squint your eyes a bit. So they didn't actually drive my goals or my 5 year plan in any visceral way. However, taking that inventory did really seem to help ground me as I went through making my goals and breaking them into smaller goals and basically wiring up my 5-year-plan process/binder. Mentally, I think it gave me the ground I needed to stand upon and solidly create my plan of attack for getting what I want out of life. I think doing that gave me the fortitude to see the 5 year plan through, and commit to it, and work at it. And keep working at it, day by day. So this morning, looking into mirrors and agonizing and asking myself all these questions which hinged on this strange word, normal, this word which usually frankly I disdain -- I thought, hey hang on just one minute. Normal, normal, normal, why do you keep saying that? Why are you fixating there? Put aside the question of “Am I normal or not?” because frankly, that answer doesn’t matter to the true issue at hand. The true issue at hand is that I don't feel very comfortable with my body and haven't since I was 12— what the fuck is any normal person going to know or be able to tell me about how to change that? Scratch everything about this line of tearing-your-hair-out making-yourself-madder-not-saner-by-following-it line of questioning and KILL the underlying train of faux-logic that’s driving it. Forget everybody else, and what everybody else does. And I sat down, and I opened my trusty notebook, and I wrote, “What’s the kind of relationship I want with my body?” You know what I think now? I think me and my body? I think we might be going somewhere. At last. I think, starting from here — what do I want with what I have — and seeing it as a relationship, as a “Let me take care of you and you take care of me,” sort of deal — I don’t know, in my notebook I titled it caps-lock BREAKTHROUGH. and then I gave it an underline. OftenBen ______ Before that happened this morning I was going to share with Pubski an old poem I dug up this week, 2011 sort of old, which you know what? Has stood up to time and is, surprisingly, still intellectually decent. A little morsel. It has a tone I think mk will recognize and like. Remember when we talked about a little detachment? I think I feel it here. _____ Happy hump day guys, on with the self-actualizing, good energy all around. ref
I went back and read your post from two weeks ago, missed it. And this one. And maybe (probably) because I just got out of my therapist's office where I bawled at how hard things have been recently, your words struck me with a clarity and poignancy that made the sunshine feel real. I too agonize over the mirror and with my body. I too struggle to find the balance between feeling debonair and confident and the midday fallout from realizing how big a mistake that shirt was. And I acknowledge it's nowhere near as difficult for someone like me (26 year old guy) as it is for women. That's to say, my tourism through the trenches of body image issues makes me appreciate how truly skull-rattling keeping up appearances is; striking all the balances (professional/not-too-uptight, sexy/not-hoey, done-up/not-hiding-something) each day is like the least rewarding stairmaster ever. <3
Yo we all have pain, it’s way cooler to realize how it’s interrelated and what we might have in common than to live in a silo or a field of comparison where only the most hurt can speak. What I’m trying to say is I don’t have or want a monopoly on any emotions like this, and I sure as shit won’t be telling anyone whether they’re “allowed” to feel a certain way or not. Most of my healing has come from places where I have been able to speak and feel heard.
Normal. No one is it, no one can define it; we are to be measured against it. Harm: Do you harm yourself? Do you harm others? Help: Do you help yourself? Do you help others? No, no, yes, and yes. Much better returns than normal. I love your plan. Industriousness is a powerful drug.
I love the poem. The bells on the door, I could hear them and see the door. My cheeks got cold. There’s a real sense of place. Great work.
I'm starting to see news articles about the reddit redesign make it to the normie press; none of them are good. I'd post one or two but, eh I just don't care any more. Starting to get a Digg vibe. Hubski looks to be he 83,000 or so most popular website in the USA, and from that link we get a decent amount of traffic from Turkey and India as well, but not Canada. Then again Alexa is odd on the non-main websites and has weird reporting. I was bored last night and went through some "reddit alternative" searches and the stuff from 2014-2017 Hubski is mentioned quite often. the current articles are mostly talking about how Voat imploded into racism and alt-right ethno-idiocy, while talking about the "chan" style boards. This explains why 4Chan has been a bigger pile of awful than normal of late. They also talk about Hacker News of all places. Maybe the shitlords will pass us over and we will escape the brunt of the exodus, which would be nice. If there is an influx here this spring and summer? Welcome those that stick around. Don't forget to use the mute and block buttons on the trolls. Enjoy the temporary shitshow as things settle into the new normal. And don't forget to get off the internet once in a while and go outside.
I made some shorts, but they're a size too big for me. If anyone here wants them, PM me. They're size 32, and I have yet to finish the cuffs, so they could be either short shorts (my personal preference) or knee length. Free, if you can cover the shipping. This was a week when a pair of shorts was the most exciting development. Not altogether a bad thing.
Hello my lovelies. Sad to see rd95 leave, happy to see him go; stirred by refugee's all-caps breakthrough. Good stuff all round. I had a decent day. Got up, had coffee and cornflakes, read the news. Wrote, for a little less than an hour, on that book I've been discussing for some time. Whipped up a quick sponsorship sheet for this summer's barefoot mountain charity thing; booked bus tickets to Cork, to visit my friend. Went for a walk. It was cloudy but dry and the sun was trying. Popped into a certain pub for a coffee. Came home, had a sandwich, had a nap. Went to the shop, bought food and beer, made spaghetti bolognese. It turned out pretty good, which says a lot, because I can count on one hand the number of times I've cooked since last year. And now it's now. I tried calling my friend but he didn't answer. After this I'll probably go finish reading Moby-Dick, it's been on my bedside table, figuratively at least, for nearly two months. Here's a photo of my cat. She came in a week ago with a limp tail; the vet gave me some antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory to deliver directly into the cat's mouth with a syringe. It's not an easy procedure. I do find it funny that she tries desperately to escape, but when the medicine is shot into her mouth she laps it up. I don't think I'd react that way to having a massive syringe shoved in my mouth.
That's what my cat does when he has a liquid prescription. How's she doing? Both my cats are getting medication for their thyroids. It's a creme I put on their ear flap. Neither seem to mind it. It's the best pet meds I've had.
I'm happy to say that she has now recovered nearly 100% of tail function! A creme on the ear flap helps the thyroid? That seems bizarre for some reason.
Apparently it has to go on exposed skin, and then it's absorbed into the blood stream. My boy has been on it for a year, and his blood work is improved, so it's working! I'm glad she's better!
Aaron Traywick is dead, and his memory has been haunting me more than I would have expected. I don't care to comment on his controversial approach. I met Aaron about a year ago at a conference, and had a couple of enthusiastic conversations with him there. He was always fasting. We connected a few times over the past year, shared some phone calls, a few meetings. He had a way of pausing, and then laughing at himself. He was funny. This spring at SXSW I shared a drink with him, and probed him about his passion for life-extension. I uncovered more emotion than I anticipated. I saw him once more about a month later. I felt that Aaron wanted to fight suffering like it was a hateful enemy. I wanted to understand him. I think Aaron wanted people be able to fight death like it was out to kill them. RIP Aaron.
I'm currently in state of wondering what to do next which is weird for me because I normally just throw myself into something I deem to be my next thing by carefully crafting a web of reasons for why I should be doing it while really feeling like I'm floating over some cavern running out of ways to get to the other side. I put in the work to understand how I got where I am and what makes me tick. I devoted time to healing old wounds and changing how I treat myself. Looking back helped me better understand myself but lately my brain keeps switching to wondering what's next or where I go from here which I imagine is a good thing. I've realized lately that the things I'm good at and interested in are also the things I was lead away from and discouraged from trying when I was growing up. The things that I failed over and over again to incorporate into my personality reflected what others wanted of me even though I felt for so long that it's what I wanted. Two years ago when I tried to make a list of things I liked vs. disliked I found I struggled because I couldn't figure out who's voice was pushing me in either direction. Now that my voice has grown louder than the others I'm excited, but I don't know where we go next. The original plan was Uni in the fall but I've been stuck on the second part of the application essay and I think I need to do more living before I can answer their questions. The first part was all about why my grades didn't reflect my potential and essentially what held me back. Given I just spent years figuring that out myself that was pretty easy to answer. The next part was about what I had done to ensure my future studies will be different and why I wanted to do this program. I really couldn't answer it. I had spent a lot of time looking back, but I had yet to take things forward. In all honesty I've barely done anything, I haven't worked with anybody on my dyslexia ever, I still have ADD and anxiety that I've also not got under control and I don't know what motivates me. That's my biggest one because the other things are roadblocks that I can get over if I know why I'm doing it. The traditional school system isn't designed for me but I can get through it if I know it will enable me to have a positive impact on the world. SO shiny new plan is part time at the college in my hometown. I've signed up for distance courses in psychology while I'm away but once I move back I don't know. I think I'll take the small engine and welding courses while I finished up the on-campus psych courses. There's an art school as well and I think I would like to take a few classes there. It will help me decide if pursuing psychology at Uni will be worth the time/money and I can take some time to get to know myself at the same time. In the meantime I'm just happy the snow has mostly melted and I'll be able to hit the trails soon.
A few weeks ago I was approached about a different engineering within my company. It turns out it's a lateral move to a plant back in the northeast, one with a lot of problems and changes in leadership, and it feels like they're trying to bring me in to be a "fixer". I've spent days talking this over with people, and still don't know what to do. The part of me that values new challenges and seeing new places is a yes on this, and if I pull it off it would likely be a great career move. The part of me that loves living in the northwest and my status at my current plant is saying to stay here. It's straining, and it doesn't help having a lot of relationship issues going on at the same time. The root cause of which has a lot to do with my consideration for others in certain aspects of communication, and a mismatch in emotional needs. I'm pretty low maintenance in a relationship, if you can believe that, and it can apparently come across as uncaring. Who knew. Maybe a serious relationship isn't for me right now.
Dude, the Northeast suxxx. You ever been anywhere in the Northeast where you didn't think, "this'd be great if it weren't for the traffic and the accent and the racism and winters that made you want to kill yourself"? Is any job worth the Northeast gawddamn
The Puget Sound definitely shares the terrible traffic award with the Northeast, but yeah, screw those winters. Where are you at these days?
Um. Louisville, Kentucky. So come to think of it I guess I can't rag on other regions for racism and annoying accents. But Louisville is actually a great place. Oasis in a sea of Kentucky.
Neat stuff: https://watape.com/ Someone setup a reel-to-reel tape recorder that is accessible by cloud. You can upload audio and get a lofi'd version back. Also neat in the realm of audio design: www.humbletune.com/tardigrain/ I got this app and have been having loads of fun messing around with it. I got a recording of my cat that, when pitched down and distorted, sounds like some kind of Cloverfield/Godzilla roar.