It was interesting because everyone thought she wasn’t hungry and kept giving solutions for that, but it wasn’t that she wasn’t hungry- she kept pawing at me and walking over to the kitchen/ her food bowl, but just wouldn’t eat what I gave her. She was very hungry, but I guess she was pickier than she was hungry.
“we thought we hit rock bottom, but then we heard a knock from below” -Russian Joke
I like to think I’m an introverts extravert. Most of my friends are introverts and they seem to like having me around, especially in busy social settings since I can act as a barrier to help manage the mayhem. I will gladly offer my services to the introvert who pulls the lever.
I’m digging myself out of a $13k credit card debt hole. I burned through my savings when a job that I had ended on my unexpectedly, and because it was contract work I wouldn’t qualify for benefits. They kept me around as a sub, promising me a full time position if I just stuck around long enough and I was foolish enough to believe them.
I’m self employed now and making do with the best I can, but I’m planning on ending my dream as a musician/ teacher and moving home. I don’t know who would want my skills, but I know they are specialized and strong. I just gotta see what kind of work would value them.
Fair, but I do like seeing the federated model thrive and prove itself as a viable alternative to main stream social media. My utopian dream would be that profit driven internet would fall apart against what we have. I hate how much power is given to so few.
Thanks so much for your kind words.
I’ve taught at a private school as a long term music sub, which while being the job that put me in the red (I kept asking when the normal teacher would come back, they never gave me a straight answer until I walked into my office one day to find her stuff there. After that they kept stringing me along in hopes that they’d start a full band program- I spent weeks putting together a proposal for it to be rejected for “various reasons”).
I’ve been thinking about the regular job, but I have no idea what I can do to get me out of the red. Anything that would pay $80k+ just seems out of reach since those tend to be senior positions or for people who can code. I’ve tried coding many times but just can’t seem to get it. Sales has burned me time after time and marketing just doesn’t stick. I can do it for myself alright, but it’s just not something that wants me around in the corporate setting.
Sadly so much of the music industry is for creating commercial music to be used for businesses. When music is a commodity to be bought and sold, humans aren’t really necessary. Why would I pay a human to create a catchy tune for my advertisement when Ai can pump out something that does just fine? AI is also breaking the music tech side. It’s not 100% yet, but Ai mixing and mastering is taking off. If I’m an artist, especially one on a tight budget, an Ai mixer could do just fine for my album when normally I might pay someone with the experience to do so. This might seem great for the artist, but once they have their album, they can get paid $20 a year from Spotify.
The tech spokespeople keep trying to convince us that Ai won’t steal our work and livelyhoods. The thing is everyone in my industry, me included, don’t buy it. These are the same people who said tech would bring Seattle jobs and prosperity, but all it did was raise rents and push out the artists. Tech bros will disagree and say Seattle is just fine, but they weren’t the ones negatively impacted by the industry that allowed them to move there. There’s a group of us in Chicago who call ourselves Seattle’s artistic refugees.
We aren’t the only ones- San Francisco, Boston, Austin, Denver- so many cities are losing their artistic communities that made them worth living in. There’s still music in these places, but you’ll notice those performances are taken by big names for people who can afford those $60+ tickets.
Hell, even Death Cab for Cutie wrote an absolutely heartbreaking bop.
Digging for gold in my neighborhood
For what they say is the greater good
But all I see is a long goodbye
A requiem for a skyline
💔💔💔
I’m not trying to be doom and gloom, but I can’t keep living like this.
I love you. Thank you for commenting and being.
I feel like the reaper is really dragging his feet with this one.
Grim reaper looking at list in the morning whilst holding skull mug, wearing a death bathrobe, and sporting pink fuzzy slippers
“Okay let’s just take a- AWWWW MAN. Really? Jimmy Carter? Uuuuugh this is gonna suck so much.”
Procedes to pull out his iBone15 to call God
“Hey cough um god I think I got plague so I need to take take the next… 5 years off yea 5 years… No yea I tested positive. Yes I can send you a picture… No no don’t worry I’m way ahead of schedule- get it, ahead? Baha yea I’ll never forget Louis, what a laugh. Oh, no we don’t need to send in a sub… No really… No, ESPECIALLY not Reagan. Sure. Yep I’ll give a call to HR. Thanks. Bet.”
Hangs up, calls HR
“Hey Lucifer I need to call out…”
I think a huge misstep of the original argument is “career politician bad”. Biden is seen as a one man “dynasty” because he has ~50 years of experience. Obama and Clinton are only seen as dynasties because they had active First Ladies so there’s a “power couple” image.
I think it’s fair to say there are political dynasties- the Kennedy’s, the Bushes- and it makes sense that they will tend to happen naturally. If my dad was president of the United States, at the age of 12 I’d have a much better understanding of the Washington Political Machine than most people.
Usually when we think of “Outsider” candidates, we think of people who have 0 government experience who enter the arena. Notice that Trump isn’t mentioned in the post. Ofc Trump was as embedded in the Washington establishment as much as anyone else when he ran in 2016, having ran for president previously and using the ol’ “wine and dine” method generously to help him get a leg up in business.
I personally don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a ton of experience in getting a lot of people to do one thing together- oddly enough that’s an INCREDIBLY HARD THING TO DO. We need all sorts of people in politics in order to represent the people accurately. The Tim Walz’s and AOC’s in congress brought so much to the table- they know what it’s like to grow up as the everyday American. The Biden’s and the Pelosi’s have been removed from that world for so long it’s understandable they might not have the most accurate picture of modern American life, but they do have the deep understanding for how to get things done. In Biden’s single term, he has outpaced most presidents in getting legislation passed. I remember being optimistic in 2020 hoping Biden would be a modern LBJ, and by gum I think ol’ Joe did it.
If you do this before work, we call it “The Sandman’s Gamble”
“I will have you know I’m a self made man, just like my father and his father before him”
And let him have that cake? No way- she should have her cake and eat it too.
I looked it up and a block in Chicago (where I live) is between 100 to 600 meters.
Chicago and New York have similar walkability, at least in my experience.
Nearest Grocery Store is 1.2 km (0.8miles) away from me, I usually take my bike to go shopping
Nearest park is like… 50 feet from me (15meters) but I happen to live right next to a park.
Nearest cornerstore is 300 meters
Nearest train station is 600 meters
Nearest library is 800 meters
To add some more,
Nearest bar is 400 meters away
I’m a musician, within 1km of me there are 4 open mics I can go to
Nearest theater is the Music Box which is 1.2 km away
Nearest baseball stadium is 1 km away
God I love Chicago
So I dealt with this a shit ton in my 20s, and have only recently found an effective way to reframe my mindset.
First, my friend introduced me to parts theory. It’s a practice that’s underscored by “nonessentialism” for my philosophy friends here (i.e. there is no single you, you are made up of many, many identities that come together). The exercise I would recommend you do is to name the different parts of you. Hell, to make it fun, pretend they are tarot cards or something. For instance my negative feelings came from a part of me I now call “the sleezy politician” who manipulates people into doing what he wants. I also took note of the origin story of this character- I had very unstable family dynamics that had a lot of backroom conversations, and also I had a traumatic friend group explosion in highschool that taught me I need to control others through charm to survive.
I also have “the musician”, “the teacher”, “the council”, “the romantic”, “the child”… I listed 34 and I could probably keep going. Recognize each one of these people is trying to take control of the wheel of your life, and you can choose who you give it too.
I also just listened to Kevin Hines on the Man Enough Podcast . The man enough podcast is a podcast that deals with men’s issues through a feminist lense- I see it as the antidote to the manosphere. That said, I don’t think you need to be a dude to take something from this. TW: it has a lot to do with suicide, but it is very uplifting when it comes to self love. The exercise I took away from it is to note the thoughts repeating in my head of who I tell myself I am, and then say the opposite. I am responsible. I am kind. I am genuine. I am honest. I am enough.
Finally I had a thought yesterday- I need to love myself before I love others. If I’m not comfortable in my own skin, how can I be comfortable with someone else? My friend who just got married said he knew she was the one when “the relaxed feeling I have when I’m alone at home is the same when I’m with her at home. I feel at home.” That’s when I realized I need to be at home with myself.
But don’t just love yourself- have a crush on yourself. Idk about you, but when I’m absolutely crushing on someone I’m seeing, I become like a bird of paradise. I keep my place clean. I exercise. I eat right. I take them out to dance and see the world. I do everything I can to be my best self for this person. So why not do that for me?
I hope some of this can help friend. You aren’t just wanted here, you are needed here, and for a reason.
Awwww, what a close friendship they had. Fully plutonic. Just two very straight friends. Good ol’ guy love, between two guys.
This but the exact opposite. I also have resting smile face. I’m so pissed off.
Fully agree.
My take as of late is that any 3rd party candidate who runs in our two party system can’t possibly be serious. They make a huge show, maybe get a message out, but almost always torpedo the party closest to them.
With the Stein’s and RFKs in the news, it’s all sexy flashy publicity without any serious effort to have a 3rd party win.
That said, there is another 3rd party personality that you might not have heard of in a while: Andrew Yang.
I actually believe he is serious about electoral reform, in fact that’s the one issue his Forward Party is about. He and his team have worked quietly to help get ranked choice vote in local elections. He is not running for president as a spoiler candidate. He is not running for senate as an independent. He is putting in the work along with fairvote.org to make the structural changes needed to have viable 3rd party campaigns. We saw what happened in Alaska when ranked choice vote was present- they kept Sarah Palin from holding a Senate seat and elected a Democrat instead.
If we had the NPVIC and ranked choice vote, our democracy would be much more representative, collaborative, and stable.
Basically, but the next step is to forgive and love that part as well. That part of you developed for a reason. If you can name what that part of you is, you might be able to look back to a time where that part of you was what was helping you. Now that you are living a different life, the game is to tell that part to step to the side and let another part of you take the wheel.
At least that’s what a gleaned from my conversation last night.
If it helps anyone in a similar situation, after a shroom trip two weeks ago, I realized my issue is a deeeeeep seated shame- my “Mr. Ethics” vibe is a facade and if you cross examined me long enough you would find out I’m rotten to the core.
I know this is false, but it’s so engrained it’s hard to shake.
In relationships, I’ll feel very anxious because I feel like “the jig is gonna be up soon, they’ll see you for who you are, you will hurt them” so I’ll usually drop and run.
4 hours later
Also I started this comment a few hours ago, but since have chatted with my friend over beers and he told me about “parts therapy”. Basically acknowledge there are many parts to you, there is no single you. There is the “superhero” you, the “deviant” you, the “artist”, the “lover”, etc. So in trying to identify this core I believe is rotten, I came up with “the sleezy politician”. I feel like I can manipulate people like hell- I can put on the charm to get what I want or to avoid risk. I can think of times when this version of me was necessary as a survival mechanism. Highschool was clique-city, and the theater department was a social minefield. My family had a heavy political side. Growing up I felt like I had a superpower to lie and get away with anything, it took me a while to realize it wasn’t a superpower but would hurt me so much more later. All that I learned through that is something I now need to undo, and that is to be comfortable with myself and not care about how others see me.
Ooof sorry I kinda word vomited but thanks for being my prep for tomorrow’s therapy sesh.
Also props to you for making such silly maps! Honored to have you as a fellow mod of !cartographyanarchy@lemm.ee !