Poutine's recent activity

  1. Comment on What are your experiences with leadership and ego? in ~talk

    Poutine
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    I find this question very interesting. I work at a facility that has a lot of childcare jobs, and over the years I've worked most of them. I am also very good at my job. Like top 1% of staff. The...

    I find this question very interesting. I work at a facility that has a lot of childcare jobs, and over the years I've worked most of them. I am also very good at my job. Like top 1% of staff. The consistent compliment I get is "you're so good with kids!" I think there's a lot of different factors going on, but the important part is I can really handle kids.

    A lot of staff struggle with kids. They're 16 years old, it's their first job, and it's hard to wrangle 4 kids at once. For years, I just kept my head down, made sure my own lessons were good, and accepted the compliments. As time went on, I started becoming uncomfortable with this. The lack of quality of the other lessons. And a big part of it wasn't that those teenagers were inherently bad people. They just needed a LOT of guidance, and they weren't getting it. So I started stepping in, helping out new and younger staff, trying to make sure every kid that walked through the doors got a good experience.

    It's very hard to do that if you are not the actual boss on that shift. So I started asking to be promoted, for about a year. I got no luck, and eventually quit. This summer, I got offered a leadership position in a different part of the facility, running summer camps. I would be (I am) in charge of a bunch of 15-16 year olds, and helping them help these kids. And its so cathartic. After years of trying to help while not being in a position of leadership, actually being in charge flows so much better.

    I will say that I have a bit of an ego. I don't know if it counts, because I am actually good at this specific task. I think the big difference is I still want to be the lowest rung on the ladder. I still want to be the counselor, they are the ones interacting with kids the most. I am aware, however, that I can help more by taking a step back, and offering guidance. I know that I'm the exception tho, and I do have to maneuver around a LOT of people who have let the power go to their heads.

    11 votes

  2. Comment on People who have attempted suicide, what prevented you from going through with it? in ~health.mental

    Poutine
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    I have the same thing with memories. They are very fleeting, and most of them are inaccessible or lost. I honestly can say that I don't mind it all that much. Or perhaps it would be better to say...

    I have the same thing with memories. They are very fleeting, and most of them are inaccessible or lost. I honestly can say that I don't mind it all that much. Or perhaps it would be better to say that it's so far down my list of problems that its not even a concern.

    Regardless of my memories, I can still be present. I can enjoy creating art right now. I can enjoy spending time with my family right now. I do feel like im missing out when I'm at a family event, and everyone's talking about occasions, and I have no idea whats going on. It's like im a stranger in the history of this family, who's learning about stuff someone else did.

    Other than that, it doesn't ruin my idea of a good life. When I was a kid, I didn't imagine growing up, and having an awesome memory. I wanted to live by the ocean, and be a teacher, and be able to name all the trees and berries in the woods, and to be a super fast knitter.

    Sorry if this is over the top. I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't feel upset about not having memories. I just wanted to share a perspective that (hopefully) helps.

    3 votes

  3. Comment on People who have attempted suicide, what prevented you from going through with it? in ~health.mental

    Poutine
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    I totally get that. I hope this post and it's comments has helped. Let me know if you have any questions about homeschooling. My whole family was homeschooled, since way before the pandemic, so I...

    I totally get that. I hope this post and it's comments has helped. Let me know if you have any questions about homeschooling. My whole family was homeschooled, since way before the pandemic, so I have plenty of experience lol.

    I hope this gets better, for you and me both. Having these thoughts, the lack of energy, the despair, im just over it. Like, it's boring, I want to move on. I would love to find that I wake up when I turn thirty, and all of sudden, I've "outgrown" my depression. That's what I'm hoping for anyway.

    2 votes

  4. Comment on People who have attempted suicide, what prevented you from going through with it? in ~health.mental

    Poutine
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    Can I ask a question about your experiences? How has time shaped your relationship with depression? Only recently have I been able to truly grasp just how young I am. I don't know how old you are,...

    Can I ask a question about your experiences? How has time shaped your relationship with depression? Only recently have I been able to truly grasp just how young I am. I don't know how old you are, but I'm very curious about what you've noticed. Do certain things get easier with time? Do certain things get harder?

    6 votes

  5. Comment on People who have attempted suicide, what prevented you from going through with it? in ~health.mental

    Poutine
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    Sometime 2 or 3 years ago, I decided to try and get on anti-depressants. It took a long time to get access to them, well over a year. Countless phone calls and appointments, endless referrals, it...

    Sometime 2 or 3 years ago, I decided to try and get on anti-depressants. It took a long time to get access to them, well over a year. Countless phone calls and appointments, endless referrals, it was exhausting. I had to drop out of school while all of this was happening, both because of depression and because I also didn't have ADHD meds. At one point, a couple of days before one of my dr appointments, I decided that if I met with my doctor, and I still couldn't get any medication, I would just kill myself that night. Thankfully, that one Dr appointment was the one where, finally, I got a prescription. Over a year later, I'm still tinkering with dosages and such, but it's been a steep improvement overall.

    Generally speaking, of late, I haven't had any bad suicidal thoughts. I still get them, but they just feel like intrusive thoughts. Like I don't really want to kill myself, my brain is just being obnoxious. What has been troubling me lately is thoughts of self-harm. Sometimes things get lodged in my brain, and I have had this specific vision of self-harm playing on loop for the last 2 months. This is one where, when the thought pops into my head, its associated with a deep desire; I actually feel compelled to do it. Contrast that with the suicidal intrusive thoughts, which is a much more mechanical concept.

    I don't know if any of this is helpful. I know that with mental health, even slight differences in experiences can fragment the notion of relatability. I definitely know that when I was passively or actively suicidal, i felt very alone. I also know that, right now, I'm in a similar boat of seeking guidance.

    8 votes

  6. Comment on Thoughts on LGBT memes and cliches in ~lgbt

    Poutine
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    I feel like the concept of an "Egg" can actually be very useful. I totally agree that it shouldn't be used to label other people all willy-nilly. I also don't want to downplay any negative...

    I feel like the concept of an "Egg" can actually be very useful. I totally agree that it shouldn't be used to label other people all willy-nilly. I also don't want to downplay any negative experiences you might have had where people used Egg to describe other people. I haven't spent much time in trans communities that use the term Egg, especially in the last year. It's more than possible that the meaning has warped quite a bit in the last 12 months.

    (I don't know if you're trans or not, so I'm going to write this comment so assuming the reader isn't trans. Apologies if it comes across as condescending)

    All of that being said, I don't agree that the whole concept is negative. I think that the process of accepting that you might be trans is a long and intense one, and its a step that often gets overlooked in topics about the trans experience. I think that, with the general political climate around transgender people, most trans folk are defensive about their identity. So it's very appealing to stick the narrative of "Oh I've always known I was a girl, when I was a kid I wouldn't stop wearing my mom's dresses," with the opposite narrative for trans men. It attempts to establish that trans people are, and have always been the gender that they say they are. It has be explained this narrative, because that's the one that fits with society's views on gender.

    A lot of trans people don't fit that narrative though. I know I don't. As far as I'm concerned, for the first 18 years of my life, I was a guy (for context, I am a trans woman). It's almost impossible to go from the mindset of "I am a man" to "I am a woman" directly. For me, and a lot of other trans people, the process goes something like.

    1. "I am a guy"
    2. "I am a guy, but I wish I was born a girl"
    3. "I am a guy, but I want to be a girl"
    4. "I am a guy, but I can be a girl"
    5. "I am a girl"

    I would like to focus on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th statement there. If you are a trans person in one of those stages, it is very hard to explain what you're feeling. It's such a scary experience, you feel like you're teetering on the edge of a cliff, about to fall into the abyss. It a tug of war in your head as you come to realize that the statements "I want to be a woman" and "I am a woman", while not synonymous, are coming from the same reason.

    It's these 3 stages that I think the term Egg is useful. It's nice to be able share that label; and the word has meaning. Not all trans people go through this process. and most people who have finished their transition don't feel like that anymore. It fits all the criteria I can think of for a word to exist.

    Again, just because this is what it used to mean, doesn't mean that's still the case. If it got morphed, and loses it's definition, than yeah, I agree that's it not a good word. There's still the concept tho, that will need a term to describe the unique stage of transitioning.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Are there any communities for black users on Tildes? in ~life

    Poutine
    Link Parent
    I completely agree with everything you said. I do want to say that I would prefer that black people's perspectives be in the main groups thats most relevant to the discussion. I would love it if...

    I completely agree with everything you said. I do want to say that I would prefer that black people's perspectives be in the main groups thats most relevant to the discussion. I would love it if in tildes.health, people where sharing articles about how Black Americans have different perspectives on healthy living. I would love it if there were black voices in tildes.games.tabletop; that would be awesome!

    Of course, if Black people want their own space, I'm not going to stop them. I would just love it if the regular spaces weren't presumed white by default. Where to hear black perspectives, you'd have to go to a different side of the website.

    12 votes