Im trying to get into the habit of setting a daily/weekly routine of hobbies, chores, meal planning etc.

Right now, they happen when they need to happen but its not the most efficient or well coordinated. And i'd like to spend less time thinking about when to do things or what to do for routine activities.

What are some routines that work for you well?

I wanted to share this nice little story that happened just minutes ago. I'm putting this on a post because perhaps people would like to share their own stories for the vibes.

I went for a quick grocery run. On the way back, I realized that I did not have my wallet in my pocket anymore. It wasn't in my pocket and it wasn't in the grocery bag.

The walk to the store was quite short but I did not see it after backtracking. A guy spotted me looking for something on the floor and asked me what I was looking for. With some diligence, he verified that I was indeed looking for a wallet and he pointed me to a barbershop close by. There, two guys were looking for me by searching my name on Facebook using the ID in my wallet.

I thanked them (in the local language, neither my first nor second language) and went about my way because I didn't know what else to say. I felt like I could have done more. Like thanked them with more words or given them a small reward etc. I was overwhelmed by the unusual situation that I didn't have any time to think.

I got home and searched for a non-monetary token of appreciation but by the time I came back they were already gone. I didn't even think they were going for a haircut.

Anyway, that was a super nice experience even though I kinda feel bad for not having shown more appreciation. I was already at the point of transferring money out of my card but I was lucky enough to have found such kind souls.

Anyone have similar experiences recently or otherwise?

I know if I posted that on Reddit, all the top answers would be something like "Money"or "It lets me survive" but I'm looking for something deeper than that.

I'm a teacher and school just started where I lived and I realize how much freedom the job gives me. I can considerably modify how my day will go as long as the students learn the curriculum. I love that freedom.

I also love the human nature of it. I get to know and see 100 kids develop every year, plus, I teach juniors and I've had a lot of my last year students stop by me to say hello and talk about their summer or their current teachers. It's fun having all these random positive conversations every day.

I get to learn a lot about people and about me. I love that growth.

What about you?

Here I am, late-30s languishing on a grey Sunday afternoon. After finishing my first real week-long vacation in 4ish years without even side-hussling, a thought is growing: I don't really want to go back, what's next?

I've browsed topics discussing career changes/pivots when the OP has a desired endpoint, but I could use help brainstorming one step earlier: how to figure out what jobs/career move I might like, might be feasible/pragmatic for me, and even just exist?

Meandering background
if tl/dr, skip to questions below
My current job (ux/comms) is objectively decent for pay, coworkers, work/life balance. So, not in a rush to jump ship. [Edit: removed some details about myself]

Questions

• Any overall life advice or thoughts on that 'something new' itch? Maybe I shouldn't equate it with my career alone?
• Do you have general guidance/anecdotes on how to meaningfully explore job/career desires or options?
• Do you know of niche job opportunities/fields that might tie into skills in various combinations of ux, communication, biology, environmental sciences, possibly healthcare? Or, how to find them? Especially in the Canadian job market context?

Housekeeping: feel free to change group/tags if appropriate. This is also a lot more than I typically share online, I may remove some personal details later.

Recently there has been a discussion thread about how many people (myself included) are recently finding it difficult to find meaningful, lasting friendships. Let's change that. I don't know if we've ever had a thread like this, but if we did then it must have been a while ago (or my search juju failed me).

Normally, the "finding friends 101" involves finding a small community that revolves around one of your interests, then make friends within that community. Finding those kinds of small communities on the internet has become nigh-on impossible, at least for me. Discord is no substitute; most Discord servers revolving around a certain interest are massive in size, with text channels flying by faster than a popular streamer's Twitch chat.

So we're breaking the code. Instead of finding a specialized community for your interests, just type up a list of your interests, quirks, or whatever other things you'd like to lure new potential friends with as a response to this thread. Go into as much detail as you'd like. If anyone has mentioned an interest you share, send them a DM and start a conversation! (That goes for the lurkers too – if you are one, don't be shy; you play an essential part in making this thread work.)

Note: it may be helpful to add other details too, like your age (if you want friends in a similar age group) and what kind of friends you're looking for in your post. Some people may be looking for people to hang in voice chat and play games with; others may just look for people to discuss topics via Discord DM; and others still may not even necessarily be looking to take their new friendship outside of Tildes. All of these are completely valid.

Ive been losing friends over the years from moving away, settling down with my partner, and just being terrible at staying in touch. And i've realized i haven't been making any new ones either. So my social circle is shrinking. I meet people, but the social connections haven't really lasted.

I wonder how other folks are finding new friends that have been meaningful and lasted in adulthood.

The Setting

For the past two months I've been dealing with a lot of stress because I've been trying to balance two extremely challenging remote university classes at the same time as my work has been asking more hours of me. More work hours are usually good for me because my job doesn't pay all that well, but they can be challenging because sometimes I'm asked to teach classes that are just outside my area of experience, so I need to spend more time learning the details so I can answer student questions.

This is the last week of classes, so right now I'm extra stressed because I'm trying to finish the last week's worth of classwork. I've still got one assignment to do which I haven't really started because I can't make much sense of this week's material; it's due on Wednesday evening. So my plan was to wake up early, go to the gym to get my workout out of the way, and then go to the library to study until my class in the afternoon.

Last night I discovered the mask for my CPAP unit is broken, so I tried to go to sleep without it.

The Day

If you have sleep apnea then you already know what trying to sleep without a CPAP machine is like; it's a miserable experience. I woke up five times last night, and when I woke up I felt miserable. I took so long to get up because of that, even though I couldn't sleep past 6:30 or so, I didn't actually get to the gym until around 9:00. Today was supposed to be a cardio day to give my muscles a bit more time to rest from my more heavy resistance workouts, but even then I only managed to do 20 minutes of fairly light intensity before I was exhausted.

After that I took a seat to cool down and get the sweat dry before I went to do a massage chair session. I pulled up Tildes and saw that one thread that's making the rounds about being attractive. And I'll be real, it came at just the wrong time. I was super angry about it and I spent more than half an hour writing and deleting all the things I wanted to say. I'm legitimately happy for the poster, but every single word they said made me hate them in that moment. My theme for the past year or so has been learning to love myself, but reading that post made me legitimately feeling like I wasn't just terrifyingly ugly and unloveable, but permanently so. To give you the context for why I felt like that would take a novel's worth of text, so I'll omit the majority of that and just tell you that in spite of losing a great amount of weight, I am still grossly obese, and having been so fat before means that my body is permanently deformed in an extremely unattractive way that cannot be fixed without a series of surgeries that are far more money than I will realistically have within my lifetime given my career; heck, I've already given up on the possibility of retiring. if I had the body of someone who was always at my current weight, it wouldn't be that bad, but as things are my body looks like one of those novelty inflatable "sumo wrestler" costumes that have been half-deflated.

While I was spending that time processing my feelings, I finally decided to not respond to that topic at all and simply click on ignore so that I could get it out of my head. Unfortunately, there is no ignore buton in my head. But at that time I was filled with so much nervous energy I needed to find a way to get rid of those thoughts. It turns out the gym is a pretty perfect place to do that; I skipped the massage chair, took a caffeine tablet, and got on the elliptical again. I pulled up a video workout and worked out all of my anger ("60 RPM is moderate? Fuck you!"). Every time I made a wrong move and my arm fat slapped against my side fat, It gave me more fuel for the fire. It got me fired enough to get through the whole workout, another 25 minutes at a much higher intensity than before.

After cooling down and doing my recovery, I went into the locker room, stripped, and took a shower. Taking a shower in the gym is something that I do partially because I sweat a lot and don't want to make my car stink too much, but on a more personal level it's something that I do as a kind of personal therapy. To do so requires me to lose my self-consciousness and body issues, at least up to an extent. It makes me feel just a bit more normal.

Today someone else was taking a shower at roughly the same time, and they just so happen to have chosen a locker just a few feet away from me. When they finished, they took their clothes out of the locker and moved over to a different bench to change. The obvious assumptions would be that they were doing it because they were trying to respect our space, or it was their modesty or body shame. But let's just say that in the moment it didn't help me feel like I was normal.

After I got out of the gym I got a message from my employer saying I've got a new class scheduled. A good thing, I guess, since many of my other classes have run their course. I could really use the money, and with any luck the classes I'm taking next term are not going to be nearly as challenging.

The Rest of the Day

It hasn't even happened yet. It's not even noon. The title was a lie, I guess.

The question is, then, was this partial day representative of my life? For the most part, yes, it is. I think these thoughts and feel these feelings every day, and I go through the same affirmations and rationalizations to deal with them every day. Today was just a little bit more emotionally intense than normal.

So why did I decide to post it? To be honest, I don't entirely know. Maybe I'm still processing some of those feelings from reading that post that set me off today. Or maybe I just want to say something for people who are dealing with the same feelings. Maybe I'm even feeling a little bit guilty from the impostor syndrome given previous comments I wrote about self-love. But I'm not posting this because I want people to feel sorry for me, or because I need help coping with it. I'm a strong person, and I actually do have a good sense of self-worth and self-love even if it's constantly under threat of the other thoughts in my head. Maybe I'm just selfishly using this public space to process some of my own feelings, or I'm engaging in some twisted form of narcissism. I just hope that you, the one reading this now, have taken something from what I had to say.

This is going to sound conceited, and it is. But I thought I would share my experiences regarding this. For context, I'm in year two of being considered conventionally attractive. I used to be morbidly obese, and I spent the years 17 to 23 being really big. In high school, I was only briefly considered attractive, but considering how short that was, I generally say I wasn't attractive in high school. Which is to say that the idea that I am attractive is still relatively new, and I'm still learning the ropes of my different life. I won't be sharing any photos, but I'm often told that I look like a young Mark Ruffalo.

I'm going to split this into parts.

Everyone is nicer

As soon as I lost the weight, I was treated a lot better. To be clear, I wasn't treated that terribly when I was overweight. In my experience, people were generally nice. But there were some times when people would just ignore me or try not to look like me. I recall one moment, in college, while I was walking across campus, this one girl was in front of me. She kept giving me the over-the-shoulder look and then ran off since she detected danger.

Those moments existed, but they weren't my overwhelming experience. What shifted was that people became overly nice towards me. People go out of their way to talk to me, to help me, or to make sure I'm okay. I haven't encountered an incident where a girl thinks I'm a creep or anything like that since.

Women approach men

I think there's this idea in the dating world that women never approach men. I've seen a lot of TikTok videos and Reddit posts where the gist is "no matter how handsome you are, women DO NOT approach men." And they will give anecdotes of "good-looking" friends who have also not been approached by women.

That's not true at all. I have been approached quite a bit, especially in the nightclub and bar setting. There are women who are not shy at all, or they are shy but they're trying something different. The one thing I've noticed, and this is going to sound mean, the women most likely to approach a guy tend to not be very attractive. The most attractive woman who approached me (and she was very pretty) approached me with the help of a friend.

Even if women don't outright approach you, they give signals as their way of making the first move. Often at the bar or club, it's a lot of staring. They stare, look away, look back again to make sure you're staring.

I work in a predominantly female workplace. So the signals in this are a little different. A lot of my co-workers go out of their way to chat with me. They often look for excuses to touch me or to get closer to me. They'll look at me when they don't think I'm looking. Recently, I had a higher-up worker start messaging me through the work chat we use and inviting me to her office for treats that she makes. They don't say anything out loud, it's just sort of obvious that they find me attractive.

Rejection stings, especially when they're not used to it

Going back to the workplace. We have cops at my work as security. It's kind of well-known that the male cops sleep with the staff. But none of the female cops really do that. I would chat with this one cop, she's quite a bit older than me (actually, she has a daughter that's exactly my age). But she is gorgeous. It started off slow; we just looked at each other for a while before I started talking to her. But we built up enough of a rapport that one day she gave me a big opening for me to ask her out. I didn't. Someone that pretty is not used to not being pursued, so she became more guarded and avoidant of me.

That was kind of a somber example. A more aggressive example was at a dance club. This woman gave me the eye contact signal, but I did not approach her. Flash forward a bit, I'm on the dance floor, and she pushes me. It wasn't an accident; it was very aggressive, and she was obviously drunk.

There are more examples that I can give, but the reaction is never that great. And I've learned that I hate making people feel that way. It's what I imagine a woman feels like when they rejects men, it's so much pressure. Especially when the woman is attractive herself, there's a sadder response from them because they're not used to that.

I was not prepared to be in a situation where I could hurt someone's feelings. Not just that, but I can hurt someone's feelings by not doing anything. It used to be simple. I didn't really have options or anything like that, so when the opposite came true, where I had to pick and choose between people, it was daunting. Almost paralyzing. At one point, I had three women interested in me at the same time, and I could not figure out how to pick one to escalate things with. At the time, I was not in the mental space to be in that situation anyway, and I think I made the overall best decision I could have (which was to not do anything with any of them) since I think things wouldn't have ended well for any of them. Even if all three of them felt a sting from that sort of soft rejection.

People assume the best in you

I don't know how many times I've been told that I seem like a nice guy. And that goes even after I've done something bad, or say some off-color stuff. I don't think I would be given that grace if I were maybe a little bit uglier.

People just assume the best of me now; they assume good intentions. One time when I was out, I had danced with a woman who was part of a group. I sat at their table, and they asked me to look after their drinks as they went to the bathroom. In my head, I thought, "Okay, they're leaving, they're not coming back, because what woman is going to trust their drink with a stranger?" They came back.

Not that I was going to do anything, nor do I intentionally try to make people feel bad (barring one time where I was testing the waters).

At the same time, people think you're sleeping around

I was a virgin until last year; it seemed like a shock whenever I would say that. When I did manage to finally lose it, the person I lost it to always thought I was sleeping with a lot of people. I've had many people think that I'm sleeping around, that I've had multiple sex partners, and somehow don't seem convinced when I try to tell them I'm not, and I don't.

I've tried different styles. When I keep to myself and when I'm overly chatty. People think the same either way.

I've been on dates where the other person assumes I'm "talking" to someone else. Like, if I use my phone for a bit, the assumption is I'm texting someone.

Conclusion

I seem to have more eyes on me now. The invisibility cloak I once had is gone and now everything I do or say carries more weight. I'm more at risk of hurting someone's feelings just by not being attracted to them. And having someone that you find attractive finding you attractive is a scary thing.

I've spoken to a very attractive woman who told me about her experiences, and while there are some similarities it's basically tenfold for women. Attractive women get gifts, people offering to buy stuff for her, just a lot more intensity. Especially since it's more socially acceptable for men to do that for women. It's not something I envy, and it fills her with anxiety and rage with how often she has to reject men.

I would say overall it's a much more positive life I'm living now, but there are times when I miss being the one nobody looked at and nobody had expectations for. I'd just eat and watch movies all day. There was a comfort to that over the healthy eating and workout regimen I do now.

I think things are going to get a lot worse until they get better (if they do). I’m not talking about US politics (I dont live there), I’m thinking more about climate change: food and water might not be as readily available anymore, never mind other things we take for granted like medicine, transportation, communications, a retirement pension.

It’s hard to articulate but I feel like our future is bleaker than the previous generation’s for the first time in modern history because of factors beyond our control (i.e. neither geopolitical nor economic). Not sure how to prepare for it so I’m wondering how other Tilderinas and Tilderinos deal with it, especially if you have or are planning on having children?

A break up
A loss
A blindside
A disappointment
Or anything else that broke your heart

Tell us the story, and how you are doing with it.

Also, for anyone reading people’s comments, remember that these are difficult stories for people to share. Please be empathetic and kind in your responses. Treat these as opportunities to commiserate and support, rather than as problems to solve.

When I was seven years old, my aunt gave me a dog. It was a toy poodle, the runt of the litter. She was from their first litter. They didn’t originally want to give me the dog since she was the prettiest. But I took her home. My aunt said she was expecting me to give her back after a few months. I didn’t.

I still remember holding her in my arms for the entire four-hour car ride back home. She didn’t like me at first. As it turns out, she didn’t like children much at all. As we grew older together, however, we formed a bond. Because of how young I was, I accidentally named her Doggie. She recognized several names afterward, including Baby, which is what we ultimately stuck with on documents. But she first knew herself as Doggie.

She had her favorites in the family. I remember her going crazy whenever my dad would come home from work. She always sat next to my mom when she was eating and watching TV. She’d come to our rooms and ask us to put her in our bed. I remember once, while I was in the middle of a stressful study session, she barked at me outside of my door because I wasn’t paying attention to her.

She was a very smart dog. There are many instances of her ability to problem-solve or think things through. She had this cough, and she recognized that whenever she coughed, I would look at her. So after failing to get my attention for a while, she faked a cough to get me to look.

She was, through and through, a member of the family.

I remember when I was almost 15, I did the math. At the time, my dog was seven years old, and I figured she would die by her 10th year, as that’s what I was told was the norm. She didn’t, obviously, but a year later on my 16th birthday, she almost died.

I awoke to my dog crying under my bed. She wouldn’t come out, so I checked, and she was covered in blood. We immediately took her to the emergency vet. As it turns out, she was attacked by a coyote. She somehow survived. She broke several of her teeth off attempting to fight the coyote. Like I said, my dog is a toy poodle, you could put her in your lap and still have a lot of room left over. This tiny dog successfully fended off a coyote attack. She made a full recovery.

She was a constant in my life. By 2020, I figured she was in her last days. She started losing her sight, her hearing, and her sense of smell. She was still functional, but it was clear she was starting to decline. Year after year, I would think, “This is probably her last year.” And year after year, she proved me wrong.

She gained more chronic health issues starting in 2022. What always worried us were her mammary gland tumors. They were benign for the most part. But one of them ruptured last week. A sign of cancer, sure, but frankly they only gave us two solutions: surgery or euthanasia. With her age, the outlook for post-surgery recovery was not great, if she even survived the surgery. She always hated doctors. I remember her recovery from the coyote attack was long and brutal on her, and she was half the age she is now.

After 18 years, I put her down. I don’t feel guilt in the sense that it wasn’t her time. It was. If I didn’t do it now, she’d get worse. She might not understand the concept of death, but the pain was very real to her. So I put an end to the pain.

I’m devastated. I, of course, knew this day would come and have been mentally preparing for years. But it’s odd that she’s not here anymore. In a way, she hadn’t been here for a long time. Her behavior radically changed over the past year, she was a shell of her former self. But now she’s not physically here anymore. I can’t grab her anymore. I can’t hear her cry. I can’t wake her up.

We grew up together, and I saw her get old. I saw her survive the unthinkable, I saw her outlive every single member of her family, including the one child she had.

I brought her to our home holding her in my arms. And I said goodbye to her the same way.

My sister and I were raised largely by our single mother, a passionate, fiery woman bordering on histrionic. I remember like it was yesterday how proudly she looked at my sister when she was crying or having a fit. My mother would later comment, multiple times, on how she admired my sister's ability to express her emotions in colorful ways, unimpeded by any constraints.

To my mother, my sister was "true" and "real". I was not. In my home, introversion was a crime. I was viewed as broken, and my lack of emotional display was something to correct. Throughout my life, different extroverts arrived at a similar opinion. Why aren't you crying? Why can't you be exactly like me? Are you a psychopath?. I am not. I experience the full range of emotions. I express them differently and at my leisure. But I feel them completely.

Sometimes, when I reveal that I do not cry, people assume that I am against emotion and against crying. I am not against crying or emotion. I understand that, to some, crying is important to emotional regulation. It can be uplifting and cathartic. Crying does not make someone weak -- much to the contrary. Men shouldn't be ashamed of crying, nor should they take any measures to avoid crying.

In the same way that no one should feel constrained in their crying, no one should feel oppressed into crying, or be made to feel ashamed of not crying. My emotional life is beautiful, deep, and intricate. I express it in a myriad of ways. The fact that I work through my emotions without the use of my lacrimal glands must not be viewed as a disease to correct. I have many problems. No crying is not one of them.

Inspired by a conversation with my mom about how our poor dog didn't get fed until 5:08 instead of 5:00, poor thing seemed convinced we forgot she needed food. Mom joked that Zoey would call the ASPCA to report animal abuse for starving her. And I realized it's really good animals can't call because the lines would be flooded with reports of their humans closing bedroom doors or daring to stop playing after 45 minutes outside on a snowy day.

So, what silly complaints would your pets make?

What's the skill?

How did you pick it up?

Did you intend to learn it, or was it more of a product of circumstance?

How did you go about learning it?

The skills can be anything, and they don't have to be life skills! Maybe you just learned how to, say, rocket jump in Quake? Tell us about it!

That is it. Just a personal post, a personal story, or a useless rant. You decide. Everyone knows men are bad at friendship. I know I am bad at friendship. There seems to be an invisible wall around each man. I had the hurtful experience of learning that some friendships are transactional. They last as long as both parties have something to gain from each other.

Many years ago, certainly more than a decade, I met this young fellow at a production van for a film we were both working on. He was a low-level production assistant; I was a script supervisor. He was an aspiring writer and learned that I was a screenwriter. I offered to teach him what I knew about screenwriting for free. I was a student myself, so it didn’t make sense for me to charge for lessons. He came to my house a few times, and I told him everything I knew. Loglines, storylines, outlines, structure, format. The works. It was awesome.

For many years he sent me his originals (usually short stories), which I reviewed diligently, as others had done for me in the past. One day, after reading one of his stories, I told him something along the lines of "You have surpassed me and I have nothing left to teach you. I will still read your stuff if you want, but now you will read my stuff as well because I want your advice." And I meant it.

Years passed, and we no longer read each other’s originals. I don’t know why; it just happened. He still visited me regularly, especially for lunches and dinners with my family (as Brazilians, the dividing line between family and friendships is either thin or nonexistent).

COVID happened, taking a slice of everyone’s personal history. I moved out of the family home, got married, had a kid. In the meantime, he sent me a message asking for help. He was depressed, paranoid, scared to leave the house. I visited him the next day and gave all the advice I had accumulated from being a psychiatric patient for the last 20 years or so.

After that I occasionally sent him messages asking how he was. Sometimes he answered. When my son was born, I sent him a picture and asked him to come visit. He responded but never came. I kept inviting him, making it clear that it was important for him to be a part of my life in that new phase. I invited him to the first birthday of my son. He answered with an emoji. He didn’t come. The last message I sent him was two weeks ago. Seen. No response.

He has an online presence, and I can see that he takes part in multiple social events related to his career as a writer. Book launches, lectures, online talks, academic events. Surrounded by people, calmly smiling and perfectly content. There are videos for a lot of that stuff.

Although the last time we talked he was emphatic that he was much better and able to work, it is conceivable that he is unwell. But it is hard to reconcile that with the fact that he seems quite capable of socializing with everyone except me.

Everyone, it seems, who is instrumental to his career. Which I no longer am.

That fucking hurts.

Is this just something men do? Is he scared of catching fatherhood from me like it's the flu? Is this an expression of his ideas of masculinity?

I'll never know because he doesn't answer, and if he did, he would never talk about that because men don't talk about anything that matter.

When I won my first grant as a screenwriter 18 years ago, I hired him as an assistant and we traveled together to a remote location where I thought I would be able to concentrate on my writing. He was supposed to help me and he did, even if a lot of what he did was just talk to me all day. That probably helped more than anything he could do in regard to the actual writing. And now I am asking myself, was that wonderful friendship-building experience just a paycheck for him?

I am ending this. I am ending this even if he does not realize. That is incredibly demeaning and I feel tired. Whatever the reason for him drifting apart, it is not for me to resolve. If someday he finds a reason to reach out, even if it is transactional in nature, I will be there for him. For now, I must say, it's goodbye, old friend.

Hello tilderinos! I'm currently on the hunt for a new job, and it's been a very long time since I've had to do any kind of real interviewing to compete for a position. I'm looking for some general tips and, if anyone is experienced in the field of education, tips specific to teacher interviews.

My strengths in interviews are that I'm generally a confident speaker, I know my field well, keep pace with recent developments, and have an enormous amount of experience to draw from.

My weaknesses are that I tend to ramble (adhd!), I lose track of multi part questions (adhd strikes again!), and I'm terrible at quickly recalling specific examples from my mountain of experience. I also feel that, especially when interviewing for positions a bit outside my experience (Eg a 2nd grade teaching position) I come across as naive at best and ignorant at worst.

I also generally have a hard time selling myself with words. I'm very much a man of action, and would love to demonstrate my skill firsthand, but that isn't terribly easy to do in an interview setting.

I hope this topic isn't too selfish of me and I appreciate any feedback I get! Thank you all.

I have grown fond of this community. But I can’t help but feel sad that I lack this connection in my flesh life.

So, how would I meet you out in the world ? When I wrack my brain I can only imagine I’d meet some of you at school, or in some cases, work ?

I don’t even know how to tell someone to meet me lol. I am pretty encouraging, so I guess if you just even make a tiny mention you want me to take interest, I will. I have met friends playing sports and in school and working. And online.

Tell us something you’re proud of.

Celebrate your successes! Pat yourself on the back!

Bragging about yourself is not only allowed but encouraged in this topic.

If you’re naturally humble and don’t know what to say: pretend like this is a job interview and you have to sell everyone here on your strengths and successes.

After my last post on procrastination, it got me wondering what are successful strategies that are used by other Tilders to keep their lives on track.

When I was in university and needed to get myself on track to graduate after a bad year of school, I adopted the Getting Things Done methodology which worked great for me then, but I didn't find myself applying it as consistently post graduation.

I've been reading Atomic Habits lately as I want to improve my own habits, but I'm also thinking about a more general "how I want to organize my life" and be more proactive on managing things.

Are you a user of to-do lists, calendar reminders, sticky notes, or something less conventual? I'm interested in hearing about it.

I'm curious what your sense of nostalgia is like?

For me I think it's reasonable low. Like I look back at certain things, events and people of my past and I will think fondly of them. But I don't think about it often, and I almost never think "I miss that thing", more so that I enjoyed it at the time and I'm glad that it happened.

What about you? How do you view nostalgia? Does it bother you that things aren't the same as before? What things do you miss?

Today is the final day to file taxes in the US, and once again I find myself needing to finish up submitting everything instead of having this submitted early (next year will be different!).

I've also been needing to register my youngest son for his US citizenship, as he is born abroad. They recently released a secure way to e-file this, which means my previous "reasons" for putting it off are not relevant (they wanted me to email sensitive information to them, or deliver it in person/via courier)

It made me wonder if there is anything big or small that people wanted to share that they've been putting off? Hopefully talking about it helps you take some action on getting that thing done!

What would your past self(intentionally vague) say about your current self(also intentionally vague)?

Look forward to hearing others' thoughts.

It is easy to feel helpless at times. As if there is nothing you can do to impact the "greater good." Many of us currently feel rather helpless in relation to politics, but there are many other reasons for this as well.

One argument I hold against this helplessness is the Butterfly Effect, which (in this context) proposes that even the smallest action can significantly alter the future.

An example could be giving encouragement to someone about to give up on a task (even if you aren't aware of it), which keeps them on a trajectory they would have otherwise never continued.

Have you been fortunate enough to identify when this has happened around you?

Of course, there could be negative outcomes related to this too, but I hope we can identify some positive ones.

(Meta note: I was debating if this should be under ~talk or ~life and went with ~life, but feel free to move it if you disagree.)

I've tried before to get input on this, but online it doesn't go anywhere and IRL people don't seem to understand. Thought about putting it in the /~finance area, but I don't know that it's really a finance issue, plus things there seem to be wider-scale financial in focus. And there's no /~advice page, so here it is:

I feel like I should be making more money lol. Now immediately, that sounds greedy or either capitalistic/anticapitalistic, depending—I know it does, but hear me out. I have a great job that pays ok but not great, and tons of free time; in my mind, and if I'm being honest in my field, chasing a 5% raise is low ROI and low likelihood of even happening. There is little room for vertical movement, but enough security that it seems crazy to make any changes. Post-college, I have had a pretty varied career background, I am very good at editing, research, training, tech, etc. but I am not an "idea person" and I don't have a lot of marketability or self-promotion ability, it seems like (also no coding abilities, which is always a suggestion; I've tried, believe me, but my brain won't do it). I'd rather edit your book than write one of my own, not because I'm afraid of rejection or can't commit to doing something/run out of steam, but because the steam just isn't there.

I don't feel the need to change careers, but I am also feeling super unfulfilled. I've worked on doing things to try and fill that gap, hobbies/other pursuits/etc, but I am haunted by the fact that I am using such a small part of my bandwidth, when it seems like I could be outputting at 2x or 3x and earning similarly. I've applied for contract work, freelance, all that stuff, but it is spotty pay at best—what I want, short of a medieval patron/wealthy benefactor, is a second job I could do on top of this one. Which leads me to side-hustle-type rabbit holes on starting an Etsy shop/a YouTube channel/a Patreon page. But when it comes down to it, I don't actually feel any passion about doing any of those things, and I can't get a narrow enough niche figured out to even come up with a potential audience. I've avoided specializing because I wanted to do all kinds of things, and now I've done that, and I feel like maybe it was a mistake. I just want to have the resources available to do what I want. Bills are paid, life is good, but I feel like I am spinning my wheels: even writing this out is like a roller coaster of feeling shame that I'm not satisfied or that I'm ungrateful, then being frustrated I can't make it happen the way I want, on my own.

Because see, I didn't say I deserve more money; I want the opportunity to earn more money. There are a ton of things I would be perfectly happy doing for a living, or for a second job. And more money might not even help—if I was a trust fund baby I be in a similar situation. But what the fuck should I be doing then? I guess what I really want is for someone to say "Hey, I need this job done, I'll give you $XXk a year to do it" like it's 1980, and then I know I am serving a purpose? And I wouldn't feel guilty about time left over, because the job is Done. But part of me is afraid that, even if that somehow magically materialized, I would feel the exact same way I do now.

so what do tilderinos?

I didn't "get" the horse thing

Like some (most?) people, I looked at horse people and wondered "why". My Mum is a horse person, she'd rave about how much she loved her horse, but the words never really meant much to me. I always empathised with my Dad who, like me, found things like motorbikes and tractors more interesting and fun.
I thought, why would you want to invest time, energy and money into this 500+ kg animal which, as far as I could tell, didn't do much other than stand completely still all day and eat grass?
And then there's the actual riding, horses are animals, they are famous for getting scared of things such as a puddle, a plastic bag and the wind. Why would I not just use a reliable thing like a bike or car and master that? I honestly couldn't think of anything worse than wanting to go on a trek somewhere and your dumbass horse going "nah I don't like that brush" and you having to take a detour. It sounds frustrating!

So I tried horse riding

I started dating someone who was also a horse person, my Mum is a horse person and I felt like I was both missing something and also maybe it would be good for my relationship. So I thought, fuck it, why not let's give it a go. A new hobby is always a good thing.
My initial thoughts were luke warm. It was difficult as hell, which probably was the main thing that kept my interest. I feel confident getting on any machine and learning the controls in an afternoon, but a horse was like learning to drive again, but worse because each time I went to learn the car had a different opinion that day.
I felt like I struggled. I got laughed at and I laughed with the people at the stables as kids the age of 10 or 12 were running circles around me.
I could go one day and feel like I had it, the horse would listen and I knew what I was doing only to go back the day later and struggle to get the thing to go forward.
It took a year, minimum because it's hard to really put a finger on when it clicked, to actually sit on a horse and consistently get basic forward, stop and turn, never mind everything else. And I swear to god there is a lot of everything else.

Horse riding is really complicated

A horse, as mentioned, is a real living breathing animal. What that guy had for breakfast today is going to effect your ride today. You don't get that on a motorbike.
I'm writing this section before I even get as far as owning a horse too, so bare in mind these are all riding school horses, not my own.
So you sit on a horse and you know the mechanical signals to move the animal the way you want. I won't go into detail. As a rider, you have to both read the animal, as you would a person in a social setting, and also set the tone on the horse too. By sitting on that horse and giving clear, no nonsense instructions, the animal also builds trust with you too. Both on a momentary and a long term basis.
This means that, you could sit on a horse and give it the right mechanical cues, but the horse will go "nah" or it half ass it. As a rider, it take so, so much practice to learn how to pick up on these cues and also correct them and, even better, avoid them in the first place! And it's obviously even harder when you are learning at a stable and you aren't sure you are going to get the same horse every lesson.
OK, still with me? Because so far we've sat on a horse.
The horse can spook, the horse can be lazy, the horse can be really energetic, the horse can be stronger on one "rein" (the direction of travel around a riding school) than the other, the horses tackle may be uncomfortable for the horse, the horse may have sore feet, the horse might have a really boucy trot or a slow canter or goes straight into gallop from walk. The variables are impossible to list. As a software engineer, the thought of trying to ride a horse programaticially sounds nigh on impossible. It's all vibes.
And that's part one of this massive post, it's all vibes.
It's the vibes. You spend years learning how to vibe check a half ton dog so you know ahead of time it's probably not to pleased about the upcoming bush which is a slightly different colour and you can do something about it.

Horses are weird animals

So far in this post, I've been learning to ride and I've started to understand, ok, there's a lot going on there. I can trot, I can move the horse but I can't really do much with that beyond go for a nice walk really. There's a lot more to do.
Around this point, thanks to the aforementioned partner, I was gifted a horse. He's a handsome quarter horse named Brego (yes, named after that Brego).
I was told "Brego is lazy, he'd rather stand there than throw you off, perfect for learning" I was dubious.
I met this horse, he didn't say much, or do much. I can read dogs, but this man was giving me nothing.
Needless to say, I started riding him and it was a rocky start. He lived up to expectations and he refused to go out of sight of the house, and I didn't have the skillset to know what to do with him.
I got a horse trainer over and she gave me the tools, which springboarded Brego and I off into the woods for some adventures together.
It's taken another year, a lot of questions, getting thrown off (not Brego as promised) and many, many neck scratches but I'm getting it now.
They don't really communicate like other animals, a lot of it is silent and very subtle. Posture, ears, eyes, jaws and being tense are all little signs of horse language.
Nowadays Brego will see me across the field and push all the other horses out the way to see me, then just stand there. He just likes to hang out with the boys, you know?
So that's part two, the animal bond and it's a great feeling! It is like a big, weird dog. They all are full of this bizzare personality that horse people keep trying to put into buckets, but it doesn't really seem to always work.

Putting it together

Having an animal you love and trust, who also loves and trusts you, through hard work ontop of the honestly rediculous amount of skill and patience required to vibe check a horse and ride it is a huge payoff.
Riding a bike or car feels to me like refining a process. I can learn it reasonably quickly and then it's years of practice to get various experience and learn various niches.
Horse riding it seems like there is always more to learn, I don't know how to format it in this post without it going on for thousands of lines.
Just consider learning to ride, learning to jump and learning dressage on one horse, then having to apply that to another with a different temperament. There's obviously a lot of crossover, and you can learn how to ride a horse with a similar personality but every horse is unique, so you're learning how to adapt and thrive with each different animal.

Everything else

I didn't know where to put this but I wanted to call out the sheer volume of knowledge in the hobby/sport. I was so unaware of this before I started to learn.
I already mentioned sitting on a horse, going forward and the intricacies there. But there is so. Much. More.
The basics, like walking, trotting, canter, gallop, turning. Multiply that by the horse itself, riding a lazy horse is a different skillset to riding a wild beast with no stop peddle. I've seen people try to bucket horses in around 6 to 10 different types. Like I said above, I'm not sure about the buckets but these are by people who have more experience than me so maybe there's something there.
Then you've got more advanced riding sports, jumping, dressage, cross coutry, racing. Obviously not everyone is going to learn and get into all of these but they are their own sports which I haven't even touched yet.
Then on top of that you have non-riding skills. That is the community is very keen you understand and you are comfortable with horse care.
We're talking stable care with mucking out, water and food, brushing before and after, tacking up and down, taking care of the tack, hoove care. To some extent there's other stuff like teeth, vaccinations, quality of life, etc etc.
I'm listing stuff and these all have depth I don't understand, there's stuff I don't know about because I keep getting told in a matter of a fact way "oh did you not know about blah?"

Horses are cool

They are massive dummies but they are cool. I used to think horse riding was a sport for lazy people.
But lord, I feel like I have to apologise! It's so damn hard and uses so much of my brain that I realize it was me on my motorbike that was the lazy one all along!
I love learning and I feel like I learn all the time riding. The fact the fatty I'm sitting on likes me too is a good feeling too.

Feel free to ask any questions and please share your thoughts and experiences with horses!
Are/were you also like me?
Are you a horse person?
Do you think you'd ever try horse riding?

I don't know what I intend for this post to be - I guess I just need to get my thoughts out somewhere. If anyone has any advice, I'd appreciate it - but I'm not expecting anyone to read all the way through this or anything really. If this isn't appropriate for Tildes, feel free to remove it.

I recently graduated college and moved to San Jose, CA for work. And let me tell you, I am not liking it here at all so far. Work itself is great - it's interesting stuff, I like what I'm doing, and I feel like there's really nowhere else I could be doing it. But dear lord, has my social life evaporated. This does not feel like somewhere that someone in their young 20s should be living. I live in downtown, and it's mostly apartments, tech companies, and a spattering of bars and restaurants frequented by tech bros in their 30s. Which is fine, but not at all the social scene I am looking for.

I work with a handful of people my age, and while we do things outside of work every so often, they're really not the same kind of folks I got used to hanging out with in college. They're all super career/status-oriented people, which is not me at all. I've definitely selected for meeting these kinds of folks by working at a tech company, but that's really not the kind of people I usually vibe with. In college, I made a lot of really close friends who were mostly "weirdos", without any better way to put it - lots of queer leftist folks, people into strange art and music, people I could really be myself around. Maybe I have high standards for what I look for in friends, but I really do not see myself becoming close with any of the people my age that I've met around here so far. I have nothing against these folks - we just share different ideals. But I feel like I am constantly censoring myself and am unable to really just be me here.

Of course, to find the kinds of people that I want to hang out with, I probably chose the wrong career path and wrong place to live. I was wary of moving to San Jose since the sentiment I'm sharing here is widely echoed online. And it feels bad proving my fears correct. I looked into moving to San Francisco, Berkeley, or Oakland, but decided against it because I was afraid the commute would burn me out. But now, I am regretting that decision hardcore. I have never felt lonelier in my entire life. I would much rather spend three hours commuting every day than spend my weekends alone.

I started adulthood during the pandemic, and I moved out of state to go to college. For the first two years of school, I had a really hard time meeting people and making friends since my university was really strict on COVID restrictions, and we didn't have in person classes until halfway through my second year. That part of my life was really lonely, too - so this isn't new to me. But somehow, being surrounded by people who are nothing like me feels way lonelier than being around nobody at all. And what hurts even more is seeing all of my friends back in college / high school thriving, and feeling like I'm drowning. I feel like I sold my friends and happiness for a job and money, and it feels terrible. Nobody I knew from college or high school lives here - I had zero connections moving up here.

And this isn't for a lack of effort - I've been trying to figure out where to meet people. I've looked at meetup, and all the events around here seem to be networking, business, and tech related. I've gone on Bumble BFF, and everyone on there just wants to "network" or aren't my vibe. I've been going to bars, coffee shops, etc by myself to try and meet people, but haven't been successful. I've signed up to volunteer at a local animal shelter, which I figure might be a good way to meet people, but they don't have any open shifts yet. I've looked for live music events near me, but there isn't really a lot in the scenes I'm into. I don't know what else to do.

Everything in this place seems to revolve around careers, money, status, networking, and tech. It feels terrible, it's like a physical microcosm of LinkedIn. I know I'm going to be moving to San Francisco as soon as my lease is up in August. I feel like I'll have a way better chance of meeting people who are like me and are my age up there. But in the meantime, I need to make the most of where I am. I'm sure there's people like me somewhere around here, but the issue is meeting them. Where do I find them? How the hell do adults make friends, and close ones at that? I am surrounded by a lot of lonely adults - lots of folks at work who never married, don't do anything fun, and live for work. Do I need to get out of here before this place eats me alive? I don't want to end up like that.

I know this will pass, or at least I hope it does. I know my life isn't over. I just feel like I'm squandering my precious 20s, if there is such a thing. At least I have a roof over my head and a dream job. I guess the grass is always greener, but I feel like I'd rather be struggling to pay rent and be surrounded by close friends than have a full wallet and an empty living room like I do now. The pandemic was a really terrible period of my life, and I won't go into detail about everything going on in my brain, but I feel like I'm standing on the precipice of that kind of depression again.

Anyway, this post isn't really coherent or organized. It's more of a rant than anything. I just needed to get my thoughts on to paper (screen?), and posting here seemed better than screaming into the void. If you read this, thank you :)

EDIT: Wow, I didn't expect so many replies, recommendations, and support on this post. I fully expected to get no replies. Thank you everyone, really. I suppose part of my situation is I need to stop being so negative - while I am genuinely unhappy here, this isn't forever and I can't do anything besides keep trying. If nothing else, I can always move in August (or before then, if I can figure out a way to break my lease without emptying my bank account). Until I move or find connections, I'll get good at enjoying my own company. And I'm also eternally grateful to have made amazing friends in college and High School that I can still talk to, even if they're hundreds of miles away.

I watched the video "Dirt-Cheap Solar Generator Setup - What Can It Power?" by Alex Beale yesterday. In the video, the presenter purchases a cheap solar panel and power bank for a total of $250 and tests household devices to see what kind of wattage it can take.

Turns out the cheap device can power most household objects. I'm curious if it's possible to try a similar setup to meaningfully cover my electricity usage on a day-to-day basis. Unlike the creator of this video, I don't have a yard. I'm exploring whether a solar solution could work with my constraints.

I wanted to share this idea with Tildes and hear any ideas/feedback/experiences from people who have tried something similar.

My goal

• Investigate whether it's feasible to save money with this setup
• If so, find a setup that I can use to power some or all of my household devices off-grid
• Pay less in electricity costs
• Be able to rely on my power bank when the building's power goes out

My current situation

• I live in an apartment in an urban area in the US northeast (southeastern Pennsylvania).
• I do NOT have a balcony (sadly).
• I have two south-facing windows and four west-facing windows (two of which get a LOT of light, two of which get a decent amount but not as much). However, my south-facing windows don't get direct sunlight most of the day since there is a building in the way (just a bit in the late afternoon).
• The dimensions of the windowsills are about 16 inches in depth and about 55 inches in width. That's enough for a small or medium-sized solar panel, but not most panels designed for outdoor use.
• I can open the windows all the way and it would be physically possible, in theory, to hang something outside rather than keeping it on the windowsill (we'll get into this...)
• I pay for all my electricity. The heat/air is central and inaccessible, as are a couple of the overhead lights (there are only a couple), but everything else could theoretically be replaced with energy from a power bank, I think.
• I already have a power purchase agreement with a renewable energy supplier. All my energy is "green" in the sense that I'm making it slightly more economically feasible to produce green energy.
• In a less expensive month, the bill might come to around $75. In an expensive month, it might come to around $350. If I heated the unit as much as I would like, it would be higher.
  • I'm pretty sure most of my electricity use is the heat/AC.
  • I'm pretty sure most of the remainder is the washer and dryer dishwasher, followed by the washer and dryer.
  • I spend some amount heating my water otherwise (shower, sinks), but I can't address that with a solar panel.
  • I wouldn't mind saving money on the rest if that's all that's feasible.

My power needs (I think)

• I don't know much power my oven uses. It's electric, which the internet says averages around 2500 W.
• My dishwasher runs at 120 V and 18.7 A. That is... uh... 2244 W. Also a lot.
• My dryer says 120 V on the machine, and if I look up the model number, it seems to be at 15 amps. So that's 1800 watts.
• My washing machine, uses....... IDK how many watts. No information on this thing exists. But it uses a 120 V outlet. The internet says an average washing machine could use up to 1400 W (sounds high, but okay).
• My computer has a 520 W power supply, but I doubt it ever uses that much. It's old and mostly runs Solitaire. Maybe one day I will get a fancy new machine that does like 1000 W.
• My fridge uses 115 V at 4.5 A. Let's pretend that's 120 V and say 540 W.
• I can't tell how many watts my TV uses, but the internet says it could be up to 200 W.

I would want a bit of breathing room with the rated wattage so that the power bank doesn't explode.

No way I can run all these devices simultaneously off the power bank, but perhaps I could time them. Even partial coverage could be adequate if it makes financial sense.

Possible spatial configurations

I see a few possibilities here:

1. Stick a bunch of solar panels in the windowsills, propped up at a suitable angle.
2. Stick the panel directly in the window like an air conditioner. In this case I would want to use a two-sided panel, since there would be some ambient light coming from the inside. This would inevitably reduce my home's energy efficiency, which I would have to account for.
3. Weld some sort of counterweight to a mounting system that I can use outside the window to perch the panel at an ideal angle. This would also reduce my home's energy efficiency, but maybe by less since the gap could be minimized. It is also probably illegal. And dangerous.
4. Just fill my living room with solar panels. I will need to have a conversation about that. But it could be done.

I think #1 is the only one that is actually reasonable. #2 would cost me too much in heating bills to make any sense. I think #3 would get me evicted or sued by the city. And #4 is unreasonable considering that I like to use my house to live in.

My budget

I would maybe spend $500-1000 on this if the payback period was a few years. Not more than 5 because panels by then will be a lot more efficient.

I guess I could spend more than that if it makes sense. I have good credit and a high credit limit. I don't make that much money but I could save for a bit or carry a balance for a bit. I think I would draw a hard line around $3000.

The power doesn't go out here too often, so that isn't the main selling point, more of a nice-to-have.

My research

I'm just looking on Amazon. I know I could maybe get something a little cheaper elsewhere. I'm searching for "power bank with solar panel".

• 4000+ W range: OUPES Mega 5 for $3300+ with panels (I think?). That's a lot of money for something that might not even work. And I don't believe it would be $3300, most other models I'm seeing are closer to $5000.
• 2200 W range: Jackery Explorer 2000 for $2500 with the 2 panels. Maybe this could cover my energy-intensive appliances, one at a time. Still expensive. The solar panels will... maybe fit in the window with about 1/2 inch to spare? I could angle them slightly if needed?
• 1800 W range: (maybe) Anker SOLIX C1000 for $800 with 1 panel. It also says 2400 W so idk what it is really. Can't determine the width of the solar panel.
• 1000 W range: EF ECOFlow River 2 for $700 with 1 panel. I am also not sure how big the panel is.
• 600 W range: SinKeu Portable Power Station for $230 with 1 panel.
• 300 W range: Marbero Solar Generator for $230 with 1 panel.

I'm discovering that these companies never specify the dimensions of the solar panels because they assume no one would ever use them indoors. Probably for good reason. If they don't fit horizontally, I guess I could stand them up lengthwise.

I'm sure it would be possible to find a cheaper solar panel separate from the power bank. But as a ballpark, those are my initial numbers.

Math

Imagine I spend $2500 on the 2200 W Jackery model, with 2 panels. I could put them in the two bright west-facing windows. Let's just pretend they can get their maximum output and that charging time isn't an issue.

Let's say I use this every time I run my oven, dryer, washer, or dishwasher (not at the same time), and otherwise I connect it to my fridge and most other electronics. (I know I said my oven could be 2500 W, but I usually just use one burner, and I bet that's more like 1500 W.) Let's pretend the hassle of running all those cables has been solved somehow.

I really don't know exactly what my electricity breakdown is. If I have the heat/AC mostly off and am not in the unit a whole lot (e.g. traveling for some of the month), that's when I end up with a $75/mo bill. But if I'm out of the unit, that means I'm also not using my dryer/washer and other devices as much. I guess the fridge was still on. The $350 side of things is because it's hot and I'm running the AC more, and maybe slightly higher dryer usage for some laundry-related reason. So maybe I'll say the minimum I'm spending on non-heat/AC electricity per month is $50-100, and at most maybe something like $150.

So in this super optimistic scenario, the portion of my monthly electricity bill I suspect I'd be able to theoretically save would be $50-150. Let's just say $100. That means it would take 25 months to pay back if all goes well. Honestly that's not so bad.

If I instead bought the 1000 W ECOFlow setup for $700, I could cover all my non-intensive electrical uses. The main beneficiary would be the refrigerator, the computer, and maybe the television. I think the savings there would be like $25-50/mo at most, being pretty generous. If I say $35, that would be about a 20-month payoff. That's also pretty good, but if it'll take about the same amount of time to pay for itself, I'd rather get the higher-wattage one.

Numerous caveats:

• It's not always sunny in Philadelphia.
• The panels will not be at 100% efficiency because the window is cloaked in shadow half the day, and there is no way I get the angle perfect, and maybe the glass affects how much energy they can absorb or something (would it help? hurt?). This isn't inherently an issue, except...
• ...that the charging time for the power station might be long. Some of the reviews say 6 hours in maximum sunlight, so for my use-case there's no way it would be faster than 12 hours for a full charge, and probably more. I use my appliances kind of a lot. The fridge is always running, and either the washer, dryer, oven, or dishwasher are running a pretty good chunk of the time. I think that I could get by with this... but I probably wouldn't be able to use it as much as I'd like (there are often moments where more than one is running simultaneously), so...
• ...the payoff time wouldn't actually be 25 months. I suspect there are some factors I'm not thinking about that would reduce the realistic amount of energy I'd save here. Let's say it is half as effective in my setup as a normal person's, because the sun is half as visible or something, and the charging time is too slow to use often, or whatever. At a 50-month payoff (4 years), I would start to get skeptical. But not inherently opposed.
• I use my windowsill for other things that like sunlight, like plants. I would have to move the plants that really love the sun somewhere slightly dimmer. Is it worth it???????
• I also like to look out my window, and if I had a huge solar panel there (especially if I had to stand it up vertically for space reasons), that would be a bummer perhaps.
• Constantly charging and discharging this thing probably reduces its effective wattage output fast. I.D.K. by how much. But there might be a point where I can't use it for my high-wattage devices, which would largely defeat the purpose of buying an expensive model. Not clear to me what the timeline for that would be.
• I still can't figure out if the panels would actually fit in my windowsill.
• Since it wouldn't be able to run more than one energy-intensive device simultaneously, I'd have to be careful not to keep it plugged in to too much stuff at once. It would overall be a bit of a hassle to plug in the panels and the charger and everything. Maybe the panels could stay plugged in, but even so.
• Running extension cords all over the house and putting a giant solar panel in even just one or two of the windows would result in a catastrophic domestic state of affairs. I can just imagine the eye-popping that would happen if I set that up unilaterally.

Takeaway

There is almost definitely something I am not considering. My math is so napkin-based, so imaginary and so optimistic.

But even if the practical efficiency isn't great, I feel like this could maybe possibly actually work, and could save me a bit of money. I would just have to spend it all up front. I mean I don't have $2500 on hand. But I could scrounge up part of it and put the rest on credit. And it would make for living room conversation with guests?

Realistically this seems like an amusing but too-annoying to actually do sort of project. If you know anyone who's done something silly like this and had it work, let me know! I'd be curious what their experience was.

This is such a vague thing to post, but in the past few years I've been wrestling with my increasing introversion. I'm always tired. I was talking about my feelings towards friendships to a friend (without an intent to say anything negative) and found myself surprised at how little I mentioned any benefits from companionships. What weighed on me was the time spent, the work spent, the money spent on trying to "keep people happy." (I have a few other closer friends, so it's not the way I feel about everyone). It's a weird position to be in as someone who had once tried hard to make new friends. I find myself struggling with the guilt for how I feel and the desire to just recess, to focus on myself, and to attend to my desire for stability (especially financial stability-- I feel like things have gotten more expensive). I have deeper and more commitments than I used to, which should make me feel so fortunate. However, as a result, they are also in competition for my time / energy.

I've been feeling really weighted down by this lately, so I'm curious to hear from people who may have gone through something similar. A part of me feels that perhaps if I made my life more stable (a cheaper mortgage instead of renting in a major / global city, a higher paying job, lower-key friendships etc.) then I would feel happier on a day-to-day level.

edit: clarified some things

I’m a young student, and I’m going to start 6th form in 2 weeks (taking maths, further maths, physics and computer science). With this approaching change to my life, I realised that soon I will have to make large decisions which will affect my future career. Despite this, I have little knowledge of what most people do day to day for their jobs, with my knowledge practically limited to a basic understanding of my mother’s work.

For my sake, and that of any other young tildes users, could you explain, without any assumption of previous understanding, what you do at your job, and what that involves.

I attended a funeral recently for a family member. We weren’t close, so it didn’t hit me that hard, but some of the people I’m close to and care about were pretty devastated.

We posted the person’s official obituary to the site of the funeral home, and we were surprised when someone sent us a link to their obituary on a completely different site. It wasn’t the same text — in fact it was very clearly a fake one if you knew the person at all. It was filled with broad, vague, non-denominational platitudes which didn’t work for someone who was specifically and devoutly religious. It did, however, have some correct information that felt lifted from the valid one. If you didn’t know the person that well, then it read convincingly. Think “ChatGPT writes an obituary” vibes.

On the fake obituary, there were links to buy flowers, plant a tree, etc.

We requested that the site take it down, and they did quite promptly, but it was unnerving that it even existed in the first place. It feels like the site scrapes obituary listings, automatically rewrites them so they’re not identical, then publishes them without the knowledge or consent of the person’s families. It feels especially predatory because it’s scamming grieving people, and I very much doubt that the services that you can “buy” through the site are actually fulfilled.

I don’t have a point to this other than that I wanted to make people aware of it.

I was wondering how people are currently dealing with inflation in everyday life. Since quite a while now, I found that I have fallen into a habit of excessively looking for discount deals for pretty much everything I buy. I feel pressured every day because prices have ballooned so much.

At first, I only refrained from buying "unnecessary" goods like unhealthy snacks, and instead just go for basic staples and vitamin-rich vegetables. Then I started to cut down on meat consumption due to the high prices, and forced myself to only buy meat that is put on discount at the end of the day as it's about to spoil. And now, I even do the same thing for regular staples like rice or potatoes. It feels imprisoning, distracting and depressing.

So I'm wondering, how are you dealing with inflation? Are you affected in a different way? Or not at all? Any advice on how I could realistically get out of this seemingly endlessly depressing spiral?

In case anyone's interested why I decided to post today: I saw McDonald's popping up in the news these days, as apparently customers don't go there anyone due to their price increases far beyond inflation since 2019. Then, I passed a McDonald's billboard today thst advertised 2 Big Mac Menus + a happy meal for a whopping 30 EUR. The regular prices used to be a fraction of that... Now it's apparently a good deal...

I posted previously about looking for a house for my disabled partner and myself and after several stressful months we're closing on April 30th!

So, now what? I'm working on home insurance quotes, I have the money arranged for closing. We're in the "these issues need addressed" phase of the contract process (there are no smoke detectors in this house wtf) and the home inspection raised no dealbreakers. No radon or termites.

So what don't I know about? What new homeowner things do I need to be thinking about now? We plan to move in the latter half of May. Accessibility suggestions are also useful, we're going to have to add a small ramp inside (one step), move a cabinet in the kitchen and replace carpet in the master bedroom.

Thanks for all the advice last time, please give me more of it?

The book Emotional Agility ascribes the following characteristics to values:

• They are freely chosen
• They are not goals - they are ongoing, rather that fixed
• They guide you, rather than constrain you

And suggests reflecting on the following questions to identify what your values are, if you don't know:

• Deep down, what matters to me?
• What relationships do I want to build?
• What do I want my life to be about?
• What kinds of situations make me feel the most alive?
• If you woke up and all your material concerns were taken care of, what would you do?

So - what are your values? Did you know them prior to this post, and if so, when did you figure it out?

One of the qualities I appreciate the most in people is generosity, however I’ve come to realise that I am not particularly generous and I don’t think many people in my family are either.

I try my best to help people as much as I can at work, but I can’t say I’ve done much more than that.

I’d love to hear what you do to be generous.

1. When did you stop celebrating?
2. Why did you stop celebrating?
3. How have family and friends responded?
4. What do you do instead, if anything?

Disclaimer - I am not aiming to shame or undermine those who do celebrate, this is just friendly a discussion for those who don’t.

This is a topic that I have been holding to myself for quite some time, mostly because I didn't know how to quite phrase what I wanted to say. I still don't think I am going to do the best job but I wanted to hear what other peoples thoughts.

I'm someone who has always valued my few friendships very highly. My dad drilled into me at a young age that it is better to have fewer, high quality friendships than a plethora of not very meaningful relationships.

As people age and move on to different stages in their life, I completely understand that some people might not have the same amount of time to give you in a day that they previously used to. People get busy, have relationships, get married, etc. Which brings me to my situation and how I feel:

I have a friend who I've known since high school, and we're both 30 now. We've always been pretty good friends and in our later 20's we got even closer. I would say that we both deviate from the 'typical' unemotional guys who don't share how they feel with others. Both him and I would let us know what's going on in our lives and how it made us feel, etc. During this time, he was in a relationship (which he was not super happy with, due to some actions his partner did), but would share some of his more inner thoughts with me rather than her. They weren't the best at communicating with one another.

Fast forward two to three years, I got married, my friend broke up with his then partner. He moved back to his parents place, and the time before my marriage (I lived with my parents and had access to a car) I would try and visit him as often as I can just to hang out at night, or to see how he's doing. I've even driven over at midnight just to hangout with him until 4 AM because he was feeling lonely.

He congratulated me online (my wedding took place in another country, and I know none of my friends could afford to, or would not want to, travel just for a ceremony, so I didn't really invite anyone) but also indirectly told me he was jealous that I was married and stuff and he wasn't. For him, getting married is a much bigger deal than it is for me, I never really minded being single or alone. Please don't misconstrue this as me not being appreciative of my wife. She is very dear to me and I always to provide the best for her.

Fast forward another 2 years, and my friend got married to someone he met online. Since then our friendship has been mostly one sided almost. I had to initiate almost every conversation, and it's like messaging a blank wall, there's no reciprocation, and if there is it is very shallow. On top of that, we hang out much less as well (which I get, you do have to give a certain amount of commitment and attention to your spouse) so messaging is the main way to keep in touch.

Don't get me wrong, I've had this happen to me plenty of times. Mostly in university, had a couple of really good friends (or so I thought), as soon as they get a girlfriend, most of them forget I even exist. Maybe I expected more because I've known him for so long, or maybe I should expect less and accept that in the way our current society is shaped people start forming a bubble around themselves past a certain point in their life and you're no longer included in it.

Maybe this post came off as me being really entitled, I don't know. I just wanted to vent my frustrations somewhere. What does everyone on here think about relationships with their friends when you're married? Are you okay with seeing them less often? Is this just an expected outcome of being married?

https://tild.es/1anp
I am very thankful for your help. It cleared our minds and we could do it in a peaceful way.
His euthanasia was painful for us but not for him.
The vet was awesome and we did it maybe a week after the ideal time. We are sad, very sad, despite our brains saying that it was the best decision we are sad sad sad.
Grief evolves and we kind of know it will get better.
You were a great community, supportive and wise.
Thanks again,

I was chatting with a friend about Thanksgiving. Neither of us find the holiday relevant to us, so this year we're going for something health-oriented (somewhat off-theme, but we liked it). I'd love to have lots of traditions, but I didn't grow up with them. If you found a tradition later in life, how did it come about?