What is something you have changed your mind about in the last year?
It can be anything, big or small! I think it's valuable to be able to change your opinions and not cling to them out of loyalty, so let's celebrate our flexibility! I'll go first.
I never used to listen to audio versions of books that I haven't already read, because I felt safety in the fact that I already knew what was going to happen and didn't feel concern over missing a passage from distraction. But in the past few months I realised that I listen to podcasts constantly, and that audiobooks (of the right kind) can be thought of as longer form podcasts.
So I've been jumping more into audiobooks for when I'm on long drives or commuting to university, and honestly it's great. I've been really enjoying Stephen Fry's Greek mythology series, and was finally able to finish "reading" the Hitchhiker's Guide series. As I have a bit of a mental block on actual reading that is unrelated to my masters, it's extremely cool to still be able to enjoy non-academic books without the feeling of guilt.
That curating a life where people can't reject me was the wrong way to go. It has put me in a position where my feelings of unlovability, boringness, unwantedness, worthlessness, and etc are compounded because there is no one to tell me different. It's not only that there is no one to tell me different, I have so isolated myself through the years that there is no one. I made it that way by taking every rejection personally. I've so insulated myself from the outside world, with people who do the same (my husband who has done the same for their own/different reasons), that there is no one to talk with, to do things with, to bounce ideas off of, to... well to be friendly with.
I'm hitting my mid 50's, and I can point to some of the events that made me go inwards. I can also look at events where I was welcomed, but I distrusted that I would be worthy and pushed what might have been good people away.
I was wrong. The pain of rejection, and I intimately know what that feels like, is not worth the price of having no one to call, no one to do something stupid with, no one to... no one to... NO ONE.
Its a small thing, but with a big payoff for me. I grew up where mulberries grew like weeds, and I never really liked them. 20-so years ago, we bought a place with a bunch of mature mulberry trees. I tasted one, meh, Just like I remembered from chlldhood--bland, slightly sweet and with a weird aftertaste. We kept them for the birds and the shade and the privacy screen, but I ignored them for decades. Last year in the late summer, for no reason I can recall, I tried another one. It was amazing! Sweet, tart, kind of blackberry-purple-grapey. Turns out there is a wide flavor spectrum depending on the tree. Alas because it was the end of the season I didnt get many. This year I go out every morning and pick a couple pints. I should get 6 weeks worth with plenty in the freezer. I've also made mulberry-rhubarb pie and mulberry-peach crisp. My partner laughs at me because I come in all stained purple every morning. It is totally worth it. The only thing I can compare it to is he revelation of eating my first mango-- for some reason my parents and grandparents believed mangoes could be deathly poison to children, so I was an adult before trying one.
That sounds great! Nothing quite like fresh food from your garden... My sister keeps chickens and there's a joy to eating completely fresh eggs of a morning
A rather inconsequential change, but I don't like action scenes in movies as much as before. I don't hate them, and there's a way to make action scenes truly engaging, but most of the time they're kinda meaningless nowadays. They're often bureaucratic, there's no actual stakes and no real drama. And too much CGI will suck the life out of a sequence.
I enjoy more the plot, dialogue and character development within the context of an action movie.
Have you watched The Boys? It takes the tired old trope of the indestructible Superman battling smarter villains. And inverts it. It’s not going for realism, but it has plot, dialogue and character.
Yes I have. It's great.
Its fucking fantastic.
On a completely unrelated note, I realized this year that I happily watch any movie with a professional assassin in the lead. It doesn’t matter how bad it is. I will watch it until the end.
I recently saw Kate on Netflix, and very much enjoyed it. If you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch!
I wonder whether you've watched the film RRR and what you thought of it! (I went into it blind and had an amazing time)
I may give it a shot, It is very rare for me to watch an Indian movie. As I said above, it's not that I dislike every single action scene, I just think that nowadays they are often devoid of meaning and drama. Just compare Rocky (1976) with, IDK, Captain America: Civil War. It's the difference between action as filler and action as drama.
I think RRR is actually my first Indian movie! The action scenes were pretty epic, but what I loved most about it was the interaction between the two main characters.
Something I regularly swing back and forth on is gun rights. Seeing the seedlings of facism taking root has swung me back toward the pro-gun side again.
I don’t anticipate a full blown government vs citizens type of war any time soon, but I can absolutely envision a future where society breaks down and political zealots start going door to door while the police turn a blind eye. Some part of this is probably just paranoia but I don’t think it’s as far fetched as some would like to believe. This has been amplified by listening to some WWII themed podcasts.
A few years ago, I also gave an audiobook a chance and found it was a nice experience.
The main reasons why I still don't listen to audiobooks is simply because they seem to be relatively expensive, and the types of books that I feel best fit are the types of books are nonfiction, which I generally don't care much for. Beyond that, it seems that Amazon publishes most of them through Audible, and I really don't like their subscription model.
You might be able to see if your library gets audiobooks either through Hoopla or Overdrive/Libby. If they have a web presence, they should let you know about your options.
Otherwise, Librivox (edit) does public domain book readings, and while they're all volunteers, the good ones are really good.
https://librivox.org/
Oh for sure, I'm very much against Amazon's stranglehold on the audiobook market. I get all my audiobooks from a lovely fellow who has a big old boat with a black flag on it (:
Want to throw in that Oku.club is a beautifully-designed indie alternative to Goodreads and I encourage people to join 🙂 and resist the Amazon empire.
I know they're different, but, along the same lines: podcasts are free, and there are many good ones.
For sure. There are a few that I listen to on my commute.
This thread has been a real treat to read, and I'd love for a post like this to be made recurring.
Not exactly in the spirit of the question, but ...
The Netherlands is not a good country, at least not for me. I moved here 14 months ago, after a lot of online research and a short vacation in Amsterdam, believing it was among the best countries in the EU for a US expat, and expecting it could quite likely become my new permanent home.
Now I'm trapped in an apt with toxic roommates, unable to get a new flat — not because I can't afford one (I can), but because no one will rent to me w/o proof of a steady job (which I don't need except, apparently, to get a new flat), and in need of medical care that the healthcare system refuses to treat because they don't consider my problem (low-T, probably?) an issue to be treated. In fact, they refuse to even test for it, because here, it doesn't matter how low my T-value is; they would consider it normal, regardless, so why bother to test it.
Seriously, literally, the doctors here do not consider low-T to be a health problem. They consider it normal and won't treat it.
My primary symptom is a half-dozen tests over the past 15 years, all showing I have low-T. It is quite possible there are other contributing issues, but multiple doctors have definitely diagnosed this as an issue for me.
Sorry you're experiencing these issues, it's really hard when your housing and health aren't doing well. I lived in Amsterdam for a few years and had some of the issues you're experiencing, mostly around finding housing without a stable job, but really enjoyed my time there.
If I can some unsolicited advice, I have 2 thoughts about your situation. Both require is a decent income or savings so please ignore if that's not the case. Otherwise it might sound tone def.
(EDIT: We also lived in one of the Student Hotels while we house hunted. They aren't great, but it might be a good alternative if your housing situation is truly awful and you want to be somewhere more 'comfortable' while you find a new house)
Good luck and I hope things turn around!
I've been doing this since I started looking, also offered extra months' security deposit, letter of recommendation from my current landlord, and to share my bank statements, to show I can easily afford the rent.
I have submitted 60+ emails/inquiries for flats, I've received 6 replies ... 1 invite to a showing, 1 "more info, please" and 4 "no thanks" ... the other 90% didn't even reply.
As to the healthcare, I either need to go to private "self-pay, no-insurance" clinics here, or get treatment in another country. Int'l/Private insurance might help with either of those, but in The Neth, everyone is required to pay for "approved" insurance which works with the local healthcare system ... so I would literally have to pay for 2 separate insurance policies, one of which I never use.
How much of this is the country vs what seems to be a situation all too common in many countries?
I moved here from Hungary, widely considered to be one of the worst countries in the EU. This place is at least as bad.
Couldn’t you just demand a test? And if they won’t, get a second opinion elsewhere.
Regarding housing, they want you to have a steady job so they know you will pay rent. Simply security of income.
I agree with @Adys, it’s not really country specific.
Meh. Agree all you want, I'm here, you're not. It's this country.
No. That's what I mean by 'they refuse to even test'. I even offered to pay for the test. And it is some kind of nat'l healthcare decision/policy, so 2nd opinion would be the same.
But I do live there. You’ve had two problems in a particular country and blame the entire country for it. That’s pretty overblown.
Many other problems here, mostly just cultural conflicts, but just too much to get into in this thread.
My original point was, before I moved here, based on extensive online research and one visit, I thought The Neth would be a great country for me to settle in. Now, after living here a year, I know that I was wrong.
I did something similar. I moved to a south American country almost 20 years ago, but I only lived there for a couple of years. I found it nearly impossible to meet people anyone other than expats and struggled to find my way. Actually I never did find my way. One of the most humiliating healthcare procedures I've ever had happened while I resided there, and the procedure didn't bring a diagnosis any closer to where I was before it happened.
What I thought it would be like before I moved was nowhere near what the reality of living there actually was. And I was stuck and it sucked and I was unable to move back to the states for longer than would have been optimal. So many people had so many ideas of how I could make it work, how to make it better, and maybe they could have done all those things if they had been me, but they weren't me and I was doing the best I could do at the time. Just like you are.
Does anyone remember the "glass of water" scene from the movie White Men Can't Jump (Warning; that scene is a bit NSFW)?
This is an overgeneralization, plus of course, it's impossible to really know people's gender online, but it certainly seems like men tend to offer solutions to your problems, while women tend to offer sympathy/empathy.
Have you considered Portugal? If you don't need a local job Portugal is a good place to live. We get plenty of western country immigrants/retirees. Gasoline and some urban area rents are expensive, but you should be able to get your healthcare sorted out at least.
It hasn't ranked highly for me in the past, but re-investigating it now. Thanks for the tip.
I think if @Eric_the_Cerise is struggling to show employment status in the Netherlands, they will have a hard time staying in Portugal for more than 90 days. Am I mistaken? IIRC those retiree visas require proof of considerable passive income and Portugal is generally strict with evidence of work or savings.
To actually answer the question at hand, I make it a point to not have strong unwarranted opinions, so I don't often change my mind on things. It's more likely that they'll be further filled out or shifted in a slightly different direction. I do have some ideas that are untested by reality but I don't consider those to be 'cannon' so they don't affect real life in any way.
One of those ideas I have is about the makeup of people who are pushing fake news and fascism, and it was shifted recently by a combination of a write-up of a conspiracy theorist and a podcast covering the current limitations of the practice of psychology. And it occurred to me that it's entirely possible that it's possible that a very large portion of these people are psychopathic.
The article was actually the main thing that pushed me in this direction because I saw so many parallels between her and my father, who was actually diagnosed with a form of psychopathy. If you look into the common traits that these people have you'll see that there's a lot of places where this fits. One thing in particular is that people who have psychopathic tendencies tend to avoid psychological evaluation, so it's very hard to get an idea of how many people actually have it. What's more is that most people don't understand it and aren't likely to be able to identify people who have it.
Of course, I'm not suggesting that most of these people have psychopathy, or even that I have any idea what kind of proportion they are. But the article also brought up the concept of the dark triad, which basically lumps in two other personality traits that are very simelar. I can see how people who are highly narcissistic or Machiavellian might fall into the same crowd and reinforce those ideas. While only one of those dimensions may be considered to be a disorder, I would personally consider any of them to be 'defective' personalities.
The thing about all of this is that it doesn't really change anything. I've already given up on trying to change their minds; whenever I see their falsehoods spread around I downvote and/or attempt to point out how they are wrong for the sake of others who may be reading. If they really are psychotic, narcissistic, or Machiavellian, no actual evidence will ever get them to admit they are wrong. Likewise, calling them out for being any of these things will just read as a personal attack and then nobody will listen to what I'm trying to say. Ultimately this little change in opinion doesn't actually amount to anything.
Psychosis and psychopathy are not the same thing.
You are right. I fixed it.
Thank you!
That I have a rational basis for my strongly held ethical opinions.
Having a second child.
My wife and I had our first child last year. We both agreed a second is possible but we would continually check in with each other and see how we feel. I know it is ultimately her decision, so I said to myself, I'm happy either way.
I stayed at home with our daughter from months 3-12 and to be honest it drove me absolutely crazy by the end. I love her a lot but by the end of the first year I was glad she was going to daycare and that I was headed back to work. I was swinging more towards "no" on a 2nd than ever.
But now 4 months later, not living in full on every day caregiver mode, I am enjoying our relationship and our time together much more, and she's become far, FAR more fun to be with, more expressive, more communicative and growing more and moreso every day. So I find myself having changed my mind, and thinking... yes, a second will be maddening at times, but my daughter has been maddening at times and she's well worth the lost hair.
We had a similar post quite recently.