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What did you do this week (and weekend)?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I put a bunch of effort into finding a new therapist this past week. It's kind of a challenge as I don't speak the local language well, but I was able to send inquiries to 3 potential psychotherapists. It feels like progress.
I hope you find a good one.
Honestly... Goals!
(Sorry, wanted to add some encouragement and this phrase — showing not my but my kids age — popped out!)
How did you find the first list to go through and select the three you did inquire to? Or did you just quack "psychotherapist [locality]"?
Are you looking for a specific kind of therapy or a specific therapist (I mean is the method or person most important?)
Would you mind sharing what kind of therapy you're looking for and your reasoning?
I recently got dumped by my therapist (for being too complex for their capabilities) and at the exit session I asked them about resources or methods they thought would be able useful for me. They did a good job with that so now I'm almost tingling with excitement to find a good therapist but I'll wait to see how my NP-assessment turns out before I start looking.
I was suggested to search thru another service for English speaking therapists where I live, which was quite helpful. I picked the 3 of the 4 that were within reasonable distance to me.
I am looking for a LGBTQ friendly therapist to help me deal with the fact that I am a deeply closeted gay guy in straight marriage. Kind of a midlife crisis type of deal, I guess.
I had tried betterhelp, but the therapist there was not always reliable and canceled or no-showed here and there (he was a great guy, though).
Yeah, I'm excited too, almost impatient to talk with someone.
Wow, bold of you to admit your situation. Sorry you're going through that, and culturally, I think people in your situation, especially men, have become very unfairly derided in recent years by popular perception. The justification being that homophobia is over now so just come out already. I think that, apart from being totally inaccurate, ignores a whole ton of complexities about people's specific situation, culture, family, and marriage.
Best of luck to you, I really hope you can find a therapist and a solution that works for you and your wife.
I've been slowly tapering off my main antidepressant for the last month or two. I'm really sensitive to medications and their effects, so it's a much longer process for me ugh. This last week was pretty rough because I just dropped down to as low as I can go before opening up capsules. Here's the catch, though. Even with all of these hellish side effects, they're not getting to me. I've been able to maintain a strong boundary of non-attachment. I actually feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel even though I can't see it yet. Other than that, things are great.
Would you mind sharing a little bit about your motives for this.
I have a friend who is thinking about going off theirs, mostly to see how it would be since they have taken them for really long and aren't really sure how they are underneath.
Not the OP but I've got friends who've also weaned themselves off antidepressants recently. For my friends, it was all about taking back control. They felt like their antidepressants were a crutch for functioning and they hated this dependency. They'd also reached a point where they felt like their pills weren't doing much for them anymore and, in their words, their depression had reached a stable state.
Would certainly direct your friend to some medical guidance on this. Weaning off such medication is not easy, there will be high and low points over the many months it may take to adjust to no longer taking this medication.
I have two main reasons:
I've been taking a mood stabilizer for well over a year now. My psych and I think bipolar is more likely the primary culprit at play.
The dreaded sexual side effects. Ugh.
Thank you, it is helpful to me to hear different stories and reasons so that I can help my friend sort things out for themselves.
I wrote about five pages of dialogue for a story and finalized a script about the layers of the ocean which took over an hour to vocalize for an audio documentary assignment.
I've been fighting off the last of a cold and been struggling with tooth ache.
Finally on Friday morning I called the dentist and then spent all day waiting for my appointment.
Unfortunately I forgot to ask to keep the tooth for the tooth fairy (is there only one or are they more like a sub-species or -culture???) so I'm short 20SEK (which I heard from a friend is the going rate).
This weekend I'm working, so not doing much, but it allows me to put the final touches on eradicating whatever virus invited itself in.
I'm also finally restarting a book I lent from a friend, I like the writing style it reminds me of Douglas Addams style for the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy series (which are my all time favourite books)
I've gotten into buying little memey EDC tools on the internet despite thinking that the whole "hobby" is stupid and cringey.
I can't imagine anything more embarrassing than middle aged men posting their "pocket dumps" and expecting everyone to believe they carry 3 knives, a wrench, pliers, a multi tool, flashlight, battery bank, a gun with two extra magazines, ratchet set, lockpicks and so on with them every day at their job as an IT guy. The whole thing is everyone living out this post apocalypse mcguyver fantasy where on a daily basis they have to fix a power distribution system, some vital engine, Bushcraft a survival shelter and 3 other things that require them to carry around all that junk.
That said... Cool little screwdrivers, flashlights, pliers and ratchets are way too fun to buy and play with.
I got what's affectionatrly called the harbor freight "meme tool" over the weekend and I have to admit, it's very cool. I justified my purchase by using it and it alone to completely disassemble and reassemble my drone to fix a few little niggling issues I'd been meaning to fix for a while, then throwing the kit into my drone bag where it replaced a handful of individual tools I used to carry around for field repairs.
I still feel like a cringe lord having all of these dumb little tools, but I mostly keep them in my backpack when I go to work. I have yet to use them while out and about and if I had to predict how often I will, I'd say maybe three times a year. It's mostly just retail therapy for men, myself included.
Not to be the basher king of easy bashings of the open door that really didn't need a bashing, but it brings me joy that you have some sort of feelings around EDC and none whatsoever around drones.
We are just different people with different kinds of issues.
Keep on being you and enjoy your things! <3
Harvested compost from one of my bioreactors and made two more, made seed blocks and started some basil, chives, peppers, and cannabis. Cleaned up the greenhouse and garden a bit. Mostly outdoor garden prep stuff.
Tell me more about bioreactors!
Johnson-Su bioreactors are a type of static aerated compost 'piles' developed by Prof Johnson (and wife) at a New Mexico university. They are an alternative to the turned/tumbled compost that doesn't allow anarobic stagnation and pathogen growth. It doesn't "need" to get to the cook-off temperature, theoretically supporting fungal hyphae growth (lack of agitation) and inhibiting pathogens (access to oxygen and competitive ecosystem).
I could go on and on, but long story short, I have decent success with them. They take about a 12-14mo to mature, using yard and garden waste, food scraps, various paper products, mulch and wood chips, goat and duck waste products, etc. Inoculated with red wigglers. Not weed free, but I use it to make compost tea mostly.
https://www.nmhealthysoil.org/2021/04/18/johnson-su-bioreactor-2/
Here are mine They are smaller than the OG design, about the minimum that might work (dries out too easily, hard to rehydrate), with the right-most torn open for sifting yesterday. The two on the left are only a week old. I got well over 200lbs of finished compost from that one reactor, plus some mulchy stuff I sifted out.
It's kind of based on Elaine Ingham's study (RIP, last month) and her philosophy and research on building healthy soil.
Thank you, this looks like great fun!
Unfortunately for me it looks like there isn't a good way to do this in my climate... Speculating it might work if you do it underground, like in a root cellar so it doesn't freeze, but then again that might be a bit excessive :)
Yesterday my husband got me a season pass to Universal Studios Hollywood. We had already bought a season pass for Six Flags complete, which had access to all of their theme parks. Considering husband works at Disneyland, I have access to every major theme park in the greater LA area.
We also met up with friends and had a fantastic time. I’ve had an annual pass to Universal before so the park was a lot of stuff that I’ve seen and done before but doing it alongside friends definitely amped it up. Besides that I was also surprised to find I actually fit in the seats for Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey for the first time! One of my friends was in a wheelchair so I got to go in the back way to get loaded in. It actually broke down temporarily while we rode it so we were offered a second ride without having to go through everything again.
My weekend was pretty jam-packed. On Friday night, I finished the wiring for my kitchen which is in the process of a remodel. In total, I put in eight 6" LED lights about spaced along the countertop edge, and although the contractors thought it was excessive, it was totally the right call. There are zero shadows on any of the countertop edges!
On Saturday, I demo'ed a large double basin concrete sink in my basement that I can presume was put in before the house was finished being built. It took less than an hour to complete and then I subsequently installed a new single basin stainless steel sink with a nice faucet with a sprayer attachment. The draining could be...improved. But that is for a future visit to the hardware store when I am ready.
Raked up and bagged about 20 bags of leaves that had compacted around my yard over the winter.
The leaves fell late and I need to get as much soil exposure as I can because I am planning to frost seed a crazy amount of clover throughout the yard this weekend.
Installed a new light fixture on my side door with the proper mounting brackets and a real dedicated junction box.
I pulled a ton of documentation for a system I am implementing and built a custom RAG pipeline using docling for the document processing, voyage AI for semantic understanding, and pinecone for the search and storage. Then, because the system I am implementing has open-book certification exams on a time limit, I put the whole thing to the test and actually passed with my certification. So that was fun!
My general contractor who has helped me with my kitchen renovation also slapped me with a $1600 change order document out of nowhere. So that is not fun. Just absolutely infuriating circumstance where this guy basically just lost a customer and someone who would go out of their way to refer them to people. I'm not asking people to work for pennies on the dollar or anything, but the changes they cited were things that should have been included in the original contract pricing, or at least given me a heads up that the change I asked for would cost me $600 for 30 minutes of work on their end. Now I just want them out of my house and out of my hair as quickly as possible.
I adapted a screen accurate 3D model of Maarva's Funerary Stone from Andor that I made for a different purpose, into an anti-ICE Whistle and started printing them in bulk for my local area.
Found a good brick colored filament too for relatively cheap so I'll just be buying that for this project from here on out. Hoping to keep my printer busy.
Also did a mini whistle that looks like the Mockingjay pin from The Hunger Games. A bit more involved since for me it requires a manual filament change.