Yeah. The same goes for the friend, as for OP: Masking and how automatic it becomes makes it hard to really approximate how bad anyone has it. Add to that the fact that OP almost definitely doesn’t see the friend 24/7, but only on social occasions, which would usually mean they haven’t seen much else other than the mask. So of course they’d think they don’t have it as bad as them, because we can only ever live inside our own skin.

I feel like gatekeeping like this is a net negative. I don’t even know why one would care about how others have it. It sure feels like OP has an unhealthy need to be the worst off, and while the reason for that is very likely completely understandable and human, it’s still harmful behavior and an unproductive mindset to have. For everyone involved, OP too.

However, there’s one thing there that is just annoying. The “everyone has adhd” line just serves to undermine adhd and its effects on any individual, it makes it seem like nothing. Which is also not the case, and actively harmful to the treatment and management of it.

I think a lot of the attributes relevant to adhd are a scale, and we all have them in varying amounts, but the same goes for the amount of tumors in our body and the microbiome in our gut. The fact that it is a scale does not take away the fact that some people are, necessarily, if we agree it’s a scale and not a binary, at the higher end of that scale and will have problems living with that. And that’s I think what’s the most important part: whether or not it negatively affects one’s life. Especially day-to-day life. There are benign tumors in everyone’s body pretty much. But for some, the tumors are either of a dangerous type or too big, or there are too many of them… we respect that and don’t go saying “well everyone has them” when someone has cancer. The same should go for adhd I think. So in that aspect I do get OP’s frustration.

However, I wouldn’t go ahead and gatekeep “true” adhd from them just because they happen to have a bad take on this specific thing.

As long as they don’t hamper mods or modding too much, then yes, sorta. The de facto experience for many is the modded experience. Which is often leagues above vanilla. Maybe they can’t ship a good thing out of the box, but they leave reasonable tools out for people to make the thing actually good.

But of course it shouldn’t be like that. Unfortunately it is. But if you think of the games as sandboxes for modders, and expect nothing more, then in a sense I guess, they do deliver.

But it takes years for the mods to mature and the games to reach actually reasonable prices for what they are.

Personally it gives me peace from the constant everything. The drops pull my attention and it’s all over, so I can relax and just feel it all, not all all. Not sure if that makes sense. It just gives some peace and escape from life and all its noise.

But I’ve personally found that the warmth isn’t a thing for me, it works just as well when it’s very middling or even a bit cold. So in my shame I’ve long since switched from warm ones to those around the 25c ballpark, it’s given me even more peace ever since. Warming the water up is the most consuming part.

But then again I’m from a culture with saunas everywhere, in every house, so I don’t really need showers for the warmth anyway, the relaxing and muscle tension relieving I get from sauna. The overall stimulating peace and silence is what my showers are for. In addition to washing and grooming, of course.

Let’s form a wizard school

Oh it’s not useless. Each time people go to the streets, it lowers the bar to do it next time too. Dancing frogs and that kind of things might lower the initial barrier for some, and from there it just gets easier to organize in general too.

It’s not immediately useful, but this improves the will and tendency to organize. And shows the strong nature of solidarity, of standing together.

One day it’ll be extremely beneficial that a lot more people have lower barriers to join the other people in the streets. The US isn’t that far from their own Maidan experience starting to feel nigh.

I wish our DM had real-life message to telepathically convey stuff to just one person.

In my group there would be literal zero chance of the others not listening to me if I ever threw a “hmm why is that wire there”, because they would’ve heard the dm either tell me due to passive perception or had me throw a roll and then tell me. So they know it’s a trap no matter if I want to rp it. Every time I get frustrated and question it, there’s this one guy who always has the reasoning and justifying at hand why they would know to do the right thing and to be fair they kind of make sense always, but there’s zero chance he’d come up with that just by my rp line alone without knowing for a fact it’s a trap.

I think that’s the worst kind of meta gaming. They are fully blind to the meta gaming there and just do it by instinct. And when you try and question, they always have a defense ready, even if it’s so wildly specific and unlikely but you can’t really fault it because they’re not stupid, the justifications hold, it’s just that the only way they habitually generate them is because they know what I know despite they couldn’t in-game know.

Like I’ve occasionally just left the thing unsaid in-game out of frustration and just reason to DM that there’s so much going on, my focus instantly switched to another thing and I forgot because I’m not very smart. So we all know there’s a trap but now nobody has told this to the others.

What do they do? The one guy fucking always comes up with some shit like “hmmm be wary, they must’ve laid traps here, hey you with good investigation, please look around and see if there’s one in this specific place for some reason” and the rolls of course often succeed because they always choose to best one to solve that.

But from rp perspective, we’ve walked this path for a while, and this thought only came up now, that it might be trapped? Just right now when you know, outside of the game, that there’s a trap?

I call bullshit and it frustrates me so much, there’s very little chance of anything interesting ever happening in-game because we seldom miss anything or do the wrong things, because “somehow” we always happen to do the right things no matter who notices things in-game or rolls or whatever, no matter how much any of us attempt to rp it, somebody just meta games it without it being explicitly or admittedly meta gaming and gets all defensive when questioned and because they now know everything, can figure out an explanation the DM can do nothing but accept because it makes sense, now that they know to pull the right shit out their ass.

Ugh. It’s not even a big deal, our group is fun and the adventuring isn’t bad, these things don’t happen often enough for it to really affect things, but god do I hate it. This ended up being a rant, I didn’t even know how much I get frustrated with it until I just now read this back. Jesus…

You are an ass. Do better.

To be fair, while I’ve never seen or know anyone circumcised, at least around here we shower after exercise and sports and stuff. We never had separated showers in schools or sports halls or gyms or similar, you’d obviously see everyone’s dick very often if you ever participated in any activity that’s sweaty. But then again we also have a very long and strong sauna tradition, which only increases the genital-seeing vectors in everyone’s life.

I think it only natural, why should anyone be ashamed or somehow hide their natural body is beyond me. I think it’s also healthy in terms of normalizing the fact that we all have a body, skin, genital, and we all come in differences shapes and sizes and all.

But I do find it similarly weird to ever bully anyone over a thing like that. Anybody too distracted by, or otherwise focused on, someone else’s body parts is probably having some issues themselves that ought to be resolved.

I have never met anyone circumcised before, nor even heard of one outside of celebrities and internet randoms like this.

So the thing about some being grossed out is purely cultural and not a universal thing. I find it odd that some would be grossed out about a thing like that, but if you choose to remain within that culture, it’s probably sensible to account for that. But I would bet it’s really not a big deal for anyone despite what they say. There are more important things going on whenever people end up in a situation where that comes up. I wouldn’t worry about that, but the again I don’t know your culture, maybe it is a big deal.

For me personally, I really like my “hood” so to say. Keeps the senses more heightened there when the delicate part does not chafe around and touch everything all the time. On top of that, I find much more hygienic to have a natural “shield” that is easy to clean and keep regulated in terms of pH and all. No doubt it would be more problematic in hot climates where there might be more sweating and stuff, that would require more intense and frequent upkeep, but here in the global North, I think it would be disadvantageous not to have the natural luxury.

Not only would I not want a circumsization, I find it actively harmful to myself and my personal health. I also find the practice extremely off-putting and horrifying, but then again all cultures come with their own “barbaric” traditions so to say, so I’m not about to yuck anyone’s yum. You do you, I say, live your best life.

It does come with some required upkeep and work, but so do our teeth. If you maintain them, they’re going to be healthy and beneficial overall. No need to cut them off in my opinion, just because it’s extra work. But that’s not the justification for the cut, so I also don’t mean to sound patronizing here. Just my view on it.

If I never understand how and why but I get to have that be the case then I am content.

This is a sane way to look at it, I think, so I commend you for staying so rational in face of something so unfortunate and life-changing.

I wish the best of luck to you, it seems you know what you are doing and my input was unwarranted. But I hope you see I was coming from a good place, even if the help was both unasked for and redundant. It’s not always the case, since ketogenic diet has found some popularity that has led it to trend a little bit among those not so inclined to actually read up on the topic or consider its consequences fully. Which is why I tend to offer my two cents when I happen upon the topic, even if I’m not an expert in the subject matter

Really appreciate the comment, thank you. Since I’ve had some education via my dietician and personal progress/experience, I’ve wanted to give my thoughts in case it helps. But here it seems you are much better up to date with these, and I’ve also got new perspective and reading from this. So thanks, again, especially for challenging my suggestions when it’s often risky here in internet as you’d often get negative pushback and most wouldn’t bother to subject themselves to that.

Monitoring personal health metrics is also helpful, especially lipids, ketones, glucose, fasting insulin, etc…

For whoever might be wondering about all this, I believe a lot of these can be tested from blood alone, which means it’s fairly fast and cheap. At least here, but here we have the benefit of a socialist democracy and its welfare system, I.e healthcare is essentially free. So especially if the latter applies to you too, you will not do any harm checking up on your levels from time to time!

For me, just a completely unrelated blood draw revealed problems with my blood glucose before it ever got to diabetes, and also revealed some (luckily minor) damage to my liver due to fatty liver. Which meant I was able, just by accidentally doing blood tests for something else, avoid these things getting worse and irreparable, and as it happens, ketogenic diet is very good for the latter (fatty liver, perhaps inner fat in general I think?), and fortunately in my case, it didn’t worsen the former either, so I managed to avoid the need for potentially expensive meds just by doing some diet education and changes, it was monitored full keto in the short term and later I was advised to return to more normal diet but with strictly reduced carbs so as to not let the problems resurface.

Just all to illustrate how just simple and quick tests like this can be accidentally good. I didn’t display any problems outwards, so I had no idea I was slowly sliding towards pre-diabetes and liver cirrchosis (really not sure how to spell that in English but I hope the word is similar and close enough).

And when doing any bigger diet changes, it’ll be good to have a baseline from before it, to compare against at different points of the diet.

Oh, this is new to me. If that is true, then that would still require balancing, since saturated fats come with other problems themselves. I suppose there’s no “clean” way to do anything at any rate, so it takes personal testing and monitoring. But I am fully willing to accept my recommendations might be outdated or misguided, and what you say is correct. It has been a while since I was on an overseen keto diet and things do change in time with new research and guidelines. To that end, I’d recommend checking out if that is indeed true, and if the new recommendations/consensus would make my point moot.

Either way, the fiber was a strong point when I was taught the diet by my doctor and a dietitian, and I can’t see that having changed. As far as I’m aware, fiber is a critical component of our gut health but also immune system robustness. And done right, it does nothing to affect the energy sourcing or glucose levels or whatever. I was given the rough guide of overall carbs - fibers = “final” carbs ingested. Not really sure how to translate that into English but I think it’s a common rule of thumb and you get the gist. Has that changed since?

But I’ll end on this note: Whatever I or someone say here on internet, best to double-check it all with your dietitian if doing an overseen diet, and yourself from internet if you’re doing it on your own.

Nutrition and health are no small things to play with. Our body is flexible and can survive a whole lot, in a lot of different situations, but there are prerequisites for it to thrive in a sustainable way. And there’s a fundamental distinction between just surviving/existing and thriving/being healthy.

Voyager too

On a keto based diet, you’ll need those fats. Perhaps consider something like sunflower oil instead though? Nuts also come with plenty of fats and have a lot of fiber too. Some have carbs more than others, so you’d have to check which ones fit your specific diet, but these are a great source of healthy fats and help keeping the gut biomes working well.

Edit: just to add, you could experiment with the fiber more. Long carbs have a very different effect on the body vs. short ones, so those, in moderation to keep the keto state up, could be okay for the partner too, and perhaps give more robustness/variety to the diet?

That’s equally valid of course, but unless you mean your birth family and not your own, the more appropriate and commendable route would be to remove yourself from the wrong family situation and figure out a new, working, one. It’s no benefit to anyone, least to yourself, if it’s not working out. Everyone will be happier for it ultimately, even if it requires some tough choices and a whole bunch of compromises, adaptation and potential heartbreak in the short term.

I mean the same is true for birth family too, but at least there it doesn’t matter as much, since often the first priority and the more day-to-day impactful one will be your own immediate family, so you can simply minimize the need to ever interact with them.

And there’s the moral implication, that you didn’t choose your birth family. But you did choose your own immediate family. So there’s a responsibility there in the latter that isn’t present in the former.

Unless the situation is that you didn’t choose your immediate family either. If it’s not working out, it’s even more of a reason to figure out a way out.

Unless there’s no way out. In which case, and only in this case, your sentiment seems agreeable and hopefully the situation doesn’t last. And if it does, hopefully you get as much time off as possible.

Yeah well, this is of course just a singular anecdote, but my experience with any touch-based de on Linux hasn’t been great.

No Linux phone I have ever seen has had a particularly competitive pricing. Or specs.

But perhaps there has been some major advancements I’m not aware of in the past week.

In any case, your latter point is true.

At this point I would not be surprised if steam built on top of the deck idea and the support it already provides for fairly responsive and configurable inputs, touch screen included, to launch a steam phone or something.

I mean deck isn’t all that far from having such a device. For the actual phone network stack they would likely just partner up with someone already in the space.

They’ve already had to tackle powering a lightweight portable device with a touch screen and adapting the UX for a small screen and non-kbd input. They’ve already established they can source parts and mass produce a competively priced device.

But realistically I can’t see it being that much better than the recent Linux phone offerings.

Yeah, the fundamental issue here too, ultimately, condenses down to tolerance and acceptance. Of other faiths, of other customs, of foreign ways to present or identify, of anything your faith or culture might not allow or actively do.

Just being able to accept or at the very least tolerate others, as they are, without trying to turn them, or, kill them if they won’t turn…

I can’t figure out why this is so hard for us humans, the majority of us at least, when it seems so… easy? Unless the difference is offensive to you, which, again, is just intolerance of difference. Just let them be and be your best self yourself. I can understand having a few words to try and sway them to be saved according to your faith or whatever, but failing that, just live your best life and I don’t know… maybe pray for them on your own or something if you’re truly worried about their soul or something. But dont go bothering them with that shit if they aren’t receptive. It seems so simple?

I don’t usually engage in these, but today has been pretty rough and my partner is on a work trip this week and I don’t want to burden them needlessly right now, knowing it’s stressful for them as a baseline. Writing things down might help, I’m thinking, and posting it perhaps encourages others to also step in and share. So it might do good, even if it doesn’t really have immediate impact on me personally.

I had to pause my studies past May, and I thought initially I’d be fine and get employed in the field for the time being, while I work on my health and mind to continue. I have adhd so it gets rough sometimes, I easily burn out and it’s hard to bounce back when that happens, and for a while I lose all interest in continuing the thing. That happened with the degree this time.

But, despite having great grades (avg of ~4.5/5 overall), the degree almost complete (~85% done) and having some experience working in the field, also as an entrepreneur for a while there, the work search has been an awakening. It’s been brutal.

Without going too much into that, it’s really done a number on my confidence career-wise. This is my nth pivot of career after always getting let down by my own enthusiasm vs. apparent employability, and I really honestly think this was my last fuck to give in terms of trying to be something more career-wise. It’s a common adhd trait, pivoting, also the easy discouragement (I tend to have a brutal case of rsd when it comes to professional stuff, not so much on personal life, which is a weird combo), so I know this will keep happening, until I get lucky. It’s all about luck I think, because I’ve always been capable and proficient in these, and I’m very enthusiastic and good teamplayer, but I fucking hate advertising myself and writing a cv is always a pain since I simply can’t make myself to write it up in a manner that would signal my strengths, it’s embarrassing to try and toot my own horn. So I need to get face-to-face time to make an impression, which I tend to do if I get the chance. However, my new degree and career aspirations are in ICT, and turns out, it’s not easy to get those interviews in the first place. In fact, I’ve got exactly zero. I’ve talked extensively with some friends in the same field and all they say is I need to suck it up and write a hype cv that mentions some certain words to get past the initial filters to an interview, but no matter how hard I try, I can not do that. It’s embarrassing. Feels similarly bad like I was breaking into a house to steal their TV during daytime when I can see them in the house. It’s so fucking bad. I convinced myself I can do this, volume is key, just apply around and I’m guaranteed to get some face time within an interviewer. Nope. None. It boggles me.

So I’ve been fighting this for past few months, and I think I have to admit that the hyping thing is part of the work in this field. I do not possess that skill or capability, so I’m not fit for this field of work either. It’s fucking depressing since I thought I finally found the thing I’m good at. I feel like I’m great in most everything I’d ever have to do, have experience doing them with clients and FOSS too, top of my class in the actual programming etc. courses (I’ve struggled with physics and more advanced maths, but it’s not like I got anything below average there either…), but this one thing I can not do, hyping myself up, writing embarrassing sales pitches about myself, this is the thing that makes me unemployable? Fuck me. I did not expect this and nothing in my studies had prepared me for this one.

So right now I’m pretty worn out and slowly circling down a despair spiral. I’m past 30 and haven’t found my field yet. Nothing sticks. Either I ultimately suck, or then I’m too rigid in my weirdness to fit the bill in things like the hyping I described above. Either way I get nowhere and either have to find a new path, or give up.

So far I have managed not to give up. Always going for the next thing, trying to find the thing I’d be valuable and useful in, have a stable income and ultimately a pension to depend on. I get let down by a field, I bite my lip and go for the next one.

But this time it feels different. Like there aren’t many things left out there to try that interest me enough that I’d at least have a chance of enjoying the thing I do at least a little bit. And at the same time, I’m slowly starting to run out of time. It’s already getting late to build up a comfortable pension, so that’s one of the reasons I’d do this soon gone. I’ve pretty much tried all the things I feel interested about, even slightly, so anything that follows will probably just suck, and I’ll feel tired and spent at home after the days, and ultimately that’s going to be bad for my relationships too, family foremost. I get that most people live like that, but I’m not convinced it’s worth living for me, if it ends up being like that.

I’m already prone to get spells of clinical depression, and I’m on constant medication even when I’m doing well, as a preventive measure. I eat so many pills every morning, it’s a surprise I’ve managed to get this far in life. I don’t feel like I’d feel before I find myself at the bottom of that void, so I feel confident I’m not spiraling that way just yet, but if I don’t manage to find a goal to run towards soon, that’s bound to happen. But right now nothing seems worth it, and I’m kind of fed up with all these pivots. Start from 0 over and over again, just to make all the effort null eventually when starting another thing from 0. And these aren’t the easy kind of things. You apply to some school or degree, work that, do intern and junior work on the side, perhaps freelance like I usually do via my own company, it takes years and years of effort to learn a new thing, get competent, get experience. It’s a whole thing. And when it turns out to be for nothing and I have to start over with a new thing, it honestly fucking sucks, but at least I’ve always had the drive before, and some options to choose from. Right now there aren’t any options left. Even if I had any drive, where would I direct it? There’s nothing left. I’ve tried to apply myself in so many different things, learnt so many different professions, and I haven’t got anywhere with any of them. Either I suck in conventional ways (I.e I’m not very good at the thing despite the attempt to be) or unconventional ways (like me being unable to write hype advert of myself to get past the initial screening of applicants).

I really don’t think I have anything to offer to anyone at this point. I have a lot of drive and enthusiasm, I’m willing to learn and spend years in doing so, but none of that amounts to anything if I simply don’t get employed. It seems I’m only worth it for employers if they get me for free (intern) or for cheap and only part time (junior stuff or freelance), but the second I start looking for an actual full time job, I don’t even get the interviews. Or if I do, it happens to be the field I never got good enough in, hence not getting employed.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I’m just so frustrated and feel like I have nothing left to give. The juices have ran out. I’ve given my everything, truly, and ended up getting nowhere.

Now the options are either be a stay-at-home dad or try to just make do with something that will likely eventually drive me back down to depression. The adhd and recurring depression is a bad fucking combo and I hate being like this, but what can I do? I always take all the pills I’m given. When I’m told to change the meds or start looking for new ones, I do so. I never fight the treatments, I take anything and everything I’m given that might help. But it doesn’t make me a normal person capable of normal things, despite all. There’s nothing more I can do. I can only follow the directions and orders given to me by psychiatrists, doctors and whatnot. That’s all. And if that’s not enough for a normal life, I’ve tried to adapt, give all my years in an attempt to find a thing I could fit in. A purpose I could sustain.

But there isn’t one. Maybe there isn’t one for anyone, people just fare better with the things like not being hyper conscious and sensitive with the way they write about or present themselves. Maybe others have it exactly as hard, they just have a higher tolerance of failure and disappointment that the can keep going longer before falling down. It really fucks with one’s head to try and understand how other people manage all these things, with so much less effort, and end up with a sustainable career and no clinical depression episodes leaving them incapable of anything other than psychiatric care and hospital stays. Maybe it’s not less effort. Maybe the just simply can do more. They can support a higher amount of effort before submitting to the eternal, readily available void of nothingness and catatonic spells.

I don’t know. This is just something I’ve been trying to live with lately, but today all this is getting too much time in my brain. The suicidal ideations are getting worse and I keep finding myself just lost in watching a wall for hours, running all these thoughts on hyperdrive through and around the storms raging through my head.

It’s not as bad as it could be, I don’t feel like I need to consider writing down some instructions to loved ones to haul my suicidal ass to the psychiatric ward, not just yet anyway, but it’s still rough. Takes a toll.

So perhaps I’d better focus on that. It could be so much worse. But I keep getting back to the flipside; it could be so much better too.

But the mind does not much care for my opinions or rational thoughts. It does its thing, all I can do is try and pump the brakes the best I can when I need to, and watch the road end, hopefully in a ditch, relatively safely, and not into a fucking slope and a freefall from a cliff soon after.

But that’s my day. Hopefully it’s been better for others.

I’m the same. Love good food and little treats. The taste and the texture and the sensations overall. Yes please.

The aftermath, however, if I ever accidentally overdo it, is just a generally bad, nauseous feeling where it feels kind of “tight” inside, it’s harder to move, you feel bloated and tired, and only thing you can do to mend it is give it time and lay still. It’s bad. Can’t even imagine liking it to be honest. But I get that some (most?) may not feel so confined and anxious when just laying still. I have adhd which probably explains why I absolutely hate having to do that.