Thank you for holding this AMA, I’ve loved all of your previous work, except for that one we won’t talk about, haha. Anyway, what I wanted to know is “how’s your diarrhea?” Thank you again, I love you.
I can’t remember not being one actually. Whenever someone said “I had diarrhea :(” I would be like, “Is that bad?” Then I started thinking, surely I’ve never actually had diarrhea then. But I’m old and wise now so I definitely have. Lucky me!
My (step?)mother in law is really hard to shop for. I always feel like I have no idea what to get her. She doesn’t want for anything, she’s pretty frugal/non-materialistic, doesn’t really have any hobbies, is kinda boring, etc.
I do my best but always wonder if she’s venting online like you (she isn’t for sure).
If people buy you shitty gifts and say that, give them a better wishlist or clear guidance.
I have literally told them things I would be happy with… I’ve been very specific about some things too. For example, I tend to be hard on jeans so anytime gift giving comes up I will tell people that I will be happy with new jeans and specify my size.
I know I tend towards nonmaterialistic and people seem to hate buying practical gifts but that’s honestly what I would prefer. I have also said on multiple occasions that if they really can’t find anything, I will be extremely happy with a simple bottle of vodka or anything penguin related… Yet somehow I never get useless penguin trinkets.
Personally I like gift cards and socks/underwear, I need those articles of clothing and the gift cards save me spending my money on those places I likely would’ve went to anyway
In fact, I was always the biggest alcoholic in my family, addicted to Jägermeister but I had to choose between continuing to drink and dying or stopping. Well, I’m here now writing this post
I had a severe alcohol problem but I hid it quite well, high functioning (most of the time, the other time I was hiding behind things like depression, anxiety, burnouts,…). So I got so much alcohol and alcohol related gifts as presents always. Then I finally started to cut down on drinking until I eventually stopped. But since no one really knew why I did that, they continued with the gifts. Even when I was pregnant and had a baby, I wasn’t invited to drink but it was assumed I would pick it up again soon, so… More alcohol.
I just moved and my new landlord gave me a bottle of champagne. Though he even knew I am still breastfeeding (a great excuse to not drink) but “well a glass can’t hurt on Christmas”.
LOL! For me, it's any Guinness-branded merch and bourbon glasses. I'm not single anymore, and we had to subtly suggest a gift card for fancy coffee beans. Still got a sweet Guinness hat, though.
Wow, by now you must have quite a large collection of Guiness stuff. I wonder if your collection is the biggest collection of Guiness stuff in the world.
A week or so ago I had just finished a tough workout at my big box gym and was heading back to my car around sunrise. I looked up and saw the most beautiful and massive pink and purple ripples stretched out from the edge of the horizon to where I was standing. It was so impressive that I had to stop a moment in the middle of the parking lot and soak it in. Then, within 2 minutes, the clouds had shifted and everything returned to a depressing gray.
Beauty like this is everywhere, but it sure can be fleeting.
Funny, but mostly true due to timing. You have a lot more sunsets and sunrises outside of work and home than you do on holiday or with the time you are able to take out in nature.
But they don’t though. They are only seen drinking alcohol at the end on Christmas Day. Literally, there’s only a few scenes that even feature the parents, and none of them until the end include alcohol consumption.
There’s a saying I’ve heard often, think it’s Chinese in origin, “Wealth lasts three generations”.
A friend’s explanation was the first generation makes the wealth, the second generation, seeing their parent’s hard work, maintains the wealth, but the third generation, only knowing privilege, wastes it.
But I’ve realized above a certain financial bracket this seems to not apply.
Still far, far better than the Benadryl suggestion.
A drugged antihistamine sleep leaves you in better shape than if you hadn’t slept at all, but not much better. That’s only good when you’re sick as a dog and doing nothing the next day.
You could very easily get ambien prescription at that point. Its like a benzo that has not life threatening addiction issues attached to it. It was very useful for me to get to sleep. It actually makes you sleep better.
All the “sleep hygiene” advice helps, but I also find listening to a lowkey podcast in the dark distracts and relaxes me. When I start drifting off I stop the playback and (usually) fall asleep.
Cannabis, heavy indica. Some sort of Kush usually that I keep in reserve, I rarely smoke these days otherwise. Knocks me straight out in this sort of situation, great sleep.
Don’t overdo it or you’ll be all baked and goofy feeling, you just want to be relaxed and sleepy.
As you’re trying to fall asleep, repeat in your mind ‘I will awake at seven alert and refreshed’. (e: or six or five, or whatever, but keep a rhythm.)
If your thoughts are intruding, say it aloud. Keep your phrase to four beats (awake, seven, alert, and refreshed should be even beats). Keep saying or thinking it, over and over, until you fall asleep. Sync it to your breath and heartbeat.
Paying attention to my breathing has sometimes worked (though not always) (not changing it, but feeling how your chest goes up and down and hearing the air rushing in and out and maybe even picturing the rhythm in your head). It distracts me from other thoughts and calms me down.
If that doesn’t work, I try to distract myself with an interesting fiction book. That normally brings my head to less adrenaline-inducing thoughts (since now when trying to fall asleep I will be more focused on who the murderer of the dead child could be, or why the Zogophonts abandoned that resource-rich planet)
All the other comments are tips to get you to sleep, putting yet more pressure on trying to actually sleep, which then makes it even harder. Then all the stuff you put in your body tires you even more and all the worry exhausts you, making things worse.
Instead of needing to sleep, just tell yourself that it’s fine if you don’t sleep at all, you’re in bed, you’re resting, and if that’s all you get to do for the entire night, you’ll do fine and have had enough rest to get through the day.
The act of letting go of having to sleep puts you in a state where you will most likely fall asleep anyway, and if you don’t, that’s fine too.
It’s found that closing your eyes and pretending to sleep (I listen to podcasts so I have more patience with this) makes you better rested than being up and about or laying in bed on a phone. If I genuinely can’t sleep, I reassure myself with that. Most nights, despite PTSD, I’ll get at least a couple hours of actual sleep this way.
What, in your mind, does “working hard” look like? Do you think the average lower- and middle-class adult doesn’t already work hard? Especially harder than they did 20, 40, and 60 years ago? Can you name a time when you think people worked harder than they do today to achieve the same level of comfort and happiness? Do you have to go all the way back to pre-agricultural times?
People in the depression definitely worked harder than people do now. Jobs were like “selling tomatoes from a cart” and “guy who sands the paint off old boxes to sell them as new ones”.
The 60s and 70s were a time of unprecedented increase in standard of living for many people in the US. You could see the Rolling Stones live for like $5, and pay for a car (in full) with a part time job. We are not going to see that again, so don’t compare life now to that.
I use to live next to a dead volcano (it’s not as cool as it sounds) which had trails leading up from the base to the top. Anyway, I was really into running back then and I decided one day that I would wake up before the sun rose. I wanted to climb to the top to greet the sunrise. I wake up at like 4am and head out. It’s freezing, I’m in shorts and thermals. All I have is a flashlight but otherwise it’s pitch black as I’m sprinting through bush, over creeks, and around blind turns. My fear response had never been stronger in my life. I finally get to the hill that leads up to the top of the volcano and hit the side at full speed. Not wanting to check for animals or look into any of the numerous caves around me. The trail follows the edge of the volcano all the way up. One side was bush and darkness, the other open space and nothingness. As I’m coming around the top my heart is trying to excape my chest, my hands are frozen into fists and my legs are made of lead. Finally, I get to the rocky top where other people have left offerings and the like. Then I look out east to the mountains in the far distance. The sun just barely peaks over and light shoots out in every direction. In that moment I knew my ancestors. I knew the earth. I saw the SUN and it was GOD… Spent the rest of the morning on on my back enjoying the open sky
Running does things like that to the mind. The first time I ran 10 miles, I started hallucinating around mile 8. I was running through the forest and the wind was gently swaying the trees back and forth. I understood for the first time that trees are the lungs of the earth, steadily breathing in the cO2 and breathing out oxygen for the rest of life on earth.
I was just talking to my wife today about how trees lived long before the bacteria that could decompose wood, how generations of trees lived and died and just stayed there. That the reason we have coal is because of all of these trees that died ages ago and couldn’t decompose. Not only are trees the lungs of the earth, but the only reason we ever got an atmosphere that we could exist in is because of the innumerable trees that captured carbon from the air and contributed oxygen back to it. Trees are fucking amazing and we owe them everything.
20% of oxygen is from bacteria and around 50% comes from plankton, the last 30% is mostly trees.
The oceans are the lungs of the Earth and climate change threatens to cause plankton to decrease in numbers or switch from carbon absorbers to carbon emitters.
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