picked up the new foster dog, coco on saturday. she’s acclimating pretty well, considering she went from a free roaming outdoor only dog on 17 acres to a downtown indoor dog on 1/3 of an acre. my old man australian shepherd is having a harder time accepting her, but we’re getting there with short 5-10 minute intros where he’s on leash so i can redirect when he gets too in her face. the little chihuahua mix has always been good with other dogs, so no surprise that they’re interacting really well.
coco goes to the vet later today, and fingers crossed there’s no major issues.
update: she’s in perfect health! no parasites, healthy weight, good teeth and eyes.
When the idea of beehaw leaving the fediverse comes up I see a few users from outside of beehaw get pretty upset about it. I wonder if this is some kind of FOMO reaction? Just food for thought.
Much better than expect. This has been the first year where we’ve had someone outside of our immediate family join us (my brother’s girlfriend) and it’s been very pleasant.
Going to start working my way through the Christmas ales I’ve been saving now!
Part of me has been enjoying the recent finding out going on. Maybe it’s because properly linked and referenced sourcing is cool and saying where someone got an idea doesn’t devalue how they’re implementing it. Maybe it’s because the people who are working on projects similar to my own are colleagues and not competition, since we all do better when we all do better.
With how many billion people in the world, any system that expects a monopoly on an idea is a bit suspect. Very few if anyone has a truly unique idea. It is more about who claims an idea most convincingly and effectively.
My impression is it wasn’t so much about thinking they had a unique idea that the others were “stealing”, as fearing the other books with similar themes releasing at a similar time would pull attention away from their book. Which is actually a bit silly, because generally the first thing someone does after loving a book with a particular genre/theme combo is go and look for more of the same. Cooperating with those other authors, so they all plug each others books (“Hey, if you loved my book, go check out X, Y, and Z too!”), would have been so much more productive.
Power’s out - we’re seeing wind gusts over 50mph and have gotten a little over two inches of rain since last night. Currently waiting for the lowest-ranked-in-the-US power company to repair things. Two trees snapped off their trunks about eight feet off the ground and landed just a few feet from our duck yard, so at least I don’t have to fix any fencing.
Edit: power’s back! Met two nice folks from Canada who were down this way to do repairs and convinced them to take a tree off a line even though it wasn’t in their task list.
My wife and I broke up several days ago. We were never legally married, and I suppose that makes it a lot easier, but still not easy.
We both had severe emotional control issues, for different reasons. I tried countless meds to help, and keep myself, and us, together. Tried therapy. But in the end, more often than not, there was no voice of reason in our relationship. We could reach points where we’d go a month or so without fighting, but it’d always happen again some day.
Finally, at a time where we were both calm and unemotional, we came to the decision that we needed to work on ourselves separately. When the consequences of our mental illness were not just hurting ourselves, but each other, it was just too hard to cope with.
We’re still friends. We’re still supporting each other, but I feel like I’ve lost the best thing I’ve ever had in my life and it’s my fault. I’m happy that she no longer has to feel chained down by my angry outbursts, my constant panic attacks, and wondering every day if I’m still going to be with her tomorrow, but I wish none of those things existed in the first place, so we could be happy together.
On top of all this, the catalyst for making this decision in the first place was that there was a new guy, who was very interested in me. When he found out I was already taken, he tried to back off, but… I guess now my ex-wife encouraged him to keep going. We’d been open to the idea of polyamory from the beginning of our relationship, so that’s how we were hoping it would go. Unfortunately, it turned out he couldn’t be comfortable with polyamory, and wanted an exclusive relationship.
And that’s when we suddenly realized that there was a choice. I could try to stay with her, hoping one day things would get better, or find a new relationship and hope it doesn’t end the same way. We realized quickly that the second was the only healthy option, even if we really, really didn’t want that.
And now, several days later, this new guy is already telling me he’s in love with me. He said it was love at first sight for him. I told him I’m going to need a long time before I can even consider anybody else romantically, and he’s told me he’s willing to wait however long it takes, but the concept scares me.
My last relationship ended largely because of emotional and psychological problems that feel insurmountable. I’m terrified if this goes anywhere that I’m going to screw it up the exact same way.
I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve checked up on my ex a few times, and it feels like she’s handling this better than I am. At the very least, she’ll survive, and that makes me happy. I was friends with her for a long time before we even started dating, and I’m just really hoping I can learn to see her that way again. But this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with emotionally and I don’t feel like I’ll survive, even if I know consciously that I will get through it.
It doesn’t sound like it was all your fault, nor was it all theirs. It sounds like two people who care very much for each other realized that the patterns they were reinforcing were not good for either of them, and took painful steps to keep the relationship they could. I’m really sorry you’re in this position now, but I’m also really hopeful that you see the good in your decision and that you were able to make it calmly despite the emotions of the situation. That’s a crappy consolation prize but maybe you’ll learn and grow your emotional toolkit to make the ability to handle situations like that even stronger.
Something that helped me to become better at communicating my feelings (and communicating when I couldn’t manage it well) was reading about mediating other people’s conflicts. Self help / self regulation books and the like weren’t helping me to navigate these situations but ones about mediation in the workplace or at home helped me to see the types of patterns that played out in my relationships. Discussing these techniques - like lots of “I feel” statements and no “you make me” statements - with my partner and agreeing to try them gave us the emotional space to really start practicing better management of ourselves.
I hope I’m not overstepping with this, but I am scared alongside you about starting anything else this quickly afterwards, and especially this intensely. It doesn’t sound like you’re being kind enough to yourself to give enough time to process, or to build up the emotional management skills you’re hoping to. Coming on so strongly to someone who’s just been through something like this doesn’t speak very highly of this guy’s character either, from where I’m sitting (just north of total ignorance, but still).
Whatever happens, I hope you find the space and peace to train those relationship and emotional skills you want for yourself, and the person or persons who help you to reinforce them.
Your suggestion in the second paragraph sounds good. Most of our fights were more or less caused by extrapolating information incorrectly due to our high strung emotions. Things like she’d mention a famous person in passing, and I would happen to know said famous person had a horrific controversy, and I’d suddenly go on high alert thinking she supported said terrible things, which would snowball into “If she supports that terrible thing, she must support all these other terrible things as well,” at which point I’d explode, she having no idea why because she didn’t know about said controversy and didn’t even like said famous person very much in the first place.
When she’d blow up at me, it was usually because I ignored a load of warning signs that she was in a really bad mood, because I felt bad not helping when she felt bad, but the only help she actually needed was for me to leave her alone until she could settle down.
As for the new guy, the situation is a little complicated by the fact that he did actually try to do the polyamory thing at first, and a bit into that is when he first confessed that he was in love with me. However, we realized that what he was really hoping for was that I’d fall for him so hard I’d decide I wanted to be exclusively with him. Once he realized that, that’s when we realized polyamory wasn’t going to work and I had to make a decision.
It still disturbs me a bit that that happened so fast, but I don’t feel like I should be judging since I was exactly like that with my ex before we started dating. Just fell so deeply in love that I couldn’t bear not telling her.
At the same time though, maybe that should make me more worried, because I was absolutely off my rocker back then and the first year of our relationship was almost entirely her reigning me in and teaching me how to approach relationships in a more healthy way.
more or less caused by extrapolating information incorrectly due to our high strung emotions
💕 the topics are different but the pattern is similar to some of the struggles my wife and I have faced together. In many cases, my own anxiety and hypervigilance tendencies have caused me to react to small things and turn them into big deals. It’s incredibly easy to just… be in those moments. “I feel” statements have helped me to give agency back to myself in those times, and I hope you discover the tools that best help you in those situations.
My knee-jerk reaction about the person is changed because of the complications; my hope for you to have the time and peace to choose how you decide to is not. Whatever you decide to do, use the opportunities you get to practice the skills that will help you be the person you want to be. If that involves him, I hope you do great. If it doesn’t, I hope you do great.
Hang, in, there. I can’t understand nor relate to your situation, but you’ll find with time and reflection that things, did in fact, stabilize. Just know there are people that care about you and that you generate meaning and joy for people in your life.
I don’t know why, but the support I get from people who can’t understand but still want to help means the most to me.
Luckily, I’ve had a load of messages from a million people on just about every platform I knew anybody on filled with support and encouragement. Everybody’s making really sure I don’t feel unloved.
About to board a plane so I can arrive at a boat for the first cruise I’ve ever been on. It’s called groove cruise and it’s 24/7 DJs and music/dancing. Hard to separate anxiety from excitement. It’ll be fun but I probably won’t sleep much!
As much as I resent it being the way of things, money is power under capitalism. Where possible, I try not to cede mine to people looking to do nefarious things or disseminate shitty ideals. While I don’t have much personally and Kant was a pretentious douche canoe, I’m still idealistically partial to the universal maxim.
Yeah, no ethical consumption under capitalism or whatever but we can try not to prop up people who are brazenly making the world shittier. Thinking our actions don’t matter is how we get complacency.
I moved to Chicago at the end of October from the deep south. The past few days the weather has been hovering around 0⁰F and that has been an adjustment. I’ve figured out the clothing I can wear to bear it. Sunday my feet felt like they were going to fall off after only a few minutes walking around. Last night I had to wait for a bus for like 20 minutes and I was totally fine. I switched boots and it fixed my whole issue with comfort.
I am new here so I have stuff to share, but my big thing right now is…I have had a lot of unexplained chest pain for a long time, and I have a cardiologist that actually has an explanation and her treatment seems to be working, also it seems to be going a long way to helping my depression in a bonus win.
pretty great! had my first agility lesson of the new year with the pups, and they rocked it. got a crate for the incoming foster dog (her name is coco, pics next week). got together with some bike/camp folks and planned our next campout and longer day ride. got to see the fellowship of the ring (extended edition) at the theater. played a first session of a tabletop game called wickedness.
i need to stop being so busy, but at least it’s good busy. 😮💨
i always pick dogs i think will enjoy it, since it’s my main reason for having dogs, hehe. my last dog (passed away last year) was the only one i’ve owned who didn’t really enjoy agility on any level. she was my professional couch potato. she was also much more chill than my other two agility nerds.
Couch potatoes are important too! And from the looks of it she was a pro.
Mine should enjoy agility in theory - she’s super smart, easily bored, very nimble and needs a lot of exercise. I don’t know if she’s being considerate by trying not to expose her clumsy human to such situations or if she just thinks such simple challenges would be degrading to such a majestic animal as herself.
At least our slightly overweight french bulldog (of all things) is ultra-motivated as long as there’s a treat waiting behind every other obstacle.
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