Essentially what you said, but I’d like to phrase it the way a counselor said it to me when I was under a lot of stress at work. Stress is the gap between our expectation and reality. Say you expect to be/produce/achieve/whatever 100%, but you are only capable of achieving 80%. The stress you experience is that 20% gap. Change your expectations to meet your reality and that stress will be resolved.

Now, it may still be that others might still want or expect that 20% from you, but that’s their problem and their stress. If you cannot produce it anyway (which created your stress in the first place), existing in the stress-gap clearly won’t make you able to do it anyway.

My father exactly. He’s Asian, so I think he feels more removed from the situation, but he worked in the US for over a decade before retiring back here. He’s still 100% pro-Trump, even though we are feeling the negative effects of his tariffs (“He has to put tariffs, he had no choice, look at their economy”), and he even admits things like Good thing I retired before Trump became president otherwise I probably couldn’t get a work visa now. My dad would vote Trump if he could vote.

I’m sorry to tell you the sets have already been dismantled and set pieces already sold off. It’s one thing to renew a show that still had its physical pieces, another thing to have to rebuild everything again.

I’m sorry to tell you this, but he did not love you. You don’t threaten to break up with someone you love, that is an abuse tactic, and you just do not abuse people you love. That is not your fault. That is a reflection of who he is, not who you are. You are only responsible for your own actions, not his.

Really, I mean it, read up on love bombing, DARVO, and if you can get a copy, a book called _Why does he do that? _ I think these will help you understand and process what you’ve experienced.

Good for you. You did the right thing for yourself. But you’re asking the wrong question; this wasn’t a you thing, this was a him thing. By what you’ve said, he’s a selfish and emotionally immature person. What good was he actually for you?

An important lesson to learn in life in general is that you cannot change another person. Only a person can choose to change for themselves, not for anyone else. The whole thing about leading a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. His selfishness has nothing to do with you, except that you suffered for it. He was selfish before you, and he’ll continue to be selfish after you. Maybe one day he’ll choose to change, but that will have to come from inside him, not for anyone else. This is true for all the kinds of ways people need “fixing” (in quotes), big and small ways, from drug addictions to simple things like pet-peeve type habits.

Look up the terms “love bombing” and DARVO. I think you will find descriptions of your ex, and I hope your eyes will be opened to the fact that he was emotionally abusive, and that you were the victim of his abuse. I hope this can set you in the right direction to put him behind you.

Platitudes like “it gets better with time” are both true, but also not very helpful in the moment. The truth is, like any injury, this kind of pain does take time to heal, and it sucks in the meantime. I’m sorry. Till then, you have to keep yourself and your life moving on, even if you don’t feel like it. Don’t let yourself get stuck where you are. You need to give yourself the opportunity to reorient yourself and your life to this change.

For me, the deepest heartbreak I experienced was not a breakup, but the death of a very dear friend. I watched a *lot *of Doctor Who (David Tennant, the first? time). I stopped watching Doctor Who years ago, but I’ll always appreciate the show and David Tennant for bringing me tiny bits of fun in those sad days. It’s been more than a decade; I still miss that friend and feel sad when I think about him. But it’s not a sharp, immediate pain, it’s more like wistfulness. And I can think about and appreciate the good times we enjoyed together.

As for an actual breakup after a not-great relationship (which yours sounds like, from your description in another thread), what I can say is that it is way better to be single than to be with someone who doesn’t love you. Nor does it seem he even liked you even as a friend. Would you ever treat a friend, even an acquaintance, the way he treated you? Honestly, it sounds like he finally did the right thing by ending it rather than continuing to drag it out. I hope you will understand this with clarity later. Don’t settle for that kind of nonsense in the future. Look for someone who is of good character all the time because that’s just who they are, not someone who turns it on and off as he pleases.

Check out this new wee little reader from Boox: https://shop.boox.com/products/picco
I think the idea of mounting it to the back of your phone is interesting, but I’m not totally sold on the idea. I’m amused by it, but not quite sold. I definitely wouldn’t want it as my every day reader, and I feel like someone who would read while standing in line… would be enough of a reader to want an every day reader.

Anywhats, what I really wish for is a Boox phone. The Palma 2 pro is close, but I still actually need my phone number for professional purposes.

Boox has 10.3" and 13.3" models: https://shop.boox.com/collections/all-products/13-3 The 13.3 would be closest to A4 (assuming that’s what you meant, A4 or 8.5x11). They run Android, you can install other reader apps like Kindle, Kobo, Libby. You can load PDFs by USB (which I do). There was a browser interface which I’d tried and it worked, but I just don’t use it. No idea if it’s still available. The built-in reading app can mark up epubs the same as PDFs. I purchased a Wacom stylus that has a side button for the eraser function because the original it comes with has the eraser on the top. I didn’t like having to flip the stylus over.

I have a predecessor 13.3" model, the Max Lumi, which is no longer available, but I am still fairly pleased with it. I’d gotten mine for the purpose of splitscreening a document on one side and notebook on the other side, to take notes for school. If I were to buy again now, I would go for the slightly smaller 10.3 size to be more portable, but unlikely to use spiltscreen. I would also opt for colour (which was not yet an option when I bought mine.)

Hmm, I see what you’re putting down. I may have to revise my thoughts on the matter. Thanks.

While I agree those ladies were a bunch of loonies, I don’t think the test is supposed to be predictive (this is how you will be), rather descriptive (this is how you are).

Although I’ve had this same argument with people over the function of dictionaries being descriptive (this is how words are used) rather than prescriptive (this is how you should use words).

A tenet of Taoism is that nothing is constant and everything changes. We can have peace and be clear-minded by moving with, around, even redirecting the changes, rather than directly resisting them.

I’m not a taoist, but I think that’s pretty damn wise.

FYI, the wait for processing is now years-long, due to the large influx of applications and the lack of foresight to increase staffing to manage that. Also, if you don’t already have the documentation to prove who your grandfather is, his citizenship, and who you are in relation to him, archives across the country have been inundated with requests for this kind of genealogical information, and they, too, are under-resource to handle it. (And not only so, but arts, culture, and heritage institutions have had budget slashed all across the country, so there are actually fewer people now to handle these requests.)

Exec was committing fraud and self-enrichment thru work. Snitched to the board with evidence, they did nothing. One even told me he wasn’t concerned. Noped outta there and snitched to the government instead.

The semi-vertical ones help compared to a standard (horizontal) mouse, but as someone who had a lot of pain, they were not enough for me. For example, I had the Microsoft sculpt mouse, which came with their split keyboard (the main reason I bought it) and still experienced pain. Then I went more vertical to the Logitech Lift which was better, but did not eliminate the pain entirely. Finally, I now use the Evoluent Vertical mouse and now no longer experience pain in my mousing hand.

The only drawback is when I used a standard mouse (totally horizontal), I used to switch hands and use it ambidextrously. Now I obviously can’t switch hands with these mice.

I think for someone who doesn’t experience persistent pain, a semi-vertical mouse may be well enough.

Are you familiar with the reputation of sabreurs being the crazy people among fencers? 😂

I know someone who flies down about once a month to help his elderly older brother and sister. (He is himself a retired senior, they are even older.) I presume he counts as 12 visitors a year, but of course, he’s just one person with family obligations.

The problem is they called them light sabres, so, naturally, they must be wielded maniacally.

Since we’re guessing, I’d guess lymph is part of it. It’s part of our immune systems, but, unlike blood which has its own pumping mechanism (the heart), lymph gets moved along passively.

Telling a conservative they’re incorrect is oppression to them.

A generation ago, Iran was not like this. Islam itself does not require any of this. An important part if Islam is that the Qur’an cannot be translated, so it is in a form of Arabic few people can really understand. People must depend on the mullahs to tell them what it says. (Which was once also what Christians said about the Latin Bible, though that makes even less sense than the Qur’an because the Bible was translated into Latin.) This is anti-women conservatives using the guise of religion to push their hatred on women and control the population as a whole. As you say, Christianity was once used in the same way, but it still is now, isn’t it?

In the US, abortion is a bogeyman used to threaten women from getting healthcare (even to the point of death), and monitor and control their movements. It’s being done under the guide of “Christianity”. “Christianity” is used against people of different races (because they can’t really be Christian if they’re not white), actually other religions, sexuality, and gender. Yet, how much did Christ ever talk about these things?