Funny cat image as a reward for opening the post
6 years ago: messaging a person on reddit. Tomorrow is our wedding
Congratulations!
Went sober.
For me it was a small change. I was having a drink here and there, maximum 3 beers a night. I just found that it made me feel like shit the next morning even after having one, and I no longer enjoyed the feeling of even a mild buzz. There was also a huge relief at not having to figure out which situation to drink in or not. Do I have a drink at this birthday party? After a hard day? While barbecuing? If I am just sober the answer is always no, so it eliminates one choice.
I started doing a tiny little injection of estrogen once a week and it totally changed my life. My productivity is through the roof, my confidence has skyrocketed, I’m grinding like there’s no tomorrow and I’ve never felt better. All the techbros should try it if they want to level up their game. Just 5mg/week, it’s basically nothing bro. Try it bro you’ll never regret taking estrogen once a week. Took me from 0.5x to 10x overnight.
I’ve blocked any YouTube video recommendations (after a video is done, the sidebar, etc), and switched to RSS (RSS Guard is my go-to, after testing about 6 RSS readers). I used Enhancer for YouTube™ to block the bullshit.
Now, I only have 319 videos left to view, in order, from all the channels that I follow. It is now me that has a tight grip on what I watch, and not YT. No more doomscrolling on YT Shorts! No more watching the newest thing (old videos are still solid, but won’t be likely recommended)! Use Youtube-shorts block to turn any short into a normal video, in case someone sends you a shorts link.
I can now have a sense of being done watching videos, instead of YT feeding me unending garbage.
RSS feed locations for YT are hidden:
https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_idThe channel id you can find on a channel, under
...morenear the top, thenShare Channel->Get Channel ID.Awesome. I might consider this myself
I made the conscious decision to mask my autism less in private and stand up for my needs more openly.
6 months later my wife left me, telling me she can’t take it anymore.After she had moved out and I realized this was final, a great wave of relief washed over me.
Now I have to pay the rent alone, pay her $1k/month in alimony on top, and somehow still have more money left over than during the marriage, lol.
And I got to keep the cats!Why do you have to pay her?
She called in sick for weeks at her new job after the separation, got fired, and now has no income.
The state doesn’t pay her any unemployment support because we’re still married.
(Divorce is only possible after 1 year of separation.)
As her husband, I’m legally forced to give her 3/7 of the difference between our net incomes.
And since she doesn’t have any income, that’s 3/7 of my total net income.That’s fascinating. Hope she’s doing okay and grows from the experience, and I’m glad you can live without masking now
Out of interest (because I’m neurodivergent) what kind of things bothered her when you unmasked? Or was the seperation just not related to unmasking?
It was related, but that wasn’t the main reason.
Divorce is only possible after 1 year of separation.
Oof. If I may ask, in what kind of backwards country do you live in?
Germany.
That rule prevents a lot of abuse of marriage laws (like “marrying” before a large windfall income to save taxes, then immediately “divorcing” again).
It gives couples time to fix their marriage if possible, before all of the legal ramifications take effect.
Or to separate their goods, get legal council, plan moving out, etc. if it isn’t fixable.
And the mandatory alimony payments allow the partner who cared for the household to leave their (possibly abusive) spouse without becoming destitute.
I wonder what makes you think it’s backwards?I stand corrected and must admit that is has its uses
Just wait until the divorce finally finalizes. New wave of relief and freedom incoming. Been there. Good luck, hang in there, and congrats!
You did the right thing.
Posted a personal ad on Cragslist; ended up married.
Seriously? What year!?
Literally like 3 months or so before Craigslist removed the personal ads section entirely.
I started some kind of anime themed browser game one day with the intent of wanting to see what kind of people would play such weeb trash.
Turns out the kind of people to play that were loyal friends to stay in touch with for over a decade and my future wife, too!
After unsuccessfully trying different budget managers over the years, I payed a considerable (at the time) amount for one that uses the envelope system (YNAB) and that is exactly the kind that works for me. Before that I always lived paycheck to paycheck, never had any money left and constantly ran into trouble. Now I have peace of mind with everything planned out and thinking a year or more ahead instead of in the moment.
Oh, I got a good one. I started leaving earlier and driving slower. It’s way safer and I get great mileage. It’s also more relaxing to not be so worried about making good time.
I don’t drive yet so I don’t really get why mileage is important. Is it because you’re getting money back for fuel or is it just so you feel justified in paying to keep a car? Or is it more healthy for a car to get more driving in?
There’s also the safety aspect. A lot of the habits that help you go farther on a tank of gas also make accidents less likely or less serious
You’ve already paid for the gas that’s in your tank, best you can do is get the most miles out of it. Long term habits that increase overall average MPG also reduce wear and make parts last longer. Biggest thing is not speeding up when you see a red light ahead.
Ever since I started thinking this way, I started finally seeing all the other cars scurrying past me to get to the same red light that we all stopped at. It compounds the calming effect to see validation through others demonstrating the futility of what I no longer choose to do.
edit: To be clear, I’m not saying I totally drag ass and block traffic. I’m just talking about smoothing out my acceleration curves a bit and the occasional person who zips around everyone else, only to hit a stoplight with the rest of us. I’m not that old yet.
Oh I’m definitely in the slow category, according to the cars behind me.
Don’t get me wrong, I do the speed limit, and heck still sometimes the appropriate “5 over” if there’s cars behind me.
But that’s not enough for most people, they race around me anyway.
But more than just not speeding up when I see the red light, I watch the light from farther away. It’s very flat here, and if you pay attention you can see the light turning from 10 or 20 seconds away, and adjust appropriately. You can even time the light to know it’ll turn red before you get there.
I’m not counting seconds or anything, it’s more of a vibe check. “That light has been green a looong time, it’s definitely turning red before I get there.”
So depending on who’s behind me and ahead of me and how far away I am, I’ll either start coasting down to maybe 5 or 10 under as I approach, that way I can use my brakes even less.
I get pretty good at it with the lights on my way to work. But some lights are un-timable. Their timing is almost purposely designed to waste gas.
And one stretch of lights changes depending on time of day to create a unidirectional flow of traffic. You’ll hit every green going south at 3pm, but every red going north. Stuff like that.
Using brakes is wasted gas, lost efficiency. I get a whole 5 or 6 more mpg driving my wife’s car, than when she drives it. Maybe more. Every time I drive it I watch the average tick up. For her it hovers around 25/26. I’ve seen over 31 in the same car.
Again I’m not the guy who painfully slowly accelerates, angering everyone. I know how to stand on the pedal when I need to. I just pay attention, and accelerate and brake maybe a little more smoothly.
If you accelate hard, drive fast, etc, you get lower gas mileage.
So if you drive 1000 miles per month, and you’re getting 25 miles per gallon, then at $4/gallon you’re paying $160 for gas a month. If you ease up and can average like 32mpg, you’ll only spend $125. Better results may be possible.
Ahhhh I accelerate very quickly because it’s fun, and I brake very slowly because I like not wearing my brake pads down. So I really only accelerate hard if there’s a ton of space in front of me and good side-visibility so I don’t have to risk sudden breaking (obv not only for my brakes, but so I don’t hurt anything!)
But I am soooo accelerating fast at every safe opportunity because it just feels awesome lawl. Then again, in a good month, I’m going 100-200 miles or less (partner and I both gremlins) so the fuel expenditure is maybe 10 bucks a month. Not even that high.
Great scenario for an EV! You’re not losing the efficiency by accelerating hard, can accelerate harder, and you make some of it back by using regen when you slow down
Oh yah. My last car was a hybrid (loved it!) but that was before EVs were very attainable. I got my current car a long while ago when someone smashed my last one to death. I loved seeing the regenerative braking work!
My car now is all gas, but she’s got low mileage and the ultimate “trim” or whatever and I love her and all of her million speakers and subwoofer very much.
I’d love an EV for my next car if I can find one that isn’t a privacy nightmare (my car is from the tail end of when you could get cars that DIDN’T phone home what you talk about in them) but hopefully I’ll have my current car forever and won’t have to worry about that.
I read once a question on whether it’s better to rapidly accelerate to your vehicle’s most efficient speed / gear, or just creep up to it.
In my old wagon, once I hit 60kph (~40mph) it goes into 4th and drops to ~1250rpm. I tend to use moderate acceleration up to that speed then just chill.
I also recall the term ‘pulse and glide’ from hypermiling which might have some relation, but without the gliding bit.
Slept with a drinking Buddy from university. We have three adorable kids now.
Triplets from a one-night stand is crazy unlucky
I joined a random Deep Rock Galactic lobby once. Usually I host them so it was odd for me join one idk why I even did that. Ended up becoming friends with one of the people in there and they’re one of the best most caring people I know. We talk almost every day now
Last time I played DRG, it truly had one of the least toxic and most friendly gaming communities I know.
Maybe I should jump back in again. Got 1000 hours in it (never had so many in any game before), but stopped playing for stupid reasons and moved on to other things afterward.It’s a gem of a game and yeah perhaps one of the best communities I know. You’re always welcome to rock and stone :3
About 15 years ago I decided not to be in a hurry when I’m driving, and also to not get frustrated with any other drivers. I just figured I’m gonna be spending too much time of my life in a car I might as well not be getting upset about it. For aggressive drivers I make up a story about how they have explosive diarrhea or something else urgent to attend to. It has made a profound and permanent improvement to my life. Would recommend to a friend.
You can add crying kids in the car to your excuses, because that’s the only time I am speeding nowadays.
I’m an Uber driver currently and this approach is vital for sanity/happiness/tips. I drive borderline grandma-style now and have gotten more than one compliment for the smooth trip, etc.
I did this too. Amazing how you still end up arriving at almost the same time as when you drove like a maniac hey?
I think it’s made me more flexible with time in general. But yeah stoplights and traffic matter more than how you drive. It’s futile to think you can go any faster, just enjoy the ride.
joined mastodon back in 2017
it made me the person i am today, in every way
it was a critical moment in my gender identity journey and finding the place definitely steered me in the right direction
over the years i’ve escaped my abusive family and came to seattle thanks to fedi, met my best friend and joyfriend both through fedi, and formed a strong sense of community on the servers i host there
i was even in a book about fedi thanks to the work i’ve done!!!
i owe everything good in my life presently to the fediverse 🥹
My cat decided to live at a neighbor’s 3 doors down. One day I thought “I’ll invite her to the barbecue party”. Six years later, we’re married and have a 2 year old boy (and five more cats).
That cat knew what it was doing.
That is delightful. I hope you occassionally call that cat, “wingman”,
Did a sleep study. I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about a month ago because of it and got a machine. Now even if I have a short sleep, I feel more rested that I ever did sleeping a full 8 or even 9 hours.
damn, does it really make that much of a difference? how does it feel now with the machine?
my doctor and i suspect i have sleep apnea. I’ll lose up to like 2 hours of sleep per night from micro-awakenings (so out of 8 hours “slept” ill get only 6 hours of actual sleep), but ive been putting off a proper sleep study for a few months now. ive been starting to wonder how it feels to actually be rested for once
I can second this. I have my CPAP for about a year now. I had 66(!) sleep interruptions per hour. Yes, the mask can be awkward especially in the beginning. But the result is absolutely worth it. When I woke up after my first night it was such an enormous difference!
Mind you, not everyone may feel such a difference immediately. It may take a few nights or even weeks.
For me it did. After doing the sleep study I found out I have a moderate case, around 18 awakenings per hour. After using the machine it’s down to one an hour.
The day I got the machine I was pretty tired so I decided to take a nap. Not unusual for me and normally when I nap it lasts about an hour. I put the mask on and slept for four hours immediately and my partner at the time said that she couldn’t even wake me up. I couldn’t remember having such an amazing sleep before.
