I’ve never gone through this exactly but have had stints of prolonged pain. I really hate painkillers. I try to meditate. I try to remove my self from the pain and see it externally. Not make it disappear, just see it as separate from myself. And I try to focus on the temporary nature of it. It will pass. In time, I won’t even remember how intense it was. The memory will be there, but not the detail.

Nope. East coast.

Same car! I covered her with stickers and vinyls. Her name is Lydia the Tattooed Subie.

I think honor is living by the rules one sets upon themselves and others. Especially when shit gets hard. It’s easy to say “I help people” but it’s a lot harder to push a car to the shoulder in the rain because somebody has a flat on a highway. It’s also easy to say people should let you in line because you have two items but do you do that when you have a full cart but really want to get home soon? I try to teach my kids “if you can help, you have to help”. When they do that, they bring honor to themselves and the family.

Ymmv.

(This is for native storage but I’m bored and want to contribute)

I do the genre thing. I’ll simplify them first. Like I have-
1 big one for Ska.
1 for first wave ska.
1 for second wave.
1 for 3rd.
No reggae, thats 1st wave. Same with rocksteady, dub, dance hall, etc.
Metal is all metal. No crossover or Nü.
I do separate Punk and Skate Punk though, the latter being the old Thrasher Mag Skate Rock tapes.
Rock is a mess but everything from AcDc to Pusa. Hip-hop is anything that even could be considered rap.
EDM is the same.

Just super broad strokes. Then a playlist is either a genre or two or the entire catalog of a few bands. Occasionally, if I get super motivated, I’ll do a playlist with albums, but rarely any more specific than that unless I need something particular- Like one for running, or a game session.

Hank Scorpio is the only correct answer. Or maybe it’s wrong, i dunno, but I think it’s correct.

I did. Back in the old days we had phones connected to wires called land lines. The phones were controlled by shitty companies similar to cell service providers or cable companies (almost as archaic as land lines).

I was having trouble getting my land line up and running after a move. A bad day at work, money trouble, and a phone that still wouldn’t work, set me off. I totally lost my shit on a poor, under paid rep. I mean, I went off. It was brutal. I think I made her cry. The people in the room I was in (rental office at the new apartment complex) all left the room.

After a solid 2 or 3 minutes of me just ripping into this innocent person, I caught myself. I realized what I was doing mid-rant and just stopped. I sort of gasped and said “oh god. What the fuck is wrong with me?” or something similar out loud. I spent the next couple of minutes apologizing and telling this person how big a shit head I was being. I admitted that I had crossed a line, commended them on their professionalism, and took full responsibility for making this their problem when it clearly wasn’t. I was sincere and I was honest. I told her that she should hang up on me and make a note in my file that I’m a problem. I also said that I’d never yell at a rep like that again. And humbly asked if ther was anything she could do to help me. She did. She solved whatever bullshit problem there was and was so rad to me.

She went so far above and beyond after I treated her like shit. That was close to 30 years ago and I still have never even raised my voice to a rep since. As bad as some places are, as poorly trained as some reps are, even as shitty as some reps are, I’ll never forget how rotten a person I was in that moment. I don’t want to be like that. That’s not the kind of world I want to live in. And frankly, fuck a dude that would talk to me like that.

There’s a board game store near me that bought all mine. I chose store credit because I’m into board games but the cash option was pretty fair too.

To see my enemies crushed. To see them driven before me. And to see more hybrid and electric vehicles on the road.

1, get really annoyed that whatever plans I had are now changed because I’m not super good at paradigm shifts.

2, try to make the best of it because I really believe we bring our own good time.

I had iphones for a while and had to jailbreak them to get them to do what I wanted. Then one bricked and I got an android. I didn’t have to jailbreak it, I owned it, I wasn’t stuck having to use iTunes, and I wasn’t forced into thececosystem. Also, Smart Audiobook Player is android only.

Same. Raised on neglect and hose water.

I was being silly.

It leans a little more toward academic than some of the others here, and spans a broader time span, but History of The World p1 is pretty good.

You bastige. You fargin sneaky bastage. Why you miserable cork-soaker!

Watership Down.

Anything but grape. Apricot is a favorite.

I’m in the building sciences. The biggest unanswered question we come up against almost daily is “what the fuck was the last guy thinking?”. And we avoid, daily, admitting we were the last guy somewhere else.

It’s this exactly. The minute you stop learning, or think you know it all, is the minute you start declining. There is always something new to learn, some new innovation, a new system or procedure. I believe this is true for absolutely everything. I think it’s why older generations get bitchy about “these kids today” too. Shit changes and people stagnate because they know it all already.

But just keep a clear head, know that life is dynamic and try to find the joy in the process of getting better, don’t get hung up on the goal of doing it perfect or being the best. Anyone of value will recognize your effort to simply improve.

I’ve been a carpenter since I was 18 and a finish carpenter since i was 30. I’ll be 52 this year. So I’ve been doing this for 34 years. By all regards, I’m an expert in my field. My work has been on magazine covers, my work has won awards for architects and designers. I’m known by name by top builders and firms in my area. I now run jobs as a superintendent and/or project manager. I get calls to come work for other companies on the regular.

I still have zero idea why. Like, I just tell people what to do in an order that makes sense. And before that, I beat nails into wood. It wasn’t till about 3 or 4 years ago when my wife took me aside and explained to my face that, yeah, I’m really good at my job that I started to realize that, yeah, I’m pretty good at my job. But everyday, driving in, I’m still just a kid that’s in over his head. I don’t feel confident at work. I know on one level I’m doing OK, I mean I must be, right? But I just come in and do my best and hope it’s good enough. Turns out, that it usualy is good enough.

And I can tell you this. Anyone that walks around super confident in their work, usually sucks at their job. I’ve seen dozens of people claim that they’re the best around, only to get axed or laid off as soon as possible. Don’t bother being confident in your work, be confident that you’re doing the best that you can do and be confident that you have the ability to keep learning.