Sup Nick! Love the energy, and if you legit haven’t heard of our friend Nicole, this is hilarious in a good way.

Looks like you’re also a sh.it.head (don’t worry - this is a good thing!), and so far don’t look to be a shithead (which would be a bad thing) so in my book we’re already friends :) Welcome!

So I’ve since quit, and I understand why even what I’m about to describe doesn’t exist anymore where I am, but right at the tail end of smoking indoors there were businesses/buildings doing totally walled off, wellish ventilated smoking areas. Those seemed ok to me, and when I (stupidly) took up smoking I was sad those were gone.

The only, and last, one I saw when I was a smoker was in an airport, which was an unexpected godsend because my fuck does it suck to be a smoker waiting for a flight.

(Yes, it’s a gross and deadly habit that’s also unhealthy and gross for the people around you and the employees who had to work in/clean such spaces, and it makes sense to have no smoking indoors).

Something to think about, though of course do whatever makes the most sense for your circumstances: what’s better - maintaining your current pace of work, without meaningful breaks, in a way that only further pushes you into burnout and risks impacting job performance to the point you could be let go for cause. Or, using your PTO, which is part of your compensation package, to take breaks and at least try to get some downtime to mitigate burnout, which generally has a positive impact on job performance and with that reduces the probability of being let go with cause?

Not going to lie and say you couldn’t get blindsided and screwed either way, but with very few exceptions I always think not taking your PTO is a mistake.

Will acknowledge I don’t know your circumstances and don’t mean any offense. If what you’re doing makes sense from a long-term survival perspective, then do what makes sense.

The issue is, what is the immediate alternative? You can simplify your life to minimize the amount of resources needed, you can find work that feels pleasant/meaningful enough that it doesn’t always feel like a slog, you can have other people subsidize your lifestyle by working themselves (cool if said people are cool with it/there’s some mutually beneficial exchange - usually involving domestic work, which is still work -, not cool if it’s pure leeching). But ultimately, unless you come from wealth, either you or someone working for your benefit needs to work to get resources needed for living.

It doesn’t have to be this way forever, but this is reality right now. Heck, this isn’t even unique to capitalism - even in a socialist society, people still need to work, they just (theoretically) gain more of the benefits of that labour than in capitalist societies.

Leaning into this will probably garner attention from the right sort of women for you. The ones attracted to “traditional masculinity” (which is kind of a trap in some respects anyway) probably wouldn’t be attracted to you sexually in the first place, based on what you describe here. So you don’t really lose anything by what you plan to do. Go for it!

And if anyone gives you guff about it, tell them to fuck off (or whatever response appropriate to your vibe, but carrying a similar message, works best).

That’s chimerism. Capitalism is a large-scale and violent event in the natural world.

I was very sad, and very self-isolating for a long while. This even translated to online interactions - always lurked and never posted, because really what did I have to say that anyone gave a shit about?

Started to feel a little less sad, and talk with people online a bit. The walls didn’t necessarily tumble, but they started to crack.

So here I am, speaking though Cracks_InTheWalls. Now, people still don’t give a shit about that, but in turn I don’t about that, which IMO is a significant improvement from where I was.

Not necessarily direct social skill things, but stuff that could put you in slightly more comfortable circumstances to work on it:

-Karaoke. If you like singing, this is a no brainer. You then have easy introductory topics (song choices, music, telling people they did a good job, etc.). Where I am the demographics are pretty wide, it may skew older where you are.

-If you have interest in doing so, see if you can join a band, maybe with an eye to doing some low-tier gigs (or high-tier, that’d be up to you and your bandmates).

-It’s hard mode, but like singing and playing music in public? Get a busking permit! Interact with the strangers passing by, etc. Best case scenario, you make some pocket change. Worst case scenario, you do something you like that puts you in front of people in a non-bar setting.

Working in something you’re passionate about and at least sort of good at can put you a little more at ease, sometimes.

Rob a bank, stowaway on a container ship, free climb a mountain or skyscraper, take out a bunch of loans and spend it on whatever, scam a bunch of dangerous people, the sky’s the limit. I’d actually say think bigger.

I’m not going to pretend it’s a good answer because it cuts in many directions, but the following has been my thinking on this:

Because if you have nothing to live for, you have nothing holding you back from taking massive risks. Take the massive risk over your own life. Suicide can come later, once you’ve done something risky and cool first that requires a meatsuit. As far as we know you only get one of those, and there’s far more than you might think that only requires one of 'em and infinite risk tolerance.

Not comfortable with the risk? Why, if you have nothing to live for? Tease that out and you can work in the other direction.

My most common recommendation is campus-fm.com, which is a frontend for listening to a bunch of North American college radio stations. Wide net but may help you find various shows whose programming you dig.

Real talk, it’s your common mass produced and internationally sold beers that suck. S’ok, a lot of mass produced Canadian beer sucks too (lookin’ at you, Alexander Keith’s. Pride of Nova Scotia indeed.)

The issue is that the good stuff doesn’t often make it outside of your borders. I’ve had decent beer when actually in the U.S before.

Will say I will drink a cold PBR if there’s no other valid choice, but if someone just has Coors or Bud (especially Bud - but especially Bud Light) I’ll stick with water. Only other American beer that reaches Canada I’d probably drink is Lucky Lager, but that’s more out of nostalgia for west coast teenaged mayham than its own merits, and Kokanee would produce the same effect and caveat anyway.

Edit: After thinking about it more, I’ve enjoyed Sam Adams limited releases before, and we get those sometimes.

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Should have sent them an invoice for your pentesting services.

https://youtu.be/dERcdvcXuE0&t=0m21s

[Edit for better choice]

Don’t look at me, RCMP

Darkness as your eyes close -> Probably some cool shit as your brain functions start shutting down -> literally nothing.

Real talk, as a kid Final Fantasy Legend on the Game Boy is how I got exposed to this kind of thinking, and the implications have lived rent free in my head to this day.

It’s a bit on the nose, but that kinda lends itself to a kid picking up on it.

Here’s my take - if there’s any merit to the heaven and hell stuff, it’s purely in the last minutes of you actually dying (assuming a not-sudden death). Something your brain might conjure up before you go, premised on your remaining memories and attitudes towards life. If you mostly feel guilt about what you’ve done in your life, it will probably be an experience akin to hell. Joy, and a bittersweet sadness about leaving this world? Probably closer to heaven. And perhaps many various experiences in between that don’t neatly map to this. All mostly a play of the last final, firing synapses before the curtain falls.

If we take this approach, what does it say about living? Well, I’d say that it’s important to live as fully and well as you can. Do good things. Make good connections with other humans and love people worth loving. Help people out. Have a laugh, read a good book once and a while. Live a life that, when it’s all said and done, has honestly good material to draw from in those final moments before oblivion.

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