This is exactly it. I’m glad you could explain it better than I could. I still don’t understand it necessarily, but I don’t understand a lot of what I lived so I’ll survive.

I mean I really only solved it by having accounts I don’t look at (emergency fund, retirement), accounts I use regularly (bill pay, “entertainment”) and an accountant who helped me set it up so I wasn’t spending every dime. It can be done by yourself but I wasn’t psychologically prepared. I’m also the only employee of my LLC so there’s a business account but it’s just taxes, my salary, and enough for a new computer every few years. That’s not my account and I never personally touch it.

Struggling taught me that if I don’t use my money right now it’ll be gone.

And I’m not saying that to contradict you. It’s funny how different people learn different lessons from the same experience. I grew up dirt poor. If I didn’t spend my money as a kid it might be called upon. And that’s the lesson I took for years. I didn’t really start saving seriously until I was closing in on 40. I have money in retirement now (and will likely retire early), but it’s because I did without for a few years trying to play catch up while making good money. It’s not a tactic I recommend. If I had started it back when I was 18 I could be really close to retirement right now.

Depends on the day. Between a few hours and a few days. If I’ve got something due at work later in the day, hours. If I have no hard deliverables for a few weeks then one of the bars where I’m a regular and play music would be the first to figure it out. All the bartenders and sound guys know how to get in touch with me.

Mom would figure it out in a month or so.

I drop off the earth pretty frequently but I always keep my gig and work commitments or call if I can’t. So it depends on my next commitment, which happens pretty much weekly.

But did you do it again at half past 2?

Peppa isn’t as bad as shit like Caillou, but Bluey is the best one by a mile.

But he had paper he printed out!

If you’re feeling down try sertraline

You’ll feel less depressed than you have been

Disclaimer: Not all people will feel less depressed on sertraline. Avoid taking sertraline if you are allergic to sertraline. Some users report diarrhea, constipation, vomiting blood, kidney failure, dropping property values, itchy feet, or spontaneous suicide. Less than 1% of users report developing a condition known as “wandering eyeball”.

Ask your doctor if sertraline is right for you.

(This was not intended to poke fun at people taking SSRIs. It’s just the first generic name that came to mind. Keep taking your meds if they’re helping and hold your head high, friend!)

We were both terrible people. We were 19 when we got married and enjoyed playing house for a while. We instigated each other at every opportunity. She cheated, we decided to make it work. Then we found out she was pregnant. I told her if she has it and it’s not mine then I wasn’t interested in taking care of her and the kid. She chose to have it (I was mad at the time, but in hindsight and with a lot of therapy behind me I realize that’s not really why I was mad, but I still made the right decision) so I made good on that promise.

She would hit me almost daily. I was severely emotionally abusive. I’ve grown since then and so has she. We’re not friends exactly, but we do periodically email each other to say hello or laugh about the actual good times if something reminds one of us of the other. Because there were plenty of good times.

We were 19 and in love with the idea of being in love. We both came from broken families and fucked up situations. And I think if we met today instead of back then we would be really good friends.

Agreed.

Warriors, come out to pla-ay

I like Hook too. I think I was 8 or 9 when it came out and it was amazing to me. My friend who is just a couple of years older didn’t like it because his younger siblings fucked that up for him by playing it on repeat.

I love this movie so much, but I get it. I feel like you have to have seen it at a certain age in order to really feel it.

I thought Junior just meant they only had 3 or 4 pair of programming socks.

My brother and I always enjoyed going out to the woods together when we were young because you couldn’t hear everything humming out there. I still enjoy it for the same reason.

My hearing isn’t even that great because I’ve spent years around loud noises (industrial and concerts) without hearing protection. But I can still “feel” cheap chargers, bad screens, and florescent lights.

I wish I could remember where I read it, but I do remember reading either an article or paper that laid out that when people are victimized, other abusers tend to be able to spot that somehow. Something about body language and it’s all subconscious.

I don’t have the answer here except to just build a shell and be a dick for a while, but I do want to say I am genuinely sorry you have to deal with that. Always being the victim or always putting on a mask is fucking exhausting and soul draining.

Right? Minute 55-60 is the 15th minute. Fuck that. If it takes that long then the team is too big for agile or the scrum master had lost control.

You’re right. The other side of that is I did a little contract work for a company that is working on software for unmanned commercial flights.

Those guys actually made me feel better. They were all super smart, meticulous, and incredibly good at their jobs. It was the first environment I’ve ever been in where I felt like I could just barely keep up. I always felt one commit away from fucking things up. So I moseyed on down the road as soon as the thing I was contracted for was finished.

It was such a cool job and they offered me a permanent place. I just couldn’t feel behind every single day for the rest of my career until my system destroyed people’s lives.

I’ve got a friend that, when cornered by acronym soup, starts discussing very detailed analytics for whatever they’re talking about. He says the acronyms don’t matter as long as the audience is sufficiently bored by whatever your answer is.

Did the pest control person confirm it’s a bedbug? I ask because I have a friend that was convinced he had them but he had carpet beetles. They were often misidentified on the old site with folks asking if they had bedbugs.

I’m not saying it’s not a bedbug. Those things are horrendous and I’m no expert. I’m saying carpet beetle larvae can cause irritation and make you think you have bedbugs and their similar size gets them misidentified sometimes.

Whether they are or aren’t, getting your landlord to get someone in to look is the right call.

If you’ve got any questions you can message me or reply to me here. I’m not a stylist (I’m a software engineer), but I’ve worked with several.