Stepos Venzny

I’m gonna have to side against Doc Brown on this one, as much as it pains me to say.

If so, they haven’t told me.

They’re not pretending to be your friend, they’re trying to be your friend. They’re prolonging your interactions, sharing their thoughts and feelings with you. They want to spend this time not feeling lonely.

The extent to which this is age related is that they probably don’t have as much energy to split between their work life and their social life as you do. If that ever becomes a struggle for you, that cliche of old people playing a lot of card games and board games exists for a reason. Organizing regular games gives you people to hang out with without always having to figure out when and how.

As for the rest of it, the struggle with change and the arrogance, all I can say is to try to be humble but then that’s good advice at any age. It’ll even help you cope with annoying coworkers right now.

Only the one that I’m actively using, except on rare occasion where I want to go back and forth as reference material.

Nice yes, listening no.

I will never be judged for or attacked by the things I tell her but ten seconds later those things have been overwritten in her mind by different things that she also won’t judge for or attack with.

It made for a complicated childhood.

Pantomime drinking and then shrug.

It’s not complex enough to have intentions of any kind, so the only danger is that people will do incredibly stupid things with it.

Imagine duct-taping a sharp knife to a Roomba. The Roomba has no concept of what ankles or stabbing even are. It will roll around the floor as it always does, devoid of either malice or compassion, and any ankle-stabbing that ensues can only really be described as your fault.

I caused that with a refrigerator magnet, then also fixed it with a refrigerator magnet. Then entertained myself more in the next couple weeks by fucking with my screen with magnets than any actual TV shows or video games.

Why is curliness relevant to shampooing?

I’d roll the dice on just coming out publicly as two of the same guy. I’m pretty sure we’d spend like a year being minor celebrities and then everyone would stop caring.

Except that one room.

There are no bodies of water but you can shoot through a falling stream of it.

If you look at your Subscribed page and don’t see any updates, there’s a good chance you’ll leave YouTube without watching anything.

The Home page has a higher likelihood of tempting you to watch something you hadn’t planned on.

There’s not really any value in determining whether labels like good person or bad person apply to you. Either option tends to end in the same result: an end to the process of introspection and a continuation of the same behavior you’re already doing. “I’m a good person so I don’t have to change” or “I’m a bad person so there’s no point in trying to change” but change is the only thing that will actually affect the feelings that are inspiring you to ask the question.

The update looks like a step in a healthy direction. You felt scared so you looked for support and you felt guilty so you looked to apologize (and reimburse). Stay focused on the process of feeling better and stop stressing about absolutes.

To a degree it’s just reflexive, a knee-jerk reaction to being told things without proper explanation. I struggled with that since I was very young. People told me what to do, what to think, how to feel, and I tried to obey but the stress of that obedience in the face of reason would always eventually end in meltdowns and by the time I was a teenager I was so worn down from that that I could barely function as a human being.

I was within a few years of twenty (pretty bad with dates) when the world showed me I had permission to think independently. There was a perceived familial obligation that I was too hurt to weather, an invitation to visit a relative that I found annoying. You’re told that you’re supposed to love your family, all of it, no matter how physically and emotionally detached they are from your life. But the act of trying to love a stranger that you can’t stand the company of and who cannot stand your company in turn, themselves only really trying out of this same sense of obligation that society pushes on them, there’s nothing in that but stress for all involved. And then you feel like a failure as a result, because you stressed them out and you’re supposed to be making them happy. It was a very small thing being asked of me and something I had always capable of weathering on previous occasions but this time I was too weak from the rest of life and, shamefully, I politely declined. I was kicking myself for the next hour, until somebody actually close to me caught me alone for a moment and praised that show of strength.

In my mind, she had always been stronger than me because she was better able to meet expectations. In that moment I learned that, in her mind, she was weak because she was unable to stand up for her own mental health needs and that I had just surpassed her by doing this. That realization changed my life. I let go of this obedience that my bones had always told me was wrong. Other people wanting something doesn’t mean I have to want it, other people feeling something doesn’t mean I have to feel it, other people doing something doesn’t mean I have to do it. Success at attempting all those things is exactly the same amount of suffering as failure, the very same action is both strong and weak. There’s no winning that game. Neither of us felt what we were supposed to feel and neither of us would be happy in the other’s shoes.

Society tells you that disobedience is arrogance, selfishness, but I’m a better person that I was before it. It made me more humble because I no longer felt that I was supposed to be right, now I want to be right and that means learning where I’m wrong. It made me more generous because I no longer felt that I was supposed to be good, now I want to be helpful because helping people feels good to do. It made me happier because I no longer felt that I was supposed to be happy, and now any instances of unhappiness don’t cause me the shame that negates future happiness. And it made me more tolerant because, fuck, I’m not about to start enforcing arbitrary standards on people when arbitrary standards caused me so much harm in the first place.

Now that there’s not an internal struggle against prescriptive conformity in the way, I’m freer than I ever was to do most of the same things everyone wanted me to do in the first place while also being able to set boundaries about those few things I know would be harmful to do.

It’s not at all frictionless to think for yourself, mind. People can be frustrated when you ask more justification of them than others do. If they’re doing what they’re told is right, saying what they’re told is right, believing what they’re told is right, it can feel threatening to ask them how any or all of that is right when, deep down, all they’re doing is playing their assigned role because they never had your epiphany. And the boundaries you set can also be at odds with the genuinely felt desires of those you care about because sometimes peoples’ desires are simply incompatible.

But that friction is nothing next to the cumulative psychic weight of total obedience. Mutual somewhat-grudging acceptance of each others’ limits is better than any one person’s permanent unhappiness.

In terms of actionable advice: follow your logic, follow your feelings, follow observable reality. Recognize it as a red flag when people discourage you from that, and recognize the importance of hearing out people who are talking through their own logic and feelings and observations and scrutinizing each other.

Everything except pants. My legs are apparently within the bounds of normality but my head, hands, feet, and spine are simply too big.

You wouldn’t think being six feet tall would be such a hindrance to shopping. It’s not big enough to stand out in a crowd, so why is it so big as to be incompatible with mass production?

Either humanity gradually grows to despise you for your ancient morals

or they don’t ever meaningfully surpass where we’re at today.

I’d always suggest being direct instead of waiting for other people to take a hint. Tactfully, mind you. Phrase it in a relaxed, emotionally neutral way that doesn’t single him out. Something like “Really, I am doing fine. When I’m at work, I just prefer to focus on the work itself instead of talking with people. I’m more at ease that way.”

That being said, is this the kind of work situation where you’re one of many options to make friends with or is it more of a you and him stuck in a room together all day type of thing? He sounds like a lonely person and if the two of you are stuck together then the best idea might be to seek a social compromise between you two’s preferences, like designating some specific portions of the day as times when it’s appropriate to have a conversation. You try to be sociable for him when it’s on, he tries to be quiet for you when it’s off.

The argument against cars also holds that people should live in places where cars aren’t necessary to avoid hermitude in the first place. You don’t need cars to socialize if you can walk to where people are, you don’t need cars for supplies if you can walk to where stuff is.

Long distance travel can have non-car solutions but also it shouldn’t be the default distance to be away from society.

I keep my head down. No legal consequences isn’t the same thing as no consequences.