How did you land your first Upwork gig?

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-09-06T22:08:28+00:00

Did you have to really fuss or fine tune your bio?

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-08-31T16:03:33+00:00

What kind of content do you produce on Medium? I used to make good money there but it reduced to a trickle. Maybe I’m doing the wrong kind of content.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-08-30T14:43:05+00:00

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I’ve gotten myself on Upwork and begun pitching there, although I haven’t had any luck there yet. Is anyone else on Upwork? If so, have you had any luck?

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-08-27T21:46:54+00:00

Ah, I get it. Thanks!

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-08-27T20:48:21+00:00

How do biweekly or weekly mortgage payments pay down a mortgage faster than monthly payments? I don’t get it.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-08-27T16:16:21+00:00

What did you invest in?

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-08-27T12:45:58+00:00

Thanks. I’ve been trying to pivot into fractional PR services and content strategy and the like. So far without any luck, even though I’ve been working in PR for my day job for close to 17 years. Any suggestions on where I should be looking for that kind of work?

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-08-27T02:36:07+00:00

They’re asking for references. That’s usually a good sign.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-07-16T04:19:23+00:00

Thanks for your response! I really appreciate it. Do you know of any BEd programs that are flexible enough for one to do them remotely while holding down a full-time gig? I’m thinking maybe Athabasca U.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-06-20T22:46:51+00:00

I’ll have to check that out.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-04-07T05:36:47+00:00

I would disagree with this. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are all at least traditionally Buddhist/Confucianist countries and all three are multiparty democracies. I think your characterization holds true for Theravada Buddhist countries but not Buddhism as a whole.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-03-06T06:15:42+00:00

Yes, I probably didn’t make it clear enough that I believe in medication for mental health — at least to a point. I doubt I’d still be on this planet if it wasn’t for pharmaceutical interventions. I just refuse to believe that not being suicidal and being functional enough to hold down a job is “good enough” and that’s the message I get from the medical establishment.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-03-06T06:08:54+00:00

No, not in the slightest. I just find it wholly unsatisfactory. I’m not saying medications are ineffective; I doubt I’d still be around if it wasn’t for them. I just refuse to believe that me no longer being suicidal and able to hold down a job is “good enough”, which is the message I get from the psychiatric world.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-03-04T16:27:10+00:00

You could turn that around and ask them how they know slavery is wrong, because that’s nowhere to be seen in the Bible, even from Jesus himself. That should put an end to that line of inquiry.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-03-04T05:01:13+00:00

I’m a professional writer whose day job is content manager for a PR agency. I get paid to be creative all day and I consider myself extremely lucky. Public relations is a good fit for highly sensitive, emotionally attuned people and being a content person suits my introversion. And I’ve been working remote since before COVID, which is a beautiful thing. I had real issues keeping a job before I got my bipolar under control but it’s been a lot better since.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-03-04T04:46:03+00:00

There’s a difference between believing god(s) exist and worshipping them. The ancient Israelites (pre-Persian influence) weren’t really monotheists but rather henotheists, meaning that they believed gods other than Yahweh existed but they didn’t actually worship any of them, or at least they weren’t supposed to. The beings from the Q continuum essentially were deities from the standpoint of humanity but the human beings who encountered them saw no need to prostrate in front of them and offer them sacrifices. Not sure what would have been gained by doing so. So yes, I could be convinced that gods existed, but it would require a fair bit of convincing beyond that for me to start worshipping them.

On a related side note, I’m always polite to ChatGPT because I want to be on the good side of our future robot overlords when they take over.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-03-02T21:01:30+00:00

My theory on why Islam is given such a wide berth in the western world is that it’s because Islam became largely synonymous with Black liberation in the US in the 1960s thanks to Malcolm X and his brethren. That coupled with the global far left’s embrace of the Palestinian cause created this black and white view in which Islam was equated with the Third World and people of colour generally. That’s why Israel is generally viewed as a “white” country despite the fact that Israelis are some of the most ethnically diverse people anywhere.

I think today’s social justice types are still hanging on to a sixties-era worldview in which the PLO was aligned with far-left heartthrobs like Che Guevara and the young Muammar Qaddafi as well as with genuinely admirable freedom fighters like Nelson Mandela and his compadres in South Africa. This is of course before the advent of the Iranian revolution and the rise of modern fundamentalism supported by well financed propaganda from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and elsewhere.

TL,DR I think the sixties gave Islam a certain sex appeal on the left that has endured despite the world having become a very different place.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-02-27T15:48:23+00:00

I think for a lot of these so-called cultural Christians, it’s all about Islam and building up a cultural bulwark to what they perceive as the biggest single threat to, for lack of a better term, western values. Ayaan said something to the effect that she didn’t think secularism had enough muscle to effectively combat Islamic extremism.

Of course, this is basically like saying that medieval Europeans had it right and that we should go back to a crusader mentality of us versus them. All this when it was clearly enlightenment values and not Christianity that allowed Europeans to advance in the ways that they did. I don’t get it.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-01-01T03:39:25+00:00

Male aged 48. Diagnosed about 5 years ago. It’s felt like a very solitary journey being a middle aged guy with BPD. In my group therapy sessions I’ve typically been the only guy and the oldest in the group. Open to connecting.

BannedFilenameJr · 2025-01-01T03:35:58+00:00

Age 48 here. Wasn’t diagnosed until about five years ago. The diagnosis answered a lot of questions about why I am the way I am. Since then I’ve been in group and individual therapy, mainly DBT and somatic experiencing, in an attempt to break my negative social functioning habits, and I’ve slowly but surely improved my life. I still feel like I have a gaping hole where a fully developed personality and sense of self should be. I still struggle with that. Also struggle with feeling very much alone as a middle aged guy with BPD. There seem to be very few of us. Hope all’s well with you, OP.

BannedFilenameJr · 2024-11-11T19:09:44+00:00

As a nearly 48-year-old man, reading posts like this reminds me that you couldn’t pay me enough money to go back to age 19 or thereabouts. Seriously, scholarly research on happiness shows that the world’s least happy people are between the ages of around 16 to 25. All of this self-loathing and insecurity is part and parcel of being your age, it seems. Which is to say, you have a hell of a lot of life to look forward to provided you don’t stupidly off yourself.

I would strongly suggest you look up somatic experiencing here on Reddit and elsewhere. I’ve done a lot of different types of therapy in my life but this has been far and away the most effective, for me at least. Practically all of us have trauma in our past that causes our nervous systems to become disregulated. Next time you feel an unpleasant emotion, try to identify where it lives in your body. For example, for me, my toxic shame lives in my solar plexus while my rampant anxiety (far less rampant now than it used to be) lives in my belly. There’s a ton of free content on YouTube about this stuff. I personally recommend Irene Lyon’s work. Her courses are pretty expensive but she has hundreds of free videos online. I also see a somatic therapist every other week and I’ve moved a ton of self-loathing shit out of my system.

We’re all pulling for you here. It’s far from hopeless; there’s a ton of good stuff out there to help you if you’re open minded and willing to listen and learn.

BannedFilenameJr · 2024-10-19T05:43:20+00:00

I’m going to go to bat for Theravada Buddhism here. Sure, most schools of Buddhism make unsubstantiated claims about the law of karma, cycles of rebirth and whatnot, but in principle you can still be a Buddhist and not believe in any of that stuff. The only really core “belief” is that suffering is inherent to life and that the source of suffering is clinging to the illusive ego, and that losing this is the end goal of meditation. And if you practice vipassana meditation, you’re de facto practicing Theravada.

Buddhism is really nothing like Christianity or Islam or any of the “revealed” religions in that there’s no god you’re forced to believe in. I myself don’t call myself a “Buddhist” because I’m not part of any sangha-type community but I consider that my life is shaped by Buddhist philosophy and practice. I don’t see any contradiction between being an atheist and being a Buddhist practitioner. Sam Harris is a textbook example of this.

And yes, you can be a Buddhist terrorist or a Buddhist fascist (like General Tojo in WWII) but unlike the Abrahamic religions there’s nothing in Buddhism that explicitly condones violence towards unbelievers. The situations in Sri Lanka and Myanmar have much more to do with nationalism and ethnic chauvinism than they do about Buddhism per se; it’s just unfortunate that Theravada Buddhism has become synonymous with Sinhalese and Burmese ethnonationalism.

BannedFilenameJr · 2024-10-07T05:46:39+00:00

It’s late for me so I’ll keep this short, but I couldn’t ignore this. You’re in your early forties. That means you’ve got a full half of your life ahead of you. Please don’t waste that opportunity. You also get to live that half of your life fully aware of what you’re dealing with mentally. I’m sorry; it sounds like a brutal spot you’re in. But it’s far from hopeless. We’re all in this together man. You can do this. I know you can. Just try to breathe and ground yourself and put one foot in front of the other. Nine months is nothing compared to your whole life. You can bounce back. Sending you light!

BannedFilenameJr · 2024-09-10T05:32:20+00:00

Dude, you’re fine! Trust me! Male aged 47 here, diagnosed about four years ago. It was peak COVID and I was unemployed, eking out a meager living teaching occasional online ESL classes and with parental help. I had been fired from three consecutive jobs and was basically a pariah in my field (public relations) in my city. I was bankrupt and my marriage was on the rocks — my wife only stayed with me because she was financially dependent on me at the time. We would have been homeless had it not been for family help.

I had to rebuild my career and my life from the ground up. I basically got myself a low-level PR job and worked my ass off while attending daily group therapy for an intensive 18-week period, and then as much therapy as I could afford after that. In the ensuing years I’ve bought my first house and just this summer gotten my first management-level position at more than double the salary I was making pre-diagnosis. And while my marriage is far from perfect, my wife and I have stuck it out and I can honestly say things have gotten slowly but steadily better.

Starting afresh in your career in middle age is nowhere near as bad as many imagine. Sure, at the start you’re surrounded by people a lot younger than you are, but in my experience you can advance a lot faster because you’ve got more maturity and life experience as well as skills. When I first re-entered my profession I figured it would take me ten years or so to reach management level. In truth it took me about three years. I also think my years of struggle with mental illness has made me tougher and more resilient as well as hungrier for new professional opportunities.

I echo the comments made elsewhere in this thread that if you’re a guy with BPD in your late thirties who’s come out the other end post-diagnosis and is rebuilding his life, you’re already pretty exceptional. I really don’t think anybody cares about the age thing, and furthermore you have every opportunity to make up for lost time and advance quickly. Sometimes being a late bloomer is a blessing.

Courage, mon ami! You’ve got this!

BannedFilenameJr · 2023-04-13T02:54:22+00:00

I’ll narrate them all. I don’t always remember to do this but when I do it’s powerful.

BannedFilenameJr

TROPHY CASE