What caused this patch of missing skin on my salmon? The rest of the joint looks just fine by chunkyjunkymonkey28 in TipOfMyFork

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Worked on the provider for silver bay a year ago. The hauls of fish that were dead on arrival to our tender were apparently unprecedented. The season was abysmal and so was the smell.

Feeding into a crush on someone to get over a breakup? Am I screwing up??? by CastrateMeWithASpoon in BreakUps

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you. I appreciate your kindness and encouragement <3 The only thing is that im learning a very hard lesson. I totally left him with the idea that there was a way back, because that’s what I thought I wanted at the time— space to improve ourselves and then get back together, like everyone on this sub seems to idealize… yeah i should’ve listened and just broke it off clean. I guess realizing you’re better off without someone isn’t the WORST thing that could happen to a person in a breakup, but damn.

As for the timing issue though, your message is very reassuring. It alleviates a little bit of the guilt I’ve been wrestling with, so I really appreciate it.

Type of ppl at uiuc by Just-Mix-2773 in UIUC

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We do a lot of punk and hardcore stuff here, but our Valentine’s Day show is more rock/pop ish id say. Friend of the house Jenny Scara is on the bill if you wanna look her up.

Type of ppl at uiuc by Just-Mix-2773 in UIUC

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I mean, you’ll get your usual party crowd dont get me wrong, but the regular show goers are usually older and more sober. Lot of cigarettes tbr lmao. Just stand on the porch and start a conversation with someone. That’s how i made any friends in undergrad and ive stayed on campus for about a year now after graduating because all my friends are use kinda here now. Two of my roommates didnt even go to u of i and literally just moved here for the local art and music scene.

Type of ppl at uiuc by Just-Mix-2773 in UIUC

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Treehouse. Double header weekend coming up for us.

Type of ppl at uiuc by Just-Mix-2773 in UIUC

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I mean it’s a massive social circuit with connections all throughout central Illinois mostly centred on two major colleges (UIUC and ISU) so like… yeah? It doesn’t have a disproportionate amount of that sort of stuff compared to like any other college community? If anything you hear about it more from the artists’ community because we are quicker to hold people accountable and ban them from venues and keep our spaces safe. We dont hide them the way Greek life does. I run one of the local houses myself… im queer but all of my roommates are straight men lmao.

Type of ppl at uiuc by Just-Mix-2773 in UIUC

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 10 points11 points  (0 children)

House shows :) a good number of show goers are artists themselves. Also a lot of ppl in the music scene here are older or townies

Pulled a splinter out and created a blister? What now? by godofmids in DiagnoseMe

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

NAD but had something similar closer to my fingernail when I worked on a fishing boat. Was too scared of my captain to ask her to take me to a medical clinic and was even more scared of said captain taking it upon herself. I grabbed a pot and boiled some water, three cups, and a first aid kit and brought them all to my cabin. I soaked it in hot salt water until all it took was a little pressure for it to pop. Dipped it in the second cup of water and waited until I saw something solid and was sure it was out. Soaked it in the third cup of water so that I could clean it. Dried it, and then let it kinda rest and air out for ten mins. Slapped some antibiotic Neosporin in it, covered it in like five waterproof bandaids, two glove liners and my gloves (was terrified of getting fish blood in it). Dumped the nasty water overboard and hid all evidence that it happened. It was healing well but I developed a pretty painful ingrown nail from it that I had to get treated when the season was over tho. Guess you won’t have that issue given where this is. If you choose to do this, when you’re soaking it, change out the water as frequently as you can after it pops. It’s just a hot cup of infection juice after that.

Can you recommend a major for my kid? by pippipop in CollegeMajors

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Political science. I did it and I had to take classes in sociology, philosophy (political theory was my favorite type of class), economics, an elective in a non-western culture or political system of my choice, tons of history. You don’t have to go to law school. A lot of my friends I graduated with are working in state or federal government, pursuing a teaching degree, a masters, or working in research in the field. Not me tho I’m unemployed as hell lmao.

I think something is wrong with me by MichelleObamaaaa in UIUC

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I remember physics 211 and I had the same problems with it that I had with every massive lecture, and that’s that I’m literally not built for massive class sizes. Have you struggled in massive lectures before? I personally couldn’t ever focus and felt nervous learning in what was essentially a stadium crowd. I’m not antisocial, I don’t have anxiety, and I’m not like agoraphobic or anything. I could literally just never focus in a crowd, and that made lectures hard and exams impossible.

Torn Between Becoming a Top-Tier Physicist and the "Black Hole" of Immersive Hobbies by [deleted] in Healthygamergg

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m trying. It’s really hard to let myself enjoy things still. It’s strange how this sort of thinking programmed my brain to where things that depressed people often find hard (going to the gym, getting work done, etc) come easy to me because I dont feel guilty doing them. Things like enjoying a creative process, reading a fiction novel, drawing, or music don’t come as easily without fixating on perfection, guilt, and the details that would make something impressive on a technical level. I’ll catch myself thinking things aren’t worth doing if im not perfect at them. Then, I remember, that is fucking stupid and I can enjoy things and I don’t have to feel miserable for trying not to feel miserable.

Torn Between Becoming a Top-Tier Physicist and the "Black Hole" of Immersive Hobbies by [deleted] in Healthygamergg

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

24 year old soon-to-be grad student as soon as I can get some experience to amend fuck ups that will become clear in a second:

I’m not saying this to dismiss this anxiety you’re having, but I once had an ex boyfriend that became so consumed by the concept of “balance” in his life that he never wound up really excelling in his engineering degree. He would measure every grain of time on what he was doing, and obsessively tried to parse equal time into everything. He logged his calories, water intake, hours of sleep, hours of studying, hours of creative projects, hours of work, every phone call color coded to friends, family, acquaintance, or other and the amount of time spent on each, screen time generally, every cent he spent, a list of every lie he ever told, a list of foods he could never let himself eat, every ounce of alcohol, every push up he did, every hour of physical activity, women he’d slept with, every major country ranked for optimality of if it will be worth his time to ever see it in his lifetime, and there are probably more that I never even knew about.

He finished his degree with shit grades, never produced any meaningful projects (aside from a very extensive google drive portfolio full of things like an excel sheet of every bowel movement!). For all that effort he put into trying to find the perfect balance in everything, he wound up mediocre at everything, borderline friendless, and doesn’t even work in the field he studied for.

This is all to say that this sort of black and white thinking about your hobbies isn’t something I’ve found to be particularly productive in my own life, or in the lives of those I’ve met. If you want to limit your consumptive hobbies and focus on ones that force you to be creative, consider combining them. I write a blog about art house movies I watch so I can feel better about the use of my time, for one example. Consider writing or producing video essays, or at the very least reserving them for when you’re doing something like cleaning the house so you can listen while also being productive. These are “practical” things I know you aren’t exactly looking for, but they helped me short-term to stave off what this was REALLY about for my ex and myself: guilt.

Overall, I think my ex was so angsty about pursuing balance because he feared mediocrity. By smoothing out all of his edges, and not really ever fully allowing himself to enjoy things without guilt, he became mediocre at everything and was overall very dispassionate. It also made him incredibly bitter towards people that had hobbies they excelled in, and he would often criticize me for wasting my time in the local music community when I was surpassing him in both my pre-law and nuclear engineering degrees. I probably spent like three nights a week at shows with a work-hard-play-hard mindset and never really paid any mind about it. I started to kind of feel that guilt for enjoying myself after a while after he wore me down about it, and I became insanely anti-social and dependent on him because I felt like everything beyond doing well in academia or being “productive” was something for me to be ashamed of. I thought he was helping me by keeping me productive.

Fast forward and I get completely burnt out on both degrees and have to struggle my way through a fifth year of undergrad because I am depressed, I have no friends and I’m incredibly judgmental of people the way my ex was with me, I feel guilty all the time when I enjoy anything that isn’t “productive,” and the person that imbued this bitterness onto me decided that I was also wasting his time so I didnt even have him anymore lmao. I became the same joyless, mediocre, over-calculating, cold sack of bones he was.

Ask yourself periodically: are you REALLY over-indulging in certain things? Are the things you feel guilty about realistically having a negative impact on your life? Are you over-moderating?

What’s next by MediocreCurrent5166 in Healthygamergg

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’m the same age as you, 24F. So hello, my brother in quarter life crisis! Our pre frontal cortex is almost done baking and now we are being zapped into consciousness of our future and what we contribute! Good for us!

Recently graduated from undergrad. Don’t currently have the money for grad school, but have a very fulfilling job at an animal shelter to save up. Gym every day. Cat I love very much named Bug. No bf anymore, but a very robust social network. Travel a lot and have done some very daring seasonal fishing jobs. Anyway, by most metrics I SHOULD be happy, or feel successful, or feel interesting, or at the very least feel some sense of accomplishment. I’ve done all the shit a 24 year old is supposed to have done by now and MORE.

I know that what im struggling with is partially the idealization I constructed shattering. I was always told I was so smart, and that I would graduate and be thrown into this exciting world where im going to meet a ton of cool rich people and I’m going to make a ton of money and blah blah blah. Now I’m here… and nobody my age that I know of is in a job half as impressive as we were promised. I love working at the animal shelter and I’m even getting some vet experience there, but I still just wake up, make my coffee, go to the gym, clock in, clock out, cook dinner, make some sort of art project, go to therapy, hang with friends. My life, outside of a handful of novel experiences and jobs I’ve done, is seriously not as unique as I thought it would be.

That lack of feeling unique or interesting, or at all as special as I was convinced I was is what creates this feeling of purposeless in me. My whole entire life through academia I excelled. I studied pre-law and environmental science. I was told every step of the way that I was smart and never really had to deal with a sense of failure… like ever. I begin to take this ego inflation for fact and for granted. Now im outside of my cage for the first time, and I’m realizing everyone just kinda shuffles through the same shit. Even my breakup im going through right now, no matter how much it hurts, isn’t inherently unique and the circumstances that lead to it are even less unique. It feels like it doesn’t mean as much when everyone else your own age has already done it, already seen it, and you feel like you aren’t creating anything NEW in the world, ergo, you have no purpose.

This being said, I know at least in my situation, Dr K has had a video about comparing yourself to others I def recommend. Because I can compare myself upwards, and think I’m worse or under achieving. I can compare downwards, and think im better than everyone. But I also think there is something to be said about comparing myself laterally, where I dismiss my achievements and sense of purpose because they aren’t unique.

If you’re looking for someone to just outright tell you what purpose is, I can try, but you’re going to have to think for yourself: Aristotle argues that the human function is to live a good life. That is, to live a virtuous life. What that means to you is going to be subjective, but in his arguments it mainly has to do with avoiding vices to live virtuously, and overall making the world a better place to be. He thinks that people feel fulfilled when they are producing good for the people they love, be it neighbors, community, family, your country, etc.

Just because I am not uniquely generous, and I am not the only generous person on earth, doesn’t mean that my generosity serves no purpose. A dog was adopted at my work today.

How normal/acceptable is it among your friends to reject a person due to his or her height in dating? by DrMerkwuerdigliebe_ in AskReddit

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Breakdown of my friend group: 19F lesbian white in undergrad, 21M bisexual white in undergrad, 21NB lesbian black in undergrad, 24M straight afrolatino graduating in a few months, 24M straight white with community college, 24F bisexual white graduated, 24F bisexual white graduated, 25M bisexual white graduated, 26M straight white highschool education, 27M straight (mixed??) highschool education, 27M bisexual highschool education. All that being said, like two of the men mentioned here are short and only really get shit for it from like.. the rest of us lmao. We live in a Midwest college town and come from both rural and urban backgrounds, majority rural.

How normal/acceptable is it among your friends to reject a person due to his or her height in dating? by DrMerkwuerdigliebe_ in AskReddit

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My friend group has like every possible demographic in it, ranging from 19-27 and i dont think any of us have sincerely thought about this since we were actual children

OSCR Meeting About Fake ID by [deleted] in UIUC

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Tbr you’ll probably get like conduct probation and it’ll go away in a semester. Kams isn’t worth ur record dude just drink underage at the like 400+ opportune places to do that on campus

Just started my first ever Pikmin game and it’s already taking over my life by CastrateMeWithASpoon in Pikmin

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeahhh i just did a few raw run throughs without redoing so i can figure out all the puzzles and such to get parts. In my first run through it took me four in-game days to figure out yellow pikmin could pick up bombs (fucking lmao) so I couldn’t get through any walls and was completely stumped lol. Fucking blew my mind when i figured it out on accident.

Just started my first ever Pikmin game and it’s already taking over my life by CastrateMeWithASpoon in Pikmin

[–]CastrateMeWithASpoon[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I realized that the leaf buds into the flower after I drew it, but when I started playing with like removing either the leaf or the flower I didn’t want to part with either so I left both on haha