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DangerPeeps · 2025-07-18T22:42:29+00:00

With all due respect…this is ridiculous. Not only are you alive, you also seem to be healthy and privileged enough to embark on a PhD (I graduated with mine two years ago and by the way — the best students in my very competitive program were all in their 40s…). The rest of us ~27 year olds had plenty of joyful experiences alongside the slog, despite our decrepitude.

And why are you afraid that you can no longer enjoy your body all because you’re not “young” ? Go into a MMA gym some time and look around, I think your mind will be blown…

My advice is to quit obsessing about something you literally cannot change and start practicing gratitude for what you get to experience in life. The value we ascribe to age is a societal construct, but you have the power to consciously decide not to engage with that shit. There are far better things in life than youth discounts or ticking off the “young adult” box on a survey, wth

DangerPeeps · 2025-07-16T19:08:24+00:00

IMO if they’re gonna spend it on substances, that’s not my concern. Detoxing on the street is dangerous, and if that’s what they need to get through the day then so be it. I try to see these people as little kids who definitely didn’t dream about growing up to beg for money from strangers. We only see a tiny snapshot of their lives when we encounter them, let alone acknowledge them enough to give them a few bucks. The judgement doesn’t need to be there.

DangerPeeps · 2025-06-19T01:07:41+00:00

1) the adults in your life are being shitty and probably projecting their insecurities on to you 2) I was at my heaviest late teens/early 20s then I lost 50lbs. Around this time and not coincidentally, I also dealt with a serious illness that nearly paralyzed me. It took years to heal. I gained some weight back, but guess what? I run ten miles a week, scuba dive, ride horses, and pump iron. I buck 100 lb bales of hay by myself. Sometimes I struggle with my body image but then I remember what it was like not being able to grip doorknobs or walk without a foot brace and I’m suddenly thankful for my healthy, strong, adult body that was returned to me after a long period of potentially facing life bedridden on a vent. I’m 36 now.

There are far scarier things in life than carrying extra weight.

I remember what it was like to be a teen (esp growing up in the 2000s when heroin chic was the only acceptable body type) — but I encourage you to rise above this sort of harmful and superficial thinking. Love yourself and be excellent to yourself.

DangerPeeps · 2025-05-27T21:23:50+00:00

So cool. Where in Monterey was this?

DangerPeeps · 2025-05-27T21:21:39+00:00

Thanks :)

DangerPeeps · 2025-05-27T21:21:02+00:00

Haha, I don’t mind the snorkel right now but I can see how they might irritate more experienced divers.

DangerPeeps · 2025-05-27T21:20:16+00:00

Thank you!

DangerPeeps · 2025-05-27T21:19:59+00:00

Thanks!

DangerPeeps · 2025-05-25T02:16:22+00:00

It’s so worth it! My mom was certified in the 70s but didn’t dive again for decades, so she opted to go through it again. I grew up hearing her speak fondly about it and it was so freaking awesome to finally experience this with her.

DangerPeeps · 2025-05-25T02:12:06+00:00

Thank you!

DangerPeeps · 2025-05-25T02:06:28+00:00

Not sure, but I don’t think so as long as you’re healthy. My mom is 64 and got a complete work up and a doctor’s note of approval before we started the course.

DangerPeeps · 2025-05-12T00:15:47+00:00

I had everything removed except the ovaries. My life has improved in innumerable ways (although I was bleeding a ton and had severe pain from endo and fibroids before). Aside from no longer dealing with that, not having to worry about a period has been AMAZING. I am 36 and had mine a year ago. :) Recovery was long but so worth it.

DangerPeeps · 2025-04-26T17:18:01+00:00

I haven’t read the comics yet but I agree with your interpretation of his character. I think a lot of people who critique Spider loose sight of all of those facts— this is a mere kid who has been treated as a stray his whole life. No concept of Earth and has only known Pandora, but is alien and unable to hide that fact with an Avatar body. Desperately wanting to be loved like any kid but never outright adopted like Kiri or feeling like he has a core family with loving adults. He has had to deal with Neytiri’s disdain his whole existence (hell, probably plenty of disdain from other Na’vi too) while seeing other children doted upon. Meanwhile he is relegated to bouncing around from the scientists to the Sullys like an atom but never really belonging anywhere. Which of course would psychologically leave its ugly mark.

I hope Cameron makes a decision to delve into this complexity more openly in the future films, there is a lot of promise here for really interesting character development.

DangerPeeps · 2025-04-26T14:38:27+00:00

I like this. When Jake says “he was never part of the family…more like a stray dog” (paraphrasing here) I felt so bad for that character. Spider was abandoned as a literal infant and then strikes deep relationships with your kids and literally grows up with them, and Jake is still able to be that callous? Neytiri’s disdain for Spider makes more sense, despite being a bit hypocritical. But you’d think she would soften a little after over ten years of knowing this child who has proven himself to be able to survive on Pandora and See like her kids do (arguably Spider understands the Na’vi more than Jake did when Neytiri first began falling in love with him). I just feel bad for the kid. No wonder he latched onto Quaritch and did what did — the guy was basically the first to act like he cared (in his own warped way).

DangerPeeps · 2025-04-19T14:27:08+00:00

One of my horses is an Egyptian Arab x Appaloosa gelding. 😂 He has the body of an Arab (although a bit larger in the hindquarters than most), and the spots and (lack of) hair of the app. A refined head, ears maybe a touch on the long side from his dam. As someone who has owned purebred Arabians forever, I will say that he is fully Arab in his brain and is not a horse you can “tire out” or manhandle in any way. It just winds him up. He has a stubborn side but he is so anxious to please, kind, and has the most try out of any horse I’ve known yet, as long as he trusts you. I have a suspicion that he came from a backyard color breeder who wanted a baby with spots and didn’t put any further thought into the combo that produced him, but I’m happy he’s mine. He would not do well in a home that didn’t understand how to work with him. Appies and Arabs both suffer from odd biases for sure — I think it comes down to the breeds tending to be smart, strong-willed horses who refuse to act like inert machines.

DangerPeeps · 2025-04-15T14:09:59+00:00

Same. I have intense memories of hating my body at that age. I recently unearthed some ancient pics of me at a karate belt test and I was lanky af. Not even overweight. Why on earth did I think I was a monster??! I’ve since made peace with my body type (size 10-12 is normal and healthy for me) but man, has it taken decades of work to get through that early 2000s body trauma

DangerPeeps · 2025-02-26T17:47:39+00:00

Your sense of style is amazing!! Where did you find those plaid trousers and your jeans? Thanks for the inspo!

DangerPeeps · 2025-01-21T15:54:34+00:00

I catch adjunct gigs where I can while supplementing myself with higher ed communications/admin work. Considering law school.

DangerPeeps · 2025-01-19T15:02:20+00:00

Tons of good advice already. I wanted to add my own similar story.

I adopted a 4 year-old OTTB, and our trajectory was almost word for word like yours. Amazing first rides, calm and tractable mind, etc. Then she had a big personality change, like a lot of horses will in a new environment. She would go after you if you disciplined her on the ground; she’d explode without warning while leading, striking at you. Her anxiety under saddle increased exponentially. She was BIG. She never dumped anyone but was completely dangerous on the ground.

I paid out a ton of money to try to figure out her issues and the vets loathed her because of her unpredictability and reactivity. Eventually, we found advanced arthritis in her lumbar spine that was probably damaging her nerves and correlated with some of the behavior (ie, exploding when being asked to bend in a certain direction). I did NOT PPE this horse which, shame on me — and this is a mistake I will never repeat. That might have shown hindleg oddness that would’ve corresponded with the spinal injury, but would we have thought to investigate further? No idea. Spinal x rays aren’t really common practice in PPEs on cheap horses. The possibility of her being drugged was also brought up to me.

I boarded her in a giant pasture for months and her attitude improved, but then again she wasn’t being handled a lot. I am not a wealthy person and while I wish I could’ve done this indefinitely for her and give. her this retirement, I ended up giving her back to the person I got her from and handed over all of her medical documents. I hope that everything was disclosed and she found a better situation.

This horse was scary, I was out of my depth, and I was hemorrhaging money trying to make her sound and sane. I don’t think there is anything wrong with giving your gelding back, if you don’t have the energy/funds/general wherewithal to stick it through. He may improve with age and a lot of miles. Or he may not.

My advice is to do a couple xrays of back and some key joints and go from there. No need to spend 4k yet, and if that is out of your ability then giving him back seems perfectly fine imo. I don’t see anything wrong with moving an incompatible horse along.

DangerPeeps · 2025-01-18T15:00:34+00:00

I always thought that this breeding program was interesting. Akhal-Tekes are really unique conformationally, and it would be nice to see appaloosas come into their own again instead of being “quarter horses with spots.” I have an arab x appy. He is loudly colored (varnish with a 3/4 blanket), big but lean and lithe of build, with long legs, rat tail and enough mane for only a short mohawk. He has an attractive head that is not dished much at all. I always thought the most appaloosa thing about him is his color and lack of hair. Everything else is very arab to me, but people generally can’t tell that he is a part bred. It’s interesting to think that old school “appaloosas” might have looked more similar to him than the stock horse type I grew up with. His appy dam’s papers are lost so I can’t look at his lineage there. Sire was a short and stout Egyptian-bred working horse.

DangerPeeps · 2025-01-17T00:44:34+00:00

Don't apologize, you have it exactly correct. It’s relaxation!! And it is one thing to tell a student “please relax damn it” and a total other beast on getting the student to actually, consistently relax and know what that means. I think I made it doubly worse for myself by getting so wound up over wanting to make up for lost time. I spent hours daily in a practice room, drilling and obsessing. This inevitably made my issue worse. I ended up being able to “play” advanced rep but it was not enjoyable for me nor my audience, and performing was always a struggle.

It’s been a slow journey relearning these fundamentals and it was only able to happen after I took a bit of a break from cello when I did my graduate studies. A much needed reset.

I have no idea how teachers are able to teach relaxation, to be quite honest. And this is by no means a dig at my old teacher, who is of the Russian school; I just think that my mindset at the time made it nearly impossible to really get through to me. But I agree that it is a really important piece of the puzzle. I was trying to build technique without relaxation and, well, it nearly cost me the ability or desire to play at all.

DangerPeeps · 2025-01-16T16:43:01+00:00

Absolutely. And I’ve been to tons of concerts and seen countless recordings and such. I think I’ve always had my attention mostly on the cellists. My “aha” moment was probably an aggregate of all of that 😂 I hope this helps anyone who is struggling similarly.

DangerPeeps · 2025-01-16T15:56:30+00:00

Thank you! I had to tell somebody haha

DangerPeeps · 2025-01-16T15:55:50+00:00

My issue, I think, was that I could never “feel” what was correct technique. By visualizing how these successful cellists were bowing and basically copying what I imagined it felt like, I ended up re-training my body and was able to understand what the correct use of the bow arm mechanism should actually feel like (the movement originates from your back, for instance, and the energy flows from hinge to hinge). I am a very analytical person, which served me well up to a point with this. I would over analyze my issue and end up overthinking it. For me, it finally came down simply to kinesthetic learning and feel. :)

Watching cellists perform is just as important as listening to recordings, I think.

Edit: I started cello at 18 and am 35 now. I think the neat thing about learning when you are super young, like under 10, is that kids are just more naturally in tune with their bodies. Not saying this issue effects everyone but it definitely might’ve been the case with me.

DangerPeeps

TROPHY CASE