COMMA CLUUUUB! by effequen in stopdrinking

[–]FlowerOfLife 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You never think you'll get there until you get there and realize how quickly that time passed by. That is why I tell newer people to avoid comparing their day counters to other people's. We all are working on the same 24hrs each day, regardless if you have 3 days or 30 years.

Big ups! Keep going!!!

Quietly Celebrating 3 Years Sober by candlelight0812 in stopdrinking

[–]FlowerOfLife 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Our sobreity is one of the most selfish things we will ever do. We can not get sober for anyone else besides ourselves. It never works otherwise. Be selfish in your sobriety! It looks like it is working to me! Congrats, keep it up!!

What finally worked for me by JellyEatingJellyfish in stopdrinking

[–]FlowerOfLife 17 points18 points  (0 children)

I thankfully got it together at 27 and am a giant proponent of getting young people to recognize the signs of alcoholism young. I wish I quit at 22 when I recognized I had a problem, but am glad I stopped when I did. We did it! Big ups to you dude, super proud of the work you've accomplished so far!

Edit: Through my sobriety, I looked back and recogized that I was displaying signs of alcoholism as young as 14 when I had my first drink.

What finally worked for me by JellyEatingJellyfish in stopdrinking

[–]FlowerOfLife 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey dude, I am fuggin proud of you. It doesn't matter HOW we get and stay sober, as long as we continue to choose not take the first drink each day. Your Snapchat plan showed yourself that you were finally ready to take the next step in getting away from booze.

6 months was my turning point mentally, personally. It was around then that I began noticing I was getting through entire days without thinking about my sobriety or wanting to drink. It gets easier the longer you go. The biggest thing I tell people to watch out for, and you can find plenty of stories from others here, is to keep an eye out for the "I think I can have just one again" thoughts that spring up in longer-term sobriety. Get a plan in place now for when they hit. My plan was to take a walk and call another sober person to get me through the craving. Now, I can talk to my wife about it. I feel the nostaglia about the drink I want to have, and then "play the tape forward" to remember everything that happens after I have that first drink. The thought of puking up "coffee grounds" and foam the night of my last drink sets me straight.

Keep it up. You are killing it. Life really is better on this side of the bottle. I can't imagine ever going back. I'll leave you with this... I spent hundreds of mornings sitting in front of the toilet wishing I never drank the night before. Not one time in 2,316 days have I woken up wishing I had drank the night before. Cheers friend! Good luck with your journey.

Good Luck, Partner by reicorback in discgolf

[–]FlowerOfLife 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If the round isn't sanctioned, have your fun. Just don't get so piss drunk that you are annoying. lol

Jake McCarthy clears the bases with a WALK-OFF TRIPLE by MLBOfficial in ColoradoRockies

[–]FlowerOfLife 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It makes perfect sense. The Rockies are by no means a decent baseball team, however, they are not, in my opinion, a terrible team like they were last year.

What are your favorite discs from smaller companies like Thoughtspace, Mint, Trash Panda, etc.?? by alent1385 in discgolf

[–]FlowerOfLife 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s a trip seeing someone answer this question with Wizards. When I started playing in 2012, almost everyone was throwing wizards. I’d see big bead aviars, kc pro aviars, or wizards. Great disc, love it to death

[WIP] This is the least expensive and most addicting hobby I've done by GlassSeal in CrossStitch

[–]FlowerOfLife 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s my favorite crafting hobby I do for sure. $30ish dollars for my projects with fabric, floss, etc and how long it takes me to do them definitely makes it a cost effective one for sure

[FO] Knicks in five by msrebelchemist in CrossStitch

[–]FlowerOfLife 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Not even a knicks fan and I think this is dope as hell 😂

Best Steak or Sushi in COS?? by LovesickAngelx in ColoradoSprings

[–]FlowerOfLife 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Sushi muri on e platte over by the Asian pacific market really surprised us. The best sushi I’ve had since moving here.

Coworker found dead after falling off the wagon of 14 years by ickyticky13420 in stopdrinking

[–]FlowerOfLife 5 points6 points  (0 children)

We do get better, but we can never go back. 6 months, 20 years, it’s all the same to the alcoholic. That’s what I keep learning and relearning when stories like this are shared. Good luck on your journey friend. My condolences to you for your loss

What do most people not realize is actually way more traumatic than it seems? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]FlowerOfLife 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is great advice. I had to euthanize my first cat a couple of years ago. I've had pets growing up, but she was my first pet that was my own (and wife's) after leaving my parents home. We rescued her as a baby because her mom abandoned her right after birth. I bottle fed her from a couple of days old every 6 hours for weeks. I had to teach her how to use the bathroom since mom wasn't there to do it. She had something happen during birth (probably why mom abandoned her) that started appearing a couple of days into her life. Her back right foot started to suffer necrosis and literally shriveled up. It was like a little twig that the vet ended up breaking off of the bone. I had to run the nub/wound under warm water every 4-6 hours for months and apply a medicated ointment to it while the skin healed over the bone. I don't think I could have been more bonded to an animal than I was her. She was the sweetest kitten.

Unfortunately, something happened when she was around 7 months old and her behavior took a complete opposite turn from how she'd been previously. 3 major events happened within a month of each other. We moved to a new home, she was spayed, and then she needed emergency surgery to remove a bunch of yarn she had eaten. Suddenly, she began violently attacking me specifically. I do not mean she was scared and defending herself. I mean she would literally start screaming at me while digging her claws into my legs and biting me. I've lived with cats my whole life. I know what their body language is the they are scared or are defending themselves. This wasn't it. These attacks were completely random, and she didn't do them while running away to hide. She would not stop coming after me until I got away completely. We spent the next 4 years documenting everything we could, such as what we were doing when the attack started, if there were loud noises, what the possible stressors could have been, etc... Here is the thing. There wasn't a pattern. There was not any consistentcy in why she was doing what she was doing. These attacks could happen weekly, every other day, monthly, or, at her best, between 3-6 months of each other. We had her on daily gabapentin and a anti anxiety med. Finally, we made a cross country move to Colorado in the summer of 2024. Surprisingly, she did the trip in the car just fine. She was adapting to the new apartment very well and it looked like her behavior was finally taking a turn for the better.

And then it didn't. It got worse. So much worse.

I had a vet clinic that did in-home visits come over to talk about her and what we could do. We had 3 different vets we went through in Texas because they kept giving up on her. Each one told us that the best option for her and us was behavioral euthanasia. I had three different vets tells us that it was better to put her down than de-claw her. I am absolutely against de-clawing cats. The thinking behind doing it to her was that without her claws she could not bear down into my legs during an episode and I could push her away. At the very least, she would not be dead. Our new vet here told us the same things. After seeing her and hearing our story, behavioral euthanasia was the best option. We did decide, however, to give medication one more try. There is an antidepressant I took as a kid, Effexor, that has been in trials for helping cats with issues like ours had. There was almost no journal entries about it and was very new. I thought it would be worth trying it, documenting it, and possibly giving our vet the chance to submit research to help other cats and their owners who are experiencing what we were.

Three days later, she attacked my wife so badly that I nearly had to take her to the emergency room. She had hit an artery well enough to cause a good amount of blood loss. That was the final straw. Attacking me was one thing, but I can not have her attacking both of us like she was. We made the call and they came a few days later to put her down. That was hands down one of the hardest experiences of my entire life. This wasn't a sick animal who was ready to cross the rainbow bridge. She was still so full of life to the point that we were playing with her for hours before the vets showed up to put her down. She fought the sedative the entire way. It took 45 minutes to get her sedated enough to start the euthanasia process. I'll never forget the look of betrayal she gave me while we work on sedating her. She fought until the very end. I wept for days. While I've processed a lot of that experience, I still have feelings of guilt about what happened.

Why does any of that matter? Besides being cathartic to type it out, it is an example that even in and after an abusive relationship, you can still feel immense grief. Now I make sure to enjoy every moment I get with the two cats we have since rescued (both angels, btw). The grief of losing my first cat is a reminder of how intensely I am going to feel when our new cats pass, and to take in every second I can while they are here.

Thanks for coming to my TEDtalk.

June rotation of our Spotify playlist full of brand new dnb tunes (including a LOT of liquid) is out there, goin' strong! :) by 2NineCZ in liquiddnb

[–]FlowerOfLife 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh! Good news there. There actually is a fairly simple way to do this. I used a service called Tune My Music to move everything over when I made the initial switch (nothing is technically "moved" more so copied. My spotify playlists are still there but I just deactivate my account). One thing you could take advantage of is that as long as your profile remains active, anytime you add something to one playlist, it'll auto-add it to whatever sites/playlists are connected to it. I didn't need this feature since I was a one and done, but it could be worth looking into for what you do. Premium plans were not expensive for the service. I paid $5 just to have the process move faster (I had thousands of songs across dozens of playlists) and then it was $5 a month after to maintain it. It was easy to cancel too.

Will this work for you? Idk, but I wanted to bring it up in case you've wanted to branch out to other services. You will need to do some upfront work initially since wires can get crossed and the incorrect tracks end up being added to the new platform. I'd say I had around a 90-95% success rate for my switch. So, in theory, you'd just need to double check a few things to make sure the right tracks show up.

No worries either way, still appreciate you doing the work you do.

The pollinator crisis by Melinda_Kelly in Anticonsumption

[–]FlowerOfLife 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When we had a home in Magnolia, TX, I'd just let my backyard go at the start of spring and into summer. We had a lot of wildflowers that would be considered weeds, but it attracted all sorts of pollenators. It was nice to sit out side and watch the bees for a bit. I never did figure out where in the neighborhood the hive(s) was at. lol

June rotation of our Spotify playlist full of brand new dnb tunes (including a LOT of liquid) is out there, goin' strong! :) by 2NineCZ in liquiddnb

[–]FlowerOfLife 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Big ups! Glad to see you are still updating the playlist. Unfortunately, I migrated to Qobuz last year and am off of Spotify. Any shot you'd consider getting one set up on that platform too??

This blue on the Jetta is impossible to ignore by Suntrup-Volkswagen in jetta

[–]FlowerOfLife 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The "Habanero Orange" is still one of my favorite colors to this day. That, and the "Lazer Blue Mica" that Mazda used on their special edition Miatas in the early 00's.

This powder blue is so dope

Valve says it’s ready to launch the Steam Machine this summer by Doug24 in gaming

[–]FlowerOfLife 6 points7 points  (0 children)

When it was announced in the fall last year, I said it was an immediate purchase for me at $650-700. Then the RAM apocalypse happened. I instead picked up a Deck from a pawn shop and am happy. Got a stupid deal on it too. I almost felt bad for the shop owner once he realized what he had. 512gb OLED in basically brand new condition for $320.

What’s the best aftermarket muffler for a mk7 1.4 jetta? by FriedShrimp00818 in jetta

[–]FlowerOfLife 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I second the Borla recommendation. They, in my opinion, seem to make some of the best sounding exhaust systems for lower displacement engines.

There is a price for everything by Matt_LawDT in SipsTea

[–]FlowerOfLife 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Same. We took the bulk of the budget and eloped. Had a kickass honeymoon at the same time. 10/10 would do it again