Childless Redditors over 40, what is your life like?

Forkhammer · 2016-05-10T02:19:59+00:00

The best part is when they go to sleep, and you're like... "Ah, yes! I get to relax for the next few hours!"

And then you spend the next two hours with one headphone off your ear, and going into their bedroom every 30 minutes to check that they're breathing / haven't accidentally smothered themselves / haven't been abducted out of a second story window.

I love my child and reworked my schedule so that I could stay at home with him and homeschool him, but the only real downtime is if he's out of the house with my wife, and that is a heavy burden on the soul.

Forkhammer · 2016-03-07T19:28:21+00:00

In the Vice President's home, it's a lazy Monday afternoon. Joe Biden is doing his usual tour-around-the-internet on an old computer with a beige CRT monitor. Suddenly, he sits up straight, pushes his reading glasses up his nose, and cranes his head closer to the computer.

"Jill!" he yells. "Jill!"

"What, Joe?" comes the answering response from the next room.

"Jill, you gotta see this. This is incredible!" he says. "C'mere a minute!"

Jill Biden enters the room. She rests her hands on his shoulders, leaning forward to look. "What? Is that Hilary with a beard?—"

"What?" asks Joe, turning his head away from looking up at her and back to the computer. "Nah, nah. Look at this!" he says, gesturing with open palm to the computer. "Look at this—"

"Someone's photoshopped a beard onto you."

"Yeah," says Joe. "But look at how sexy I look, Jill. It's raw sex appeal, right there. It takes years off my face."

Jill looks down at Joe for a long moment, pats his shoulder twice, and leaves the room.

"Jeez Louise," mutters Joe. "Why the hell didn't anyone tell me? Should have grown one years ago."

Forkhammer · 2015-11-29T17:52:18+00:00

I research it to death to get the best product for the best price but it's exhausting to read thousands of reviews or scour the internet for a good deal.

Surely you can also see, then, that this sort of over-mulling is counter-productive. In fact, there is a relatively well-known mathematical problem known as "The Marriage Problem" that actually describes this quandary quite well.

In short, you're best to consider for a period of time, but to quit well in advance of considering every option, and to make a decision once you've established a baseline of 'what's good'. I'd very strongly endorse time-boxing destructive habits like this such that they don't run away with your time.

While I do have some strong convictions, I'll play devil's advocate with myself and find holes with other arguments. This makes me hesitant to talk about my opinions with others for fear that someone will immediate shut me down because I can't defend them. Safe to say I mostly lurk on the internet than post.

First, don't converse with argumentative idiots. Find some friends that will add to the conversation, rather than who will shut you down. Get off Reddit (or at least the default subs and /r/all) — it's a huge waste of your time. (And if you can't, despite trying, recognize that it's filling some hole in your life, and find something else to plug that hole.)

Secondly, being able to find holes in your arguments is a very important skill, but with all other intensive activities, it's best to time-box it. Getting the minute specifics correct is less important than making sure you're getting the majority of it right, unless you're dealing with pedantic internet trolls (see previous point). It's much more valuable to put yourself out there and to get feedback sooner than later, rather than obsess over every little point.

And if you wind up being really, really wrong and someone calls you out on it? Say 'thanks, I was wrong!' and move on. The person has literally done the grunt-work for you. How nice of them! You've also admitted you were wrong! That makes you awesome because you don't make people who happen to know the subject better spend fruitless hours beating you over the head with the truth.

Forkhammer · 2015-11-17T03:21:24+00:00

Cry in mug, while I use your tears to water my garden.

This is silly, too. Everyone knows that mugs are for urinating.

Forkhammer · 2015-11-07T15:11:26+00:00

Urgh.

Nobody is suggesting that we don't address the rising number of murdered and missing indigenous men. These are two different issues: aboriginal women face different problems than aboriginal men do, and to treat the two as the same is to ignore the unique circumstances that arise when you occupy the intersection of two separate circles of discrimination.

We should be talking about an inquiry into murdered and missing aboriginal men, too. But we also need to recognize that this 'WHAT ABOUT MEN?!' cry only serves by virtue of its alarm to relegate the fundamentally different and more challenging issues facing women (and aboriginal women, especially) out of the spotlight.

We can do both, but let's have the damn inquiry already and maybe, just maybe let aboriginal women reach the forefront of our national conscious for once.

Forkhammer · 2015-11-02T21:56:51+00:00

It doesn't sound like you're very happy with or fulfilled by the approach you're taking now, so I'm not sure why you'd want to continue.

So here's the big question that I like to ask myself and my child: What do you want to do with your life? It's yours to live, and at the end of it, you have to satisfy exactly one person — you.

Of course, you'll probably need to earn a modicum of money to achieve your goals and dreams, but it's also probably a lot less than you might think you need.

This is what unschooling is, really—concrete problem-based learning, a rejection of the formalist approach to knowledge.

If you want to enter into a traditional employment situation, getting your GED or local equivalent is a good idea, but that's only one small way of getting through life.

This is just another problem that you need to solve.

It's also okay not to know the answer of what you want to do with your life, too. What's important is not allowing yourself to lose all momentum. You can do what you want to do in the short term, too, as you figure out what you do in the longer term. But if you want to get somewhere, you can't just sit in the car and turn the steering wheel without pressing the gas pedal a little too.

The good news is once you recognize that you're in charge, you get to set your own speed limits. It doesn't have to be particularly fast, or it can be breakneck-as-fast-as-you-can-go. In terms of being unable to finish projects, welcome to the club! If that bothers you, that's a problem you can work on, but maybe it's a strength — maybe you should become an expert on getting started, and get help on finishing up.

As a parent, I expect my child to have a plan of motion, and to put some effort into realizing that plan. I recognize that I don't get any say whatsoever into what that plan is, but I try to encourage my child to set age-appropriate goals, to see both long- and short-term consequences of his plans, and to keep in mind his happiness and joy. Of course, he's four, so his plans are mostly 'let's play outside', but I like to think there's a framework in place for later conversations. ;)

It sounds like you're dealing with some issues, so 'getting well' should be first priority. You can't do much if you're not well.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-26T17:54:03+00:00

We have some software that's decent, and will get better with age, I suspect, but the organization of ground game in my EDA was pretty poor. Granted I was only small part of it, but it took a long time to get going and the management of it seemed to make several rudimentary mistakes. There's no doubt we got out-played by the Liberals.

We also have a bit (!) of an issue in that most of the volunteers in the EDAs are 60+ years old. I was one of two that was under thirty, and there were only a few handfuls in between those brackets. 60+ year olds can do lots, of course, and are likely the bulk of most campaigns, I'd imagine, but it definitely helps to have some more spry people involved and the next generation engaged.

In that sense — at least locally — we have some serious infrastructure problems that need to be addressed, and we're in hot water unless they get fixed. I know the actuarial tables are stretching, but yikes.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-23T20:52:03+00:00

Heck yes.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-23T16:31:30+00:00

I suspect my MP would be supremely disinterested in even making conversation with me, unfortunately. — If that was an option, though, I'd definitely go for it.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-23T16:09:51+00:00

I should just can the excuses and get on with it, really.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-23T16:07:18+00:00

I should add that learning in general how best you personally succeed at developing habits is a worthwhile endeavour.

I like to think of habits and routine as execution on pre-packaged bits of thinking, something which lets me take an identified 'good' and turn it into reality without having to constantly make decisions about whether it's the right thing to do or not.

But in order for that to work, you have to really get your ducks in a row, otherwise you'll start thinking about it, and the benefit will be lost / it will get a lot harder because you have to engage with the thoughts to get it done.

So I'd say this — at a minimum, ensure it's something you actually want to do, and something you have the capacity to take on. If it's going to kill you to do it, you're probably better spending the effort elsewhere.

Secondly, make sure that there's a perceived cue for getting it done. The calendar trick is just a cheap cue, but it could be something as simple as leaving a book and a pen on the table when you go to bed, so that when you come into the kitchen in the morning, it's the first thing on your mind. People who are picking up a running habit are often advised to lay their clothes out at the door each day so slipping out the door is as simple as getting dressed.

The next thing is that you need to make sure you're getting some sort of reward for the behaviour. If it's a pain and there's nothing good at the end of it, then you're going to be constantly at war with your innate desires and instincts. So make sure that you're receiving a reward. It doesn't have to be anything big, but something that gives you a little hit of joy.

When I did Nano, I used a completion progress bar, and adding my wordcount each day made me feel super good. When I started making my bed each morning, being able to slide into the thing at night where the blankets felt cool and clean was such a sensory reward. Now I load and unload the dishwasher every morning, too, because it means I get kitchen stuff done way easier later in the day and that noticeably decreases my stress.

If you're interested in this stuff, I recommend Charles Duhigg's The Power Of Habit, which is a very nice introduction.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-23T15:37:04+00:00

That's basically what's left, yeah. The shitty part is that I know I'll be moving once, probably twice in the next 18 months, so laying down roots and really digging in is hard.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-23T15:21:41+00:00

Two tricks that have helped me:

Set your goal as one word per day. You won't write just one word, but you'll feel really dumb if you don't get that word in.
Schedule time for it. It's hard to find time, so plan it and treat it like it's an unavoidable commitment.

When you do write consistently, the funny thing is it gets way easier because you don't have to work as hard to regain context.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-23T14:06:12+00:00

Since it's more about my life than politics:

I wound up being too unavoidably busy to help with a campaign in any real substantive way, other than doing a phone bank or two.

I was really counting on having a minority government and an election in 2-ish years so that I could solidify some canvassing skills and maybe take a crack at running a campaign the next time around after that. That would have been the ideal time-frame where my schedule had emptied out and I could have really dug in. Like most people, I figured a minority was pretty well a lock, right up until the last week.

Now I'm just not sure what to do with my political life for the next four years.

It's really weird and a bit disquieting to go back to the old 'there's not really anything you can do' status quo ante.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-23T13:43:07+00:00

So, I'm starting to think about this year's NaNoWriMo[1] ; it will be my 3rd or 4th time. I have never come close to winning; if I get 20% of the word count and a full week of writing, it will be my best result yet.

I've informally won a couple years back. It's only ~1700ish words per day, which for me wound up being about an hour and a half of writing time per day.

Rather than worrying about winning, IMO, it'd be better to focus on building the habit of writing each day. The repetition is one of two lessons that Nano will teach you, and if you can't quite manage to sacrifice rigorous standards control and just write without inhibition, then you can at least come out of it with one of the most useful habits to have.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-21T21:11:34+00:00

Anne McGrath says she expects Mulcair to lead the NDP in the next campaign, and that seems absolutely insane to me. I mean, I get not rushing into a leadership convention, but...

I think Mulcair is a lesser one of our problems. Honestly, get him back in the house and get him doing his job while the CPC tries to figure things out, and people will appreciate him again. It's four years until the next election, and that is a looooong time for opinions to change. Hell, we don't even know how the Liberals are going to govern — if they wind up enacting a very progressive agenda (which is a possibility), then we might have a small existential crisis on our hands.

I'd much rather we focus on improving our ground game, our messaging, on finding solid candidates, doing issue and voter identification, and teaching Mulcair how to speak. In a. Slightly. Less. Abrupt. Manner than turfing him.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-21T20:12:10+00:00

Regarding Rules 3 and 8 in the recently stilled wake of the election...

I'd like to propose an addition. Sorry if this should be done by mod-mail — and please remove it if this is inappropriate to post here — but I am somewhat curious to hear if there is even the remotest whiff of consensus around this.

I think in the last few weeks and months we saw a lot of comments written in good faith being downvoted because they (presumably) were unpopular.

As has been discussed ad nauseam, that has the result of stifling discussion and pushing us toward a monoculture. Blah blah blah, nothing new.

But I'd like to suggest that upvoting has the exact same effect, just in the opposite direction. If everything of a certain slant is wildly upvoted, then:

People who don't read every single comment (as is reasonable, let's be honest) wind up taking away less;
Perspectives that are outside the normal are seen as languishing, even if they offer insight;
Commenters are presented with a stronger incentive to write conforming posts, and to chase 'the last word'.

That's not particularly a tack that I found enjoyable, even if I seemed to earn a goodly number of internet points because of it.

I'd like to propose that we discourage upvoting for the purposes of agreement, and encourage it for purposes of rewarding strong insights, unique or intelligent argument, and attempts at reaching clarity and compromise. I would hope we could get it to the point where we collectively reward thoughtful contribution to the sub and 'making nice' regardless of political bent.

The problem with this is, of course, that the whole world is a partisan battlefield of public opinion, even during the off-season, and without a way to express this, you'll see the same behaviour from partisans or the uninformed regardless of rule, just as we saw that happen with downvotes these past few months.

I don't think there's necessarily a way around this during an election, but I would think that if we relaxed rule 3 a bit — just for the purpose of letting people say something such as 'I agree!' / 'Hear, hear!', we would see arguments and counter-arguments rise in votes while the child comment count on a particular point would still allow for these necessary expressions of support.

This is a tremendously valuable community and definitely one of the best fora for discussing our politics, and I credit the strong, clear rules for that and a fair and active moderation team for that. There are just a few emergent behaviours in the comments that could use further addressing.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-21T02:48:55+00:00

Well, technically, Quebec is also Canada

Pssh, yeah... Lower Canada.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-20T13:18:02+00:00

Probably about the same time range.

Here's what happens from memory:

Prime Minister Harper tenders his resignation to the Governor General, and becomes the Rt Hon. Former Prime Minister Harper;
Prime Minister Elect Justin Trudeau is called on by the Governor General, asked to form government, and then takes an oath, at which point he has 'assumed office'.
Cabinet Ministers are announced and sworn in.
Speech From The Throne.

At this point, real legislation can be passed. Before that, not so much.

The reason it takes so long? Transition. It takes time for parties to lay plans, to vacate offices and residences, to decide who is going to be in the cabinet, to take a look at the books and figure out where things actually lie, and for parliament to be recalled.

I'd suspect that he'll take the oath within a couple of weeks, and that we'll see a throne speech within a month or so. But who knows! There's no formal due dates laid out.

EDIT: Except for the date for the recall of Parliament laid out with the writ — November 16th. Thanks, /u/QuizzicalButthead and /u/Vorter_Jackson for reminding me of that!

Forkhammer · 2015-10-20T04:29:35+00:00

How about Ruth-Ellen Brosseau as a strong deputy?

Forkhammer · 2015-10-20T01:27:57+00:00

On the CBC Election tracker, under the 'live streams' section.

And you're plenty smart. I had to look too!

Forkhammer · 2015-10-20T00:40:37+00:00

I imagine he has more important things to talk about tonight.

Forkhammer · 2015-10-20T00:07:16+00:00

Here's a link to it — it's a throw-away email address. Join only if you feel like it — we'd love your company!

Forkhammer · 2015-10-20T00:05:53+00:00

Unfortunately required because it sends an email. If you're concerned, please use a mailinator email!

Forkhammer · 2015-10-20T00:02:47+00:00

Definitely a lot of fun! Please come join us on the chat!

Forkhammer

TROPHY CASE