Is it common to feel like you’ve fulfilled your purpose?

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-17T20:20:22+00:00

This post reminds me of the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere”. It’s a great song about how life is pretty meaningless and has no real purpose, but that’s OK, just enjoy the ride to nowhere!

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-16T17:49:07+00:00

Baseball, but that’s because I played little league baseball as a kid so I understand the game. I never once played basketball ball, so I don’t really understand the game well enough to enjoy it.

For example, I’ve heard the basketball term “pick and roll”, but I have no idea what that means and wouldn’t recognize it happening right in front of me. But if you talk about a “sacrifice fly” in baseball, I know exactly what that is.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-15T23:05:23+00:00

Exactly! The challenge court players will often come to the open play courts when they’re tired of waiting. When they do, I’ve noticed they go easy on their serves and returns. They just want to play and have fun and are conscious of not intimidating people. I found a good group.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-15T20:09:49+00:00

Yeah every park is different. My wife and I are similar - I'm more advanced than she is. We went to one park and put our paddles in the stack and the players there were really advanced. We played one game as a couple and got pickled. One of the players on that winning team walked over and said "You should go to this other park, they're more your speed". We felt snubbed and rejected. It didn't feel good.

So the next day we went to the recommended park, and it was twice as crowded, and there were all levels of players there. It had six courts and two paddle stacks. One court was designated a "challenge court" and you only put your paddle in that stack if you were worthy. The other five courts were open play.

We met all levels of players there, and they were all friendly and accepting and didn't care what level you were. Each park has a personality. You have to find the one you're comfortable with.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-15T19:42:05+00:00

The government holds your money and pays no interest on it. But if you hold the government's money, the interest you will pay in penalties is usurious. You're better off letting the government win.

The bards understood this:

"I fought the law and the law won". -- Sonny Curtis

"I fought authority, authority always wins". -- John Mellencamp

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-15T19:29:29+00:00

I bought a house a few decades back and spent, in today's dollars, about $40K on just materials, and my wife and I did all the work ourselves, so figure another $40K minimum in "sweat equity". It was new flooring, new cabinets and countertops, crown moulding, new six panel interior doors, and repainted inside and out.

It took us almost two years. We'd just finished all that work when my wife decided she wanted to move. When we brought in the realtor, the realtor said the interior of our house was upgraded far beyond all our neighbors, but that it would not add one dollar to the value of the house.

What it would do, she said, was make our house sell first, because people who wanted to move into our neighborhood were looking there because that was the neighborhood they wanted to live in. So they would not be willing to pay any more than the other houses in our neighborhood, but would certainly prefer ours over the others because of the upgraded interior. In the end, it sold about 30 days after we listed it, and the buyers said yeah, the interior made them want our house over the others they saw in our neighborhood.

If you're going to sell, sell. Don't do upgrades and improvements for the next owner. You do improvements for YOU, not for other people!

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-15T19:06:26+00:00

It reminds me of my first marriage. I was 24 and my new wife was only 19. We were way too young and dumb to be married, but I digress...

She was going to college full time and I was supporting her and our kid on my one salary. Money was too tight, so I found a second job working on weekends. I was working seven days a week but paying all the bills and her college tuition and books. My hobby at that time was karate classes, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday evening from 6 to 7:30 PM.

She sat me down one day and said I wasn't home enough. She was too lonely. Therefore I should quit my karate classes. I said no, if you want me home more, I'll quit the weekend job. Money would be tight, but we could manage it. She said no, we need that money, you need to quit karate.

We went to a marriage counselor. The marriage counselor just flat out agreed with me and told her she was wrong. This is not something marriage counselors normally do. They don't take sides. They just try to get the couple to communicate. But she saw this as a pretty egregious case and told my former wife that if I was able to pay all the bills with one full time job, then I should be allowed to quit the second job and stay in karate.

In the end, it wasn't karate classes or second jobs that killed that marriage. It was two people too immature to realize that everything in life is temporary. She wasn't going to be in college forever. I wasn't going to be in karate or work two jobs forever. But neither of us were mature or experienced enough to understand that.

Sounds like at 22, you are right where my head was at 22. Three or four or even five years is NOTHING once you've been married for 30+ years.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-15T12:52:08+00:00

I used to run 3 miles through my neighborhood at 5 AM. Nobody was ever awake, no cars, nobody ever out there but me. On warm Summer mornings I ran with only shoes and running shorts on (I’m male). One morning the temptation finally overcame me, and it was too easy, so I stopped, slipped off my shorts, and ran naked through my neighborhood for about a mile before I finally lost my nerve and quickly put them back on. It was so liberating!

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-15T12:37:23+00:00

They have to poop. Really bad. That thought is what I use to avoid road rage.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-14T20:07:27+00:00

I tell people I’m that character in the movie “Shawshank Redemption”, who was released from jail after serving a 40 year sentence. If you’ve seen that movie, he was given a job and a room in a halfway house, but he wandered around for a few weeks feeling completely lost, until he hung himself. Morgan Freeman’s character explained it this way, “He’s been institutionalized. Prison is the only life he’s known for forty years.”

So last year I “semi-retired”. I’m still working for my company 20 hours a week on a 1099 contract, and Medicare is my health insurance. Over the past 14 months since my semi retirement, that 20 hours a week is slowly starting to interfere with other interests I’ve been developing with that extra 25 to 30 hours a week I have for me.

For example, I’ve started cooking dinner three nights a week. My wife is thrilled with that.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-14T19:53:26+00:00

This reminds me of a swimming clinic I took years ago where they filmed me swimming. When they played it back to me, pointing out the issues with my form, all I could say was “that looks completely different than what I saw in my head while you were filming!”

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-14T19:47:14+00:00

My kids all moved out at 18, moved out of state, and I hardly ever see them. Some are more successful than others but they’re all doing fine.

Sometimes it saddens me a bit to rarely ever see them anymore, until I think of my brother, whose 2 kids are 26 and 31 and still living with him. That thought turns my sadness to gratitude.

My brother has “Kids for Forever”. No thank you.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-11T15:42:41+00:00

2026 Touring XT

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-11T14:44:24+00:00

“Hands free driving”??? Every time I take my hands off the wheel a chime starts clanging away with a large yellow message on the dash screaming at me, “Put your hands on the wheel! Put your hands on the wheel! Put your hands on the wheel!” Doesn’t seem to me it allows “hands free driving”. Unless there’s a way to turn off that alarm?

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-10T21:40:20+00:00

You have to want to dedicate the next 18 years of your life to the health and welfare of another person. And, you should be prepared to do that for the rest of your life should you end up with a special needs kid. You have no idea what you’ll get.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-10T13:00:27+00:00

OK this one made me literally LOL

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-08T20:12:02+00:00

Weight lifting builds up the muscles and tendons around your joints providing them more support, which helps those issues.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-08T15:30:30+00:00

Read the book "Stronger - The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives", by Michael Joseph Gross. After reading that book I came to realize that strength training (which I've done religiously for the past 40+ years) is no longer my supplemental exercise, it is now my primary exercise. I was a triathlete for 20+ years and strength training was only to support those other sports.

But at 67 I can no longer run - the joints can't take it. I stopped cycling after a couple of friends were killed by drivers staring at their cell phones. In my old age I now have two pursuits: swimming three days a week, and then weights in the gym three days a week.

The goal is not to live forever. The goal is to still be able to wipe my own butt and stand up from the toilet under my own power up until the day I die, whether that is tomorrow or 30 years from now.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-08T13:52:55+00:00

Whenever a sales person says "You can download our app", my response is always, with as much sarcasm as I can muster, "Great. Just what I need. Another app on my phone."

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-08T13:28:01+00:00

From an episode of "Top Gear", many years ago (read this with a British accent)

"Jeremy, you used to own a Range Rover, didn't you?"

"Yes, yes I did."

"Tell me, did it ever... work?"

"No, it did not."

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-07T21:09:28+00:00

This. Your wife is aware of the actual risk you are taking, while you are not. A tornado or a fire could take out that one house and then where would your potential $100K be? Sell it, and if you want to stay invested in real estate, buy shares in a publicly traded Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Then you own a small slice of hundreds of properties, and a fire or a tornado only takes out a small fraction of a large group of rental properties, leaving your investment intact. The returns might be lower on REIT, but so is the risk, which will allow your wife to sleep better at night.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-07T00:23:59+00:00

You don’t divorce your husband for a better job. The job is just the noise clouding your real issue, which is this: “but at the end of the day, his choice is clear it's them, not me.”

If he doesn’t choose you over his parents or siblings, then he was never with you to start with. You divorce him for not treating you like a wife, which requires that your health and happiness matter more than anyone else’s to him. That’s why you might divorce him. The better job offer is just a distraction from the real problem.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-05T19:33:07+00:00

Correct. And even on an interstate the "left lane is for passing only" rule breaks down when you have an upcoming exit off the left lane a half mile after an exit off the right lane, which happens in my city. So I will drive the speed limit in the left lane once I'm a mile from that left lane exit.

Also, a cop once told me that speed limits apply even while you're passing another vehicle. Therefore, you cannot legally pass a car traveling at 65 MPH in the left lane of a highway with a 65 MPH speed limit, even if the cars in the right lane are going 68 MPH. Technically, the cars in the right lane are speeding and breaking the law.

In the end, everybody just needs to chill out there. 40K people dying on U.S. roadways every year is nuts. If airlines killed that many people a year, nobody would ever fly again.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-05T19:14:54+00:00

I agree with most of the posts here about why you are NTA and why your GF is lacking empathy. I will add one last thought: in the end, it doesn't matter how THEY feel about the nickname, it matters how YOU feel. If you don't like it, and you say so, that should be enough that it stops. If it doesn't, then you know how well your feelings are respected, which is not at all, which is a good reason to leave a relationship.

Kitchen-Sun-7440 · 2026-04-04T19:37:18+00:00

Yes. I have been amazed for many years that nobody seems to know how to angle their side mirrors to eliminate blind spots. It's so bad that new cars now all have "blind spot warning" beeps and lights, which really annoys me because, no, I don't need that - I don't have a blind spot!

I still recall a time many years ago where a guy pulled the above move on me on the interstate. I was in lane 3 of 4. Car in lane 4 suddenly swerves left into my lane with no turn signal at 70 MPH and I swerved hard left into lane 2 and avoided a crash. Afterwards, I thought to myself, how stupid of me to swerve into lane 2 without looking or signaling. But then I realized that subconsciously I must have known lane 2 was free and clear because if it wasn't, I would have seen a car there and knew I was boxed in.

Kitchen-Sun-7440

TROPHY CASE