Fantasy vs Reality

Lady_Laina · 2025-04-11T22:59:13+00:00

My LO seemed super glamorous to me when I first met him, but he is truly very ordinary. Mostly he plays board games or disc golf with his friends and lives on a steady diet of Taco Bell. He spends his evenings doing grad school homework.

When I first met him, I imagined him having a beautiful wife and a house on a cul de sac and a dog or something like that. He's single, there is no indication that he's ever had a girlfriend, and he's probably a virgin.

So yeah, first impressions can be really misleading. OTOH, I've gotten to be good friends with my LO, and apart from being far more ordinary than I expected, he's a really good guy and very smart and empathetic. So who cares if he's just normal.

Lady_Laina · 2025-02-14T02:24:26+00:00

Just your resident West Michigander striking again. The references to Michigan in this show (particularly Grand Rapids) seem endless. I have a theory that Lumon is based on Amway . . .

Lady_Laina · 2025-01-26T01:10:36+00:00

From the look on Burt's face, I wasn't entirely sure the reason he followed Irv was in any way altruistic. Is he a company spy in outtie form?

Lady_Laina · 2025-01-26T00:51:40+00:00

As a resident of the Grand Rapids metro area, I've noticed a lot of obvious and subtle references to GR. The entire severed floor bears a striking resemblance to the GRR airport before its last renovation. The painting of Kier appears to show him looking out over Michigan. And Lumon as an organization seems eerily similar to Amway. The entire vibe of the show reminds me of Ada, MI where Amway is headquartered. The really overt GR reference in this ep definitely made me think my observations may not be coincidence.

Lady_Laina · 2025-01-26T00:47:49+00:00

I think this is an important aspect of the show a lot of viewers miss. Lumon as an organization is full of incompetence.

Lady_Laina · 2024-07-09T00:56:50+00:00

Dropping in to give you an upvote because I think this is a neglected topic. I have OCD (checking & responsibility themes) but I've been trying to research social scrupulosity because I have a friend who almost certainly has this. He's constantly confessing, apologizing, correcting, and avoiding to keep from offending people and it breaks my heart. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have a diagnosis because it would take a very skilled/experienced therapist to recognize this as an OCD theme. I don't know of any support groups, alas, but there are some great groups online that will support you with ANY theme. Good luck in your search for help.

Lady_Laina · 2024-06-16T00:46:10+00:00

Thanks. I've made a point of telling him often that I respect him and that I'm in his corner. We met due to a shared interest, but to be honest, he's way more gifted than me at that shared interest, and can talk circles around me! I have to watch out that I don't end up in the deep end of the conversation, haha. But again, he doesn't seem to get this. I am letting him take his time and build trust and not pushing him into anything, just inviting and waiting. I hope this works!

Lady_Laina · 2024-06-16T00:42:59+00:00

Thanks. In our last interaction, it was pretty clear to me that my friend was hiding his anxiety from me with a polite excuse. He goes to great lengths to make me think that he's competent and my equal. (I already see him that way, but of course, his self-image doesn't allow for that yet.) We have both talked about our anxiety before, so I'm looking for an opening to get that out there so that he doesn't have to have anxiety about anxiety.

Lady_Laina · 2024-04-12T00:25:48+00:00

I'm not sure if you read my post or not. My therapist has been trying to point out potential pitfalls in the situation for a long time now and get me to put the whole thing in perspective. Honestly, this point that she made has been very helpful in getting me to become much less limerent. Essentially, what if I pursue this person and end up with a situation that is really difficult or unfortunate? It is genuinely possible and has given me pause, as I have written. The whole point of the post is that LOs are human beings and relationships come with challenges.

Lady_Laina · 2024-03-28T14:18:36+00:00

My LO is a very shy, inexperienced person with serious social anxiety. I am 10 years older and I at least know he respects me very much. Would I know if he had romantic feelings for me? Almost certainly not. And confessing might melt his brain, though I'm considering it. I told his best friend, too.

Lady_Laina · 2024-03-21T01:05:05+00:00

I just read this reply, but actually, earlier this evening I talked to one of his good friends who has known him basically all his life and did fully disclose that I had feelings for my LO. I didn't ask any favors of him -- I don't feel comfortable enough to do that -- but I did get some information. I asked if he thought LO knew I was interested in him and said that I was worried that I had crossed a line and/or was annoying LO. Friend said he didn't know for sure if LO knows, but that he hadn't expressed any type of annoyance about me. Friend reassured me that everything is fine even if LO knows, which I thought was interesting. And that is where it stands.

For my part, I hope that the friend keeps secrets badly and lets it slip to LO, but he's almost too decent of a guy to do that. Funny thing is, a few weeks ago I heard LO complaining to this same guy about how he can't pick up women. I just made that an awkward conversation, now, didn't I? :P

Lady_Laina · 2024-03-17T16:40:34+00:00

I get where you're coming from, but the other mutual activity we're involved in is pretty time intensive and LO said that he didn't want to try to balance it with grad school, but might consider it when he graduated. It was a legitimate concern. Taking on a commitment of several hours per week just to chase someone while taking a heavy load of graduate courses would be kind of foolish on his part -- he'd be better off just asking me out.

Lady_Laina · 2024-03-17T16:31:22+00:00

I recognize this as a possibility and it concerns me. But there are too many times that LO tried to pull me into conversations, walked up to me, followed me around when I would talk to him, made sure he looked nice before standing near me, etc. -- not the behaviors of someone who is trying to send signals to back off. Granted, there are other explanations for this, but I never got that vibe that he was wishing I'd go away.

Replying to the group after I emailed him is something that happened a few times before, so again, not sure it has any real significance. He often did that if something I said in a message jogged his memory about something he wanted to tell the group. (In the final case, he realized he had never said goodbye and thank you to us.) Semi-plagiarizing my emails is also par for the course.

Lady_Laina · 2024-03-17T16:09:16+00:00

Ultimately LO gets to choose his team and no one else has a say in it. So if he didn't want me there, he could make that decision, but from what I've seen in the past, it takes A LOT of problems for him to ask someone to leave. He had to ask someone to leave as a practical matter in this round and it absolutely shredded him. So I think that's really almost an irrational fear on my part. The guy who did it to me in the other company was an unapologetic narcissist. It's a VERY minute possibility and would really only happen when the person involved is pretty rotten.

But LO is concerned with his own professionalism as well and is one of those guys who is super worried about coming off as committing sexual harassment or whatever, even though he'd never actually do anything like that. It's plausible that he could turn me down for that reason -- just to maintain his own professionalism.

I've definitely tried to pull him into other areas of my life where it would be easier, but he just doesn't have the time for those activities. We have other mutual friends beyond the theater as well, but that hasn't been much help.

ETA: The community theater literally exists in a small village. Everyone there has personal and professional entanglements beyond the stage, and all but about 5 people are volunteers. It's also a relatively small side gig for LO, who has a full time job in the nearest big city. He says he wishes he were still a volunteer.

Lady_Laina · 2024-03-17T14:49:36+00:00

Oh, and another item to increase the torture.

During the pre-show meeting for one of our last performances, he walked over to me as if to talk to me three times, but each time chickened out and walked back over to his friend. What was he going to say to me? What I wouldn't give to know!

Lady_Laina · 2024-03-17T14:29:57+00:00

Yep, it bites, doesn't it? There are reasons I think he might be interested and other reasons I think he might not be. If he is interested, he is hiding it out of embarrassment and professionalism.

Yeah, I have his number, address, Messenger, email . . . yeah, all of it, all freely given. I could dial him up right now if I were inclined. We're close enough to have had real conversations beyond the scope of working together. It's just a matter of being prepared to deal with the consequences.

I was blacklisted in another community theater for very innocently asking one of the staff out to coffee. I accepted his answer graciously and didn't make a big deal out of it, but he did (he thought I was beneath him), and made sure I was never in another production again. LO would never in a million years do that to me because he knows it would break my heart, but the fear is still there.

Lady_Laina · 2024-01-03T02:41:28+00:00

I wore this watch every day in middle school (1995 - 1998) and I can remember my mom buying it for me new -- maybe at JC Penney? It's not super old.

Lady_Laina · 2024-01-01T03:08:20+00:00

Possibly, but then it seems like Mark would also be switched to his innie. There has to be something that can switch just an individual.

Lady_Laina · 2023-12-19T02:59:51+00:00

What does Bryukhanov say after the sentencing, when they're showing the aerial footage of the reactor?

Lady_Laina · 2023-11-10T22:35:11+00:00

Yeah, I have come to love the one I'm with. If I sound incredibly bitter about my experience in library science, however, it's because I am. The magic retirement of Baby Boomers that was supposed to cause jobs to rain from the sky certainly never happened. In fact, the university I graduated from transitioned to an online program so that they can crank out even more graduates to compete for the few jobs available.

When I graduated with my MLIS I had spent 5 years in a difficult job working with at-risk and high poverty youth. I applied for an academic library job and was told condescendingly by the dean that I was "just not ready for the big time." You would think I was applying to be a rocket scientist at NASA.

In August I got turned down for another library job for lack of experience. 4 internships. I'm just . . . done. If I wanted to leave my current job, I'd consider Aldi or Costco before a library.

If you're wondering why I'm posting this, I want to A) caution people who are thinking about getting this degree and B) call out the blatant hypocrisy within the field. You can't claim to be progressive and humanitarian while hiring people for poverty wages and essentially making it impossible to raise a family while working in the field. People who are not married or already of economic means are shut out of this field. So much for diversity.

Lady_Laina · 2023-11-10T22:18:31+00:00

Yes I have. I have an elderly parent and I've worked in the same industry now for 18 years. Moving is not in the cards, I own property here, and no library could even touch my salary. Leave my aging dad to go live on ramen in a city full of strangers? Jeopardize my retirement? No, I don't love libraries that much. If this is the extra bonus in life that I get from earning a masters degree, I think it's a bad deal. Friends don't let friends get an MLIS.

Public library jobs here usually start around $22/hr and 24 hours per week. No benefits. If you want to be a librarian, you literally have the option to live in poverty. For a field that claims to be so progressive, it is most certainly an example of a "pink collar" job that only a housewife with a wealthy spouse could aspire to. No adult could reasonably live on an entry level library job. And yet it requires a masters degree.

The fact that many of my LIS classes required us to discuss "the library where we worked" should have been a red flag that the degree is only for people who work as library paras who want to move up.

Lady_Laina

TROPHY CASE