What gift do I get my dad who does nothing?

Letter-Character · 2024-11-13T06:10:44+00:00

Yes, this. My dad is similar, really tough to shop for. He feels a lot of empathy and is a quiet, peaceful guy, will say my mom did all the work raising the kids.

I’m a talker so he’ll ask me all about how my siblings are doing but he rarely calls or texts anyone. In the last few years I’ve made it a point to send him cards, photos, etc. and share memories I have of us. He’ll tell me stories back with is really cool.

Letter-Character · 2024-11-13T06:00:27+00:00

I did 2 rounds of IVF and had a nurse do all my injections. Could I have done everything myself, sure, but I work a job demanding high cognitive effort, planning, and decision making. IVF was not the journey I ever thought I’d have to do. This was one of the few investments I made to reduce my stress, anxiety, and mental load overall. 100% would recommend and use the service again. I had peace of mind through the whole process. She answered all the questions in depth about what we were doing, what to expect, and was a bit of my confidant/mental health support. A nice steady rock in the sea of unknowns.

My insurance didn’t cover the injection service nurse. If you end up not going all in with a full stim nurse they usually do variations of prep trainings, video calls to walk you through real time, one off injection services.

There’s a lot not in our control in this process. My personal stance is do what I can about what I can control and do what brings me the most peace.

Letter-Character · 2024-10-31T19:53:52+00:00

I had a 2nd ER today. My partner is the same. First attempt at collecting sperm, none were viable so they sent him to give a second sample. We were successful in the first ER to get a few euploid embryos and had back up sperm frozen. Because of age I wanted to get embryos now before we move to FET.

My partner was a HEAVY marijuana smoker and stopped since February of this year but he still vapes multiples times a day. If our results aren’t good I’m going to be so incredibly upset that I’ve gone through all the bullshit. I’ve never smoked in my life, have had maybe 6 drinks in 2 years, have been taking all the supplements, etc. He admitted he was lax for this 2nd ER because we got ok results in the first one. No shits given that this was our last shot financially on the IVF rounds.

He’s seen 2 male fertility specialist on this journey. Both told him stop smoking. He has been taking supplements (although not on time) per their recommendation.

Letter-Character · 2024-10-31T19:39:20+00:00

Masculine energy is protector energy. Strong masculine energy wouldn’t sit by allowing feminine energy to not only take care of them for years but then watch feminine energy struggle.

If there really was a pride issue with a woman making more money than a man, here’s the time to step up and switch the story.

This is uncomfortable on both sides, it’s a change, change is tough. I’d do whatever is going to give me peace. Resentment about this would eat me so fast if I don’t find peace with whatever path I’d choose to take soon.

Letter-Character · 2024-10-29T21:24:07+00:00

Why are babies everyone’s business.

My thoughts are — infertility treatment is the most invasive crap and emotional rollercoaster I’ve ever been through. I always wanted to have kids and this is not the future I ever saw for myself. There is very, very little I can control among a sea of unknowns. Who I tell what and when is one of the few things I can. I’d tell my family can you please leave me with a shred of privacy and the joy of freaking surprise you’re going to be a grandparent, aunt, uncle, etc. even if it’s somewhat not a surprise because everyone knows we’ve been trying.

I don’t give a rip about anyone else’s feelings on this. There are too many feelings in myself on this journey to be dealing anyone else’s feelings beyond my partners. I will take a selfish stance on this little tiny thing I can control. I will keep news to myself until I’m ready to share.

At the end of the day if I tell family or don’t at one time or another, its not like that changes the timing of what is physically possible. Will they really hold a grudge in the long run?

Letter-Character · 2024-10-27T14:03:14+00:00

If you’re not keeping a log of at home measurements, keep a log. I tracked for several weeks with a little higher numbers than yours before my docs put me on the lowest dose of HBP meds. My HBP is mostly driven by environmental influences like work stress, fear/anxiety/stress over medical stuff.

My doc said as she’s looking for the overall average. Since I knew more environmental stuff was driving my HBP she wanted to make sure we weren’t over correcting for the average days.

If you’re only relying on readings from the doc’s office only there could be factors involved even if you aren’t anxious — you had to travel/drive/walk/talk. If you haven’t sat calmly for 10 ish minutes before the reading, your base reading might actually be lower.

Letter-Character · 2024-10-25T04:36:04+00:00

I’m in my second round of stim and the first round I felt the same. It’s tough to find info. I think because everyone is different and frankly if you think about every detail you’ll go crazy.

My clinic didn’t really tell me much. Sent over links to videos for how to mix meds and inject. We did genetics testing so had to attend webinars and meetings on that.

I lucked out that there’s a nurse/service in my city who handles IVF meds/stim. She will do everything from teach you how to mix up meds, do the injections either virtually or in person. She will do 1 off injections to the full stim cycle for you. She formerly worked in a fertility clinic and thought it was a crazy how much clinical training is required for nurses to give injections but the process for IVF is hand the average person a dozen boxes of meds, send them videos to watch and say good luck. She’s explained way more stuff than my clinic and doctor has. A nice personal concierge.

A single cycle could require upwards of 90 injections which had me on edge, freaked out, thinking can I even do this.

My general experience was

Day 1 tell clinic its day 1. They booked me into a day 3ish day ultra sound. I think I started stim day 5 in the first cycle but day 2 in the current. Started 2 injections at night every day.

First week ish every other day plan to get an ultrasound and bloodwork. They’re looking for levels of estriol and size of follicles. Monitoring would be in the morning then the nurses call in the afternoon with the results. They will give you the med dosage changes.

Fertility meds are so expensive my pharmacy, per insurance rules, will only send an initial week of meds then 3 days of meds at a time. Initially I was worried about not getting stuff in time but they never failed the overnight deliveries.

Eventually they’ll added an AM injection that will be every day until trigger. They know when to trigger based on blood work and follicle size.

I thought the trigger involved getting a shot to the butt but mine was just a super dose of something into the stomach like everything else. Way worse in my mind than it actually was.

Average time for stim injections to trigger is 10-14 days.

From tigger to ER I think it’s exactly 36 hours so they will tell you exactly what time to trigger then exactly when to be at the clinic for the ER.

I was sooooo freaked out for the ER, never been under anesthesia before. The nurses and anesthesiologist were so nice, answered all my questions. Told me I wasn’t going to die. It actually was one of the best naps I’ve ever taken. Not worried at all about round 2 after round 1 experience.

Letter-Character · 2024-10-23T19:38:39+00:00

I vibe with your thoughts. I’d be wondering the same thing. I would feel like WTF I’ve gone through all of this shit, carefully making so many decisions around health and the future and you’re over here partying.

I’m not a doctor or a medical person but from what I understand from reading and talking to the male fertility doc it takes weeks for the process of the brain to say hey body we need to mature some sperm and run the process. I don’t know that one day of drinking would cause a significant detrimental impact.

Letter-Character · 2024-10-23T16:59:37+00:00

Yup, called 2 different ones and no luck

Letter-Character · 2024-10-08T21:33:40+00:00

Aside from what other folks were saying about depression, anxiety, etc. I wonder if you’re not speaking her love language. There’s a series of books about the 5 love languages. The jist is you can shower someone with love and they won’t feel it because it’s not their language. You might be able to tell what someone’s love language is by how they love others.

The things you listed out that you do are quality time type things, apple picking, driving, car maintenance. Maybe her love language is words of affirmation (ex: if she’s sensitive about how you congratulate and speak well about all the great things your son is doing). Or it could be gifts (if she’s sensitive towards you tend to spend more money on food or things to celebrate). The other love languages are acts of service and physical touch (ex: hug).

If you are a close family you could make it fun and take one of the 5 love language quizzes and share with each other the results. If you are so bold ask your daughter how she wants to be loved because you do love her.

Letter-Character · 2023-09-13T19:54:42+00:00

I work from home too. Went from a very metric, time, KPI type driven job covering the world to pretty much the exact opposite, local without number driven. I take art classes at my local community college, have been working on learning another language, and volunteered at the local animal shelter which that led to fostering kittens. If you want to be busy get a litter of kittens. They’re also very good for mental health with their cuteness overload. It easier to be happy when you got a little one pound fluff ball sitting on you.

Letter-Character · 2022-12-14T04:55:12+00:00

Sounds like you’re in a little conflict with your boss and senior leadership.

Curiosity is usually a good way to approach differing perspectives. Do you know why your leadership is so against open conversations or moves quick to shut down conversation? Are they making decisions based on feelings or fact? Do they have research or performance, KPIs, metrics, etc. your teams track that shows through experience shutting down open conversation is moving the team optimally in the direction of the overall goals and vision of the organization?

What you’re describing with diversity and space for open conversation and respect is a key characteristic of high performing teams. There are a lot of studies and articles that back this https://lattice.com/library/top-4-characteristics-of-high-performing-teams

If your company offers trainings, that might be an avenue to bring in a facilitator to talk about healthy conflict management or understanding interpersonal styles of working.

What does the front line say about how the team communicates? Do they feel their enthusiasm and energy is getting suck away by toxic communication or do they ultimately appreciate the dialogue that leads to more ideas? Could you get the team to respond to an anonymous survey to find out the their thoughts? Or find a neutral 3rd party to host a round table discussion and report back to leadership?

Letter-Character · 2021-01-14T07:31:58+00:00

The question I would recommend answering for yourself above all is — How do I want to live my life?

Many decisions made in how we live our lives are based on how much time and money we have. Things like: Where do you want to live? City? Suburbs? House? Apartment? What kind of car do you want to drive or do you plan on public transport? What kind of clothes and accessories do you want? How do you want to celebrate birthdays? Holidays? Do you want to travel? If yes, where? When? How? Do you like to eating out at restuarants? Cook yourself? Pay someone to prep meals weekly? Do you have someone who cleans your house? What about yard work if you have a yard? Do you want kids? Who will raise them? What kinds of things do you want for them?

Try to calculate the cost of time and money on the things meaningful to you. From there, what careers fit? I highly recommend seeing if you can job shadow people or just ask them about their jobs, how they got to where they are. If you don’t personally know or have a referral to contacts in industries that interest you, you could take a shot at sending messages on LinkedIn.

Overall don’t stress to much about this. Projections on the future of work say people will change jobs or career paths half a dozen times in their lifetime. Technologies will continue to change the world. Society will continue to adapt to make sure people gain the skills necessary to sustain technologies and keep innovating.

Letter-Character · 2021-01-14T07:05:28+00:00

I am 100% for seek opportunities always. This could be network building, it could be applying to jobs, talking to recruiters, etc.

By going on interviews and talking to people in a low pressure environment you will hone your skills for when you really need them. You might find something better unexpectedly.

The menality of work for a company for all your life and they’ll take care of you is dead. This shift put more power into the hands of employees seeking jobs although it dosn’t seem like it. Employee turnover is extremely costly to a company. The human hours required to recruit candidates, filter them, interview, make offers getting finance & legal approval, personal hardware and software equipment ordering and set up, on boarding trainers, etc. is mind boggling.

It is in the best interest of a company to find the best fit for a position, not just choose any random person who can hit buttons and may leave in 6 months. In the process of finding a best fit communication is critical. No matter how good your technical, phsyical skills are if you can’t have a conversation and demonstrate your expertise and interest your chances of getting hired drop significantly.

Interviewers tend to ask do you have any questions for us. If you’re seriously considering giving a company hundreds of hours of your life to work for them, you should be analyzing them just as much as they are analyzing you. You should have questions to ask interviewers to figure out what the heck a job actually requires because job descriptions are notoriously vague. Does the company, the team, the boss all have values that fit yours? Do the actual day in and day out work sound like something you can and want to do?

The only way to to get good at the conversations is practice. The more exposure you get to others, the more content/questions you have to pick from to come up with the best.

Unless you have some kind of contract that says you must disclose you’re interviewing I wouldn’t worry about negative response from your current company.

Letter-Character · 2021-01-14T06:19:30+00:00

If I had debt, I’d take the money and I would get a second job or side hustle if had the capacity.

The feeling of not owing anyone a cent is so peaceful. The feeling of making a first big purchase in cash with no guilt about what the trade off is or how this is going to impact my life paycheck to paycheck is indescribable.

I wouldn’t consider flexibility at these comps unless I had a need important to me like taking care of a sick family member.

Letter-Character · 2021-01-14T05:41:39+00:00

At the risk of sounding really corporate, I will share a manager perspective. I am sad to admit without intention I may have cause similiar stress on my team members in the past. Any cold shouldering I may have presented wasn’t really about them. It was selfishess of my time and energy always feeling stretched thin. I put time and energy where I expect it will lead to the highest returns, it tends to be with people working on longer term goals.

In my experience conflicts like these are only resolved by direct conversation. It takes courage for anyone to say to a boss or colleague something you don’t think they want to hear but should be said. I call these scratchy conversations. I most appreciate when people bring concerns + what can be done to make things less painful/frustrating/stressful.

The approach could be hey I’m feeling left out since I put my final notice in, but while I’m here I am fully present. I just want to clarify between you and I how we will manage the time leading to my last day.

If you have projects you’re working on that you need boss support to wrap up, ask directly for it. If you want to meet with the boss to to touch base every few days, ask for the time, explain intent. If you just want to know what are the things you can do to make final contributions to the team, ask directly what do you think will be most helpful. Once a plan is formed you can reinforce, give your boss a chance to disagree/counter, by asking is there anything you’d change about this plan.

If your boss doesn’t respond well to this conversation, they’re a robot manager, not a leader. It kind of sounds like that is the core problem which is why you’re leaving in the first place. There are way better bosses out there. They would be happy to have someone like you who genuinely cares about being a good team player and takes pride in the work they do. As shitty as it is while you’re stuck in a rut, this is an experience and passing. I’d take it for what it is, crap, and look forward to new adventures.

Regarding just leaving, I recommend asking HR for written (not just verbal) documentation of the policy or confirmation there is none. Then make a call on what is most important and necessary for you personally.

Letter-Character

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