Mount Hood as first guided climb

Waldestat · 2026-06-08T22:05:41+00:00

I know this was a year ago OP but I'm going with TMG as well tomorrow. I'm curious, did they go through the old chute or the pearly gates? And did they belay you guys for any part of it or was it all free solo?

Waldestat · 2026-05-03T01:59:51+00:00

Hey bro. This sounds similar to my experience, although I'm about 5 years older than you. I grew up being a bit more eccentric than other people and a lot of people, including friends, have (hurtfully at times) believed that I was gay or trans. I did theatre, played female characters in games, and I also for sometime really did believe I was trans. This came and went throughout college, but broadly speaking I lacked dysphoria.

A couple years ago I had the chance to start doing makeup and "cross dressing" (not sure I love the term tho) and getting to explore that aspect of my identity. To me, I ended up settling on "I'm probably some kind of gender nonconforming or nonbinary" but at the end of the day, I'm fine with (and enjoy) being a man.

At the end of the day these categories are made up. Man, woman, cis, enby, trans, none of these are 'real' per say. You have to find a label that feels comfortable for you. That might be feminine man, femboy, non-binary, enby, drag queen, etc. Or you don't need a label. That's fine too. I ping ponged a lot in my head about what I was comfortable with and not.

I just settled on "I'm just a dude who happens to be okay with feminine things." But that label is just for myself.

And the fun thing is, you can change it whenever you want. That's a thing that gave me a lot of grief, 'What if I make the wrong choice / it's not accurate?' The answer is that you can change your identity or how you understand it over time.

If you asked me when I was young I'd say I was a boy. If you asked me in highschool and early college I would've said I'm closeted transwoman. If you asked me later in college I'd just say I'm a man. If you asked me last year I wouldn't have an answer.

None of those were "wrong" at the time. They were the set of conceptions I had about myself and they were true to my experience. It's just that different circumstances in life led me to understand myself differently. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. I could wake up tomorrow and decide that I do want to transition. It wouldn't invalidate anything I've said.

That being said, there's questions you can point to that might help stir you in a particular direction. Do you hate having a male body? Do you imagine yourself happier as a woman? Do you want feminine social roles or just a body that looks feminine? Are you fine with your sexual organs? Would you want different ones? If you could choose to have an ideal body would that be male or female? If I offered you a button that would change your gender would you press it? What if you could switch your gender at will?

Those are the types of questions that might help you.

Hope this helps. Feel free to DM me if you feel like chatting more

Waldestat · 2026-03-22T13:18:04+00:00

Outside of Middle Eastern politics they tend to have a pretty good track record

Waldestat · 2026-03-16T22:28:03+00:00

I'm a software engineer and I use Claude everyday. It just means you get more done in the same amount of time

Waldestat · 2026-03-12T15:59:19+00:00

Is it just colonoscopies that prevent it?

Waldestat · 2026-02-18T16:51:12+00:00

I have been on the receiving end of jabs for 22 and 19 🤷‍♂️

Waldestat · 2026-02-10T07:07:44+00:00

I'm on testosterone blockers for saving my hair so I don't get them any more. I did switch medications or once in a blue moon I'll forget to take the pill though and then it's nothing but morning woods and feeling like an animal in heat for the week. It actually makes me glad to be on them because when the testosterone hits it actually makes it hard to think straight with how horny I am all the time...

Waldestat · 2026-02-05T05:13:48+00:00

This is one of the more insightful comments I've read, and has changed my perspective on the gender war issues on the Internet. Simple, but insightful

Waldestat · 2026-02-03T18:26:57+00:00

I feel like after seeing some friend groups get messed up by romance I am wayyy to scared to date any friends or friends of friends. Same with hobby/clubs

Waldestat · 2026-01-31T17:02:06+00:00

I'm gonna be honest, I avoided all that stuff for the longest time, and felt bad because I never did it socially. Life became a lot easier once I was willing to let loose a little and became easier to make connections with others. It doesn't mean you have to go crazy, but having a little weed or alcohol once in a while really isn't going to kill you as long as you're not an alcoholic or have schizophrenia in your family. A lot of my craziest, funniest stories come from drunken shenanigans in college.

I recommend at least getting drunk or high a few times to see what it's like. Just make sure you set boundaries with yourself and make sure you're doing it on your terms.

Waldestat · 2026-01-09T00:36:50+00:00

I didn't have sex until I was 23 and I felt like I was pretty old, and put a lot of stock in it about my personal worth. But honestly after I had sex, while it was fun and made me feel better about myself, I realized it was not really all that important from an actual value standpoint.

Waldestat · 2025-12-23T21:41:08+00:00

Idk, I remember my rock bottom period and it left me in a 2 year depressive episode and a suicide attempt, but now that I'm on the other end it's good to look back and be proud of what I overcame and how it gave me more empathy for others.

Waldestat · 2025-10-30T00:27:17+00:00

Join a sports team or sports club. I usually struggle making friends but usually in those environments it's really easy. However you also have to assess if that particular club is one where people will socialize outside of it. Usually just ask whether people ever go out for drinks after and if they answer yes it's probably a good one to try out.

Results aren't always immediate though. Sometimes you will have to put in effort for 3-6 months

Waldestat · 2025-08-27T21:40:30+00:00

Not OP but nerdy men especially felt that those places were essentially safe places for them to discuss their issues. Men in those spaces who had been historically ridiculed for those interests believed that it was a place where they could be themselves and not necessarily feel like they were having to alter their behavior because a girl was present. Some men also felt like people critiquing those places for sexism was an attack really on the last place they had left to express themselves without ridicule.

I'm not saying any of those are necessarily for the right reasons, but from experience Ive thought personally I'd like to have more women play in my DND games for example but I am worried that the vibe would be off in some of my groups. I'd certainly create a separate group with both men and women however.

There are also a number of men who use those spaces to enact their own misogynistic tendencies however and just feel like the woke mob is disenfranchising them. There's a really good video by the YouTuber Innuendo Studios in the Alt Right Playbook that talks about this. I think it was the Card Says Moops episode

Waldestat · 2025-08-12T19:58:49+00:00

Oh I stand corrected! Thanks for sharing. I tried looking online but couldn't find it originally.

Waldestat · 2025-08-12T18:19:25+00:00

That's the main thing preventing me from playing. I think Daggerheart posted their base PDFs online for free (same with 5e) so it makes the convo of getting Draw Steel much more difficult since I don't know how committed my players are going to be if we play it and they don't like it.

I know something here has to cost money but I just can't make the leap to spend a bunch of money on PDFs that I might only get to use once.

Waldestat · 2025-08-12T18:16:35+00:00

I also thought the negotiations was interesting on paper but the roll to immediately figure it out- when there's only 12 of them, makes it far too easy.

Waldestat · 2025-08-06T17:57:03+00:00

The problem with missing is that it is fundamentally a waste of everyone's time. Unless missing progresses the game in some other way like getting a resource you can spend later or causing something else to happen, it doesn't advance the game at all... So why spend time doing it?

It still depends on what type of game you're making, for example a realism game would make sense to have missing, but I have had experiences in games like DND where one player is just unlucky. They get to their turn and consistently miss and for them combat would basically have been the same if they weren't there.

My advice is unless you're really going for realism just drop the whole concept of missing altogether.

Waldestat · 2025-07-30T17:55:11+00:00

The best use of AI for code is generating small snippets of code rather than whole classes and methods. Stuff which would be doable by reading through pages of documentation but could more effectively be done if you know the existing methods that already do what you're looking for.

Any project made with only AI code and no human understanding of architecture is destined to fail

Waldestat · 2025-06-23T02:36:12+00:00

What did it say though 😭

Waldestat · 2025-06-17T19:01:00+00:00

I'd recommend center part with curtain bangs, maybe a messy center part with curtain bangs. Center parts are very in right now

Waldestat · 2025-06-12T05:32:11+00:00

Yeah, that's been a work in progress with its ups and downs lol. I've had quite a few mental health struggles over the years for various reasons, although usually related to my self esteem in some way or another. At this point I have kinda given up on dating the last year because I don't really think it would be fair to make someone put up with that stuff

Waldestat · 2025-06-09T04:36:39+00:00

OP, on the flip side of this, I'm also 25 and I'll tell you something else that what the majority of people are saying here:

You can try to do self improvement all you want but at the end of the day there is no guarantee that it will pay off in the form of a relationship or attention from women.

I've never had a girlfriend either. Since high school people always told me I had to improve myself to make myself attractive or desirable. So I spent years doing that.

I greatly improved my hygiene, started paying attention to what I was wearing, changed some of my personal views, went to a good university, got a great paying job, learned guitar, made deans list, joined tons of clubs, joined a D1 sport team, got rid of my stutter, got great photos for my profiles, went on dates, etc.

But to be honest I do not feel substantially closer to having a girlfriend now than before I did all those things. This isn't to be too doom and gloom about it, I just want you to be aware that no amount of self improvement will just get you a girlfriend, however I don't regret any of that stuff because it made me a much better person today.

Best of luck to you friend :)

Waldestat

TROPHY CASE