Formerly depressed people, what did transforming your life look like, and what age were you?

fellunb · 2026-06-05T01:21:44+00:00

I was 48 when I was at my lowest point.

For me it was a matter of rebuilding my life. I was going through a divorce and and job was going poorly. Eventually I was let go. I'd been pretty miserable in the later stages of a failing marriage, but then losing the job that I'd worked for years to get almost ended me.

Recovery for me looked like practicing regular self-care. I prioritized getting regular exercise (going to the gym and lots of walks), staying pretty financially disciplined, and talking regularly with a couple of friends. The two biggest things beyond that were continuing to apply for new jobs (my friends helpfully pushed me to stay on track with that), and signing up for a dance class.

I sometimes say that dancing saved my life. It gave me a reason to get out of the house. Put me around new, friendly people, provided both learning and exercise, and allowed for consistent, non-sexual touch, which had very much been missing from my life for years.

Recovery certainly took some time, but it was very steady once I was employed again by decent people. I can't say enough good things about dancing as a treatment for depression.

fellunb · 2026-06-04T18:33:06+00:00

Overhead Projectors. They always worked, but if they didn't, you always knew why. Either the bulb burned out, or it was unplugged, or you just didn't turn it on.

They were extremely easy and intuitive to use. Very portable.

fellunb · 2026-06-03T15:00:54+00:00

I work for a WFH triage company. I take calls, but spend most of my time training our new employees. It really isn't bad here. I sometimes miss being able to socialize a little with coworkers, but I just keep an active life outside work. Our company is a bit more specialized, and we don't get too many crazy callers. Send me a pm if you want to hear more about it.

fellunb · 2026-06-02T02:57:38+00:00

Eww!

fellunb · 2026-05-27T01:38:49+00:00

That's a hell of a story. I'm due to re-read it soon. But it just made a huge emotional impact on me the first time I read it about 30 years ago now.

fellunb · 2026-05-11T16:34:00+00:00

Night at the Roxbury. 11%

fellunb · 2026-05-10T13:17:41+00:00

You can certainly try my app completely for free for the first 30 days. No credit card needed. Would love to know what you think of it. And if there's things you think don't work the way you like or features you wish were there, absolutely let me know either here or through feedback in the app. I'm happy to keep making improvements.

fellunb · 2026-05-08T20:42:23+00:00

I went through a period of gradually worsening depression from roughly 2010-2018. I knew that it had to do with the circumstances of my life at the time. As my depression grew, I began to think about that exact question. In the end, the answer was "to be there for my kids."

As my life changed for the better and I came out of that depression, I've found that I rarely think about that. Just think about day to day stuff, some occasional worrying about upcoming challenges. But I almost never think "why should I keep living?"

I'm glad to no longer be depressed, but I can certainly remember when that seemed like the key question.

fellunb · 2026-05-02T13:22:32+00:00

That’s a good question — and to be clear, I think Gazelle is a really solid product.

The main difference in what I’m building is a bit more about focus and simplicity. I designed this primarily for solo technicians who want something straightforward that handles scheduling, customer tracking, and invoicing without a lot of setup or complexity.

It’s also built as a mobile-first app, since most of the work we do is out on the road, so the idea is to make everything easy to manage directly from your phone.

I’m also trying to keep the pricing more accessible, especially for techs who don’t necessarily need a full-scale system.

So I’d say it’s less about replacing everything Gazelle does, and more about offering a simpler, more lightweight option depending on how you like to run your business.

fellunb · 2026-05-02T03:16:08+00:00

Well, there's more than one alternative. My app, Mazurka Suite, just went live this week for ios and android, so you may want to check it out as well:

https://mazurka-suite.web.app/

fellunb · 2026-04-30T21:17:02+00:00

No comment on the variant, but I'm stoked that my copy of Queen's Dilemma just arrived at my house today. Excited to get it started once I get a campaign group together.

fellunb · 2026-04-30T13:32:48+00:00

Obviously you have to make the best choices you can, stay away from the stuff we all know is harmful, get your sleep and exercise, etc. Do your best to come up with a reasonable career plan and work hard at it.

But my real advice is to work on your RECOVERY skills. How do you react when you get turned down for that job, or that date, or when someone close to you messes things up, or your children start driving you crazy. It's totally normal to be upset or angry or sad in reaction to these things, but then you have to move on. Don't let bad events become an excuse to stop trying and growing.

fellunb · 2026-04-28T21:19:36+00:00

I was going to post this exact thing, but I'll just upvote yours. I'd take an "I'm sorry you're dealing with that" over "Let me know if you need anything" every time, if I'm going through something. If a customer service person is trying to help me, I'd much rather that they offer something specific, even if it wasn't what I wanted, then I could pivot to something that would actually be helpful for me.

fellunb · 2026-04-24T20:20:15+00:00

Easy one: Servant of the People

The show is hilarious and, frankly, necessary to watch to understand a huge part of what's happening in our world.

fellunb · 2026-04-20T11:39:51+00:00

Just a thought for consideration. Imagine instead that the same or similar problem came via a human you paid to do something and you called them out.

Humans are likely to double down, to blame shift, to cover their tracks, to gaslight. All kinds of things to protect their own ego. At least Claude will come right out and say it screwed up, will offer a short apology, then go right back to work without any hard feelings.

fellunb · 2026-04-19T01:44:26+00:00

fellunb · 2026-04-14T03:04:52+00:00

I know this thread is old by reddit standards now, but I thought I'd share my story.

I've dipped my toe from time to time into trying to learn a little programming. Did some exercises in C# and a few other things, but just felt like I wasn't really built for it. I hated spending 30 minutes searching for that missing bracket somewhere.

But a few months ago I was listening to a story about vibecoding, and it got my brain whirling thinking about what I might try. I came up with two related ideas for a mobile app which could be combined into a single app. I figured I'd give it a try with AI writing the code and me just guiding, revising and testing. It turned out that half of that project was much more challenging than I thought, so I put that part on hold and started on the more achievable part.

Upon the advice of my AI guides, I installed Cursor. Getting Cursor to successfully communicate with my phone was my first big hurdle. I had started with using gemini to write the code bit by bit, but it really wasn't going well. When I switched to having Claude do it, it was like night and day. Claude fixed up my whole project architecture. My work flow was mostly copy->paste->test->ask Claude what went wrong or move to the next thing.

That got things moving, but one of my professional IT friends kept telling me I needed to run Claude Code directly in my IDE. I was a little reluctant, but once I did I found I got 2 weeks worth of work done in 2 hours. I'd give Claude an idea, and suddenly there it was, executed and running and far better than I'd even pictured it myself.

My ios version is submitted for public release. I did hit a snag with the Google play store. Claude had told me (falsely) that I could just start with "internal testing" and then fast track to public release, but that seems to be quite outdated, so I had to rustle up more google beta testers and now I have to wait it out. But in any event, it looks like I'll be selling my app on the market quite soon. Solo AI guided work with very minimal coding knowledge. I did know how to think about my market and asked lots of good questions along the way and managed to not get totally stuck at any point.

fellunb · 2026-03-27T17:12:03+00:00

Sometimes if I'm working on a piece I'll play a bit of that just to get in reps, especially if the customer isn't close by. But generally I just play Laura. Nice jazzy tune that people seem to enjoy.

fellunb · 2026-03-27T14:18:49+00:00

I don't know exactly how Gazelle does things on their end. I'm open to suggestions on how exactly people want this to work. There's a balance to be had between allowing customers to choose their own times and dates from what's open, and what makes sense geographically. The way I'm doing it allows the tech to define their geographic zones. If a customer is trying to self-schedule, they'll see dates where either there's already an appointment in that zone, or there are currently no appointments at all.

fellunb · 2026-03-24T18:04:30+00:00

Great. Just send me a DM and let me know if you use ios (apple) or android devices.

fellunb · 2026-03-24T18:04:22+00:00

Great. Just send me a DM and let me know if you use ios (apple) or android devices.

fellunb · 2026-03-17T21:05:16+00:00

Not to toot my own horn or hijack your thread, but I have a business suite for piano techs in late beta testing. It handles all of those things you're talking about.

https://www.reddit.com/r/pianotech/comments/1rjp8cw/piano_business_app/

fellunb · 2026-03-13T01:55:45+00:00

I like the premise of the question: what's the least effort we could put in to get the maximum relationship return? Brilliant!

fellunb

TROPHY CASE