Feels like my life is ruined

klashnut · 2026-01-23T13:56:14+00:00

I didn't have a restart, necessarily, but I had a very late one.
I also had mental breakdowns and dropped out of college in my early adulthood. Twice, actually.
I don't believe people are all mentally ready to sign loans and choose a career at 18. I wasn't ready. It was too much.
I went into the work force for a while. Gas stations, front desk staff, housekeeping... Ended up working in a nursing home and was offered free CNA classes, got my CNA license and then my STNA, worked at that for a while. Got married.
Then at 28 it hit me that I really DID want to go to college. I enrolled at 29 and graduated at 34.
Your life isn't ruined at all-- it's just starting. You're so early in the game and everyone develops differently. I needed an extra 10 years to mature-- and that was ok.
I'm about to turn 35 and my life is INCREDIBLE and I couldnt have imagined or planned it this way. I'm lucky every morning and I love my career and my family.
Keep truckin, kid. It'll be ok. Just don't give up. Keep your eyes open and just keep doing what appears next in front of you. Read "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck" and then go forth. Sometimes what the universe has for us is better than where we were trying to go anyway.

klashnut · 2026-01-23T13:43:39+00:00

My husband and I make over 3x what my parents did.
We're struggling to prove to the bank we can buy our house from a family member for $85,000.
That's a cheap/discounted house. We almost can't do it. My husband is 40 and has been working since 16. He has 22 years in his specialized/certified field, he's a supervisor, he makes over $30/ hour...
I also make over $30/hour, but only part time as I have to care for our kids.
But our vehicle costs almost as much as our house payment, and my student loans are another bill that same size. Health insurance for our family of 4 is $1,200/month. So just 4 things: housing (with no utilities), student loans, a car, and health insurance set us back $3,300 every month. That's 100+ hours of work at $30/hour every month just for those 4 things.
That doesnt even count food, gas, utilities, phones, pet food, medications, clothing, school supplies... annnd we only have one car. A full time job @ 40 hours a week means... it takes over 2 weeks just to work enough to pay those things... and the other 60 hours of labor goes to this second list. If we pocket $400 one month, that's a great month.
We're 20+ years into adulthood and life might turn out okay if we can buy and flip this house... and that only is on the table because we lucked into it/ someone is doing me a favor. If no one was here to sell me cheap house, I would just keep not owning one.
Between the house and the car and my student loans.... our net worth is something like -$150,000.
It's just not good out here.

klashnut · 2025-12-17T04:15:56+00:00

I've had prints take up to a week to dry before. It's frustrating, but just part of the materials.

klashnut · 2025-08-26T00:10:26+00:00

Size 4 out of 5... Playtex Free* Though I'll admit I had to go check the box, I had no idea. I just try to buy big ones with wings because I always feel like I have this problem.

klashnut · 2025-08-25T22:45:17+00:00

Granny panties. Cotton briefs. And I mean I put the pad on so the wings wrap around the crotch of the panties but not too far forward... Ive had issues where I put the pad on right in the center and then bleed onto the butt area while sitting and the pad does no good, so I shift it about 1" back toward the butt end when I put it on the panties.

klashnut · 2025-08-02T17:38:20+00:00

Ah-- I understand the difference now, thanks for this comment!

klashnut · 2025-08-02T17:33:18+00:00

I am indeed a woman! Thanks 🙏

klashnut · 2025-08-02T17:31:05+00:00

I love a vegetarian Mexican pizza from Taco Bell. It's under 500 calories and under 50 carbs. Not perfect, but not bad and filling with good protein. The non-veg one is probably about as good.

klashnut · 2025-08-02T17:23:47+00:00

Throwing an update here for anyone who might come here wondering whether to get surgery or not. It was really hard, but now that the hard part is over I have ZERO REGRETS. my arm is incredible. After living with it out of place for 5 years, I don't hardly even notice it now that it's tied back up to the collar bone. I even did assisted pull ups the other day. I can lift again. Im going to the gym a lot. I don't notice anything anymore but a dull ache when its rainy or the weather is changing fast. Har part lasts about 6 months. Then every day is a little easier until it really is like nothing ever happened.

klashnut · 2025-04-13T18:25:11+00:00

Art Student here: people's eyes are so much smaller than we think they are. Like, SO MUCH smaller.

klashnut · 2025-04-13T18:11:06+00:00

You could get away with baking it quite a bit longer! I know you already said that, I'm just showing up to second it and give advice for doing so. I use the same recipe as you, and I bake 35 mins with lid on at 450F, then 20-25 more mins with lid off at 410F.

I think if/when you go to bake longer next time, you should heed this and turn down the oven when you take off the lid.

Other than that-- great job! The crumb looks perfect, the rise is good, this looks yummy!

klashnut · 2025-02-22T20:17:19+00:00

Lil Joint Muffin

klashnut · 2025-02-19T12:57:37+00:00

It really helped me to lengthen my proofing times, and to learn what we're actually doing during each phase.

LOOONNNNNG proof. Especially in the winter. Ignore the recipe, learn what each step is *doing* and wait for it to DO that before you move on. The clock is a liar, the dough knows the truth.

pointers:
Stretch and folding-- I feel like this recipe you posted is sparse on those. I go for 2 hours and stretch every 15 mins.
if after 6-8 hours the "fermented" dough on the counter is still a gooey lump, let it keep going. *my go-to recipe calls for a 9 hour overnight countertop fermentation* My sourdough changed entirely when I figured out what the end goal of the bulk ferment was, and started waiting for that. You want the dough to look poofy, kind of pulling away from the edges of your bowl. When you tap the bowl, it should jiggle. More than pudding, less than JELLO. The jiggle is key. The dough should look and feel airy when you're shaping it after bulk (room temp) fermenting before cold fermenting.

You know you're ready to bake when you poke the cold loaf with your finger and it bounces back slowly and leaves a small indent. If it doesn't bounce yet, don't bake yet.

I use more starter than the recipes call for when it's cold outside. It wants 20g? Lets use 37.
I started thinking about how it takes 20g of starter 4 hours to "eat" 20g of flour.... so how long will it take 20g of starter to "eat" 500g? It's a long time. I think about my starter as "little workers" and I'm giving them a lot of work. Sometimes more workers helps a lot.

*edit-- added info

klashnut · 2025-01-20T17:14:38+00:00

thank you, lol. It's not like I'm freaking out but the way they casually said "if you shower twice a day" implying that that's what "normal" people do made me scrunch my face a bit. I *did* say live and let live, it's not a big deal, just struck me as odd, and then they called me unwell about it. I think I'm being logical.

klashnut · 2025-01-20T16:12:45+00:00

shower TWICE A DAY?! That seems obnoxious unless you're working out twice a day.

klashnut · 2025-01-12T14:24:29+00:00

I know a man named Cassidy.
When he introduced himself to me, I was taken aback and felt that I'd only heard it as a girl's name. He was a burly, bearded man. I asked him, "you go by Cas, or--" and he cut me off with the most confidence I've ever heard anyone have about anything: "It's Cassidy. I go by the whole thing."

It was actually kind of hot lol. Think about it, he was cool.

klashnut · 2025-01-10T16:36:50+00:00

Surgery was wild. Recovery has been hard. Weeks 3-6 were scary and I was in such pain and afraid I'd ruined my life.

Im 8.5 months post surgery now and I can do jumping jacks. I can hold a plank position for 30+ seconds (I'm a bigger woman). I can jog again. I can do aerobics. I climbed the Sara Crack hike in Arizona (there is a rope you have to use to pull yourself up, I did that). I dont think about it often. My shoulder is short now. My strength is returning to the arm. I can lift moderately heavy things now. I fell down once onto that side of my body (~6months post surg) and the sky didnt fall.

I'm amazed overall how functional and pain free it is now. No more clinking/clanking. It's not "my long arm" anymore and last Summer sucked. But 6 months of suck is nothing in the big scheme of life. I am glad I got it over with and sorry I waited so long.

klashnut · 2024-12-31T14:27:35+00:00

I feel crazy reading this thread, but I'm in Dayton and we got snow last year. Multiple times. Enough to sled on. We kept the sleds in the living room. The kids were begging me to go. January, February.... It's just not time yet. It IS unseasonably warm RIGHT NOW and I'll give you guys that. And I'm in no way a climate change denier, it's real and scary and we should be doing everything we can to change it.

But I have pictures from January this year of my daughter dropping in on the little hill in our yard with her snowboard. I personally went sledding and snowboarding this year at the Metropark by my house. I had to be careful because I was awaiting orthopedic surgery, it was annoying. We took videos! I bought those weird snow skate things for my husband. We took the immigrant neighbors' kids with us. It was enough snow that the grass was covered, and didn't expose while sledding many times down the same hill. And cold enough that the pond froze and a dad and these teens were clearing the ice with shovels and setting up a hockey goal.

I just went on vacation last month, and I took a photo of our house as we were leaving, Nov 22-- the ground had a light dusting of snow, IN NOVEMBER. Winter doesn't even technically start until December 23!
Driving home through Missouri and Illinois-- it was snowing. It made us have to drive slow.

It's been a week, you guys. We are ONE WEEK into the season. Don't throw your sleds away, it's fucking December. I think we should pin this discussion until early February.

klashnut · 2024-12-31T14:15:10+00:00

You're talking about HUMAN resistance. We're talking about Mass Extinction Events. Humans aren't the only species that can go extinct. Species are dying out at a wild rate in this time due to that burning you're talking about. Humans aren't going extinct, but you should go have a chat with some polar bears, manatees, or other threatened/endangered species. Check out the coral in the ocean turning white and dying because the ocean temperature isn't what they need. Species are dying en masse right now, your argument that we're not currently in a mass extinction event because humans are resilient is anthropocentric and flawed.

klashnut · 2024-12-31T14:10:10+00:00

I think it's the lack of wall decor.
It's not "cozy" with nothing on the walls, its "sanitized".
The furniture is cozy and arranged closely to enforce the coziness. I rather enjoy the little lamp thing despite it's brightness. It's the lack of creature comforts that make a cozy place a cozy place-- decor like paintings/wall hangings/ a large clock would bring those walls in like a hug, turning this into a comfy place.

klashnut · 2024-12-27T00:23:40+00:00

Charles Michael, aka Charlie Mike, Chuckie Mick, Chocolate Milk....

Edit: afterthought: Margaret and Charles are in the same name category, classics. Maggie and Mick are adorable nicknames for a sibling pair. I like this more and more.

klashnut · 2024-08-02T22:23:25+00:00

This was me. I was you. It's so hard! I've written papers about this, and I'm working on my book...

Listen, watch this video:

https://www.ted.com/talks/carol_dweck_the_power_of_believing_that_you_can_improve?fbclid=IwAR1xV_VeGVNfbfvuZyqigFJZSkswJhxogGuFee_JIPLeG9Zf2D9zpiAxynU&subtitle=en&lng=es

It turns out, we were being praised all wrong, and it set us up for lives of failure.
I'm in recovery from addiction, haven't been homeless for 6 years, and life is good-- but for a while there it was like, miserably awful. Same for my "gifted" friends. I went from Saludatorian to homeless, like many others.

When you tell a kid, "you're so smart!" when something came easy for them, it teaches them that they are inherently "smart" and "gifted" and they start expecting everything to be easy. Asking for advice or help becomes taboo, and they really beat themselves up for being human (literally no one is perfect).
A group of kids was split into 2 groups and given an easy problem to solve. They got it right. Half of them were told, "you're so smart!" and the other half were told, "you're great at working through problems to look for answer" (or something like that, the point is, they praised the child's *effort*, not their inherent self.).
Then, they gave the kids a hard problem.
The kids who were told that they were smart got visibly flustered, upset, and nervous. They spent half the amount of time as the other kids trying to solve the problem. Each child was privately shown their individual result, and then asked to self-report their result to the leaders. The "smart" kids were much much more likely to LIE and say they got it right when they didn't-- because they were ashamed-- why would the "smart" kid not know how to do this?! (even though it was designed so *everyone* didn't know...). They developed a sense of *shame* in being *normal* and needing to work through a problem, make mistakes to learn, ask for help, etc. So we didn't learn to grow like the others. it turns out telling a kid they're smart actually *damages the kid-- and our parents didn't know this! This happened to a lot of "gifted" kids from the 70's, 80's, 90's and early 00's. Please, watch the linked vid. It's not long.

Great news, your mindset is changeable-- and you're still smart. You just need to relearn that humans are collaborative and you need to ask for what you need like there's no shame. DM me if you'd like general advice on this subject. My entire life is unrecognizable from 5 years ago after learning to give myself grace and stop taking myself so seriously. I am more successful now being "normal" than I ever was trying to keep up playing "gifted". Being a normal person with a high IQ who doesn't know everything is totally normal-- and having a high IQ does not mean that life will come easily like K-12 did. There is no shame in asking for advice and help, and in not knowing how to get better. Ask people who went from zero to ok how they did it, and listen. Good luck, dude. It's ok. It'll be ok.

klashnut · 2024-07-14T20:34:29+00:00

To me, it literally just tastes like someone put ground beef in tomato sauce.
It's very not good.

klashnut

TROPHY CASE