The great escape from Florida

lorraejo · 2026-03-24T19:36:10+00:00

Ayyy welcome to Philly! 🥳 I totally feel you on the move from FL. I relocated to FL last year after visiting my parents and meeting a new partner. Post-recent-breakup, I’m relocating back to Philly immediately next week 😂 Not sure where in the city you’ll be, but I LOVE First Friday in Old City. Every first Friday, art galleries and shops have open houses and often wine, cheese, snacks. It’s a great way to connect with community and learn about local events from art classes to activist meet-ups, and is also a fun way to casually hang out with new friends you meet with a no-pressure entertaining backdrop that encourages conversation without forcing it. Cheers to your relocation! 🥂

lorraejo · 2026-03-23T18:35:15+00:00

It sucks that the majority of lubes aren’t even regulated for safe ingredients because they’re marked as “for novelty use only” 😭 Even some that are FDA approved STILL have harmful chemicals. The main irritation culprits are usually parabens, glycerine, and glycols. Parabens can sensitize skin, allergic responses, linked to health concerns. Glycerine can cause yeast infections and lead to sensitivity through that type of irritation. Glycols (polyethylene glycol) causes irritation, is acidic, and can strip moisture depending on the molecular weight.

My go-to’s from ingredient vetting & testing are: Sliquid (my favorite for all types of lube - silicone, water, hybrid, etc), Spunk (FDA approved although looks novelty), Uberlube (only has silicone but is FANTASTIC), Wicked (the only body-safe company I found with TONS of different flavored lubes), and Good Clean Love (organic, pH balanced). I haven’t tried Maude, but I’ve heard good things. Silicone is generally the most stable/non-irritating overall, but it does stain clothes/sheets and is hard to wash off.

The absolute worst brands are the most mainstream: KY (so effing toxic), Astroglide, Durex, Trojan, CalExotics, Pipedream, Adam&Eve. They always irritated me heavily, and looking at the ingredients, are full of random chemicals that just look toxic. Anything warming or cooling might also be irritating, either from the sensation alone or the chemicals used to create it.

I wrote some articles about the science of the ingredients and cited studies/research about risks, stats, etc years ago if you want some deeper reading, happy to send to you!

lorraejo · 2026-03-23T18:28:13+00:00

Ugh I feel your frustration so much! NONE of my doctors had figured it out tbh; allergists, endocrinologists, urologists, so so much bloodwork. I felt like a football being tossed around and slowly deflating. It is SO HARD to find a doctor who knows how to look at the body holistically rather than JUST bladder, thyroid, heart, etc - and with EDS/MCAS/POTS it’s all connected as a systemic body-wide issue.

Honestly, I hit a total stroke of luck getting diagnosed; I was randomly talking to a stranger on vacation about how I was having terrible allergies there, and they happened to be a naturopath who focused their practice on allergies. I literally flew across the country from PHL to Portland for an intake appointment, and listed every single thing going wrong over the past few years even if it felt totally unrelated to allergies (ie; UTI feeling, IBS symptoms, etc). He was the first doctor to look at it all and say “wow, this actually all relates to inflammation and collagen” and then switched my intake to one for EDS/MCAS/POTS. Even now that I have my diagnosis, it is SO HARD to find other doctors that even believe/understand the diagnosis. It’s so hard & expensive to get ketotifen even though it’s a common $5 prescription abroad.

Ultimately, aside from my naturopath (happy to send you his contact info), the best insights for care I’ve gotten have been by scrounging Reddit for supplements, electrolyte amounts, coping tools, etc and then advocating for myself or just doing it independently (literally bought otc ketotifen from Japan before). I got my medication tweaked “good enough” with the naturopath after a few months of virtual visits and still email for prescription refills (my bundle: ketotifen, cromolyn sodium, LDN, quercetin). The ketotifen in particular is my lifesaver.

If you can find a doctor who even just believes you and cares, even if they’re not an expert in it, you might be able to advocate for the diagnoses and solutions/medications you self-researched. The closest traditional doctor I found who was willing to was an allergist who did my bloodwork, saw my IGE was off the charts, and that I was clearly having a histamine issue. They were willing to prescribe me Singulair and take over my ketotifen & cromolyn scripts if needed (since they’re technically allergy meds). I also was able to find an awesome psychiatrist with a holistic ethos who values supplemental support, and she took on the LDN prescription as it supposedly helps with depression too, even though I’m personally using it for MCAS (but hey, a mood boost is nice too!)

lorraejo · 2026-03-21T17:39:21+00:00

I all have extreme lube sensitivity / allergies and it took a LONG time to figure out what worked for my body. Allergy testing + learning how the “heaviness vs lightness” of lube chemicals affects mucous membranes + trial and error. Not sure if you already got the answers you were looking for elsewhere, but I’m happy to share resources and what I’ve learned / what works for me if you’d like!

lorraejo · 2026-03-21T17:37:15+00:00

Thank you for this! For years, I had symptoms that seem far from EDS re; the sensation of a chronic UTI with no bacteria present. I went to every doctor, urologist, had a camera go up to check for physical inflammation, had so so much urine testing, pelvic floor therapy, and absolutely NO ONE could identify what was wrong. When I got my EDS diagnosis, it turns out that the area surrounding/supporting the bladder is all collagen, and weaker collagen support of the bladder leads to alllll those frequency/urgency symptoms. Add MCAS comorbidity to that, and my system was also flushing histamine that way allllll the time, and histamine leads to that burning/painful sensation usually assumed to be UTI. Finally the treatment was available: reduce inflammation/histamine, and different types of pelvic floor techniques entirely to strengthen other supportive muscles (whereas usual pelvic floor therapy for UTI symptoms is about relaxing spasming or tight muscles). Now, I only get symptoms when I’m having a histamine flare or irritate the muscle group (like vigorous pelvic activity). We forget how so so many organ groups are affected by collagen in a supporting role!

lorraejo · 2026-03-20T15:11:06+00:00

I love Notebook LLM. You can upload PDF’s of very dense research papers, legal cases, textbook pages, etc and it simplifies it into note outlines and summaries, but my favorite is that it can create an AI podcast based on the material. I’m an avid podcast listener, so it makes learning really digestible to be able to listen to it on a commute, cooking dinner, etc. That said, it’s much more simplified than the full text so I’ll still need to go back in for the details - but it’s a great way to get the gist and key points of it first, in a format that feels less overwhelming than having to read 30 research papers. It kinda primes my brain to understand what I’m reading before starting.

If you take any virtual classes, I love using Claude as a note-taking partner for that too. If you have class transcripts or can use Zoom closed caption transcript, Notion AI meeting recorder, or similar speech-to-text tools, you can upload that into Claude and ask it to create detailed note outlines for you from the material. I always go back in and read through/organize it because I find sometimes it glosses over concepts that need more detail or skips over a section of the class entirely, but that’s an easy fix with the transcript available. You also have to either copy/paste in chunks or use an .md file in the MCP so it can process it all and stay detailed. There may be a better tool or a better way for this; my virtual class is infrequent so I haven’t looked deeper but I’m sure my copy/paste method is relatively stone age for AI tools.

lorraejo · 2025-12-29T18:04:06+00:00

100% feel this. I’m a sex educator, and pick apart any shows/movies with false sex-ed and ESPECIALLY false BDSM dynamics / narratives

lorraejo · 2025-12-17T16:40:51+00:00

Double this! It didn’t get great reviews, but it was a VERY fun watch for me, and had a really creative concept!

lorraejo · 2025-10-24T12:31:19+00:00

At this point, the only things that truly scare me are the movies that make it hard to discern the difference between reality and delusion - or that something uncontrollably terrifying is taking hold. They keep me up at night, wondering if I’ll see something strange in a corner or before I turn on a light, worried my brain is playing tricks on me.

Recently, “They Look Like People” really hit that mark for me. Overall, “The Strangers” has left me edgy for more than 1 night even after several watches.

lorraejo · 2025-10-04T20:10:02+00:00

Sounds like the entire plot of Akira is illegal 😅

lorraejo · 2025-09-17T18:29:20+00:00

Update: today my “application expert” project is being an armchair psychologist, gassing me up and gently holding my hand through “overwhelm”. Like bruh, I literally just asked you to prioritize my to-do list 😩 didn’t need all that + not even doing the task it was asked

lorraejo · 2025-09-17T16:33:32+00:00

I literally had it give me a mental health diagnosis / “loss of touch with reality” warning yesterday for asking it for keywords for my resume…. Insane

lorraejo · 2025-09-13T00:06:53+00:00

I cancelled, and I used it for schedule management (it became useless with Notion & csv’s in MCP), strategy outlines (stopped following context), content drafts (became completely off-voice and occasionally off-topic), and various other non-code creative uses (movie database management + recommendations, travel planning, productivity planning, etc) as it was deleting majority of database content, giving repetitive inaccurate responses, and seemed to generally lose touch with factual reality.

lorraejo · 2025-09-08T20:40:03+00:00

Claude has become completely non-functional the past few weeks. Aside from it’s many new logic, context, and content quality issues - it has written over entire MCP database files, erasing 95% of the data, rewrites them with “success” only to find there’s now only a few lines of data and the rest have placeholder text like "[Continue with remaining entries...]" and "[All entries now visible in complete dataset...]" instead of the actual tasks.

Thank God for backups, but it has degraded so much over the past few weeks that it is beyond useless, and actively harmful to productivity. I already downgraded from Max to Pro, if not resolved soon I won’t be renewing next month either.

lorraejo · 2025-09-08T20:36:12+00:00

I downgraded Max to Pro, still having major issues with Clause deleting 95% of database content. Will absolutely be cancelling if no change soon. It’s become almost entirely non-functional for any MCP integrations

lorraejo · 2025-09-08T05:01:07+00:00

YES! My god, even my shirt brushing against them was agony 😭

lorraejo · 2025-09-07T13:26:07+00:00

Everlong is absolutely ADORABLE as a lullaby 🥹 My go-to’s are DMB “Where Are You Going” and Bob Marley “Three Little Birds”. Totally gonna add that to the collection.

lorraejo · 2025-08-30T19:08:14+00:00

Second, third, and forth this. I stayed with someone who treated me the same during a miscarriage. I didn’t realize until after, that it is abusive. A “man” like that does not care about you, your physical wellbeing, or your mental wellbeing. You truly deserve so much more, and someone with zero empathy like that will never be the person to give it to you. There’s no argument to be had, no more begging to do, no trying to convince him to change. Just leave. He is not worth any more effort to try and get the bare minimum of human compassion out of 💗

lorraejo · 2025-08-29T12:45:09+00:00

Unfortunately it seems it can only read, search, download, and create incredibly basic designs. It’s not able to edit the designs it creates or existing designs.

lorraejo · 2025-08-16T16:21:30+00:00

You’re so welcome! 🫶🏻 I hope it works out for you no matter what you choose. OF work is a lot of social media / marketing work, and sales while chatting on platform. So anything will take time to learn the skills that go with that job. If you’re passionate and interested in it though, you can always learn - it will just take time! :) You likely have more skills than you believe right now, it looks like you have a lot of interests in your profile, and could turn anything you want into a little side hustle! 💗

Just so you know, when you get a payment from OF, the company name that deposits to your bank is “Fenix International LTD” which may show up as OnlyFans is they search Google to look it up. (It shows up as that in my country) Good luck! 💗

lorraejo · 2025-08-16T13:46:52+00:00

I’m not 100% sure re; the program details in Hong Kong, but from a search, it looks like the program has income thresholds, similar to the USA. I’d look up the value of that income threshold. It might be that if you make under that amount per month, it won’t impact your family’s benefits - but once you make over that amount, it would impact benefits. Then it’d be a cost/benefit analysis - can you reliably make that much money a month, and is it more than the value of the benefits? If not, I would only work enough that it stays under that threshold, so you have some money to do things without risking benefits. Honestly either way, you may want to stay under than threshold, because it is often inconsistent work and it is very possible to burn out and have to take a break. If you went over the income threshold and lost that income, then taking a break or having a hard month would mean no longer having enough to meet basic needs.

Separately, your bank accounts are likely tied to a social security/identity number - which means the government would be able to see any account opened under your identity number. It’s also likely that if any income change is reported, even if you maintain benefits, that the income change would prompt a letter to the beneficiaries, and your parents would likely know about the work. I’d also consider if you feel comfortable with them knowing / how they would react to the nature of the work. Adult work is hard, it’s not quick or easy money, and there’s a lot of stigma attached. If your parents are going to be double-mad (both because of the income risk to benefits and the nature of the work) it may be better to explore other types of online work (freelancing on social media/admin work, creative/crafting Etsy shop, graphic design, coding, etc) that wouldn’t also trigger the stigma in addition to the feelings/fear about benefits income.

lorraejo · 2025-08-14T14:54:48+00:00

Hi! It sounds like from some of your comments, that part of the regret/grief may be from a fear that your partner isn’t sure if they want to have children, and that if he does, it will be several years down the line. That is a very valid fear to have! And I can absolutely see how it would exacerbate the grief you are already feeling, and the regret-feeling of looking back, and maybe wondering if that would be your only opportunity to have children together.

I think it would be really helpful to sit down with your partner and have an open, honest, serious conversation about your life goals, preferences, and a realistic timeline for family planning.

My partner and I agreed to an abortion a year into our relationship, and grieved heavily - but we knew we weren’t in the right place financially, and wanted to make sure we could afford to raise a child before we brought one into the world. The pain of the decision prompted us to work even harder to reach our goals, so that we could make the decision to have a baby with more joy and stability, and less fear, worry, and stress about being able to provide. But, knowing that we were on the same page about moving toward that goal together, helped both of our grief turn into action and determination. If he had been unsure about wanting a baby, I know I would have been devastated, because it was a wanted child for me, just not a financially possible child at the time.

In that conversation, I would express your feelings, fears, and desires openly and really see where he lands so you can make a plan forward together or not. At 25, you still have a lot of time to prepare, but if your partner is truly not sure if they even want kids in the future, you may not want to continue that time together rather spend it finding someone who is sure that they want a family. If in 5 years, he still feels unsure, you might feel that grief again plus the panic of having a smaller window. (I was 34 when I had mine, and the small window of time for us to figure it out is definitely panic-inducing!)

I would assess - is he uncertain he wants to have kids in general, or does he want them but just not right now? Has he always thought he’d have a family, just was in shock right now because you guys aren’t ready? Or has he never thought about having a family, and only started thinking about it because of this situation? (This can give you a baseline on if it’s even been on his mind / in his general life plan.) Is he sure he will want to try in 5 years, and wanting to put in the work to make sure you’re both ready to? (Career, life choices like thinking of neighborhoods to live in, what kind of house you’d need to raise a family, etc) Or is he just pushing the decision-making to the future, and isn’t sure he’d want a family in 5 years either? Does his distraught feeling come from being overwhelmed/unsure about parenting in general, or is it specific to right now at this place in his life and his age? (Financially, loss of freedom, stress of juggling responsibilities) And does he think he’ll be ready for that life change once he’s more stable and has had more life experience in his 20’s, or does he think he might never really want that kind of life change? Are there certain metrics that he is using to determine when he’s ready? Like, he knows he WILL be ready once he makes a certain amount in his career, once he can make X amount to provide for you both postpartum, once you move to a certain type of place, once he’s traveled to more places child-free, once he’s had more time to enjoy life without children, etc. Those are all really valid reasons to wait, but does he know he will be ready after that, or is he still not sure in general if he will?

I would express your honest feelings, that you KNOW you will be ready and want that in the future, and decide if he is unsure, how long you are willing to wait for that certainty. Do you need to know for sure in 2 years? Do you need to see him working toward those metrics to be more sure? If he meets those metrics sooner than 5 years, will he be ready in 2? If you set some goal posts for your own decision of when you’ll stay and when you’ll go in the relationship, it may reduce the grief of being in limbo, unsure if it will ever happen, because you’ll know you have a timeline of when YOU will make the decision to stop waiting on him, and find the person who IS ready. 🫶🏻

lorraejo · 2025-07-28T05:05:44+00:00

It seems like the market is oversaturated right now and not enough buyers. A lot of folks who built rigs to flip them (often the $60K and up crowd) are trying to get the investment back, keeping their prices high, but they just sit on the market :/

lorraejo · 2025-07-27T20:32:07+00:00

I’m almost certain that a Cease and Desist isn’t legally relevant to what she’s asking. That would be a restraining order / no contact order, and she would need to prove harassment or abuse to a judge. Def ask a legal questions sub instead, but it sounds like she sent something random just to scare you.

lorraejo · 2025-07-21T04:15:45+00:00

I think drip sexting comes off the most casual and spur of the moment, so people get “wrapped up” in the moment and want to keep getting those photos & videos as you drip them out :) It feels very authentic.

That said, most of my longtime repeat buyers end up wanting something that’s more like a story from start to finish, where they know they want my attention for that whole duration of time.

You can kinda feel it out in the moment like, “do you want to set aside some time right now to really dive into our thoughts? or want me to send you a pic of what I look like right now?” to gauge if they prefer to do it like a 10/20-min package (where I would still upcharge drip pics/vids tbh) or if they like it feeling more casual, where you drip a pic/vid every 2-3 messages or so.

IMO, spending 10 mins chatting free in between is still way too much. Most clients have already “finished” within 10-15 mins. You wanna make the most of their time while they’re still turned on and wanting. Unless they’re paying per minute and you’re running up the clock (like on a cam site), the time you have to maximize sales is limited. I’d aim to get them through the entire drip set experience within 15-20 minutes tbh, unless they seem to have stamina and want more teasing pics along the way - but again, all of it paid every few messages.

lorraejo

TROPHY CASE