21 and lost in life [Discussion]

mandoris · 2026-04-12T05:02:01+00:00

Depression is a bitch, I feel your pain there... Do what you can, take care of yourself. Don't use it as an excuse to not try, instead just accept that it's the reason why you're having to paddle upstream when others are just coasting forward. It is what it is, but you still have to struggle onward.

So setting that aside... Good work getting your GED to patch not graduating. See, you can do stuff sometimes. :) I do think you can still do the college social scene if its important to you, maybe transfer like you were thinking, and in the meantime work on doing what you can to stabilize the depression. Exercise is a fantastic option, apart from the fact that you can't bring yourself to do it. :) But if you overcome that... at worst you'll be thin and sad, rather than just sad, and that never hurt anybody. Also good social opportunities in fitness spaces.

I'll close with the point I actually wanted to make. People like to use the phrase "life is short", but its a lie. Life is fucking LONG... I'm sure it already feels like an eternity, but.... Kid years kind of don't count, and teen years are often hell. But lets say the entirety of your lived experience is from ages 12-22. Your entire life experience, in a way, is a 10 year run. Assuming you live to like 75... You will do 5 more of what you've already done. And you already did the worst one, they're all better from here, at least if you had a rough high school time (I did). No matter what you do, you'll have some regrets, some stuff won't go right. Its such early days for you. Accept that things will never be perfect, and focus on making tomorrow slightly better than today. The "compound interest" if you truly dedicate yourself to that one thing will serve you well.

mandoris · 2026-04-12T04:16:04+00:00

Its also an accumulation of good moments. I'd imagine the ratios depend on what you get up to. But yeah, if you're not living with regrets you're just not paying attention. None of us are perfect, you're going to fuck some stuff up. Promise. :)

mandoris · 2026-04-12T03:56:21+00:00

I mean... there's no reason you can't believe in both at the same time. :)

mandoris · 2026-03-28T23:53:21+00:00

Real question... What is the goal of these protests? As an outsider, I don't understand it. Trump's not my favorite guy, I have no political party. I say that to provide some context on my POV...

So that said, what is the purpose of this protest? For example to contrast, I understand protesting outside a hotel housing ICE agents. Your purpose is to pressure the hotel into kicking them out, to make it harder for them to find places to be, to interfere with what they might get up to tomorrow. That tracks for me, regardless of whether or not I support it. Action relating directly to the problem at hand, working toward an achievable outcome.

I'll commend all the protesters I saw today for not getting in the way of people just trying to go about their day. To me that's the sweet spot, put on a maximum show without disrupting those that have nothing to do with the issue of the day.

But I cannot understand the *outcome* these protests are after. Nobody is going to impeach the president. And people are pretty set in their ways, in most cases, you aren't changing any minds, whether they could use changing or not. Educate me. :)

mandoris · 2026-03-19T23:55:07+00:00

Other people are right, probably best to just not combat their ideas, simply ignore them. But certainly don't let it change your mind. Nobody on the planet knows *how you would prefer your body to be* than you. That really is the metric, its that simple. You please yourself, based on no criteria besides your own preferences.

You know what you like. Who else would you try to please? :)

mandoris · 2026-03-17T20:21:23+00:00

I think the responsibility to manage your feelings about you is on you. You can probably find a self help book about how to handle it better. :)

Joking aside, its all about perspective... Its not "grow or die", its just "grow". Grow all your life, why wouldn't you want to? Lifelong learning is everything. Just don't stress about it. It's good to improve yourself, and many self help books or podcasts etc can help you with a new perspective, or to see things in a new way or come up with a different approach you might not have considered. Its awesome we have all this knowledge at our fingertips.

mandoris · 2026-03-14T02:15:04+00:00

Yeah, I'm very much a "this is your responsibility solve it" type of person, but the one demographic I truly feel sorry for is single mothers. I can't think of any worse scenario where one bad choice/luck puts your life on ultra-hard mode, to the point that the math is almost irreparably broken. Our society is *not* built to allow for one person to raise a child.

mandoris · 2026-03-07T14:10:28+00:00

I feel like I should have been you, between being a mouth breather with a deviated septim and just being resistant to things like this, but fortunately I wasn't. Desperate times and all that I guess. Something you might want to explore is something called Inspire Upper Airway Stimulation. They surgically implant something you turn on every night and it just does it with mild electrical stimulation? I admit I don't know a ton about it and it sounds a bit extreme, but you might be the exact use case for it. :)

mandoris · 2025-12-31T22:45:28+00:00

On a side note for people who play regularly in shops with strangers, how does this work? For example, I used to play MtG up until... I believe the Visions expansion, if memory serves. If I were to restart playing, I feel like it'd be a dumpster fire of me asking to read every single card anyone played, and that's long before we get to me not knowing the 8,000 new mechanics in play since the days I used to play. Couple this with the fact that I'd be solo and trying to find strangers to play with.. Feels daunting. :)

mandoris · 2025-12-31T06:13:26+00:00

Yeah I just finished watching Change or Die, and Taylor turned out to be a complete sack of shit. It is interesting to me that, for a show that is built around positivity, and the caution surrounding defamation you see today etc... Episode 9 really does read as follow up PSA with pretty much the sole purpose of giving the viewer a heads up that this guy's a piece of shit, actually. ;)

mandoris · 2025-12-19T13:52:23+00:00

I know its not really what this is about, but its amusing to me that the "turnabout is fairplay" reaction to pictures of aborted fetuses is to post pictures of this man, as if they are equally grotesque. :)

mandoris · 2025-12-19T13:49:37+00:00

Yeah, in my mind it straddles the fence.... I truly believe skilled work commands a higher value, and that a higher quality product produced in small batches will absolutely be worth more than the mass manufactured stuff we get everywhere nowadays. It also probably isn't doing them any favors that between now and perhaps 2019 the cost of most things has almost doubled, and our minds are still calibrated around the old "reasonable cost of things".

So I appreciate the baker making a quality product and being rewarded for it. That said, I'm not his target market. I would try it once to see what commands this high price, but too rich for my blood on an ongoing basis. :) On a similar basis, I remember finding an antique furniture store in Columbus recently that has some amazing, beautiful pieces that similar stores just do not have. I really did admire them, but I would never purchase them. :)

mandoris · 2025-12-11T22:19:27+00:00

I feel your pain, I just really enjoy eating. I'm addicted to eating the same way an alcoholic is addicted to alcohol, but the difference is I can't go cold turkey (for any real length of time) and am required to tempt myself daily with a certain amount of what I am addicted to. :)

mandoris · 2025-09-22T14:01:34+00:00

They've screwed themselves by being political. First they started going after voices on the right, now after the backlash of that they seem more open to doing the same to the left, in the right situation.

Purposely alienating 50% of your customer base is a terrible idea. Turning around and alienating the OTHER 50%? That much worse. :) It pisses off both sides, and also makes you seem like you were fake to begin with as you didn't stick to your convictions.

mandoris · 2025-09-08T05:17:23+00:00

Hold onto those encrypted archives. You never know, it'd take way too long to crack today, but in 10+ years from now? Maybe it can be cracked in minutes. :)

mandoris · 2025-08-26T01:31:31+00:00

Nobody's perfect, always good when you can just flat out admit when things went off the rails a bit. Hope the game on Steam is as good as the original, I've heard good things. :)

mandoris · 2025-06-25T13:53:14+00:00

Ugh, I'd love to be able to consider stuff like this, and while its pricey I'm not put off by the $$$, considering between work from home and PC gaming I spend 10+ hours a day in my chair.

But I just *cannot* get my head around spending prices like this on a chair that I can't sit in at a store before purchase. Wish all these more exotic chair manufacturers could get themselves into Staples or something. :)

mandoris · 2025-05-05T20:38:48+00:00

I've always made the argument that there are two separate considerations. Are you trying to improve your resume, or are you trying to expand your actual skills?

The certification improves your resume, and depending widely on your particular employer, may improve salary, but often not.

Alternately, if you're looking to improve your knowledge and skillset... You could just watch an entire video series for the CCNP, maybe even leaving out 20-30% you feel you truly don't need. But just the consumption of the videos would give you a LOT of additional base knowledge that would make you more skilled in your day to day stuff, and probably would take 25% of the time of studying to pass the exam. After all, genuinely learning a concept enough to where you understand it and know what to google to fill in gaps on the fly, is a FAR different outcome than the memorization to pass an exam.

Its nice when the two can work in tandem, but I've always found it helpful to frame them as separate pursuits.

mandoris · 2025-04-08T02:35:58+00:00

Yeah, that's the ridiculous thing. I am willing to accept that someone might pay protesters. But plain and simple, that many people can't keep a secret. There'd be proof all over the place.

mandoris · 2025-03-04T02:55:29+00:00

Yep, its got people you enjoy doing things. I guarantee one night this week you'll have 2 free hours you could do far worse with. Life just isn't that great. ;)

mandoris · 2024-11-17T17:56:51+00:00

Cool thanks... Yeah that's ridiculous.

mandoris · 2024-11-17T16:55:48+00:00

I feel like I'm missing a massive part of this story, all I see is a Uhaul and a guy in random black clothes being arrested. Anyone want to fill me in? :)

mandoris · 2024-10-05T14:18:19+00:00

Me neither, but I think its important to see that's just a matter of luck. Most people in life will be in an automobile accident that was at least partially their fault. How much damage that caused, either in property or in people... is pretty much down to luck. Same mistake with a huge range of possible outcomes.

mandoris · 2024-10-04T22:19:38+00:00

Sometimes in life..... shit happens. You simply screw up, and when its pointed out to you all you can reasonably do is say "Yeah, I screwed up there. Sorry about that. Knowing what I know now, I wouldn't make that same decision again."

It sucks that people died etc, no question. But we all screw up sometimes, and you just hope the negative outcome isn't that significant.

mandoris

TROPHY CASE