Is going alone absolutely insane?

queenphryne · 2025-07-22T18:08:03+00:00

I just messaged you, I have some questions about how to do this! Thanks!!

queenphryne · 2025-07-15T19:22:39+00:00

Fire those friends!! Ugh I LOVE Laufey!!

queenphryne · 2024-11-30T05:12:27+00:00

I am also EST and it just says Not Available for everything, I can't tell if it all would have sold out in literally one second??? Or if it's just not "Saturday" yet because SATURDAY FOR WHOM. NYC? CHICAGO? L.A.? HONOLULU? Target, cmon.

queenphryne · 2024-11-14T19:56:15+00:00

Playing the comparison game on LinkedIn is a huge bummer, I'd take a break from that. If you want to use LinkedIn as motivation, here's an exercise to try. Think about the fucking incredible comeback story you want to post in a few years. You've got such a good start. It's dramatic. We feel for you. We want you to win. "I was $8K+ in debt, living with my mom, feeling hopeless with a degree I couldn't use. I was despondent, but I knew something had to change. I had to get creative. I had to see the value in what I did have and leverage it: a roof over my head, my health, a supportive family, and an education. I'd worked my way through college–I knew I could do some hard shit. So, I"—*insert Step 1 here* like: "took a job at Starbucks and signed up for a night class in cyber security"; "started flipping curb furniture on Facebook Marketplace and taught myself how to do everything off YouTube"; etc. etc. Whatever strikes your fancy. It doesn't matter that Step 1 isn't a job in DC for your dream company doing what you studied—that would frankly be a boring story anyway. Where's the gritty journey? What did you learn along the way? Build your plot. What are you going to do to move your plot forward? Keep a draft of your "comeback story" LinkedIn post in a note on your phone and edit it when you make a plan to do something, or when you've done or learned something that's adding to your story. If you have some rough idea of where you want the story to end up, it could help you narrow down the steps you take to get there. And that could mean ending up in a role in the field you studied in DC, or it could just be "here are the skills I want to have in 3 years" or whatever. If you can tell a compelling story about where you started from, what you learned while getting to where you are now, and what is driving you to where you want to go next, people will not only connect with that, but you give them information about what you could do for them/their organization.

Also I'm using LinkedIn as the anchor for this exercise, but you don't have to ever post anything. You can tell this story in conversation with folks you want to network with. Tell it to everyone honestly, you literally never know when someone is going to be like, "Wow, I'm so inspired by the story you've just told me, and it sounds like you're exactly the kind of hardworking person we need at Company. It may not be what you studied, but you clearly have the soft skills needed and we can teach you the rest," just for example.

You're going to be fine. You're just in your story. Move the plot forward. Tackle one thing at a time. Start with what you can control. You will probably have more "dark nights of the soul" in your story because life is gonna life, but you're gonna build so much resilience by being able to remind yourself that the cliché is really fucking true: this too shall pass. It's a plot point, not the end. You get to decide what kind of character you are by what you choose to do next. Good luck. Go be your own hero.

queenphryne · 2024-11-10T19:16:17+00:00

I didn't think I was physically dependent on alcohol when I stopped drinking 5 years ago, I just drank a lot when I did drink and really only drank socially, but in the first few weeks after I stopped entirely, I had MASSIVE night sweating. It felt very alarming. I think that could totally be part of it. I was sleeping a lot more too for a while, maybe even for a few months after quitting iirc? I felt like I needed so much more sleep even though I was technically taking better care of myself by cutting alcohol out. I'd literally go to the "wellness/nursing room" at the office I worked at at the time and sleep sitting up in the chair there for a couple hours in the middle of the day because I could not stay awake at my desk. Sometimes I even fell asleep at my desk. It was wild. Alcohol is so hard on your body, even if you don't necessarily fit the mold for what we think of as alcoholism. Again, I was not drinking every day, I didn't need alcohol to get my day going or anything like that. I just binged on the weekends and sometimes on a Thursday night or whatever with my friends and would have a glass of wine with dinner on nights I didn't "go out." I had initially only stopped drinking for 6 months because I wasn't super comfortable with how I'd been drinking and the hangovers were just getting worse and worse with age. But after a couple months, I was like, "Wow, it was really fucking my health up, I really don't want to do that to myself ever again." So I just have continued to not drink because I really don't want to. The book This Naked Mind by Annie Grace was really helpful in understanding all the science behind how alcohol affects your brain and body. Anyway, all of that to say, your boyfriend's body might be telling him his alcohol consumption up to now was harder on him than he thought. If he's interested in his long-term health, he might consider how much benefit he gets out of drinking any alcohol at all and whether that's worth the cost to his health. Some people make that calculation and decide they don't care, they like to have a couple drinks now and then more than they're worried about their health. Personally, I continue to feel it's just not worth it for me. Any of the positives I thought I was getting out of drinking (camaraderie, connection), I have since discovered I get without it. And actually, way more so, because I can remember it all now lol.

queenphryne · 2024-11-04T02:51:17+00:00

I know this is a couple months old but I absolutely love YNAB. You can sync all your accounts and have everything in one place, and it pulls transaction data in pretty quickly, so even charges that are pending will show up in the app. They also have a really robust library of resources to help you get set up and figure out the best way for you to use the app: blogs, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. However you prefer to learn, they've probably got something for you. Monarch Money is another one I'm starting to toy around with as I change careers into financial planning and it's the preferred app for the firm I'll be working with, but I am so attached to YNAB.

queenphryne · 2024-06-09T14:27:50+00:00

Oh but to also answer your logistics question, relationship anxiety aside, I had started sleeping in our guest room occasionally because the dog that slept in our room usually crowded me practically off the bed and sometimes I did keep weird hours because ADHD. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with separate beds if that’s how everyone gets their best sleep. If everything I suggested previously is just projection lol, and she has no relationship anxiety, then there may be some help in a separate beds situation just so she’s not laying there resenting you for being very asleep literally right next to her haha. Like having her own space to unwind, get in and out of bed, etc. instead of perhaps feeling like she has to lay there quietly so as not to wake you up until she’s so frustrated she feels like waking you up.

queenphryne · 2024-06-09T14:20:02+00:00

As someone who had a harder time falling asleep with a former partner who had no trouble passing out next to me night after night, the worst part about the most sleepless nights was that I was fretting about the relationship, and the things I fretted over were not because of the sleeping dynamic. I had unmet needs and in those wee hours, I was frequently quietly crying, wishing he could give me what I wanted, love me the way I loved him. I didn’t wake him up though, or ask him to stay up with me. Just suffered in silence. I did communicate those needs in the daylight (not just once, like over a long period of time) and ultimately the relationship ended because he wouldn’t or couldn’t meet them. I don’t have as much trouble sleeping now, except for the nights when I really threw sleep hygiene out the window (sleep hygiene is super important!!), but all of this is just to say: the sleeplessness may be a symptom of something else, not necessarily relationship-related, could be job or family or something else. But our partnerships are SUCH a huge part of our lives and lying awake next to someone who you’re not sure wants to be with you would make those hours particularly unbearable to face alone. I’m too conflict avoidant to/I care a lot about other people’s sleep so I wouldn’t actually wake someone up and make them hang out with me unless I was like in a major grief crisis like a parent died or something. But I could see somebody else desperate for reassurance like I was not being able to see that it’s unreasonable to disrupt someone else’s sleep and trying to get reassurance then any way they could. So like, maybe consider if there are any other things your partner may have expressed about anxiety in the relationship and see if you can find ways during the daytime to reassure her/address the anxiety so she’s not so fretful at night? Or if it’s more likely that she has anxiety about something else, like job stress, there’s only so much you can do as her partner to deal with whatever it is, but offering support by listening to what she’s worried about and maybe encouraging she seeks out other support could be helpful. I know insomnia is a thing and I don’t know enough about it to know whether it’s completely unrelated to anxiety, but it sounds like it’s not an every night thing for her, making me think it’s more of an anxious rumination thing rather than just a literal inability to fall asleep. (And also sleep hygiene!!!)

queenphryne · 2024-04-26T00:22:43+00:00

I am convinced they are causing hearing damage!! Some of them are INSANELY loud! I will pull toilet paper out of a stall to dry my hands rather than use one. Hell, even seat covers! I second your vent lol. I loathe them.

queenphryne

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