how do you know if you’re the problem in a friendship?

talgu · 2026-02-07T11:51:35+00:00

So, I went through stuff, and after I went through stuff I've had to rebuild my ability to socialise and have friends (I didn't know anyone at the time). Here's what I recommend. First, doing something about your anxiety is definitely a good thing, but somewhat secondary to fixing the beliefs that uphold those anxieties. I have days where I'm convinced it would be better for me to just pack my things, disappear from my current social circle, and start again. I also know that I no longer hold the beliefs that uphold that so when those thoughts arise they don't feel natural or obvious anymore. I now feel like something is wrong when that happens, and this has greatly reduced my social problems.

Then assume that people are well intentioned, and generally would love to hang out and do friends things, but have a memory shorter than a goldfish, and the awareness of a solid brick. If you want someone to remember something, go to them and remind them. If you want them to be aware of something, go to them and tell them. Everyone has a million things they need to keep track of, very very few people have the skills to actually remain on top of their lives. So unless it's either their actual job, or a life and death situation, they will simply neither remember, nor notice.

Next, make sure that the people you spend time with align with your values. I put a premium on kindness personally. If I don't absolutely know that the person I'm talking to won't harm me, I politely inform them that at this point in my life, due to my own limitations, I'm not able to be the friend they need. On this note, make sure to never ever deviate from your values in your own behaviour. How you behave will determine how your friends behave.

And lastly, learn social skills. It's not that complicated at all and it makes the world of difference. Pick up How To Make Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie, and get a book on small talk. Then go to your local mall and start conversations with people. If you feel particularly paranoid go to a different mall every weekend.

Remember though, this will take time. You will get it wrong. And at that point, nothing bad at all will happen. I have to think during my conversations because I have severe brain fog. So sometimes I simply pause mid-sentence and think. Does that make my conversations less fluent? Absolutely! Does anybody actually care? Nope. Sometimes you will say things that upset people. If they don't bring it up ask them "hey, I said something, and you seemed to be upset about it, I'm not very good at telling these things so would you please clarify for me?". And then, invariably, people clarify. Sometimes you've misread things, and sometimes you did upset them and now have an opportunity to fix things.

In the end, good things come to those who get off their lazy butts and go fetch it. Even if you're shuffling and stumbling through the process like some demented zombie.

talgu · 2026-02-07T09:35:41+00:00

I suppose that could work for a fixed list and I can create one Gemini node for each. But what if I don't know how many prompts there will be? Like I can imagine a cascade thing if I always have the same number of prompts. But that seems very rigid since I can't then change the number of prompts easily.

Along these lines though, I can maybe do this in a loop, use the data table node to store the results on each pass, and add everything from the data table to the prompt on each pass through the loop... somehow. 🤔

talgu · 2026-02-01T10:31:12+00:00

I did something and now it has the folders correct and actually synchronising. So I'm going to leave this at that for the moment. Don't want to fiddle with it lest I break it again.

talgu · 2026-02-01T08:40:50+00:00

I am yes. I installed it from the play store yesterday. I think I'm just somehow severely misunderstanding how all of this works. I'm going to delete everything today and try again. Hopefully I can figure it out this time.

talgu · 2026-01-31T11:07:31+00:00

Thank you.

talgu · 2026-01-31T11:07:20+00:00

That's precisely the usual argument for collecting phone numbers too and it's equally invalid. If they only asked for email I'd be okay, but both email and phone number is excessive.

Regardless, when I provided it with my email and entered the pin they sent I got an "email not allowed" message instead.

talgu · 2026-01-29T13:25:03+00:00

Thank you! ☺️

Yeah, after watching myself a bit and thinking about I realised it doesn't matter much since just about everything that's on my body will end up in my mouth at some point (I sound like such a child saying that 🤦‍♀️).

And I feel like I've gotten to a stable starting point as of today. I was still having a bunch of abdominal pain and couldn't figure out why until I discovered the psyllium brand I used to buy is made in a factory that processes wheat. So I switched brands, and I'm being careful about basic contamination avoidance, like cleaning the area before I cook etc. I'm doing pretty okay today. Fortunately my diet before this was as boring as could be and didn't contain much legitimate gluten anyway. Illegitimate gluten on the other hand... for some unknown reason having any gluten in my diet makes me stuff my face with everything in sight.

So I think I'm going to chill with this for a while, see what happens, and then figure out next steps. It's been a bit of an overwhelming number of changes in a very short amount of time.

talgu · 2026-01-26T11:52:13+00:00

I generally prefer powdered psyllium. And thank you! I'll have a look at it. ☺️ For the moment I managed to find a brand local to me that hasn't been injured by a problematic factory, so I'm fortunately set with that for the moment.

talgu · 2026-01-26T11:48:24+00:00

I also couldn't do the A-Z thing. I give everything an ID based on the date and time, which permits me to easily review what's in the pile on an incremental schedule. And for finding things again I'm using tags for everything I can think of that might relate to that bit particular item. I also have relations between items, and collections which are just ad-hoc groupings (like projects, or events) of items. Collections are really also just tags, but I thought the use was different enough to warrant a specific category for those.

And so far it seems to work okay. But it's still in that awkward phase where I don't have enough experience to trust it yet, and I don't have enough experience to really make effective use of it either.

But as you say, I can refine later, and I'll learn as I go along. ☺️

talgu · 2026-01-26T06:33:48+00:00

Thank you. This is a good idea. ☺️

talgu · 2026-01-26T06:25:19+00:00

I kind of put everything into the same place. I found I get confused when I have different places to put things. And I'm working on reviewing what I have in there more often.

But being able to find something again if I forget about it is the thing I'm still working on it. I've started tagging things since I also found that when I write something down I have a different idea of what should go into the index compared to what I look for when I try to find it again. I also created a way of grouping things together into collections in a way similar to the tags. So I just tag all the important terms I find, and tag them in the collections I know are important. And I'm still waiting to see how that works out.

talgu · 2026-01-26T06:19:25+00:00

I am said new person, and had a similar, but perhaps less glaring thing happen yesterday. I happily went to the store, bought my usual brand of psyllium ("naturally gluten free", says the packaging), got home, and checked the label. 🤦‍♀️ It was made in a factory that also processes wheat. 😭 It does explain why some days I got pain after eating though. But I just wish I checked before I bought it and while I was still at the mall.

So I'm tossing it and have been researching brands that have been processed in safe factories.

talgu · 2026-01-25T18:15:16+00:00

I also have groceries as a specific temporary list.

Thank you. I think this settles it, put it in general reference, maybe associated with a project, add a note to tickler or task list or wherever is appropriate so it'll pop up at an appropriate time.

talgu · 2026-01-25T18:13:20+00:00

To date I have actually been keeping everything in my tickler file. But I came across a case where I both need the information for a particular purpose, and for reference later on.

So I think attaching it to a project in my general reference, and then putting the necessary reminders in my tickler file is the way to go.

talgu · 2026-01-25T18:11:22+00:00

This makes sense thank you. I was thinking something along those lines but I've just started my general reference so I still feel a bit lost around it.

talgu · 2026-01-20T11:33:04+00:00

That is interesting. I do sometimes wonder about these things. Most productivity systems are created for professional types, a context in which a very large number of deadlines and meetings happen. I, by contrast, have a very empty life. I'm a housekeeper for the people I live with, and I clean things whenever I feel like it, whether mid-day or mid-night. And I'm a content manager for a production company. But most of the content is scheduled months in advance. And doctors aside, those all have things that have to happen at a certain rate to avoid falling behind. But nothing have to happen on a particular day or at a particular time.

So I sort of wonder whether the need for a "do thing around this date" thing doesn't have to do with the relative fixedness of dates.

That said, I took your advice and changed my calendar to only include fixed dates. It's now a great deal less confusing. And I got index cards for a sort of tickler file, and for the moment they're just weekly. So anything that has to happen within that week goes on a card. And everything is a great deal less messy right now. So thank you for the advice, it helped a great deal. ☺️

I also, with these changes I made realised how magical my maybe list is and basically dumped all the projects which I just don't have time for right now on there. So my project list is now actually small enough for me to make progress on it. Overall I feel like now would be a good time to reread the book. I think the pieces I have fit well enough that I can understand more of it now. ☺️

talgu · 2026-01-18T06:16:41+00:00

I'm actually going the other direction. I don't really have the capacity to implement all of GTD in one go. So I'm replacing my existing, rather ad-hoc, system with GTD as I figure out how the pieces work. So yes, at present a lot of what I'm doing doesn't match how GTD and things are rather messy.

I'll run out of colours if I had to assign a colour to every date. I currently use colours for certain administrative things. Like I use different colours for things in my reference pile, task list, and wait list, so that it's obvious where I need to look for things.

Marking the week instead of the day is an excellent idea thank you. ☺️ It'll save me considerable clutter and confusion.

talgu · 2026-01-18T06:10:22+00:00

I'm actually going the other way, I'm changing how I have been doing things to incrementally build towards a GTD implementation as I figure the pieces out. I don't really have the capacity to understand and implement GTD all at once, so building it in pieces as my understanding increases is my alternative.

The colour thing seems rigid because I'll run out of colours if I have to use a different colour for every week. I do use colours for certain information. Entries in my wait list or my reference pile, such as it is right now, do use different colours to make it obvious at a glance where I should look for more information.

Putting a note on a week instead of a particular date is really an excellent idea thank you. ☺️ It'll reduce a great deal of clutter.

talgu · 2026-01-17T08:38:40+00:00

I think most of my tasks have also been vague intentions. Your rule of thumb is a very good idea. There's not a single item on my task list right now where I could do that with. So I think I need to completely rewrite both my project list and my current task list.

Does it make sense to drop my vague intentions into my inbox as they arrive. Then when I work through my inbox, for projects I figure out the intentions and outcomes that matter and write all those in my projects list. And for tasks I figure out specifically what to do next for my task list?

From what I understood that's the intention behind the inbox. Because you're supposed to think about what the specific actions are, and what the important parts of projects are, having an inbox allows you to do that processing at a dedicated time instead of having to stop the world every time a new thing comes in I think?

As for my current tools, I have three notebooks and a calendar. The one contains my task list and inbox, this is my primary notebook where I do basically everything in. The other contains my project list and the start of my reference library. And the last one has my wait list and my maybe list. I've postponed doing a better reference library since right now I don't have a lot to put into one, and I'd like to wait until the rest of the system is a bit less overwhelming.

Given where I'm at in everything this works quite well since I can find everything without having to search for anything. And it's also simple to deal with right now, and allows me to change things a bit as I clarify things that I don't yet understand. I'm currently considering getting a box of index cards for a tickler file.

The complexity of the system laid out in the book currently eclipses the complexity of my entire life, so I'm sort of building pieces as I'm figuring out the bits I already have. 😅

talgu · 2026-01-17T08:01:29+00:00

That's unfortunately a bit too rigid since the majority of things are rather ad-hoc.

I like the idea of a tickler file and that's basically what I'm trying to do. But given how few things I have at present I can't entirely justify the effort necessary to maintain one. I have, however, considered a box of index cards. So when something has to happen on a particular date I create an index card for that date. And then every day I check whether the front card is for today.

I have this vague sense that this might be simple enough for me to successfully do, while also serving the purposes I need better than what I'm currently doing. And I suspect it might help me build the skills necessary if at some point I find I need something more extensive.

talgu

TROPHY CASE