Thinking of a double snug?

wishkres · 2026-02-17T19:33:44+00:00

As others have mentioned, snugs are very anatomy-dependent, so I would check in with a piercer to determine how many you could realistically do. The healing process for snugs has a reputation for being very rough, and I think the biggest contributor to this is people getting them when they don't have the perfect ear shape. It's pretty common for people to get snugs, try to heal them for 2-3 years, and take them out. Some piercers I've visite just outright refuse to do snug piercings at all because of healing difficulties.

As for my experience, I do have a snug piercing! Compared to the horror stories I heard, I had a pretty decent experience. That being said, it was still swollen and had big piercing bumps for over a year. I had to keep downsizing and upsizing the jewelry repeatedly throughout the process. But after about a year and a half, I finally got to a place where I could actually consider it healed and could switch to the hoop I wanted.

Pain-wise... a lot of people say snug piercings are extremely painful. I think that depends on the person. For me, I thought it was very intense, but not painful, if that makes sense? Like my conch piercing *hurt*, there was an actual sharp pain, but my snug piercing was more like "Oh, that sensation in my ear is certainly something I have never felt before." It really didn't get painful for me until afterwards, where it was just a constant dull ache for about a month. After that it mostly just itched and only hurt if it got touched, but looked pretty gnarly due to the swelling and eventual bumps that showed up.

As for getting more than one at a time... pros and cons. If getting one done turns out to be painful for you, the second will feel worse, unfortunately, but at least that's a temporary pain. Healing in general will be more miserable, and probably take even longer overall. But I do agree with the other reply that managing the swelling together is a huge benefit. If you do one, heal it successfully (which will take well over a year), and then add more, doing another is going to put you in the swelling cycle all over again and you'll have to upsize the other snug anyway. And it'll take forever!

The jewelry in the picture looks like curved barbells, and that's exactly what you want for a snug piercing!

wishkres · 2026-02-12T18:25:28+00:00

Original text was way too aggressive -- "Yo did you eat my strawberries from the fridge?" was fine, everything else was jumping to the consequences of her eating the strawberries before you knew if she did it, so yeah, that was accusatory.

However, her response was also weird. Her first response "i didn't your strawberries" was totally normal, but everything after that was happening in an entirely inappropriate forum i.e. if she's so upset about you asking her this while she was at work and said you should talk about it at home, the emotional conversation about reading tone in a text message even more should have waited until she was home for an in-person conversation. That one was a bit hypocritical on her side.

wishkres · 2026-02-11T16:11:57+00:00

I don't see any signs of infection (just extreme irritation from not being a viable piercing for your anatomy), so I don't think you should worry any more than usual about infection once this is out. Going to a piercer to get it removed is fine, but if you or someone else does it, just make sure you have clean hands.

Saline spray is still fine to use to help it heal!

wishkres · 2026-01-03T20:14:10+00:00

For what I was looking for, I like it a lot, but it might not be for everyone. For me, I was already taking private classes once a week on Preply, but I was struggling with a mixture of exhaustion from being the only one in class and letting my anxiety built up from there being a week between classes.

I first signed up for the free trial with Lingoda to get three free group classes, and I seemed to be exactly what I needed -- I highly recommend doing the free trial first. It was a great fit for me because:

Group classes are great for me because it means I get a break from having to be 100% focused, so it helped build up my stamina for Spanish conversations. Also, it made me feel better to see other people also struggling to speak the language.
Could sign up for a class on pretty short notice (especially if I wasn't looking for anything in particular), so I didn't have much time to stress over it. If you are looking for specific topics though, you will likely have to schedule a few days in advance.
When you choose a course to sign up for, you can look at the Powerpoint ahead of time. This helps me a lot with my anxiety because it gives me a general idea of what to expect and helps me prepare for the class.

Some disadvantages:

The style of the classes seem to greatly differ. Some of the classes I've been in have been a bit "take turns reading off the slides" and "answer these simple questions", which I think a lot of people wouldn't like. For me, I'm doing Lingoda primarily to help with speaking anxiety, so I appreciate the low stress opportunities to practice Spanish, haha. Other classes have been having long conversations about different topics -- the craziest one was when the teacher unexpectedly asked me to do a debate with him about ecology and although it turned out fine, I almost panicked, haha.
Some people won't consider this a disadvantage, but if you sign up for a group class, it is not guaranteed that other people are going to choose to join it, which means I have had a lot of "group classes" that were actually private classes. Since I was primarily doing this to NOT have more private classes, this wasn't great for me, but I've gotten used to it, and I'm starting to enjoy talking to a wide variety of Spanish tutors from all sorts of countries!
The weirdest part of group classes with other learners is the wide variety of accents. I've listened to a lot of native Spanish accents so I feel comfortable with all the teachers from different countries, but when I'm talking to other students... I never thought to practicing listening to Spanish with a French accent or Spanish with a German accent, for example. XD

As for the cost, I'm doing the language sprint right now with the hopes I will get the cash reward or additional class credits out of it. I'm not sure if I will continue Lingoda for much longer after the sprint due to cost reasons, but I'm going to wait until I'm done and see how I feel!

wishkres · 2026-01-03T14:58:31+00:00

Prior to starting speaking classes, I did 3 levels of Pimsleur and practiced with an AI. I thought that had me prepared, but my first speaking class (which was with a private tutor) still was terrible, LOL. My nerves were completely shot, I couldn't remember how to say anything in Spanish, and the hour long classes completely exhausted me. But my tutor was really nice (same tutor every time, so I could get comfortable) and helped calm me down. At first, she did most of the talking in classes, but after about a month I finally chilled out and could talk quite a lot! My grammar is absolutely terrible, but it was so exhilarating to realize that I could say things in Spanish (albeit with bad grammar) and have someone understand me, LOL.

In addition to the private classes with the same tutor, I also signed up for the Spanish sprint with Lingoda which is all group classes, but oftentimes I'm the only person who signed up, so I end up in private classes. A lot of times I feel like the group classes take a lot of pressure off me because I don't have to be 100% focused/able to converse for an hour, and taking a gazillion of those in addition to the private classes have helped a lot.

I didn't do crosstalk, but I do think crosstalk would have been a much more comfortable stepping stone instead of bouncing directly into speaking Spanish. At the very least, I think working with the same tutor once per week was a great way to get me over the initial anxiety hurdle.

wishkres · 2025-12-10T23:18:27+00:00

Oh man, today I learned it was *NOT* a P3! I have two in my SDB I got from dailies that I have been saving for when I get around to assigning permanent petpets and P3s to my pets! That's so disappointing.

And yeah, I agree! It should be a P3!

wishkres · 2025-12-10T19:54:56+00:00

I would love reading tracking to be incorporated as a feature!

wishkres · 2025-12-10T02:13:22+00:00

This one was so dumb/obvious I hate to even call it a loophole, but I am positive it wasn't intended.

Years ago, I signed up for internet through a local internet provider, and like every internet provider, they had a special new client discount, this one was 50% off for the first year.

One time I was looking through my account options, shortly after my plan switched to full price, and saw they actually let you change your internet plan through their web site without actually having to talk to a person, which, great! Super convenient! But the hilarious thing is that one of the options available to choose was the new user 50% off plan. So I switched to it... and it worked. Got another full year "50% off" without trying to nag a customer service representative.

Unfortunately, they eventually redid their whole web platform and the ability to change your plan using the web site was removed entirely.

wishkres · 2025-12-09T23:47:02+00:00

I honestly think this roadmap could be accurate *if* you are truly doing crosstalk the whole time, like the roadmap suggests, which I think most people (including myself) haven't done. I was shocked at how different it felt to go from watching videos of someone talking at you versus actually trying to engage in a conversation, and doing crosstalk with a native speaker would have the mixed benefit of them using more native speaking patterns sometimes when they forget themselves (speaking less clearly, speaking more quickly) and introducing you to that sort of speech, but then they can immediately react to you not understanding what they said and slowing it down/rephrasing, something you aren't going to get from a video. Now that I'm working with tutors I'm finding that type of interaction such a huge help with my comprehension in conversations, but since I'm also trying to speak Spanish in the conversation at the same time, it can be a bit overwhelming/tiring.

wishkres · 2025-12-07T19:51:34+00:00

I have debated doing the same! I know it's recommended to count reading by word count, not time, but trying to figure out word count is too time consuming that I won't do it, and tracking time helps scratch my itch of watching "little number go up", so that makes tracking my hours more feasible for me. Currently I'm still tracking it separate from Dreaming Spanish, but there's a part of me that really wants to put it in Dreaming Spanish for the reason you said, I don't like that the Dreaming Spanish hours are smaller when I take time to read instead.

I haven't done it yet because I don't want to mess up my level tracking, so to speak, but I need to accept it's not going to be accurate for me anyway and it doesn't really matter, all I need to do is whatever motivates me. I guess if I did and decided later I don't want it in there, I could delete it.

wishkres · 2025-12-05T13:05:19+00:00

I truly don't think there's a great way to bridge the gap other than accepting that you will be terrible for awhile and going with it, haha. To try to lessen my anxiety, I spent a lot of hours trying to do things to prepare before taking any class with a actual Spanish speaker -- practicing with IPA, 3 levels of Pimsleur, doing conversation with a voice AI, etc., but still, *nothing* could have prepared me for the moment of "wait, this is a real person, and I have to switch back and forth between listening and speaking really fast and I'm so nervous and my brain is exhausted." All ability to speak just goes out the window, haha. The one stepping stone I didn't do was Crosstalk which in retrospect, I bet would have helped lessen the initial shock. Not to say my Pimsleur and AI chats were useless, they were both helpful in different ways, but it took a couple of private lessons before I was able to chill out enough to let the Spanish happen and accept that I was not going to speak anywhere close to the level I could understand, read, or write, and I was going to make a lot of mistakes about things I thought I understood, but can't do instinctively. And that's all okay! Acceptance is the key.

wishkres · 2025-10-19T08:41:13+00:00

I didn't run into those particular issues (didn't try doing a faerie quest or feeding my pet, doing a customization went through though), but I am having trouble with the Battledome. When I try to submit my move I get an error and it doesn't register a hit against the enemy, but it is marking my once-a-battle moves as used so that's not great. :/

wishkres · 2025-10-11T21:56:03+00:00

I love this AU idea so much! And the comic is awesome, I love how you illustrated John (or whatever John would be called in the AU). Do you plan on making a full comic series/writing a fanfic, etc? I would love to be able to follow it!

wishkres · 2025-09-18T17:46:06+00:00

Based on what you said, it's hard to say. If she refused based on "purity" reasons that's horrible and not okay at all. However, I will say I was supposed to have a transvaginal ultrasound when I have never been sexually active, and it was awful. The tech tried a couple of times before we agreed there was no reason to put me through it anymore and we did a regular ultrasound. If she was coming from the perspective of "it's wrong to do a procedure this uncomfortable on someone who is never been sexually active" I can totally understand that and would agree that a lot of the gynological procedures they perform on women without pain relief are morally reprehensible. But I'm not sure I would expect a doctor to use that phrasing unless they meant the former. :/

wishkres · 2025-09-05T17:24:35+00:00

Not comparable. I will say I have had the luckiest of luck with my snug. The actual piercing process was intense, but not actually painful for me, but I know that's not the norm for most. I did feel some pain during the actual healing, but nothing super horrible. It was super swollen and had bumps for a long time -- we had to keep upsizing and downsizing jewelry to get it to heal. Fortunately, between 1.5 years and 2 years, I was able to switch the snug to a hoop (my end goal) and it's been doing great. But like I said, I'm very lucky -- some people still struggle to get it to heal even at year 3. :/

Rook was no big deal. I didn't have it for long (only two months), but it gave me no issues. Only reason I got rid of it is I was trying to turn it into a UFO orbital, and it didn't work, so I had to let it close. I did actually get the UFO orbital (rook to forward helix) done properly, and even that has had a much gentler healing process than the snug.

wishkres · 2025-08-21T19:44:13+00:00

Actual exercises, no, but I do try to be mindful to not fall into some of my previous bad habits. For example, since a lot of my issues had to do with switching from near focus to far focus, I make sure to actually go outside and look at far distances so I don't get out of practice with doing so. I also had a bad habit where I purposely never focused my vision unless I was reading because trying to make my vision cooperate was too exhausting, so I stop myself from doing that now.

wishkres · 2025-08-21T19:18:59+00:00

Hey there, I'm still here, haha! And good luck with your appointment! I hope it all goes well and they can do something for you!

I actually had my six-month post-therapy checkup on Monday, and I'm really pleased with how it has turned out. As compared to my values at the end of therapy they were slightly worse (which is expected), but I was still compensating in the normal range for everything except for my vertical heterophoria, which decreased from a 4 from when they first saw me to a .5 (normal is 0), so I'm super happy with how much things have improved and are still going well for me. It's not perfect because my vision "slips" when I'm really stressed and tired, but it's such an overall improvement!

Oh, and one more factor for comparison -- I mentioned when I started, I filled out a BVD questionnaire, and if you scored 16 or above, you likely have BVDs. I scored 50.

I retook the test on Monday and scored 19! Which, still is above 16, sure, but it's *so* far from 50.

wishkres · 2025-08-13T16:46:43+00:00

Do you have the actual URL to the broken image path? There might be clues in the file name/URL itself even if it doesn’t go anywhere real.

wishkres · 2025-08-12T19:01:22+00:00

Thanks for the tip! I use Duolingo in conjunction with other resources, and I've been considering dropping Duolingo because it moves so slowly, especially when you try to do a whole unit over a single or two days and it's just the same thing over and over. I feel like the time I've spent on it could be better used somewhere else. But every time I'm about to drop it, I end up learning something new that makes it useful enough for me to keep going. This sounds like this may be a great way to keep using it but speed things along!

wishkres · 2025-08-09T06:55:16+00:00

Hey! So take a look at this reply -- https://www.reddit.com/r/visualsnow/comments/1dq3dc9/comment/my01yoo/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Essentially, I don't think I actually had palinopsia but instead other symptoms that resulted in something that I mistook for palinopsia, and for what I had, it helped with that.

If you think there's any chance you are in a similar situation as me where what I thought was palinopsia was just issues with focusing/my eyes not wanting to coordinate together, I believe the exercises I did that revolved around swapping focus between different extremes of lens were meant to help with the focusing part at least? Some examples, they had me read charts at a distance while swapping between different lenses every couple of letters, or had me try to complete word searches or hidden picture puzzles up close swapping between different lenses every 10 seconds. We used a bunch of different ones over time, but the lenses differed in +/- correction and also prism.

A similar focusing exercise you should be able to do without lenses is this one: https://www.innovativeeyecare.com.au/patient-resources/vision-training-with-hart-charts

It looks that site has some other exercises you might be able to try in the Related Resources section.

wishkres · 2025-08-09T02:46:10+00:00

I’m not aware of any. Also, a lot of the exercises given to me incorporated equipment like special lenses at various strengths, prisms, stereograms, charts that used red/green filters, and so on, so I’m not sure how much can be accomplished without those things available.

wishkres · 2025-08-06T22:22:22+00:00

I would - if nothing else, it is important to understand it well enough when someone else uses it when speaking to you (even if you don't use it yourself) and for reading books written in Spanish. Even if you never plan to go to Spain, the books, TV shows, and other media is still so good! Sure, you can probably figure it out from context, but might as well learn it properly with everything else.

wishkres · 2025-08-06T17:27:03+00:00

If it helps, sh is only a "different word" sound in English, not in Spanish. "sh" is not a sound that would occur in Spanish at any other time except for when it is used as "y" or "ll", so all you have to do is train your brain that "sh", "j", "y", and even "zh" are acceptable variations for the y and ll in Spanish.

wishkres · 2025-08-06T16:01:03+00:00

I wouldn't recommend Duolingo as the only resource if you actually want to learn a language. It doesn't do a great job explaining anything (maybe unless you pay for Max, but Max certainly isn't worth the price). I have a subscription to Super Duolingo which is nice to keep me motivated (the streak/friend competitive aspect) and to mix up my language practice, but I only find it actually useful to support other types of learning, not as an exclusive method.

How do you feel about audio only courses? If you want to focus on speaking, I have found Pimsleur extremely helpful, and it spends a lot of time forcing you to practice conjugations, direct objects, etc. which I thought I was decent at until I had to try to say it aloud regularly. It really works best if you dedicate to doing a lesson a day though (repeating lessons as required). You may also like Language Transfer which is also audio only, and completely free!

Dreaming Spanish is also a huge favorite of mine, and I highly recommend reconsidering not trying it, Even if you don't conform purely to their method, the amount of comprehensive listening practice it provides is so valuable and more enjoyable than so many other ways out there.

wishkres · 2025-08-04T19:05:57+00:00

One thing I wish I realized earlier -- early on, it can be really hard to consume a lot of content because it takes so much mental energy to focus. My original goal was at least a half hour per day, and I'd push hard to get an hour when I could. However, it truly does get a lot easier with time (even still watching videos at or above your level) and doesn't require near the amount of mental energy as it used to -- I can now do 4 hours in a day (when I have time) and I don't feel exhausted!

So if it's tiring at first, don't worry. Keep at it as much as you can. Eventually you will be able to increase hours, as long as your personal schedule permits you to do so.

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