What a mixed day. I’m feeling very blessed these past few days.
I had a couple people I knew when I was a kid help me out a bit, after almost 20 years they reminded me who I am. I’ve been losing myself a lot lately and it was great getting to know me again.
A fairly new friend, of a couple years now, also helped me out. More gave guidance and made connections, but it all speaks to his wasta. Wasta, in the Arab world, is your ability to network or to get things done with your word instead of using money or labor. Because my life often depended on the wasta of my guides I have a special respect and appreciation for people who can use their word to cause or affect actions. It may not mean much to you, but a friend I can take for his word is a rare thing in my life right now.
I lost a Brother very early this morning. I never said goodbye or forgave him and I had every opportunity to do so and the background knowledge and experience to know both were necessary. In my family, if you’re cut off on a phone call and not certain the person on the other end heard you tell them “I love you”, the general rule is that you call back immediately and until they hear it. I took that with me downrange. The last words any member of my family or unit will have heard from me when they die is “I love you.” I have to live with this now, the last words he heard from me were not the kindest words I’ve ever said and that’s all I can even remember of them.
My lady is in Morocco. My dog is staying with a friend across the county. All this life came at me pretty quickly but I still have more good news!
Lots of fitness and diet blogs follow me so you’ll enjoy this; I lost about 4 inches on each thigh and 2.5 from my butt! At 35, my abs decided they want to be seen again and I’m back down to my second-floor weight. 2F was my job on my early years missions, anything requiring a small guy meant me. I weighed about 180 then and I’m 176 today with significantly less body fat.
826 followers! So close. At 1k I’m going to make a pencil case/ makeup bag/ stash bag from my very limited private batik fabric (discontinued and I bought all of it between Redding and Seattle, 2.25yds left in the world) and ship it to a randomly selected follower who reblogs my 1k post. The giveaway is flexible, but 826 of you haven’t offered much by way of suggestions for the giveaway. More details to follow.
As I was writing this earlier today I received a start time for the morning, very exciting. Now I’m kicking myself for leaving all my tools about two hours further south than they’re worth to go get. Oh well, I’m employed doing the thing I love, building homes!
Life comes at you fast sometimes, and it can be hard, but the most precious stones are made under the most immense pressure you get to choose each day how much of that life you can handle. As long as you’re trying to be the best you, you have nothing to worry about.
People used to tell me the strike through when I’d get down on myself for not being able to achieve impossible goals. It’s bullfish. Stress and the pressure causing that stress aren’t healthy. I had to take a step back from my life recently, maybe some of you could benefit from a new perspective as well.
Just out of curiosity how did that guy who resolved to eat only a pure-meat diet turn out? Did he finally wise up? Die of scurvy?
I think he wound up in the hospital at a minimum
I’ve done all meat for about a month, I didn’t really notice much change. I’ve also done nothing but taco bell for several months, potatoes and milk products for a month, high fat, high carb, high fiber, etc. The thing I felt the best on was paleo but that’s because it’s a well rounded diet with no processed garbage in it, but I missed cheese too much. I’m trying keto now but I don’t really have anything left to lose. Paleo was also easiest to shop for, no need to go down any aisles, just make a trip around the outside wall of the grocery store and you’re set.
Humans are pretty resilient, but the best diet for one person isn’t going to be the best for everyone else. Each person has different needs and the best way to get and stay fit is to be conscious of what you’re putting into your body compared to your activity level. At one point I was eating over 6,500 calories daily and still losing weight, I’ve gained weight on less than 1,500/day. You can be healthy eating garbage, but it’s so much easier when you’re eating healthy foods.
One of my go-to vegetables because they’re flavorful and easy to adjust to any entre.
What you’ll need:
Oil (I use olive)
Honey
Lemon juice
Garlic salt
Plastic bag big enough to hold your sprouts
Preheat oven to 350/ 175
Put the sprouts and lemon juice in the bag, add a tablespoon or so of honey and a couple dashes of garlic salt. Shake everything up until the honey dissolves then dump it in the pan. You can do this step in a bowl, I just have a thing with marinating in bags.
Top rack in the oven for 40-50 minutes. *EDIT* Cutting them in half lengthwise significantly reduces cook time but also cooks a lot of the fluids out of your sprouts. Played th with it, have fun.
The lemon juice and honey should start to carmelize on your sprouts and pan, but not burn.
Salt and/ or pepper if you’d like, but these are pretty tangy already.
Anyhow, I have had chia seeds in my home my entire life and never really viewed them as food until a couple months ago. I now drink about ¼ cup of them in a breakfast shake every morning. It keeps me going until lunch and adds some substance to my protein and vitamineral green powders.
Over the past few months I’ve gone from >190lbs to a stable weight of ~160lbs and I feel amazing. I justified the new sewing machine purchase because if I didn’t have a working machine, I’d be buying all new clothes. Now I just need to practice a lot on some old work pants before I start taking my daily wear stuff in.
I get cold sometimes, I use a bit more force than necessary occasionally, and I look like I’m wearing borrowed clothes but it was worth it. Cutting back on the drinking, going outside, being awake in the daytime, and having no money to sit around snacking and watching TV all day really helped, and so did you!
If you’re trying, you can do it. If you’re not, no big deal.
Since once in a blue moon I actually discover a decent rule for adulting, and since I know I have followers a few years younger than me who are just entering the workforce, I want to tell you about a very important phrase.
“I won’t be available.”
Imagine you’re at work and your boss asks you to come in on Saturday. Saturday is usually your day off–coming in Saturdays is not an obligation to keep your job. Maybe you were going to watch a movie with a friend, or maybe you were just going to lie in bed and eat ice cream for eight hours, but either way you really, really don’t want to give up your day off.
If you consider yourself a millennial you’ve probably been raised to believe you need to justify not being constantly at work. And if you’re a gen-Z kid you’re likely getting the same toxic messages that we did. So in a situation like that, you might be inclined to do one of three things:
Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Cave when they pressure you to come in anyway, since you’re not doing anything important.
Tell your boss you’d rather not give up your day off. Over-apologize and worry that you looked bad/unprofessional.
Lie and say you’ve got a doctor’s appointment or some other activity that feels like an adequate justification for not working.
The fact is, it doesn’t matter to your boss whether you’re having open heart surgery or watching anime in your underwear on Saturday. The only thing that affects them is the fact that you won’t be at work. So telling them why you won’t be at work only gives them reason to try and pressure you to come in anyway.
If you say “I won’t be available,” giving no further information, you’d be surprised how often that’s enough. Be polite and sympathetic in your tone, maybe even say “sorry, but I won’t be available.” But don’t make an excuse. If your boss is a professional individual, they’ll accept that as a ‘no’ and try to find someone else.
But bosses aren’t always professional. Sometimes they’re whiny little tyrants. So, what if they pressure you further? The answer is–politely and sympathetically give them no further information.
“Are you sure you’re not available?” “Sorry, but yes.”
“Why won’t you be available?” “I have a prior commitment.” (Which you do, even if it’s only to yourself.)
“What’s your prior commitment?” “Sorry, but that’s kind of personal.”
“Can you reschedule it?” “I’m afraid not. Maybe someone else can come in?”
If you don’t give them anything to work with, they can’t pressure you into going beyond your obligations as an employee. And when they realize that, they’ll also realize they have to find someone else to come in and move on.
IMPORTANT!! PLEASE READ!!
Just like with many other parts of life, learn to say ‘no’ to people. You are important. Don’t kill yourself for another person, esp. if they are your boss.
to It would be easy to say this is “yet another example of how boomers destroyed culture,” but it would be more apt to blame how capitalism’s exploitation of baby-boomers destroyed culture.
In the first couple hundred years or so of the middle class’s existance, young people grew up inside an extended family and learned social roles by emulating their elders. Being a good host or hostess, and a good guest, were values that society recognized as skill-based. Hence, elders actively taught those skills and young people actively learnt them. But come along the baby boom, with an unprecedented combination of wealth and relative numbers, and corporations rushed to define a “teenager” market segment that they could profit from directly by separating their demographic off from the more stable “middle class family” demographic. So “teenage culture” emerged, and they myth of the “generation gap”, and baby boomers never learned the more sophisticated skills of being good guests and good hosts. And hence, many of those skills are only available to people who like hiding out in the HM435-HM477 sections of the library stacks. So here are two little hints from my time in the UBC main library, tested and proven over nearly half a century:
1) When you host a gathering, you have a duty of care to your guests. You have a legal duty of care to keep them reasonably safe, and you have a social duty of care to help them be reasonably comfortable. So try to greet each guest as they arrive, remember their name and something interesting about them, and –> introduce them by name to someone else at the party who might find that thing interesting too.<– Sample script: “Bill, I want you to meet Emma. She is restoring a ‘65 Barracuda, similar to the one you restored.” After your guests are mostly finished arriving, keep an eye on your guests and when one is backed into a corner behind the potted palm looking miserable, go fetch them and introduce them to someone else. Sample script: “Oh, Phyllis, there you are! Have you met Toby yet? Toby! You should really tell Phyllis about your pet tortoise!”
2) When you are a guest and you get buttonholed in this way, help out your host by at least pretending to be interested in ‘65 Barracudas or pet tortoises, and asking the other guest something. Ask them anything. Or if you see the guy moping behind the potted palm before your host does, approach them and ask them something. The key is, use the words “what” or “where” or “how” to ask the question, rather than “do/did …?” That way they cannot simply, desperately, answer “yes” or “no” and have to tell you something you can build on. And don’t worry about “not wanting to pry”. People tend to really like to talk about themselves, provided you give them leeway to decide what part of themselves to talk about. Sample script: “Lucky you! How did you manage to get your hands on a ‘65 Barracuda/pet tortoise?” Or if you didn’t get a prompt from your busy host, “What canapés are the tastiest?” or the old standbys Sample script: “what school do you go to/what are you studying/what do you do in your spare time when you’re not at a cocktail party?”
You can actually memorize just one of these open-ended questions and use it in nearly every circumstance; and then follow up by noticing what the answer makes you curious about, and asking that.
Enjoy.
if your friends have weird pronouns, (or even normal pronouns) the format of a formal introduction gives you an opportunity to drop them smoothly into the conversation without anybody having to have an awkward moment about it.
Jeff this is Shawna they like to restore vintage muscle cars and they make the BEST brownies if you haven’t had any yet
Shawna this is Jeff, I went to highschool with her and she was always telling me about metalshop but the she went into tech! the bum!
anyways I’ll let you too get to know each other, I gotta check on the spinach poufs in the oven.
This is a big, giant list of Youtube tutorials that will teach you all the basic life skills you need to know in order to be a functional adult. There are a lot of important skills that aren’t included in this list, but this should be enough of a basic guide to get you started and prevent you from making a total mess of yourself. Happy adulting!
If there’s ever anything you want that isn’t on this list…youtube it. Everyone always comments on my handiness, but everything I know comes from an old guy and his iphone.
I’m going to give you the best piece of Adult Life Is Hard advice I’ve ever learned:
Talk to people when things go to shit.
I don’t just mean get it off your chest, although that’s good. I mean: Something’s wrong with your paycheck/you lost your job/you had unexpected emergency car repairs and now you’re broke so your credit card payment is late. Like, not just 15 days late. We’re talking, shit got crazy and now you’re 90 days late with compounded interest and late fees and the Minimum Payment Due is, like, $390, and you’ve got about $3.90 in your bank account. Call the credit card company.
I know it’s scary. I know you feel like you’re going to get in trouble, like you’re gong to get yelled at or scolded for not having your life together. But the credit card company isn’t your parents; they’re just interested in getting money from you. And you can’t squeeze blood from a stone or money from someone who doesn’t have any. So what you do is you call them. You explain you’re experiencing temporary financial hardships, and you’re currently unable to bring your account up to date, but you don’t want to just let it get worse. Can you maybe talk to someone about a payment plan so you can work something out? Nine times out of ten you’ll be able to negotiate something so that at least it’s not just taking a constant, giant shit on your credit score.
- Can’t pay your power bill? Call the power company.
- Can’t pay your full rent? Talk to your landlord.
- Had to go to the hospital without insurance and have giant medical bills looming in your place? Call the hospital and ask if they have someone who helps people with financial hardships. Many do.
- Got super sick and missed half a semester of class because flu/pneumonia/auto-immune problems/depressive episode? Talk to your professor. If that doesn’t help, talk to your advisor.
You may not be able to fix everything, but you’ll likely be able to make improvements. At the very least, it’s possible that they have a list of people you can contact to help you with things. (Also, don’t be afraid to google things like, “I can’t pay my power bill [state you live in]” because you’d be surprised at what turns up on Google!) But the thing is, people in these positions gain nothing if you fail. There’s no emotional satisfaction for them if your attempts at having your life together completely bite the dust. In fact, they stand to benefit if things work out for you! And chances are, they’ll be completely happy to take $20 a month from you over getting $0 a month from you, your account will be considered current because you’ve talked to them and made an agreement, you won’t get reported to a collections agency, and your credit score won’t completely tank.
Here’s some helpful tips to keep in mind:
1. Be polite. Don’t demand things; request them. Let me tell you about how customer service people hold your life in their hands and how many extra miles they’ll go for someone who is nice to them.
2. Stick to the facts, and keep them minimal unless asked for them. Chances are they’re not really interested in the details. “We had several family emergencies in a row, and now I’m having trouble making the payments” is better than “Well, two months ago my husband wrecked his bike, and then he had a reaction to the muscle relaxer they gave him, and then our dog swallowed a shoestring and we had to take him to the emergency clinic, and just last week MY car broke down, and now my account’s in the negatives and I don’t know how I’m gonna get it back out.” The person you’re talking to is aware shit happens to everyone; they don’t need the details to prove you’re somehow “worthy” of being helped. They may ask you for details at a certain point if they have to fill out any kind of request form, but let them do that.
3. Ask questions. “Is there anything we can do about X?” “Would it be possible to move my payment date to Y day instead so it’s not coming out of the same paycheck as my rent?” The answer may be “no.” That’s not a failure on your part. But a good customer service person may have an alternate solution.
Anyway! I hope that helps! Don’t just assume the answer is “no” before you’ve even begun. There is more help out there than you ever imagined.
Hey guys, this is an old post, but it’s still relevant, and I thought I’d re-up it for living in COVID times when a lot of people are losing income. Don’t be afraid to toss that in when you call to ask for help! “I’ve experienced a loss of income due to COVID-19″ is gonna be all you need to say for most places, because wow let me tell you how much this is the case. A lot of places are setting up COVID-19 specific relief policies, so this may be even easier than normal.
Good luck, stay safe, stay inside if you can, and wash your hands. <3
Definitely do this!
I know it’s really hard to handle the shame sometimes but often, if you ask, people will be willing to help you.
My favorite approach is some variation of “Would you consider X, it would really help me out”
It assumes nothing. And subconsciously, people feel like a jerk if they say “no, I won’t even consider it” so if they can’t do what you’re asking, they may offer another solution or at least be willing to help you problem solve.
It’s been really helpful for me in many situations.
i can’t believe we’re all young professionals and academics and we’re still logging on to tumblr.com every single day to clown on ourselves. who let this happen
Look man this is the only place left im allowed to say clown shit without it impacting my career, just lemme have this
