Severine

As I was reading this, I was thinking, "What's a school letter mountain?" so I can confirm that this is not a thing anywhere I have ever lived (various parts of Canada, Boston, Scotland). It's cool that you had a landmark to aim for though.

As an RPG packrat, this made me laugh. I totally understand. Sounds interesting. Do you mean writing a program for yourself or something else?

This blew my mind. I do this too. Very relatable. I'm glad your system is coming together! I hope it takes some of the pressure off.

❤️ This is beautiful.

Enjoy your unexpected gift of a free evening!

I got word that both my references for the volunteer position with the crisis line have submitted their responses! \o/ A big relief. They both mentioned that the feedback form they were asked to fill out was nice and short, which was great. I always dread an organization sending out some ridiculous six-page questionnaire that is a huge drain on my references' time. I am grateful to have people who are willing to take time out of their day to say nice things about me and enable me to pursue things I'm interested in. Also, I think my immune system is winning the battle with whatever it is I'm fighting off 💪 D, who was granted Canadian permanent residency fairly recently, just got his new social insurance number (Canadian equivalent of SSN, if you're American), and we're just about done with the process of updating all the banks, the accountant, his work, etc. Since L got PR months before D and already did all this stuff, it means we're allllmost at the point of being done with all the big administrative/paperwork aspects of the international move. In three years, they'll be eligible to become citizens, and if they choose to do that (highly likely) all three of us will be dual citizens. I don't know where we'll end up in the long term, but I like having options. Related to D getting PR, we have to get rid of our current car, which is a 12-year-old Honda Fit. Well not have to, exactly, but we have to choose between spending thousands to bring it up to Canadian specs or selling it in the US. Given its age and condition, it's not worth the former, so we'll be saying goodbye to our little red go-kart down in WA sometime soon. I like the Kia Rio we replaced it with more than I expected to: I don't like buying new cars (the depreciation pains me physically, haha), but it's important to D, and he has strong preferences about so few things that I happily greenlight it when he does. And thankfully we're on the same page that small economy cars are the way to go. I might break into hives if he or L wanted to buy a luxury SUV or something. Driving a new car is weird, though. Android Auto casting to the built-in screen is...kind of awesome? Although I'm sure the car is collecting a horrifying amount of personal information about us.

Glad to see you back! And to see the business blooming, even if it's stressful. Hopefully you can find time to walk off some of that stress, but you know the drill - don't beat yourself up if you can't find the time. Any chance you can leverage this cancellation into some extra time off at work? Maybe even a long weekend?

This is extremely logical. It would have been adaptive, even, had you remained in a situation where competition for the best food was a reality. Maybe it will help you to see it through a lens of your body trying to protect itself (i.e., you) and make it easier to forgive/process/strategize for. For what it's worth, I think many of us can relate. You're not weird, alone, or overly sensitive.

Fingers crossed it gets sorted ASAP. It does sound stressful. Can you think of a workaround if it won't go full-screen as planned? I wish I knew enough to offer troubleshooting tips.

Sorry to hear you're feeling fragile ❤️ I think it's good to be gentle/loving toward ourselves in such moments. And I don't think your reason is stupid. Despite the modern context of food availability, there's still a sense of loss when something you anticipated/expected is snatched away from you without warning. I think it's understandable for upended expectations to create an undercurrent of uncertainty that can be unnerving. For what it's worth, I can relate. It took me a long time to be comfortable admitting to my family, for example, that I don't like it when people take food off my plate to snack on or taste. I felt bad (selfish, miserly) for feeling that way, but everyone was understanding and now nobody does it, so I can be relaxed when someone comes over and says, "Ooh that looks good," because I know they're going to take some from the serving pan if they want some, not off my plate.

You are wise to look at it this way, IMHO. It took me such a long time to get to a point where I wasn't overly worried about precision. It helped me, oddly enough, to learn that calorie counts on packaged foods can legally (in the US) be up to 15% off. And of course I knew that even the official counts for whole food items like broccoli, chicken, etc. that come from USDA research can be off because not every head of broccoli or chicken is the same. So, I finally realized, what's the point of obsessing about precision when the data I'm using to track is itself an approximation? It helped me adjust my view of calorie counting from "I am measuring the number of calories I eat so I have completely reliable data" to "I am tracking calories as a tool to remain conscious of what I eat." It's a lot easier and less stressful (and, I would argue, ultimately more helpful) to be more relaxed about it. I know exactly the kind of game you mean. I almost always end up enjoying them once I settle in, but the first time around it's always a little bit of a headache. Many of the games I like best (Viticulture, Wingspan, etc.) fall into this category. I'm very impressed by how active you are, btw. You've got a really well-rounded routine.

This is amazing. Straight out of Skyrim.

Seconded. Emotion can be a great source of motivation but it's often not the best planning advisor. Uncomfortably relatable! You're definitely not alone. I salute your wisdom in seeking a durable and well-considered plan. Being 90% dialed in all the time is better than being 100% in short spurts and 50% the rest of the time. This is so true. I feel this so hard. I think it makes the activation energy to get started much higher than it needs to be, because you know, in the back of your mind, that once you get started you won't let yourself off easy. So you know you're signing up for something significant. If we were okay with going out, doing 10 minutes of just-okay weeding, and then stopping, we'd probably do it a lot more often and the result would be a nicer garden and less stress and weird guilt/pressure.

Ouch, shoulder situation sounds bad. Is it okay to do the exercises even with it hurting like that? My PT always told me to stop when it hurt. I too hope you get it looked at.

I've pondered that, but I'm hesitant to put too much weight on the theory because I can't prove it. It's almost certainly part of it, but I have no idea how much. I need to be able to read my own log files. Part of it is that I'm quite hard to please when it comes to pastries and baked goods, so a huge percentage of commercially available cakes, cookies, etc. are just substandard as far as I'm concerned. If I'm at a fine patisserie where everything is delectable, sure, I'll be tempted. But walking through a grocery store bakery? No desire for that stuff at all. And in case it doesn't go without saying, Vancouver has a lot more mainstream grocery stores than fine patisseries But I think a lot of it is just emotional and habit-based. Chocolate became a source of comfort for me at a very young age, and the "feel bad --> eat chocolate --> feel better" neural pathway gradually morphed into a "feel normal --> eat chocolate --> maybe feel even better?" unconscious strategy. And when eating too much chocolate made me feel bad, well, it's probably no surprise what I did when I felt bad. The irony. I see concrete evidence of the years of conditioning when, for example, I'm mentally going over my to-do list and feeling the stress of demands and deadlines and then BOOM there's the craving for chocolate. I'm not hungry - I'm just in some level of discomfort and my brain/body offers it as a solution. Unlearning that, and rewiring new solutions to discomfort, is the challenge. I am grateful that my temptation is fairly narrowly constrained, though. If I were tempted by candy, ice cream, cookies, cupcakes, etc. it would be a lot more difficult.

Cosmo Sheldrake is great! Good share. Props for not letting your walk be sidelined by the weather. I am a fellow appreciator of winter weather, but it can make going out require more activation energy.

I winced at this! Glad you still got some good loot, though.

Among the reasons I miss European infrastructure (and the more reasonably sized countries help too).

So sorry to hear you're facing this! It's definitely making the rounds. Sending healing happy thoughts.

I am either getting sick or in the midst of fighting something off, depending on whether my immune system or some unknown menace wins the battle currently raging. Blargh. I hate not feeling well. Yesterday we took the morning off and went to a counterprotest, which was a positive thing to do but still exhausting, and I'm sure that's part of why I feel so run down at the moment despite trying to take it easy and recover. Still eating no chocolate and feeling good about it. It's remarkable how much less sugar I eat overall when I'm not eating chocolate. Other than chocolate, there isn't much sweet that I actually like, so when I avoid chocolate I tend to not replace it with other treats/desserts even though that'd be perfectly fine according to the rules of the challenge. It's part of how I know that the chocolate fixation isn't really about a physiological craving for sugar so much as an issue with chocolate itself, both biologically and emotionally/mentally. The rest of my eating has been less consistent than I would like, but I am very firmly holding to a "focus on one problem at a time" approach and not worrying about that right now. I have in the past fallen into the all-or-nothing trap pretty hard, and I am not making that mistake again. This time I am going to fix one thing, consolidate, then move on. Incremental, durable improvements.

Sucks that you're feeling down. Anything stressing you out in particular or just the ups and downs of mysterious brain chemicals? We're here for whatever you need ❤️

FYI, I had this issue, and turning off "motion blur" and setting "film grain intensity" to 0 (both in display settings) fixed it for me.

The cello is my favourite instrument! Do you know Zoe Keating? My favourite modern cellist. I would definitely recommend checking her out if you're not familiar. I've seen her live many times, and she's incredible both on and off the stage (lost her husband to brain cancer years ago and became a bit of an activist for healthcare reform after their insurance company tried to deny him coverage for essential treatments).

Walking the line when job stuff is mixed in with parts of your support network is never easy. We're here to support unconditionally, and nobody is going to ask any questions you don't want to or can't answer. Share what feels useful for you to share and no more.

Yeah, L took a video from the kitchen window actually...here's a little snippet of it. There's a 6-8 foot drop off the side of the deck, and you can't see her in this part of the video, but the mother is under there. https://imgur.com/a/8kscm6T