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  • My mom who I haven't seen in like six years is coming to stay with me for a little under a week. She hasn't seen me in person since I transitioned but is supportive despite her conservative leanings. She's also visiting me in here in Portland from where she lives in Texas so there's a double layer of "everything is okay, the city is not on fire" plus all the new trans stuff she's going to be asking about. So it'll be a week of doing my best to be an LGBTQ encyclopedia and Portland advocate while catching up with my mom. It should be okay, but it's going to be stressful 🥲

    • I hope everything goes well during the visit! If she's supportive, that's already a great sign. Constantly explaining things can get exhausting after a while, but it's definitely easier to handle when those questions are asked in good faith.

      I hope you don't mind me asking, but as someone who is really considering moving to Portland from the deep south, how is it? It seems like a really fun city, but it's hard to sift through the propaganda with it being such a target for conservative media.

      • I don't mind! In fact, here's way more info than you asked for!

        Portland has it's problems, no doubt. But in comparison to the south? It's not even close, you couldn't pay me to move back (and my job tried lol). The weather is more mild, the people more friendly and the culture more inclusive. The food scene is crazy, so much variety and fusions you've never heard of. Afters years I'm still discovering new eateries to try and pretty much every place has veggie/vegan options if you're into that. Super walkable with awesome public transit (for an American city) that makes it great to get around for real cheap. Hiking trails on hiking trails with lots of bike infrastructure. So many fun shows come to town all the time and the local artists are their own brand of amazing weirdness. Also weird subcultures. I'm going to the Mondo Croquet World Championships this Sunday where you play croquet with bowling balls and sledgehammers. Takes place in Portland every year for 26 years and I just learned about it two days ago lol

        Now the bad. There's some sketchiness with some of the houseless encampments around town, but the majority are just people trying to get by. Don't berate or antagonize them and you'll be fine. I was just walking in Old Town the other week with a friend, this is often described as the most dangerous part of the city, and it was fine. A houseless person who was talking to himself saw my Mars Attacks shirt there, smiled real big, and then yelled "ack ack ack ack ack!" So I smiled back and gave him a nod, he was satisfied with the exchange and went on his way. Which is honestly how it goes most of the time. Most houseless people I talk to are just thankful I talk to them at all and don't ignore them. One dude showed me his sweet rock collection on the train, he was stoked to share with someone and they were some pretty sweet rocks tbh. I know anecdotes don't directly translate to data but for what it's worth that's been everybody's experience I've spoken to that I can confirm actually lives here. If you go to the Portland subreddit for instance you'll see a lot of claims being made but then dig into the profiles to find they don't actually live here.

        Our police department is the worst. I know everyone says that, but like, Portland Police might actually be the worst. They're on an unofficial soft strike right now and have been since the George Floyd Protests and only respond to the most urgent of urgent calls. Then wonder why everyone hates them and wants to slash their budget. I could go on for a while there but I won't. Portland cops suck, real hard.

        Housing and rent sucks, but so does everywhere else. So, meh. Although with Oregon rent control I've been able to renew my lease and have pretty close to what I was paying in rent five years ago because we haven't moved.

        I didn't meant to type a wall of text, but that's a very summarized run down of what to expect. I tried to be completely honest because it's not a perfect city, but I couldn't imagine living anywhere else at this point.

        with it being such a target for conservative media.

        It's kind of a blessing in disguise because it largely keeps conservative people from moving here so it's mostly really cool/chill people that move here instead lol

  • Debbie downer here! If you're having a good day, I don't want to harsh it, so skip me! :)

    Apparently my mood's been off enough this week that it's been effecting people around me negatively and now I have to get restarted on meditating to hopefully fix it. But at least I do have that one option, I definitely haven't always had a path to follow when it comes to mood/feeling stuff. It just feels precarious because it's like, if this doesn't work, what comes next?

    Idk, maybe this is a feeble attempt at crowdsourcing what comes next, because if that doesn't work, idk what I'll do. Probably will just shrug and try to keep moving at the very worst, it's all one can do sometimes.

    But it's not all terrible, my cat is healthy, I have a job, and I have friends, so there's that :)

    Tldr; this is me venting that emotions are difficult little bastards

    • I don't have much to say that might help, except that I feel what you're saying. Many times I've been at a place where all I can do is look at my emotions and think "what the hell am I supposed to do with this?". Nothing like not knowing how long you'll have to wade through the swamp or what's going to help you get out. Sometimes all you can do is keep moving and be open to what's coming in the future.

  • Bit up and down. Not as productive as I would have liked thanks to mental health, but also not terrible either. I'd give it a 6.5/10

  • It's been pretty awful, sadly. As Neil Gaiman says, "Events are cowards. They come in packs." It's been one blow after another all week, and I don't think I can handle any more bad news.

  • I'm honestly losing my will to live. Not actively considering sucide, but in the "I wouldn't mind if that bus just swerved into me and this bullshit could finally end" phase. Physical and mental health's down the shitter, and I'm making the mental part worse by isolating myself from my friends and the outside world in general – partially because I'm just so tired due to health issues, and partially due to having picked up an old substance abuse problem that I tend to reach for every time I hit a rough spot, and which absolutely does not help. Haven't left my apartment in days now.

    Everything feels so pointless. My immune system hates me, meaning my body has decided that everything starting from my eyes to my nervous system is the enemy, so now I'm slowly losing my eyesight and getting neuropathic pain from dying nerve fibers. After getting sick 3 or so years ago I've managed to cut almost all of my friends out of my life because I either honestly didn't have the energy to do stuff with them and keep in touch, or just spent my days sulking about how terrible I feel (and tbh there have been times I really did feel absolutely terrible, what with radiotherapy and surgery and all) instead of spending time with people who cared about me, so now nobody even asks me out to things anymore or gets in touch. Not that I had all that many friends in the first place, being a bit of a weirdo loner to start with, so it's no surprise that the few I had left evaporated when all I could talk about was how terrible I felt after getting an internal organ nuked or how I had to go to the emergency department again because of XYZ.

    Slowly trying to come to terms and learn to live with chronic illness now that the acute stuff is over, but I've isolated myself so efficiently that it's hard to pick up my life from where I left it before I got sick. So right now the place I'm at is that I'm a bloated aging ruin of a person in a world that's rapidly going down the shitter, and I just feel so hopeless about, well, everything.

  • Goin' aight. It was fun last week, but pretty busy for a summer week for me too. I had a friend over while they were in town for the summer, got to see Les Mis while there was a performance in SF, and was unexpectedly enlisted to help another friend practice for their driving test. All a great time, but maybe I'll get some more time this week to tend to some personal hobbies and projects.

  • Been another week of pointless stressful bullshit at work for me, which eats into my real life outside of work more than I'd like. That being said, making some progress on finding a therapist (a surprisingly difficult process it seems) and also a driving instructor -- almost made it to 30 without learning to drive, but the time is now!

    Also starting the process of ditching music streaming in favour of Bandcamp, which has been fun. Been feeling some real nostalgia for the old days of buying tracks off iTunes!

    • I've been in touch with my therapist over maybe three distinct periods since 2018. It was always surprisingly slow, draining, and exhausting to get things started for a range of reasons. Slog aside, however, it was always incredibly worth it to get a professional perspective and to begin with professional solutions. By no means has it been perfect, but it's been much better. I think it's fair to say it's been life changing, even. I'd always recommend people consider professional help if it even crosses their mind and they're in a position where they can access it. All the best in finding a therapist!

      Ditching music streaming sounds cool! I think I'll still have a place in my playlists for streaming to handle stuff like music I'm trying out or some lower priority tunes, but I've been gradually building up my own library. There's something really satisfying about having the files on my own hardware, or at least having something I purchased online rather than relying on streaming. I've had the rug pulled under me with songs or shows I was streaming before. It's always a bummer to discover one less song or episode in my media library 😞.

  • Well, things have been up and down for me - lots and lots of stress factors from what feels like every potential facet of my life for a long time now. I've been working on trying to improve that where I can, and getting help from mental health professionals too.

    But on the upside, yesterday I got to hang out with a couple of friends that I haven't gotten to in a while, along with meeting some of their friends, and it was a blast! We did the "Last Wish" raid in Destiny 2 which was a very fun time! It did a very good job at reminding me that even though bad things can happen, there's still some good moments to be had.

  • Pretty mixed, feel weirdly restless all the time since I dropped my medication at the end of the week before last week. Got a new vape which is keeping me company at least, a nice E-Elev8R ball vape. Kind of terrifying dealing with the red hot glowing metal heating as it gets up to temperature though.

  • A weird mix of great and awful! Recovering well from a surgery I've wanted for years, just in time for my roommate to get laid off from work! All while my computer is dead, preventing me from working myself.

  • Not that great.

    Starting a new (internal) role tomorrow which got me a £4k payrise and is going to set me on a path to chartered accountancy, which is great when just three months ago my employer announced plans to lay off my whole department and outsource hundreds of jobs to India. After escaping redundancy and purchase ledger (I have been working in PL jobs for the past three years and desperately wanted an out), I should be feeling jubilant.

    If anything I feel the opposite.

    My sadness/frustration comes from the fact that my love life has all but flatlined. I grow sick of trying to use Tinder, Bumble, Okcupid, Hinge and pretty much any other dating app to exist and getting zero matches from legitimate people. I grow sick of being given false platitudes about how I'll find someone eventually, when I just know that I'm going to go through my thirties still a virgin.

    Part of me seriously worries about success, that I'll soon each the point where I could command a high five figure, possibly a six figure salary, then suddenly have women flock to me not out of admiration but out of wanting my money.

  • i give my week a 4/5, been busy the past few days trying to set up a Firefish instance with my partner which has been just awesome and i’m super excited to open it up and get people on it! rly inspired by beehaw’s community-building style.

    in less awesome news i’m moving back home at the end of the week and i’m not looking forward to it. moving is so stressful and i don’t want to be back home with my dad either lol.

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