after a busy last week things have calmed down significantly; about to finish a 900 page book in three days, which is quite an accomplishment

  • Alice@beehaw.org
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    16 days ago

    Awful. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the usual shit that comes with working retail during the holidays. I’m never home anymore. I’m always at work. I’m always trying to fill orders with equipment that doesn’t work, in back rooms stuffed so full of pallets I can’t reach the product I need, with deadlines I can’t hit.

    After I walked away from my friend group I stayed in touch with my best friend, and things were nice and it was a breath of fresh air at first, but now we fight all the time. He keeps going “I can’t keep doing this”, but I don’t know what he wants me to do. I feel like he engineers these impossible conversations where anything I could possibly say turns out to be wrong. If I point out that he’s contradicting himself, he gets upset because I know he has memory issues so I shouldn’t expect him to know what he told me last time. But he’s still allowed to get mad at me for doing what he asked…

    He kept saying things about me that straight up weren’t true, not subjective, and didn’t acknowledge it when I told him he was wrong. I’m pretty sure I caught him trying to gaslight me right after I thought we made up.

    I loathe everyone I know at this point. I know I need to give up on friends, but that just leaves me with my family, a bunch of homophobic leeches. My fucking father asked me for a DNA test on Thanksgiving. He could have asked decades ago, but he only decided now because he’s running out of excuses to fight with mom. All anyone ever wants to do is fight and tear other people down.

    I need to learn how to stop feeling lonely without turning to other people. All they do is upset me.

    • rtc@beehaw.org
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      15 days ago

      Sounds like me from years ago.

      I turned a bit towards doing civil disobedience. Which is—doing my own thing for myself rather than aiding anyone. To be honest, life was shit when I chose this because everyone around tried to make life shit even more for me. But it just turned out it was because how much they needed me while treating me like the most useless thing ever. And needed things to go back to the way it was, which was make use as well as abuse.

      It will be shit but a way out of this seems to just be to ‘no’ anybody. To be genuine and if people are around, let them be. Oddly I do not do friends now, but have more people who are friendly than I could have had when I was in my previous situation.

      Try looking for a non-essential job is my suggestion (retail labour is essential for the very people hurting you). Something in the arts was something you were already doing it seems (I saw the digital artist comment) so something which respects you a bit more than posting on those spaces would be fitting. Not quite what depends on the whims of other people. It is not exactly easy, yes, it is very tricky rather… it is easy to make many mistakes. But if you provide what is scarce (you’ll know when you see anyone asking if any such thing or resource exists on the internet anywhere and the answer is no, usually asked by people who do not have access to the more costly things in life), if you provide that while trying to figure out your thing, you’re more likely to get thank you’s rather than abuse. Especially when you provide more value than you ask for in return for it (in current market terms), and remain aware of the situation of the particular market you decide to engage in. Then, depending on your understanding of the situation, you could either continue or adapt your methods in the future.

      I can’t say I haven’t felt desperate… but I feel at this moment I’ve already broken up the biggest problems which were persistently around me (in a permanent manner). An important thing to understand is malicious people usually rely on you, yourself, giving them a helping hand in them hurting you, so be aware of where and when you could possibly have been making it easier for them to be horrible to you without noticing it.

      • Alice@beehaw.org
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        14 days ago

        There are no jobs in my area besides factory work that will pay me as much as Walmart. I doubt I could even make pennies off art, it’s all being replaced by AI.

        I agree about not having friends anymore. I’ve always craved human connection but I’m going to get over it.

        • rtc@beehaw.org
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          14 days ago

          I did the same. However, when I started paying attention solely to my own thing after choosing not to put any effort into seeking friendship, I became better perceiving of what is a good friend. Right now I can’t say I’ve got ‘friends’ and I do not seek out people with common attributes, but people who share some attributes with me (even the slightest) do chat for a bit. People who do not find it acceptable to personally harm others actively or passively for their own gain usually stick around and have a casual chat here and there—even when these persons and I are usually focusing on our own lives, sometimes time is just made for a casual chat. Usually wholesome stuff, nothing forced. Usually in the past, ‘friends’ had boundaries set so they didn’t hurt the other, yet usually things did get ugly very often. That pretty much didn’t happen now even without any such boundaries. It took some years of not conversing with others and wholly immersing myself in my own personal activities and development, but it got there.

          For me as well, employment has been a problem because being from a bad family, I was stressed out all the time and that looked bad from an employability point of view. So I developed strength in a few fields which I never had before. Getting myself to a state where I could surpass the quality of the ‘mainstream’ by don’t with my own hands, not being dependent on resources, I was then greeted by regulation whose unspoken purpose seems to be the one thing it achieves—break the ability for solo business persons from doing what they can. You’re forced to be an employee. Now I can say that while my grades were decent, my ability was child-like compared to my ability now. Including practical ability, or rather especially, and having good technical ability as well helps this. I can say that the decisions and the abilities of those who perform a number of corporate duties made me scoff. I’ve basically fixed every problem I had which denied me proper employment before as well. All this, but I am not fit to be employed for reasons I know too well. So I’m doubling down on doing my own thing, releasing it digitally for free (and having few restrictions so that others can integrate my work into their own without worry) and relying on an appreciation model (what people call donations). Now, this is a model whoch doesn’t usually do well in the rare times when it doesn’t just fail, but that is usually because it is basically put out there and there is hope people will like it and spend on it (a bit more complex and more steps). My method will be a bit different—it will also not have paid exclusive content, which is a slightly fanous method.

          You could try something I did, but I can only warn you that my method was very extreme. However, when I had no option and no chance in life from any choice, this thing opened up and broke that situation completely. Talent is nothing born from birth, it is just strength. Strength is only the ability to do things better with your own ability rather than with vhelp or tools, nothing more than that. Power is the tool which stops and drains any strength you have. Choose to have no power over anyone, and not to let anyone have pkwer over you as well. When you make decisions which are not one of a coward, one of an evil person, you feel pain. A pain which people resort to all sorts of things to escape. The pain is nothing but of the mind and body getting stronger—the body, bones included, literally rearranges and fixes any issues to get to stronger form. Accept the understand it till it subsides. I dif this process of pain for years till many health problems badically fixed themselves on their own, because the body is capable of that if you let it. Improving the kind and body in strength was improving the ability to do things—to improve skill. To assign talent to myself that I never posssessed, and to have no limit in how many things I can be talented in. Of course, the learning still needs to be done but its achieved at the pace of someone who is ‘naturally talented’ for a task. When your ability surpasses most, selling your thing will still be a problem due to the market and world structure, but it won’t be impossible with effort. As I stated… the method I used was extreme, and was even more painful because I was learning as I went along with it. I formed the steps from painful experience. Maybe it could help.

          Edit: An important part of this is knowing what power is. Power is making others do what you want them to do, and even telling others what they should do. So this method cannot be used without practically forgetting the concept of should. Many will disagree with it… but since I started it, my intolerance of people who want to harm others has only increased; my ability to deal with them has improved. The key is it is difficult at first to not make others do things that they don’t want to, while not letting them to force you to do things yku do not want to without having power over them. And there’s a lot more to figure out before you’ll be able to fix many problems that seem to be a big nuisance to most.