Also, after breaking with my parents, and telling my kids I love them, I realized how very rare it was for my father to tell me he loves me. So, tell people what they mean to you and that you love them because it might not seem like much at the moment, but it means a lot in the long run.

Some people can’t do that because their parents will use that against them. They love their parents but need to maintain a certain emotional distance so they don’t leverage that for emotional blackmail.

Yep. Look after your teeth folks.

This. This one was a rough lesson to learn.

This one is painfully accurate. And doubled if they cheated on their ex. It’s not romantic, you’re not in a movie. They’re a shitty person who cheated on their partner. They will do it to you.

if they’ll cheat with you, they’ll cheat on you

Apostrophe’s aren’t alway’s where they be’long.

IMHO that’s a surefire way to burnout and self-doubts later on. My advice would almost be the opposite.

Never too late to change if what you’re doing isn’t working for you. Recognize when you’re about to kill your passion with expectations, and don’t do it. There is little to no cross-disciplinary knowledge that doesn’t come in useful, so don’t force yourself to be single-minded in your pursuits. What you’re learning matters surprisingly little, that you’re learning matters so much more.

But yea, don’t change major pursuits, like, every year. Probably depends on the person which advice they need. I definitely would have needed the latter.

This also applies to software engineering and farming, from experience.

Also don’t expect to do it well the first time. Skills take practice to develop. Practice with those tools before you apply them to expensive materials for the thing you really want to make.

I’d worry more about disappointing your future self than your parents.

idk man I’ve seen some pretty bad tattoos

Per your advice I got a tattoo of Anna and Elsa 69ing on my cheek, thanks!

I work a very sedentary career and don’t have a ton of energy after work/kids, but I’ve found having an under the desk pedal cycle to use during the day has done wonders for my physical and mental health.

I heard the same advice about investing for retirement. This feels like a glitch in the matrix.

Don’t try to have a good diet and workout routine, try to regularly improve your diet and workout routine.

The best workout routine is the one you can stick to. Plenty of people online will tell you that to lose weight you need to be doing cardio in a certain heart rate zone or to gain muscle you need to weight lift a certain way. That is technically true, but useless. A great workout routine is just walking for half an hour each day. It is a much more realistic goal for out of shape people and simply getting your heat pumping and your muscles moving regularly will get you most of the health benefits you need.

Same thing with diet. A keto or intermittent fasting diet may be the fastest way to burn fat, but they are very hard to stick to and when you break them, you will be so hungry that you will eat enough to gain back all the weight you lost. A more realistic plan is to cut out a sugary beverage from each day and to make sure that every meal includes a vegetable high in fiber. Once that is an established habit, build on it with other small changes that move you closer to a healthy lifestyle.

You know something that helped me exercise regularly was… “you’re going to be scrolling through your phone. Might as well do it while on the treadmill/peloton/etc”

But don’t switch completely to a healthy diet all of a sudden, do it slowly. Otherwise your body may not handle the drastic change and you may get health issues (mine was a belly button infection 🙃).

Personally, I like to plant gardens that help out natural pollinators in order to change the bees that I want to see in the world.

You could also be autistic and have the same experience like me or even both

Citation on that? I’m sure it’s possible, but weirdly-specific percentages with no citation make me suspicious.

In in my, it was just a lot of factors of upbringing and had really weird ideals and probably a dash of neurodivergence that combined to give me this feeling. Getting out of the environment I was in, getting some mental help, etc. solved that for me.

I’m not feeling that I have failed but that the whole model of gender and sexually are flawed. So, in my opinion, society has failed me.

Important note: just because at some point you felt attraction to people of opposite sex, doesn’t automatically disqualify you from LGBTQ

Also, if your parents were abusive, be deeply skeptical of “love at first sight”.

The most amazing connection I ever had with a partner led to the worst abuse I’ve ever experienced.

I’ve heard a ‘crush’ being described as an absence of knowledge about the actual person you are fixated on. It reminds me of the story Robert Pattinson told where he took his stalker out to lunch, bitched about his life for an hour, and then never saw her again!

Where the fuck were you 30 years ago??? I was in 8th grade, and I was OBSESSED with (girls name redacted).

14 year old me saw wedding bells, and wild sex nights, and babies, and a house.

40 year old me knows I was just horny, and she was just putting out horny flirty vibes. I don’t even know her favorite food!

In my case:

If you’re falling in love with someone who’s “perfect”, you’re probably falling in love with someone who has an undiagnosed mental illness and is very good at pretending to be the person she thinks you want her to be, for a while.

She will spend the next 6 years making your life very, very miserable.

Also, floss.

Currently the non-availability of dental care in the budget is the biggest visible sign of poverty.

Remember that while dentristry is an essential service, it is mercenary and thus priced out of reach of our bottom 30%.

Some things are important, but importance is only half of the prioritization.

I once avoided asking my father for money for the dentist, out of pride, as a tooth infection was developing.

By the time I finally did break down and ask him, it had advanced to the point where my nervous system got permanently altered by the pain levels I experienced.

I finally broke down and asked him when it got too much for me to handle. But by that time, it wasn’t at its peak yet. The pain peaked after I started the antibiotics.

I guess the lesson was: a problem will continue to develop after you take steps to solve it. In my case, waiting until the pain reached a level I couldn’t handle meant that the maximum pain level was well above what I could handle.

The lesson I learned is this: The problem does not go away magically the moment you decide to ask for help. So don’t wait until the last second to ask for help.

Like, call the fire department long before the fire gets out of control.

Oh my GOD yes. The pain now is a FRACTION of what it’ll be the longer you put it off! And trust me, at some point you will be forced to go if you don’t choose to go yourself. Just go. They won’t judge you for starting now.

I push people in wheelchairs for a living. I roughly walk 6-10 miles a day. My shoes are 2-3 years old, and literally falling apart.

And I’ll keep wearing them until a week AFTER they fall apart! I got duct tape!

Can confirm on the shoes. Whatever else needs cut back, as long as you can afford rent and food and gas to get to work, buy good quality shoes. Not all expensive shoes are good, but good shoes are not cheap. Second hand good shoes that are your size are very very rare. Upgrading insoles can get you by for a while, but there’s nothing like good quality shoes.

I dropped 200 euros on a split ergonomic keyboard and it fixed my shoulder pain from typing excessively.

I invested in an Areon chair and have zero regrets. Best decision I ever made. I work as a software engineer, and also game in my spare time. So sitting around is a lot of what I do unfortunately.

Agreed and agreed. But an addendum regarding mattresses: No matter what the salespeople tell you, most mattresses with pocketed coil springs are pretty much the same apart from hardness, especially with a compensating mattress topper. Just get one that feels right to you, definitely don’t think that more expensive=better, mattress-wise.

More money advice: Most things come in two tiers worth purchasing: “nice” and “wow”.

“Nice” are the things experts deem good enough, or clothes-wise ones that you can see yourself actually wearing across multiple years, both durability- and appearance-wise. Affordable, and you like them. A useable placeholder, if you will.

“Wow” are the things that you’ve been steadily dreaming of for years, or ones that catch your eye even if you weren’t looking. “Buy it for life” stuff. Solid whole wood furniture, that teapot or coffee maker you’ve been dreaming of. A designer winter coat that only costs 20 times your old one. 🫣 On these you look at the price tag after; you want it, you get it, and if it breaks, you repair it. If it’s affordable, or if you find more than one of these every 1-3 years, consider yourself very lucky.

Nothing below “nice” is worth getting, and very few things between “nice” and “wow” are worth getting.

I like to measure costs in dollars per hour, similar to this. So what if that hobby item is 400 dollars. How many hundreds of hours will you get enjoying it? So like, a dollar an hour.

A movie you don’t care about seeing? 20 dollars for 2 hours. Maybe hold off.

And like all skills, will develop as you do it more and more. If you’re new to cleaning and you suck at it, don’t despair. Just keep trying.