Jackie's Fridge

I use a Kaweco Sport as my daily driver.

Bonus: Nobody ever “borrows” it at work because it confuses and terrifies them.

Treez nuts

Oh wow you struck gold with that therapist! We need WAY more of him, but you’re right it’s draining work. Like just hanging out with a good friend will wipe me out, but digging deep into the root of someone’s pain, over and over, every day…ooof.

I’m sorry your friend cancelled. Hopefully he gets over this bump and you can reschedule.

I am so happy to hear you have a friend who is willing and able to help you out! My partner and I have good days and bad days. She’s usually more motivated, but I tend to be handier (when I can focus). I lucked out there I think.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could get some mental health professionals who actually trust that someone is accurately describing what they’re dealing with and how? Like - you can throw neurotypical-friendly solutions at me all day but there just might be a reason they won’t work the same as they have for someone else.

Take care of you! Here’s hoping for an uptick in The Good Days soon!

Love it! Minimal but effective.

Oh that’s just awful. So any time you need to do Big Project, each smaller step is in itself Big Project and subdividing is off the table.

It also sounds like you’re tackling everything without help. If you can stand it, would organising a group task force help? My partner (not me - I can’t do people very well) got together with some of her more reliable friends and they will plan every other weekend to all descend upon one of their homes and spend about 4 hours doing What Needs To Be Done. It turns the activity into more of a social gathering, and they actually get things done.

Not sure if that would help with some of what you’re dealing with. Also, I’m definitely not a professional so I can’t really help, just try to throw suggestions into the ether in the hope that they might improve someone’s situation a little.

🫂 Not a mess, you just operate differently to how you’d rather. Brains are wildly variable and affected by the strangest stuff. A trick that might work under certain conditions might not with others. Juggling moods, free time, seasonality & weather, finance (“can I afford to do this project right now”) and all that other garbage is a whole task in itself.

That’s when it might help to fall back on compartmentalising the task as others suggested: what is the next single step to refinishing the closets? Sanding the walls? Okay today I will sand one wall and then stop. Done. Feel like tackling a second wall after? Let yourself do that. If not, you are one step closer. Not up to even that single wall? Do future-you a favour and get your equipment staged to do that wall.

Small progress is still progress.

Can dimly remember what he looks like. Apparently he looks like someone’s creepy uncle who was always doing sleight of hand tricks to wow the little kids

This can be dangerous, but sometimes I will force myself to stop short of reaching a good stopping point. Like, say you have to put up panelling, and 5 sections will cover a wall. Put up 4 panels and stop for the day. That 5th panel not being in place will drive you mad until you dive back into the project.

This will sometimes backfire, and I do have years-old half-finished projects that I’ve wandered away from

This is why I joined a track-a-week music challenge this year! I’ve been dabbling for 5 years and still have no idea what I’m doing musically (no theory or anything) but I figured cranking out a finished song every week throughout 2024 would force me to get better and it’s really working!

I mean, I’m still cranking out garbage, but now it’s higher quality garbage and I can make decisions faster, let go of ideas that aren’t working without a second thought, and learn from other people taking the challenge.

As far as art goes, I’ve been drawing live caricatures for 15 years and I’m WAY better than even a few years ago. Definitely stick with it. Be too stubborn to give up. Keep doing the thing. Skill will develop the more you persevere.

The Birthday Massacre are so gooood

I am with you on every one of these points. The image selection process is terrible now, where before it was quick & simple. And in the past couple of updates, sending larger images and gifs was sporadic until now I always get an error. I was happy when they added message reactions, then puzzled when they just stopped at six, half of which are rarely useful.

I’ve been a paid user for years, but now I’m causally shopping for something else. If they’re giving up on their app, so am I.

Seriously. USA is like the generic video game starter character before anyone’s had a chance to customise it and level up. At all. And I say that as someone who lives here.

She vaguely thinks there may be something out there but it has zero bearing on her life. I think that makes her functionally an agnostic atheist.

A Mary Sue can fail, but those failures don’t usually have a massive impact and are easily reversed without the feeling that the MS had to struggle to earn the reversal.

The more flaws a character has, the more they have to work to balance them out. Readers are more likely on the side of a character that has to work and make sacrifices to make it through the difficulties the plot throws at them.

Random Example: Diana Rowland’s “My Life as a White Trash Zombie”. Protagonist Angel has a criminal record, drug addiction, abusive home life, and generally makes very bad decisions. Because of her life course, she has very few resources (she can’t go to the cops, nobody she knows has money or connections, etc) but she can think quickly and has a sort of desperate resourcefulness. Because everything is working against her, she has to fight for any positive forward movement, and one misstep can be a serious threat - and those happen frequently, undoing any success and forcing her to burn her resources to try a new path. IIRC in one of the books the B-story is her trying just to earn her GED as the main plot around her is utter pandemonium. Just that struggle to graduate high school is a herculean task given the deck stacked against her. Readers aren’t thinking “how will she win”, they’re thinking “well what’s going to go wrong this time?”

TL;DR: If every time your protagonist has a setback the readers shout “can’t she ever catch a break?” instead of “ah she’ll just breeze through this” you should be doing okay.

I have random stupid hangups and for who knows why profanity is one of them. I’m fine with it. I barely notice when others use it. But I just can’t. It doesn’t sound right in my context or in my voice.

Of course I hate my own voice with a fiery passion, but that’s another hangup.

It’s been around for a while. Over a decade ago Target ran a cheeky back to school advert featuring a slow pan across school cubbies with lunch pails all labelled with variant spellings of “Braiden”. I thought it was hilarious.

It’s a short series (six episodes so far) but with two more in production: The Devil’s Hour.

Go in blind, don’t spoil it for yourself.

If you like a series that gives you all the clues but none of them fall together until the last episode, this one is dark, brain-bendy supernatural mystery with an excellent cast.

Listening to other people, especially to women, is a skill. Don’t spend silent time in a conversation waiting for your chance to speak or be smart or witty, stay quiet and really process what you’re hearing. Imagine yourself in their situation. Accept that what they say is exactly how they feel.

The less time you spend talking, the more your conversational partner will tell you, and the more you will start to understand them, their lives, their goals, and their anxieties.

Knowing and understanding other peoples’ experiences will help you not only make better decisions in your own life, but understand why other people act and think the way they do. You’ll be less likely to snap-judge or make assumptions about others. And knowing more about your loved ones, co-workers, and neighbours will allow you to help them effectively if they need it.

And travel abroad as much as possible - listen to people from other countries and cultures. The human experience is wildly varied and endlessly fascinating.

It’s great being the one nobody suspects! A few people thought I might have done the baby thing but I was also “finding” babies in my work area and was decent enough faking confusion and offering up more plausible co-workers as suspects. I like your idea of getting creative with the hours sign!

I forgot - I also did a squished spider prank. I drew a “crushed” spider in a random spot on a sheet of copy paper - two sloppy body segments and broken stick legs in the general squished spider arrangement. I used just a black felt-tipped pen and even added a tiny drop of water to the body to bleed the ink and make it look juicy. Once it dried, I slipped the paper face-down in the paper feed tray (so the print would be on the spider side) under two clean sheets of paper.

When my supervisor printed a spreadsheet, there it was on page 3. Sadly, she didn’t have a huge reaction to that one, but I was still proud of myself.