391–400 of 570 posts
Perhaps a more simple regret, but not buying bitcoin when it was at ~8USD. In hindsight it would've been the easiest way to not have to think about money anymore for the rest of my life.
I spent my twenties doing nothing but working. I put no time into learning basic self care skills like cooking, cleaning, or exercise. Weekends were wasted mostly lying in bed exhausted. I never dated. In retrospect I was obviously depressed, but I took me nearly 10 years to understand why. My relationships with my parents and peers earlier in life had been so fraught that I became convinced I could never have a heal…
I hope you know now, this is a mistaken belief. Also in romantic context.
Last week, actually. Was a bit careless and inebriated while working on a demo and suddenly I realized I had luksFormatted the luks partition holding the only copy of keys for cryptocurrency worth ~$200k. That was a sizable fraction if my supposed net worth. Either I'm still in denial or I've risen above obsessive materialism as it doesn't affect me too much so far, though. Its just money. Unplugged the drive and hav…
Was it 200k at the time, or appreciated later?
I don't really "believe" in regret. At each and every point in my life, I was working with the information I had at my disposal, each information having its own "weight" in my mind. Every mistake I've made has brought some information in my mind that wouldn't have been brought otherwise. Fantasies of "changing the past" are seductive, but ultimately pointless. The only way I could justify having regrets, is reminding…
It seems you define regret as: if I went back in time I would do instead of and of course this is a pointless exercise if you choose to define it this way. Most people I think define regret more abstractly: back in time, was a _mistake_, it shouldn't have happened, _I_ shouldn't have done it that way and consequences came from it either for myself or those I love. It seems from your response that you're ok with admit…
Time travel doesn't exist, ergo regret shouldn't exist. I think what op is saying is they don't ruminate on it and I agree, nobody should. unless you have an established pattern, then rumination is self invoked torture.
I'm torn on this. My life is pretty great. Well paid, leaving a job I hate for a job I think I will love in the next few weeks, loving family. Things would be drastically different if not for the path I actually took, but still. I'm a developer, and a decent one - not FAANG level by any means, but decent. But, my degree is from a school nobody's ever heard of, in an unrelated humanities subject, with a horrendous, ba…
Possible, though based on what I've seen so far, somewhat unlikely.
Usually, the old job wasn't that bad with more hindsight, and the new job is rarely that good...
I spent my twenties doing nothing but working. I put no time into learning basic self care skills like cooking, cleaning, or exercise. Weekends were wasted mostly lying in bed exhausted. I never dated. In retrospect I was obviously depressed, but I took me nearly 10 years to understand why. My relationships with my parents and peers earlier in life had been so fraught that I became convinced I could never have a heal…
> as I believed early baldness would negatively affect people’s initial impressions of me I hope you know now, this is a mistaken belief. Also in romantic context.
However, this effect surely pales in comparison to the effect of the permanent sexual dysfunction finasteride can cause. It is frankly outrageous that regulators in the United States have adopted the drug companies’ willful ignorance of this.
In my case I find it impossible to imagine I will ever meet a partner who is comfortable with inability to participate in normative sexual relations, as well as being compatible in other dimensions. I could honestly say that it has ruined my life.
I regret hearing the lies spoken during sex education when I was in fifth grade in 1987. The public school I was forced to attend brought in a sociologist to do the damage. She told us that we had to release our libido energy regularly - either by having sexual relations with another person or by masturbation, and that this was okay and healthy. Self control and abstinence were presented as being unrealistic. This pr…
Many factors have conspired to keep things this way:
- The only prerequisite to becoming addicted is having a body that is intact.
- There is practically nothing to prevent a curious teenager from masturbating at a young age, and the current literature regards this as normal, despite the fact that it can lead to addiction if it's not addressed. But teenagers are not about to let something that embarrassing be addressed by their family, especially for one as reticent as I was.
- Because the addiction is behavioral there is no physical substance to seek out and no seedy culture to involve oneself in, so there's no exposure that could lead to outside forces wanting to change you. You can obtain a limitless amount of porn anywhere for free and nobody would ever know.
- The physical consequences of using are mostly fatigue the next day, which can be mistaken as the result of anything. Mentioning sexual topics is taboo in comparison to admitting you are alcoholic, so nobody is going to guess correctly and intervene based on your appearance. It's an invisible addiction.
- When it's to the point that people online question if addiction to masturbation is even a thing, or if it's a puritanical argument in opposition to sexual freedom, it greatly diminishes the stances of people who actually have the condition and can't control themselves. Many are trying to decrease the shame around sexual things while the people that can't help themselves are left behind adding those movements to an ever-growing list of rationalizations.
- Being addicted to masturbating and/or porn is not as severe as being addicted to hard drugs or even alcohol. It gives you a sense that this is the "right" addiction to have if you're going to have an addiction at all, and makes quitting all but hopeless once it's taken hold.
- Admitting to this publicly opens yourself up to ridicule with the way the culture is set up. It's unlikely many would react positively to jokes about heroin users or binging alcoholics. Sexual humor on the other hand is practically embedded into every sitcom and countless memes and dick jokes. Addiction to masturbation is never going to be taken as seriously or at as large a scale as most other addictions.
The only good part is that the addiction is manageable for the most part and my lack of sociality has prevented me from going as far as casual sex. But I'm starting to have erectile dysfunction and a loss of satisfaction from physical overuse.
A part of me thinks that the way masturbation is meant to be a totally private activity closed off all routes for anyone to help me from a young age. It makes me wonder if trying to avoid all addictions would have been a hopeless endeavor from the start. Every time I admitted it to a counselor or therapist they either wouldn't take it seriously or didn't offer any routines that stuck.
Still, even though it is a rationalization for my own addiction, I am still glad I did not get addicted to alcohol or cigarettes or eating instead. It gives me pause to think how easily I could have started down that path with just a bit more openness to experience than I once had.
EDIT: And of course to prove my point about stigma I've been hellbanned for making this very post.
Losing the relationship with my best friend and girlfriend when I was in my twenties. We had been friends ever since we were kids and then dated all through school and college. We both knew marriage was in the cards. But then she left. No one cheated. No broken trust. No drama. She told me she wanted to know what it's like to be alone, which I mean, fair enough after so many years of just us. Since then, many wonderf…
I was moving from Australia to Sweden. I looked into bringing him with me, but how well would a tropical bird really do in _Sweden_, and would he be able to survive the stress of the journey? I decided to find him a good home.
I put an ad up for him on the local classifieds site. I was giving him away for free to a good home, with cage, feed, etc. My requirement was to meet the family first, and that they would promise to contact me immediately if something did not work out or if they changed their minds, and I would make other arrangements. I had hundreds of replies and went through them all. One of them was a family with a young daughter who already had one other friendly Rainbow Lorikeet. They sounded very nice, like they'd be an attentive and stable home, and I thought it'd be great for Goku to have another bird companion, too.
I met them and they seemed great. They were good with Goku. They said they'd take their time introducing the other lorikeet (I wasn't worried about this because they said they had lots of prior bird experience, and we discussed this point specifically to make sure we were on the same page with the introductions). They promised to send me updates and pictures, and we added each other on Facebook.
They sent a picture of Goku perched on their daughter's shoulder the next day and was so relieved because I thought I made a good decision. But after that, it was radio silence. I sent them a message asking how he's doing a week later, to make sure that all was good before I fly out. I got no response. I messaged again a month later, on Facebook, and got no response again. I tried again a few more months later, and then once a year or so for a few years, but they never replied to me. I wasn't spamming them demanding information or anything, just checking in at reasonable intervals, since they agreed to send me updates from the very beginning.
To this day I have no idea what happened to Goku, and feel like I betrayed him. I didn't pick the family carefully enough, and could have taken more time. I got too excited. I didn't even look at bird rescue operations, since for some reason I just assumed a regular home would be better. I'm certain that something bad happened: he got hurt, or they ended up not being the people I thought they were and sold him or something. Otherwise why would it just be total radio silence?