I think this is my favourite suggestion. I can draw but like most people have placed my hobbies in the ‘oh I need time to sit down and do that’ which is rubbish really (I doodled through decades of office work and meetings) so that’s certainly something I can do!

I’m also guilty of hoarding little notebooks, moleskins etc that are easy to keep on hand.

Cheers!

The way I try to approach these threads is to try and pretend there’s a bunch of people sitting around having a conversation.

If you’re familiar with the dynamic, and you emulate it here, you might enjoy yourself more. Or you could do this I suppose?

Each to their own.

Oh that’s cool, I’ll check it out - thanks!

Anything else doing?

Oh gosh I’ve tried Duolingo so many times over the years and never gotten far. I’m impressed with people who keep it up.

Can you tell me more about the games you like? I have lots but I’m pretty bored with most of them.

That’s cool. How was your day otherwise?

Already muted compadre

Something that only occurred to me just now is that when I was in my 20s and early 30s and still assumed I’d have children (despite that looming self imposed pressure feeling exactly like dread), the parent-child relationship I had imagined in my head was set in the past.

I grew up in the 90s and early 00s. I’m an elder millennial. I think my gen was very lucky in that we got to see and enjoy the rapid emergence of technology before today’s capitalistic enshittification but our interpersonal dynamics and everything we did didn’t rely on it either. So the ‘come home when it gets dark’ or ‘I’ll meet you at 4 at the cinema’ mentality was still strong. No social media or inability to switch off the connection to other people.

We also didn’t have the existential crises that come with thinking about climate change, the death of truth and the rise of misinformation, and the next pandemic.

So when I was picturing raising a child it was in a dated context that for the most part doesn’t exist anymore. Yes there’s exceptions to everything - I’m speaking in a very general sense - but I cannot imagine myself growing up in today’s world. I had a hard enough time back then, with similar struggles most kids have. How the fuck would I help my own child navigate it???

No thanks.

You could look into some kind of work experience program or even troubled youth programs operating in your area that might be able to make use of your knowledge and your property?

We don’t need kids to pass on what we know to the young :)

Yeah you guys are 0 for 2 on that, hey. Might not be a good talent pool to draw from.

Yep. The idea of up and down is just due to who made the maps first.

Yeah without any stated stake in this, this seems to be just looking for free smut to read. This isn’t the place.

7.5

Terrible night’s sleep but I’ve had a couple of leads on work (one is almost in the bag) and I just did a big walk in the sunshine and I’m not in pain.

Pretty badass even if I’m gonna go pass out very soon.

Drew their swords and shot each other. A deaf policeman heard the noise and came to arrest the two dead boys. If you don’t believe this story is true, ask the blind man as he saw it too.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

I feel like that’s already happening

Or see a physiotherapist instead.

I’ve heard this called the ‘dirty 30’. It works. Whatever needs cleaning up or tidying, 30 minutes is just short enough to not feel like you’re using all your free time on chores, but long enough to make a real dent. Especially if your partner either helps with the same task or does a different one. Setting a timer can help and you start to almost frantically see how much you can get done. I like that competitive element even against myself.

In Australia it’s customary to thank the staff members attending your table. So when they top up your water, or lay out cutlery for the next course, or clear plates, you say ‘thanks/thank you’. Same for people clearing glasses in bars. It’s like a millisecond pause in your conversation to thank the staff member; it’s basically cell memory, you don’t think about it. They may or may not acknowledge it with a smile or ‘you’re welcome/no worries’. . It’s just a basic manners thing.

I and my partner were doing it in the states and it was clearly unnerving the staff. Lots of puzzled looks or ‘thats ok hun’ like they had to reassure me that it was part of the service.

Do people just ignore staff there? Is paying a tip at the end the only acknowledgment that they exist?

Holding the fork vertically with downward pressure in the left fist while cutting with the knife. Then putting down the knife, swapping the fork to the right hand for eating. Bonus points for biting the forks.

It’s the most distracting thing in all American media. I like to yell “yanks eating weird!” And point at the screen. Once you see it you can’t unsee it.