she began leaving voice messages

well, it was nice to know you all, i'm going to go melt over here

this is even funnier if you own a cat and know how they react to musical instruments

i remember a teacher from elementary school who would sing and play the guitar to us in class.

he made it seem very natural for a teacher to do that. he turned the blackboard into a stage.

björk björk

evilness Rorschach test

the girl i'm dating is 30 and has been looking for a career change. she works in software development, but she has only been trained on mainframes and wants out of that.

i was a full-stack web developer for 15 years until 2020.

the other day, she said, thoughtfully, that "what you had 3 years ago is everything i want right now..."

i think she's been thinking about why i abandoned it, especially considering the money it made.

some of the answer is that it lacked the human element. i'm a communicator, first and foremost.

the girl i'm dating is 30 and has been looking for a career change. she works in software development, but she has only been trained on mainframes and wants out of that.

i was a full-stack web developer for 15 years until 2020.

the other day, she said, thoughtfully, that "what you had 3 years ago is everything i want right now..."

i think she's been thinking about why i abandoned it, especially considering the money it made.

person

currently very anxious for replies to... well, just about everything. the girl i'm dating has been very quiet on chat today AND now i have two job applications to wait for too. suspense!

i have sent an application to a private school for two teaching positions pertaining to software development. i've been thinking about teaching and the fit was too good to not do it.

i couldn't see myself getting a formal teacher's education and teaching some ordinary subject in a public school.

i've been unemployed and thinking about what the hell to do now that i'm not a developer anymore since 2020 and have only applied for a handful of positions since that time, so this is a pretty big deal for me.

nostr:npub1rjwumr7j6tac08t0qttvc44walt549nc4eyyxjc0phn6yxzj7uzq0accc9 like with depression and anxiety, that term should probably be used carefully unless it's been seriously inhibiting you and you went and got a diagnosis because of it. i'm 40 and some of the lifelong life/career issues i've been facing are difficult to explain without pointing to my ADHD diagnosis, or at least some kind of developmental delay.

a Norwegian expert on youth's mental health says that many people use words like anxiety and depression when they really just mean they're nervous or sad.

there are also situations you can be in over extended periods of time that cause you to be nervous and sad a lot. the fix isn't always treatment but a change in the environment, which is usually difficult.

nostr:npub1qmsedc67fkq0k9tgt7s0r5uykkmfsmlfzz2tqp776ppy3r0s5jcqmhunlg being so used to reading text on a screen since an early age, it's not something i really have any relationship to.

nostr:npub1gcnwmugmg0898m7l787jhpsyju52rc5wpngplteg8n99g3r6zr8qt9penp at one point it was a somewhat attainable job for relatively many people. local studios were everywhere. my small town of 2000 people had two if you counted the local radio station. now it has none.

the male lesbian

the death of a profession

nostr:npub1034e40t6leq7e6vq34aclxwecwcnlaa2muc558vrdp8hdw00ewgs8gfpua booo

i've been told by several people that i look much younger than 40. i'm not complaining.

i don't think this was ever a convention in electronic text or typesetting. i'm 40 but i had access to computers at an early age and thought only people much older than me did this. typewriters were a relic to me even from a young age.

dad worked as a journalist and even back in the early 80s, everyone had a terminal on their desk for typing articles so they could be submitted directly for electronic typesetting.

nostr:npub1adrmq8c9dpa0jvsdcmcclyqpz87hthcffkka5n7nncff7jlmr4fq4kys3z i was going pssst at him to get him to look at the camera lol

how to make a cat come to you: try to avoid it or pretend that it doesn't exist.

emotional waitress

nostr:npub1adrmq8c9dpa0jvsdcmcclyqpz87hthcffkka5n7nncff7jlmr4fq4kys3z there were certain subjects that i liked a bit such as natural sciences, social sciences and computer class. my best shot given my job experience is probably to teach IT.

real-life problens are never as interesting as fictional ones

mathematicians took that and ran with it - they used up all the GREEK ones too!

✈️🏢

it's always mildly funny when doors have notes on them saying to keep them closed at all times.

somebody will be screaming at the top of their lungs all right

anyone know of any fedi accounts that post funny images?

making a list of your core values forces you to connect with your own emotions more, because you have to think back to moments that you enjoyed and figure out what elements they had in common.

making this list of values made it more clear to me what had made me so unhappy with my job overall life situation prior to 2020.

my life at the time was very poorly matched to anything that actually made me happy. i was a software developer, which does overlap with *some* of my core values, but far from enough of them, and i had little going on in my life outside of my job.

i'm somewhat closer to seeing which direction these values could take me in professionally, but the path there should also tick off some of the boxes, or the plan won't be realistic to execute.

so, what about my own self-image which was shattered in 2020?

for me, the rebuild began with writing down a list of very general things that make me happy or motivate me.

i was in a very lost place at the time, having little sense of who i was, but values are about what you feel, not who you think you are, so you can examine those even if you know nothing else.

here was the list i wrote:

- Understanding, confidence, valuation, belonging, respect, recognition, admiration

- Mastery, creativity, learning, discovery, innovation, problem solving

- Justice, truth, objectivity, predictability, regularity, clarity, safety

- Beauty, shape, colour, fantasy, mystique, nature, music, spirit, soul

- Peace, calm, quiet

- Freedom, mobility

- Romance

the list was written in June 2020, right around the time when i was having my breakdown. it still reads like a list of things i consider important even now, 3 years later.

people will usually not significantly alter their self-image unless there is a traumatic event that wipes it out, such as what happened with me in 2020 and i had to start with a blank slate.

so even if you - the friend or adviser or caring parent - can see the outline of who a person could be, they'd probably reject it if you actually told them.

people will very quickly form self-images based on what their surroundings are telling them, and once formed, it will only change slowly with time.

there are fast ways of reshaping a self-image but they're cruel and unethical.

one thing that's challenging when you're having deep conversations with people is that you can end up seeing potential in them that doesn't agree with how they self-identify.

suppose you're talking to an engineer and you realise that their personality type is a better fit for teaching.

and they're already in the middle of an engineering career, but you can't suddenly just tell people who they are...

what do you call a coach or therapist who is allowed to state his opinion if the client insists on it? usually you're not allowed to do that, but sometimes, people genuinely can't reach a conclusion, even if the answer is staring them right in the face.

looking at the core values that certified coaches follow:

1. genuinely interested in other people, what drives them, and what their beliefs are

2. finds joy in helping other people while remaining in the background, supporting and cheering on

3. convinced that most people can do more than they think and limitations are often just mental blocks

4. believes that people know what's best for them

5. never gives opinions or advice

to be honest, i know people who are very much looking for #5 and no one will ever give them any answers.

and while i generally follow #4 when i have personal conversations with people, i don't believe it's always true, because i've personally been wrong about what was best for me before, and if someone had helped me to become self-aware, maybe i would have realised.

it was starting to sound like something i was maybe interested in doing but obviously i can't do so as a certified coach, because my approach would be too active for that.

i would *want* a coach to be more active about it. i went to someone called a "job specialist" that the government hires and they were hopeless to talk to because they just sat around waiting for me to form my own opinion, and i never did.

if there was something called a tech psychologist, that would be fun to do