It’s not so bad being the worst player on the team. Just means you have a lot of room for improvement as long as you’re willing to learn. Honestly it’s one of my favorite situations to find myself in. “Oh I suck. How can I get better?”

I have a salaried work from home job with no defined working hours. As long as the work gets done within SLAs the hours me and my team work are irrelevant.

Thoughts and prayers to Vosen, AMD, and ZLUDA.

I’ve been thinking about this a bit more, and I realized that I talk to other people the way I talk to myself. This probably wouldn’t be a problem if I weren’t so critical of myself.

I think I need to not only put in the effort to reread the things I write when communicating with others, but also to just be kinder to myself in my internal monologue.

I spend too much time being frustrated inside my own head, and that makes it easy to use that same tone when I’m interacting with other people.

Thanks for sharing your advice. I think verbalizing my thoughts the way you suggested will be really helpful.

Honestly, yeah sometimes. It’s my emotional reflex to frustration that was programmed into me by my parents and I haven’t done enough cognitive behavioral therapy to undo it.

Absolutely true, but it’s also more difficult to ask a good question when you don’t know anything about what you’re asking.

People who know a lot about a topic can ask very good questions about that topic.

The problem I see with most questions people post online is that they make too many assumptions that their audience will will magically understand the context of their question.

Good questions require relevant context.

Determining relevancy requires expertise.

Expertise comes from experience.

No matter how many questions you ask and answers you get you’ll never “understand” something until you do it.

Instead of asking questions like “How do I do X?” people should be asking “I’m trying to accomplish X, I’ve tried Y, but I’m encountering Z. How could I resolve this?”

I guess my rule is that you should never ask someone a question without first trying to answer it yourself.

It’s my belief that everyone is a masochist to a certain degree, and those who don’t realize it are in denial.

I drive a vehicle that burns gasoline and contributes to pollution. I purchase products that come in plastic packaging. I participate in an economy that can only exist by taking advantage of people in other countries where labor is “cheaper.” These are all things that I enjoy doing even though I know they’re inflicting suffering on people.

If I don’t do these things I pretty much won’t be able to function in society. And I certainly wouldn’t be able to contribute anything that I think is valuable.

One option would be to end myself, but that would inflict suffering on all my friends and family.

Another option would be to believe that the good I’m doing will outweigh the suffering I inflict on other people.

I’m interested in your thoughts on this. Do you think it’s possible to live a life where you don’t inflict suffering on anyone else?

You’re right, but you’re ignoring a crucial part of the equation which is the person who is suffering enjoys it or else they wouldn’t be doing it.

Haha, agreed. I used to love “going fishing” with my grandparents until I actually caught a fish, then I just felt terrible. I used to have nightmares where there would be fish hooks in my food.

Now “going fishing” to me just means hanging out by the water and being peacefully bored while other people enjoy the things they enjoy.

True, but not always true. Sometimes it’s the boss at work, or the bills on the desk, or the son you used to take fishing before he moved away for college.

Yeah for sure. You can’t logically prove that world view one way or the other, but it’s something worth thinking about and meditating on imo.

I broadly interpret “form relationships with people that make your life better and avoid shitty people” as “Do what makes you happy with the assumption that everyone is doing the same thing, and that the choice to pursue happiness is correct.”

I definitely get the sentiment of “avoiding shitty people”, but I do think that there is a time and place for it. I have some family members with some really hurtful world views and I still choose to engage with them when I know it will bring happiness for both of us.

But yeah, I don’t think my philosophy is logically perfect by any means. It is admittedly irrational, but it’s the best thing I’ve found for being able to live my life the way I feel like I should be living.

Unless you think that everyone is the same person and humanity is just a distributed consciousness. In which case anyone you end up with at any time is the person you’re supposed to be with. At which point the key to moving forward is trusting and forgiving “yourself”.

Exactly! I think one of the fun things about growing up is realizing that your personal experience isn’t completely unique, and that other people have shared similar experiences. I also don’t think it’s weird to have the idea that many of the things we enjoy and find funny (like puns and silly sounds) would cross language and cultural boundaries.