Dry red blotches on back of my scalp

When we entered the recent downtrend (only 5%), I sold off my LETFs in my rollover IRA since I can't average down. When we resumed the uptrend, I bought back in for the majority of the funds. But in between, now that we have a lot more leveraged tickers (though only 2x), I bought a bunch of them like AAPU, AMZU, TSLL, NVDL, and GGLL. Of these, AAPU and TSLL are the downtrodden stocks and fit my plan of going into something that had a deeper correction/pullback and had more room to run upward.
These have done very well (especially GGLL which went up 30% since I entered; TSLL is still in the red but still has an uptrend). Yet today they collectively went up about 4% whereas today TECL went up almost 7% and TQQQ almost 5%. So I'm thinking of selling off these individual names and then buying TECL/TQQQ instead: $IXT just went into the uptrend today whereas the other individual tickers have all been in an uptrend since I bought them.
Any thoughts on this plan? Maybe I should just sell the GGLL, NVDL, AMZU and keep AAPU and TSLL since the latter two have more room to run (or not, if TSLA goes back into a downtrend, I would just sell TSLL).
Or I could just leave it, not being greedy about the 3% difference but there are more LETFs to monitor here. I also believe, having done this for a brief while only, that the 2x leverage in these individual tickers aren't enough to make up for the 3x leverage you get from TECL/TQQQ (I'm talking about the specific tickers here, not any other combination or 2x vs. 3x in general).
As an aside, this downtrend/uptrend on a daily basis I've been doing has been working quite well. I had a position in UGL I sold off, didn't make much, but did make some green.
Overall, I still lost out a bit going out and coming back in TQQQ but this time it was only 1% (last summer it was 5%). Yet if our 5% correction had been much deeper, my moves would've been wiser. I have two accounts where I am able to do the parallel experiment (EDCA vs. swing trading). But in my taxable I'm going to do the same if I see the weekly downtrend take shape, tax hit or not*. Once you see a weekly downtrend, it's unlikely it's just a short correction. This prevents unnecessary lot of wash sales and short term tax hits but still largely preserve capital. For instance, based on weekly I wouldn't have gotten out at all in 2023 even though we had like a 10% correction.
*I just realised this year that if you pay 110% of your previous year's taxes, there's no estimated tax penalty and you can just wait till end of the year to pay your actual tax on gains.

4 months ago I finished my first round of accutane and it was absolutely amazing. My acne consisted of stubborn closed comedones spread all over my cheeks and forehead that would become inflamed and turn into angry pimples. I struggled with them since I was 12 and had tried everything, including probiotics, antibiotics and topical treatments. Accutane got rid of them within a month and I didn’t even have a purging fase, they simply disappeared. After finishing the treatment, I started the following routine:
AM
Avene cleanance cleansing gel
Cetaphil daily hydrating lotion for face
LRP Anthelios mineral sunscreen spf 50
PM
Avene cleanance cleansing gel
Cetaphil daily hydrating lotion for face
Tretinoin cream 0.5% (prescribed by my derm)
And when my skin felt dry I’d use Aquaphor
Everything was going great until I hit the 4 months mark after finishing accutane. The closed comedones came back and I also started breaking out. I already scheduled an appointment with my dermatologist to address this but I’m absolutely devastated. I’m worrying I’ll have to go on a second round of accutane and was wondering if anyone also had their cc’s come back after accutane? If yes how did you get rid of them?

Hi everyone! Planning first trip to Paris with my boyfriend for 4 days. I have a loose itinerary planned out. I have a day set aside to explore Monmarte, and a day set aside to explore Marais. Is that too much time? Should I add anything else in there? All recommendations welcome!
Day 1: -Walk to Monmarte from hotel (in Marais) -Find breakfast at cafe on the way -Explore Monmarte (feel free to add suggestions of things to do/see/shop in Monmarte aside from Sacre Cour) -Lunch in Monmarte -Walk back -6:45 Res at Ober Mama -End night with drinks at Little Red Door and bars around area
Day 2: -Breakfast at Carette by Marais -Walk around area -1:00 PM lunch at Mokonuts -More exploring Marais, thrifting (any suggestions of things to do welcome) -Dinner at L’Avant Comptoir du Marche -End night at La Caveau
Day 3: -Eiffel Tower -Picnic on Siene -Musee d’Orsav -Maybe Catocombs? -Dinner at La Rennome -Siene night cruise
Day 4: -Versailles (let me know if it’s worth it or if i should do something else in my time here that i’m missing from my other days”
Appreciate everyone’s help!

I've been together with my ex for 3 years. With those 3 years maraming red flags. Like I can feel it in my gut na may mali pero I keep on going because of the manipulation tactics he used na recently ko lang na process . haha sorry nakakatanga kasi talaga kapag sa maling tao.
First : Love Bombing tapos sasabihin nia na baliw mga ex niya etc like to make himself look good.
Second: Gifts na walang ka affection . Pero mahal. but i can feel it na hindi romantic gesture . ako pa naman mas impress ako if galing sa puso. pero he will shower u with expensive gifts kung un lang.
Third: Bread Crumbing .. eto na. ito na ung phase na nakakabaliw . hahahha ung akala mo praning ka pero unti unti na niyang tinatanggal sayo ung mga dati niyang ginagawa. Less time together. tapos mafefeel mo na di ka worth it. as in . umiiyak ako tas siya wala siya reaction as in. everytime . so weird . trauma bond ba to
Fourth: Discard grabe ang dami niyang drama sa phase na to. as in. tapos may bago nalang pala. pero infairness . ang bilis and di ko alam ano sinasabi niya sa mga babae. mukha kasi siyang good boy.
Pero napansin ko lang sa kanya... masyado siyang conscious sa sasabihin ng iba. kahit ung mga sabi sabi ng ibang tao as in tinetake niya into account. parang gusto niya talaga ng perfect image ganon.
hindi niya lang ako magawang ee bring down kasi we are both influential and magrereflect din un sa kanya.
but ung exes niya mejo natamaan talaga ung mental health nila to the point na 2 years na kami parang anjan pa din.
di ko naman maisip bakit . eh siya nauna nagsabi sakin na masama ung tao na un. 😅
Di ako masyado nainis eh . kasi looking back ginawa din niya to sa ex niya with me. so ayun . 😔 bat kasi di pako naniwala
up until now di pa rin ako makapagshare ng maayos kasi lagi niyang tinitwist narrative. kaya dito nalang ako as anon. 😞

A few weeks ago, someone posted a link to one of Don’s rants and I went through and commented on each of the points. I can't find that post, but I had copied it over here: https://www.reddit.com/perpetualeducation/comments/1c7k9re/donthedeveloper_on_a_rant_about_how_aspiring/
We had a chat about it. Here’s the video/podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHmqZkC3LqU&lc
Don titled it: There's a MASSIVE Skill Gap Among New Developers
I'll attempt to write a bit about that - (even though we went over many other topics - and I'm having a hard time grouping them)
It’s easy to simplify this into “the market” or “the boot camp” or “the tech stack” or "what's fair" or "the resume" - but I think people are missing the various multidimensional aspects at play. Is it:
Is it all of those things - and more? (Yes). And it's "the student" too." We're all different (cue reading rainbow moment). But it's true. Some of us are slower. Some of us are faster but miss the details. Some of us have a background that alignes neatly with tech. Some of us already know what job we want and why - and other people just want to make a good bet on a stable career. No matter what zone you're in, we still have to face the music - and deal with (trigger alert) - the truth.
The market is real. Companies aren't aggressively hireing random barely capable developers right now (like they have in the past). They're scared and holding on to their money. They also kinda realized they were spending more money on middle management and probably developers too - and are going to need some time to figure out how to make profitable businesses (or how to keep getting more VC funding to burn through).
But if there's a huge gap between your skills/experience and what it takes to do the job you're applying for, none of the other factors matter.
Many people choose a coding boot camp based on superficial factors like the price, the timeline, the website design, and the sales pitch. They often don't consider other important aspects because they simply don't know better. This isn’t unlike any other product or service or school.
Some people pick out a boot camp and learn a bunch of awesome stuff and they go out there and start a new career and for some reason, they don’t come back to Reddit to tell us about it. There are some legit colleges and boot camps and other alternative learning paths out there - that are really great. It's just a fact.
If you read the bootcamp marketing, paid your tuition, went through the steps they lined out, and came out the other end unable to get that job they promised you, well - that’s awkward. Maybe for you, it’s that simple. If you feel like you got a raw deal, I’m sorry. There are some businesses that should be ashamed of themselves - but they won't be. All you can do is warn other people. That’s over now. We can only work with the present.
For people who really want to work in this industry - they'll keep moving forward: at the end of the day, this is the playing field. So, if you want to get off the bench, we’re going to have to design a path to that – and you might need to rethink some of your assumptions.
It could certainly be said that new developers are now expected to know about–and have experience with–a lot more things.
Are the expectations that someone brand new to development is going to be able to get a job unreasonable? Well, does it matter what someone’s opinion about that is? You either want the job - or you don’t. And you need to know how to do the job, or no one will hire you. Do you need to know everything on this huge list to get an entry level position https://roadmap.sh/javascript ? (no) (in fact - close that - and don’t ever look at it again)
When I started (at the age of ~30) (in ~2011), you needed to know HTML, CSS, (Probably some PhotoShop to get your assets), maybe a little PHP (and likely HTTP and more about URLs and request types and forms), FTP and DNS to get your site hosted, and maybe some JavaScript. You might have used jQuery to help out or Knockout.js. And you had to know how to hook up a database and MySQL and probably a CMS or some sort. And maybe your code was a mess or maybe it adhered to some common patterns. But that was life. Not everyone needed to know all those things. Some people would focus more on getting the mockup into the HTML and CSS. Other people might focus on the server and the PHP or Perl or Java. There were all sorts of jobs and some of them were done by people with a formal education in Computer Science studies and other people just figured it out as needed. There was a lot of work to be done. Lots of custom stuff to build and maintain. And it was just normal to learn more incrementally as the years went by. You could totally get a job knowing just HTML and CSS (and you still can BTW). There was still an infinite amount of things you could know. But it seemed to ramp up naturally because we were closer to the grain of The Web.
So, what do people learn now? (Generally) They rush through some HTML and CSS really quick (which actually teaches them more bad habits than good). They rarely learn about DNS or FTP because a tutorial showed them how to type a few random things into a terminal to have their site on a free service and they don’t buy a domain name because there’s a free subdomain. Apparently paying for anything is for suckers and companies that don't give you things for free are evil capitalistic pigs who should be shut down. New devs don’t know much about servers because their text editor is actually running an advanced web application behind the scenes that starts a virtual server and runs all sorts of other things they don’t understand outside of that context - like connecting to version control, opening a terminal pane, SSH, code completion and typeahead, autoimport completion, AI suggestions and other additional layers like typescript and many other linters to tell them where all their errors are. If they couldn't use VSCode - they might be dead in the water. It can feel like you’re just a bag of meat being yelled at by VSCode as you try and solve the errors and remove all the red lines. And we do all of these - to put the training wheels in place.
And I’m not saying that a LAMP stack doesn’t have it’s own level of black-box and mysteries with how Apache handles your HTTP requests and MySQL starts up it’s own server - but we have to be comfortable with some level of abstraction or we’d be writing all ones and zeros at the machine code level.
So, the new developer is manning this huge stack of tools unknowingly, but they do get a lot of benefits. We can spin up a pretty complex web application with a front-end to make requests, a server to talk to a database and other third-party systems and respond back to the client/front-end, and an auth layer to make sure people are properly signing in and only seeing what they need to see. There are abstractions for HTML and CSS and JS that put that template logic and controller logic into a neat little component file (which is great) and that component file is properly registered based on file name conventions and everything gets set up in this larger system of conventions that all happen behind the scenes in the framework architecture. So, as a new developer - you can really ride the framework and know hardly anything about how it works - as long as you know the language to speak to this layer of the abstraction (the API).
These aren't just arbitrary add-ons that people made to complicate things. They solve real-world problems. The new dev won't really understand what they are - but I'm not saying we should just get rid of them. They allow us to move faster and to build interfaces and business logic without having to write tons of behind the scenes repeated structural code by hand. And with those training wheels, we have more time on our hands. We can also add in the chance to further define our programs with safety measures and plan automated testing routines, and built-in documentation of our code base. We can keep adding layers and layers or pull in more and more third-party tools. It’s pretty amazing. But what people end up learning is how to maintain that configuration - and there’s only so much time - and so, they end up learning 10% of all the things you used to need/want to know. And some jobs have a path for that. But there's likely going to be a long-term cost for you.
Arguably - it doesn’t matter how much “code” you know - and making things is what matters. And that’s true. That’s what matters to the business that pays you. And to the school that wants you to feel good about your progress. But I think you should protect your learning journey. It’s for you. It’s going to be what you carry on throughout the years and it’s a seed.
Getting proficient with a popular tech stack - when the market is booming proved to be a great decision for boot camps and their students. And I'd bet that the majority of people mean well.
But when it's not booming, students are in it for the wrong reasons, schools have tightened up and moved online, the market has plenty of devs who already have 5+ years working with that framework/stack -- then all of the sudden - the surface-level fake-it-till-you-make-it path (as much as I respect that) doesn't work as well.
When it's obvious that you can't build an HTML page with semantic markup, that's accessible, and has a universally pleasurable experience, and you can't write CSS without a UI framework or do anything custom, it's obvious. You should be aware of that gap. When you've never owned a domain name or setup a deployment pipeline, you should be aware of that gap. When your personal website looks like your boot camp gave it to you, you should be aware of how that looks. When you can't take a server-side scripting language like Python or Go or PHP and build out a little personal website framework - you should be aware of that gap. When you can't plan a project and don't have experience with diagrams and explaining things, you need to be aware of that gap. When you've never written about your process or created any case-studies to explain your projects, you should be aware of that gap. When you're only proof of work is the class assignments, you should be aware of that gap. When your github history goes dead after the last day of class, you should be aware that we'll see that. When you claim to no nothing about visual design and that's for someone else on the team - you should be aware of that gap. If you refuse to turn on your camera and just want to be left alone, you should be aware of that huge gap. If you can't build a little prototype app without React, they you probably don't JavaScript, and you should be aware of that gap. And there will ALWAYS be a gap. There's always more to learn. So - it's an important skill to know what to learn and why - and when. You can't learn everything. And if you're having a hard time finding work right now, then get clear on your goal. Stop applying for general "Software engineer" jobs you aren't ready for. Narrow your scope. Figure out a job that you think you can do confidently. Get clear on how big your gap is and what you need to learn to get centered and confident with your toolset. Ideally, it's fun. Try and ignore all the doom and gloom and focus on your own personal goal.
It's not just the market. Too many people are applying for jobs they aren't anywhere near qualified to do. And it probably doesn't feel good. But luckily - you can learn the things and get back on track.

I might have made a (tiny) shift to here before my account was even created.
Ok, first of all, apologies for yet another long-ass novel from me, and for not posting this with a clear takeaway in mind. I don't find small unintentional shift posts like "my carpet changed color!!" the most exhilarating either, but it's my turn! Hopefully I manage to put enough substance into it with my words, I just had to share this asap.
So come today, I'm with family and a specific "number" comes up in conversation. I don't want to mention what this is due to privacy something-something - but, this number is something that's pretty significant for me. Someone in my family gets this number wrong. I very gracefully correct them... but they double-down on it. This is where red flags start going off in my head, so I just deflect the conversation and say I might be going crazy (and consider that possibility myself lol). Now, I have to reiterate, this number is pretty significant, and has been reinforced throughout my whole life, it relates to something, it's not just an abstract number in a password or something. Like imagine the months of the year changing order. All of a sudden, I find out that I'm all alone in this battle. Everyone else is singing the same note and I'm tonedeaf. That number has actually changed in reality, for no one else but me.
Ok, as I established, forgetting or brain fog is out of the question. The other possibility except for shifting, is actually going nuts, and I feel surprisingly sane for a crazy person. Although I guess that's what every crazy person thinks, so dear voices in my head, please confirm I'm not crazy in the comments haha. Anyways, so all of this got me thinking, when would the shift had happened? When was the last time this number got "tested" in front of my eyes like this and came out correct? And did something out of the ordinary happen in that time frame, besides me falling asleep in the middle of a method every night lol.
And this leads me into sidestory time. I've mentioned this story before, but this might have reinforced it. You see, before I made this account I was a pure lurker. I wasn't necessarily writing off shifting, more like I was still in a consideration phase - is this something I want in my life, what would I do with it, and is it worth becoming active in the community, having yet another distaction to adhd over, etc. (yes). That was my status quo, until a pretty complicated incident happened in my close circle. Again, sorry for leaving it up to the imagination, but when something involves someone else I'm close to, I'm a private person. What it boiled down to in the end was that I was forced to choose between actions that didn't feel like me, and that idea was stressing me out to infinity.
That very night is when all considerations went out the window, I had come into a new potential avenue to solve my unsolvable issues - shifting - and I was taking out all the brakes off the rollercoaster. I just fell asleep in utter desperation, repeating something along the lines of "I really don't need this to happen rn, I'll just shift to change it and never even know". Why the "never even know"? I still regret that part, but I guess it was because I was still in the consideration period back then. I was worried that shifting might potentially make life more meaningless somehow, like make life and free will feel more fake. So unfortunately, as much as I go on to retroactively prove to myself it worked, I'll never really know that it did. I set myself up. But yeah, if it wasn't clear, the next day I found out that voila - I had actually really misunderstood the incident and everything turns out trivial. Wow, another case where everyone else is in agreement on reality and I'm the only one out of order lol. What led me to this story, is that the last time I can remember comparing that previously mentioned number in my head, with itself in the external world, happened before that shifting incident. So I have a hunch I may not have unintentionally shifted, but that number changing is just a side product of that night. Why it changed or what it means? Still can't answer, that mystery isn't getting solved.
TL:DR; A huge thing changed for me. And it's possibly not even an unintentional shift, but connected to a desperate attempt to shift before I was even interested in shifting or had this account. In that attempt I cucked present-self not to know I shifted, so I might just have brain worms.
But anyways, what are the takeaways from this, what can be done with this information? The question isn't rhetorical, I'm really curious to hear your thoughts. As with everything, there must be a way to utilize the awareness of small or unintentional shifts.
What I could come up with was: First, the most obvious one - to reinforce the ideas behind LOA. After a successful shift, logically LOA becomes more natural to the shifter. Although unintentional/unbeknownst to me in this case, it still gives some rise to the idea. And this doesn't have to apply only to me, hopefully by reading this post, another tiny crack opens up in your own doubts too.
The other thing I'm considering, is whether I should try changing this number back. It's already bugging me anyways and it hasn't even been a day. My memories of my entire aware life were of a different number. So maybe it's possible that shifting will come to me easier if I just tried to change this one thing back before I'm used to it, rather than going for an entirely different reality first? I honestly want to hear someone more experienced's opinion on this, has it been more effortless for anyone to make smaller changes? Leave aside the fact that it's technically manifestation at that point, or that technically in my case I might have already shifted intentionally before.
And that's all I have in mind for now. Again, sorry for long, I tried to jerk my funny bone a little bit so hopefully that makes up for it 🍀

Hello all, looking for advice. My cat is almost 5 years old I adopted her almost 3 years ago. She’s had a lot of stomach related issues mostly vomiting. I’ve tried addressing issue with vet following recommendations from them that included changes in diet, slow feeders, lick mats, etc.
After trial and errors her frequency of vomiting have stayed the same. About a year seven months ago I took her to the vet because she had vomited a couple of times same day and she had low energy. Vet did an examination and had me taker her to a Emergency Room. She got treated they did stomach ct and she was administered fluid and anti nausea medication. Hospital recommended to have an abdominal ultrasound which I got a couple of days later at her regular vet office. I was told everything looked good that it was probably some sort or IBD or food sensitivity and she was switched to a hills prescribed diet per their recoemndarion.
I tried that diet for almost a year with no improvement in her vomiting so I switched her back to tiki cat with a mixture of some dry but mostly wet food.
I took my cat for her annual appointment in March. I was told she had elevated liver enzymes, her number was around 200 ATL. The vet said it might be related to her stomach issues but unable to say for certain. She wanted as a follow up to see if my cat would “stop vomiting” for a few weeks to repeat blood panel. I responded that was not a feseasible option because we never been able to control her vomiting for the past 2 year. I also wanted her to rule out any other causes for increased liver enzyme. We settled on my cat getting a GI blood panel and repeat regular blood work. Which took 3 attempts. First appointment could not happen because she was not fasted which they neglected to tell me. Second attempt the technician could not get her blood due to “small veins”. My poor cat got pinched on 3 different legs and they rescheduled for her to be seen by a more seasoned technician another day. So third appointment she finally got her blood drawn and I was told the vet would call in 4 days with the results.
Well it’s been 6 weeks and I’m still waiting for the results. I’ve sent emails, Ive called and left messages and I get the same bs response we will tell the doctor to give you a call back.
I cannot comprehend how can the vet not call back with the results after six weeks. I plan to go in person on Saturday and probably request her records and find another vet. I’m really angry at this point. Is there anything I can do about the vet?

as of last year, i had just started getting bad breakouts on my face. went to the dermatologist and started using tretinoin and spironolactone. great- my skin was cleared within a few months and i was the most confident i had been in a while. other than a few manageable pimples every once in a while, my skin looked amazing. so beginning of january i went back to the dermatologist and she suggested winlevi. first month was great, skin still looked good. second month was fine. at the end of march, i noticed my face burning after moisturizing as well as irritation, redness, and extreme dryness around my mouth and chin area. I thought maybe it was purging but my skin was genuinely having a bad reaction to this. and it's so weird because the rest of my face is clear, it's JUST my chin area that is affected. i switched from the CeraVe lotion to the CeraVe moisturizer (which i rily regret) and my face really started burning. after that i started using the La Roche Posay moisturizer and im still currently using it. as of last month i stopped using Winlevi and my chin cleared up quite a bit. i noticed last week that it's starting to have the same exact issues i was dealing with before. i really don't know what to do, if anyone has any advice i would reallily appreciate it.

This is the first time I have written something of this length, and is more of an exercise in self-therapy than anything else. Disclaimer: This story contains conversations about child abuse. Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy it.
Nathan’s number appeared on my phone screen. I debated whether or not to answer it. We hadn’t been on speaking terms for a while, and while we did keep in touch sporadically, it was usually because of important family issues. I didn’t know of anything happening with mom or dad, nor with Talia or Rio, so I let it go to voicemail. I could always call him back later. I placed the phone back in my pocket, and returned to cleaning my camera. The phone buzzed again. A text message came through. I read the preview line from the home screen. “The city declared eminent domain on the house” I unlocked my phone, read the full text message, and dialed my brother.
I wasn't able to get any closer to the house than a few blocks. Most of the area was blocked off with chain link fencing and construction equipment in preparation for the demolition that was supposed to take place within the coming days. The barriers didn’t prevent people from walking in to the neighborhood, but it hindered scrappers from coming in and stripping the houses of copper wiring and plumbing.
I grabbed my camera bag out of the trunk of my car along with my tripod. I shouldered it and hooked the tripod to my bag. I pulled my water bottle out of the center console and shut the door. I stood next to my car surveying the neighborhood. 12 city blocks of old single family homes comprised the neighborhood where I grew up. Some of the houses had been empty for months, others for years. There was an eerie silence that permeated the still air. I could not hear the familiar sounds of people, pets, or cars. I locked the car and put my keys in my pocket. I patted my jacket down to ensure I had what I needed. After a quick check, I started my walk.
The sidewalk of the old neighborhood streets still bore the familiar cracks and grind marks from years of buckling and remedy. Leaves dropped by the trees still lay scattered all along the pathways and sidewalk. Korina’s house was the first house I encountered as I made my way through a gap in the fence. The yard was overgrown with tall grass and thistle. I could see the faded blue paint of the old house contrasting the green and browns of the lawn. The chain link fence that marked off the corner property was nearly invisible through the thick brush. As I continued walking west towards 110th, I started to feel something was off. The streets seemed wider than I remembered. It took me longer than I’d like to admit, but eventually I realized what was different. There were no cars.
The streets here typically had cars lined bumper to bumper in any spot available, and were visible from block to block. The absence of all these vehicles made me realize just how deserted the neighborhood really was. House after house, yard after yard, the telltale signs of desertion reinforced what I could see from the moment I passed the construction fence: This was no longer my neighborhood. There were no signs of life, and no one I could expect to find still here. Abandonment was the new normal here. I continued on, glancing at houses and recalling memories of summer bike rides, and daily walks with dogs I used to have. I remembered walks home from school, and chasing after ice cream trucks when they passed our houses. I smiled a bit as I remembered more and more of my years spent here. I don’t quite know just why I was smiling. There were plenty of bad memories here too. Fights, yelling, being beat up, being robbed. I could remember failed friendships, lost loves, and bitter feelings of failures too.
Still, I felt a certain amount of nostalgia despite the weight of these negative feelings. I almost wanted to experience everything again, although I wasn't sure why I was feeling this way. Concrete, asphalt, billboards and liquor stores were the normal vistas of everyday life. Occasionally, after a good rainstorm, the grey haze of smog would lift, and the mountains would be visible to the north. At least, they would be visible until mid-morning when the exhaust from a million cars covered them behind a veil of pollution.
It wasn’t until the first time I travelled out of the city that I realized there was more to see. Traveling up the coast north along the Pacific Coast Highway introduced me to scenes of deep blue ocean water spanning the width of my vision. Driving up Highway 3 introduced me to the permeating scent of Pine and Fir trees. The two-lane stretch of highway from Portland to Tillamook introduced me to lush green forests that I had only ever read about. When I came home to the same old dirty, dusty concrete and boiling summer asphalt, I had made up my mind. I would do everything it took to leave this place. I would not spend another day longer than was necessary living in cramped quarters and fighting for parking space.
I arrived to the house, and paused at the gate. The house sat in contrast of what the rest of the neighborhood looked like. Instead of overgrown grass and tall weeds all over the place, the landscaping showed signs of relatively recent work. The guava tree in the front lawn still had some fruit ready to be picked, and the avocado tree on the other side of the pathway was still weighed down by its own fruit. Flowers still bloomed in the raised bed in front of the house. My brother had clearly tried to keep up on things until the last possible moment. The house, too, looked better than what I expected after walking up 4 blocks and seeing nothing but dilapidated houses and unkempt yards. I opened the gate and walked up to the small porch. The metal gate that enclosed it was gone having been removed by my brother when he took over the property. It looked nice to see it open instead of the cage it once felt like.
I turned the knob on the door, but it didn't give. Ever a creature of habit, my brother had locked the door when he left. Of course, he did. I sighed and prepared to find another way in when I remembered my parents hiding a spare key. I wasn’t sure if it would still be there, but after running my hands along the back side of the gutter downspout, I was rewarded for my efforts. I unlocked the front door and stepped into the front living room, the sounds of my footsteps and the closing door echoing in the empty space. The room felt both larger and smaller than I remembered it. I suppose it was lack of furniture that made it feel larger, but it still felt smaller than I remember. The result of growing taller throughout the years I suppose. I slowly walked along the slate tile floor towards the central hallway that connected the front of the house to the back bedrooms. I wasn't entirely sure that just because the front door was locked, that there wasn't some squatter looking for a little temporary shelter within the back rooms. I carefully and silently crept step by step towards what used to be the bedroom shared by my sister and me. I stuck my head in and gave the room a cursory glance. It was empty, thankfully. I moved back into the hallway and peered into the bedroom across the hall. This is where both of my brothers had shared a room. It too, was empty save for a few boxes holding hardware and doorknobs from the closet doors of the bedroom. I walked back towards the back of the house where my parent's bedroom was. The walls in the hallway bore the dusty signs where picture once hung. The bedroom door was open. I stepped inside, and looked around. The old avocado paint that my mom had picked out years ago still adorned the walls. Walking further towards the addition that was the small room my grandma and grandpa lived in showed that there was no one here. I breathed a sigh of relief as I set my bag down and set up my tripod. I reached into my bag a pulled out an envelope of old photos. These were old snapshots that we had all taken at some point in time in the house. There were pictures of all of us sitting at the dining room table playing a game of Monopoly. There was a picture of my brother and sister sitting on a couch in the front living room. There was a picture of me hanging on the bars of the front porch. I looked through them all and held them in place in front of me as if I were holding a window to the past.
Each picture made the lump in my throat grow as I started to struggle to control my emotions. There was history here, and soon it would all be gone. This is the place where my parents had raised four kids. They had taken care of my grandparents in their twilight years here. My Aunt and my grandmother had both died in this house. Birthdays, graduation parties, and anniversaries had been celebrated here. The echoes of life had reverberated within the walls of this place. Now, the house sat silent. It would never again know happy screams of kids having a water-balloon war out in the front yard, nor would it hear the cries of anguish as the matriarch of the family passed away surrounded by her family. What once was a home full of life was now just an empty house made of drywall and paint. I sat there for a moment contemplating just how much family history was actually made here. As I thought hard about my siblings and my parents, I felt pained at the thought of our strained relationships. We had all scattered once we had the opportunity to be free of each other. My oldest brother had married and moved away as soon as possible. My sister now lived in northern California. My parents too had moved away. I was now living in Utah. Only my older brother had remained behind. The lump grew larger in my throat as tears welled up in my eyes. I held back sobs of anger and pain. Why was I hurting? Hadn’t I dealt with these issues already? I walked back to my old bedroom and sat down under the window. I pulled my head down into my knees and cried. I could hear yelling and screaming in my head. Shouting matches between siblings and parents, brothers and sister, rattled inside my brain, making the pain grow. I sat there and cried. I hadn’t cried like this in a long time. Eventually I ran out of tears and tired gasps of sorrow and regret washed over me as a blanket of drowsiness enveloped me. I leaned my head back and fell asleep.
I woke up to the sound of footsteps. It took me a moment to realize what I was hearing and hurriedly stood up. Had someone followed me? I knew the police were patrolling the area sporadically. Had they seen me enter the house? I knew there would be a possibility of getting a trespassing citation, but I figured I could either talk my way out of it seeing as to how I was a former resident, or I could probably fight the citation in court if the judge knew why I was there in the first place. Ultimately, passing through the gate had been a calculated risk that I was willing to take for the sake of my art. I got up from my corner of the room and moved towards the door. If there was someone in the house, I needed to know. I didn’t want my gear to stolen, and if there was a cop in the house, I wanted to ensure I didn’t get shot.
I was greeted by the sight of a startled chubby boy standing on the other side of the door. His round cherubic face was crowned by a head of short curly hair. His hazel green eyes stared widely back at me. He clearly didn’t expect someone to be here in the house. His body recoiled in fear as he cowered back towards the hallway. “Wait, what are you doing here?” I asked as non-threateningly as I could. The boy muttered something that I couldn’t quite make out. “What did you say? I couldn’t hear you” I replied. “Are you here to rob us?” he timidly responded. “Rob you? What are you talking about?” I asked as confusion set in. “What are you doing here?” It was his turn to be confused. “Uh…I….live here?” he replied. “What do you mean you live here? No one lives-“I stopped midsentence. I hadn’t noticed in my initial shock but the room wasn’t the same. A familiar blue couch caught the corner of my eye. In front of that was an old console TV with a partially broken antenna hanging on the wall behind it. I walked further in to the living room to notice wood paneling on the walls. A large mirror hung on the wall to my left. Familiar yellow lamps sat on round drop-leaf tables on either side of the couch. A large hutch sat in one corner, a collection of letters and bills, mail advertisements, and a phone book covered scattered over it. “What just happened?” I asked out loud to no one in particular. I was thoroughly mystified by what my eyes were seeing. I had walked into the house from the front door and had stepped into an empty white room with slate floor tiles, but somehow now found myself in a furnished room with brown carpet that was all so familiar to me, yet was nothing but a distant faded memory. I turned to look at the boy still startled by the intrusion of a strange man looking wildly around the room in total shock.
“You can take what you want, just please let me go. I don’t want problems.” He stated his voice still shrill with anxiety. I blinked a few times as I tried to process just what the heck was going on. I gathered my thoughts as best I could and tried to reassure him. “Kid, I’m not here to rob anyone. I was just-“I shook my head “Where the hell am I? Am I having a dream?” I asked myself. “I must be dreaming. I’m just tired and still sleeping. This is all a dream. Yeah, that’s it.” I needed to sit down. Being back in the old house must have overtaxed my senses, I told myself. I’d having a dream about an old memory. I walked over to the chair next to the couch and sat down. I sunk into it and rested my head back towards the wall.
The boy kept his distance, but sensed I wasn’t there to hurt him. He looked me over with anxious curiosity. He stood at the far end of the couch, examining me while he played out scenarios in his head in preparation for a quick exit. “Why are you in my house?” he asked me. “Dude, this is all just a dream I’m having. I’m not really here.” He reached over to the couch and picked up a pillow. He reared his arm and threw it at me. It landed in my lap. “I don’t know, man. You sure seem to be here.” He said to me. I opened my eyes, startled. I looked down at the pillow he tossed and examined it. I ran my hand over the fabric and felt its texture. I remember this pillow. This was the pillow I would roll under my head as I lay on the couch and watched TV as a kid. A sudden realization hit me as I looked around the room with fresh eyes. No longer was I blinded by the fog of confusion. I knew exactly where I was.
I was home.
I looked at the boy still standing at the edge of the couch. I looked him over and realized who he actually was. I stared in disbelief as I smiled and tried to put him at ease. “It’s ok Johnny. I’m not here to hurt you. No one is going to hurt you. Please, sit down” I told him. I motioned to his end of the couch. “Who are you, and why are you here?” he asked me.
“This will be hard to believe, but I’m you” I said with an incredulous tone, “I’m not sure how I ended up here, but I’m here.” He looked at me as I had grown a second head. “That doesn’t make any sense. How could you be me? Did we invent time travel? Oh! Are we secret government agents with the CIA?”
I chuckled. “Wait, wait, wait. Let’s start at the beginning. I’m you at 38 years old. You’re…what, 11… 12 years old? It makes sense. I fell asleep under the window in my- our old bedroom. I didn’t come here on purpose or in a machine. And no, I’m not a government agent.” His face contorted to display understanding, disappointment and finally suspicion. His eyes narrowed as he leaned in towards me. “How do I know you’re really me?” he asked. I thought about it for a moment. How could I prove to him that I was who I said I was? A few seconds of silence settled between us. I stroked my chin, thinking of a solution.
“I have a better idea. Ask me questions that only you know the answers to.” “Okay” he responded. He glanced around the room trying to come up with something. His eyes fixated on the Nintendo sitting under the TV cabinet. “What game do me and Nathan have a map of?” I looked over at the NES. I hadn’t thought about this for years, but I knew instantly what he was asking. “YOU don’t have anything. Nathan is the one that made the map for Section Z” His jaw dropped. He tried to trick me, but his plan failed. He knew well and good that Nathan never let him play. It was always ‘I’ll let you play when I die’ or, ‘you can play when I’m done’. The problem was that he never followed through. Usually by the time Nathan was done, the NES was overheated, and the game would no longer load until it cooled down. By that point, it was time for bed.
“How do you know that?” he asked in astonishment. “I know these things because I’m you. Just like I know that you wear t-shirts to the pool because you’re embarrassed by what others will think of your body. I know that you used to think that people that die off in movies were prisoners that were set to be executed from death row, so they used them for making movies. I know all about you because I’m you”
Johnny sat on the end of the couch in bewilderment, his mouth slightly agape. He had never told anyone any of this. He didn’t have any close friends to talk to about such things, and those friends he did have were more acquaintances than friends. There was only one way he could possibly know these things. He was talking to his future self.
I could see Johnny’s mind completely explode. There lay endless possibility and the answers to a million questions he could ask about his own future. He started to ask a question, only to stop, close his mouth, and try asking another. I knew if he kept this up he would have a stroke or something. “Dude, calm yourself. Let’s talk this out rationally, otherwise you’ll end up stroking out or something.” I told him. He took a deep breath and I could hear him muttering quietly. I knew he was trying to form a coherent sentence before he actually spoke it. I did it all the time. “Ok, first of all, are we rich?” he asked with tempered expectation. I chuckled and grinned back at him. “No, not at all. If I was rich, would I be dressed like this?” I replied as I motioned to my beat up brown Vans and worn out jeans and T-shirt. “We-, I – make enough to get by. I’m not poor, but I earn enough to pay the bills.” His face grew a smirk as he commented “Yeah, I figured. What do I do for work? I mean, what do you do for work?” I thought about it for a second. I wondered how much information I should divulge to a younger me. I still didn’t think this whole situation was really happening, but if it was, I probably should proceed with caution. “Well, it’s complicated. I do a little bit of everything. You know how you’re constantly taking things apart? Let’s just say that it’s good to put them back together in order to keep them working. Take good notes on paper if you need to, and make sure you have a clean work area so you can keep track of all the parts.” He gave me a sheepish look. He knew exactly what I was talking about. I had spent countless hours sneaking dad’s tools to my room so I could figure out how something was built and try to figure out how it worked. I had gotten myself into some pretty bad trouble with dad over a drill, his timing light, and other stuff I had taken from his room. His belt had become quite familiar with my butt cheeks.
I gave him a knowing smile. “What else do you want to know?” He thought about it for a second. “Do we have a girlfriend?” I laughed, probably a little more than I should have because his face contorted into a sour frown. “You don’t need to be a jerk about it” he scowled. I continued to chuckle. “Yeah we have a girlfriend. We have more than a girlfriend” I could tell he was irritated with my vague indirect answers. I knew what he was asking. I remember the crush I had on my neighbor across the street. We had been friends since kindergarten, and had been classmates for 1st, 2nd, and 4th grades. We got along really well, and I knew from around 12 or 13 that I wanted to be her boyfriend. Unfortunately, things never progressed beyond the ‘just friends’ stage of things. It wasn’t from lack of effort on my part. We had just grown up together most of our lives that she didn’t see me as anything more than a brother and friend. “Dude, look. You just started to go through changes and you are starting to notice girls, but that doesn’t mean that you need to love every girl that shows you a little kindness or subtle interest. You need to slow down and let things happen naturally. You can’t force a relationship with someone.” Johnny pondered these words for a moment. I sat back and put my feet up on the coffee table. I looked around the room some more while I waited for another question. There was so much I had forgotten, but being back here had unlocked more and more memories that continued to wash over me. I was trying to hold on to my cool as not all those churned up recollections were pleasant. I stood up and walked over to the front door to peer outside the small central window embedded into the center of it. I could see the old neighborhood as I remembered it all those years ago. The lot across the street that served as a parking area for those that worked at the wheel works at the end of the block was empty of cars. I furrowed my brow as I thought for a moment. An empty lot meant it was afterhours or the weekend.
The gears in my own head started turning. “Wait, where is everyone?” I asked Johnny. Johnny turned to look at me still processing my last response. “Uh..oh, Mom and dad are out of town. They took a trip east this time. I think Rio said they are in Arizona right now. Rio and Nathan went out to get some food and to rent some movies from Video Showcase. Knowing them they’ll eat out first. Talia is staying over at Tia Rosie’s place today with her friends.” I grunted at his response. My mind was wandering as he mentioned Talia and Tia Rosie.
A sudden sharp pain pieced my heart. The pain of a thousand memories now unsealed spilled out from the box I had locked them away in. Tears welled in the corners of my eyes as I turned back to look at Johnny. He felt it too. He stared at the floor with an intensity that made me think it would burst into flames at any moment. I walked back over to him and sat next to him. He didn’t move. I placed my hand on his shoulder, and he threw himself into me. I could feel the tears dripping onto me as he sobbed intensely. “Hey man, its ok. It’s going to be ok.” I said as my own tears started to flow uncontrollably. I pulled him close and draped my other arm around him.
I knew the pain he was feeling. It was such a heavy burden, and I knew there was no one he felt he could talk to. I remembered it all so vividly. We sat there for what seemed to be an eternity. When we finally stopped sobbing, and our noses ran dry, we tried to breathe our way through to calmness. I got up and knelt in front of him. “Johnny, listen to me and remember what it is that I’m about to say to you. You are stronger than you think. You are stronger than you believe. NO ONE should ever have to go through this. Just because it happened to Talia, doesn’t mean you have to put up with it any longer. I know you didn’t think it was wrong, but I’m telling you that what she is doing to you is wrong. Talking to mom and dad isn’t going to make them hate you. You are not doing this to her, she is doing it to you. I’m not making excuses for her, but she is also more damaged than anyone realizes, and she is also dealing with the same level of pain you are. Remember that we do unto others what has been done to us. That doesn’t mean we need to continue the cycle of abuse” The lump in my throat grew immense at my own statement. I swallowed it as best I could and continued “You are going to deal with this pain a little bit at a time, and you’ll slowly get over this. It’s like a broken bone. When it happens, you don’t realize how bad the pain is until the adrenaline wears off, but then the immense pain is there. Just remember that this will pass. Just like a broken bone, you will heal over time, and one day, you will realize that the pain is gone and the bone is no longer broken. You’ll remember the pain, but it won’t hurt anymore.”
Johnny sat there in stunned silence. I knew he didn’t have anyone to help him through this. He couldn’t talk to Rio or Nathan about what was going on. Mom and Dad were constantly working to keep the family fed and sheltered and while they provided materially for their kids, emotional help was less available. Perhaps it was due to their energies being divided into 4 kids, a mortgage and multiple jobs, or perhaps it was also the culture of not talking about problems. Either way, they needed to know what was happening. They wouldn’t be able to fix it otherwise. “They’re going to be mad at me” he finally said after a few moments of silence. “No they won’t be. They love us all. I know you’re not used to hearing it, but they do love you. Everything they do is because of their love for us. This isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything wrong. Telling them isn’t going to cause them to be angry.” I thought for a moment to find a good analogy. “You love Odie and Lady, right?” He nodded in agreement. “Ok, how would you feel if you knew someone you trusted was coming to the house and beating up our dogs when we weren’t around?” He thought about it for a second before his face changed to anger. “I’d want to kill them!” “Yes, but would you also feel sad that you weren’t there to try to protect them?” I reasoned. His face changed again. He understood what I was saying. Mom and Dad would be angry, but not necessarily at him. They would also feel a great sadness knowing that someone was hurting their child.
I smiled at him. He understood. I nodded. “Dude…You’re going to come to understand that life is not what you think it will be. Life is messy and can change in an instant. The plans you make today may not make it to next week. A lifelong goal can be derailed because of something out of your control. Mom and dad have spent their life protecting us with the goal of keeping us safe, but circumstances out of their control have affected their kids, and now we- you all have to deal with the fallout. Just remember that you are not the culprit. Yes, mom and dad will be hurt and angry, but not at you. Trust them. They don’t do things to hurt us” Johnny hugged me. I- He didn’t have many people he could trust and open up to. He liked to talk a lot about everything going on in his life, no matter how trivial. Everything, except this. This was a shameful topic, and he didn’t feel like anyone would understand why he didn’t go to an adult sooner. The problem was simple. He simply didn’t understand that it was wrong. Now that he had an adult that he could talk to, himself no less, he wanted to lift this burden off his shoulders. He was happy to have found someone and he hugged me tightly. I hugged him back just at tightly. It wasn’t every day that I could meet my younger self and help to comfort them. “Thank you” he said to me.
The world darkened, and everything faded to black.
I lifted my head out of my knees and looked around. I was sitting under the window in my old bedroom again. Had I fallen asleep? I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked the time. I was emotionally drained and incredibly tired. I hadn’t had sleep like that in years. I got to my feet and looked around the room briefly before walking out to mom and dad’s old room. I grabbed my camera and slowly walked the house, snapping picture after picture. The only sound to be heard was the sound of the camera shutter and my soft footsteps. I thought about my dream as I took pictures.
Upon entering my room, a random memory hit me.
The stash.
I was pretty sure I had taken the hidden box when I moved out all those years ago, but since I was here, I should double check. Heading into the closet, I pushed the panel that led to the attic space out of the way and peered in. I couldn’t see anything, so I reached up there to feel around. The box was indeed gone. I felt around for a few more seconds and was surprised to feel what felt like a thick envelope. I didn’t remember leaving anything up there, but after pulling it down and giving it a cursory glance, I figured it was an old envelope of lost love letters. It wasn’t until I blew off the thick layer of dust that I realized what I was holding. It was a letter. Not just any letter. It was addressed to me.
Under the now semi-cleared layer of dust were the words “To be opened by future me”. I looked at it for a few moments before opening it. I couldn’t remember making this at all, much less storing it up in my secret hiding spot. If ever I hid something, it was in the stash box. My hands shook a bit as I started to open the envelope and pulled out the yellowed pages inside. I started reading.
"Dear Future John. I have spent the last few years remembering a dream I had when I was younger. Life was…difficult at that time, and I spent a lot of time escaping my reality by reading a lot of books and watching a lot of TV. On the off-chance that what I think is a dream really happened. I wanted to write some things down in an effort to give you my thanks. I merely consider myself a conveyer of thanks, although I will pile on my own thanks to you for your words of encouragement. I remember finding a stranger in the house one day while I was home alone. I was afraid he was there to hurt me at first, but after a few moments, I came to realize I was meeting myself. Well, I was meeting me, but from the future. I think he said he was in his 40’s, but I couldn’t tell you with any certainty. Either way, we talked. We talked about life, and what the future held in store for us…
Mostly though, we talked about the abuse. Well, Talked is being generous. We cried, and then we talked. I don’t remember exactly what he told me, but I remember how he made me feel. He made me feel safe. I felt like I could trust him. Trust myself. In the end, he gave me the courage to stand up for myself both at home and at school. He also gave me the courage to talk to mom and dad about what was going on between me and Talia. I do remember being afraid that I would be punished, but he reassured me that they wouldn’t, and that they loved me.
It was a difficult and awkward conversation, but in the end, arrangements were made for me to share a room with Rio and Nathan. I didn’t have much of a relationship with Talia for a long while, but after some years, we managed to patch things up. She apologized to me, and I came to understand the abuse she herself was subjected to by so-called family friends. She didn’t tell me this in an effort to excuse it, but to merely help give me closure to a difficult time from my own childhood. Mom and dad promised to be more attentive to us and we sort of established what I guess you would call an open door policy. We talk more about stuff that’s happening in our lives. Mom is much easier to talk to now. Dad is a little more patient with us too. I apologized to them for not coming to them sooner, and dad gave me a “nugget of wisdom” that I think I’ll live by: We can’t fix what we don’t know is broken. I’ve tried to make sure I talk to them when something is wrong, and I’ve tried to implement that in my life so I don’t have problems with other people.
I’m trying to grow up to be a good guy. I want to have good relationships with people. Nathan says I’m turning into a people pleaser, but I don’t necessarily see that as a terrible thing. I know when to say no to someone. Well, either way, I wanted to make sure I thank you for the help you gave us. I probably won’t remember writing this, but I hope I do find it again someday. Here’s hoping I turn into the man I feel you are. -John Age 16."
I stared at the letter, the words blurring as tears welled up in my eyes. I quickly brushed them away as I quietly spoke to no one in particular. “Thanks guys. I hope I live up to your expectations” I folded the letter, placed it in my pocket, and walked out of the room. After picking up my backpack and tripod, I silently walked towards the front door, my footsteps echoing in the empty house. I turned to look back at the empty living room one last time, and after a moment, I walked out.

Age - 24
Sex - F
Height - 5’3
Weight - 170
Race - white
I noticed earlier today that there was a small red bump on my arm that I scratched. It hurt really bad after I scratched it, but ultimately I forgot about it. I got home and scratched the same arm in a different area and it was really painful. I looked at it and there are a TON of small raised bumps on the back of the forearm. They aren’t super red, but I can see they are slightly irritated. My husband thought it looked like poison ivy, but it’s not too red so we aren’t sure. Could this just be an allergic reaction?
FYI: I haven’t changed any soaps, detergents, medications, or cleaners

So I met this girl on Facebook dating. She seems way out of my league, but we talk a lot and she seems really cool. We’ve been talking for about two weeks now and from the beginning, she told me she was into NFT’s. She got me to turn 500 bucks Into ETH so I can buy the NFT. When it was time to buy the NFT it have been already way too long of a process. So I was tired and decided to do it later. She was guiding me along the whole time and got pretty annoyed when I decided to stop.
This Raised a red flag. so I looked her up on pimeyes.
I found a bunch of pictures and online dating profiles from random places. All with different information. Like names, country of origin, age.
So I confronted her about it.
She had already told me she had a weird ex-boyfriend and she didn’t want to get into it at the time, but she told me the boyfriend stole her identity a bunch of and made a ton of profiles to ruin her reputation so she wouldn’t get a better job. so excuses, kind of check out. And I’ve been looking a lot into that.
This happened about two days ago and when I confronted her, she got upset and we didn’t talk for a while. The rest of the night w This happened about two days ago and when I confronted her, she got upset and we didn’t talk for a while. The rest of the night we’ve been talking. But been talking since then, and she wants to start the process again. What should I watch out for when buying an NFT? What should I not share with her when buying an NFT?
She’s calling me back in 30 minutes so we can finish
Another weird thing is that we only talk on video when she’s at work but she lives alone. She just said she’s not that much into video chat so we mostly text. Tonight should be the first day. I will see her outside of her office.
She also says she’s from Canada, but she comes to the United States for work often

I reconnected with my crush from 2018-2020 in March 2023, fell for him again, I confessed for the first time about it all in June 2023. For some context I'm INTJ. I'm very transparent about what I feel and I feel like he hides his emotions so much.
He confessed that he liked me in 2018, but he moved on in 2019 because he thought I didn't like him back. We fell for each other but didn't make it official though we acted like a couple because I was healing (from being cheated on in 2022) and I was honest about it. I started wanting commitment by February 2024.
In April 2024 he confessed that he had feelings for his girl bestfriend throughout 2022 because she was there for him after his breakup (when he got cheated on in 2021). However I wasn't comfortable as he didn't give me commitment because of him healing from her, he didn't confess it earlier. He told me they cut contact in February 2024.
Today we had our first date (meeting for the first time, when we were friends we never met each other), we were being all cuddly and I saw a text message from the girl bestfriend he claimed that he blocked. She said "How was the date?". Then he told me that his friends told her we went on a date. He showed me the chat that there was no flirting involved. After I went home I started complaining and he blocked her.
He paid for the date, he travelled a long way (12 hours) to meet me, he dropped me, he was sick, he did everything, and then this. Also he's been putting in a lot of effort since July 2023.
He promised me he's focused on me, he told me loves me and asked me out, we made the relationship official.
All I know is that he is 1000% better than my ex. For some context, I dated my ex from May 2021-December 2022. It was my first relationship and an extremely toxic one. He cheated multiple times, lied about everything, crossed my physical boundaries on a daily basis, talked down on me, controlled me and isolated me. There were 127 red flags and I was severely trauma bonded. We broke up and got back together over 18 times in a year. So compared to that, this feels like heaven, this guy replies to every part of the paragraph, there's genuine changed behaviour everytime I bring up something I'm uncomfortable with ever since last year.
I am not comfortable with his girl bestfriend. He said they never talk, he forgot to block her on snap and so now he did. But I feel something so uneasy. He said he had her blocked on instagram and whatsapp.

When we entered the recent downtrend (only 5%), I sold off my LETFs in my rollover IRA since I can't average down. When we resumed the uptrend, I bought back in for the majority of the funds. But in between, now that we have a lot more leveraged tickers (though only 2x), I bought a bunch of them like AAPU, AMZU, TSLL, NVDL, and GGLL. Of these, AAPU and TSLL are the downtrodden stocks and fit my plan of going into something that had a deeper correction/pullback and had more room to run upward.
These have done very well (especially GGLL which went up 30% since I entered; TSLL is still in the red but still has an uptrend). Yet today they collectively went up about 4% whereas today TECL went up almost 7%. So I'm thinking of selling off these individual names and then buying TECL instead: $IXT just went into the uptrend today whereas the other individual tickers have all been in an uptrend since I bought.
Any thoughts on this plan? Maybe I should just sell the GGLL, NVDL, AMZU and keep AAPU and TSLL since the latter two have more room to run (or not, if TSLA goes back into a downtrend, I would just sell TSLL).
Or I could just leave it, not being greedy about the 3% difference but there are more LETFs to monitor here. I also believe, having done this for a brief while only, that the 2x leverage in these individual tickers aren't enough to make up for the 3x leverage you get from TECL.
As an aside, this downtrend/uptrend on a daily basis I've been doing has been working quite well. I had a position in UGL I sold off, didn't make much, but did make some green.
Overall, I still lost out a bit going out and coming back in TQQQ but this time it was only 1% (last summer it was 5%). Yet if our 5% correction had been much deeper, my moves would've been wiser. I have two accounts where I am able to do the parallel experiment (EDCA vs. swing trading). But in my taxable I'm going to do the same if I see the weekly downtrend take shape, tax hit or not. I just realised this year that if you pay 110% of your previous year's taxes, there's no estimated tax penalty and you can just wait till end of the year to pay your actual tax on gains. Once you see a weekly downtrend, it's unlikely it's just a short correction. This prevents unnecessary lot of wash sales and short term tax hits but still largely preserve capital. For instance, based on weekly I wouldn't have gotten out at all in 2023 even though we had like a 10% correction.

So as the title eludes, I am looking for a splitter for my setup.
All of my 10 consoles in my setup bar the N64 outputs and is currently setup with RGB. I could and should mod my N64 for RGB output... but coulda-shoulda-woulda.
I am content with using S Video for capture purposes through my Tink as it looks as fine as the N64 will allow without mods.
But, I would also like to display on my CRT at the same time, the issue I am running into is that my CRT or SCART splitter does not allow SVideo through or something, I am not sure what the story is.
But I am content with composite on my CRT as it looks as I remember it looking, though I want to use the Svideo for my captures while simultaneously running the composite cable to the SCART switcher, which allows composite through.
So I want a simple and easy way to split the RCA red and white for audio, so I can input to my tink via Svideo w/audio, while splitting the audio back to the SCART Switch with a SCART composite convertor which seems to pass that through to my CRT ok.
The cable I am using out of my N64 is a red, white, yellow, s-video cable from retrogamingcables.
Can I split the red and white with no degradation using a simple y splitter?
Can I simply extend the rca yellow composite video from the cable? or will this cause some degradation?
Can I use a y splitter on rca yellow? Or is that bad?
If there is yet another box to add to my setup to split this one console what's the cheapest best one?
Should I just RGB my N64? (I am partially afraid to break it)

I reconnected with my crush from 2018-2020 in March 2023, fell for him again, I confessed for the first time about it all in June 2023.
He confessed that he liked me in 2018, but he moved on in 2019 because he thought I didn't like him back. We fell for each other but didn't make it official though we acted like a couple because I was healing (from being cheated on in 2022) and I was honest about it. I started wanting commitment by February 2024.
In April 2024 he confessed that he had feelings for his girl bestfriend throughout 2022 because she was there for him after his breakup (when he got cheated on in 2021). However I wasn't comfortable as he didn't give me commitment because of him healing from her, he didn't confess it earlier. He told me they cut contact in February 2024.
Today we had our first date (meeting for the first time, when we were friends we never met each other), we were being all cuddly and I saw a text message from the girl bestfriend he claimed that he blocked. She said "How was the date?". Then he told me that his friends told her we went on a date. He showed me the chat that there was no flirting involved. After I went home I started complaining and he blocked her.
He paid for the date, he travelled a long way (12 hours) to meet me, he dropped me, he was sick, he did everything, and then this. Also he's been putting in a lot of effort since July 2023.
He promised me he's focused on me, he told me loves me and asked me out, we made the relationship official.
All I know is that he is 1000% better than my ex. For some context, I dated my ex from May 2021-December 2022. It was my first relationship and an extremely toxic one. He cheated multiple times, lied about everything, crossed my physical boundaries on a daily basis, talked down on me, controlled me and isolated me. There were 127 red flags and I was severely trauma bonded. We broke up and got back together over 18 times in a year. So compared to that, this feels like heaven, this guy replies to every part of the paragraph, there's genuine changed behaviour everytime I bring up something I'm uncomfortable with ever since last year.
I am not comfortable with his girl bestfriend. He said they never talk, he forgot to block her on snap and so now he did. But I feel something so uneasy. He said he had her blocked on instagram and whatsapp.

I recently was gifted the Versed Gentle Retinol Serum. I have used a bunch of different retinols, immediately prior to this was using the Obagi 1.0 retinol cream which has the same percentage of retinol. I ran out of that one and the next day started the Versed serum. I spaced out and forgot I exfoliated in the shower and then put on retinol before the rest of my routine. 20 min later my face and neck was EXTREMELY itchy and red, with bumps on my neck. Was so uncomfortable I could barely sleep. This has never happened to me with any of the retinols I have used in the past, occasionally I have gotten a bit sensitive/burn after using too many days in a row and then take a day or two break. I assumed I over-exfoliated and damaged my skin barrier and thats what caused this, so for the following week I cut out all active ingredients and exfoliating + used only gentle products and zinc oxide cream overnight. I went back to try the retinol again after 8 days and it again, made my face really itchy. Not as bad as the first time but still very uncomfortable.
Has anyone had the same experience or know why this happened? / does anyone know if theres something specifically in this product thats not in other retinols that could be causing this? Would love to know so I can avoid whatever ingredient is doing this.
For reference, I do not have sensitive skin at all. No allergies that I’m aware of. Been using retinol every other night-5 days a week for almost two years and nothing like this has ever happened. Also, all of the products that I used in these instances in addition to that retinol were products that I have used consistently for a long time so I know it’s not another product causing this.

Last month was SO dry for me romantically. Now, I have a crush on someone and we have a date tomorrow, but then out of nowhere 2 of my old situationships hmu and then a random follower asked me if they could take me out on a date like wtfff where are u guys coming from 💀 it’s like the second I’m interested in someone, everyone comes crawling back lol

Hey all, I came across this subreddit when searching for similar cases to mine and wanted to help and share my experiences.

First occurrence or reoccurence?

My problem first started when I saw a clot of blood come out when peeing 2 weeks ago. I went into a state of shock where I nearly fainted. After breathing deeply for 10 mins, my head slowly stopped turning and I thought back to when something similar happened about 3 years ago when I masturbated and afterwards my pee was faint red. Evoking a similar horrified reaction, what I did back then was no masturbation for 6 days and a semi-constant array of ice packs on my groin and testicles. A complete lack of libido was prevalent throughout this. The ice packs and lack of libido seemed to have quickly resolved that case and no further episode of bleeding was seen.
What seemed to cause it back then was over-masturbation as I was not doing any other vigorous activity.
No one seems to touch on this in all the posts and comments I've read but if you are constantly feeling horny and you are constantly masturbating then this is not good. In my case, I remembered masturbating 8 times a day. I developed a varicocele and one of the veins leading to the testicle is now huge and causes discomfort when I don't masturbate for too long (it swells). I think that it's not just masturbation but the constant and over-production of sperm in the seminal vesicles caused by too high testosterone and sugar consumption causes inflammation of the seminal vesicles and prostate which leads to a rupturing of a blood vessel in both or either.
My assumption is that if you've had hematospermia happen before, then it is more likely to happen again.

Clots = healing?

Fast forward to 2 weeks ago after noticing that clot of blood, I instantly ceased all masturbation activities again. However I was still extremely horny. As touched on above, this would be my undoing as I was feeling so horny that I tried masturbating again 4 days later. To my absolute horror, the whole ejaculate was red (about 2 tablespoons). Let's just say, it wasn't a bloody good time at all 😶‍🌫️. After examining my ejaculate, I saw that it was fresh blood and some white bits inside. I went to empty my bladder and I was horrified yet again - the whole thing was dark red. To top it off a random clot came out. Went to pee twice more and still fully red and a few more clots came out. The third time it was clear.
I learnt that due to the clots, my body was healing something and this gave me reassurance. They were uncomfortable to pass through my urethra but nothing major.
I booked a doctor's appointment ASAP. Men are so much less likely to seek medical help but in this case, I didn't want it to be anything nasty, so I called my doctor straight in the morning and they booked me in that very same afternoon. Although awkward, I recommend any person reading this to book in with a healthcare professional, they give you reassurance and I know it's awkward but you have to do it just to rule out anything super concerning. I took a urine sample in and although it was a female doctor in attendance, she understood a lot about what was happening and just to rule out an infection, gave me a few tablets to take. She told me to continue masturbating infrequently as there was no pain, just to see if symptoms were decreasing. Female doctors are on average way more understanding and sympathetic and I certainly felt reassured.
I stopped doing any form of exercise and focused on healing.

Take 2

I stopped masturbating for 4 more days and with the above reassurance, I tried again. I was terrified to do it thinking I'd die. Thankfully no pain again but my nut was all still red but hold on, it was less red than before? Or was I seeing things?
Went to pee again and it was red. Two more times I peed red and on the 3rd time a clot came out and the pee went crystal clear. It seemed as though the clots were causing a lot of blood? I went to bed that day thinking I was never going to get better. For anyone reading this, I want you to know that your body loves you more than anything in the world, it will literally fight to see you survive and heal you in wondrous ways even though you might abuse it. Give your body a hug.
By this point, I was feeling extremely deflated and lacked a libido. Like I would not even get hard in the mornings or at anything. I was a nervous wreck to be honest thinking I would not have children ever again. Honestly I thought I had cancer. I was listening to sad songs on repeat and I certianly wasn't my happy self.

Take 3

3 days later I tried again and there was no blood!! Success 😀!! No blood in my pee too. Something seemed to be getting fixed!

Take 4

The next day, I was beginning feel my old self come back. I rode my bike, I went to the gym and had a hot shower to celebrate. Then I decided I would try again at 2am. As I will touch on later, all of those combined led to my downfall and I shot out a small fingernail's worth of blood at the end of my not-so-happy ending. Went to pee and it was all red. 3 clots came out in short succession. The next time I went to pee it was all clear.

Take 5 - time to get serious

After the last try, I knew something was getting better and that gave me reassurance. It also enabled me to understand that just like how you brush your teeth too hard your gums will get inflamed and start to bleed, in the same sense that if you keep masturbating an obviously inflamed reproductive system, you will get bleeding.
I stopped thinking about sex for 6 days, I would pinch myself hard if I ever thought of it. I put ice packs on my balls and above the penis area. I did a few stretching exercises. I drank chamomile tea daily. I drank water. I wore shorts rather than fleeced joggers. I went to sleep for a full 8 hours rather than 6. I drank blueberry and orange juice.
By the 5th day I wasn't feeling horny but my varicole behind my left testicle was swelling and the area above my penis on the left side was feeling very inflamed. My body was telling me to get rid of all the stored gunk. I drank chamomile tea and it calmed that area down and I soon fell asleep.
On the 6th day, I knew I couldn't keep it all in there and so I tried again and to my relief the ejaculate was normal looking. Pee was clear too. Success 😄!!!

Self diagnosis

If I were to self diagnose, the whole thing was caused by my intense gym session which led to me being very aroused which led to me overmasturbating in a hot room which led to something getting inflamed and start bleeding a lot. I think I burst a blood vessel in one of my sperm vesicle as no blood would come out without masturbating first. The presence of clots indicate that I ruptured quite a bit of stuff in there, oh dear. The whole ordeal lasted 2 weeks but from now on I will take better care of myself.

Possible remedies

If you don't want to read the above, here's things that worked for me:

• Seek professional medical advice at once. You're bleeding in a place that should not be bleeding. Get it checked now before it's too late.
• STOP thinking about sex. I found that my case was exacerbated by horniness. If you keep this to a minimum, your body will stop making demands from your inflamed reproductive system thereby reducing inflammation.
• It follows on from the above that you should STOP masturbating and having sex. I kept it at once every 4 days but I think I should have left atleast a 5 day gap between sessions as the first 2 days were my body still feeling aroused.
• Reduce physical activity. Do not do anything highly taxing.
• Chamomile tea has significant natural anti-inflammatory properties that will reduce overall inflammation. Drink daily. (find a high quality batch mind you).
• The doctor did not recommend doing this as she thought it had no effect but you can try it: Ice your groin area including your testicles.
• Drink water.
• Get more sleep to heal faster. 8 hours.
• Wear breezy shorts if you're in hot climate.
• Reduce sugar intake. Not sure if this had any effect.
• Drink blueberry and orange juice. Not sure if this had any effect.
• Most importantly is please don't be afraid. I had no idea if I'd be leaking mounds of blood when I came and that fear made me sit for hours in bed with worry. From what I've read most cases are nothing to worry about.