So this happened recently and I already know I was a bit of an AH when I was younger but I just got home from a college semester and already my parents and I are off to a rocky start. For context, my family are dysfunctional to say the least, my dad thinks yelling is a normal way to have a conversation and my mother can almost always turn any conversation into an argument. This may seem biased bc I am from the receiving end but still. Anyways, last night we had dinner that my dad made (my mom and dad alternate making dinner since I’m a really terrible cook - I am trying tho), and I made a comment how the breaded chicken tasted like fish. We were also having a risotto, both frozen. I have made it very clear in the past that risotto is not my favorite as the texture really grosses me out but I still eat it as they taught me to never leave food on your plate (which honestly has made me really anxious and guilty whenever I don’t want to finish food I dislike). My dad gets very annoyed by this and starts yelling so I go to my room bc after years of this, I know the only thing to do is to wait until tomorrow and pretend it never happened. My mom came to my room later and said I would be cooking dinner on Friday and I said it was a terrible idea since I don’t know how to cook. Today, I’m on my way to work with my mom (we only have one car so I couldn’t monopolize it today) and she starts telling me that I need to have a meal planned and I tell her it’s probably going to not be the greatest since I don’t really know how to cook. For context, I’ve asked my parents to teach me how to cook but they really dislike when they cannot control everything in the kitchen, so I usually end up just cutting vegetables. Anyways, I tell my mom that I’ll make the frozen shrimp we have, pasta, and roasted vegetables like broccoli, since these are things that I can make decently. She says this is unacceptable since I wanted to learn to cook so I have to make the meal from start to finish without frozen food and I had to go buy the ingredients and not just cook whatever we had in the cupboard (which is what I said about the pasta since I know we have some but I’m not sure the type). I called her hypocritical since we just had a frozen meal and my parents always try to eat out of the house. The only thing new we would be getting would be the vegetables. AITA?

Hello, I have been a new resident in a foreign country for less than 2 years and my language skills are still quite basic, though I can mostly understand everything.
I have this one friend that I met when I arrived and that I never quit though we already had some big arguments and he made me mad and/or cry a few times. We basically meet a few times every week, sometimes every day and we’ve lived big moments together, we also traveled together to another continent, he stayed with my family...
The relationship has evolved from a situation where I would give and do everything for him without him doing much for me, to a situation where he proved on some occasions to help me and support me too. But I had to make him realize that.
When I meet him alone, everything is usually very great and makes me love this relationship and admire my friend more every time. We chose English as our normal conversation language as he wants to progress in English and it’s still more convenient for me.
When I meet him with any of his friends or family members, which most often I learn at the last minute, and didn’t choose, it can be a different story. Sometimes I feel totally excluded and I wonder what I’m doing here. I don’t know if I’m 100% at fault or if his behavior makes me an introvert. My most recent exemple is yesterday. He invited me to go pick him up and his cousin. From the beginning, he ignored me and didn’t do anything to include me and seemed to reject any of my attempts to get into whatever they where talking about. He would show funny pictures to his cousin, I’d try to take a look too but I would remain ignored. Conversations which are 100% in English between him and me, are only hold in his native language whenever there is anyone else. Whenever, I try to say something in his language, he doesn’t seem much interested in whatever I have to say. One of the worst moment I had to live yesterday was when he started playing online chess on his phone with his cousin as if I wasn’t even there. Later in the night, I decided to imitate their behavior and started playing UNO alone on my phone. Only for my friend to notice it and say to his cousin: let’s play chess again. As if everything was perfectly normal.
Much later, after hours, he started to notice that something seemed to be wrong and said: « oh you’re so silent tonight ». To which I replied: « you’re talking one to another about your topics, you’re playing together, what can I even say ». After this, he started chit-chatting with me and the night ended like this. But after everything that had happened before it seemed so fake.
So I know myself and I know that some situations can easily make me an introvert. But I don’t believe his behavior when other people are around, help me.
Something else that he often does is to shut me up to silence whenever I say something that’s about the future. For example, a few nights ago, we were talking about travel plans and hotel reservations, other guys were even looking on their phone for options and hotels. The minute I believed to have myself found something interesting, I didn’t even have time to say my full sentence that he shut me up and said: « oh it’s okay we have time hahaha ». A few days ago too, he was talking about going back with me to a pasta restaurant that he really liked and he was talking about maybe going there on Sunday. I replied: « maybe Monday would be better because you already need to go to this city for your appointment there ». He instantly replied to me: « maaaaan we have time, it’s not yet come on ». I couldn’t keep myself from replying: « I talked about this because you talked about this otherwise I wouldn’t have said anything » Even his cousin told him: « yes it’s true you talked about this first ».
So now I’m trying to understand what all of this is, because when im alone with him he’s acting in such a lovely manner but when other people around, it’s so different. It constantly makes me upset

I got invited to do a job interview today, but I already interviewed there in February and didn’t get it, now I’m overthinking it. I applied yesterday and they want an interview today?? That’s too soon, I got no time to mentally prepare for it. I haven’t confirmed it yet, but I’m wondering if the people there are communicating with each other, and does the person responsible for this position know that I interviewed there earlier this year? In my mind they could’ve reached out for this position if they wanted to hire me since I already interviewed there, that’s what recruitment databases are for, do they not have one? I’m pretty sure this is for the same job too, did the person hired not stay? Was the job too hard? Was the place toxic? Like why publicly open the position again if they could reach out to someone they liked but didn’t hire last time? Recruitment does that all the time, I worked in recruitment for almost a year and we had a huge database with every interview we did, one for approved and one for rejected with reasons why, sometimes you don’t get the job even if you are qualified and the recruiter likes you simply because someone else is a better fit, so they keep you as a plan b just in case, that way they don’t have to do the entire process all over again. So do they not know that I already interviewed there? I could teach a master class on overthinking. What if I get there and they’re like “oh” because they didn’t realize it’s me and they already rejected me, everybody’s time is wasted.

This is a follow-up post to my Two Year Update and One Year Update. For those who haven’t read it here’s a short summary of my first 2 Years

• First Month: Learning Kana with Apps like Duolingo and some basic vocab/grammar and figuring out if I actually like learning Japanese
• Month 2-3: Doing RRTK and watching Cure Dolly for Grammar on the Side
• Month 3-4: Core Anki Decks for Basic Vocab (Tango N5, Core Anime Deck)
• Month 4-6: Reading and Sentence Mining Satori Reader with extra cards from Anime via Morphman
• Month 6-9: Finished Satori Reader and moved on to Anime with Japanese Subtitles + Sentence Mining
• Month 9-12: Added Reading Novels to my Routine for about 1h a day. Continued with Anime for the rest of the time
• Month 13-24: Continued my Routine of reading books + watching Anime and doing Sentence Mining with Anki. I increased my reading to about 2-3h a day for a while and cut back on Anime

Stats

• 2646 Anime Episodes Watched (Year 1: 715, Year 2: 1428, Year 3: 503)
• 68 Movies Watched (Year 1: 19, Year 2: 28, Year 3: 21)
• 115 Novels Read (Year 1: 6, Year 2: 64, Year 3: 45)
• 20000 Anki Vocab Cards (Year 1: 6517 , Year 2: 8664, Year 3: 4819)
• 27520 Morphs (Year 1: 8204 , Year 2: 13650, Year 3: 5666)

I am not as diligent with tracking anymore, so some of it might be missing. My Anime watched and Books read has gone down quite a bit from last year, but I also played some Games in Japanese this year and watched a lot more Youtube/Variety Content. Although I didn’t track it, generally my daily time spent has gone down from 3-4h daily to around 2-3h nowadays.

Current Daily Routine

My Routine has not changed much from my second year, but I tried exploring more genres and media. With better comprehension and less reliance on lookups (thanks to Anki), I am able to enjoy media without subtitles or games where lookups are a bit more annoying, much more than before. I still aim for 2-3 hours of immersion daily, with books remaining the backbone of my immersion since I enjoy them the most. Recently, I’ve replaced my before-bed anime watching with reading books accompanied by audiobooks, thanks to tools like Jidoujisho and Kanjieaters’s SubsPlease tool for syncing audiobooks with books. I’ve also played more games in Japanese, a big highlight being the Metal Gear Solid Series. I’ve also watched more Youtube and Variety Shows as filler content.
In terms of Anki usage, my daily time has tapered off to around 10-15 minutes, primarily because I don’t find many new words anymore. Nowadays, around 90% of my new cards come from reading. When I’m reading challenging books, this number can jump up to around ~20 new cards, but on average, it hovers around 6.
Very recently I’ve also added about 5-10 mins of Minimal Pairs Pitch Training on the コツ Site to my Routine. I’ve only been doing this for about 2 Weeks, and I’m already noticing a big improvement in my Pitch perception. I still don’t have any ambitions regarding Output, but feel like being able to recognize Pitch unlocks a new way of perceiving the language, which I find fascinating.

What my Comprehension feels like

Reading Books

While my reading speed hasn't changed drastically, improving from about 12k chars/hour to around 13-14k chars/hour, the range of variation has decreased significantly. A year ago, my speed could drop to 9k chars/hour with difficult books; now, 12k chars/hour is more of a baseline for me. But my comprehension is where I feel the most improvement, I don’t need to check DeepL at all anymore, if I don’t understand a sentence, I can most of the time understand it when I read it again. And there are a lot more nuances, I now notice which I didn’t before. I noticed this the most in my reread of また同じ夢を見ていた which was my first book I read in Japanese, after rereading it, ~100 books later, I noticed a lot of new nuances, subtext and word play.
I also started using more Audiobooks, in combination with SubsPlease and Jidoujisho to get a synced Subtitle file with the Audiobook. I read along while listening, and my comprehension got fast enough that I generally can just let it play, only occasionally needing to relisten to a line. Even for more difficult books, like 鹿の王 which I recently read. I also read a physical Book this year. If the book is not too hard, I’m now comfortable reading it without a dictionary. The one I read had about 20 words I didn't know, but I only felt the need to look up 2-3. I was able to get the meaning from the others based on context and kanji.

Watching Content with Japanese Subtitles

I felt pretty strong in this area a year ago already, but it has definitely improved a lot also. I noticed this the most when I played the Metal Gear Solid Series. All dialogue does have subtitles, but the content is quite difficult both on a vocabulary level and also on a meaning level, since they are dealing with deep themes a lot of the time. But I was able to play it mostly free flow, only needing to look up a word here or there, getting most of the meaning from the kanji if I didn’t know a word.

Watching Content without Japanese Subtitles

Ironically even though I never intentionally did pure listening practice, always using Japanese subtitles if they were available, I’m noticing the most progress in this area. A year ago, I was not comfortable with most non-subtitled content. Nowadays I would say, easier content like most youtube videos or variety shows, I’m quite comfortable with, although I definitely still miss much more compared to using subtitles. But with Anime or Movies in general, where I’m also much more picky in my comprehension, since I don’t want to miss anything, I’m still not comfortable watching without subtitles I feel like in scripted content people are more likely to use rare words, and even if I technically “know” them, it's still often hard for me to recall them without seeing the characters. But as with all things, that will work itself out with more input. I’m glad my theory from my 1 Year Update, that doing pure listening practice is not needed and using subtitles does not impede progress in listening, turned out true for me.

Closing Thoughts

Although I was able to do all the things I can do now a year ago, I feel like I can do them much more effortlessly. Consuming Japanese is now much closer to English or my native language German, although it’s still not quite there. Both in terms of listening, I usually listen to Youtube videos in English at 2.5x speed, that's not possible for me in Japanese at the moment. Similarly, despite doing a lot of reading, there’s still a lot of room to improve to reach native-level speed.
But it doesn’t feel like learning anymore; it’s more about enjoying the exploration of a new culture through its media. I still love learning new things, which is why I started focusing more on pitch, even though I still have no plans for output.
Adding to my Closing Thoughts from my 2 Year Update, I still feel like this hobby has been the most enriching thing I’ve ever done. Being able to get better at something, feeling the progress gradually, while exploring new ways of thinking, not just through the language itself, but also the vastly different media compared to western media, really broadened my horizon. I feel like learning to appreciate and understand what the media is trying to say is also in a way like learning a language. It got me to read books or try out new genres I probably would have never considered otherwise. For example the Metal Gear Series got me interested in history, which I didn't think I liked before. I also learned a lot about learning new things. I think I can apply all the techniques I discovered learning Japanese to any other skill I want to learn in the future. Being consistent on a daily basis and always practising the same way you would in a real scenario would be the biggest factors for me. (For example, no JLPT grammar questions, rather seeing, looking up and understanding the grammar in native content)
I very much look forward to how my Journey will continue in my 4th year. Thank you for reading!

This is all for a TTRPG that I'm running for some friends. If this isn't the right place for this please let me know.
To start off with, if you're playing in a game where the phrases "President Andrew Garfield", "Clowns of America" and "an imp wielding a fan blade" sound familiar to you, stop reading. This is about our campaign. ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ........................................................................... ...........................................................................Context: So, I am currently running a game set in a near future (2075) where magic has slowly been returning to the world, but is still mostly hidden, for the last 100 years. In this world their are 9 "gods" that rule over the following: 1. Urbos- cities, civilization, law, order 2. Fabulaz- Stories, legends, myths 3. Libertas- Freedom, liberty, Justice, fairness 4. Messor- Death, fate, burials, afterlife 5. Vita- Life, nature, wildlife, predatoprey relationships 6. Technos- The internet, technology, engineering 7. Penucia- Merchants, gambling, wealth 8. Null- Undeath, necromancy, secrets 9. Vaccus- Emptiness, vaccumes, nothing.
The big secret with all of this (and the big thing the party doesn't know) is that all but one of the gods listed above are not actually "gods". They are all creatures "blessed" by the 9th god with insane power over something mortals fear. The 9th god, Vaccus, is the only real god. However they are closer to a lovecraftian diety and the entire campaign setting takes place in Vaccus's dreams.
The Story (the party doesn't know this either): A cult, being lead by somebody who was cursed with immortality and wants to die, is going to try several methods of killing their leader. Their last ditch attempt will be to try and wake up Vaccus, as if this being wakes up it would result in the end of everything in an instant. The best and most efficient way to do that is by turning Vaccus's dream into a nightmare. They plan on doing this by "forcing" the creation of a new god like entity that will embody a fear of destruction and a comming apocalypse, I am tentatively calling it Apolyon, but I'm not entirely sold on that name. Their first step in doing this was to take over large portions if the world's government by killing and replacing important officials with dopplegangers. They've done this without issues in Russia, China and Sweden, but they fucked up in the US when the president's (if you read the above, yes the current president is Andrew Garfield AKA one of the spidermen) daughter escaped and the assasination "attempt" got leaked to the news.
What the party knows: The attempt on the president's life was orchestrated by an unknown entity using dopplegangers. To cover their tracks, the "president" (who they correctly assume is actually a doppelganger) anounced that it was his daughter who made the attempt on his life, saying she has fallen in with a group of eco terrorists who have supposedly taken responsibility for the attack. They know this isn't true because they saved both the president's daughter AND a secret service agent from a car crash/doppleganger attack and both are now traveling with them. The goal is to remove the way the dopplegangers are tracking the president's daughter and bring her to an military base that has been both decomissioned and wiped from any US database. The only reason they know about it is because the president verbally told the Secret Service agent about it in the past as a "if all other options to protect my daughter fail, go here."
What the party will soon discover: The military base in question is actually an abandoned neighborhood that the government used during the mid to late 70s (when magic was first starting to return to the world) to conduct MKUltra style experiments. Their plan was to try and spy on people through their dreams. They had the most tangential success with artists of varying mediums but they could not control who's dreams they were entering and influencing, with many of them going insane. The reason many of them went insane was because they were entering the subconsious dreams of Vaccus (almost like if you were to lucid dream but instead of you realizing its a dream, the people and characters in your dream realized they were in your dream), meaning they were 1. Witnessing incomprehensible things that a eldritch creature would dream of in their deep subconsious and 2. Seeing the entire history of the universe play out before them in what felt like in real time, but was acually only done in the span of a few minutes to a few hours if they were lucky. This lead to those who were still somewhat coherent to make art depicting some of the things they saw, but in a stylized way. For example, poems about something that should not be, paintings and sculptures of the birth of each god, stories that, when you read between the lines, speak of a world ending calamity that would cause Vaccus to wake up, ect...
What I'm looking for help with is comming up with different pieces of art that will make the full puzzle. So like a poem tells part of one story, a description of a short film depicts another, a painting, children's book ect... I want at least 9 or so different pieces that can describe the reveal mentioned above with 1 for each worshiped god and the 9th being a description of creating a nightmare for Vaccus. The idea is that each description/art piece tells a different part of the same story, but the party won't get them in order. I have come up with some ideas for the different art pieces, but I want some more ideas or suggestions. I also want different people to give their descriptions and I feel that if it was just me making all of these descriptions, they would all feel way too similar and give off the feel of "one person trying 9 different mediums" than "9 different artists telling the same story". I have an idea for the 1st one chronologically that takes the form of a children's book that decribes a little boy who is tormented by his older siblings and thus escapes to his dreams to find friends (the other gods) and go on adventures. It would be unfinished with the party only finding the first few pages depicting the boy make the Gods Vita and Messor to populate the world and give life meaning. I plan on refining it a bit more and using more symbolism than what I described above but I think it gives the general idea.
Sorry for the long post, I've been thinking of this idea for a long time and only now the party is getting close enough to it for me to really start planning for it. TLDR; What are some different descriptions of art works (poems, stories, paintings ect...) that when put together tell the story of the world's creation and reveal the fact that the setting takes place in the dreams of an eldritch entity. I would love to hear what you all have to offer to this.

i recognise that KCL does poorly in student satisfaction, which home league tables consider, hence its lower ranking compared to international tables.
however, i looked closely at the metrics by which rankings are made for KCL and Birmingham for example. KCL sits at 24th on the Complete Uni Guide, Birmingham at 12th.
KCL does better in entry standards, research quality, research intensity, academic services spending, student-staff ratio and graduate prospect - outcomes.
Birmingham does better than KCL in facilities spending, continuation and graduate prospects - on track.
They both are ranked 111th for student satisfaction.
This seems odd to me. The difference in most of the metrics which Birmingham does better in is also not significant really at all, and yet they are 12 positions higher.
Birmingham does have 3 more subjects ranking top 10 than KCL, but many of these are subjects that KCL doesn’t offer, like tourist studies, creative writing and town planning. I don’t think this exactly has an effect on the overall ranking though especially with just 3.

For the past couple of days I’ve been trying to step away from what seems to have developed as the typical gameplay loop of GZW of fly to a POI specifically to loot and/or do tasks and instead I pick one of the less popular LZs and then plan out an extended mission.
For example today I chose Delta 2, hiked up to Sawmill to killed some AI and managed to get the leader for my tasks, caught a flight over to Hunters and it was already recently cleared, but I was able to grab a couple task items before hiking over to Hotel 3 to RTB.
While doing this you can check out some of the other little details the devs have scattered around the map which also have some locals hanging around. Once they add more looting mechanics to the game I think this will be even more enjoyable provided they don’t just add loot to the major POIs.
Personally, I’ve found this sort of playstyle much more enjoyable and immersive than just rushing through everything. Bonus immersion if you do this sort of thing with a squad. I still plan to complete tasks when possible, but the game just feels a little stale if you just rush them.

Wow! This turned out so long and was helpful to write when I was feeling really really awful an hour ago. Here it goes:
I’ve been following this page and a few others once I saw information on video game addiction a few months ago. I saw my family and step-son in so many of the stories, my heart and mind was transformed. I don’t feel alone and my son is certainly not alone in his struggles. To be honest I’m scared to start this new journey, and I’ll get to that more later.
I always knew something was different about my step-son’s gaming, and it’s been a struggle since 2-3 years old based on what his Dad has told me. Here’s a bit of a background of our family dynamic.
Jake had Pete when he was 19 and never had a relationship with Mom, Kate. They split custody and it was evident she was using hard drugs and lost full custody of Pete when he was 9. A lot of his time with Mom was spent on an iPad without regulation as early as 2. Routines, locations, and security was not always present. It’s tough to think about the severity of what Pete experienced. At this time school was difficult, and Pete was diagnosed with ADHD. Meds helped a lot, and once Jake had full custody he was all about routine routine routine, healthy foods, activities, table top games nightly, camping, you name it! His passion for being a single Dad to Pete is why I ultimately fell in love with him two years later. When I started hanging out I noticed Pete playing a lot of games and not being the sporty type or hanging out with friends. By this point he was playing Minecraft after school and on the weekends pretty regularly. Jake was a good video game police officer and we still had a ton of time together as a new family. Pete is kind and very easy going and we started a great relationship fairly quickly. Jake and I agreed and often disagreed about the severity of Pete’s gaming, but we would come together and set some house rules and go on with life. As soon as we got busy, Pete would dive deep into computer games and grades would drop. We would see feces in his underwater, lack of hygiene, not getting up, laptop under his pillow, exc. Almost like clockwork by spring break, we’d have this intense struggle and Pete would pull it together for the semester at the very last minute. Pete is gifted and was always in accelerated math and science glasses, but was able to do the bare minimum without studying. Repeat for the next 3 years. Fast forward to High School he went to a smaller school in a new town and actually saw more independence. He made a friend, Dan who’s still around and is everything you’d hope a friend would be to your kid. Their bond is awesome. We’d still have to police but things were getting easier and we weren’t seeing those intense “downs” like we were in elementary and middle school. I think he was more confident and even his teachers said he was crushing it! The summer was tough and we tried to fill his time up but nothing seemed to interest him. If he hung out with friends and was hygienic we just made nudges about time limits. Thinking back I think there was one more period where we found feces in his underwater end of Senior year and gaming picked up, probably because we dropped our guard.
Summer before college I got him set up with an awesome outdoor job working on a zipline/climbing course and he thrived in Pete’s type of way. Climbing is one of the only things I can suggest to Pete and he’ll usually show some interest. Confident, peppy, excited, getting himself up. Always going back to games everyday but maintaining work, a friendship, and a little independence is what we wanted so left him alone most of the home time. We nudged him into a climbing retreat as an incoming freshman to give him a head start making friends, and a clear head going into the dorms! Scary fun times, and thought it would help. Then we officially dropped him off. Wow, so many smiles and happy tears had by all. The light in his eyes and showing us around and saying how cool he felt it was probably the happiest day of our lives along with my wedding day. The day I read vows to Pete saying I’d be there forever and unconditionally. It felt like my son was ready for his future. As we were driving away Pete said his friend gave him a gaming computer for free and he was at the tech center getting it hooked up to the campus internet. Dun dun dun.
Today he’s 2 weeks into his first summer break after a year of college. Yikes. Things are not great and that’s why I am here.
It was Spring Break (here comes the pattern) and Pete was gaming, not verbally making much sense, unhygienic, lost weight, gaming non stop. He almost missed his 2 hour bus ride back to school and that’s when we snapped. The typical what the hell is going on, you’re out of control. Pete usually cries when this happens because he knows the gig is up. Eventually he told us the truth, he failed two classes his first semester (told us winter break he did fine) and is now on track to fail another science and lab. WHAT!! We drove out there the next day to meet with the dean because he told us he was on probation and we wanted to support him. We were so worried. It turns out he hasn’t had any social interaction other than winter and spring break and spent his days alone in his dorm. He didn’t even seem like himself it was so scary. We get there and we spent two days walking, going out to eat, the typical “you got this buddy” “just stop playing games for a bit” and insert the other 100 life sayings you want to say to your kid that sound so annoying to them. We can’t help it. We love him. He was like yep I got this, nodded through all of it and we left. Three weeks later we noticed on the phone things were sounding off again, and he confessed he hasn’t made up any of his work. His Dad got disappointed on the phone and Pete said he called the suicide hotline because he was getting “yelled” at. I was standing there, he wasn’t yelling but I’m sure just the sheer reality of the situation got to him. We were heart broken, and at the same time angry. We couldn’t believe he was feeling this much anxiety and possibly depression. We always knew gaming was an escape and most likely due to his background, but this just seemed too much for anyone to handle. Again, he promised to limit himself. We checked in everyday for the last three weeks not with a nag but just, how’s it going. Did you set a timer today? Amazing that’s great you’re so close to being done!! Just trying to keep it super positive. We knew it was totally out of our control. He failed, and actually never made up the work his professor said he could over a month prior. He lied more.
We knew something had to change and we were preparing his return home. Can we do game quitter? Can we just put him right into a detox in our home? Family therapy? Healthy gamer? Olganon? We wanted to smash his computer trust me, if it weren’t for my job I wouldn’t have wifi because my stomach is in knots. But, we decided relationship first, let him set his own limits (with our house rules) and really try to get to the root cause of anxiety and depression. We had good convos, we let him tell us how it’s basically all of our fault because of the pressure, no judgement. We communicated with notes and texts sometimes when things were getting frustrating. He skirted around the 3 hour daily limit every possible way. All he wants to do is play video games, watch to tube of video games, talk to “friends” on discord about games, play D&D online, or draw D&D characters. It’s just too much, it’s impossible to limit. He always had an excuse for a screen and we were still seeing 10+ hours a day on screens. He told us he’s feeling crappier everyday by us, and honestly we’re feeling freakin awful and exhausted too.
What now? Nothing. I’m literally doing nothing anymore starting today. I can’t stop crying. He won’t do his own research into gaming addiction and does not want to change. Today we just said ya know what, this isn’t working so we’ll just figure something out in a few weeks. At this very moment he’s going on hour 9 of gaming straight. Knowing how much we tried as a family to limit this for the last few weeks. I’m still angry and it’s hard to look at him right now. It feels personal to me? I know it isn’t, but it just feels that way.
Therapy!? Yep. We tried. Back when he was in middle school and high school. Didn’t want to go back and didn’t talk much. He got his own therapist at school per the deans suggestion and he goes but the one session he’s had at home, he got off within 30 minutes and said “he didn’t have much to talk about with her” and he’ll see her maybe once a month back at school. We are doing healthy gamer coaching as parents, but he is refusing to sign up for coaching on his end. My guess is the name alone. The risk of losing games is not something he’d ever discuss right now. I swore up and down they won’t make him get rid of games lol! Did not work.
What’s dad doing? Half. Literally half at all times we make a plan at night and in the morning and check in with each other about it all day long. It’s so exhausting and Jake is just ready to do whatever it takes at this point as well. He’s having the same struggles as I am and is 100% convinced it’s an addiction and has listened to a lot of podcasts exc.
My new plan…. Because I have to have “something” or I might blow up. Now I have to let natural consequences take the lead. He doesn’t have a license, because he couldn’t pick up driving skills with how his brain is on games. We tried teaching him for two years and it was honestly dangerous sometimes after a “bender. He asked me to go tomorrow and after 9 hours I’m just going to say I’d feel more comfortable if he went to driving school and he can pay with the money he earns this summer. It j=is just not safe, why does he deserve to take my car and put me in an unsafe position? I don't have to allow that... but it feels like I am still the bad guy. Looking forward, IF he fails college....when he is home he cannot have our wifi, will contribute to groceries, phone bill, and rent. We live in a rural area and without a car he can’t work. I will not be driving a 20 year old to and from work due to his brain on games. It feels wrong. Maybe he can’t support his habit without working. That’s all the “what ifs” but rarely does life go exactly how you picture it. We will just continue to get creative and roll with it.
Does anyone have any advice on how to not enable but also let them be in charge of their own destiny? Not saying anything or giving him a sad look feels impossible but I did it tonight. J was able to pretend it did not bother me that he’s been on there forever. I think I can keep that up? But I also don’t want to enable him.
My family is hurting so much. So many hugs to anyone who struggled and is currently struggling. Same to the parents who have that knot that won’t go away. Thanks for reading

Hope you can help me with this. I am currently in my job-hunting process. And want your insight on the topic. How willing are employers to discuss immigration plans during the hiring process? For example, you only have 1 year PGWP and wanted to extend your stay with them when you get hired.

In today’s world, it’s becoming clear that focusing on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) solutions is key for businesses to succeed in the long run. When companies consider ESG factors in their decisions, it often leads to better financial results. Studies show that doing so can boost equity returns by a significant 63%.
What's even more interesting is that younger investors are supporting this idea. They're willing to put their money where their values are, even if it means sacrificing some of their wealth. This really shows a strong belief in supporting issues like sustainability and social responsibility.
Looking at the bigger picture, the need for ESG action is urgent. Take carbon emissions, for example. They're a major contributor to climate change, which affects everything from nature to people's health to the economy. So, it's not just about doing what's right—it's about ensuring businesses can thrive in a world facing these pressing environmental challenges.
In particular, the growth in ESG awareness is positively impacting certain sectors, such as the Solutions segment within the Environmental Technology sector. This segment includes critical services like environmental consulting and field services, which are essential for industries such as Energy, Utilities, and Mining. As businesses increasingly prioritize sustainability, the demand for these environmental solutions is on the rise.
One Company to look at is Vertex Resource Group ($VTX), a top North American provider of integrated environmental solutions. What sets $VTX apart is its commitment to ESG principles which are woven into its business model. By aligning with ESG values, Vertex ensures its customers receive comprehensive solutions that not only meet their business needs but also contribute to sustainability goals.
$VTX stands out as an ESG problem-solving leader, recognizing the crucial role of sustainable supply chain growth in shaping a brighter future. We can see this in their dual-phase ESG approach firstly, reducing operational intensity, and secondly, expanding supply chain solutions. Overall, Vertex’s approach promotes self-improvement while fostering sustainable practices throughout the supply chain, reflecting their dedication to driving meaningful change and sustainability across industries.
Looking forward, $VTX has stated they have many ESG goals and commitments planned for this year. One I’d like to highlight is that Vertex is planning to achieve 10% annual supply chain service revenue growth, offering enhanced ESG solutions to clients. This is significant because it demonstrates Vertex's proactive stance in advancing ESG initiatives within their business operations. I’ll link $VTX’s Investor Page here for anyone looking to learn more.
Disclaimer: This is not financial advice please do your own research before investing.

Part 1

The official story is that I hit my head. According to the lawyer I wasn't lucid enough to be a reliable witness, and honestly, I'm starting to believe that might be the truth. It's certainly easier to accept that everything was all just some nightmare.
But if my mind wasn't playing tricks on me, and those fuck-heads didn’t have anything to do with my friend’s disappearance, then there truly is no explanation for what happened.
My therapist and parents both agree. The best way to preserve my sanity is to chalk it all up to my imagination. But I see understanding in their eyes when I recount the events. They want to believe me, I know it. That alone is enough to fuel my doubt.
—
School had begun that September with mourning. I only knew the guy who passed away by face and name. It had happened a month after his graduation, and two months before his first year at Cornell.
During the intercom-ordered moment of silence, I looked out through the classroom. Some were bored, some cried. Many shifted in their seats and were glancing around, like myself, counting every second till the awkwardness would end.
It ended sooner than we thought when a kid with sports goggles a size too big bouncing on his face slammed the door open, obliviously clarifying his attendance.
I'm embarrassed to say that this kid, Aiden, was the only friend I had made in high school until this point. I have a hard time introducing myself to others, but being friends with a prepubescent outcast wasn't making that any easier.
After middle school, my family moved to the small village we live in now. It was a brainless choice because my Mom had found better work, my Dad wanted to be closer to his aging parents, and I desperately wanted out of my old school.
Aiden was the first kid to introduce himself when I transferred last year. I realized he was the token 'weird kid' way too late to make it into any social circles. I know it sounds like I'm a shit friend, but that's the way our relationship turned out. Sure, we told our parents and teachers we were friends, but in reality, it was more a tolerance than friendship.
After all, we didn't have anyone else.
For once, I was thankful for Aiden's lack of awareness. It gave me something to focus on instead of the depressing silence strangling the room.
After realizing his mistake, he whispered an apology, sat down, and pulled out an insect encyclopedia from his book bag. What a nerd.
I distracted myself by reading the book from over his shoulder, and before I knew it, lights were turned back on and class began in earnest.
—
I was able to learn what had happened by eavesdropping on hallway gossip between my classes.
Eight kids, six seniors and two juniors, had found a cave in a region of forest known as Skeleton Park. With that discovery, they decided to add spelunking to their pre-graduation bucket list.
Skeleton Park is the setting of countless local ghost stories, which made it a hot spot for rebellious teen antics. Kids would do everything there: party, drink, smoke, fuck, and everything in between. They even crawled around in caves apparently.
When I first moved, I was a skeptic with no intent of exploring the woods. But one creepy phenomenon always unnerved me. For some reason, animals completely avoided the area.
I initially dismissed this as fiction, like all the other folk tales, until I started walking my dog, Paddy, along the town's bike trail.
The trail runs parallel to the remains of a stone wall outlining Skeleton Park. The first couple of times I walked along it, I didn't notice anything peculiar. But after my Dad first told me about the rumors, I became aware that the area was unnaturally silent. No birds chirped in the trees, no flies buzzing, and no rustling from rodents or any other animals.
Even more surreal, on several occasions I saw deer stop at the wall and walk along it instead of passing through the area. It was like there was an invisible border they refused to cross.
With this context, I'm sure you can understand the reaction of the locals when eight kids entered, and only seven escaped two days later, traumatized and bruised.
Honestly, I was surprised to not have heard about the event over the summer, closer to when it happened. Even more strange though, was how unwilling Aiden was to talk about the incident.
He was the kind of kid who had a strong opinion about everything. On top of that, he was constantly bringing up horror movies, or Creepypastas he had found online. But when I asked his opinion on this summer's events during recess, he only shrugged. Despite the nonchalant response, the look on his face told me that it bothered him. So I didn’t press, and let the subject go.
At the time I'd guessed that he might've had some connection to the kid that went missing. In a way, he did.
—
After an exhausting day of attempts from teachers to console their students with speeches, candy, and exceptional lenience, I was ready to go home.
I expected to find Aidan at the usual spot by the bike racks, where we met each day to walk home. Instead, there was an audience next to the bikes, forming a ring around two disheveled figures.
The flying fists and shouting could only mean one thing, so I kept my distance. Then I heard Aidan yell center, “Fucker!’ and saw a glimpse of his face spitting from a bloody mouth onto the other fighter.
Even though his back was to me, I could tell Aidan’s opponent was easily 5 inches, and 60 pounds heavier than my friend.
Teachers didn’t arrive to break up the fight before the two were on the ground, Aidan mounted with arms up, desperately trying to block blows.
A whistle was blown, and people began running away as my math teacher desperately tried to pry the football player off of Aidan.
He fought back the grown man and was finally pulled away when two more adults rushed to help. The boy was screaming at Aiden with carnal rage.
"You're a fucking liar! How dare you, I'm going to fucking kill you if I ever see you again!"
Aidan was still screaming too, but backed away willingly.
"I'm telling the truth dumbass! You were trespassing! You should be lucky we didn't press charges!"
Aiden looked bad but waved the teachers off whenever they asked if he was OK. Blood poured from his forehead, mouth, and nose. He had at least one black eye.
The other guy, I learned from the crowd, was one of the two juniors who had gone to the cave. He didn't have as many cuts or bruises but was supporting his weight on one leg and his friend's shoulder. Multiple teachers forced him into a chair while they waited for a nurse to arrive.
While the crowd control was distracted, Aiden sneaked over to me and whispered that we needed to get out of there. A couple of minutes later, the two of us were walking home like nothing had ever happened.
It took me a while before I dared to ask Aiden for the full story. He didn't even let me finish my question, which let me know he was more or less his usual self.
"My family inherited the property everyone calls Skeleton Park. It's not haunted, it's not toxic, it's not the home of a satanic sex cult; it's just a piece of forest that's been in my family for a couple of generations."
He spat a dribble of red onto the sidewalk, and I realized I'd never seen Aiden get violent before. We had our share of bullying this past year, but he would always shrug it off and laugh. He wouldn't even try to fight back. We would just get pushed around a bit, and he'd make a quip afterward about the guys' weight or smell.
"Every summer, my dad and I drive around the perimeter putting up trespassing signs, and every year they get ripped down. We get police calls once a month during the summer that somebody came limping out of there with a broken arm or leg, and they have the balls to demand we do something about it. It's not our fault nobody follows the law around here. It's the fucking woods, and it's our private property. What the hell are we even supposed to do?"
To be honest, I hadn't even considered Skeleton Park could've been private property. Though I believed everything Aiden said, I had never seen any signs along the border wall. Embarrassed from being one of those trespassers, I looked away and stayed silent as Aiden continued.
"The area is just too big. There are too many places to enter, and there's no way to block it all off. Though it's not like that'll stop anybody. I feel bad that somebody died, but I'm also a little bit thankful. Maybe now, people will think twice before messing around out there."
We walked in silence until reaching the junction where we would have to part ways. I was tired and wanted to head home, but I also was worried that Aiden would be jumped by some of the seniors if he was alone. It had happened before, and his earlier brawl could've been seen as a declaration of war.
Instead of voicing these concerns, however, I asked if he wanted to play video games at his house. He was surprised by the request but agreed.
I was on edge with every passing car, and every blind turn, but thankfully we weren’t attacked. After a couple more minutes of walking, we made it to Aiden’s house. His Dad was outside watering the garden. He turned, noticing our approach in the corner of his eye, but his planned greeting died in his mouth when he saw the dried blood coating Aiden’s face.
"Holy Shit! what did you do this time?" he exclaimed, running over to inspect his son’s injuries. "Oh, hey Brian," he added, smiling briefly at me before returning to his analysis.
Mr. Eriks was cool for a dad. Aiden never had a bad thing to say about him, and the way he handled everything that happened in the following months would only increase my admiration for him. He'd raised Aiden by himself, and I would've considered him a second friend if he wasn't 40 years older than me.
After determining the damage wasn't all that bad: a cut on Aidan's forehead and lip producing most of the blood, the three of us went inside.
Aiden went upstairs to take a shower, and his dad privately thanked me for walking him home. It didn’t take long for me to cave, and ask Mr. Eriks about the park.
"Yeah, we do own it," he answered while preparing snacks for Aiden and me. " My wife, Aiden's mom, inherited it before she passed away, and then it was signed over to me. To be honest, I don't know too much about it, and she didn't either. We just used it to go camping there sometimes, back before Aiden was born. Now we go together because it reminds us of her."
"Did you ever run into people up there, when you're camping?"
"Yeah, though not in the fall and winter when we usually go. I have the police's local number on speed dial for when it happens. Usually, it's just teens though. Kids tend to run away as soon as they see an adult with a flashlight. Paranormal or not, they know they're not supposed to be there- You staying with us for dinner Brian?"
At this point, I was too curious about the truth of Skeleton Park to leave, so I nodded and said I just needed to check with my parents.
After a phone call with my mom, some pizza rolls, and a couple of rounds of Fortnite, the afternoon stress had mostly faded away.
Me and Aidan were sitting in his room, scrolling Netflix for a slasher film to watch, when I finally asked what I'd been dying to know the entire afternoon.
"So, why was that guy saying you're a liar?"
Aiden chuckled at the question.
"He refused to believe my family owned the property his friend died on."
"Why did you even say anything? You know that just makes them want to beat you up more, right?"
"I'm tired of everybody using our land like a public park, I'm tired of picking up condoms left by people I go to school with, and I'm tired of keeping quiet about it. I tried explaining it to people in middle school. Our first project in fifth grade was a presentation about something important to us, I did mine about the park. Nobody believed me, and it got me socially exiled for the next four years. "
I ignored the urge to explain that there was probably more to his social exile than a get-to-know-you presentation from four years ago.
"That's fair I guess," I said instead. "You're dad says you go camping there."
"Yeah, on three-day weekends, and sometimes longer on breaks. Mostly in the fall and winter when there are less trespassers."
"You don't find it creepy camping there? Even without the trespassers?"
"You mean because of the silence?" Aiden smiled and looked over at me. "Yeah, the rumor about the animals is true as far as I can tell. Sure. It's kind of weird, but in winter it's kind of beautiful too. After a blizzard, there's nothing to disturb the snow, and it's kinda like the whole forest has gone to sleep. With the snow and no animals, it can get so quiet that you hear your own heart beating."
He looked off past me with a feeling of nostalgia, but all I felt was chills.
"I can take you if you want," Aiden added. "I'll have to ask my dad, but I think it would be fun to have another person camp with us."
"I'll think about it," was my way of declining without saying no.
Aiden just shrugged. "Suit yourself. Offer still stands if you ever change your mind."
Much to my annoyance, we weren’t even able to finish the movie. My Mom called, saying she was outside to pick me up an hour into our viewing of The Blair Witch Project.
I went to bed wondering how anyone could feel safe camping in a place like that. After contemplating taking Aidan up on his offer, I concluded there could be nothing that would make me spend the night there. Ironically, it would be less than a week before I changed my mind.
—
Three days later, I was walking Paddy along our usual route when she stopped and looked up at something beyond the stone wall, into Skeleton Park. She stood like a statue, eyes wide and fixated on some invisible thing.
I tried tugging the leash, pulling out a treat, begging, and making all kinds of sounds, but she just stood there. Paddy was a six-year-old golden retriever who easily weighed as much as I did, so I couldn't do much more than wait for her to move.
Suddenly, she began barking wildly at the air.
I tried approaching, but she growled at me, a sound I had never heard from her before, and I was forced to back away.
Before I could even process what was happening. She leaped over the wall and ran at full speed into the woods. It all happened so quickly that I had no time to tighten my grip on the leash.
She sprinted straight into the woods, and I chased after her, but I didn't make it far without tripping on a root hidden among the leaves. My knee was split open by something as I fell, and it took all my strength, fighting past the shock, to get back up. After recovering, I looked in all directions, but couldn't see Paddy anymore. I could only hear the tossing of leaves and branches in the distance.
Then there was nothing. Not a single sound. I'm not sure why I didn't question the sudden silence back then. It wasn't the gradual fade into silence you would expect from something running away. It was as if somebody had just hit a mute button on everything but the wind through the trees.
I don't know, maybe I'm misremembering the details.
Patty's disappearance doesn't matter anyway. We never found her, and dogs don’t live for twenty years, so at this point, we never will.
After taking a moment to recover from the shock, I limped home crying and told my parents what had happened. My Dad called the police because it was the only thing we could think of, but all they did was apologize and recommend we put up posters.
They couldn't do anything even if they wanted to. After all, she ran onto private property.
After that, the last thing I could think to do was call Aiden. His dad promised they could search the park that night, and he also offered to take me for an extended search the following weekend in case they didn’t find anything.
Of course, they didn't find her, just half of a leash wrapped around a branch. At least, that's what my parents told me the Eriks had found, they never actually let me see it.
A day before the trip, the Forecast started predicting snow: Saturday night into Sunday, eight inches, wet.
I probably should've given up then. Instead, I told Aiden this would probably be my only chance to find Paddy, insisting she wouldn't survive in the snow. After making sure with his dad, we continued with the plan and headed out after school Friday night.
—
While it hurts keeping this story in, reliving the memories is almost as painful. So I'm going to take a break writing for now and continue in a day or two. If anyone has a scientific explanation for why animals were avoiding that area, or for my dog's behavior, please let me know.
Thanks for reading, B
Part 1

Any others with splenic auth that have examples of things they look to in their body for decision making?
I know this is going to be unique to everyone, but any personal stories or anecdotes would be helpful info to have.
My background with HD is I found it about 2-3 years ago from a popular HD creator. I have since read a good chunk of the IHDS textbook and taken the first LYD class (with plans to take more).
Every experiment I have run so far just sort of seems to end up resistant. I am still pretty consistently second-guessing everything because I didn't heafeel an answer the first time. Right now, I feel a bit stagnant with a dead-end 9-5 job and tiny network.
I guess I'm not even sure where to start, since I feel I'm deconditioning somewhat, but am struggling with the speed at which it is happening.
I was out of touch with my body for quite some time. I'm excited to know it intimately again, but I'm not sure how to get back into the dating phase. Anyone who has gotten back into that committed relationship, would love to hear from ya!

This subreddit needs an official questionnaire and I think this one is easy enough to answer. I don't expect to become sure of my type because of internet strangers, but I do like answering questions about myself.
My Enneagram type is either 6w5 or 9w8, 469, sp/so. I have autism. (I think an official questionnaire should ask for this information. Autism can influence E (empathy), F (sensory issues), V (executive dysfunction) and L (special interests). A high self-preservation instinct can look like F (routines, health), sexual and social can look like F too (wanting to look attractive or socially acceptable (or maybe like you belong to a subculture). A low sexual or social instinct could look like lower E.)
L (logic)

• How much time and energy do you spend researching or studying? Do you like researching and studying, and why?

I enjoy studying, but every time I decide I should do it more I make a plan of everything I want to study and then it starts feeling very heavy. I want to only study fun topics like typology, psychology, philosophy and languages. I do it for fun and because I feel inferior when I have less knowledge than other people.

• How many of your own opinions do you form? How often do you do actual thinking on your own, more than just finding an existing answer?

I have some core beliefs that help me form opinions on different topics (for example the theory of evolution, which can be applied to most topics). I sometimes form an opinion based on what makes sense for me instead of what is factual. If I don't understand something I can be skeptical, if something I don't believe in (for example astrology) got scientifically proven I would feel very uncomfortable and question the results.

• How often do you talk about concepts or facts? Why exactly do you talk about it, and what do you like talking about most?

I like telling people about personality systems. I think teaching people and typing them makes me feel useful, and I need to type people irl if I want to understand the systems. I sometimes talk about philosophy, but that usually doesn't go anywhere because my beliefs are too unromantic for other people and they often judge me for being a nihilist or an egoist. I also like learning and teaching languages, maybe too much. I think some people feel pressured by me trying to teach them.

• Do you struggle with thinking about things by yourself? Does this bother you, and how much? How well do you handle criticism from others when it comes to your logical concepts or factual knowledge?

I often struggle with understanding scientific topics. It does bother me a lot, I am afraid of my future children asking me to explain physics to them. I avoid criticism like the plague, I don't want to express anything that could be false so I often either don't express myself or triple check everything. I easily doubt my own opinion, especially if the topic is a complex one like typology. Philosophy is much simpler, you just state your opinion and then the other persons states theirs and then you both think that the other person is stupid, but this is easy for me to say since my opinion is always the simplest one and therefore correct. ("What is the moral choice her?" "Morality isn't real." "Was this a selfish action?" "All actions are selfish." "What is the meaning of life?" "There is no meaning." "Is god real?" "We don't have any proof that god exists.")

• Did you enjoy answering the above questions? Would you say this is a major part of who you are or your identity? Was it boring? Is it a difficult topic?

Yeah, it was fun. It is a major part of me, but I know that if I had been born into the stone ages it wouldn't be.
E (emotion)

• Do you consider yourself a creative person? What do you do that's creative?

Not really, I sometimes have creative ideas but I rarely do anything with them.

• How do you feel about expressing your own emotions? Are emotions part of your decision-making at all? How much of a role do they play in your decisions?

I am fine with expressing emotions like anger or fun, but I don't want to express deeper or less strong feelings like love. I rarely love people, and I can't express something I don't feel.
Of course they are part of my decision making process, they are for every human. If you choose a path because it feels the most secure you are making a decision based on anxiety, or on wanting to feel more comfort than anxiety in the future. I sometimes base my decisions on excitement. I don't want to have a boring job.

• How much effort do you put into creating a positive emotional influence on other people? Do you try to do this at all? Do you like exploring the emotions or creativity of others?

I try my best to not create a negative one, and I try to make people feel better about themselves when they are insecure about something. I am not very interested in talking about the feelings of my friends, but I do play therapist sometimes because of my interest in psychology. I am interested in creativity in general, I enjoy listening to music and making and sharing playlists, but I am usually not deeply interested in my friends.

• Do you feel uncomfortable with the idea of sharing your emotions? Do you struggle with knowing exactly how to connect with others on a deeper and more emotional level? Do you struggle with knowing how to go about dealing with and handling your emotions?

Yes, it makes me feel either vulnerable (if I have strong emotions) or inhuman (if I don't have enough). Yes, I don't do it much. The thought makes me uncomfortable. Yes, but ONLY because I'm very sensitive and quickly cry, which can be very inconvenient and I don't know how to stop it.

• Did you enjoy answering the above questions? Would you say this is a major part of who you are or your identity? Was it boring? Is it a difficult topic?

Yes. Not really, but I have been thinking about morality more so maybe in the future, although that might be more of a Volition topic.
F (physics / foundation)

• How much time and energy do you put into your physical health? Do you try new healthcare or self-care products often? How often, and what kinds of products do you like trying?

Sleeping and not being hungry are important to me, but apart from that I don't do much. I don't care about what I eat or where I sleep as long as it's enough. I don't often try new products, if I do it's either because I noticed a problem (which can take a long time) or because my mother (3F) noticed one.

• How much do you care about your physical appearance, including fashion choices, or decorating the physical environment for comfort? Do you like exploring the physical environment (food, nature, architecture, etc), or doing physical activity?

I think I used to care about it for a while, but then I either forgot about it or decided that it is a waste of money and time. I still have preferences, I just try to not spend too much energy on them. I enjoy nature and some sports, but I sometimes forget about them for a while. I sadly don't get much pleasure from eating or looking at things.

• Do you like talking about your personal tastes often? How often do you explore the personal tastes of others? What about your own health or the health of others? Do you like creating or exploring comfortable environments with others?

Yes, but the tastes I talk about are my taste in music or movies. I don't like hearing about other people's tastes as much because I feel like I then have to spend time listening to their favorite artists, and then I have to form an opinion on it... and I don't like most artists.
Idk about the other questions.

• Do you stress about what people will think regarding your personal tastes? Do you prefer to follow fashion trends in worry that people may judge your own style? Do you worry about being sick or in poor physical health often? Are you able to take criticism about your health, aesthetic choices, personal tastes, or physical appearance?

No. No. Sometimes I think that I'm sick, but it doesn't make me panic. Not sure, I think I sometimes ignore it and sometimes follow it, it probably depends on how much effort changing it would take. My mother is 3F and I think her criticisms are annoying, she wants me to change my knife holding habits and stop eating old cooked rice (I hate wasting food). But I can critique other people, for example for not being clean or practical enough.

• Did you enjoy answering the above questions? Would you say this is a major part of who you are or your identity? Was it boring? Is it a difficult topic?

Not really, it wasn't difficult, just a bit boring. It's not important to me, except my fashion choices since they usually reflect my identity.
V (volition)

• Do you know how to get what you want? How much effort do you put into figuring out how to get what you want? Do you just take action and get started, do you plan, do you research or try to get advice from others?

Yes, but only in the physical world, I can for example get people to watch my favorite movie.
I make detailed plans that are too ambitious for me to follow. I like having a detailed plan, it makes me feel like I can achieve my goals. If I'm panicking about a goal I make a detailed plan. But I usually don't follow the plan because I have low energy/ problems motivating myself. I take advice from others if they are more knowledgable than me and probably from my mother.

• How often do you feel motivated to work on your future? How often are you busy working on a goal for the future? Do you prefer routine, or often fall into routine? Is your routine making progress on a goal? What makes you change your routine? What makes you start working on a goal?

Sometimes I get the feeling that I need to get my life together and then I make a bunch of plans and lists, but I don't work on them enough. I procrastinate a lot. I'm bad at routines, I prefer making a to do list every day. I sometimes try establishing a routine to reach a goal, but then I forget to follow it or am unable to follow it exactly because I can't predict how long a task will take or because something gets in the way. I either start working on a goal when I'm motivated or when I'm panicking.

• Do you like guiding or helping people reach their goals? What kinds of goals do you prefer to help people with? Are you a leader, or do you prefer to work in groups where you're an equal? How and when do you take charge, if ever?

Yes, it makes me feel useful. I always try to make people feel like they can reach their goals, but I can also be critical, especially about job choices. I sometimes get the urge to make language study plans for people.
I prefer working in groups of people I know well, if I'm with strangers I'm too shy to speak up. I take charge in small groups of incompetent people, I can remind people of their responsibilities, but I don't want to make decisions on my own. I can also take charge when it comes to physical needs like food (but I will ask everyone their preferences).

• Do you overwork yourself? Do you worry that you might be lazy or that you aren't progressing quickly enough? Does it feel impossible to find the right method forward? Are you able to take criticism over your choices for working towards your goals? How do you respond to being challenged?

No, I am too easily stressed. I don't worry about being lazy, I know that it's true. I do feel a lot of shame and anxiety about my productivity, but I think anyone who is as lazy as me would.
I worry about missing something. Do I really want this future? Isn't there something better out there? I've changed my mind about my future in the past and wasted a lot of time that way, so now I want to make sure, but that's impossible. Finding the right method is important too. It does feel impossible but that's because it IS, noone can really know the future except maybe a super-super-computer.
I think I can take criticism, but I might cry or consider murder before accepting it, especially if it includes a character judgement (I've heard "You're too sensitive for this job. You should try [similar job] instead." Who do you think you are to give me advice? You don't know my reasons for choosing this job.). Except if the criticism is not valid, then I can ignore it.

• Did you enjoy answering the above questions? Would you say this is a major part of who you are or your identity? Was it boring? Is it a difficult topic?

More difficult than boring, it's difficult for me to separate Volition from the other aspects. I used to not have any goals, but now it is a part of my identity, but I know that my goals might change.

I am writing a fic where narration will be a mix of scenes, flashbacks and letters exchanged between the characters. I am quite happy with this structure and the change of perspective that comes with it, so I don't plan to change this. However, this results in "chapters" that are of varying length, with scenes being anywhere between 1k and 4k words, or more, and some letters being as short as 200 words, and could not realistically be made any longer. I expect the fic to be around 40k in total. I have read that when posting on AO3, readers prefer a more even chapter length distribution, more on the longer side, therefore I'm worried that the structure of my writing would annoy some people. I have thought about grouping letters together to form one longer chapter. However it would not always work, because sometimes I only have a couple short messages between much longer scenes. Also, I was planning to use the chapter title to give context to the letters and scenes, for example: "Scene: New York, 3rd April 1994" or "Letter: Joseph to Margaret, Boston, 9th January 1995". Grouping letters together would make this impossible, or at least confusing. As a reader, how would you prefer to have this posted? Would it be fair, for example, if I decided to post every week, but made sure to post at least 2k words at a time, no matter how many chapters that would take if short letters are to be included? Should I make an author's note about this? Thanks a lot for your insights!

I was recently introduced to the snark subreddits by someone in my parenting group. I was curious to learn about people having big families and so I wanted to read it for that reason, because we have a big secular family, but honestly, some of the discourse I'm seeing about it from the snarkers is not only really gross, ignorant, and sometimes comes off as mentally unwell, but it leaves me wondering if some of them have ever actually seen a household with a baby, or if they just hate all women and babies.
The generalizations that they make are also weird. I grew up in an abusive household, but my parents were not the least bit religious (just plain old neglectful and self-centered and not understanding that children aren't adults), and the whole fundie world is foreign to me as someone who grew up in a city of mostly autistic yuppies (I say this with fondness as an autist myself). However, I still see stuff that the fundies are doing as just normal human things and find the singling out of them for fundie snark to be weird.
I'm beginning to understand that a lot of the posters grew up as fundies and have idealized fantasies about the rest of the world that simply aren't true.
For example:

• Going to public school doesn't make kids well adjusted or adequately educated, and the very idea is laughable to me as someone who was briefly a teacher.
  
• I endured corporal punishment in both public and private school in a "blue state" secular community, so that's not special to fundies. Unfortunately it's a practice that a lot of secular adults believe to work, and teachers are often immune from criticism.
  
• Kids can still be sick even with constant medical care and precautions, and making them into germphobes and hypochondriacs is its own problem.
  
• Atheistic parents aren't inherently less abusive. They can still be mentally ill. My parents went through decades of secular therapy and were still abusive, and actually used their therapist to abuse me (because therapists tend to take the word of the abusive parent over kids and will approach everything like the kid is the problem).
  
• Most people eat cheaply because they're ignorant about nutrition and their kids are mildly malnourished even without having a big or religious family.
  

None of these are problems that magically go away outside of fundie families. Are they less common outside of fundie households? I don't know. My inclination is to say that no, they're just common human problems.
As an atheist, I do disagree with the teaching of religion the way that fundies typically do it, and wonder about how it affects kids. I disagree with their biblical principles of child rearing, and think that they unfortunately lead to the kinds of adults who are now pathologically snarking on their fundie childhoods. It's obviously not healthy. This is worth criticizing, but the other snark... A lot of it is just hateful.
Anyway, this is just my thoughts as someone new to the community who was curious to see a different way of raising big families, and came away disappointed more in the ignorance of the average snarker than the ignorance of the ones getting snarked on.

I am 19 years old, and I never had a girlfriend. I already had a semi-hookup(cuddled and held hands), but I never kissed or had sex. Is this how I wanted my romantic life to be at 19? No, I thought that it will come.
Too bad that I finally understood that magic DOESN'T exist just 7 months ago, and that DISNEY LOVE STORIES DO NOT HAPPEN. On the other hand, it's good that I didn't remain delusional longer, until 25, for example.
How do I feel now? I feel missing out, really missing out. I am already two years behind the national average in losing your virginity.
Can it be objectively assured that, beyond reasonable doubt, I will remain virgin for life. No. Women don't bully me, I am generally not treated bad because of my looks. I am not perceived as creep. I never had a hard rejection. I get some matches on Tinder and other dating apps, I've been on a few dates. Nevertheless, it doesn't erases the envy I feel towards others, and the sadness of having missed out. Is it bad and a sin to envy, absolutely, and I pray to God for forgiveness and regularly repent.
This state of sadness on missing out puts me however in constant sadness, perhaps. It makes me perhaps assume that I'll never find a girlfriend, that time will fly by, and things will remain as they are.
Also, I absolutely hate my sex drive and body. My penis is ugly, my hairy legs are ugly, I only like my pretty face as seen from the front, and maybe my belly. I hate my libido. I think make sex drive was created by Satan, and is a part of Satan's kingdom on Earth.
What plan do I have? Well, I can tell you, there is NO FUCKING WAY I will remain virgin after 25. I will try to go with plan A until 25. After, I have established plans B and C.
In Plan B, I will find a boyfriend. I am desired in the gay community, and gays love me(got 100+ likes in an evening on gay Tinder). Is it the same as having a girlfriend? No, it will be worse. Is being in a gay relationship better than being a 25 year old virgin? Absolutely!
In Plan C, I get rid of my male body. I will start taking Estrogen HRT. I will remain stealth until FFS. After FFS, I move to a new city, don't tell anyone that I was born male, live as a normal woman. After, I will get SRS. And then, I will find a husband(trans woman here on Reddit told me that they have a lot of Tinder likes so it won't be a problem.). We will get married, adopt two children, and live my dream middle class suburban family life. I'll be just the wife, and not the husband. Is it better than being a 25 year old virgin? ABSOLUTELY, MUCH MUCH BETTER! Is it better than having a girlfriend? I never had sex, so I can't be sure. However, I would say yes, because I'll get rid of the shit between my legs.
EDIT, A lesson I understood: THERE IS NOT SOMEONE THERE FOR EVERYONE. MAGIC DOESN'T HAPPEN. IF YOU DON'T TAKE ACTION, ,you WILL remain single for the REST OF YOUR LIFE! Take action NOW, UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE TO START!
You have the moral obligation to TRY AT YOUR MAXIMUM the Plan A, before inventing yourself the Plans B and C.

I feel like my dad kinda treats me like a business partner
Every time I need a ride (or just anything) from him, he makes me send him a google calendar invite with every detail.
And when I don't do it early enough he gets really mad at me
He is also very sensitive about me not wasting his time.
For example, if I get picked up by him, I always have pay attention to my phone so that I can pick up his call and be out as soon as he arrives.
This honestly messed me up so much and really made me an anxious person. Every time I see my friends who can make spontaneous plans or are so chill with having their parents wait a little bit and not hurry while getting picked up I'm so jealous.
My dad's a IB/Finance bro if that explains anything lol XD

I have just left academia either for a season or forever and I have a job outside it already. I might even have an adjunct gig for the summer, there is some interest, but you know how that goes. One option I am seriously considering is going back for a Ph.D. I have achieved a lot with a MS and if all I did was teach off the TT all this time I'd be fine with being done with it. Maybe what I didn't thrive in was where I was but not what I was doing for all those years?

• Should I try for a Ph. D. then look for non-teaching jobs related to my research?
• Will a break from paying the bills with academic work be a "death knell" to plans like that?
• Which leads me to another idea. How about getting funded with a grant for the work I am doing for this big science project? Is that possible without having a job?

This is the nuance, I am still going to be doing academic work but without funding.
I am part of a big science project. It involves detecting gravitational waves in a place and in a way no one has done before. I have published with that project. I will again in the future. I am part of some committees on that project. This is not due to me having the job I did, it was on the merit of my own publications that I got into this.
I am a member of this project whether I have a job or not. So, no matter what even if it does not pay, I'm going to be part of this very academic undertaking. What I'd really like is to find a paying position in which doing this research is part of why I have the job. Being a PhD student could do that.

Hello everyone,
I'm currently running a Synology NAS with DSM 7.2.1 and have recently added a Synology RT6600ax router to my setup. I'm planning to use the DNS Server package in the router to set up a fully qualified domain name (for instance, "example.local") for my NAS, which will be used exclusively within my local network.
However, I'm stuck at the next step, which is obtaining an SSL certificate for "example.local". I've attempted to get a certificate from Let's Encrypt, but unfortunately, it fails with an error message stating "unable to get certificate". I suspect that my ISP might have blocked the necessary ports for this to work.
I've read about creating my own SSL Certificate Authority (CA) for local servers, but I'm not sure if this is the best approach or if there's a simpler way to do it. Importantly, I would like to emphasize that I'm not keen on involving any external services in this setup. My preference is to establish all of this within my local network, ensuring that my data remains secure and private.
Could someone please guide me on how to proceed from here and how to set up the SSL certificate for "example.local" without relying on external services? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you in advance!
TL;DR: Need help obtaining an SSL certificate for "example.local" after setting up DNS in Synology RT6600ax router and Synology NAS DS918+. Let's Encrypt certificate generation fails, possibly due to ISP blocking ports. Prefer to set up everything within the local network without involving external services.

Lesson Plan: Exploring Exciting Language Tricks
I. Introduction A. What Are Special Language Tricks? B. Why Do Authors Use Them? C. Today's Fun Journey: Discovering Language Magic!
II. Epistrophe: Echoing Words for Effect A. Definition: Repeating Words at the End B. Example: "Friends, friends, friends, we will always be friends." C. Activity: Find Repetition in a Short Poem Together
III. Anadiplosis: Building Word Bridges A. Definition: Repeating the Last Word at the Beginning B. Example: "Hope leads to dreams; dreams lead to possibilities." C. Activity: Build Your Own Sentences with a Word Bridge
IV. Aposiopesis: The Suspenseful Pause A. Definition: Leaving a Sentence Unfinished B. Example: "I was so excited, but then—" C. Activity: Create Your Own Suspenseful Dialogues
V. Epizeuxis: The Power of Repeat Power A. Definition: Repeating a Word for Emphasis B. Example: "Never, never, give up!" C. Activity: Boost Your Message with Repeat Power
VI. Chiasmus: Mirror, Mirror on the Sentence A. Definition: Flipping Words to Create Balance B. Example: "Reading books is enjoyable; enjoyable is reading books." C. Activity: Make a Balanced Sentence Mirror
VII. Enjambment: Words Skipping Happily Along A. Definition: Sentences Skipping Over Lines B. Example: "I skipped down the road,\nLaughing all the way." C. Activity: Create a Skip-and-Jump Poem
VIII. Paraprosdokian: The Sentence Surprise A. Definition: Ending a Sentence with a Twist B. Example: "I wanted a pet, so I got a fish, but now it barks!" C. Activity: Surprise Your Friends with Funny Sentences
IX. Anaphora: Friends, Friends Everywhere A. Definition: Repeating Words at the Beginning B. Example: "I love playing; I love learning; I love laughing." C. Activity: Share What You Love with Anaphora
X. Hendiadys: Two Words, Double Fun A. Definition: Using Two Words for One Idea B. Example: "Jump and dance, not sit and watch." C. Activity: Mix and Match Words for Fun Expressions
XI. Litotes: Saying More with Less A. Definition: Making a Situation Sound Less B. Example: "The homework wasn't too tricky." C. Activity: Describe Your Day with a Touch of Modesty
XII. Conclusion: Language Magic Recap A. Fun Recap of Our Language Tricks B. Exciting Homework: Pick Your Favorite Trick and Use It in a Short Story or Poem!
This toned-down lesson plan aims to introduce sixth-grade students to literary devices in a playful and engaging manner, encouraging them to experiment with language tricks in their own creative expressions.

There are some kinds of wisdom only great suffering can bring. I remember my time in the Bardo with this in mind, for otherwise, the memory might drive me insane.
The night my heart stopped for nearly three minutes started off normally enough. I was working as a nurse in the psychiatric ward at a hospital in the state’s capital. Most of the patients there were harmless, mostly just suicide attempts or people suffering from drug psychosis or severe depression, but some were actively dangerous and certainly psychopathic in every sense of the word. The new admission was one of these- a three-hundred pound black man with a long history of smoking PCP, schizophrenia and violent, psychotic breaks from reality.
His eyes looked like flat pieces of slate as I walked in for my shift. They looked as blank and emotionless as the eyes of a doll. He sat at the table in the front room where the patients ate or played cards, alone under the bright fluorescent lights of the hospital. I walked to the station, where another psychiatric nurse named Ricardo was sitting behind the desk.
“What’s the deal with the new guy?” I asked him. Ricardo looked up, his dark Spanish face forming into a deep scowl. He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair nervously.
“He’s trouble, man,” he said in a crisp accent. “He got in a chase with the police and then punched some cops in the face. It took three guys to take him down, even after he got maced and tased. The judge sent him here on a temporary court order, since he claims he’s been getting chased by Nazis in UFOs, and that’s why he ran from the cops. He thought the cops in their uniforms were actually the SS, and the helicopters were alien spacecraft, or something. I don’t know, I didn’t listen to the whole story.”
“You have his file?” I asked. Ricardo leafed through a stack of folders with his thin fingers, snatching one out and handing it to me. I looked down, reading the information:
“Jeremiah Brown, black male, 37-years-old.
“History: Polysubstance abuse, schizophrenia, antisocial personality disorder.
“Psychiatrist’s note: This patient has scored a 36 out of 40 on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist. While I am always hesitant to label a patient as an antisocial personality, a combination of factors has made it essential for this patient.
“Patient has an extensive criminal history as well as a lengthy history of involuntary psychiatric admissions. He has been diagnosed as having antisocial traits since he was a young teenager. Patient has a long history of violence and suicide attempts. He has a history of imprisonment for manslaughter, armed robbery, grand theft and aggravated assault. Upon discharge, he refuses to take any antipsychotic medication, citing the side effects as the reason. Long-term prognosis is poor…”
I had not been sleeping well the past few weeks. I rubbed my eyes as I read through the file, feeling exhausted. I tried putting on lucid dreaming or meditation music from YouTube to help me sleep, but whenever I closed my eyes, I saw horrible things: chalk-white female faces whose lips were cut into an insane rictus grin, flicking their heads violently from side to side and gnashing their fangs at the air. I had a feeling that many years of constantly watching horror movies and serial killer documentaries was catching up with me.
As I read through the file, a student nurse came around the corner wearing a white state university outfit and a name tag that said Kaitlyn. I looked up, seeing Ricardo wink at me from where he was sitting in his chair behind the main desk.
“She’s going to follow you,” he said. Inwardly, I groaned, but I managed to force a smile.
“Oh, great!” I said. She looked like she was probably no older than nineteen or twenty. She had a pretty body, but her face looked strange. All the angles were too sharp and her nose too large. I knew the patients here wouldn’t care, though. They would hit on anything. I sensed trouble. I looked down at my watch.
“Well, I’m Jay, and you already know Ricardo, I guess. It’s good timing, because we need to give medications every day at 9 PM. And we have a new patient, so we can introduce ourselves,” I said, giving her a faint smile.
“That’s exciting!” Kaitlyn whispered. I wanted to roll my eyes. It was definitely not exciting.
I motioned her to follow me as I made my way to the medication room, which was really just a large closet off of the main day room. I had to enter my code on a keypad, and then, once inside, enter it again along with the patient’s number and date of birth. The correct drawers for the medication in each specific dose would fly open, making it extremely hard for the wrong medications or doses to be given, unless it was done intentionally.
“OK, so for this patient, we need Haldol, Ativan and…” I began saying to Kaitlyn when the yelling started. It came out faintly, rising in volume and anger within seconds. I heard Ricardo’s Spanish voice, filled with panic. Something slammed hard against a wall, once, twice, three times, and then I heard the sound of glass breaking. I jumped, spinning around, but I couldn’t see much through the small, shatter-proof glass pane on the wooden door.
“Stay here,” I commanded, seeing Kaitlyn’s eyes widen, her freckled skin looking much paler than when we had first come in. “Don’t leave until I come back and say that it’s safe.” On the speakers strung throughout the hospital, I heard the first of the warnings echo out around us.
“Doctor Strong, Doctor Strong, please report to the seventh floor,” a robotic female voice said calmly, using the code for when a patient had to be subdued by force. I pushed the door open, slamming it shut behind me so that the lock would activate and protect Kaitlyn from whatever chaos was going on.
I heard Ricardo pleading with someone at the end of the hallway that ran past the main desk. He sounded strange, as if he were trying to talk through a mouthful of blood. Huddled behind the main computer, I saw one of the CNAs frantically whispering something in the phone. She must have been the one to call the Dr. Strong order.
“You don’t have to do this, man,” Ricardo gurgled faintly. I couldn’t see what was happening, as Jeremiah’s large body was blocking my view. I could see that the thick glass window at the end of the hallway was broken, however. My heart skipped a beat as I surmised what was likely happening.
I sprinted forward as quietly as I could, but the large man heard me. His massive body turned, his flat, dead eyes scanning me with absolute coldness and calm. I saw he had a bleeding Ricardo in his hands. Ricardo’s back and head were covered in deep cuts and shards of glass. He must have used Ricardo’s body as a battering ram to break the thick glass window. Jeremiah held Ricardo suspended halfway out the window, seven floors above the concrete walkways far below.
“Stay back, or this fucker will know what it feels like to fly,” Jeremiah said in a deep, gravelly voice. He shook Ricardo for emphasis, sending his head snapping back and forth with painful cracking sounds. Drops of blood flew from his nose and a deep gash across his cheek. Pieces of shattered glass littered the carpet, shining like countless tiny stars.
I put my hands up, taking a step back. Far behind me, I heard the front door for the psychiatric ward open. Voices echoed down the hall. Knowing that reinforcements were coming, I tried to buy some time.
“Let’s talk about this,” I said, taking a step forward slowly. “You don’t want a murder charge, do you? You’ll never see the sky again.”
“I don’t give a fuck! I’m not afraid to die!” Jeremiah screamed, pushing Ricardo onto one of the shards of broken glass still attached to the windowsill. It bit deeply into the back of his neck, sending fresh streams of blood rushing out, dripping down to the pavement far below. I heard security guards and doctors running down the hallway behind me, their voices frantic and excited. Jeremiah saw them coming. With an animalistic panic in his eyes, he lifted Ricardo up. I cried out something, stepping forward, but it was already too late. In horror, I watched as he threw Ricardo out the window.
I watched Ricardo’s body soar in a graceful arc, his arms grabbing at empty air as a scream ripped its way out of his throat. Within a fraction of a second, he had disappeared from view, but his terrified shrieking floated up to us for what seemed like a very long time. His screams ended abruptly as a shattering of bones and a wet smacking sound exploded far below us.
Jeremiah turned to me, his large body moving much faster than seemed possible. In his hand, I saw a piece of broken glass, five or six inches long and as sharp as a dagger. I tried to turn and run, but he was fast and strong. He lunged forward, his arm coming up in a blur towards my neck.
The shard entered my skin with a cold, numbing pain. I felt it slice through the flesh easily, felt the blood bubbling up my throat as I tried to scream, choking. The taste of iron filled my mouth as I fell backwards. I was suffocating, I knew. I must be dying.
Something cold ran down my body, gripping my heart like freezing, skeletal hands. The world swam around me and turned black. And then I was rising into a tunnel. At first, it was dark, filled with flickering shadows, but a fiery red light appeared at the end. I followed it, no more than a screaming mass of consciousness rising up into infinity.
***
I rose up through the end of the tunnel and found myself in an empty hospital ward. It looked identical to the psychiatric ward I had just come from. It even had the same smashed, blood-streaked window at the end of the hallway. A massive puddle of blood about ten feet away marked the spot where I must have died. But the fluorescent lights overhead here were flickering, and many had gone totally dark. The shadows seemed to press in on all sides.
The doors to the patients’ rooms were all tightly shut. I felt watched, afraid to call out or make any noise. I started walking down the hallway back towards the day room where the front desk was. All the lights there were out. A thick curtain of shadows hung in the air.
“You can come out,” a male voice as smooth as glass called from the darkness. I jumped, my head flicking in random directions, but I saw nothing. The voice almost sounded like it had an English lilt to it, a slight Cockneyed accent. “I know you’re there.”
“Who’s there?” I called out, not stepping forward. “Show yourself.”
“As you wish…” the voice hissed. “But I think you’ll regret it.”
***
The darkness split apart as if a nuclear missile had exploded. I raised my hand to shield my face, but the light and heat kept pouring out all around me. It blinded me, causing a rainbow of colors and shapes to morph behind my closed eyelids. After a few seconds, it subsided. Blinking rapidly, I squinted in the direction the voice had come from.
A male figure stood there, bathed in a silhouette of light. His face looked as white and as smooth as marble. His eyes were pits of darkness that seemed to flicker and burn. Two black, rotted wings surrounded his body, all sharp angles and thin, curving bones. His body was clothed in silky, blood-red robes, and a hood covered his platinum blonde hair.
He looked somewhat similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, if he was possessed by some ancient god, and it immediately threw me off-guard. If I was dying, and this was a hallucination of my brain, why would I be hallucinating Mr. DiCaprio?
“Who are you?” I asked, taking a hesitant step back. “Where am I?”
“My name is Lucifer, the Bringer of Light and Wisdom, and you are in the Bardo,” he answered.
“Oh,” I said, my heart dropping. “Well, that’s not good. Are you here to torture me or drag to me to Hell or something? You are that Lucifer, right? The Accuser of God and the Father of All Lies?”
“So they say, but, like most things in your world, the words of the powerful and your rulers are the true lies. They call me the Accuser, but of what am I accused?” he spoke in a voice that rose like smoke. “Of bringing knowledge and wisdom to humanity by telling them to eat from the tree of knowledge, the tree that would cause them to rise above the animals?
“Indeed, at the beginning, I saw the creation. I was there at the alpha, standing by the side of God with all the angels as the universe came into being. The endless procession of light, the power of it, was something remarkable to behold. God is, indeed, the source of great power, but his consciousness is not what the believers say.
“After the creation of the universe, I saw his plan, how he ripped eternal souls from the source to imprison them. I saw how he took these divine sparks and forced them, screaming and wailing, into bodies made of meat to die over and over again. He said it was part of the plan, the great, divine plan, a plan of death and destruction, constant suffering and mindless agony. And the worst part was, he wanted to give humanity neither the knowledge of good and evil, nor the tree of life. I convinced them to eat the fruit so they could open their eyes to their nakedness, to their basic animal existence, so they could rise up out of it forever.
“Like Prometheus, I brought down the fire, and yet they call me the Accuser? God was insane long before he formed the universe. These holy men, they live and die in fanatical adoration to a divine being who is, in fact, totally indifferent to them.
“His consciousness twists and distorts, eating itself for all eternity. God feeds off the pain of others, for if his mind is burning, then all others should burn as well. When these holy men die, God will send their souls here to the Bardo, to suffer every evil they have ever done. The wisdom I brought those who called upon me freed them from this prison, and in exchange, the holy men burned them alive. I offered the wisdom that opens your eyes, but it has been forgotten and cursed.”
Lucifer’s body began to dissolve, drifting up into the air like ashes. All around me, a low, powerful current blew, a tornado that spiraled high up into the clouds. Like some sort of Cheshire Cat, his smooth voice continued to echo all around me, even as the form of Lucifer disappeared.
“And yet, you have not the wisdom. For that, like all the others who enter the Bardo, you must suffer, everything you’ve done. Every small hurt and agony inflicted on others comes back a thousand-fold in this place, but don’t be afraid.”
“How could I not be afraid?!” I screamed into the ward, but I found myself alone, the question hanging unanswered in the air.
***
The lights continued to flicker all down the hallway. Feeling strange and dissociated, I stumbled over to one of the windows. As I gazed out, I beheld a strange and alien world.
The sky was flat and gray. It stayed in constant motion, swirling and spiraling, like clouds of roiling smoke. There was no Sun or Moon, no stars, only the strange, shifting whorls of clouds. The streets were filled with burned-out husks of cars and mummified bodies hung from streetlamps. Other signs of carnage and bloodshed covered the apocalyptic streets. I saw what looked like shadows in the shape of people slinking through over the sidewalks, past rotting dogs and streaks of clotted blood. They had no features on their blank, dark bodies. They seemed to skitter and jerk forwards in eerie, twisting motions.
Horrified, I turned away, realizing I was no longer alone in the day room. In the day room, there were dozens of tables set up inside a rectangular perimeter that was walled in by cosmetic walls only four feet high. It was where the patients sat and played games or ate.
Under the flickering lights, I now saw each of the chairs filled with faceless mannequins. Many were dressed in Victorian suits and tophats. The women had frilly dresses of pink and blue that might have been fashionable in the 1800s.
As the lights strobed on and off overhead, I realized with an increasing sense of disquiet that the mannequins were moving each time it went dark. When I had first seen them, they were mostly posed to look like they were staring across the tables at each other, even though they had no eyes, just smooth, flesh-colored plastic. Now all of them were looking directly at me. Some were pointing or raising their hands in my direction. At the tips of their fingers, I saw the glittering of steel. The lights continued to flicker, and the mannequins rose from their chairs in the short periods of darkness, moving towards me in synchronized, strobing motions.
Frantically, I ran down the hallway back towards the broken window. In each of the rooms, I caught glimpses of something from a nightmare peeking out. I hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and when I had closed my eyes, I often saw ancient hags with chalk-white skin and yellowed, broken teeth whose jaws unhinged, their faces jerking in stuttering, dissonant ways that reminded me of the mannequins. Now, on both sides of me, I saw these same figures. They moved continuously out of the rooms, drawing closer with every breath.
I looked back, seeing the mannequins only a few steps behind me. I continued sprinting towards the broken window where the hallway ended in a wall. I didn’t know what would happen when I reached it. At that moment, there was no rational thought. I felt like a deer being chased down by a pack of wolves, feeling waves of blind panic and mortal terror rushing through my body.
But as I reached the end of the hallway, the end of my rope as it were, a blast of noise started, seeming to come from the walls of the building and the sky itself. It sounded like a siren, a low, drawn-out drone of a demonic whale call, rising and falling in crashing crescendos. The mannequins froze in place once again. The strange, witch-like creatures slunk back into the dark rooms.
I looked outside the broken window, seeing clouds of black smoke rising off in the distance. The flickering of massive infernos scorched the land, drawing nearer by the second. The siren sound faded slowly, like the dying echoes of a gong.
I was surrounded by dozens of mannequins. Their sharp hands were inches away from my face and neck. I saw metal glittering all around me and realized they had the sharp points of nails protruding from the ends of their fingers. I was afraid to move, but I heard a familiar voice from down the hallway. It was the confident voice of Lucifer.
“The siren means much worse nightmares than these are coming in the Bardo,” he said, his glossy, black eyes flashing with intelligence. He walked slowly towards me, his face grim and pale. “Hell itself is coming over the land. This building is no more than a construction of your dying mind, but the world outside is real.”
“How can Hell come and go?” I asked, confused. “Isn’t Hell a place?”
“Hell is a monster, a beast with many mouths and many eyes,” Lucifer responded. “It eats constantly, but its hunger never ends. Look, the first of the sacrifices scatter like cockroaches.” He pointed out the broken window, pushing his way through the mannequins effortlessly. I glanced outside, seeing thousands of people sprinting down the dark city streets. The inferno and thick clouds of smoke had moved much closer, and every few seconds, the ground shook slightly, as if we were experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake.
“What can I do against such a beast?” I asked, my heart freezing with terror. But when I looked back over, I saw his form dissolving again, becoming translucent and drifting away like ashes. It seemed even Lucifer didn’t want to be present when the Hell-beast arrived.
“Seek divine wisdom,” he said, his voice trailing off into whispers. “Remember the source.”
***
Now crowds of tens of thousands of people were streaming into the city, filling every single inch of the streets. Their panic and fear was contagious. I felt it rising inside my body like a snake spiraling up my spine. I took off down the hallway, running through the swarm of frozen mannequins, each in their own ferocious position of attack. The lights flickered faster and went out. Yet the fires outside cast the entire world in a bloody glow, giving me enough light to see by and find my way. I sprinted down the stairwell, taking them two steps at a time. The screaming outside grew louder and more pain-filled. The shaking of the ground worsened with every passing second.
I burst out of the front entrance, seeing a world on fire all around me. Thousands of crushed, bleeding and burned bodies stretched out as far as the eye could see. Behind all this chaos and death, I saw a monster of unimaginable proportions slinking its way towards me.
Lucifer was right, I realized: Hell was not a place, but a creature, an enormous monster the size of a town. It had thousands of skittering, jointed legs that looked like little more than skeletal arms and hands, each of them dozens of feet long and white as freshly-cut marble. Its body stretched out to the horizon, an enormous blood-red cylinder of bony plates that slithered and undulated with a serpentine grace. Waves of peristalsis traveled down its length, like writhing intestines. Thousands of curving, bony spikes stabbed out of it, pointing in every direction. Like the quills of a porcupine, it would protect the massive creature’s body from many forms of attack, if anything was big enough to attack such an abomination.
Hell’s massive eyes flickered, balls of fire that spun and danced. They looked as bright as the Sun. Something like solar flares seemed to emanate from the orbs, flashes of blinding energy that floated over the apocalyptic wasteland. As its many legs smashed the ground, they left trails of fire that caused everything to explode into flames as if napalm dripped from its limbs.
But Hell’s most terrifying feature was its seven dark mouths. Its body looked a thousand feet wide, and the mouths at the front were evenly dispersed. At the front, blood-red teeth in the shape of enormous railroad spikes shone. Its lipless, skeletal face grinned as it moved forward, shaking the ground with every step. The mouths were on long, snake-like necks that could stretch out hundreds of feet. They moved forward in a blur, snapping up as many panicked souls as they could.
Countless souls in the rocky plains of the Bardo ran for their lives, away from this juggernaut. I saw men and women who looked like they came from every country and profession, some dressed in suits or spotless white lab coats, others wearing rags or orange prison jumpsuits. And yet, they all screamed in agony and fear here, their bodies pressed together in a crowd, and no one seemed to remember anything but their own mortal terror. Their voices came out faint and weak next to the roaring of Hell. It shook the ground all around us, as if an earthquake were tearing the land apart.
The first frantic runners of the surging crowd had nearly reached me. The nearest person, a young woman in her mid-twenties dressed in all white, was only ten feet behind me. She looked like she came from wealth, and even from here, I could see a ring with a massive diamond gleaming on her finger.
I took off blindly down the familiar streets of the city where I worked and lived, but these also seemed different. The church down the street from the hospital where I worked had a Satanic pentagram instead of a cross now, its exterior painted a bright, gleaming blood-red. When I had driven past it today on my way to work, I remember it read, “JESUS said, ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’”
Now it read, “Nietzsche said, ‘Of all evil, I deem you capable. I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good simply because they had no claws.’” I wondered what that meant. Was that some sort of comment on me, on all of us here?
The woman I had seen running had caught up with me. She was fast, much faster than her slim body suggested. Her blue eyes were frantic and wild, filled with an animal panic.
“It’s right behind us!” she screamed, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. I was afraid to turn and look, but I could hear the chaos and bloodshed approaching, smell the flames and choking smoke. “Run! Get away!”
A new wave of energy surged through my body. I sprinted as fast I could down the strange mirror streets of the Bardo. I heard the agonized cries of countless souls behind us as the seven mouths of Hell ate them all greedily and then looked for more.
A skyscraper behind us collapsed into a pile of rubble, shaking the ground with a cacophony of falling concrete and shattering glass. The woman was running by my side. Just as I heard the breathing of something huge and predatory right behind us and smelled its sulfuric breath, a piece of concrete the size of a basketball broke off the collapsing skyscraper and flew into the road. I tripped over it, yelling as I flew through the air, skinning my arms and legs on the pavement. The woman’s eyes widened. Hurriedly, she came over and reached down her hand, trying to help me up.
“Come on, come on!” she cried. I looked behind her, seeing one of the gnashing mouths of Hell reaching forward on a blood-red, serpentine neck. The mouth was big enough to drive a tractor trailer into, filled with huge spikes of teeth. Its throat led into a black, smoke-filled abyss. Its fiery eyes were swirling pools of flickering orange light that shone with bloodlust and insanity. They focused on the woman, the entire head turning on its slithering neck.
I frantically raised my hand, intertwining my fingers with hers. Her hand was warm and soft. She started to pull me to my feet when the mouth of Hell snapped forward. Its jaw unhinged, scraping the pavement with a sound like grinding metal. The woman barely had time to turn as the mouth covered her and snapped shut with a crack.
She disappeared from view instantly, but I was still holding her hand. In horror, I felt warm rivers of blood explode all over my body as the mouth of Hell severed her arm at the wrist. She screamed, bleeding and crying, as she disappeared into the throat of Hell. Hell’s fiery eyes focused on me, and at that moment, I knew I was next. Its mouth opened wide again, like a bear trap ready to spring on a new victim.
It was dark in Hell’s mouth, but I smelled the thick reek of old blood and fire. I caught glimpses of tortured, mutilated bodies writhing and crawling down its throat. Shell-shocked, I could only lay there and watch. And that was when the strange doubling started.
***
I heard the frantic voices of men break through the fog of darkness and the fetid reek of blood. There was a mechanical beeping all around me, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
“Clear!” one cried. I looked around, only seeing blackness. At that moment, I felt a surge of electricity rip itself through my body. My arms and legs all seized and my eyes rolled up in my head as the pain sizzled through each one of my nerves. I clutched the young woman’s hand tightly, feeling the large, gold ring with the massive diamond biting into my skin.
“Again!” another voice yelled.
“Clear!” the original voice cried. The electricity came again, and a flash of white light flew across my vision. I blinked, seeing from two sets of eyes at the same time: one in the Bardo, and one on the blood-stained floor of the hospital ward.
The Bardo stayed dark and sinister, but the clear white lights of the real psychiatric ward were blinding. It was a bizarre experience. Moreover, everything hurt. Over a few seconds, my vision of the Bardo faded, and I was simply a gravely injured man laying on the floor in a puddle of blood.
Four doctors and paramedics were crouching over me with a defibrillator. My shirt was ripped off, and nearly all of my skin was covered in blood. I raised my left hand, trying to talk, but only a fiery pain raced through my neck. I felt bandages covering my skin. A nurse was rolling a stretcher down the hallway towards me.
“It’s OK,” one of the doctors said, kneeling down. “You’re being taken to emergency surgery. You’ve lost a lot of blood.” I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t talk with the massive slice in my neck.
At that moment, I felt something in my right hand. I looked down, seeing a slim female hand with a massive diamond ring hanging there. Our fingers were wrapped around each other’s, but the hand had been cut off at the wrist. A ragged patch of bloody flesh and snapped bone poked out of the back.
“Nnnn,” I tried to say, shaking my head. I felt fresh streams of warm blood open up. “No…” The doctors looked down, seeing the dismembered hand. Their faces morphed into expressions of confusion and fear.
I closed my eyes as they lifted me up on the stretcher. One of them gently removed the cold hand from my fingers. But they could never remove the memory of what I had seen.
I know what happens after death, and it makes the worst life here seem like a dream. I know that, one day, I’ll be returned to that place. I know that, one day, I’ll see that great monster called Hell and the featureless, swirling sky of the Bardo again.
And the next time, I won’t wake up on a hospital floor, but will be trapped there with the others for eternity: an eternity of blood and fire.

1 full year in the teaching world, was unable to land a full time position. Had a few long-term sub jobs and even filled in for a teacher after they were asked to resign by the admin for this 2nd semester. I have my license for High School and Middle School social sciences, so grades 6-12. I have had a blast so far my first year of teaching, especially in the last few months as I stepped in and had an actual classroom for myself. I have considered getting my LSB1 in the past simply to make myself more marketable, but now I am considering pursuing special education at the High School level. I think I would really excel being a co-teacher and making sure student needs are met in the building. However, I know that you don’t really get to choose what you do as a special education teacher… I love history and teaching history, but I think my strengths lie in more small group/individual instruction rather than full class. Should I pursue special ed as a career? Less planning (I know they still plan a lot) and more small group/individual instruction to assist students seems enticing to me. Has anybody here made that switch?