Hi all! I have RA in my lower joints. My ankle has been my biggest issue lately. I’ve never been able to wear tight boots because anything that hits or rubs up against my ankle joint will irritate the hell out of it. I recently learned even socks can mess with me. I normally walk around in converse and crocs. Crocs were actually what my doctor recommended to my mom when I was a kid and got diagnosed, and I’ve thankfully never had any pain from walking in those. I thought converse were fine until I noticed how much it hurts my ankle after walking around for longer than an hour or two.
What do yall wear to protect your joints? I’m tired of waking up with a swollen, bruised ankle all because I wore the wrong socks or shoes.

i am 15, trans, and autistic. i tried going to high school in person but i had to go back to online school in december after the first semester because my mental health got so bad i couldn’t function and only recently have i been starting to get back on my feet. my memory is awful and im tired all the time, ive tried just about everything and doctors don’t know why. i’ve been on lexapro for a year and it’s working pretty well but i still frequently have days where i can barely function. as dumb as this may sound all i do is play video games and masturbate and even with that i can’t even enjoy it because of how SSRI’s make it impossible for me to enjoy anything sexual. i also believe i have ocd as i show most all signs and my mother also has it. which leads to me having awful intrusive thoughts that make me think terrible things about myself and others. i can’t maintain a relationship of any kind because i have a very low social battery, holding conversations online and in person are very difficult for me, and i’m also autistic which i find i mask well but not well enough for most people not to be able to tell there’s something off about me. i’ve lost interest in most of my hobbies and i can’t seem to enjoy anything the way i used to. my siblings are my best friends but one moved and the other works a lot, i spend a lot of time with my parents which i do cherish especially because they’re getting older. but i still feel very lonely, even with my siblings they don’t show interest in my interests the way i do theirs, they’re both big music people but they really don’t seem to show interest when i show them any of my music. i do feel i could be diving too deep into my siblings lack of interest in me, but i also feel like if i was they would acknowledge me more when all three of us hangout. they’ll have full blown conversations and never ask for my input or anything. i’ve talked about this to the one im closer to more than once and they said they’d try to include me more but i don’t feel that they have made that effort. they tend to make empty promises to me a lot and they have for years but i don’t feel there’s a way to address it with them. i wish i had a way to express myself, i know my brother was very similar to me when he was my age and that he did a lot of writing and so did my other sibling, but i don’t feel that i can express myself that way and the same goes for other forms of art. as much as im doing okay right now i know im going to go back down and i want to be better prepared for it in anyway i can be. im happy for any input you may have and even if you don’t thank you for reading this. i’ve never felt able to truly express what i feel so even if i don’t know you it’s good to know someone knows what im feeling.

So this can be either a fun or a mortifying conversation to have depending on who you are and who your first fictional crushes were at the age you had them.
But you know what? I think that it would be fun regardless!
So let's get to it, in no particular order other then what comes to mind first.
=][=
1) Amy Rose: I think Amy Rose was my first fictional crush from a video game as a kid. Definitely because of Sonic Adventure DX and 2 Battle, but damned if I could tell you why. All I know is that it has left me for an appreciation for pink hair and pink things in general that has lasted to this day. It's not fierceness, that really wasn't a thing with her character back then (but is in things like Boom and while that IS something that would have gotten me hard like fishhooks back then as it does now it's not BECAUSE of the Amy that kid me had a crush on) ((Edit: Oh it was Misty from Pokemon and Jessie from Pokemon, that's where that fierceness appreciation came from as a kid)).
2) Clover from Totally Spies: Yeah this one probably tracks for how memed the show is, and I remember very little about the show itself, but I distinctly remember that for a good long while as a kid she was absolutely my favorite and to this day I don't know why. I think it was her rather combative and fiery attitude combined with being the only blonde I have ever been attracted to, which at least partially came from her rather unique hair-style.
3) Boromir: So Boromir from Lord of the Rings specifically was my first "Man Crush" as a kid, which I only recognized as a crush crush years later. Bemusingly enough most people I knew who had a similar LOTRs crush had fell hard for Aragorn or Legolas instead. Never a Gimli though sadly. Or a Frodo.
4) Martin Septim: Martin Septim from the Elder Scrolls Oblivion is the main character of that game, and it's for very good reason.
A Middle-aged priest tired and greying, but warm and caring. Feels unworthy of his role, and is forever doubtful of himself, there is just something about this man that struck me and hundreds of others like a dagger to the heart.
5) Morrigan: Dragon Age Origins. . . . It's Morrigan. Mean, Flirtatious, Dark and Gloomy, and ever so slightly evil. Morrigan has done so much to what I appreciate in terms of general taste, it's a lot.
6) Tali: Mass Effect. Yeah was never a Liara guy, I played Final Fantasy XIII first so going from that game to hearing Lightning speak in a really soft and breathy voice just drove me up the wall, but Tali was . . .well cute! Cute and fierce, and later on protective and so so so driven.
7) Gauldoth Half-Dead: Heroes of Might and Magic IV. . . . .Look it's like how people are attracted to Ghouls from Fallout, except imagine that the guy is only HALF-Dead, is a necromancer, and goes out of his way to save the world and protect his people from his gone mad Master. He's an edgy badboy who stops himself from going full Shadow or Geralt by fact of being a super pragmatic necromancer.
=][=
Those are all of the ones I can think of at the least, that definitely influenced my tastes in a major way.
I'm sure that there are at least a dozen that I am forgetting in the forgotten mists of time, but these are all of the ones that I can remember at the least.
But that's just me, what about the rest of y'all? Who and Whom were your first fictional crushes? Why/What made you attracted to them do you think? And are you embarrassed about your choice of crush back in the day?

PART ONE THOUSAND AND THIRTEEN
[Previous Chapter] [The Beginning] [Patreon+2]
Sunday
Lucas tapped the flat of his finger twice on the partially open door, more to let Boyd know he was coming than actually requesting permission to enter. He pushed it open and strode through as the somewhat welcoming grunt came from within.
“Hey, sexy,” he said, crossing the two rooms to zoom in on Boyd sitting at his bench. On the spinner before Boyd was a larger figure than he had ever done before: an eighteen-inch figure of a woman with an hourglass figure wearing a form-fitting formal gown that flowed to the floor, swaying as if she’d just stepped to her right. Her hands were curled as if she were holding something or someone, but that part was missing.
“Ooooh,” Lucas said, resting his head on Boyd’s shoulder to examine the piece closer. “She’s pretty.”
“She’s also the viscount’s granddaughter, who I think is married to a prince somewhere in Eastern Europe. I’d have to pull out her details again, but she’s already got two kids, and she still looks this good.”
“She doesn’t look old enough to have two kids.”
“That’s what happens when you marry when you’re still a teenager.”
“Please tell me it wasn’t an arranged marriage.”
Boyd did a slow pan to level an annoyed look at him.
“What? They used to.”
“Slavery was a thing in America back in the day, too.”
Lucas made a deflating raspberry. “If you want to get technical,” he grumbled.
Boyd twisted his seat to face him, loosely curling his arms around Lucas’ waist. “Where are you off to, Mister Soon-To-Be-Masters?”
Oh-ho. Someone’s feeling playful. “I thought you were going to become a Dobson,” Lucas countered, leaning in to give him a quick morning kiss.
“Yeah, but then I was reminded I do have family that I care about.”
“None of which are Masters. Your mom and Aunt Judy are sisters who changed their names when they married. If you were going to take any of their names, we’d both be changing to Davenport.”
Boyd looked down at where their abdomens rested against each other.
“Hey,” Lucas said, sliding his hand under Boyd’s chin and lifting it so he could see those beautiful baby blues focusing on him. “What’s going on, love?”
Boyd opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He tried twice more. “Ten years,” he finally croaked. “They took me in and gave me a home within the family for nearly two years, and I repaid them by cutting them out of my life the second I could. Who does that to their own?”
“Somebody with a lot of fear,” Lucas answered honestly. "And that somebody isn’t you anymore. You’ve invited Emily to be our accountant, and personally, I hope you know what you’re doing there…”
“Emily has always been good with money. The only time she’s ever been off is when she borrows money from you, and you go to get it back. By the time she’s finished explaining all the financial movement around the transaction, you end up owing her twice as much, and she’s really convincing. Computerised flow charts and everything.”
Lucas hoped he was exaggerating. If Emily had been that quick and deceptive to separate Boyd from his money when she was a teenager, she might have been even more cunning now. Lucas would remain attentive until she proved herself because the love of his life had earned this break. “Okay,” was all he said since he didn’t want to argue.
Boyd nipped the tip of his nose. “Don’t you ‘okay’ me in that tone of voice.”
Lucas pulled back and rubbed the back of his hand against his nose. It hadn’t hurt, but it was weird. No one had ever done that before. “I’m a cop, love. In my world, it’s guilty until proven innocent.”
“Getting back to my original question. Where are you going?”
“I’m going to go and get some supplies for Levi and Maddy. The dumbass has been worrying himself sick over where he can leave Maddy on short notice if he and Austin get called out to a fire together. They can’t waste up to an hour each way getting over to Queens and Brooklyn.”
“Tell him she can stay with us,” Boyd said without hesitation. I’ll be here all the time, and if I’m out and it’s an emergency dump-and-run, I can drop whatever I’m doing and call someone to teleport me back.”
Lucas leaned in and kissed him again. “And that’s just one of the many reasons I love you,” he said once they parted. “Charlie will be here too, which means Robbie won’t be far away either. Levi still wants to run it past Llyr since it’s his place, but so long as we keep her on our side and away from Miss W, it won’t be a problem.”
“You’ll need to remember to lock up your guns when she’s here.”
Lucas nodded thoughtfully in agreement without speaking. It would devastate everyone if Maddy somehow managed to get her hands on one of his work firearms and fire it. He’d need to get a thumbprint safe – something that he could get at very quickly in a crisis.
“How is she with beds?”
“What?”
“Don’t little kids have those hospital guardrail things, so they don’t roll out of bed and hurt themselves? I mean, your bed isn’t that far from the floor, but if you’re getting supplies, you might want to think about some of those things to keep her in.”
Lucas hadn’t thought about that. “Okay, then it’s going to be a bigger shopping trip than I thought, but that’s alright. Levi and Maddy are going to chill in the apartment until I get back.”
“Do you want me to check in on them?”
“Nah, it should be fine. Levi knows where Charlie’s office is, and if he’s going to annoy anyone while they’re at work, it should be our sister.” Lucas turned Boyd back to his carving and leaned his head on Boyd’s shoulder. “You keep outdoing yourself, you know that, right?”
“These tools are magic. I can’t do a thing wrong with them.” With a slight grimace, he added, “Hey, have you ever heard the story about the kid who gets the magic piano?”
Lucas squinted warily. “Am I going to like this story?”
“It’s a cautionary tale. This kid finds a magic piano, and all he has to do is work the pedals, and the piano plays itself. No one notices it’s not the kid, and the kid’s ego grows with each performance until he’s an international sensation. Then, he has a fight with the piano over who the star really is. The following night, the piano refuses to play, and the kid is booed off the stage. His family is left financially ruined.”
“I will beat you within an inch of your life if you equate that to you.”
Boyd looked at him. “How can I not? I mean, when I relax and just let the tools do what they’re made to do, the pieces come out flawlessly—every time. But the second I worry, minor defects creep in. Nothing I can’t counter and fix, but still…”
“If it concerns you that much, why not do a piece every now and then without the divine tools to prove to yourself that the skill is yours and the tools are just tools?”
Boyd looked over the divine toolset, then back up at the shelf where his older tools were. “That’s a good idea,” he admitted.
Lucas lightly kissed him on the lips and stepped out of his grasp. “I’ve been known to have them now and again. Oh, and don’t forget we’re going to Angus’ this afternoon. Just the six of us.”
Boyd raised his left hand in acknowledgment, but his focus was back on the carving even as his right hand picked up a scalpel of some kind and drove it across the carving’s middle. The blade was then smoothly passed to his left hand to make an incision from that side while his right reached for a new tool.
As he’d said, his motions were flawless, with chips and shavings flying at the speed of a professional wood chopper. Lucas could watch him work all day, but if he was going to make it to Angus’, he needed to leave now.
He let himself out and headed for the main front door to the level.
A little over an hour later, after grabbing several sets of clothes in his brother’s size, Lucas was standing in the middle of the children’s clothing section, blinking in confusion at all the options. He would go to touch one, then back away, unsure.
He must have looked pitiful because a staff member in her mid-thirties took pity on him and approached with a warm smile. “Can I help you?”
“Yeah, this is crazy,” he answered, gesturing to the millions of clothes options before them. “My brother asked me to look after my niece in an emergency, and I want her to have whatever she’ll need at my place in case he doesn’t have time to take her home.” He looked at all the clothes. “Whatever that entails.”
“That’s really sweet. Is your brother a doctor?”
“Fireman.”
The woman gave Lucas the once over. “I can see that.”
Lucas chuckled. It wasn’t anything he hadn’t heard before. Between him, Levi and Mav all sharing their dad’s muscle, they’d always caught people’s eye. “Anyway,” he said, wanting to move this along. “My niece is three going on four, and she’s about this high,” he said, showing her height as an inch or two under his hip.
“Does she have any favourite TV shows?”
“Spongebob,” Lucas said, incredibly grateful for his conversation with Levi over breakfast. He’d have never had that answer otherwise. “And if you’re not doing anything after we get her clothes sorted, my fiancé mentioned something about bed rails since she’ll be sleeping in my old queen-sized bed. This is an all-in shopping trip for her, and I have no idea what to get.”
“Do you have any toys for her? And no, I’m not pushing for a commission here. Little minds need to be kept stimulated, or little hands will end up in places they have no business being. If this is your first time looking after her, you’re going to want a few toys, books, and things to keep her busy.”
“My brother is already nagging me about buying her the basics. What would you recommend that won’t make it seem like I’m trying to buy her affection?”
“Are you okay with electronics, or are you trying to steer her away from that?”
“It doesn’t faze me. It’s more the cost. I don’t want to buy her what my brother hasn’t or can’t afford. I’ve been into too many households where kids have every version of PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo and every known game that goes with them. Those kids appreciate nothing, and that’s not something I’m okay with.”
“You see a lot of people’s houses?”
“I was a beat cop for over eight years before my promotion.”
“A policeman and a fireman? I’m sure there's a joke involving a bar in there somewhere.”
“If there were, the third person would be an ice hockey player,” Lucas chuckled again, already liking this woman. As they wandered through the aisles, she added things to his cart. Clothes were first, but they quickly moved on to toys. A couple of generic soft toys. and the board game “Candyland”. Lucas grabbed ‘Hungry, Hungry Hippos’, as that was one he and his brothers had played when he’d been Maddy’s age. Then came two large boxes of Duplo.
Not once did it feel like the sales assistant was pushing an agenda. She even paused to consider the options as if she were buying them for her own kids. Lucas really appreciated that.
As they were walking the isles, Lucas came to a screeching halt and stared at a range of doctor, nurse and vet play sets. Two jumped out at him. One had a plastic pet carrier with a handful of bulky instruments, and the other came in a bright blue bag with red handles and a white pawprint on the side. It had a comprehensive range, including toy bandages, pill bottles, cream jars, syringes, a stethoscope and even a cone of shame. Both went into the cart after he checked to make sure the two soft animals would fit in the carrier.
Mason’ll have a field day showing her exactly how to simulate using all this stuff, he thought to himself with a grin.
“You’re really very thoughtful,” the woman said after he explained why they both had to be purchased.
Lucas specifically asked for books after that. Real books with paper pages. He was sure his mother (as a high school English teacher) would murder him in his sleep if he didn’t buy Maddy at least ten books ranging from ones she could memorise and pretend to read (which, in her grandmother’s eyes, taught her word structure and was the first step in learning to read), with ones he could read to her. And that, of course, required Spongebob bookends to hold them together.
“Your fiancé is a lucky woman if you’re willing to do all of this for your niece,” she said once the cart was full and they were heading back to the checkouts.
“Yes, he is,” Lucas agreed, deliberately sliding in Boyd’s gender without making a huge issue of it.
Her eyes widened in horror. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Wow, I really shouldn’t make that assumption anymore, and I apologise.”
Because this was New York. “Apology accepted,” Lucas said, waving it aside. Boyd might have been embarrassed, but thankfully, he wasn’t here. “Thanks again for all your help.”
* * *
((Author's extra-long note:
Heya guys! Just letting you know I need to take a week off. [It’s nothing to do with the community here, I promise! I love writing this, and I’ll be back as soon as I can.]
In fact it's … you know what? Stuff it. You guys might as well know. Remember how I mentioned earlier this year we were fighting for more care for my special needs daughter?
That’s the issue.
Our support coordinator has our written authority to act on our behalf. Yet we’ve been told in writing from the government department that if she doesn’t back off, the whole request, including thousands of dollars of specialists interviewing our daughter and reporting their findings, will be deleted, and our request, including all-new interviews and reports, will have to start all over again.
I’m almost at the point where I’m not sleeping, but our support coordinator has promised us to fight because, in her words, “This is getting ridiculous.”
I’ve been really struggling to write this week with everything going on in the background. I’ve finally admitted I need to pull back (just for one week—I mean it when I say how much I love this writing and the little community we’ve formed) to focus on sorting out the mess, so that my writing isn’t tarnished by the battlelines that are being drawn up in the background.
(I already scrapped a page and a half because my anger at things [I bounce between anger and depression] had people who were usually very chill (Robbie) acting in a very aggressive manner that simply wasn’t them. Because of this, I’ve already used up several of my backlog this week and I loathe to lose any more, given how hard they were to build up. (The thought of using them up without others to take their place was also adding to my stress.)
And I was told by my beta reader, ‘Given you’ve been doing this for over three years, and you’ve only had the occasional day off due to sickness, take the week and regroup, stronger than ever.
I agreed. This means my next post will be on Monday, the 27th, Australian Time.
This means my next post will be on Monday, the 27th, Australian Time.
I hope with all my heart that you’ll all still be with me when I return next week.
Karen. ))
((All comments welcome. Good or bad, I’d love to hear your thoughts 🥰🤗))
I made a family tree/diagram of the Mystallian family that can be found here
For more of my work, including WPs: Angel466 or an index of previous WPS here.
FULL INDEX OF BOB THE HOBO TO DATE CAN BE FOUND HERE!!

Email marketing has become a crucial tool for veterinary practices looking to connect with pet owners and grow their business. In today's digital age, having a well-crafted email list can make all the difference in reaching and retaining clients. But how do you go about creating the ultimate veterinarian email list for your practice's growth? Let's dive into the strategies and best practices to build and nurture a robust email list that drives results.

Introduction

In the competitive landscape of veterinary care, establishing a direct line of communication with pet owners is essential. Email marketing offers a cost-effective way to engage with your audience, educate them about pet care, promote your services, and ultimately drive business growth. Crafting the ultimate veterinarian email list involves strategic planning, audience understanding, and consistent effort.

Understanding Your Audience

Before embarking on your email marketing journey, it's crucial to understand your target audience—the pet owners. Consider demographics such as age, location, pet type, and specific needs or concerns. Tailoring your content to resonate with these demographics will yield better engagement and conversion rates.

Building Your Email List from Scratch

Start by implementing sign-up forms on your website, allowing visitors to subscribe to your newsletter or updates. Offer incentives such as discounts on veterinary services or free pet care guides to encourage sign-ups. Make the sign-up process seamless and straightforward to maximize conversions.

Leveraging Social Media for List Growth

Social media platforms are powerful tools for expanding your reach and attracting new subscribers. Engage with your audience by sharing informative content, hosting Q&A sessions, and running contests or giveaways. Promote your email newsletter on social media profiles to drive traffic to your sign-up forms.

Creating Compelling Content to Attract Subscribers

Content is king when it comes to email marketing. Provide valuable and relevant information that pet owners find useful, such as pet care tips, preventative healthcare advice, and updates on clinic services. Incorporate eye-catching visuals and personalized messaging to capture subscribers' attention.

Segmenting Your Email List

Segmenting your email list allows you to tailor content to different groups of subscribers based on their interests, pet types, or past interactions with your clinic. Personalized emails have higher open and click-through rates, leading to improved engagement and conversions.

Maintaining and Engaging Your Subscribers

Consistency is key to maintaining a healthy email list. Send regular newsletters with a mix of educational content, promotional offers, and updates from your practice. Encourage subscribers to interact with your emails by asking for feedback, hosting surveys, or inviting them to events.

Analyzing Metrics and Adjusting Strategies

Monitor key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to gauge the effectiveness of your email campaigns. Use this data to refine your strategies, test different approaches, and optimize your content for better results.

Building Relationships through Email Marketing

Email marketing provides an opportunity to build personal connections with pet owners beyond the clinic walls. Send personalized birthday greetings to their pets, offer exclusive deals for loyal subscribers, and show appreciation for their continued support.

Ensuring Compliance with Email Regulations

Respect your subscribers' privacy and comply with email marketing regulations such as GDPR and CAN-SPAM. Obtain explicit consent before sending marketing communications, provide clear opt-out options, and keep your email lists up-to-date to avoid potential legal issues.

Implementing Email Automation

Save time and streamline your email marketing efforts with automation tools. Set up welcome emails for new subscribers, schedule appointment reminders and follow-ups, and trigger targeted campaigns based on subscriber behavior or milestones.

Optimizing for Mobile Devices

With the majority of emails being opened on mobile devices, it's essential to optimize your email templates for a seamless mobile experience. Test your emails across various devices and screen sizes to ensure they display correctly and are easy to read and interact with.

Integrating Email Marketing with Other Strategies

Maximize the impact of your email marketing efforts by integrating them with other marketing strategies. Cross-promote email sign-ups at your clinic, sync your email lists with CRM software to track customer interactions, and leverage data from multiple sources for more personalized campaigns.

Staying Updated with Industry Trends

Stay ahead of the curve by staying informed about the latest trends and developments in the veterinary industry. Subscribe to relevant newsletters and publications, attend conferences and workshops, and network with peers to exchange ideas and insights.

Conclusion

Crafting the ultimate veterinarian email list is a continuous process that requires dedication, creativity, and strategic planning. By understanding your audience, creating compelling content, and leveraging the power of email marketing, you can effectively grow your practice and nurture lasting relationships with pet owners.

I am a founder that has experienced most of the good, the ugly and the bad of raising capital for my startup from private investors and Venture Capitals. I have experienced co-founder break-ups, key employees leaving, secondary rounds, successful funding rounds, bridge rounds, flat metrics, growth metrics, massive partnerships with FAANG companies, hundreds of investors rejections and so on.
I've decided to post interesting tips and content that can be useful for founders that are right now fundraising to help them avoid certain mistakes or take some weight off of their shoulders.
This one is about investors telling you "You're too early", something that you've probably experienced if you are fundraising for your startup.
Having gone through 100+ pitch meetings, I can tell you that they will NEVER say the real reasons. When they throw a random metric, an expected traction, or whatever feedback, take it with a very fine grain of salt.
The true reasons normally are these:

1. They're Afraid to Say No: Investors want to keep their options open.
2. No Sense of Urgency: They think, "Why invest now? I can wait 6 months and see if the founder solves X."
3. Lack of Understanding/Belief: They don’t get what you’re doing but don't want to miss out if a big name like Sequoia/a16z decides to land a Term Sheet.

So, when you're fundraising, instead of focusing on changing your roadmap and do what they tell you, focus more on why the above didn't work out. All of them can be summarized to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). So, what can you do to generate FOMO among investors?

1. Be extremely optimistic about the fundraise. Investors don’t want to feel they are “helping” with their money, charities fill that gap better. They want to feel that they are going to have an extreme return. They want to feel they are betting on the 1% companies. They have to feel a sense of urgency.
2. Casually throw details about the progress of the fundraise with confidence. Don’t worry, those small details will become stronger facts as you make progress in conversations, and your confidence will grow and their sense of urgency too.
3. Obsess with the tough questions. Everyone is good at the easy ones. Construct short, simple and objective arguments for each tough question. As Pascal said, “if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter”. Deliver the message through.
4. Be passionate and straightforward about what you want to build. Don't try to sound as something you think you should, or something you’ve seen around. VCs are tired of fabricated pitches, they speak with 10 different founders a day, all of them feeling they are the most special founder that will become the next Elon Musk. Don't let the air in the room eat you and act nervous. Be authentic and special.

These things may seem irrelevant, but investors are not rational animals. What pushes them to dive into a company and invest in it, is not the data. It's the feeling of closing a deal that potentially will return their entire fund several times. Those things happen once every 100 companies and there's no empirical analysis in the world that can give you such insight.
Therefore, the story you build around you and your company can have a greater weight in your investor interactions than having a good CAC.

In 2010, I was facing felony charges for distribution of drugs. I was a drug addict. Hook line and sinker. But never admitted that to myself. My drug of choice? Anything I could get my hands on. Cocaine, ecstasy, weed, Xanax, Oxycontin, ciggys, alcohol, ativan, seroquil, spice, mushrooms.. You name it.
Desperately wanting to avoid prison time, I did whatever I could to turn my life around. The potential pain in carrying on was too great to tolerate. This was my rock bottom.
I enrolled in college, started working out every day, got rid of any "friends" that wanted to continue that lifestyle.
And quitting my daily drug use?
It wasn't a factor. I was too scared. I was willing to do anything to escape my prison sentence so I dropped them all without looking back. I was lucky. Lucky I had hit rock bottom. Lucky that everything collapsed around me. I needed a push and this was it.
Apparently the judge saw that I was making real change and I was able to avoid prison. I was slapped with a couple of felonies, fines, and drug and rehab classes.
Having felonies on my record was hard. I couldn't get a decent job. Even Walmart was excited to hire me, but then rejected me because of my record. I knew that I had turned a new leaf. I just needed someone to see that I was changed now.
Luckily, I found a family that needed help with their special needs kid.
I worked for them for long enough to get my felonies reduced and expunged off my record.
When hard drugs turn into soft drugs.
I thought I was "drug free" because I had stopped all illegal drugs. But soon I found myself consuming copious amounts of caffeine in order to lose weight and get "Jacked". You see, I found a passion for natural bodybuilding and Jiu-Jitsu around 2011.
I consumed endless content on how to lose body fat so I could finally get a six pack. A lot of YouTubers at the time were promoting pre-workouts like Jack3d. Which also had another stimulant called 1,3 dimethylamylamine - or DMAA. Which was banned after it had become known to be problematic.
So there I was, taking Jack3d, working out, and trying to figure out how to get a six pack. I hired the same coaches that my favorite YouTuber Matt Ogus had. 3DMuscleJourney. I got very serious with Diet and training.
When I started with 3DMuscleJourney in 2012, I had been working out for a solid year. I had gotten down to 195lbs from 215. Not a huge difference. And I had put on a good amount of Muscle in that time.
3DMuscleJourney taught me and guided me on how to train effectively while dieting and how to diet efficiently by tracking macros. But my preworkout and caffeine use had spiked up 1,500mg a day. I used caffeine as a substitute for food. After 12 weeks, I was down to 160lbs.
I was fit by any person's definition. My new found glory would soon collapse as my caffeine and DMAA use caught up to me. I started having bad shoulder pain, my joints were achy and cracky, popping every time I moved. I started stretching and doing mobility exercises but the pain in my body only got worse. I was unable to sleep. I would have fits of rage followed by lows of doubt and depression.
Then, I broke. I was no longer able to exercise because of the pain. I started eating more to see if it would help my joints. I quickly gained 30lbs. Probably within only a few weeks. I ended my coaching and started to slip back towards the abyss
That's when I figured out that caffeine and DMAA were both a huge problem.
I had been consuming caffeine my whole life. But never thought twice about it. It was a legal substance that a kid could go buy in a vending machine. How bad could it be? Broken, I decided to quit.
I was quickly able to cut out DMAA. But every attempt at quitting caffeine left me in so much pain that I would quickly rationalize going back to it. I never made it past two weeks.
Why was this harder than quitting all of those harder drugs?
I guess decades of using a softer drug still carves out some pretty steep ravines in your reward pathway. Caffeine was my last vice. Or so I thought..
I read the book "Caffeine Blues". This book explained that caffeine is not healthy in any way. It is a stimulant that causes your body to break down over time just like any drug. The book outlined some of the negatives associated with caffeine.

• Poor sleep, even if you didn't consume caffeine close to bedtime
• Joint pain from increased muscle tension.
• Poor vitamin and mineral absorption.
• Energy crashes and mood swings.
• Irritability.
• Psychosis.
• Masking negatives of caffeine with drugs and alcohol.

The list goes on. This was crazy. The book recommended tapering off of caffeine. While I was able to wean down to 300-600 most days. I couldn't get myself to fully commit. I started to look for some help.
Maybe I needed something to give me energy and focus while I quit?
I started to look at "Nootropics" to help me focus. I tried a large variety of them.

• Noopept
• Modafinil
• Piracetam
• Aniracetam
• L-Theanine
• Phenibu
• Kratom
• Nicotine
• A large variety of other supplements.

Non of this helped me quit caffeine. I soon realized that these legal "Performance enhancers" were just drugs. With their own highs and lows. And negative effects over time. I ended up quitting all of this after a year.
It was back to the drawing board.
Around the end of 2015, I ended up doing a 3 month or so long caffeine taper. Using caffeine powder and a mg scale I bought off Amazon. The plan was slow and steady. 1-2mg per day. I didn't want to notice my caffeine levels were dropping. After about a month under 25mg, I started feeling great.
My joints felt great, Arizona heat was more comfortable, I craved healthy food and exercise, I slept like a baby, the list goes on. I had raised my testosterone levels from 320ng/dL to 575ng/dL.
But then, just as I finally let go of caffeine. There was a surprise. A curve ball that would change my life forever.
The boy who lived...
My first child was to be born. The 24 hours in the hospital was an introduction to the lack of sleep I would face over the next few years. I caved..
One or two cups of coffee later, my son was born, and a new cycle of baby wake me up > being tired > caffeine to get me through the day > poor quality sleep > baby wake me up had begun.
I got got even more dependent on caffeine. I could no longer just take a nap whenever I wanted. I was a mess. Feeling like shit, with high stress, I also started drinking alcohol and smoking weed again. My testosterone levels plummeted down to 275ng/dL.
Great move dad..
I wanted to get healthy again. I started reading books about health, nutrition, meditation, etc. I wanted to attack this problem from multiple angles. I started eating a plant-based diet, meditating, exercising, taking ice baths, etc. I quit alcohol and weed again. Tapering my caffeine down below 100mg again.
I was starting to feel better. Even got my testosterone levels all the way up to 575ng/D
The girl who lived..
Sorry about the Harry Potter references...
Just when I thought it was over, another curve ball to my health goals. Something that would start the lack of sleep cycle all over again.
You guessed it.. another child! This time, there was a baby girl in my house. This new baby came with new challenges. Our daughter was born with cataracts. She had to have surgery at around 3 months old to get them removed. So not only did we have to deal with the lack of sleep stress again, and boy did she excel in that area, we had to deal with putting contacts in a baby...
Imagine a grown man squeezing their fist closed. And you have to delicately open up their fist, and place a sticky note on their palm without bending the paper. And the grown man is also having a seizure at the same time. Also, you haven't slept a quality night of sleep for weeks.
Needless to say, but I'm going to say it, our stress levels shot through the roof. We had new worries and fears about our daughter's condition and the caffeine cycle ramped back up again. All while trying to focus on my new career in IT and raising our other child.
Testosterone Replacement Therapy
I think sometime early 2023, a friend told me he was on Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT). I knew my low test levels were due to stress, caffeine use, lack of sleep, belly fat, poor eating habits, etc. But I was desperate for some edge that would help me finally quit caffeine and get healthy again.
I thought, if I can use Testosterone to help me get healthy, then I can get off of it later and not suffer any consequences.
Boy was I wrong
TRT did give me more drive and gusto to get stuff done. It also made me work harder than my body wanted. I started getting more back pain from harder weightlifting session, I actually started doing more caffeine, and even weed again. I was like 6 years clean from weed at this point.
This made me over confident. Like I could handle anything, which led to poor decisions. I felt like a horny teenager and it made it hard to focus. I started masturbating furiously..
After 4 months stabbing myself in the ass, and draining my life essence, I decided to quit TRT cold turkey. I knew this wasn't what I needed.
Withdrawals from TRT were bearable. I had waves of depression, lack of energy, etc. But I got through it. I'll probably get my levels tested again soon. As I write this, I have been off of TRT for 12 months now.
I leaned more heavily on caffeine while I was coming off of TRT. My current levels are around 400mg per day. But tapering off is my primary focus. Or maybe I should try cold turkey again? Not sure how I can afford to be a useless zombie for weeks while I have a full time job and 2 kids to look after.
"Semen retention" and NoFap
For years, I had made half ass attempts at doing No Fap and quitting porn. The benefits claimed by people who have tried it are:

• Increased energy
• Vigor
• Willpower
• Can function on less sleep
• Increased confidenc
• Better focus and concentration
• Muscle growth
• Increased Libido

I started to read some books about the topic. This big two were "Your Brain on Porn" and "Cupid's Poisoned Arrow". These books took a more Science-based approach. There were also a couple books that were a little off tilt such as "Bliss of the Celibate" and "Why You Should Never Masturbate". These books included a lot of hokey about chakras and religion.
I never made it passed two weeks.
After TRT, I decided to give it a real go. NoFap/ Semen retention felt like my final try at getting an "edge". I lasted over a month. Just around the 3 week mark, I had felt the same benefits of TRT without all of the negatives. I also learned, that you have to be all in.
Any sexual thoughts had to be banished. Just think of something else. If you entertain lust at all, you will fail. Stay off social media where you may run into soft porn, which can start the spiral that leads you to porn, etc.
I was able to control my caffeine intake finally, my sleep was better, my wife was more attracted to me, I was more patient with the kids. I finally found the answer.
But then, I relapsed. And lost sight of the benefits. I had forgotten.
Slowly everything started slipping again. With small nofap stints here and there never lasting more than two weeks.
As I write this, I am realizing that caffeine was never my problem. It was a symptom of something else. I am currently on day 6 of retention and have made it my number one priority again. I need to remember this. I need my edge back.
The journey continues..
Life is full of ups and downs. And decisions you make (good or bad) compound over time. I know all of the positive effort, and commitment to personal development has paid off over time. Even though it may have been slower than I had hoped.
This story leaves out a lot. But I'd love to have a conversation with anyone who has had similar struggles. I have been going at this alone. I can only imagine how much more growth there can be surrounding yourself with like-minded individual
Ta Ta for Now.

Actually he is my uncle but he has been the father figure since I was around 10. I'm 23 now.
So I did something (cooked some onion) and he commented about how "that's not how it's done". I thought it was (mistakenly so) so I said "it is done like this". He repeats himself and so do I two or three times, after which he was getting visibly angry. Just his face, he was actually containing it, which was apparent.
But this was enough to trigger me (if you wish to know why this was triggering I have a post about it, trigger warning for physical violence and humiliation). He started to leave after doing some explaining and when he was walking away I said smt like "you're already getting crazy!" (Which in our language sounds kinda worse but idk how to translate) Meaning the visible anger on his face that triggered me was overreacting to me just contradicting him. Supposedly, me just bluntly replying "yes it's done like this" is provocative.
Anyways after hearing that he comes back and gets in my face. He wasn't going to hit me, that's "in the past", but he feinted and I turned my head, expecting a hit. Somehow we ended up talking for like two hours, there were many points we both wanted to get across to the other and I doubt there was much mutual understanding , but what's relevant to this post is that he made it known that things would be "worse" if I ever spoke to him like that. That he would beat me if I called him an idiot.
He showed me how he has been containing himself all this time, and that even know after saying you're going crazy he didn't hit me. That's true.
He said he really hates being offended. He told me that one time when he asked a worker that was doing stuff in our house for something, the dude just turned his back to him and my dad screamed so loudly the dude was startled. Like did a little jump.
I'm like: you think that's good for your health? You've been containing your temper lately, you think it's good? Repressing it even further will only make it worse in the long run and you will stop being so effective at restraining yourself when you want to. He seems to think he knows a thing or two about psychology so he replied with condescension at my suggestion that he needs to fix the anger issues instead of just controlling himself when they arise. Whatever.
It sucks. What's even worse is that most lf the time he is normal. Like 999/1000 times. Our baseline is good terms right now. But my subconscious still remembers, I haven't unpacked all those things yet. I don't like knowing that my father would beat me up for offending him. I don't like not saying something to him (even if it is calling him stupid) only because of fear of physical responses.
I told him many things, like how it sucks fearing my own father and he said "don't provoque me then".I painted a hypothetical situation in which I called him an idiot to ask him what would happen if he didn't react in an aggressive/violent manner, he replied and finished with "but better never call me that". I was like "wouldn't you stop to think why would your son call you that? Why would anybody call their dad that way if everything was good? Or why I said you were getting crazy?" And whatever the fuck his reply was to that it probably boiled down to "you have no business saying those things". Sure, calling someone an idiot isn't good. Focus on that. .
My repressed emotions to his attitude all this years were there in the conversation. I kept stopping because the knot in my throat wouldn't let me talk, tears on my eyes. This didn't seem to communicate anything to him.
I wonder what I'll do when I get stronger than him. I'd be so tempted to start something just to show him he can't overpower me anymore. I wouldn't even hit him, just restrain him and faking a hit just so he sees what it feels like. Even then, I don't think it compares to an adult doing that to a kid or teenager. He has heart issues though, and as much as I wish for payback, I feel like his rage would be so much worse after being restrained that his heart could worsen (also I understand revenge makes no real sense, forgive them Father for they not what they do, if he could understand he would).
Anyway. We hadn't had an altercation like this in a while, and it's the first time I actually said something like that to him. He won't hit me if I don't insult him. But his intimidating nature is still present at times, for example when I don't listen to him and stubbornly oppose him (it happens sometimes but I only with him, surprised?) And knowing he can get like violent or just verbally aggressive doesn't make the "good times" worth it. He is a "good charismatic person" basically all the time except when these things happen. But I'm at odds with the fact that if I ever fail to contain my subconscious resentment to him and call him something (motherfucker, idiot, stupid high-iq but low-eq controlling dumbfuck) I'll get beat up. I understand that healing is on me to stop walking on eggshells when he is around, but I'm starting to dislike him on a more conscious level now. Which is confusing too because everytime I've brought this up to my mother, she seemed to understand part of how I was feeling, but ultimately it boiled down to "he's family and will catch a bullet for you, will always drop anything he is doing when we need help". WHICH IS TRUE BUT I DON'T CARE
AITAH for wanting to keep interactions with him at the bare minimum?
EDIT: I'd love to move out. I live with my mom, grandma and grandpa. He lives in the city and comes by 1/2/3 times a week, frequently spending the night or two. I still love them, and especially my mom and her parents, but being able to fuck off whenever I need to without resorting to going some place or park would be great. But I can't. I'd put an extremely tough burden on my mom, she'd have no live left: she works a lot, grandpa is getting very old but main thing is taking care of my grandma, there are some things like lifting her that only I can do because grandpa is too old and uncle can't due to some tendon issues on his arms. Besides the option to start earning a metric shitload of money to retire her and be able to afford 24/7 elderly care personnel, do you have any ideas about how to approach this?
EDIT: at some point he brought up the "how much love we gave you" situation. Now here is what disturbs me. It's true, I've been given tons of love, patience, opoortunities, the works, not only from the rest of the family but from him as well. So I imagine myself as a parent that loves their kid so much, and then I imagine myself intimidating him because he called me crazy, or hitting him because he didn't listen and did something different from what we had agreed on, behind my back, for the millionth time. It feels wrong, it feels ignorant. I'd be wondering why the fuck does my son agree to do a certain thing and when it comes time to it, he does a different one. I'd start thinking about why he keeps lying about school grades, failing to pass the year even when he sees how bad it stresses his mother out... Instead of hitting him in the face with a closed fist (but hey, it wasn't full force!!) because he keeps lying and driving his mom crazy.
But hey, that's me. I'm "not the one to teach him about psychology"
TLDR: father is very intimidating sometimes and capable of violence if I offend (as in insult) him. We talked for 2 hours I expressed him my concerns and his response boils down to "don't provoque me and we'll be good". Provocation is "reasonable", he had never screamed at me or put a hand on me for leaving the lights on or breaking smt or whatever some very abusive parents out there do, but for "insulting, lying repeatedly driving us crazy". And since he is only aggressive in a justifiable way, it would seem weird and sad to the rest of my family when they notice I'm getting cold to him and keeping interaction in the house to a minimum. They wouldn't fully get it, I know because I talked to my mom several times at least and while she seems to understand a bit she will beg me to "fix things with him". And to them it will boil down to something like "he does this because his dad can beat him for calling him an idiot? What did he expect?"

Actually he is my uncle but he has been the father figure since I was around 10. I'm 23 now.
So I did something (cooked some onion) and he commented about how "that's not how it's done". I thought it was (mistakenly so) so I said "it is done like this". He repeats himself and so do I two or three times, after which he was getting visibly angry. Just his face, he was actually containing it, which was apparent.
But this was enough to trigger me (if you wish to know why this was triggering I have a post about it, trigger warning for physical violence and humiliation). He started to leave after doing some explaining and when he was walking away I said smt like "you're already getting crazy!" (Which in our language sounds kinda worse but idk how to translate) Meaning the visible anger on his face that triggered me was overreacting to me just contradicting him. Supposedly, me just bluntly replying "yes it's done like this" is provocative.
Anyways after hearing that he comes back and gets in my face. He wasn't going to hit me, that's "in the past", but he feinted and I turned my head, expecting a hit. Somehow we ended up talking for like two hours, there were many points we both wanted to get across to the other and I doubt there was much mutual understanding , but what's relevant to this post is that he made it known that things would be "worse" if I ever spoke to him like that. That he would beat me if I called him an idiot.
He showed me how he has been containing himself all this time, and that even know after saying you're going crazy he didn't hit me. That's true.
He said he really hates being offended. He told me that one time when he asked a worker that was doing stuff in our house for something, the dude just turned his back to him and my dad screamed so loudly the dude was startled. Like did a little jump.
I'm like: you think that's good for your health? You've been containing your temper lately, you think it's good? Repressing it even further will only make it worse in the long run and you will stop being so effective at restraining yourself when you want to. He seems to think he knows a thing or two about psychology so he replied with condescension at my suggestion that he needs to fix the anger issues instead of just controlling himself when they arise. Whatever.
It sucks. What's even worse is that most lf the time he is normal. Like 999/1000 times. Our baseline is good terms right now. But my subconscious still remembers, I haven't unpacked all those things yet. I don't like knowing that my father would beat me up for offending him. I don't like not saying something to him (even if it is calling him stupid) only because of fear of physical responses.
I told him many things, like how it sucks fearing my own father and he said "don't provoque me then".I painted a hypothetical situation in which I called him an idiot to ask him what would happen if he didn't react in an aggressive/violent manner, he replied and finished with "but better never call me that". I was like "wouldn't you stop to think why would your son call you that? Why would anybody call their dad that way if everything was good? Or why I said you were getting crazy?" And whatever the fuck his reply was to that it probably boiled down to "you have no business saying those things". Sure, calling someone an idiot isn't good. Focus on that. .
My repressed emotions to his attitude all this years were there in the conversation. I kept stopping because the knot in my throat wouldn't let me talk, tears on my eyes. This didn't seem to communicate anything to him.
I wonder what I'll do when I get stronger than him. I'd be so tempted to start something just to show him he can't overpower me anymore. I wouldn't even hit him, just restrain him and faking a hit just so he sees what it feels like. Even then, I don't think it compares to an adult doing that to a kid or teenager. He has heart issues though, and as much as I wish for payback, I feel like his rage would be so much worse after being restrained that his heart could worsen (also I understand revenge makes no real sense, forgive them Father for they not what they do, if he could understand he would).
Anyway. We hadn't had an altercation like this in a while, and it's the first time I actually said something like that to him. He won't hit me if I don't insult him. But his intimidating nature is still present at times, for example when I don't listen to him and stubbornly oppose him (it happens sometimes but I only with him, surprised?) And knowing he can get like violent or just verbally aggressive doesn't make the "good times" worth it. He is a "good charismatic person" basically all the time except when these things happen. But I'm at odds with the fact that if I ever fail to contain my subconscious resentment to him and call him something (motherfucker, idiot, stupid high-iq but low-eq controlling dumbfuck) I'll get beat up. I understand that healing is on me to stop walking on eggshells when he is around, but I'm starting to dislike him on a more conscious level now. Which is confusing too because everytime I've brought this up to my mother, she seemed to understand part of how I was feeling, but ultimately it boiled down to "he's family and will catch a bullet for you, will always drop anything he is doing when we need help". WHICH IS TRUE BUT I DON'T CARE
AITAH for wanting to keep interactions with him at the bare minimum?
EDIT: I'd love to move out. I live with my mom, grandma and grandpa. He lives in the city and comes by 1/2/3 times a week, frequently spending the night or two. I still love them, and especially my mom and her parents, but being able to fuck off whenever I need to without resorting to going some place or park would be great. But I can't. I'd put an extremely tough burden on my mom, she'd have no live left: she works a lot, grandpa is getting very old but main thing is taking care of my grandma, there are some things like lifting her that only I can do because grandpa is too old and uncle can't due to some tendon issues on his arms. Besides the option to start earning a metric shitload of money to retire her and be able to afford 24/7 elderly care personnel, do you have any ideas about how to approach this?
EDIT: at some point he brought up the "how much love we gave you" situation. Now here is what disturbs me. It's true, I've been given tons of love, patience, opoortunities, the works, not only from the rest of the family but from him as well. So I imagine myself as a parent that loves their kid so much, and then I imagine myself intimidating him because he called me crazy, or hitting him because he didn't listen and did something different from what we had agreed on, behind my back, for the millionth time. It feels wrong, it feels ignorant. I'd be wondering why the fuck does my son agree to do a certain thing and when it comes time to it, he does a different one. I'd start thinking about why he keeps lying about school grades, failing to pass the year even when he sees how bad it stresses his mother out... Instead of hitting him in the face with a closed fist (but hey, it wasn't full force!!) because he keeps lying and driving his mom crazy.
But hey, that's me. I'm "not the one to teach him about psychology"

I want to die. Have wanted to for the last 2 months. I just think it would be easier if I wasn't here. then I wouldn't have to deal with this all the time. Maybe I would finally have peace. I already buried my grandmother last week, so why not join her?
I'm not completely sure my friends like me. Whenever I'm with them in the group, I get ignored and it's like I'm invisible to them. They don't involve me in the conversation, they don't call my name or ask for my opinion, it's like I'm not there. My life feels like I'm watching a movie from behind a sheet of glass and I can't intervene or influence anything. It's like I'm not there, so eventually, when I start feeling this stinging sensation, I leave and no one cares. No one notices. no one calls my name.I don't know why. Maybe they just plain don't like me. When I initiate conversations one-on-one, they interact with me, but when it's in a group, they often ignore me.
And this metastasizes to other aspects. For example, none of them have ever texted me. Ever. I'm ALWAYS the one who initiates the conversation, and they take their fucking time to text me back like they're doing me a favor by talking to me. I asked one of them today if we could do something together that he'd done with a different member of the group and seemed enthusiastic about it, and he just didn't respond. It's been 7 hours. And he's the fast texter...
2 months ago, I went on a camping trip with them. I only joined that hiking team because I wanted to be closer to them, but that trip just showed how much they can't stand me and will go out of their way to act like I'm not there.
And the thing is, I like these people. I do. They're cool, funny, and awesome and I've crushed on several of them, but they really treat me like shit, and it's gotten to the point that I just think about leaving this world behind a lot. Maybe they'll miss me? I don't know.
Maybe it's because they don't take me seriously. I've always been the class clown, maybe they only see me as comic relief and don't think I'm an actual person.
I'm just tired. And I don't know how long I can keep this charade up of being happy and content with being ignored all the time.

Hello Redditors,
This is an incredible success story of how we helped a client achieve incredible results in just four months, generating an $80,000 return on investment (ROI) with a combination of SEO and Facebook Ads. We have completed many successful projects and there's a certain satisfaction in seeing our strategies translate to such tangible growth. I have tried to keep this post extremely detailed so that it can be beneficial for experienced marketers and newcomers alike.
The Client: Hair Extension E-commerce Brand
Revenue Split Between SEO and Fb ads: 3:2
Average Order Value: $350
Total Revenue(6 months): $140,000
Expenses(6 months): Product Cost + Delivery cost + Team + Agency Fees + Ads Cost+ Website Optimization + Packaging: $60000
Basic Company Background:
The brand was being run by a Mother-Daughter duo for the past 3 months. They had a shopify website with average structure and were struggling with facebook ads themselves. Although they made few physical sales due to friends and relatives but were unable to utilize the digital potential of their business as such. After trying facebook ads for some time they wanted a reliable digital marketing team to work with and they were recommended to us by one of our other customers who has a service based business. Initially we connected majorly for facebook ads but after the initial discussion when were doing research from our side, we found that there is huge potential in SEO for this niche so we suggested that we should prepare a proper website on wordpress and focus on both SEO and Ads parallelly as, although Ads will give an initial boost to the business but SEO will bring some stability and help in building a sustainable business.
Facebook Ads Campaign Structure:

• Our campaign housed multiple ad sets targeting users who are interested in fashion products and we also targeted audiences of some big and costly fashion companies. We were mostly targeting females aged 25-45 with good income source to have optimal conversions in the beginning, with our Seo efforts we planned to target a slightly younger audience as well which is going steadily as of now.
• We ran occasional promotions like "Buy x get x free" to boost AOV.
• Due to the high AOV and especially the product niche sometimes it is necessary to build trust so we used retargeting to build trust and showcase benefits, not just push for immediate conversions. Ads focused on comparison(Before & Afters), Customer Reviews, Hassle free product application and natural look, stylish look.

Ads Creatives and Brand Positioning:
It's important to note that after deep research we could find that a major share our hair extensions customers are females aged between 21-45 so we did not actively position our brand as solving problems of low hair volume, but instead we focused on how the products ads style, gives a much better look and you can try new hairstyles and hair colors daily. Also since almost all the demographics in this age group are working, we tested a professional look angle as well which gave us decent results. In ad creatives as well as on the website we made the daughter as the face of the product as we want to slowly grow her instagram as well which can add another organic and sustainable stream of revenue. She shoots before and after transition videos, general product application videos and other videos for ads according to the target audience and brand positioning strategy we discussed earlier. Instead of making long videos focused on product details a lot, we made short but captivating videos which can appeal to the young audience’s fashion sense.
Key Takeaways from FB Ads:
Mostly Meta Ads or Any other marketing tactic is just a traffic source but conversion will basically happen by how well you are able to communicate your product to the audience through your website. Its is necessary to have a smooth user journey, attractive offers, crisp information and right brand positioning on the website.
It is extremely important to make data driven decisions and track customer journeys meticulously. Always rely on your own tracking or google analytics to avoid the potential unreliability of Facebook Ads Manager.
Seo Strategy
If you don’t already know this, SEO is all about how effectively you can strategize your content and technical efforts keeping a bigger picture in mind. After our initial keyword research we could find that the average Kd of the important keywords was low when it comes to commercial keywords which were directly related to the business.
It's important to note that since the website was being built after our onboarding only so it was easy for us to structure the website according to the SEO strategy that we prepared.
At every stage we had meetings with the developer to ensure that there are no technical issues that will hinder the SEO growth and future and also we structured the website to be SEO friendly. We built separate pages for all the product categories and after through keyword research we added content to those pages so that the pages itself can rank for commercial keywords.
After the website was ready we audited it for technical issues(Like mobile friendliness, H1 tags, canonical tags, etc) we started focusing on the content. We wanted to establish our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions and hair care industry in general.
Since the website was completely new, initially we created blogs(2-3 times per week) around informational keywords with low KD purely for increasing our website authority and bringing the initial traffic on the website. We have seen that usually people start stressing about approaching big websites for guest postings since the first day itself but if your keyword research and content is solid, that is not required in the beginning. Initially we focused on profile creations, image submissions, pdf submissions, internal linking in the content, web 2.0 backlinks etc and this was more than enough for us to rank for low difficulty keywords and increase our DA to a decent level so that our category pages can rank for low difficulty keywords.
Here I would like to include a tip, many times people are worried that what if the backlink that they have created doesn't get indexed. In the initial phase we work really hard when it comes to what we call as maturing our backlinks as this is the major factor for ranking on low difficulty keywords. So basically what we do is, we make backlinks of our web 2.0 backlinks itself which helps the primary backlink in getting indexed which ultimately helps with our website DA.
Also many people have been asking us in our previous posts how we structure our blog since I talk a lot about content quality, see it's not as hard and it doesn't involve a lot of research at least in the initial phase when you just have to rank on low difficulty keywords. In this phase usually what we do is study the top 5 ranking blogs on the particular keyword and make sure that we include more content and more subheadings then them. Also we try to find opportunities to include tables or charts wherever possible, we include good quality images(original if possible) and at this stage internal linking is very very important so we focus on that as well. In later stages although the basic strategy for framing the blogs remains same, overall content strategy varies a lot from business to business and requires a lot of strategizing depending on the brand positioning goals.
So after we were able to rank for low difficulty informational keywords and our Website DA reached a decent level due to our backlinking efforts, we started writing content around the fashion advice and common problems which people face related to hair in general. But as discussed earlier, we wanted to keep our brand positioning fashion centric, so even while writing about common problems we applied a positive and solution centric approach. We strategically placed internal links to our product pages in the content and tested popups with offers as well. Apart from this, we started guest posting as well at this stage. For finding websites for guest posting we used SEMrush’s backlink gap analysis tool and created a segregated list of blogs that we can reach out to based on their content quality and DA. By this time the store started generating decent revenue from ads and SEO so the client was completely onboard with reaching out to blogs for guest posting. Guest posting and overall strategic SEO application started generating a good amount of traffic for us and in 3-4 months the revenue generated due to SEO surpassed our Ads revenue as well.
Advantages of Combining SEO and Paid Ads
While Facebook Ads played a crucial role in launching the brand and driving initial traffic, SEO has emerged as the primary driver of sustainable growth. This approach allowed us to:

• Reduce Reliance on Paid Advertising: As our SEO efforts matured, we were able to gradually decrease our Facebook ad spend, resulting in cost savings and improved return on investment.
• Build Brand Authority: Our SEO strategy has positioned our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions industry. This fosters brand recognition and trust, leading to organic customer acquisition.
• Scale Traffic and Revenue: Organic traffic growth has been exponential, leading to a significant and sustainable increase in website revenue generated through SEO.

SEO efforts are always ongoing but we are really satisfied with the base that we have built and we are really looking forward to working with keywords with higher KD and generating more revenue with SEO In the upcoming months. Although we will keep running ads in future as well mostly for awareness purposes but the major revenue will be generated from our SEO efforts. Apart from this, as we mentioned earlier, we are looking to actively start the Social Media efforts as well from the next month itself. We will be looking to target Instagram and Tiktok in the initial phase and we believe in 2-3 months social media will contribute towards 25% of our revenue which will grow rapidly.
Thankyou For Reading!

Hello Redditors,
This is an incredible success story of how we helped a client achieve incredible results in just four months, generating an $80,000 return on investment (ROI) with a combination of SEO and Facebook Ads. We have completed many successful projects and there's a certain satisfaction in seeing our strategies translate to such tangible growth. I have tried to keep this post extremely detailed so that it can be beneficial for experienced marketers and newcomers alike.
The Client: Hair Extension E-commerce Brand
Revenue Split Between SEO and Fb ads: 3:2
Average Order Value: $350
Total Revenue(6 months): $140,000
Expenses(6 months): Product Cost + Delivery cost + Team + Agency Fees + Ads Cost+ Website Optimization + Packaging: $60000
Basic Company Background:
The brand was being run by a Mother-Daughter duo for the past 3 months. They had a shopify website with average structure and were struggling with facebook ads themselves. Although they made few physical sales due to friends and relatives but were unable to utilize the digital potential of their business as such. After trying facebook ads for some time they wanted a reliable digital marketing team to work with and they were recommended to us by one of our other customers who has a service based business. Initially we connected majorly for facebook ads but after the initial discussion when were doing research from our side, we found that there is huge potential in SEO for this niche so we suggested that we should prepare a proper website on wordpress and focus on both SEO and Ads parallelly as, although Ads will give an initial boost to the business but SEO will bring some stability and help in building a sustainable business.
Facebook Ads Campaign Structure:

• Our campaign housed multiple ad sets targeting users who are interested in fashion products and we also targeted audiences of some big and costly fashion companies. We were mostly targeting females aged 25-45 with good income source to have optimal conversions in the beginning, with our Seo efforts we planned to target a slightly younger audience as well which is going steadily as of now.
• We ran occasional promotions like "Buy x get x free" to boost AOV.
• Due to the high AOV and especially the product niche sometimes it is necessary to build trust so we used retargeting to build trust and showcase benefits, not just push for immediate conversions. Ads focused on comparison(Before & Afters), Customer Reviews, Hassle free product application and natural look, stylish look.

Ads Creatives and Brand Positioning:
It's important to note that after deep research we could find that a major share our hair extensions customers are females aged between 21-45 so we did not actively position our brand as solving problems of low hair volume, but instead we focused on how the products ads style, gives a much better look and you can try new hairstyles and hair colors daily. Also since almost all the demographics in this age group are working, we tested a professional look angle as well which gave us decent results. In ad creatives as well as on the website we made the daughter as the face of the product as we want to slowly grow her instagram as well which can add another organic and sustainable stream of revenue. She shoots before and after transition videos, general product application videos and other videos for ads according to the target audience and brand positioning strategy we discussed earlier. Instead of making long videos focused on product details a lot, we made short but captivating videos which can appeal to the young audience’s fashion sense.
Key Takeaways from FB Ads:
Mostly Meta Ads or Any other marketing tactic is just a traffic source but conversion will basically happen by how well you are able to communicate your product to the audience through your website. Its is necessary to have a smooth user journey, attractive offers, crisp information and right brand positioning on the website.
It is extremely important to make data driven decisions and track customer journeys meticulously. Always rely on your own tracking or google analytics to avoid the potential unreliability of Facebook Ads Manager.
Seo Strategy
If you don’t already know this, SEO is all about how effectively you can strategize your content and technical efforts keeping a bigger picture in mind. After our initial keyword research we could find that the average Kd of the important keywords was low when it comes to commercial keywords which were directly related to the business.
It's important to note that since the website was being built after our onboarding only so it was easy for us to structure the website according to the SEO strategy that we prepared.
At every stage we had meetings with the developer to ensure that there are no technical issues that will hinder the SEO growth and future and also we structured the website to be SEO friendly. We built separate pages for all the product categories and after through keyword research we added content to those pages so that the pages itself can rank for commercial keywords.
After the website was ready we audited it for technical issues(Like mobile friendliness, H1 tags, canonical tags, etc) we started focusing on the content. We wanted to establish our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions and hair care industry in general.
Since the website was completely new, initially we created blogs(2-3 times per week) around informational keywords with low KD purely for increasing our website authority and bringing the initial traffic on the website. We have seen that usually people start stressing about approaching big websites for guest postings since the first day itself but if your keyword research and content is solid, that is not required in the beginning. Initially we focused on profile creations, image submissions, pdf submissions, internal linking in the content, web 2.0 backlinks etc and this was more than enough for us to rank for low difficulty keywords and increase our DA to a decent level so that our category pages can rank for low difficulty keywords.
Here I would like to include a tip, many times people are worried that what if the backlink that they have created doesn't get indexed. In the initial phase we work really hard when it comes to what we call as maturing our backlinks as this is the major factor for ranking on low difficulty keywords. So basically what we do is, we make backlinks of our web 2.0 backlinks itself which helps the primary backlink in getting indexed which ultimately helps with our website DA.
Also many people have been asking us in our previous posts how we structure our blog since I talk a lot about content quality, see it's not as hard and it doesn't involve a lot of research at least in the initial phase when you just have to rank on low difficulty keywords. In this phase usually what we do is study the top 5 ranking blogs on the particular keyword and make sure that we include more content and more subheadings then them. Also we try to find opportunities to include tables or charts wherever possible, we include good quality images(original if possible) and at this stage internal linking is very very important so we focus on that as well. In later stages although the basic strategy for framing the blogs remains same, overall content strategy varies a lot from business to business and requires a lot of strategizing depending on the brand positioning goals.
So after we were able to rank for low difficulty informational keywords and our Website DA reached a decent level due to our backlinking efforts, we started writing content around the fashion advice and common problems which people face related to hair in general. But as discussed earlier, we wanted to keep our brand positioning fashion centric, so even while writing about common problems we applied a positive and solution centric approach. We strategically placed internal links to our product pages in the content and tested popups with offers as well. Apart from this, we started guest posting as well at this stage. For finding websites for guest posting we used SEMrush’s backlink gap analysis tool and created a segregated list of blogs that we can reach out to based on their content quality and DA. By this time the store started generating decent revenue from ads and SEO so the client was completely onboard with reaching out to blogs for guest posting. Guest posting and overall strategic SEO application started generating a good amount of traffic for us and in 3-4 months the revenue generated due to SEO surpassed our Ads revenue as well.
Advantages of Combining SEO and Paid Ads
While Facebook Ads played a crucial role in launching the brand and driving initial traffic, SEO has emerged as the primary driver of sustainable growth. This approach allowed us to:

• Reduce Reliance on Paid Advertising: As our SEO efforts matured, we were able to gradually decrease our Facebook ad spend, resulting in cost savings and improved return on investment.
• Build Brand Authority: Our SEO strategy has positioned our website as a trusted authority in the hair extensions industry. This fosters brand recognition and trust, leading to organic customer acquisition.
• Scale Traffic and Revenue: Organic traffic growth has been exponential, leading to a significant and sustainable increase in website revenue generated through SEO.

SEO efforts are always ongoing but we are really satisfied with the base that we have built and we are really looking forward to working with keywords with higher KD and generating more revenue with SEO In the upcoming months. Although we will keep running ads in future as well mostly for awareness purposes but the major revenue will be generated from our SEO efforts. Apart from this, as we mentioned earlier, we are looking to actively start the Social Media efforts as well from the next month itself. We will be looking to target Instagram and Tiktok in the initial phase and we believe in 2-3 months social media will contribute towards 25% of our revenue which will grow rapidly.
Thankyou For Reading!

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I'm not sure how helpful it will be to post here because I think my issue goes far beyond the usual conflicts one might find in a traditional dnd campaign. So before anyone reads this I wants to emphasise that 1. this was my very first dnd campaign and I joined it without any prior knowledge, and 2. this campaign was never intended to be a traditional "we're heroes and trying to save the world while fighting monsters left and right" campaign. I hope this answers any questions along the lines of "Well, why did you create this kind of character in the first place?" and "Why do your characters spend so much time talking about stuff, don't you have some beholders to fight?". I also cannot explain the whole situation without writing a literal 20 page long essay, so I'll try to keep it as short as possible and only give two examples. I'm definitely leaving a lot of details out here, so please let me know if clarifications or futher information is needed.
To preface what this is all about: I was a player in a very roleplay focused campaign and my character basically turned into the problem child of this campaign. I never intended for my character to be the focus, was never interested in him being the focus, but nothing I ever did suceeded in solving the issues at hand and taking the focus away from him. I constantly got accused of "making my character suffer", whereas from my perspective I was constantly trying to keep this character safe from the constant attacks he had to endure. It was like no matter what I did, no matter what I let this character do, it was never right. I think everyone in this group makes an effort to play their characters realistically, I defininitely do. And yet it was never me going "I know exactly what my character has to do to fix this but I'll REFUSE to do it because I don't like it" but me literally having no clue what people wanted from this character. The dm repeatedly said that nothing they tried to fix this character was helping. Whereas from my perspective these things that were supposed to "help" my character were the exact things that my character was struggling with. So it turned into a constant stream of something happening, my character then feeling bad, then everyone focusing on my character feeling bad, then my character trying to fix things, everyone telling him that he's doing it wrong, my character feeling even worse.... and me wondering why my character cannot just exist in peace, why we constantly have to focus on him instead of the "plot". I don't think anyone was interested in constantly discussing my character's mental state, I definitely wasn't interested in doing that, and yet we kept doing it. But I also did not know how to have him react differently to the constant shit getting thrown at him.
______
So, basically:
Around three years ago a friend of mine told me about this new dnd campaign they were starting and asked me to join. I've known this friend for half my life but we never lived close to each other, maintaining loose contact over Twitter and me visisting them every two or three years. I had never played dnd before, which they didn't think would be a problem, calling the campaign "very beginner friendly". The whole point behind this campaign was that both this friend (the dm) and two of the players from the main campaign they were playing wanted to play more regularly, so my friend/dm came up with this campaign which was basically a prequel to that main campaign. That main campaign was a more "traditional" dnd campaign with a quest to save the world and regular combat. Meanwhile this new campaign was supposed to be focused on roleplay. There was no overarching plot or quest and the setting was an arcane school and our characters were supposed to be students at said school, just starting their first semester.
When creating our characters the dm asked us to include at least one character in the backstory that was important for our character, and also an objective for our character, something they wanted to achieve. The character I came up with was a young half-elf wizard specialising in abjuration. The gist of his story was that his parents had been arrested and executed for high treason when he was very young and that he grew up rather isolated with his older brother in a place they were not allowed to leave before coming off age. When my character was 14 he woke up one morning to find his brother gone. He had left him only a cryptic letter, hinting at wanting to find out what had really happened to their parents, telling my character that he was sorry and that he would come back. When his brother had not come back after several months, my character too ran away and made his way to Candlekeep, which he had visited many times with his parents (who had been scholars) as a child. He tried to find answers in Candlekeep and spent the following three years hiding in the library before something prompted him to leave and travel to the aforementioned arcane school in order to study there. His objective was to find out why his parents had to die, what happened to his brother, and adjusting to normal life after years of isolation.
Personality wise this character was supposed to be very kind, very gentle, quite naive, honest, and at the beginning of the campaign rather anxious. My assumption was that after growing up in isolation he would need some time to get acclimatised and would be anxious and overwhelmed in the beginning but would loosen up with time and become more self-confident. Some bad stuff happened early on in the campaign and he reacted to it in a rather not healthy way (withdrawing, refusing to eat, but also not talking about what was going on because he didn't want to put the focus on himself). I messed up here, I realised that later. I assumed the other characters would sit him down and ask him what was going on, leading to some kind of cathartic conversation, my character then revealing his past, and him becoming more confident and positive through it, completely resolving this issue. I didn't realise that introducing these kind of psychological issues into the story would be an issue, simply because I wasn't planning on making it a big thing. I thought it would be realistic for him to react this way and I thought it was something that could easily be resolved. Nowadays I would approach this completely differently: if I were to play this character now I would make this whole "accepting his past, becoming more self-confident and open" thing part of his backstory and would start him off as being confident and in tune with his emotions, instead of trying to quickly get through this development at the start of the campaign. So I think I know what I SHOULD have done to prevent this from escalating. What I am trying to figure out is what I could have done to fix it AFTER realising my mistake. Because we spent months and months trying to resolve this issue and never really got anywhere. Despite me trying my best to keep the focus away from my character, despite me trying to turn him into someone more confident and happy, despite me NOT WANTING him to be the focus of the story and doing my best to keep him out of the spotlight.
______
Here is an example of the things going on in the story, to which my character reacted badly and me not knowing how else I could have had him react that would not have caused further conflict:
Over the course of the campaign L. figured out what his brother was up to after him and his friends getting intro trouble and a mysterious stranger helping them get out of there and that stranger then revealing himself to be A.'s husband (and therefore my character's brother-in-law). L. had a lenghty discussion with this person and after that I basically viewed L.'s conflict as resolved: he now knew why his brother had left, he knew that it had not been his fault, and he knew that his brother had found someone who loved him and was not alone. L. still hoped to be able to see his brother again to get to say goodbye properly. Because in L.'s mind there was no other possibility but this being a goodbye: his brother had a new life now that he, L., was not part of anymore. And L. accepted that. There was no anger, no resentment, only relief knowing that his brother was not alone, had someone by his side who loved him, and that he still cared about L. and that L. had not - as he had feared - done anything that had caused his brother to not want to be near him anymore. He had finally gotten the closure he had needed, he was feeling okay and I viewed this whole conflict as resolved.
Fast forward a few weeks: A. finally suceeded in doing what he had been working on these past few years and returned to L., just like he had promised in the letter he had left him all that time ago. When talking to him, L. realised that A. was not actually planning on leaving, like L. had assumed. Instead A. told him that he and his husband would stay and look for a new home near L.'s school. L. was very surprised by this but of course he was also happy. He hadn't even considered that his brother would stay. His biggest hope had been that his brother would occasionally send him a letter from whereever he was. Him actually wanting to stay was very unexpected for L. but of course he was very happy about it. They also had some good conversations during that time, which not only brought L. further closure but also revealed connections between several past plot points.
About a week after A.'s return L. went to visit him. He just wanted to spend some time with his brother and also ask him for advice. The semester was coming to an end and everyone was busy preparing for the final exams and L. also still needed to find an internship placement for the summer break. L. wanted to do his internship in Candlekeep but was unsure on how to approach this, who to contact, how to phrase his request, so he thought asking his eloquent and knowledgable brother for advice would be a good idea. This conversation quickly went downhill with A. accusing L. of not respecting the people working at Candlekeep enough to do proper research beforehand and L. ending up feeling like he didn't deserve doing an internship there and ending up feeling even more stressed out about the whole thing than he had already been beforehand. They changed the topic and at some point A. started to jokingly fighting L. and putting him in a headlock. L. had no interest in fighting his brother, even as a joke, and reacted by going limp so he could slip away. A. then asked something along the lines of "So that's how you react in a fight? You just give up?" and L. said "Well, I know you would never intentionally hurt me with no good reason". The next second L. was falling. He was up in the sky, the ground many meters below him, and he was falling. L. immediately deduced that this must be some kind of enchantment and tried to fight it, but neither acknowledging that this wasn't real nor trying to shake it off did anything. He did not know any flying or hovering spells, nothing that would help him stop the fall, and ended up crashing into the ground. The next moment he was in some kind of water pool inside a cave that he struggled to get out of. A. was waiting by the cave entrance and offered L. his hand when he got out. L. refused to take it. A. then left and L. eventually followed, finding himself back in the room they had been in before. Either in the cave or shortly afterwards A. asked L. why he hadn't just used a spell to stop his fall, being surprised by L.'s statement that he had not yet learned an appropriate spell. L. eventually sat down at the table and did some exam preparation. A. made some food and put some in front of L. which L. ignored. Eventually L. looked up and asked A. what his biggest fear was. A. had just put L. through several of his biggest fears - falling, drowning, not being able to trust the ones he loves, and getting his control taken away - so he wanted to know what A. was scared of most. A. the told L. that his biggest fear was someone using his abilities to do something bad. And then he explained to L. that he had come to the conclusion that he would not be able to stay after all. That while he was able to defend himself, L. was not, and anyone wanting to get to A. would have an easy time doing so through L. who was evidently not able to defend himself. L. did not take that well and asked A. why he couldn't just train L. so he would get better at defending himself but A. refused. A. then said he would take a walk and allowed L. to come with him. They walked for several hours without talking, ending up in the middle of a forest where some ancient creature appeared that A. had helped several years ago and that was now nearing the end of its life and had called A. there to say goodbye. A. also explained to L. that he did not actually want to stay. That he - A. - had been naive in thinking that he could just live a normal life and that it had been nothing but a dream and that he simply wasn't made for that kind of life. Some time during that conversation A. also told L. that he was convinced that he would end up in the Nine Hells for the things he had done. They spent the night in the woods and the next morning L. realised that all his things had been stolen by some fey creatures, including his spell book. After searching for several hours they were able to find his spellbook, which had been smeared with insults. A. managed to clean it up and they returned back home and L. was reuinted with the rest of the group. Before L. left A. also gifted him an indestructable spellbook. A few days after these events L. went to the temple and addressed Mystra, telling her how lost he was feeling and how worried he was about his brother. He told her that he wanted nothing more than to protect the ones around him but how he was constantly failing in doing so. And how he just wanted his brother to be safe and how he was worried he would really eventually end up in the Nine Hells and how he didn't think A. deserved that but that he didn't know how to prevent that from happening. The next morning L. found some strange piece of cloth on his face which after some examination was revealed to be an item belonging to Mystra which she had used to hide something in the past. The very condensed explanation of what that item does is that when attuned to it one cannot be found through any kind of traditional divination magic, making one basically undetectable. The next time L. saw A. he told him about this item and A. was basically like "Oh cool, well in that case we can actually stay here". L.'s reaction was to start crying and A. asked him why he was so upset and why everything was always the end of the world to him.
The way I see this whole situation: I simply wanted L. to spend some time with his brother, hopefully get some advice from him regarding that internship and then going back to the rest of the group. Instead what happened was that A. first called him disrespectful for wanting to do an internship at a place and not having done enough research beforehand. Then taking L.'s statement "you wouldn't hurt me with no good reason" to assault L. Then telling L. that he would not stay after all due to L. apparently not being able to defend himself. Then explaining to him that "actually, I didn't want to stay in the first place", and then a few days later telling him he WILL stay after all. So basically, L. had accepted that his brother would not come back to him for good, he had accepted this and had found closure. Then his brother told him he WOULD stay and L. was of course happy about this surprising turn of events. Then his brother told him that due to L. not being able to defend himself he CANNOT stay. Then he tells him he doesn't WANT to stay anyway, confirming the exact reasoning behind L.'s initial assumption that A. would not stay. And then after realising the threat was eliminated, decided to stay afterall, despite having it made very clear that he did not actually WANT to stay... and apparently only staying because he thought that's what L. wants, despite L. repeatedly explaining that his priority is for A. to be happy and that he does not want A. to stay if that's not what makes him happy and A. just completely ignoring that? Am I really the only person who thinks that it's understandable why L. is confused and upset in this situation? Plus the constant "What do you mean, you don't know [this one simple thing]?" when L. is already barely able to get a regular long rest in between trying to keep up with school work and all the stuff that's going on at the side, like a literal war for example, and constantly feeling that no matter what he decides it's always wrong and he never has enough time to do the things he is supposed to do, let alone the things he wants to do? Plus him wanting to spend the afternoon with his brother turning into a 36 hour long event and him having to spend half a day looking for his spellbook, only to find it smeared with insults?
Am I being dense for not understanding what the whole point of this was? Trying to make it clear to L. that his brother is a powerful and dangerous person? He was already very aware of that and did not need a reminder. Proving to L. that he shouldn't trust his brother? Why even associate with him in the first place if you don't want him to trust you? Giving him the indestructable spellbook was nice. But was having some fey creatures steal his original one and smear insults all over it and him having to spend hours searching for it really necessary?
Whatever the hell it is the dm was trying to do here, I think a simple, calm conversation between those two would have been a lot more effective.
But maybe it's clearer from the outside, so if someone else understands what happened here, please help me understand.
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Another situation was that due to his struggles early on in the campaign my character was supposed to see the school's healer once a week so she could make sure that he was okay. My character went there once a week, feeling more or less okay when entering her office, and coming out feeling confused and upset after having his mental state analysed and picked apart. Neither did my character enjoy this nor did I think that any of the players (including myself) had any interest in listening to my character discuss his emotions every week. So eventually I had my character write a letter to the headmistress, explaning that he wanted to stop doing these weekly check-ins. Upon being asked why, he explained that these appointments actively made him feel bad and that he would do a lot better if he didn't constantly feel pressured into talking about things he didn't want to talk about. The reaction was that he was told that if he cannot handle simply being asked how he was doing once a week, then he wasn't stable enough to go to school, and consequently got kicked out. Leading to us spending two sessions trying to resolve this and my character eventually being allowed back into the school. ______
The situations I described are the kind of thing that constantly happened to my character.
We had a calendar where we wrote down short descriptions of what happened each day. I once went through this calendar with a friend (who does not play dnd) and it basically went like this: "So that day this traumatic thing happened to L., and the next day this happened, and two days later this happened, then the next day he almost died, then three days later he discovered this, the next day this other thing happened,....", and my friend just went "Holy shit, it's no surprise that this kid is losing his marmbles."
So I keep alternating between "I messed up this whole campaign by creating a problematic character" and the feeling that the dm had it out for specifically my character and it didn't matter what I did, nothing could have solved this.
Some constructive ideas on what I did wrong and what I could have done to fix things would be appreciated. (And yes, we did talk about this in the group. I eventually got tired of talking about it because it never lead anywhere.