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What's today, Sunday? In most places? So that means not a lot of eyes will see this. I'll delete it sometime today anyway.
I've been creating and deleting accounts, and words for, well more than a year. Not sure the exact time frame.
Within that same time frame I've done a lot of reading too. Lately the flavor has been Wei Wu Wei. Highly recommend by the way, if you're in the mood for tasty words like:

I am my phenomenal absence.

Open Secret and All Else Is Bondage are both great.
Anyway, that's not the point of this post. The point is to say, what if I've always been a nutcase?
My entry into this is drugs and music festivals. It started way back in 2014 one weekend on Molly. Walked away from that though, wondering "How can I be that happy without drugs?"
Well more psychedelics happened. More festivals. But then also a lot of meditation, listening to Watts, reading Tolle and life happened.
Life happened a lot, in ways I didn't full expect nor understand, and it's continued to happy in ways that have completely destroyed whatever framework of "normal" availed itself.
In fact, I haven't been normal since that first step into the rabbit hole at the festival, appropriately named Nocturnal Wonderland. Like Alice.
But dear God, what's been discovered is so much more than happiness. Was reflecting on this earlier in a private journal. I wanted a kind of permanent high I guess, but instead am left with choiceless gratitude. This is the phrase being used for the moment. Maybe tomorrow it's something different.
Not what the label points to. Whatever that is, whatever "choiceless gratitude" barely reaches, is so far beyond. It's beyond all the stuff we talk about with Nonduality.
I mean, it's that too. It's the model of "Who is there to do this and that, Oneness, non-coceptual reality," blah blah, all that. But also so far beyond.
Beyond without going anywhere. Like now I'm tapping these words out against a piece of glass, and listening to the breeze and some birds in the distance, neighbors doing yard work. A siren somewhere. So this is all right here and now, but there's also a very subtle intangible...I genuinely don't know the word. But it makes me laugh, whatever IT is.
IT is so far, but very, very here now. We can stuff words into this like "Infinite" or "Awareness" or "Is-ness," but all of those words are stale.
They're like cupcakes that have been sitting out for a couple days after a birthday party. Still sweet. But stale. Dry. Old. Dead. Forgotten.
THIS "It" whatever "IT" is isn't stale. It doesn't fit in the model of stale versus fresh.
Anyway, enough of that. The point is that I've become more honestly myself after all these years of trying to find permanent happiness.
And as myself, honestly, maybe I'm a nutcase.
:)
Oh, folks always ask why I delete my words. Headaches. Of all the answers I give, this is always the primary reason.
Thinking through these words, or thinking of me as an object, or if they are written from or cause conflict, all of that gives me headaches.
So I let the words hang out for a bit until the headaches get too strong, and then delete.
Nobody's been able to answer why these headaches happen (not only here, but whenever I write or do something to cause attention). Nobody has been able to offer a remedy either.
So I figure it's part of the thing, whatever the thing is, like catching a cold and you sneeze. Whatever. Not expecting anybody to understand any of it.
Later.

I am reading a journal article about the Russian economy, and came across the phrase “Экономика обеих столиц, ряда южных и других регионов”, and I was wondering if this refers to Moscow, St. Petersburg and then other regions, or “both the capital, and these other regions”.
Apologies if this is poorly worded!

https://youtu.be/kKTWybNRR3Y?si=nmPCk4Ex5xKKbsdq
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tragicallyhip/wellgotoo.html
Hello everyone, I hope all is well. Today we are going to be looking at the song “We’ll Go Too” which is the seventh song from the band’s third studio album Fully Completely.
This is a song where on first listen you might not think it’s as catchy or as important as other songs on this near perfect album. But the more you listen to it, the more it starts to gel with ya. It begins with this bright chugging guitar riff that is simple but drenched in reverb, with a tone that reminds me of the 80’s. It’s followed quickly by a fast strum of a distorted guitar, Sinclair’s bass and Johnny’s hi hat. Afterwards, that distorted guitar comes down and plays some nice arpeggios to give the song dynamics. It’s a huge sounding intro and it transitions nicely into the verses. I especially love the rhythm of this song. I believe it’s in a 4/4 time signature but it definitely has a swing to the drums which gives it a march type feel to fit with the song’s title.
Lyrically, this song appears to have different themes that we’ll break down, one by one. First, Gord sings “to boldly clap, in a room full of nothing.” It’s a funny thing to imagine but I see it as someone wanting to stand out in a crowd. Which in a sense is what most performers try to do. The second part of the verse is “museum's locked and it's long since past closing” which of course reminds me of the line from “Wheat Kings” where Gord sings “ it’s a museum and we're all locked up in it after dark.”
But the following lyric in this song, “you cannot know, you cannot not know, what you're knowing” is also worth noting. Again, it’s a comical line that contradicts itself, but I read it as someone who’s maybe unsure about something because they are unsure about themselves. This whole first verse could be through the perspective of someone who’s afraid of looking like idiot for wanting to stray from a social norm and of being afraid of not knowing the way to do it.
Now when the band launch into the chorus, this is the part that took a bit to grow on me. The music during the chorus is great and I have no issues with it. It’s more the way that Gord sings the chorus that threw me for a loop. It’s the note and more specially the way that Gord sings the word “what.” To my ears at first, the note just seemed a little wrong or a little off. It almost sticks out like a sore thumb. I’m not sure if that’s just a “me” thing or if that’s what Gord intention was. But now I have no issues with it and in fact I think the melody is extremely catchy now.
And lyrically, I think this chorus is from a similar perspective. Gord sings “what can we do? They’ve all gone and we’ll go too.” This sounds like someone, or a group of people, realizing that they can’t do anything to make themselves stand out so they’ll just follow everyone else. So if the crowd goes, then they will too. And it’s possible that this chorus is sung from the same person in the verse. Maybe this is them realizing they just have to follow the norm. And speaking of following things, I absolutely love the little guitar riff that follows the chorus. It’s fun, playful and really fits the vibe of the song. It starts off with some slower picking before doing some nice hammering ons to make it more bouncy.
In the second verse, Gord starts off by painting a picture of opening the curtains everyday as if he’s stuck in a routine. The real telling line to me is “I don’t know why, I’m so immunized against reforming.” It’s like this person is not sure why they are against the idea of making a change. It seems like they don’t want to follow the herd but can’t help themselves. The lyric “to coldly slap at a face full of nothing” is a nice counter balance to the very first line in the song. And the lyric “You never know, it could've been one of those looks of longing” is maybe the idea that this person is looking for the look on someone else’s face that tells them that they aren’t alone in feeling this way.
After another chorus we get this extremely tasty solo from Rob. It’s not overly long or self indulgent, but it has the perfect amount of delay to sound huge and still fit the song. Coming out of the solo we get one final chorus and one final guitar riff to end the song.
This song may be one that a lot of people skipped over on the first listen to this album. I know I was one of those people. But over the years it’s actually become one of my favorites. I feel like this song has a different sound than a lot of other Hip songs. The pocket that Sinclair and Johnny play in is extremely tight, the various licks that Rob and Paul play throughout the song really work well within in the groove, the production is perfect like the rest of the album and the lyrics feel relatable once you peel back their layers.
But what do you think of this song? Would you considered this song a deep cut? What do you think the song is about? Favorite lyrical or musical moments? And have you seen this song live?

So I learned a few days ago that there were Minecraft novel books. The books were not connected to each other, like not having an overall narrative through the books, so that inspired me to make one myself.
This is a summarized version of the idea of a Minecraft series. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Minecraft: The series

Volume 1: The Giant
Chapter 1: Reincarnated

• Our main character gets reincarnated into the Minecraft game because he died due to an earthquake as he was getting ready to play Minecraft. When he gets reincarnated, we see him explore the world, and process what had happened to him, and where he was.
• Chapter 2: Night
  • Night starts to arrive, and the main character is starving. He tries to get food, but then starts to get attacked by different monsters. He finds a secret hideout and goes there, where a village was. The MC explains what happened, and the villager was a bit confused when the monsters attacked them. The village Tom helped them defeat them, and Tom invited the MC to the village.
• Chapter 3: Village
  • We go to the village named Grummor and see the iron golem battle a zombie army. The villagers come, and together they defeat it. Tom explains that the zombies have started to get more active due to the rebirth of the giant, which was a huge zombie. He explains briefly some of the giant lore and how it had a huge zombie army and loved to destroy things. Also, that the giant always rebirths every 500 years., and then we explore the village life a bit.
• Chapter 4: Life in the village
  • We see the average life in the village and what Tom does as a weaponsmith. The MC ends up working as a farmer, and his boss was very strict. Later, the MC gets invited to talk with the leader of the village, Steve. He was a normal human and not a villager, and he explains a bit about why he is the leader of the village and some other things. The main point was that he wanted to know his purpose. The MC explains his lore, and they get a bit closer, and he gets to stay.
• Chapter 5: Into the cave
  • Once again, we see the average life of the MC with the mean farmer, Archibald. This time, the MC tries to have a better relationship with his boss, but he fails. Tom explains that Archibald was a stubborn one but cared about everyone; the MC didn't believe that in the slightest. The leader asks Tom, two villagers, and the MC to go mining; they pack and head off with two new members, Dave and Bill. They were twin brothers, but the MC saw all the villagers the same way. Dave was sarcastic and joked quite a bit. Bill was a bit shy since the MC was not a villager, and in this world, everyone who is not a villager is seen as mighty and powerful. They explore the caves and get attacked by a few monsters, but all goes well. Until the creeper explodes, the land blows them away, and they fall into a mineshaft.
• Chapter 6: Mineshaft
  • In the mineshaft, the villagers get excited and try to find all the loot they can, and Tom explains that their ancestors used to live underground because the monsters were so powerful, but when their ancestors got more powerful, they started to live in the ground, and these mine shafts were stations between the villages and cities underground. The MC was fascinated. Meanwhile, Dave and Bill find an amethyst geode, explore it, and then get surrendered by cave spiders. They come running to Tom and the MC, and they try to defeat them. Realizing there was a spawner, they tried to quickly escape from the cave and succeeded .( They managed to get some of the loot before all the chaos. )
• Chapter 7: The search
  • They go to the village leader, where they get their report. Steve, the leader, promises he will go there and get the rest of the loot and destroy the spawner to see if they can get more knowledge from ancient times. The leader prepares to go to find the wandering trader. The MC asked why, and the leader said they can sometimes predict the future without realizing it. The MC told him that he initially thought he was going to buy something from him, and the leader made sure he understood that they didn't have anything valuable and that it was a waste of money. They pack, say bye to the village, and go on the journey. It took some time, and all three of them noticed that each night the zombie activity increased massively. One day when they were sleeping inside a small cave and their bags were gone with all the food, and they felt hopeless because of it. The MC started to doubt if they could find the wandering trader. All of a sudden, Tom noticed that behind them was the wandering trader, commonly called the “wanderer” or the "predictor.” In specific situations, "an idiot"

Chapter 8: Zombies rise

• The wanderer behind them made the sound of the mob, and they were all relieved. Steve tried to explain the problem and asked the wanderer if the giant had fully awakened and where their chambers were this time, since they change every time. The wanderer took some time to realize some things he said, and Steve had to repeat the phrases many times, but he still could not understand. They concluded that he was extremely dumb and decided to go back to the village with the wanderer. It was nighttime, and they got attacked by zombies. Tom, the McSteve, fought the zombies and protected the wanderer, who continued to make the sounds. After they defeated them, they left and were cautious since they were low on health. When they started to get attacked by the phantoms, the wanderer all of a sudden started to give the prediction, Hmph, hmph... big... big... very big... the mountain.“ and then started to list the coordinates of the chambers, which isn't normal; they couldn't write it down since they were still being attacked by the phantoms, but they managed to make it to the village, and the villagers realized what was happening and were ready to handle the phantoms.
• Chapter 9: Zombie attack
  • Things got rough. The villagers managed to defeat the phantoms, but one villager reported that a zombie army was approaching. The leader quickly assigned everyone their positions for the battle, and defense walls were being built, but it was already too late; the zombies were inside the village. Steve explained that the zombies were coming in four groups: one from the north, another from the east, one from the west, and so on. Steve added that after they were done here, they needed to go to defeat the giant, so he instructed the MC to be careful as he batted, so he batted against the giant. The villagers battled, and it was rough; some villagers had died and others were seriously injured.
  • Things weren't looking so good. Steve decided to evacuate the village. Everyone got ready, and in the middle of the evacuation, as some people began to run away, they started to realize that the evacuation couldn't happen anymore; they got surrounded in the village. Things only got worse. One of the zombies lit a wooden house on fire, and it slowly spread with the rest of the buildings. The villagers only option was to fight fire with fire. Literally. Some lit their sticks on fire and started to burn the zombies, and others tried to extinguish the fire that was destroying the village. Soon enough, they started to win the battle and kill off the zombie army, but they still haven't defeated the giant.
• Chapter 10: The plan
  • It was 1 a.m. in the morning, and some of the villagers started to put up the defense wall while Steve, Tom, the MC, and a few others, including the wanderer, held a meeting on how to progress. The leader gave the damage and the total deaths. Almost everyone was injured in some way, and eight villagers had died in the battle. Steve made it clear when going to the battle that the giants needed to be careful and avoid more deaths. It would be tough since there were propably over 200 zombies in the chambers and in the mountains.The zombie population was continuously increasing because there were spawners in the chambers. With that in mind, one of the villagers, Elica, who was a strong warrior and loved to fight and wanted to become the strongest warrior in the land, told them that they should just storm in and beat up the giant and its underlings. Despite Elica being a great warrior, she was overconfident. The other suggested getting help from another village, but the village they knew was too far away, and they didn't have time to search for another one nearby.
  • After thinking about what to do, the MC got an idea when he remembered what he did when he was being attacked by monsters during the night when he played Minecraft. They agree on the plan and leave the village, and as they leave, the wanderer starts to say things again: “Angry, awake, coming down” and tells the coordinates. Tom wrote them down and thanked the wanderer who suddenly passed out; someone took care of him, and they marched off with the remaining who could fight in the chambers.
• Chapter 11: Battle in the mountains,
  • As they traveled to the mountains, the MC was scared, but Tom explained that Steve was powerful and they could win. Dave and Bill, who were also them, were reassured that the leader would keep them safe, but the MC wasn't sure and wondered where he would go if he got killed here. As they marched in, there were a huge number of zombies in the hills, all coming down. The next wave. The MC and the others took their spots and started to burn the forest in a square shape, trapping the zombies. While the others tried to push them into the square, soon the others came with skeletons, spiders, creepers, and a few phantoms behind them.
  • They ran into the square, and the zombies started to fight with the other mobs, and the fire started to slowly close in while still burning areas surrounding it. They also noticed that there was a larger army from the other village, Rioria. With teamwork, they managed to kill off the zombies. They felt pretty good until they heard a very creepy and ugly voice from the sky. All of them looked up at where the giant was standing and were observing the battle.
• Chapter 12: The giant
  • We get a little backstory to the meeting where Steve explained after the meeting about the chambers, where the giant rebirthed every 500 years, from a special totem that kept rebirthing the giant every 500 years and made it fight against its will and destroy everything. Apparently the ancestors had beef with an ancient tribe who were connected to zombies, so when the tribe was wiped out, they kept reawakening the giant every 500 years in hopes of destroying the world and getting their revenge. The MC was confused about why it had to be every 500 years, and Steve explained that the giant was reborn with the power of a totem (that was a crystal in the shape of a totem). It took a long time for the totem to get enough power to be able to raise the giant back from the dead. Steve also explained that this time, they have a better chance to destroy the totem since they have gotten better materials and new villages have been built in the area, so if they came to the battle field, they could win. Another advantage they have is that they know where the chambers are, so they don't need to waste time finding them and let the zombies have time to cause more damage.
  • Back to the battle: the giant was massive, but it could only fight by stomping and waiting for more zombies to spawn from the spawners. Steve assigned Tom, the MC, Bill, Dave, and Elica to go to the chambers and find the totem-shaped crystal and break it. They agreed and went to the chambers. They had a regeneration potion, so they were fully ready to beat them up. They immediately made their way to the chambers and were ready for the battle.
• Chapter 13: The chambers
  • Going into the chambers, there were zombies, and Elica wiped them all out. Late, they got into a trap. Getting surrounded by zombies, the MC noticed it was a thing that they liked to do and found a way to escape the trap. If they charged through one way, they should get out easier, and they put the plan into action, which worked on some level, but they were still being chased by zombies. The problem was that there were a huge number of tunnels in the caves, and they had to find the specific passageway to the huge opening where the totem was. Meanwhile, on the battlefield, the giant started to go on a rampage. Steve used a few potions of harming, but understood they were no match and the fate of the village and others depended on the MC and the group he was in.
  • As they ran in the tunnels, they somehow got separated once when they accidentally left Bill behind, but they were all together, supposedly close to the area where the crystal is. They assumed that because the zombie activity was very high. Assuming they might be protecting something, like the totem. At one point, the monsters came both ways, and they had no exit; they were stuck. Things weren't looking good, but Elica did not show a slight fear, took out her bow and arrow, and started to one-shot them. She commanded the others to go forward and kill them. They weren't sure about her decision since she was the strongest and she was the one shooting arrows. If she were to kill the zombies with a sword, it would have been much faster, but they didn't want to make her mad. So after surviving the attack and being super weak because of it, they make it to the area where the crystal was, and the number of zombies is huge. Alica started to make a staircase from the stone blocks, which hadn't come to mind for others before. They bridged to the crystal on the roof. It was easier than any of them imagined.
  • Meanwhile, on the battlefield outside, it started to rain, and the giant had totally destroyed them all and walked across the remaining fire like it was nothing. As he was walking towards the village, Steve couldn't imagine him destroying the village; he wouldn't let that happen. He stood up and tried his best to kill it, but he just stomped over him and continued walking. So far, they have reduced half of the giant's health, costing many lives. Many wanted to kill it, but they were all so exhausted and hurt. All of them started to lose hope and prayed that they could destroy the crystal.
  • As they bridged to the crystal, the zombies started to bridge and come towards them. They needed to destroy the crystal fast before they got killed by the zombies.
• Chapter 14: The crystal
  • Tom, whose face turned pale, explained that they couldn’t get out if they all swarmed inside this cave. The MC thought that all the zombies would die if they destroyed the crystal. Tom explained that the zombies came from the spawners, not from the totem's powers. The totem did form the spawners, but according to world logic, it wasn't the totem who was making the zombies; it was the spawner. So they quickly went to the crystal on the roof and ran out of the blocks. The situation didn't look good, but Elica tried to shoot the cystalls, but only a few of the arrows managed to barely hit them.
  • During the battle, the weather got worse. Some stood up and went again to fight, causing some damage. The giant had 42% of its health left but was still standing strong and got close to the village. Steve had enough and wanted to protect the village, so he started to climb him, went close to its head, made his way close to his nose, and stabbed its eye. The giant was in pain and used his hand to get him away, but Steve managed to dodge the first time. The second time, the giant took him and was about to hit him hard on the ground, which would have killed him. Steve tried to stab its hand so he could fall and possibly survive, but to everyone's shock, the zombie just despawned. Steve fell to the ground and somehow managed to break his fall a bit with the help of the villagers, but he was seriously injured and needed immediate care.
  • In the cave, they finally managed to destroy the totem, and it exploded. David started to bridge in panic and made it safely to the other side of the cave. The zombies got closer, and Dave and Bill started to mine their way out. The MC, Elica, and Tom handled the zombies. When the tunnel was deep enough, they ran inside, blocking the exit. Elica had a torch, and they made it out. They were all tired and got filled up with what happened. Steve was in the hospital in Alavania, a city formed from 8 villages, and everyone slowly got back. The fire had died out due to the rain.
• Chapter 15: Rebuilding and continuing the journey
  • When they returned to the village, everyone cheered them on and called them heroes. They explained to the village what had happened, and the villagers were concerned about when their leader would return. The military from Alavania heard the giant’s awakening and destroyed the spawners immediately.
  • A month went by, and everyone was at peace. One day, Tom asked a few times how the MC was going to move forward. The MC wasn't sure since he was still adapting to the new life, but today he made his decision. They were on the beach having a picnic, and the MC announced to Tom that he wanted to stay and live with them. If it would be fine with Steve, the MC had no place for him to go or get back to since he just spawned here. Tom was happy to hear it, and when Dave and Bill learned that too, they were also very supportive. When Steve returned the following day, the village was very happy about his arrival. The MC asked if he could stay, and the leader didn't hesitate to say yes, and he was sure he would be a great help. Everyone celebrated, and the village took the MC with open hands. Everything was back to normal, and the MC got to explore the new world he had reincarnated into.
  • In the final pages, we see Alavania's leader come back to his throne, looking mad. His personal butler, Alvin, the leader of Alavania, asked how the meeting went. Alvania was furious and said how they just kept talking about the giant matter and some other boring stuff, when he brought up his plan, they didn't give him permission. He was mad, but he had a backup plan. He was going to go to the Woodland mansion and make a deal with the pillagers that would fulfill his life's goal. Destroying Grummor.

I tried to get rid of all the grammatical mistakes, if there are any I'm very sorry I'm not the best with these stuff. If anything does not make sense, tell me, and I will make it clear for you.
Thank you for reading!

Hey Guys,
So you may be aware that western scholarship has been approaching the topic of the preservation of the Quran in depth. In the 70s, Patricia Crone wrote Hagarism which led to the development of the Revisionist School of Quranic studies. They said that because the Quran mentions vegetation and because Mecca wasn’t as large as a trading hub as Muslim tradition represents, and because the Quran seems to reference such a wide gamut of sources, it was impossible that the Quran was compiled in Arabia, but must have been in Petra or a city with greater links to the wider world, and that it was written by comities over three hundred years after the prophet.
The secondary claim of the academics is that none of the Hadith literature can be trusted. Now, I do believe that some of the Hadith (perhaps more than we assume) may have been corrupted, but I do think academia is far too dismissive of the historicity of the hadith completely. I read the Hadith in precisely the same way that I read the old testament: both contain some Wahi - or revelation - but neither is the word of God verbatim, and if anything in them directly contradicts the Quran or aql, I reject it outright. That being said, I do believe some of it is historical and goes back to the prophet and is therefore part of the Sunnah and is Wahi.
Returning to our discussion: the discovery of the Sanaa’ palimpsest put the revisionist theory to rest as the entire Quran has now been attested to around 650 - Uthman’s Quran. However scholarship has not yet been able to conclude the historicity of Abubakar’s Quran. I have attached my arguments (I have not included the arguments of the person I was discussing with because I do not have his permission to repost).
I was wondering what you think of this argument, or whether any of you are capable of carrying out or redesigning the experiment I outline here to prove the likely historicity of Abubakar’s Quran. Please note, I take on a secular tone in the text because that’s the rules of that forum which I respect, it’s academia not apologetics, not because I believe in the ideology. However, here, I hope to see what you think.
POST 1
Dr. Van Putten points out there is significant orthographic consistency in Quranic manuscripts, highlighting the way the name Ibrahim is spelled for instance.
Do you believe this could demonstrate elements of the original compilation of the Quran under Abu Bakar ?
My argument is fairly simple:

1. Uthman’s recension was done to prevent variants and to maintain a uniform authoritative codex.
2. Given that context, it doesn’t make sense to have variant spellings of proper nouns like names in a standardised text, particularly in verses adjacent to eachother which would be jarring.
3. This is not due to the fact that orthography wasn’t important, as we see meticulous care to retain the variant orthographical features across manuscripts.
4. Given the push for uniformity, there must have been a stronger push factor / reason to retain the lack of uniformity in a project whose entire purpose was uniformity.
5. The most obvious reason is that the original authoritative text that the first compilation (Abu Bakar’s tentatively) was sourced from was fragmentary: ie sourced from different fragments written by several different scribes each of whom had different spellings of proper nouns - the collection of this fragmentary material (written on perishable items according to tradition - led to the first compilation project which retained the variant spellings in the Abubakar Archetype). The Uthmanic recension had access to the Abubakar archetype but the variant spellings were retained because the fragmentary verses held the highest authority. Zaid was said to be in charge of both projects.
6. Since the original manuscript (Abu Bakar’s) was personal property of the Caliph (and wasn’t copied or in distribution until Uthman) other variants were not destroyed according to the traditional narrative, other stemma could have formed either from companion codexes or from the Uthmanic codex forward (the variants being sourced from other physically attested fragmentary pieces - therefore justifying their inclusion.
7. The most likely scenario for the text we see in my mind is the tradition: a fragmentary written archetype that was faithfully followed by Zaid ibn Thabit (and variants being included from other fragmentary attestations of the same verses).

So does the orthography suggest the narrative of the original pre-Uthmanic compilation of an authoritative text has legs / should be explored further / is the most cogent explanation of currently available data ?
Dr. Van Putten, I also reference your work in making my argument, so please let me know if I have mischaracterised it, I would also love your thoughts on this theory.
POST 2
Hey, first thank you for your response. What i was trying to say is that the spelling wasn’t standard and varied both between scribes and a single scribe may spell words differently, thats a given.
My actual point is that while that may generally be true, the fact that the uthmanic text more or less faithfully reproduces the set of variant spellings in copies suggests that the uthmanic committiee did care about the spelling, but chose not to make it uniform - otherwise the locations of the variants wouldnt be relatively consistent in copies. This, to me at least, suggests there was an archetype which had the variant spellings, which was respected as an authoritative source ie an earlier written codex which was likely fragmentary.
It’s just an assumption, you’re right, but was wondering if it has legs.
Another way to get to what i’m asking, does the evidence youve found suggest the existence of an earlier written codex as the tradition attests to ? If not, whats a better explanation for what we see ?
POST 3
Thank you again for your response, it's really an honour speaking with you.
“If the first codex wasn't a direct copy of anything,” My argument is that the first codex was a copy of written fragmentary verses.
The consistency of the Uthmanic manuscripts with regards to the spelling convention (whatever the distribution of the way a single word is spelled, that's not my focus, my focus is on the consistency with which each spelling appears in its position across manuscripts) - if that consistency is high, that strongly suggests they were aware of the different spellings because they cared enough about the spellings to reproduce them faithfully in their exact positions, but they didn't change them - and the existence of an authoritative written text that was collected from fragmentary sources / scribes (and therefore had varied spellings) would seem to have the most explanatory power for the data we do see.
What I’m inferring is that if we see this consistency in the location of certain spellings in the Uthmanic text type, the story of Abubakar's Quran explains that data best.
For clarity:
My argument actually doesn’t rely on the distribution between various spellings in the text, but rather on the fact that the position of the various spellings are maintained exactly in copies - i.e. the difference in count between the spellings isn’t relevant to this argument.
If we limit ourselves to a single codification, this creates a conundrum: on one hand they seem to care immensely about the position of various spellings (and therefore implicitly care about the spelling), but on the other hand they don’t see the differences in spellings as significant as obvious variation exists in the text - so the position of various spellings in the text is important, but the fact that there are different spellings of the same word between those precise positions is not important (as there are variants).
POST 4
This is what I reference:
Dr. Van Putten’s findings lit a light bulb off for me: the data makes most sense if the traditional narrative is correct and there were two codifications.
Van Putten: “By examining 14 early Quranic manuscripts, it is shown that this phrase is consistently spelled using only one of the two spellings in the same position in all of these different manuscripts. It is argued that such consistency can only be explained by assuming that all these manuscripts come from a single written archetype, meaning there must have been a codification project sometime in the first century.”
Sidky: “If the first codex wasn't a direct copy of anything, then there is nothing for them to care about.”
But there was something to copy according to the tradition: written fragments that had small chunks of Surahs or just had individual verses. I want to test for that - ie can the orthographic data we have not be random or just chalked up to ancients not caring about spelling, but instead be due to the fact that the verses were transcribed by different scribes. This isn’t a multiple author hypothesis - I don’t think that has credence, it is however an argument that it may be worth testing if the first codex was fragmentary, which would strongly support the traditional narrative.
The first codex wasn’t a written rendition of an oral text according to tradition, it was a compilation of fragmentary verses that were in turn the actual written editions of the oral text. The difference is significant - because if true, and assuming the fragments were small and written by the scribes then the speaker of the oral text would be the prophet himself and the variation would likely be from the prophet or from the scribes mistranscription of what he said - but because they were small fragments, this is less likely.
POST 5
My theory explains this by the strict adherence to the written fragmentary verses that Zayd collected from scribes that wrote them down. Each had a different approach to orthography, but whatever their approach when the original Abubakar Quran was collected their writing held absolute authority as it was written under the supervision of the prophet, so Zayd would be motivated to retain it exactly (if there was more than one attestations of the same verse, for instance an additional article or the lack of one, Zayd could choose to use one fragment in one codex and another fragment in another codex to preserve both as both meet the same conditions of authority). Each scribe likely had different spelling conventions, and likely applied their preferred spelling conventions with differing consistency.
A scribe that wasn’t consistent could have the same word spelled differently in the same verse, and another scribe that was meticulously consistent could have an entire Surah with completely consistent spelling - depending on what fragments were found from which scribes.
Whatever was on those fragments was likely transcribed exactly (as Zayd, the same person in charge of Uthman’s compilation, was also in charge of the first compilation project, and so likely employed the same standard of exact copying of the written text irrespective of spelling variants).
So if the traditional narrative is correct, if we had the original codex we would expect to see some natural variation in the spelling convention because it was collected from various sources with different spelling conventions - if the Uthmanic text faithfully copied that text, whatever the distribution of variants between the various words in number, we would see their exact position meticulously maintained in copies of the Uthmanic codex because the first codex would have had them and would be authoritative.
POST 6

1. The best explanation for why the Uthmanic text maintained orthographic variance is because it copied from an authoritative older written text.
2. The best explanation for why the older written text has variation in the spelling is that it was transcribed by different scribes who spelled things slightly differently. Those initial scribes would have been dictated to directly by the Prophet so their transcription would outweigh all others, so the variants we see could either be due to their mishearing, or assuming the Prophet was illiterate, he would not have been able to enforce spelling conventions, so scribes would have had creative license to write the name in the spelling convention they were most familiar with. So scribes with a Jewish background would be more likely to spell ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺑ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﻫ‬ ‫ﻢ‬ and those without would spell ‫ﺍ‬ ‫ﺑ‬ ‫ﺮ‬ ‫ﻫ‬ ‫ﻴ‬ ‫ﻢ‬, but if those spellings appeared next to another word like Nimatullah and we see that both one spelling of Abraham appears every time one spelling of nimatullah appears, and a third word with variant spelling in the quran also appears in only one way when the first two have that form, then we can suggest that it comes from a single fragment that had orthographic consistency, and other fragments of the quran with a similar pattern likely come from the same scribe.

If we have a sufficient number of pairings to analyse we can build confidence that all of the verses that adhere to those pairing were written by a single scribe & confirm the Abubakar hypothesis with a degree of statistical confidence, because the story of fragmentary compilation would match the data we see, .

It’s a book or comic I read years ago, maybe about 15 years? The best I recall is this:
A man is trying to prove his friend doesn’t really believe in the soul and offers to buy it from him. Either really cheap or for a drink, I think. Other people join in on the joke and sell their soul for a drink to this guy.
Except the friend dies and this guy is now in charge of his spirit. I think he looked like he was run over.
I remember other gods getting annoyed at this new “religion” as the guy keeps buying souls and I think he created a heaven that was basically a giant casino resort.
I’ve been trying different phrases to try and find the book but no luck. Anyone remember this?

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TW for sexual, physical, medical, emotional, and religious abuse, childhood sa, suicidal ideation, and self harm
This past week has been incredibly difficult due to that holiday so I decided it would be good for me to write a letter to my nmom to keep for myself during my healing process to get everything out and it's been very cathartic. Part of my healing journey has been sharing my (extremely personal) experience with others who understand, hence why I'm sharing this here, and maybe it'll give someone some strength knowing that I made it out after all of this. I hope everyone was kind to themselves this week and was able to treat this holiday as a holiday for themselves for surviving their nmoms!
Dear mom, Happy belated Mother’s Day. My Mother’s Day was spent being upset and anxious so I decided to write this letter. This letter is so incredibly difficult to write and even more difficult to read back to myself. Moving away from university and back home during COVID was genuinely one of the most difficult things I have done in my life simply because of all of the repressed memories that flooded back into my brain every single day I was in that house. I used to resent the pandemic for forcing me to live in an environment that made me want to harm myself every single day and die every other day, but I am now thankful for the clarity that it brought me as I don’t think I’d have the foresight that I have now.
There is a lot that I want to say. I am angry, bitter, resentful, and traumatized from things that you have done to me as a child and also as an adult. I thought for a very long time that thing were normal but thank God I now know just how truly fucked up so many of my childhood experiences were. Not a single day goes by where I don’t think about the emotional, physical, and sexual abuse that I went through. I am haunted every single day by things that you did (and some things that you didn’t do) and hope that one day I will be able to heal from what I experienced.
I grew up being close to my cousin Chloe (a year younger than me) who was obviously very bitchy, mean, and abusive. This fact isn’t something you weren’t aware of as I know a fully grown adult would be able to see how she treated and talked to me when around you and come to the obvious conclusion that I should not have been allowed to be around her. She bullied me, called me names, physically assaulted me by pushing me, pulling my hair, and sitting on me with my hands held behind my back until I couldn’t breathe, forced me to bathe in scolding hot bath water that would burn my skin, making me undress and make fun of parts of my body, and forced me to watch things that she knew would scare me. This is the same time that I started having insomnia and struggled in school due to anxiety. It’s also the same time I remember my sound sensitivity starting. Do you remember my childhood friend’s mom Amelia and how protective she was over my friend, Diana? Diana met Chloe at my 9th birthday party and Diana went over to her house for a playdate and Chloe did something to her. She physically reached over and groped Diana on the privates. I knew Amelia IMMEDIATELY prevented her daughter from ever being around Chloe again. I also knew that it's possible she mentioned this to my aunt, but I'm not positive. I know that Amelia is the type of mom to prevent Diana from reading Harry Potter because she thought it was a bad influence on her due to being “demonic”, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she made you aware of what Chloe did to Diana as she knew that I spent a lot of time around her. I doubt that what Chloe did to Diana was ever kept a secret from you. Chloe also forced me to do sexual things I didn’t want to do from roughly the ages of 8-11. One time, we were in her kitchen and she pulled out a knife and said that she was going to stab me. By then, I knew she just wanted to scare me so when I had no reaction, she put the knife away. I was terrified of what would happen if I said no to her so I went along with whatever she wanted. She would go into the bathroom and tell me to follow, would lock the door, and make me take off my clothes and let her do things to me and forced me to do the same things to her. I used to think that you had NO IDEA about this until I remember you saying the words- “you were an amazing kid and never had any problems until you got a little older. I always wondered if something happened.” Who the fuck says that to their kid???? Yeah, something DID happen and it wouldn’t have happened if you protected me!!!! You fucking idiot!!!! I remember being in our new house and taking a shower with you when I was about 8 (which was VERY inappropriate and should NEVER have happened at all) and saying something that clearly made you uncomfortable. It CLEARLY indicated something was going on. I remember the exact face you made and know that any normal, healthy adult would have done something about it and made sure nothing was happening. They would have made sure I was SAFE, and talked to me about safety, but nothing was said or done. You have failed me many times, but this one is the most painful. Not only will you need to live with the fact that you knew about my abuse and did nothing, but I will have to live with the fact that my mom knew "something happened” and didn’t care about me enough to protect me. I look at my beautiful niece Hallie, and imagine not protecting her like that and want to vomit. I cannot fathom how a mother would have the thought “I wonder if something happened to my daughter to case a massive behavioral change” and NOT DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT! You didn’t talk to me, never asked me if Chloe was doing anything, or anything at all. If I even had a minor suspicion that something was happening to Hallie, I would IMMEDIATELY do something about it because THAT IS MY JOB as an adult in her life. You failed me and deserve to know that this traumatized me and gave me PTSD. I am NOT autistic, no matter how much you WANT me to be so you can go around and gain sympathy for “having an autistic daughter” rather than owning up to the fact that you caused what “went wrong” with me.
Not only did you not help prevent me from being molested by my cousin, you also added to my sexual trauma by forcing me to use the giant egg monistat insert to treat a yeast infection when I was 11. I was ELEVEN and you had a bright idea to force a HUGE foreign object into my prepubescent body even though you were fully aware I could have easily gotten a prescription for a pill to swallow from a doctor. I was scared. I had so much pain and itching and needed a mother to hug me, tell me it’s going to be okay, or at the very least, EXPLAIN what I had and how we were going to fix it. You didn’t do any of that. You told me to lay down and proceeded to try and administer medication that is NOT meant for children 12 and under due to the physical damage it could cause. I was clearly in pain and scared, but you kept trying anyways. At any point, you could have stopped and taken me to the fucking doctor, but nope. You then got frustrated that “you couldn’t get it in” and told your 11 year old daughter to shove it inside herself. Then you left the room. I hadn’t even had a period yet, let alone know where my vagina was but you sure felt the need to yet again abandon your parental responsibilities and place them onto your kid! Miraculously, I put it in and wobbled out to lay on the couch because I was in physical pain from BOTH the infection and YOU, but because a child’s body isn’t able to properly fully insert the medication used (which once again I’ll remind you is meant for girls 13 and up), it came out and got on the couch because you didn’t give me a pad. And rather than prioritize your own daughter’s health, safety, wellbeing, and comfort, you were more upset about the stain on the couch and yelled at me. I will never forget in all of the years that I am alive how ashamed and disgusted I felt standing behind you watching you furiously scrub at the stain that I caused (actually, that YOU caused since this never should have happened in the first place!) and feeling a huge flood of guilt every time I saw that couch stain. One of the best days of my life was when we got a new couch and I never had to see that stain again.
All of this caused me to develop anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and ideation, self harming behaviors, having out of body experiences where I dissociate, and panic attacks amongst other things. YOU caused ALL of this and you fought tooth and nail to convince me that it was MY fault for being broken. “There’s something going on with you,” and you made it your mission to never take any responsibility for any of the trauma that you caused. Not only did you ignore all signs of abuse and sexually assault me yourself, you bullied and helped a family friend Sharon bully me when I was “being mean” to (her daughter) Faith. I was treated like I was a mentally ill monster who couldn’t be trusted and always got in trouble whenever Faith shed a single tear because I was “mean to her”. Faith cried at LEAST 15x a day, and I was blamed every time she decided to say I was the reason. You allowed a monster (Sharon) to ABUSE me and had the incredibly wise idea to start passing along what shit talking you two would say about me TO ME, a 13 year old girl. I was THIRTEEN. I was A CHILD. And yet, you came crying and complaining to me about how tired you were of hearing Sharon say I was being mean to her daughter when you could have TOLD THE OTHER ADULT IN THE SITUATION TO STOP. It never was my responsibility as a child to try and make another adult stop abusing me by “behaving better.” There was nothing wrong with how I was behaving. You never once tried to help me, you always blamed anybody and everybody else for your failures. I would come and ask you for help when I was struggling and if you didn’t care, you would pawn it off to somebody else- “go talk to your older sister” “talk to your therapist about that” “I don’t know what to say except to tell you to pray about it” and when I came back saying praying didn’t magically fix my depression, you told me to pray harder. I guess you really thought it was a skill issue rather than a diagnosable health condition! No wonder I wanted to die! Hahaha! I’ll never forget the look of disgust on your face when I was sobbing hysterically and struggling to get out the words when I told you just how badly I was affected by Sharon and said how you played a role in helping her harm and abuse me. “WELL. I’m SORRY if you think I didn’t protect you enough. I know what that feels like because my parent’s took my sister’s side a few weeks ago when we were having an argument” (as FULLY GROWN 50+ YEAR OLDS arguing and bitching LIKE CHILDREN!) No, mom, it’s not the same. I was a child and not only did you not stop an abuser from harming me, you joined in. You allowed her access to me and you passed along what horrible things she said was wrong with me. “SHARON said she thinks YOU’RE BIPOLAR. Do you think you are?” “Sharon told me that you’re having AN EPISODE and are being mean to Faith! Show me your phone!” Erm? I’m thirteen? What do you expect me to do? “Well, I just don’t understand why you keep bringing this up when it happened so long ago. I just hope you can forgive her and move on.” You’re fucking disgusting. Should I go into detail about how many times I asked you to not interact with Sharon more than you needed to and you proceeded to try and force her into my life more? You KNEW how uncomfortable I was with you attending Faith’s wedding and yet, you cared more about how you looked and not only attended, but hosted both her wedding and wedding shower. I have always wondered why you never cared how I feel until I realized that you prioritize yourself and how you look to other people above anything and everyone. There is a clear pattern of behavior- - When I was 17 and you were berating me at your work for wanting to visit my friend up in Boston to see a concert together because “you just didn’t understand why I’d want to do that” and I started crying. You rolled your eyes and said “you better leave now if you don’t want my next client to see you crying because her appointment is in a few minutes.” You cared more about having your random client seeing me cry and potentially thinking you’re a bad mom than comforting me. - When I was 13 and we were saying our nightly prayer the night that I had my “therapy appointment” (aka, you and my “therapist” chastising me for writing in my diary that I was having suicidal thoughts), when you were praying you said “Dear God, please help (my name)… and… pLEASE HELP ME!!!!” Clearly, YOU were affected more than I was even though I was the one wanting to die because of you. Wow. Your life is so hard! - Telling everyone around you that I “have problems” and am “really struggling” so you can gain an ounce of sympathy. The way that your friends come up and talk to me is baffling. - Laughing about me with my friends in high school when I was out of the room- “hahaha my daughter is sooooo weird hahaha” - When I was 18 and you called my “therapist” (who did NOT get my consent before doing this and violated her ethical guidelines) after I moved out and stopped talking to you, you got her to help you write a list of “rules” to force me to stay in contact with you. They consisted of requiring me to “talk to you, dad, or my sister at least 1x/day” so you “knew that I was safe” aka, you wanted to control me even though I was an adult and not living in your house. I was perfectly safe, and yet you made me sound like I was doing drug deals in the morning, prostituting myself after lunch, and had plans to commit felonies later that night. I went to school, ate, and went back to my apartment. You had no right manipulating me into talking to you by using my therapist, dad, and sister against me. Pathetic. - Telling me to go do my runs on a strange man’s property instead of the road because it’s “safer.” Dad said that this man who I’VE NEVER MET told him that “there are bad people out there who will kidnap her and do horrible things to her, SO INSTEAD she should run on MY property!” Not sketchy or rapey at all, right? And completely dismissing me when I said that made me uncomfortable by saying “my dad knows him”? Lady, do you know any rape statistics? Clearly not, because you’d then know that only 7% of assaults are strangers while 93% are family members or acquaintances. NINETY THREE PERCENT. The amount of times that I’ve mentioned someone made me uncomfortable or had a massive affect on me as a child and you’ve replied with “Oh, well did they touch you?” People don’t have to touch me to traumatize me. You’re pathetic for thinking that.
I’m not mad at Chloe. I don’t feel any anger or ill will towards her at all. She was a child just like I was a child. She was failed more than I was failed. No child acts that way and assaults other children without learning that from somewhere. I blame her parents for what happened to her. I blame YOU for what happened to me. I vividly remember things that my aunt would say the same time this was happening about little girls and their bodies and I want to smash my head against the wall. Children are to be protected above anything and everything else, by you didn’t. Do I hate Faith and think that she’s a bad person because of what happened when we were 13? No. I fully blame you and Sharon. The amount of adults that have failed me in my life keep me up at night. I think about how different my life would be had dad been more involved and seen what was going on and taken me away from you. I am angry with him for that. I dream one day I will be able to sit down with him and tell him everything I have written about and he will hug me, support me, cry with me, and apologize for not being there more to protect me. But who knows, he might defend his child abusing, mentally ill wife and say I’m making up everything. Who knows.
Do you want to know what my sister said when I told her all of this? She apologized to me for not being 15 years older than I am so she could have raised me instead. I want you to sit here and think about how fucked up that is. My own sister wishes she could have taken me away from you so you couldn’t have abused me. I imagine the pressure she must have felt having to grow up while also raising her mother and sister and I sob for her. I’ve sobbed for me for the mental anguish and torture I experienced at your hands. I’ve even sobbed for you because I can’t imagine being even a fraction of how fucked up you are to resort to abusing and neglecting your child- a child you begged to have. A child you had trouble having and prayed for. Embarrassing.
I’m never going to have a relationship with you again. If God is willing, I will never have to interact with you ever again. Saying that phrase “if God is willing” is ironic because you forcing me to pray my problems away rather than helping me led me to not believe in him. How can I believe in something that also neglected me? I’d sit in my dark bedroom night after night praying and sobbing for him to help me. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I felt broken and alone. I now know that I was a child praying for God to take away my PTSD, and that is not possible. My heart breaks for that child.
You’re a pathetic excuse for a mother and human being. I’m truly shocked that I survived you and your abuse. I’m surprised that I didn’t ever try to kill myself to try and get away from you because you’re a vulture that prays on innocent people. The only important people in your life are people you think will give you something or will make you look good. That’s why you refused to ever cut ties with Sharon, you knew she was sexually abused as a child and you couldn’t POSSIBLY NOT be her friend because you need her to be your “friend,” or rather, your token sexually abused as a child friend. I genuinely hope that you get better and become a normal healthy person but I won’t ever be around to see it. I hope you feel even a fraction of the pain and abandonment that I have felt my entire life. Happy Mother’s Day, but today isn’t Mother’s Day for me, it’s Daughter’s Day. Moving far away from you one month ago has truly saved my life. Instead of trying to survive, I am enjoying my life. I would have died in that house. I get to finally celebrate being away from you and celebrate myself for staying strong and fighting when I could have easily given up. You once told me “you feel like I HATE you!” to guilt me into fawning over you and telling you how much I loved you, but now you get the opposite. I DO hate you and hate how you have permanently changed me and I wish to never see you again. Instead of praying for the “God forsaken, atheist, lost, evil, liar, miserable, spiteful, hateful, disgusting, mentally ill, “autistic” daughter, pray for yourself. Pray for God’s forgiveness for emotionally, medically, physically, sexually, and religiously abusing and neglecting me. You deserve to remain in your "clueless" state of "having NO IDEA what you did wrong to make her stop talking to me!" for the rest of your life.Happy Daughter’s Day.

“These types of people always blame their mother, you know.”
Whenever I hear that incantation, the eerily exact combination of words, I always notice the inevitable short pause just after the final syllable.
When it is spoken by someone who isn’t an actual mother, a forty-year-old man perhaps, there’s a truculent tone to it because the person knows they’re not prima facie on trial. If you have ever read Notes from the Underground, you know what I mean; the narrator attempting to trick an omniscient and omnipresent audience. What they really mean is: “of course MY mother hasn’t given me any mental issues because what would that say about ME, hm?” Their subconscious is involuntarily pushing their response in a direction they might not decide to go in if they had a chance to think logically. Or, more, if we were capable of thinking logically.
You know when you have found where the infection is because the patient yelps when you press it. How often have you accidentally stumbled upon the rot in someone’s soul? How often have you said something innocuous to someone over thirty-five that was met with a strange sort of aggression? As though suddenly possessed to say something by an evil genie, the minotaur of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good & Evil. Something that, even if you are not trained to notice minor attitudinal changes, you still pick up on as out-of-place?
It is different when a mother says it, of course. There is a tenderness present because they know they are, prima facie, on trial. It is even more different when it is your own mother saying it, and it is exceptionally more different when it’s your own mother saying it during a discussion about her mother who is dying in the room opposite.
My Grandmother had suffered a mainline shift, which is when part of someone’s brain is pushed up against the side of their skull. Some thing made to move unnaturally and unaccordingly with their natural pattern. Matter incorrectly constituted.
Myself, my mother, and my cousin were, at the time, sat around in the Long Hours. We had a spate of deaths over the course of four years, so “in the Long Hours” became a family saying, along with “resting the eyeballs” (sleeping). The Long Hours were when you would sit in a hospital for hours on end waiting for someone to die. My family, still having some sway in local healthcare, were allowed to stay past visiting hours, and given preferential treatment when beds were being allocated.
My cousin, called P., and I were in a deep discussion on Eminem’s relationship with Eminem’s mother, which was the topic of conversation on the radio; nothing but the freshest of topics for this regional DJ. We were talking about whether Eminem should forgive his mother after all this time, since forgiving your mother is the done thing where we were from. So, me, my cousin, and my mother were in the Long Hours not thinking about the antiseptic smell, not thinking about our grandmother, my mother’s mother, who was still dying in the other room, and instead thinking about how much money you need before forgiving your mother is what’s expected of you. Because when you’ve “made it” you have nothing else to prove, which means you should be able to put aside old offences. This was the mental arithmetic we were trying to solve as we talked. If we take X to be childhood trauma and Y to be a million in cold hard cash, how many Y until X becomes 0? Or maybe that’s no longer complex mental arithmetic and is becoming basic trauma algebra.
Apropos of nothing, mum blurted out “well ~I~ think after a certain age you shouldn’t blame your parents for things anymore, why do these people always blame their mothers?”
Which stopped the conversation pretty quickly.
At the time I felt attacked, because at the time I thought most things were about me. I was narcissistic in the wonderful new modern way, where instead of thinking everybody believes me to be amazing, I pathologized everyone watching and commenting on every minor mistake I had. Was my theory that the reason I had a secret social anxiety, that my mother had somehow downloaded her own anxieties onto me, revealed to the omnipresent audience? Did I wear it on my face? Was it obvious to the world?
At the time I hadn’t realised everything that was wrong with my mother, something that would later metastasize into a full-blown depression, or that what she was actually talking about was her own issues with her own parents. (See? What you were thinking before was right; everyone just needs to realise nobody is ever actually thinking of anyone but themselves.)
My grandparents always favoured her sister, P.’s mother, and my mother always resented them for that. This was the involuntary movement from my mother.
Whenever these types of shibboleths pop up – “they/these people always blame their mother” – it always feels like a borrowed phrase. Like the subject is struggling through a sub-language in a primordial plane, grasping at passing notions, anything that seems familiar. What my mother said was “why do these people always blame their mothers”, but what she meant was “please be aware that I have no hangups about my own upbringing because I’m well adjusted”, which really means “I’m terrified I’m not well adjusted because my parents didn’t love me” whose real genesis is “I’m terrified I did something to not deserve my parents love”, which has the half-caveat “and I half-believe it’s true”.
I still find it hard to forgive my mother.
But I heard the spell incanted this last week by a distant relative I have been staying with in New England. Her son had been, involuntarily, admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She was holding court about how awful the other people-who-were-there (‘patients’ being forbidden a noun) were, after a rather-too-loud argument about how she encourages co-dependency with her son. She said, “they always seem to blame their mother, these types.” Same pause at the end. Did you spot the shift? These types in this context are her son and their mother was her this time. The plea is that her son is not one of these types, thus absolving her from blame for her son’s condition.
It is a lot easier to be kinder, to see the whole beauty of the love of a mother afraid she has failed, when it’s not your mother. When it isn’t You she has maybe failed. I’m certainly not immune from these little language tricks we play on ourselves. Notice how I cushioned that last sentence with a “maybe”? I also originally typed, then corrected, that my grandmother was ON the hospital room, which was my own subconscious trying to will hospitals into being a liminal space. You ride a hospital bed the same way you ride a bus, because they’re both somewhere you go on the way to something. Because good God, imagine if this was it and you spent your entire time worrying what your mother thought of you?

Guy I'm seeing pulled me up on my bushy eyebrows and body hair in a very indirect way. I have a small treasure trail which I think is cute. The hairs are blondish so I don't go to the hassle of waxing or whatever. He didn't directly say it to me, he just brought up that isn't it weird how the beauty ideal has molded us to view women a certain way and that if they're not like that then it's kinda ick e.g. if there's a woman with hairy legs etc even though innately we should feel attracted to them because they're a woman you don't. I'm totally paraphrasing and can't remember the exact phrase he used but I asked him directly do you think my legs are hairy and he said no. I do shave my lower legs but not my upper ones which aren't hairy imo. Now I'm like fuck, guess I better get the tweezers out and laser my entire body. I guess it's good in a way. He wants me to look my best? I'm not shaving my bush though just bottom part. I told him I have a lot of testosterone soooo... and he laughed.
I'm also completely neurotic and I went for a nap after getting home from his place today and then tried calling him and he didn't answer straight away. Immediately my mind jumped to the worst and I thought he was with another girl when he was actually just out on his bike. I blocked him on whatsapp and sent him a bunch of 🐷🐷🐷 emojis. He called me and was like wtf and I'm pretty sure he now thinks I'm crazy which I am. I told him I'm sorry for being so neurotic.
His dog died recently which was honestly heartbreaking as I considered them a package deal and my favourite activity was going for walks with him and his dog. I interpreted this as a punishment from God for having premarital sex and that maybe I shouldn't be with him.
I also don't feel comfortable pooping in his house yet even though I have multiple times.
I called him twice by accident on Whatsapp when I was reading over his messages like a sap. This was in the really early days and one of the times was at 7.30 in the morning when I was half asleep. Embarrassing. We were able to laugh about it but still.. literally the complete opposite from aloof and cool. "Someone misses me" is what he said.
He smokes so I started vaping again. This is definitely bad.
I guess I'm an rs gf. I feel like I like him so much I'm going crazy. I don't even have any reasons to have trust issues. It's always been me that's sabotaged my past relationships. I'm going away for work in June so at least my mind will be on other things then. Is there any way I can let go and stop being so uptight and neurotic yet still tick all the boxes as the ideal wife? I believe it is his fault for love bombing me telling me I'm going to father his kids, move in with him and that we're going on a motorbike road trip for our honeymoon.
I genuinely should have been born a man. I tried therapy before but ghosted my therapist to join crossfit. I'm also 30 so this is all just so embarrassing. I guess the post could be titled being a modern woman is hard. I don't really have any girlfriends in my corner to slap some sense into me. Someone tell me to chill tf out or what I should do.

I am 42, turning 43 in December .
I had a stroke in August 2022.
I had to relearn how to walk, which was successful.
My vision took a big hit; I have a left field deficit that likely is not coming back. I see double. My ability to read has been severely affected.
My left arm is affected, and is now probably not going to be of much use beyond semi useful decoration.
My left hand is likely and probably going to remain non-functional.
Cognitively, I am pretty much normal. I have noticed myself having"Senior moments", and my "trivia memory"has taken a strike. For example, it takes me a struggle to remember the name of particular actors. I can tell you there IMDb information, but I'll have to be patient on recalling their actual name. For those needing clarification on "senior moments", imagine walking into a room and wondering why you walk in there. Or having to more heavily rely on Google calendar and your phone's alarm clock system to keep track of appointments. Basically, my working memory has taken a strike, so I need to rely on crutches such as these.
So why am I coming here today?
I do not know what to do with myself. Obviously, I am prone to depression from these events and consequences. I feel I have become much smaller.
I have not worked since my stroke. I would like to return to work as I am able to, likely meeting assistive technologies.
In case you are wondering, I am using speech to text to dictate this post. You shall have to excuse mistakes.
I feel like I have no direction, and with that no movement - - or at least no movement of meaning or usefulness to speak of.
In before folks start talking about going to therapy, I have been going through Kaiser for medical. The Kaiser psych department has basically sequestered me to some low tier level of"therapies"which are regulated to blocks of eight sessions max, with referrals to PowerPoint based group sessions involving DBT. While that is all well and good, there's really not much that can offer in terms of addressing specific issues that I won't get into here.
There was a program offered by the state for people who had suffered TBI, and I had attended for several months. However, I have stopped attending, because they offer services geared towards folks with a deficit in cognition. It took a while for them to understand that I knew what people meant when they said the word "spaghetti". Their activities were tantamount to various flavors of vocabulary lessons floating between SAT vocabulary prep and crossword puzzles. Please define these words you have never heard of in your life. Lack of knowledge of words you have never heard of in your life is evidence that you are cognitively impaired excuse me? Explain that one to me. I digress.
As one point of reference, somewhere along the line of trying to gear their offerings more towards what I might find useful I was asked to explain what the phrase "every cloud has a silver lining"meant; fair enough, but they're just seems to be a disconnect between help on offer and help needed.
I came here seeking advice and the experience of others who have gone through similar.
Even if you were fortunate to have your stroke and return straight back into work, I would like to hear your story.
I would also like to hear your story of how you were struck down and were able to rebuild yourself, your life, your world after your apocalypse.
I know that I can do this.
I have no map.
My compass seems to be pointing towards magnetic purple.
I need a clue.
I am looking for reorientation.
Paint me a picture, please.
Crayons might be required, but the crayons do not need to be flavored.
P. S.
I am making efforts to be social out in the real world. I am fortunate enough to be able to get myself to activities, and interact with other people in real life.
However, I do tend to be a homebody.
I am opened to questions.
Thank you in advance.

So, here is part 2 of my entitled employee story. We left off with discovering Sally’s retaliation of giving me trash as a Christmas gift after her latest write-up.
So, the next several weeks, I am noticing more problems, but here’s some of the highlights.

1. Ever since we had issues of the office’s checks going randomly missing, Sally had apparently decided to just stop throwing any envelope away when opening the mail. She would supposedly search the envelopes/paperwork & then keep the envelopes with the paperwork. So, instead of doing her job better, she would decide to just stop doing the job at all. After all, you can’t get in trouble for screwing it up if you aren’t doing it, right? However, this resulted in items getting left with the paperwork (which sometimes wouldn’t get touched for several weeks due to being busy) that had needed to be collected or addressed right away.
   
2. Sally’s careless mistakes continued at about the same rate (average of 2 to 3 a week). She would put deposit slips/emails with the wrong office’s report, put one office’s mail in another office’s bin, put one office’s funding papers in another office’s bin, put one office’s bills in the folder for their correspondence & vice versa, put one office’s bills in the folder for another office’s bills, put the new month’s bills in the folder without taking out the old month’s bills so they would get mixed up. I could go on & on.
   
3. Sally would still ask for help on things she shouldn’t need help on anymore, ‘cause I had helped her many times on items exactly like it in the 2 years she’s worked here. I mean, the whole point of asking for help when learning new things on a job is so you can take the input you’re given & use it to get better at the job so you don’t have to ask for help anymore. I mean, what kind of office works by their employees constantly needing to be walked through everything every day? Sally would even ask for help on things no one would need to ask for help on. For example, she asked me, “An office took a deposit to the bank without showing it on their report. How do I write that up in the letter to fax to them?” Um, exactly what you just said to me. Or another time, she asks how long she should wait before calling an office back. Well, how long do you think you should give them? Just use your good judgment. You don’t need help with that! Again, you’ve been here 2 years!
   

On Jan 26, I take the Dec bills, correspondence faxes, & timesheets out of their folders to scan them into the computer. Now, one thing the bills should always have on them are the check number used to pay for this purchase & the date it was paid. The offices themselves are supposed to write this on there, but they don’t always, which is why it is our job to write it on there if it’s missing. I had noticed when I scanned Nov’s bills around Nov 30 that a lot of Sally’s offices don’t have that info written on them. So, I explained to her what needed to be written on every bill/receipt. I now flip through the Dec & Jan bills of her offices really quick to check them. There are quite a few of them with no info written down on them. There’s strike one for noncompliance.
Another task we would do several days a week (that’s Sally’s responsibility) is to check the bank accounts online. She is to look at the bank balances & report any low balances to Greg (or me if Greg isn’t there). She is then to look at the transactions in order to see if anything looks fraudulent. Since we are a loan company, check fraud is very common for us. So, we look at the checks for anything funny-looking, & we look to see if there are any auto debits (like when you use your bank account online to pay for a bill) that would tell us if someone got hold of our bank account info.
On Jan 30, at 1:15 p.m., I asked if any of the bank balances were low (Greg was out of town for a few days). Sally said she had forgotten to check the bank accounts that morning. Weird, ‘cause you had to check the Dallas office to make sure the money we sent them had shown up. How did you get the login sheet out to look in their bank account but then forget about checking all the bank accounts? This just further cemented in my mind that she was NOT checking these bank accounts the way she should. I was 100% positive that all she does when logging into these bank accounts is checking the balances to give to Greg but then never checks the transactions. I know this ‘cause, 1) I’ve observed Sally only logging in to write down the balances & then logging back out (she had some flimsy excuse ready when I asked her about it), 2) there have been auto debits that appeared in bank accounts that we didn’t find for weeks until I happened to see it for some reason & guess what? She never pointed those out to us, & 3) Sally hadn’t bothered to check the bank account balances since Greg was out of town, so clearly she only felt the need to check the balances. There’s strike two for noncompliance.
& even more bad mistakes or decisions:

1. At the end of Jan, we discovered that Sally had mailed the employees’ W2s to the managers’ home addresses instead of to the offices to distribute to their employees!
   
2. We had an office that moved locations to right across the street, so the only thing that changed in their address was their street number (12 Main Street instead of 11 Main Street). I explained this to Sally & gave her an updated list of the office’s addresses. 3 weeks later, we get a call from that office saying that mail we send to them keeps going to their landlord’s house. I check the address labels Sally had created for herself. Sure enough, it had the wrong address on them. I go to grab the lease, & at the top is where the tenant’s new address is listed. & all the way at the bottom of the page in the paragraph titled “RENT” where it lists where to send the rent is the landlord’s home address. & that’s the address Sally had chosen to be the new office’s address on her address labels.
   
3. Sally hadn’t been faxing the offices to ask for bills/receipts that never made it to us.
   
4. I used the last towel on a roll of paper towels, so I went to the cabinets to grab another. We were out. Sally is in charge of keeping track of supplies that need ordering, so I go to Sally & say we’re completely out of paper towels, we need to order some. Sally response: “No one ever tells me when they grab the last roll so I know when to order them.” Um, excuse me, since when is it our job to tell you to do your job? It’s your responsibility to keep track of supplies. You should be checking the level of paper towels, toilet paper, Kleenex, etc., to see when you need to order them.
   

So, I knew she needed a second warning write up for carelessness cause of the numerous mistakes since the first warning write up in the middle of Dec, & I would be giving Sally a first warning write up for negligence cause of her not asking the offices for missing bills & not writing the info on the bills I had told her to do at the end of Nov. However, it was only a few days from Feb, which was the time for performance reviews. So, rather than doing a write up now & then in a week or so doing a performance review that was one of the worst performance reviews I’ve ever heard of, I decided to just do it in one fell swoop. You know, just get it all out of the way with one bad conversation, one bad day, & then both of us can hopefully put it behind us & move on.
I decided to do the performance review & write ups on Feb 5 (Monday). It went much smoother ‘cause Greg was there, so Sally couldn’t really give me lip or lash out by showing attitude & anger like she had previously.
On Feb 7 (Wednesday), I log in to get the transactions for an office who is switching banks. I wanted to get an updated list of outstanding checks so they know how many checks are left before they can close the old bank account. & what do I see? Someone had used the bank account to pay $100 on their AT&T bill. I call the office & find out it was actually them, so no fraud there. But I then ask Sally if she had seen that when checking the bank accounts. She said she didn’t remember. Obviously, I have found my proof that she is either not checking them or isn’t paying attention when she does. I have a discussion with Greg about it, & we decide I need to have a sit down with her about her not doing her job. She is sick on Thursday, so I plan to talk with her the next day she comes in.
On Feb 9 (Friday), I begin the conversation about checking the bank accounts & how important it is. I am planning to say things like, we expect you to do this job, you’ve been told multiple times to do this task, if you’re not going to do the job, then you’re welcome to go find another one, etc. But she cuts me off at the beginning with an excuse of, “Well, I didn’t know what I should be looking for, now I know.” & it broke me. She does this exact thing every time I have to have a conversation with her. She has an excuse ready to go on the tip of her tongue, always spins it around so it’s not actually her fault. It’s always, “Well, I didn’t know that, but now, I do.” & I was just done. I didn’t continue the conversation, even though I needed to, ‘cause I just broke down in tears from the stress of having to discipline her & knowing that nothing will ever come of it, but having our hands legally tied to be able to fire her right now. I cried nonstop for over 4 hours.
On Feb 12 (Monday), I sat down to continue the conversation, this time with a written statement for her to sign.
Me: You respond a lot of the time that you don’t know how to do things, which is very frustrating, ‘cause you’ve been shown multiple times how to do these tasks. It’s very inefficient & wasteful that I have to constantly check all of your work & retrain you on the same thing over & over again. This needs to change. This job is about accuracy & accountability.
Sally: You’re not giving me a chance to improve. I never hear “Good job,” from you. All I ever hear is, “You’re doing a bad job, sign this paper.” I get in trouble every time I ask for help, so I guess I’ll just follow the instructions & hope I’m doing it right.
The problems with that response:

1. You’ve worked here for 2 years, Sally. You’ve had plenty of time to improve.
   
2. The reason you never hear “Good job” is ‘cause you’re not doing a good job. How am I supposed to tell you “Good job,” but also need to give you a write up for doing a bad job? If you’re getting multiple write ups for doing a bad job, don’t you think that’s a sign that something is wrong? I mean, she thinks that managers should be telling their employees good job on everything they do right. No, you’re expected to do these tasks. We’re not going to congratulate you every time you do your basic job requirements like some toddler that needs constant positive reinforcement so they know that doing something right is a good thing! You will hear “Good job” when you are doing a really good job on something, when you go above & beyond!! I mean, do you think Greg tells me “Good job” when I’m just doing my job as expected?!! NO!!! I’ve never had a manager constantly tell me “Good job” all the time!!!! (Whew. Sorry about that. Kinda went on a crazy rant there. I’m good now.)
   
3. Here’s another example of her mentality of “if I don’t do the job, I can’t get in trouble for doing it wrong.” She’s going to stop asking for help instead of using the help I’ve given her to do better. I mean, if you’re making these mistakes when you ARE asking for help, how many more are you going to make when you stop asking for help? How does this make any logical sense?!
   

Well, here’s another chance for some malicious compliance. She claimed she didn’t know how to check the bank accounts, right? Well, my job as the manager is to make sure my employees know how to do their job. So, I need to sit down with her & train her how to check the bank accounts. Again. Even though I know she already knows how to do it. So, every time you tell me that the reason why you didn’t do a job is ‘cause you didn’t know how to do it right, well, we’re going to sit down & waste both our times & annoy you having to be retrained on something you do, in fact, know how to do.
Sally continues making careless mistakes & not doing stuff she doesn’t think she should have to do. Like answering the phones. It’s her job to answer the phones; that’s something I as the manager should be delegating to her. However, she never answers the phone unless I literally can’t. So, I had asked her to start answering the phone more. She will wait until the last possible second before answering the phone. By that time, it’s already rung twice, so I have to answer it before it goes on any longer or they hang up. One time, we were both away from our desks when the phone rang. We both went to answer it, but she was closer & got to her desk before me, put her hand on the phone, & watched me until I got to my desk before she picked it up. With a comment of, “Oh, (laughs) I didn’t want to make you walk all the way to your desk.” Well, you did, anyway, you little jerk.
On Feb 27, Sally asks for help on a report. She says that my note stating the office is over-deposited $28 on report 1 but fixed on report 2 by being $28 under-deposited didn’t work out. She says that they were never over by $28 in the first place. I take the report to look it over. Her calculator tape adding up the deposits shows the bank is in balance, but I don’t see deposit slips.
Me: Where are the deposit slips?
Sally: I haven’t gotten them yet.
Me: (trying to comprehend her logic) Then how do you have the deposit amounts added on this tape?
Sally: I got the amounts from the report.
Me: You…(my brain trying not to implode at this point) you can’t add up amounts to see if the bank has too much or too little money in it without knowing what was actually taken to the bank. The amounts on the report don’t always equal what was taken to the bank.
I log into the bank account & discover just that: the report says they took $500 to the bank, but their deposit says $528. They were indeed $28 over-deposited. I then lecture her (for the second time in a few months) on the correct way to account for the deposits at the bank, that we are only to use the dollar amounts on the bank’s deposit receipt. (The first time was her getting the deposit amount from what was written on the deposit slip instead of what the bank gave us credit for on their printed receipt. The bank had shorted us $500, & we never knew until her deposits didn’t work out when reconciling the bank statement at the end of the month. We were missing $500 for 4 weeks! It’s a miracle we didn’t overdraw the account.)
Another task that we do several days a week is checking the CFPB website. This is a government website that uses federal regulations to monitor financial institutions. It’s like the Better Business Bureau, but more official. Customers can make complaints through them, prompting an investigation to make sure we’re following the federal guidelines. We have 2 weeks to respond to a complaint before it is past due.
On Feb 29, Greg just happens to be looking at an email inbox that he never checks, ‘cause after all, we’re checking the CFPB website, so he doesn’t have to look there, right? There is a complaint in 2 of the portals that have been in there since Jan 22. He immediately marches out & tells Sally about them.
Greg: Aren’t you checking the CFPB sites?
Sally: Yeah, I am.
Really? Then how come you didn’t print this complaint off to give to Greg in the last 6 weeks? She came back from lunch to a second warning write up given by me for negligence.
On Mar 5 (Tuesday), we are working on reconciling the bank statements so we can close the month of Feb. Sally brings me a Jan bank statement for an office.
Sally: This never cleared in Feb.
I look at the bank statement. It’s an electronic deposit of $254 on Jan 31. I remember this. She had asked me at the beginning of Feb why this deposit wasn’t recorded on the office’s report. I explained that since it didn’t show up in the bank account until the last day of Jan, they might not have known about it before the end of the month & so recorded it on the first of Feb. We will wait until the first report of Feb. If it’s still not recorded, then we’ll bring that to the office’s attention. & here she is, clearly telling me she hadn’t brought it to anyone’s attention all month long.
Me: (staring at the bank statement as I try to prevent my autistic brain from exploding at her while also trying to prevent a spontaneous stroke) You didn’t keep track of this all month?
Sally: Well, I didn’t know if it was treated differently ‘cause it was OTBP (One Time Bill Pay, which is the electronic deposit). (Oh, what a shocker, she once again didn’t know how to do something.)
Me: But we talked about this. If it wasn’t on the first of the month, we needed to address it.
Sally: Okay, well, now I know that we treat this the same as other deposits. (goes nonchalantly back to her desk like it was no big deal, like she hadn’t just revealed she had once again disobeyed my detailed instructions)
Me: (seeing her flagrant disregard for the seriousness of the situation & wondering just how on earth she could once again think that not doing her job would have no consequences) This is exactly what Greg talks about over & over, about how we can’t leave errors like this to sit for weeks & weeks, that these need to be dealt with as they happen.
Sally: (still as easy-going as if she had simply used the wrong color highlighter) Okay, I’ll make note of that.
Now, I am getting really pissed off. She keeps saying, “Oh, now I know that OTBP is treated the same as everything else.” That doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter that you didn’t know it’s treated the same! I specifically told you to take care of it if it didn’t appear on the first of Feb! It didn’t matter what kind of deposit it was! I said to tell me if it wasn’t on the first of Feb!
Now, this was right before she leaves at 3:30, so by the time I’m finished with my text conversation with Greg (‘cause he isn’t there that afternoon), she has already left. But I’m telling Greg that I have once again caught her being negligent, & she’s already had 2 written warnings about this, which means our next step is letting her go. Not to mention, her carelessness is still continuing. He said that he supports my decision to let her go. By the way, the final decision happened an hour after she left. If I had known before she left that we were indeed going to fire her, I would have done it before she left so she didn’t have to come all the way to work in the morning just to leave again.
So, on Mar 6 (Wednesday), I arrive early to work so I can be prepared. I am standing at my desk, watching her come in. This is unusual, so she frowns as she approaches me.
Me: Sally, we need to talk.
Sally: (still frowns at me)
Me: (handing her the typed up notice) We are going to read this together. “When reconciling the month of Jan, around Feb 5, it was brought to my attention that we had a deposit that hadn’t been reconciled. I gave you instructions to wait a report to see if it works out. If not, you would need to bring it to mine & the office’s attention for further instructions. This wasn’t done. It wasn’t until Mar 5 that you brought this to my attention again. You have been told many times the importance of reconciling the financials of the office. You have been warned several times of negligence. This is another example of negligence with respect to your job. All you had to do was follow my instructions. It is for this reason that it is now time to terminate your employment.”
Sally: When did you tell me to do this?
Me: (thinking, “Um, I kinda just told you when I told you do that, but, okay.”) When you showed me the Jan bank statement—
Sally: Yesterday?!
Me: You showed me the Jan bank statement a month ago when you were reconciling Jan. I told you to wait for the first of Feb & then—
Sally: You did no such thing!
Me: Yes, I did, Sally.
Sally: When does Greg get here?
Me: Around 9, like usual.
Sally: I’m calling him, ‘cause this is ridiculous. You’ve had it out for me from the very beginning.
Me: No, I haven’t.
Sally: Yeah, you have. Just like the other 2. (sets her bags at the front door, goes outside, & calls Greg)

1. How could I have had it out for you from the very beginning when we didn’t have problems for the first year & a half you worked here? If I’d had it out for you from the beginning, you wouldn’t have had a job the past 6 months. Need I remind you what Greg told you about the timesheet thing being something we fire someone for on the spot, but that Molly had gone to bat for you & gave you a second chance? Why would I have done that if I had wanted you gone from the start?
   
2. “Just like the other 2.” She’s talking about Irene (who had left in Feb 2023) & another employee (who we’ll call Phil). Phil had been fired (by Greg, by the way) for continuing to watch movies on his phone at his desk despite being told multiple times by Greg to not do that. & Irene? She wasn’t fired. She gave her 2 weeks’ notice. & we then discovered when going through the work she’s been doing as we started taking over her tasks that she didn’t just not do jobs. She would actually forge the work so she wouldn’t have to work. “A bank imbalance of $2.65? Well, I’ll just add it to the imbalance that’s been building up for who knows how many months & just label it as an over-deposit from the end of the month. That way, I don’t have to look into why the bank isn’t balancing.” But no, I had it out for them, apparently.
   
3. Does she really think that calling Greg was gonna reverse my firing her? Does she really think I would do something as drastic as writing her up or firing her without discussing it with my supervisor first? Did she really think I would do this behind his back?
   

Apparently, she did, ‘cause Greg confirmed that Sally tried telling him about all the stuff I’ve been doing to her as if he didn’t know. She hung up on him when he explained that he’s been told everything as it happens & he supports this decision.
Sally: (storming back into the office & towards her desk) I’m not signing anything.
Me: Ok.
Sally begins packing up her desk. I had known she kept a lot of personal items at the office, so I had gotten a big box or 2 out & placed them nearby for her to use to pack up her desk.
Me: We can give you a box if you need it.
Sally: I don’t need sh** from you guys.
Me: The only thing we’ll need is your office key.
Sally: You’ll get it when you get it. I’m packing my desk.
Me: Ok.
I go back to work, keeping an eye on her as she packs to make sure she doesn’t take anything she’s not supposed to or damage any company property. Sally at some point decides to use the boxes she didn’t want from us to pack up her many items. She takes both boxes to the front door where her bags are & sets them down to put the last of her things in. She picks up one box to take outside.
Sally: You are the worst manager ever. (goes out the door)
Me: (shrug)
Sally: (comes back in for the final box) Seriously, you’re the most evil person I’ve ever met. (leaves)
Really? I rank worse than the guy that beat you up? I’m worse than him?
I continued watching her to see if she’s going to come back to give up her office key. As she packed up her car, another employee had arrived (we’ll call him Randy). He had run into her on the way in & asks me if Sally quit. I explained, no, she was let go. I then see that Sally has gotten behind the wheel of her car without coming back to give us the office key.
Me: Well, I guess we’ll just change the locks.
Randy then takes it upon himself to go out to her car. He phrased it very gently by saying he wanted to spare her having to come back in to turn the key in.
Sally: I guess Molly didn’t have the balls to do it herself. (hands the key over)
& then…she was gone. Despite having to do the entire corporate office’s work all by myself & falling steadily behind little by little, I have never been more happy. I had forgotten how much I loved my job & how much I couldn’t wait to get to work. I haven’t been this stress-free in 6 months, & it feels fantastic! & the great part is, I’m not really falling as far behind as I expected to without her. Having to do 2 people’s jobs by myself is only affecting me a little. Really goes to show you how bad she was for the company & for my job when she disrupted everything that much. For example, me & her would get through maybe 5 to 6 offices’ reports between us in a single day when playing catch up after closing the previous month. One day? I caught up on 10 offices’ reports in a single day. By myself.
Oh, did I mention she smoked marijuana most days on her way to work or while on her lunch break? We could never actually prove it. But, come on, you don’t smell that strongly of marijuana on only select days if you aren’t smoking it recently. If it was leftover from the smell of your house or car, you would smell like that every day. But it was only some days she would come into work or back from lunch smelling like that. Obviously, smoking on the job. So very glad to be rid of her & her awful skunk smell. Although, I do wish her well on a new job search. I don’t wish ill on anyone, ever. But I am just glad she’s no longer my problem to deal with.
(Added 2 months after she was fired): By the way, I am actually gaining on my work. I’m not only not behind on my work, I’m actually getting it done soon enough to work on extra stuff. Also, out of the blue, we’ve started getting about 3 to 4 sales & scam calls every day since Sally left (for things like better Medicare benefits, better retirement benefits, & even one time recently where “Walgreens” was calling to ask if I still had diabetes). I’m convinced Sally signed us up for calls as retaliation. I hope they die down soon, especially as they are starting to get rude. (Our response to every one of these is “Sorry, this is a business.” This one guy responded to me with, “This is my job.” I said, “I understand this is your job, but this is a business. I am not allowed to take personal calls.” He said, “Why?” I said very slowly & firmly, “Because I’m working!” He started to say, “Can you explain to me why—” I hung up. Jerk.)

So, here is part 2 of my entitled employee story. We left off with discovering Sally’s retaliation of giving me trash as a Christmas gift after her latest write-up.
So, the next several weeks, I am noticing more problems, but here’s some of the highlights.

1. Ever since we had issues of the office’s checks going randomly missing, Sally had apparently decided to just stop throwing any envelope away when opening the mail. She would supposedly search the envelopes/paperwork & then keep the envelopes with the paperwork. So, instead of doing her job better, she would decide to just stop doing the job at all. After all, you can’t get in trouble for screwing it up if you aren’t doing it, right? However, this resulted in items getting left with the paperwork (which sometimes wouldn’t get touched for several weeks due to being busy) that had needed to be collected or addressed right away.
   
2. Sally’s careless mistakes continued at about the same rate (average of 2 to 3 a week). She would put deposit slips/emails with the wrong office’s report, put one office’s mail in another office’s bin, put one office’s funding papers in another office’s bin, put one office’s bills in the folder for their correspondence & vice versa, put one office’s bills in the folder for another office’s bills, put the new month’s bills in the folder without taking out the old month’s bills so they would get mixed up. I could go on & on.
   
3. Sally would still ask for help on things she shouldn’t need help on anymore, ‘cause I had helped her many times on items exactly like it in the 2 years she’s worked here. I mean, the whole point of asking for help when learning new things on a job is so you can take the input you’re given & use it to get better at the job so you don’t have to ask for help anymore. I mean, what kind of office works by their employees constantly needing to be walked through everything every day? Sally would even ask for help on things no one would need to ask for help on. For example, she asked me, “An office took a deposit to the bank without showing it on their report. How do I write that up in the letter to fax to them?” Um, exactly what you just said to me. Or another time, she asks how long she should wait before calling an office back. Well, how long do you think you should give them? Just use your good judgment. You don’t need help with that! Again, you’ve been here 2 years!
   

On Jan 26, I take the Dec bills, correspondence faxes, & timesheets out of their folders to scan them into the computer. Now, one thing the bills should always have on them are the check number used to pay for this purchase & the date it was paid. The offices themselves are supposed to write this on there, but they don’t always, which is why it is our job to write it on there if it’s missing. I had noticed when I scanned Nov’s bills around Nov 30 that a lot of Sally’s offices don’t have that info written on them. So, I explained to her what needed to be written on every bill/receipt. I now flip through the Dec & Jan bills of her offices really quick to check them. There are quite a few of them with no info written down on them. There’s strike one for noncompliance.
Another task we would do several days a week (that’s Sally’s responsibility) is to check the bank accounts online. She is to look at the bank balances & report any low balances to Greg (or me if Greg isn’t there). She is then to look at the transactions in order to see if anything looks fraudulent. Since we are a loan company, check fraud is very common for us. So, we look at the checks for anything funny-looking, & we look to see if there are any auto debits (like when you use your bank account online to pay for a bill) that would tell us if someone got hold of our bank account info.
On Jan 30, at 1:15 p.m., I asked if any of the bank balances were low (Greg was out of town for a few days). Sally said she had forgotten to check the bank accounts that morning. Weird, ‘cause you had to check the Dallas office to make sure the money we sent them had shown up. How did you get the login sheet out to look in their bank account but then forget about checking all the bank accounts? This just further cemented in my mind that she was NOT checking these bank accounts the way she should. I was 100% positive that all she does when logging into these bank accounts is checking the balances to give to Greg but then never checks the transactions. I know this ‘cause, 1) I’ve observed Sally only logging in to write down the balances & then logging back out (she had some flimsy excuse ready when I asked her about it), 2) there have been auto debits that appeared in bank accounts that we didn’t find for weeks until I happened to see it for some reason & guess what? She never pointed those out to us, & 3) Sally hadn’t bothered to check the bank account balances since Greg was out of town, so clearly she only felt the need to check the balances. There’s strike two for noncompliance.
& even more bad mistakes or decisions:

1. At the end of Jan, we discovered that Sally had mailed the employees’ W2s to the managers’ home addresses instead of to the offices to distribute to their employees!
   
2. We had an office that moved locations to right across the street, so the only thing that changed in their address was their street number (12 Main Street instead of 11 Main Street). I explained this to Sally & gave her an updated list of the office’s addresses. 3 weeks later, we get a call from that office saying that mail we send to them keeps going to their landlord’s house. I check the address labels Sally had created for herself. Sure enough, it had the wrong address on them. I go to grab the lease, & at the top is where the tenant’s new address is listed. & all the way at the bottom of the page in the paragraph titled “RENT” where it lists where to send the rent is the landlord’s home address. & that’s the address Sally had chosen to be the new office’s address on her address labels.
   
3. Sally hadn’t been faxing the offices to ask for bills/receipts that never made it to us.
   
4. I used the last towel on a roll of paper towels, so I went to the cabinets to grab another. We were out. Sally is in charge of keeping track of supplies that need ordering, so I go to Sally & say we’re completely out of paper towels, we need to order some. Sally response: “No one ever tells me when they grab the last roll so I know when to order them.” Um, excuse me, since when is it our job to tell you to do your job? It’s your responsibility to keep track of supplies. You should be checking the level of paper towels, toilet paper, Kleenex, etc., to see when you need to order them.
   

So, I knew she needed a second warning write up for carelessness cause of the numerous mistakes since the first warning write up in the middle of Dec, & I would be giving Sally a first warning write up for negligence cause of her not asking the offices for missing bills & not writing the info on the bills I had told her to do at the end of Nov. However, it was only a few days from Feb, which was the time for performance reviews. So, rather than doing a write up now & then in a week or so doing a performance review that was one of the worst performance reviews I’ve ever heard of, I decided to just do it in one fell swoop. You know, just get it all out of the way with one bad conversation, one bad day, & then both of us can hopefully put it behind us & move on.
I decided to do the performance review & write ups on Feb 5 (Monday). It went much smoother ‘cause Greg was there, so Sally couldn’t really give me lip or lash out by showing attitude & anger like she had previously.
On Feb 7 (Wednesday), I log in to get the transactions for an office who is switching banks. I wanted to get an updated list of outstanding checks so they know how many checks are left before they can close the old bank account. & what do I see? Someone had used the bank account to pay $100 on their AT&T bill. I call the office & find out it was actually them, so no fraud there. But I then ask Sally if she had seen that when checking the bank accounts. She said she didn’t remember. Obviously, I have found my proof that she is either not checking them or isn’t paying attention when she does. I have a discussion with Greg about it, & we decide I need to have a sit down with her about her not doing her job. She is sick on Thursday, so I plan to talk with her the next day she comes in.
On Feb 9 (Friday), I begin the conversation about checking the bank accounts & how important it is. I am planning to say things like, we expect you to do this job, you’ve been told multiple times to do this task, if you’re not going to do the job, then you’re welcome to go find another one, etc. But she cuts me off at the beginning with an excuse of, “Well, I didn’t know what I should be looking for, now I know.” & it broke me. She does this exact thing every time I have to have a conversation with her. She has an excuse ready to go on the tip of her tongue, always spins it around so it’s not actually her fault. It’s always, “Well, I didn’t know that, but now, I do.” & I was just done. I didn’t continue the conversation, even though I needed to, ‘cause I just broke down in tears from the stress of having to discipline her & knowing that nothing will ever come of it, but having our hands legally tied to be able to fire her right now. I cried nonstop for over 4 hours.
On Feb 12 (Monday), I sat down to continue the conversation, this time with a written statement for her to sign.
Me: You respond a lot of the time that you don’t know how to do things, which is very frustrating, ‘cause you’ve been shown multiple times how to do these tasks. It’s very inefficient & wasteful that I have to constantly check all of your work & retrain you on the same thing over & over again. This needs to change. This job is about accuracy & accountability.
Sally: You’re not giving me a chance to improve. I never hear “Good job,” from you. All I ever hear is, “You’re doing a bad job, sign this paper.” I get in trouble every time I ask for help, so I guess I’ll just follow the instructions & hope I’m doing it right.
The problems with that response:

1. You’ve worked here for 2 years, Sally. You’ve had plenty of time to improve.
   
2. The reason you never hear “Good job” is ‘cause you’re not doing a good job. How am I supposed to tell you “Good job,” but also need to give you a write up for doing a bad job? If you’re getting multiple write ups for doing a bad job, don’t you think that’s a sign that something is wrong? I mean, she thinks that managers should be telling their employees good job on everything they do right. No, you’re expected to do these tasks. We’re not going to congratulate you every time you do your basic job requirements like some toddler that needs constant positive reinforcement so they know that doing something right is a good thing! You will hear “Good job” when you are doing a really good job on something, when you go above & beyond!! I mean, do you think Greg tells me “Good job” when I’m just doing my job as expected?!! NO!!! I’ve never had a manager constantly tell me “Good job” all the time!!!! (Whew. Sorry about that. Kinda went on a crazy rant there. I’m good now.)
   
3. Here’s another example of her mentality of “if I don’t do the job, I can’t get in trouble for doing it wrong.” She’s going to stop asking for help instead of using the help I’ve given her to do better. I mean, if you’re making these mistakes when you ARE asking for help, how many more are you going to make when you stop asking for help? How does this make any logical sense?!
   

Well, here’s another chance for some malicious compliance. She claimed she didn’t know how to check the bank accounts, right? Well, my job as the manager is to make sure my employees know how to do their job. So, I need to sit down with her & train her how to check the bank accounts. Again. Even though I know she already knows how to do it. So, every time you tell me that the reason why you didn’t do a job is ‘cause you didn’t know how to do it right, well, we’re going to sit down & waste both our times & annoy you having to be retrained on something you do, in fact, know how to do.
Sally continues making careless mistakes & not doing stuff she doesn’t think she should have to do. Like answering the phones. It’s her job to answer the phones; that’s something I as the manager should be delegating to her. However, she never answers the phone unless I literally can’t. So, I had asked her to start answering the phone more. She will wait until the last possible second before answering the phone. By that time, it’s already rung twice, so I have to answer it before it goes on any longer or they hang up. One time, we were both away from our desks when the phone rang. We both went to answer it, but she was closer & got to her desk before me, put her hand on the phone, & watched me until I got to my desk before she picked it up. With a comment of, “Oh, (laughs) I didn’t want to make you walk all the way to your desk.” Well, you did, anyway, you little jerk.
On Feb 27, Sally asks for help on a report. She says that my note stating the office is over-deposited $28 on report 1 but fixed on report 2 by being $28 under-deposited didn’t work out. She says that they were never over by $28 in the first place. I take the report to look it over. Her calculator tape adding up the deposits shows the bank is in balance, but I don’t see deposit slips.
Me: Where are the deposit slips?
Sally: I haven’t gotten them yet.
Me: (trying to comprehend her logic) Then how do you have the deposit amounts added on this tape?
Sally: I got the amounts from the report.
Me: You…(my brain trying not to implode at this point) you can’t add up amounts to see if the bank has too much or too little money in it without knowing what was actually taken to the bank. The amounts on the report don’t always equal what was taken to the bank.
I log into the bank account & discover just that: the report says they took $500 to the bank, but their deposit says $528. They were indeed $28 over-deposited. I then lecture her (for the second time in a few months) on the correct way to account for the deposits at the bank, that we are only to use the dollar amounts on the bank’s deposit receipt. (The first time was her getting the deposit amount from what was written on the deposit slip instead of what the bank gave us credit for on their printed receipt. The bank had shorted us $500, & we never knew until her deposits didn’t work out when reconciling the bank statement at the end of the month. We were missing $500 for 4 weeks! It’s a miracle we didn’t overdraw the account.)
Another task that we do several days a week is checking the CFPB website. This is a government website that uses federal regulations to monitor financial institutions. It’s like the Better Business Bureau, but more official. Customers can make complaints through them, prompting an investigation to make sure we’re following the federal guidelines. We have 2 weeks to respond to a complaint before it is past due.
On Feb 29, Greg just happens to be looking at an email inbox that he never checks, ‘cause after all, we’re checking the CFPB website, so he doesn’t have to look there, right? There is a complaint in 2 of the portals that have been in there since Jan 22. He immediately marches out & tells Sally about them.
Greg: Aren’t you checking the CFPB sites?
Sally: Yeah, I am.
Really? Then how come you didn’t print this complaint off to give to Greg in the last 6 weeks? She came back from lunch to a second warning write up given by me for negligence.
On Mar 5 (Tuesday), we are working on reconciling the bank statements so we can close the month of Feb. Sally brings me a Jan bank statement for an office.
Sally: This never cleared in Feb.
I look at the bank statement. It’s an electronic deposit of $254 on Jan 31. I remember this. She had asked me at the beginning of Feb why this deposit wasn’t recorded on the office’s report. I explained that since it didn’t show up in the bank account until the last day of Jan, they might not have known about it before the end of the month & so recorded it on the first of Feb. We will wait until the first report of Feb. If it’s still not recorded, then we’ll bring that to the office’s attention. & here she is, clearly telling me she hadn’t brought it to anyone’s attention all month long.
Me: (staring at the bank statement as I try to prevent my autistic brain from exploding at her while also trying to prevent a spontaneous stroke) You didn’t keep track of this all month?
Sally: Well, I didn’t know if it was treated differently ‘cause it was OTBP (One Time Bill Pay, which is the electronic deposit). (Oh, what a shocker, she once again didn’t know how to do something.)
Me: But we talked about this. If it wasn’t on the first of the month, we needed to address it.
Sally: Okay, well, now I know that we treat this the same as other deposits. (goes nonchalantly back to her desk like it was no big deal, like she hadn’t just revealed she had once again disobeyed my detailed instructions)
Me: (seeing her flagrant disregard for the seriousness of the situation & wondering just how on earth she could once again think that not doing her job would have no consequences) This is exactly what Greg talks about over & over, about how we can’t leave errors like this to sit for weeks & weeks, that these need to be dealt with as they happen.
Sally: (still as easy-going as if she had simply used the wrong color highlighter) Okay, I’ll make note of that.
Now, I am getting really pissed off. She keeps saying, “Oh, now I know that OTBP is treated the same as everything else.” That doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter that you didn’t know it’s treated the same! I specifically told you to take care of it if it didn’t appear on the first of Feb! It didn’t matter what kind of deposit it was! I said to tell me if it wasn’t on the first of Feb!
Now, this was right before she leaves at 3:30, so by the time I’m finished with my text conversation with Greg (‘cause he isn’t there that afternoon), she has already left. But I’m telling Greg that I have once again caught her being negligent, & she’s already had 2 written warnings about this, which means our next step is letting her go. Not to mention, her carelessness is still continuing. He said that he supports my decision to let her go. By the way, the final decision happened an hour after she left. If I had known before she left that we were indeed going to fire her, I would have done it before she left so she didn’t have to come all the way to work in the morning just to leave again.
So, on Mar 6 (Wednesday), I arrive early to work so I can be prepared. I am standing at my desk, watching her come in. This is unusual, so she frowns as she approaches me.
Me: Sally, we need to talk.
Sally: (still frowns at me)
Me: (handing her the typed up notice) We are going to read this together. “When reconciling the month of Jan, around Feb 5, it was brought to my attention that we had a deposit that hadn’t been reconciled. I gave you instructions to wait a report to see if it works out. If not, you would need to bring it to mine & the office’s attention for further instructions. This wasn’t done. It wasn’t until Mar 5 that you brought this to my attention again. You have been told many times the importance of reconciling the financials of the office. You have been warned several times of negligence. This is another example of negligence with respect to your job. All you had to do was follow my instructions. It is for this reason that it is now time to terminate your employment.”
Sally: When did you tell me to do this?
Me: (thinking, “Um, I kinda just told you when I told you do that, but, okay.”) When you showed me the Jan bank statement—
Sally: Yesterday?!
Me: You showed me the Jan bank statement a month ago when you were reconciling Jan. I told you to wait for the first of Feb & then—
Sally: You did no such thing!
Me: Yes, I did, Sally.
Sally: When does Greg get here?
Me: Around 9, like usual.
Sally: I’m calling him, ‘cause this is ridiculous. You’ve had it out for me from the very beginning.
Me: No, I haven’t.
Sally: Yeah, you have. Just like the other 2. (sets her bags at the front door, goes outside, & calls Greg)

1. How could I have had it out for you from the very beginning when we didn’t have problems for the first year & a half you worked here? If I’d had it out for you from the beginning, you wouldn’t have had a job the past 6 months. Need I remind you what Greg told you about the timesheet thing being something we fire someone for on the spot, but that Molly had gone to bat for you & gave you a second chance? Why would I have done that if I had wanted you gone from the start?
   
2. “Just like the other 2.” She’s talking about Irene (who had left in Feb 2023) & another employee (who we’ll call Phil). Phil had been fired (by Greg, by the way) for continuing to watch movies on his phone at his desk despite being told multiple times by Greg to not do that. & Irene? She wasn’t fired. She gave her 2 weeks’ notice. & we then discovered when going through the work she’s been doing as we started taking over her tasks that she didn’t just not do jobs. She would actually forge the work so she wouldn’t have to work. “A bank imbalance of $2.65? Well, I’ll just add it to the imbalance that’s been building up for who knows how many months & just label it as an over-deposit from the end of the month. That way, I don’t have to look into why the bank isn’t balancing.” But no, I had it out for them, apparently.
   
3. Does she really think that calling Greg was gonna reverse my firing her? Does she really think I would do something as drastic as writing her up or firing her without discussing it with my supervisor first? Did she really think I would do this behind his back?
   

Apparently, she did, ‘cause Greg confirmed that Sally tried telling him about all the stuff I’ve been doing to her as if he didn’t know. She hung up on him when he explained that he’s been told everything as it happens & he supports this decision.
Sally: (storming back into the office & towards her desk) I’m not signing anything.
Me: Ok.
Sally begins packing up her desk. I had known she kept a lot of personal items at the office, so I had gotten a big box or 2 out & placed them nearby for her to use to pack up her desk.
Me: We can give you a box if you need it.
Sally: I don’t need sh** from you guys.
Me: The only thing we’ll need is your office key.
Sally: You’ll get it when you get it. I’m packing my desk.
Me: Ok.
I go back to work, keeping an eye on her as she packs to make sure she doesn’t take anything she’s not supposed to or damage any company property. Sally at some point decides to use the boxes she didn’t want from us to pack up her many items. She takes both boxes to the front door where her bags are & sets them down to put the last of her things in. She picks up one box to take outside.
Sally: You are the worst manager ever. (goes out the door)
Me: (shrug)
Sally: (comes back in for the final box) Seriously, you’re the most evil person I’ve ever met. (leaves)
Really? I rank worse than the guy that beat you up? I’m worse than him?
I continued watching her to see if she’s going to come back to give up her office key. As she packed up her car, another employee had arrived (we’ll call him Randy). He had run into her on the way in & asks me if Sally quit. I explained, no, she was let go. I then see that Sally has gotten behind the wheel of her car without coming back to give us the office key.
Me: Well, I guess we’ll just change the locks.
Randy then takes it upon himself to go out to her car. He phrased it very gently by saying he wanted to spare her having to come back in to turn the key in.
Sally: I guess Molly didn’t have the balls to do it herself. (hands the key over)
& then…she was gone. Despite having to do the entire corporate office’s work all by myself & falling steadily behind little by little, I have never been more happy. I had forgotten how much I loved my job & how much I couldn’t wait to get to work. I haven’t been this stress-free in 6 months, & it feels fantastic! & the great part is, I’m not really falling as far behind as I expected to without her. Having to do 2 people’s jobs by myself is only affecting me a little. Really goes to show you how bad she was for the company & for my job when she disrupted everything that much. For example, me & her would get through maybe 5 to 6 offices’ reports between us in a single day when playing catch up after closing the previous month. One day? I caught up on 10 offices’ reports in a single day. By myself.
Oh, did I mention she smoked marijuana most days on her way to work or while on her lunch break? We could never actually prove it. But, come on, you don’t smell that strongly of marijuana on only select days if you aren’t smoking it recently. If it was leftover from the smell of your house or car, you would smell like that every day. But it was only some days she would come into work or back from lunch smelling like that. Obviously, smoking on the job. So very glad to be rid of her & her awful skunk smell. Although, I do wish her well on a new job search. I don’t wish ill on anyone, ever. But I am just glad she’s no longer my problem to deal with.
(Added 2 months after she was fired): By the way, I am actually gaining on my work. I’m not only not behind on my work, I’m actually getting it done soon enough to work on extra stuff. Also, out of the blue, we’ve started getting about 3 to 4 sales & scam calls every day since Sally left (for things like better Medicare benefits, better retirement benefits, & even one time recently where “Walgreens” was calling to ask if I still had diabetes). I’m convinced Sally signed us up for calls as retaliation. I hope they die down soon, especially as they are starting to get rude. (Our response to every one of these is “Sorry, this is a business.” This one guy responded to me with, “This is my job.” I said, “I understand this is your job, but this is a business. I am not allowed to take personal calls.” He said, “Why?” I said very slowly & firmly, “Because I’m working!” He started to say, “Can you explain to me why—” I hung up. Jerk.)

After taking over a month to finish this latest volume, I think I may be finished with this series. It had an interesting (although not super original premise), and I had liked the progression for the most part. However, after finishing Volume 5, I think I have too many issues with the story to where it doesn't feel worthwhile to continue.

• This story would be nearly identical if it was just about a boy wanting to make a high school debut. The going back in time aspect really doesn't add much outside of the intro, some flashbacks, and the phrase "rainbow colored youth" being used way too much. It's also not as if the knowledge from his first experience is really being utilized (other than basketball for whatever reason). It's more just "get in shape, be sociable and friendly" and everything falls into place. This had been nagging at me for a while and couldn't put this into words before, but the premise just feels wasted/irrelevant.
  
• Everything goes too smoothly for Haibara. At some point it just becomes uninteresting when you know every issue or "obstacle" will be overcome no problem. The basketball game at the end of Volume 5 really sold this for me. I ended up just skipping through several pages (not sure why this author loves detailing basketball games so much), and of course his team ends up winning. Haibara's just made to be too athletic, handsome, smart, charismatic, etc. to where he doesn't feel like a real person anymore.
  
• Too many female characters falling in love with him. While I did think the aspect of "how a friend group deals with 2 people being into the same person", with the addition of Miori now and the drama that the ending hinted at, I think I'm over it. Especially since most of the characters he interacts with are women, I could see this playing out more times than it already has with the band member, the coworker, etc. Plus, as if the relevant side characters weren't enough, he also gets more or less confessed to by a stranger because hey, why not? He does have male friends but each of those is also linked in a romantic way to other characters. So he's either interacting with a female character, or when it's with the males it's still usually about the female characters too.
  

At the end of the day, the story has just become un-interesting and predictable. It's hard not to compare this to the Re:Life manga, which has similar ideas but it feels so much more impactful with the concept. I'm not 100% sure I'll be dropping this, but I went from reading each volume at or near release to being incredibly okay forgetting about this series. This is mostly a rant but I'm curious how others feel, especially for any JP readers since I'm guessing it's further ahead there.

It’s been a week and a day. She was ten, but it was still a complete surprise. We had walked a mile every day preceding the vet appointment that indicated acute pancreatitis with complications. The following hospitalization and few days at home after were full of ups and downs. She was miserable, her liver enzyme levels did not go down, she wouldn’t eat, forcing meds in her was torture for all of us. Still, I read posts on canine pancreatitis groups of dogs who make it and grapple with our decision to let her go. I feel angry certain medications weren’t introduced sooner and that I didn’t know enough early on to advocate for her.
I’m grateful for my dog co-parent and other pets, who I am grieving alongside. I’m grateful her passing was peaceful and of course for every single moment we had. But I join everyone here in profound pain, as great or greater than every human loss I have experienced. Everyday moments punctuated by her absence. Every routine and easy turn of phrase startles me and brings me to tears.
Our other dog, brother, our good boy, has taken to sitting on her spot on top of the steps of the back deck, where I am sitting now. Where she protected us from every bird and airplane. In her last days we all took turns sitting with her here. I hope she haunts us from her spot. I keep expecting to see her here.
I’m not sure what the point of posting this is except that it helps to write my grief among people who know the true depth of love and loss of a pet, who don’t think it’s crazy to be so affected by “just a pet.” She was better and closer to my heart than almost every human I know, and my heart is broken. My heart is with all of you going through the same.

Hi 👋 IDK what to do. I hope the person doesn’t read this & be offended. 😥
Ok so through online I have just started chatting to some1 who happens to be trans & is looking for a good galpal etc. That’s great with me.
HOWEVER She’s not out of the closet in that she has never been out as woman. Not gone outside dressed like that. She said she’s comfortable within their (home?) space or indoors ( but they have not gone out for eg for a walk or cafe etc.) maybe one day.
I get that it can’t be easy but then, would I even agree for eg to meet a cis woman at their home when I’d never met them before? No I would not. Meeting in public & all that.
She’s said let her know if I’d still like to be friends & of course but do you know what I mean?
So what do you advise?
I guess I thought we’d meet at a cafe, walk or something - & again I’ve never just rocked up at a cis girl’s house either if I’d never met her but only spoken online - in messaging.
So IDK what to do or how to phrase anything & yes I do understand her concerns! She needs to feel safe. She’s not out etc etc.
But I need to feel safe too. It sounds like she’s only open to meeting in private if she’s saying one day she might go out etc dressed as her?
I hope this hasn’t offended anyone?
Please advise me. Thank you 🙏 and I don’t want to come across as transphobic or anything in her photos in some she “passes” in others IMO she doesn’t so I figured she is probably trans before that convo. So that is not the issue.