My friend and I have been discussing the topic of children for a few years. Her boyfriend adamantly wants kids and she doesn't.
We recently met after a couple of months and when I asked her about this topic she casually told me "oh yeah I made up my mind, I'm having children". I was quite shocked and asked more questions. The juice of it is that she was essentially given an ultimatum by her boyfriend who told her that either she changed her mind and decided to have kids, or he would've left her after several years together.
She apparently "thought it through" (in one night) and ended up deciding that yep, they'll have children. Despite all of her objections and fears and reasons not to. And all because of his - quoting her words - "desire to have a legacy and pass on his genes".
I am so baffled by these "legacy bros" that would rather have their partner go through immense pain, discomfort and hell (and risking their lives) than miss out on spreading their lower quality genes.
I am very sad for my friend because after discussing it through she doesn't seem convinced at all and she was essentially repeating her boyfriend's justifications word-by-word. But best of luck to them I guess.

I moved to a new state with my husband about two months before he deployed. It has been very difficult making friends as I work from home. Even before deactivating my social media, it was very difficult making friends using social media group pages. He has been gone several months and while it hasn’t been easy, because I’m constantly alone, I thought it was going okay.
He emailed me last week, after going radio silent, telling me how much he is struggling and how unhappy he is. Shared that a lot of it is my fault. He doesn’t feel comfortable opening up to me and never will. To preface this, this happened after 5 days of no talking after a “fight”. I put it in quotes because I was genuinely trying to avoid a fight. We were talking on messenger. He was giving me one or two word answers to everything and I started getting frustrated. So I told him I was gonna let him go and to have a good night and I love him. He asked me what he did wrong and I told him nothing. He said I love you too and immediately logged off. I messaged him back explaining that it felt like I was trying to pull teeth talking to him and I know he is exhausted and stressed so instead of hurting my own feelings I would rather get offline. He never opened the message. I also sent him a screen shot about something funny his brother shared with me so he could get context about what I was asking and knew it wasn’t a big deal. But again, he never opened the message.
Five days later is when I received the aforementioned email; he was purposely ignoring me. He had promised me multiple times before that he wouldn’t do that sort of thing again (this was now the fourth time) and this one was by far the longest. I sometimes struggle knowing how to respond because when he shares that I’m upset about something, he gets the context completely wrong. For example, he thinks I get mad at him for talking to his family. That’s not true at all. I get upset that we get to talk for what seems to be a few hours online, and he’s not really participating in sharing anything. I have to ask questions, I get one or two word answers back and that’s it. I try not to push but sometimes I need the communication to feel connected. He doesn’t tell me he misses me, he doesn’t call me babe or honey (he used to) I know he is struggling, and I’m by no means saying I have it worse, but on the boat, he has explicitly told me that he doesn’t like anyone, he doesn’t trust anyone and he absolutely hates this command. I don’t really have any friends but my isolation is not quite self induced.
I responded to his email explaining my side of things, and apologizing for not creating a space for him to feel comfortable to talk to me. That’s literally all I’ve tried to do but he just seems to feel pressure when talking to me. I genuinely believe his stress, anxiety and lack of sleep are highly contributing to his emotional and mental distress. Add that he is in a combat zone and I’m sure its worse. He won’t tell me that though, usually just says he’s not at all worried or makes a really dumb joke about it.
I all but begged him to please let me know if all he needs is space, that I want to support him but the silence is torture to me. I have an anxious attachment style (he is avoidant) so I tend to think worst case scenario. So I requested that he please put my mind at ease that he’s not considering ending our marriage.
Three days later he sends me a very long email talking about how he is not looking forward to coming home, and isnt because we couldn’t get thru a deployment without fighting; that he wants to go to his childhood home to see his family. That we don’t want the same things. That I’m happy where we moved to and he is not. He only chose these orders and the last orders to be close to his family. He hates that I don’t get along with his family and that I don’t really want to move there when he retires.
Let me explain that he lives in a very tiny town where there isn’t even a grocery store. I literally would not have a career within an hour of his town. We had agreed that we could live an hour away, like one of his brothers does and it would still be close enough to his family. Also, his family has been quite rude to me. I have been mending fences with them for the sake of my husband. I don’t care where we live in the grand scheme of things, but I still need to have a job and his father and that side of the family very much abuse alcohol. They are also very ignorant and racist. My husband already struggles with over drinking. That’s not something I want to raise a family around as they can be verbally abusive when drunk, and you never know what’s going to trigger them. They have no goals nor aspirations in life, and that’s okay, but I do/ we did… I thought. My husbands goal is to retire from the service and go home. I was willing to go close (1-2 hours which he had agreed) to his home because I have a while before I can retire.
He proceeded to talk about how he was miserable with his ex wife and doesn’t want to spend six year with me, like he did with her, thinking marriage was supposed to be an unhappy union. That he stayed with her that long because he didn’t want it to fail; also because she convinced him things would get better. They never did, in fact I believe there was some infidelity on her side. He continued on about nonsense, like how he wants the mirrors in our house to stay but I wanted to change them and he has completely given up on having a say on how to update the house we bought. For the record, I left the mirrros the way he wanted. I picked paint colors I knew he would like.
Next, he mentioned how we had gotten in a fight right before moving and in haste, I told him to leave me there. he considered that we do end it then but we agreed to keep going because even though we struggle with communication, we do love each other and want to continue our marriage as overall we are pretty happy.
He ended the email explaining that he has not been happy for a while, has been struggling and while we work good together, he doesn’t believe we are right for each other. That I need to look within and figure out if I am happy in the relationship. That he doesn’t care about my answer but he is not at all happy.That he will never be able to communicate the way I want and he has made more changes for me, like attend couples counseling and anger management, than he ever would have for anyone else.
There are still a few months left to this deployment. I literally have no idea where that leaves me. I’m hurt as shit. I’m angry. I’m confused and frustrated. Not once on this deployment have I even mentioned splitting. Month two was the first time he mentioned divorce. We got past that hurdle and month three he mentioned that we should consider getting pregnant when he gets back. Then some stupid issue comes up and the cycle of being angry and fine continues. In fact, I all but beg him to not leave me when he has these outbursts. I feel stupid.
He is not one to ask for help. He clearly needs help but I have no idea what to do. It’s clear he doesn’t want anything to do with me.

This week’s vintage batch features black hard rubber pens from three of the Big Four American Makers of the 1910s-20s. Nibs range from Flex to Wet Noodle. As always, all are fully restored and ready to write.
 
ALBUM & TIMESTAMP
 
Pastable link: https://imgur.com/a/R5fpCKe
 
Condition (n.b.): All pens listed below have been disassembled, cleaned and restored with new sacs installed in the last couple weeks. Each of these pens is guaranteed to fill and write as designed without leaks or other problems. Nibs have been adjusted when necessary to ensure that all lay down a smooth and consistent line.
THESE PENS HAVE NO CRACKS, CHIPS, PERSONALIZATIONS, LOOSE OR MISSING PARTS, BENT NIBS, MISALIGNED TINES, BROKEN/WORN OFF TIPPING, OR THREADING ISSUES.
 
Line Widths and Writing Samples: To provide buyers with as much information as possible, I have started to adopt the following line width standards: XXF (.1-.2mm); XF (approx .3mm); F (approx .4mm); M (approx .6mm); B (approx .8mm). Nib flexibility is determined by variation (max line width under pressure) and softness (amount of pressure). Flexibility designations based on variation generally run as follows for an XF/F nib: Semi-Flex (approx. 1mm); Flex (1.2-1.9mm); Superflex (>2mm). All line width measurements are taken with a digital caliper but should be considered approximations providing a general guide. Width may vary slightly depending on type of ink and paper used as well as amount of pressure applied. All writing samples are on Rhodia dot paper using Waterman Serenity Blue.
 
 
1. 1920s Waterman 92 1/2 (BCHR, GPT, lever filler, 14k XF Flex nib). This slender (1/2-sized) model is longer than a ring top but slightly shorter than a 52, measuring 4 3/4” capped and 6” posted. Not to be confused with the later, celluloid 92, this 92 1/2 is made of black chased hard rubber with gold-plated trim. It’s the first I’ve ever encountered. Cap came clipless from the factory (no holes drilled for a clip), but has been outfitted with a gold-plated accommodation clip. Based on its absence from US catalogues, I believe this model was made strictly for foreign export. The barrel has a Canadian imprint while the nib reads “Ideal / England,” it being a common practice for Waterman’s Canadian pens to be finished in England. That 14k nib is a Flexible writer (note change from writing sample after taking measurement. It lays down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to a 3B+ (approx 1.8mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Thin hairlines and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it a great choice for shaded writing. Condition: fine [C]. This pen has no functional flaws but does show some use. Hard rubber is an even dark chocolate color – still much darker than the brown these can turn. Chasing is significantly yet evenly weakened across the cap and barrel. Hard rubber surface is smooth with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes. Gold-plating on the lever has a sliver of brassing in the center and parts of the clip look tarnished, though I’m not sure this amounts to full-fledged brassing. Manufacturer imprint on barrel and number stamp on barrel end are weakened but fully legible. An affordable user and a lovely writer for those wondering at what all the fuss is about early Watermans. Price: $150
 
2. 1910s Waterman 12 Eyedropper (BCHR, German Silver clip, eyedropper filler, 14k F Superflex nib). This full-sized model measures 5 1/8” capped. This slip-cap eyedropper is made of black chased hard rubber with a rivet clip marked “German Silver” – less common than the standard nickel clips. This pen is an eyedropper. The section unscrews for the barrel to filled using an eyedroppepipette – holds far more ink than a lever filler of the same size. My usual caveats about early eyedroppers apply here. If carried, it is not uncommon to find a little ink on the nib or in the cap. Super-Flexible 14k Ideal NY #2 nib lays down a smooth and consistent F line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.5mm) under light pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Easy variation and reliably wet flow over its full range of flex make it a great choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian. Condition: excellent- [B-]. Hard rubber of the cap is dark black with virtually no fading but center of barrel shows fading to dark chocolate under certain lights. Chasing on cap is sharp and deep but barrel chasing is very light and only visible when the light strikes it. German Silver clip is pristine with no brassing or other notable wear. Hard rubber surface is smooth with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes. Manufacturer imprint on barrel is weak but mostly legible while number stamp on barrel-end is all but worn away. Price: $190 [ON HOLD]
 
3. c.1918 Waterman 52 (BCHR, NPT w/ Sterling Silver clip, lever filler, 14k XXF Needlepoint Superflex nib). This full-sized model measures 5 5/16” capped. A nice example of Waterman’s celebrated workhorse made of black chased hard rubber with a sterling silver Ideal accommodation clip with “Waterman’s / Made in France” stamped on one side and a hallmark that reads “GP” on the other side (DETAIL PHOTO). This pen came clipless from the factory (no holes drilled for a rivet clip). Super-Flexible 14k Ideal NY #2 nib has a needlepoint width and superb snap-back that gives it a surgically precise feel when writing. It lays down a smooth and consistent XXF line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.2mm) under light pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Insanely responsive snap-back, needlepoint hairlines, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it another excellent choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian. Condition: excellent [B]. Hard rubber retains its dark black color with virtually no fading. Chasing is weakened a bit yet readily visible over the cap and barrel. Hard rubber surface is smooth with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes. Manufacturer imprint on barrel is quite weak and only partly legible while number stamp on barrel-end is deep and fully legible. Price: $260 SOLD
 
4. c.1918 Waterman 52 in Box (BCHR, NPT, lever filler, 14k M/B Superflex Factory Stub nib). This full-sized model measures 5 5/16” capped. This pen comes in its original factory box with 5-page pamphlet including care and filling instructions as well as other offerings from Waterman (BOX PHOTO). It’s a clean 52 made of black chased hard rubber with nickel-plated trim including earlier, wide rivet clip. 14k Ideal #2 nib is a Super-Flexible Factory Stub that manages to deliver sharp unflexed variation without compromising smoothness. Under normal pressure it lays down a smooth and consistent M/B line (approx .7mm) on the down-strokes and XF line on the cross-strokes. And the line widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.0mm) under light pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE – note change in flex grade after measuring). A versatile nib whose responsive snap-back, easy variation, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it well suited to shaded notes under normal pressure and calligraphic writing styles under flex, the Stub grind keeping one’s letterforms neat and straight. Condition: excellent+ [B+]. This pen and the one below came from an estate of someone who seems to have purchased these pens, wrote with them a few times, then stowed them away in their boxes. This one is definitely collector-grade, having seen very little use. Hard rubber retains its dark black color with no discernible fading. Chasing is evenly sharp and crisp. Hard rubber surface is smooth with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes. Manufacturer imprint on barrel and number stamp on barrel-end are deep and fully legible. Box is in sound condition with no torn ends but original owner managed somehow to burn a couple small holes in the paperwork. A boxed 52 with an uncommon nib in uncommonly clean condition. Price: $310 SOLD
 
5. c.1918 Waterman 55 in Box (BCHR, NPT, lever filler, 14k XF Flex/Superflex nib). This oversized model has a thick girth and measures 5 1/2” capped. This pen comes in its original factory box with 5-page pamphlet including care and filling instructions as well as other offerings from Waterman (BOX PHOTO). This pen is made of black chased hard rubber with nickel-plated trim including earlier, wide rivet clip. Commensurably oversized Ideal NY #5 nib yields Super-Flexible variation with Flexible softness. It lays down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.1mm) under moderate pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE – note change in flex grade after measuring). Condition: excellent+/near mint [B+]. This pen came from the same estate as the 52 above and also resembles an artifact of a time capsule. Hard rubber retains its factory black color with no discernible fading. Chasing is factory sharp and crisp. Hard rubber surface is smooth with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes. Manufacturer imprint on barrel and number stamp on barrel-end are deep and fully legible. Box is in sound condition with no torn ends but original owner managed somehow to burn some small holes in the paperwork for this one as well. These big fellas are getting tougher to find, especially in this condition. Price: $440 SOLD
 
6. c.1921 Wahl Pen 72 (BCHR, NPT, lever filler, 14k XXF Superflex nib). This standard sized model measures 5 3/16” capped. Having purchased the assets of the Boston Fountain Pen Company, Wahl began manufacturing fountain pens in 1917. Wahl’s first pens were essentially rebranded Bostons and Tempoints (a NY company they acquired in 1918). The first full-fledged Wahls, dubbed simply “The Wahl Pen,” rolled off out of the factory in 1921. This 72 one of those pens. Its’s made of black chased hard rubber complemented by nickel-plated trim including Wahl’s patented roller-clip. The Wahl Pen is chiefly distinguished from earlier designs by its patented Wahl lever with apexed center. Super-Flexible 14k Wahl Pen #2 nib is a lovely writer. It lays down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.4mm) under light pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Needlepoint hairlines, superbly responsive snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it another great choice for calligraphic writing styles. Condition: excellent/near mint [B+]. Hard rubber retains its factory black color with virtually no fading/oxidation. Chasing is factory deep and crisp with no discernible wear. Surface is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes. Nickel-plated trim is exceptionally clean with no brassing or other noteworthy blemishes apart from light scratching to the clip. Manufacturer imprint on barrel and number stamp on barrel-end are deep and fully legible. Price: $280
 
7. 1910s Parker Lucky Curve 20 (smooth BHR, eyedropper filler, 14k XF/F Superflex/Wet Noodle nib). This full-sized model measures 5 5/16” capped. Parker collectors know all too well how much harder it is to find early Parker eyedroppers compared to say, Waterman 12s. This simple, utilitarian Lucky Curve eyedropper from the early teens is made of smooth, black hard rubber. Slip cap came clipless from the factory (no holes drilled for a clip). Long Lucky Curve feed is intact. This pen is an eyedropper. The section unscrews for the barrel to filled using an eyedroppepipette – holds far more ink than a lever filler of the same size. My usual caveats about early eyedroppers apply here. If carried, it is not uncommon to find a little ink on the nib or in the cap. Early 14k Lucky Curve #2 nib with teardrop breather hole yields Super-Flexible variation with softness and flow verging on that of a Wet Noodle (comparable to a soft dip pen nib). It lays down a smooth and consistent XF/F line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.4mm) under very light pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Thin hairlines with a light hand, strong snap-back, and reliable flow over its full range of flex make it another great choice for calligraphic writing styles such as Copperplate and Spencerian. Condition: excellent [B]. Black hard rubber retains its factory black color apart from minor fading to a deep, dark brown on the barrel visible under certain lights. Surface is smooth and lustrous with no deep scratches or other notable blemishes aside from a group of short scratches to the left of the imprint (see imprints photo). Nib shows a small scuff here and there and a scratch on one tine that has no effect on durability or performance. Manufacturer imprint on barrel and number stamp on barrel-end are deep and fully legible. A lovely writer and the first example of one of these I’ve ever offered. Price: $270 SOLD
 
8. c.1915 Parker 16 Overlay (gold-filled over BHR, button filler, 14k XF Wet Noodle nib). Measures 4 5/8" capped and 6” posted. While Waterman overlays of this period aren't particularly common, they're far more numerous than their Parker counterparts today. Parker overlays like this one were commissioned to the George W. Heath company in New York, who is credited for some of the finer overlays on early Watermans and Conklins as well. The gold-filled filigree over this black hard rubber ringtop features an exquisitely hand-engraved Art Nouveau pattern as well as an indicia on the barrel for engraving. The pattern is the earlier, more intricate design that's more sought after than the simpler Art Deco pattern of the later 1910s-20s. Barrel overlay is stamped "Parker Fountain Pen" along with patent dates from 1891 and 1905. Pen has an Xmas tree, Lucky Curve feed and knurled blindcap unscrews to reveal brass button for filling. To fill, one simply unscrews the blind cap, submerses the nib, and depresses the brass button once. The fine workmanship of this pen is complemented by an early 14k Lucky Curve #3 nib, a scarce “Lazy S” variant with long tines. The nib is a Wet Noodle with softness, variation, and flow comparable to that of a dip pen nib. It lays down a smooth and consistent XF line that widens to a 4B+ (approx 2.5mm) under minimal pressure (see WRITING SAMPLE). Another nib with astonishingly responsive snap-back giving it a precision feel and you maximum control over the line. Together with its thin hairlines and reliable flow over its full range of flex, this makes for an ideal choice for calligraphic writing styles. Condition: excellent+ [B+]. Overlay shows no brassing, dents, or other notable flaws aside from some pin-sized dings confined to the knurled portion around the top of the cap. Hard rubber retains its dark black color with scarcely any fading. Knurling of blind cap isn’t quite as sharp as it once was and number stamp on barrel-end is faint but legible under bright light. Manufacturer imprint on barrel is deep and fully legible. Price: $380 SOLD
 
 
 
Shipping: Pens purchased on the weekend are mailed on Tuesday. Otherwise they are mailed within 2 business days of payment. All pens that do not come with their original boxes are packaged in PVC or thick plastic tubes to protect them in transit. To CONUS locations the following shipping options are available:

• USPS First-Class with tracking for $5 Due to the delivery delays that continue under postmaster general DeJoy, I strongly recommend that the Priority shipping option be chosen. All packages will include full insurance (covered by me). Rest assured that a full refund is guaranteed (issued through Paypal) in the event of a lost parcel and you will not have to wait until I receive a reimbursement from the USPS.
  
• USPS Priority with tracking for $9
  

International Customers: Please contact me for shipping quote if located abroad (delivery confirmation required). (Note: due to the issues stated above, my international shipping options are currently limited. PM for more info). Please do not ask me to commit mail fraud by altering the declared value of a pen for customs. Not only am I registered as a business but shipping insurance is based on declared value.
New York Customers: For tax purposes, I am now required to add an 8% sales tax on any sale made in the state of NY. If your shipping address is in NY state, please let me know before payment to receive an adjusted total. Discounted shipping is included for NY State residents to help defray the extra cost.
Ordering: Pens are placed on hold for the first person to reply to the thread and PM me with firm request to purchase (no chat DMs please). A request with the words “I'd like to purchase [pen number]” would be best to avoid confusion), to which I’ll reply with payment details. Please note that a message inquiring into a price discount does not suffice to place a pen on hold. If I haven't received Paypal payment within 24 hrs after a hold is placed, then pen(s) may become available to the next person.
Payment, & Guarantee: Payment by Paypal only. All pens are guaranteed to be in the condition in which I've described them. If I've missed something objectionable or the filling mechanism is not fully functional, the buyer may contact me up to 7 days after receiving the pen for a full refund (issued once I receive the pen back in the same condition as sold). Buyer must ship the return no later than 2 weeks after it was delivered to receive a refund. I've sold pens online for over a decade. Please check my past listings here as well as on the classifieds and historical sales forums on FPN (username: Estragon) and FPGeeks (popcod) for some of my previous offerings.
 
 
OTHER OPEN LISTINGS

• Vintage Montegrappa Extra Edacoto
  
• Waterman Nurse’s Sets
  
• Off-Catalogue Sheaffer Stubby Balance Lifetime
  
• Psychedelic Bayard Excselsior
  
• Waterman Taperite Citation
  
• Conklin Enduras, Nozac
  

I'm evaluating solar panels for my area. I'm in the PNW. A local company gave me a quote for:

1. 32x 400watt panels (REC N-Peak 3 Black Series)
2. Invisimount mounting system
3. Enphase monitoring system

They predict I'll generate 11203 kWh per year based on the shade report.
The quote is around $35K. Then I get a federal credit reduction of ~30%. So $25K total upfront cost.
Does this seem reasonable or am I missing something? When I priced out the panels they are about $250 each. The enphase/converter is around $6K. So around $15K+ to buy the components myself, and then I'd have to do my own install.

“This book is on voyages to the North, where Lord Debling intends to travel.”
“Miss Featherington, are you reading about the fabled Northwest Passage?”
(S3 E4 11:16)
Hi everyone! I posted a comment about it right after season 3 dropped, and I have seen a bit of interest in the Northwest Passage on here recently. I thought that for those of you who didn’t learn about it extensively in school in the small corner of Canada that I did, I’d put together a little informative post on the extremely brief (and perhaps even inconsequential!) reference to the Northwest Passage in Episode 4. I’ll provide an overview of the Passage and its history, touch on some characteristics of travel to this region, and conclude with some completely speculative comments on the literary purpose of evoking the passage in this scene in Season 4.
Also, full credit to the other NWP enthusiasts who have been making posts about this and discussing it in other threads.
A quick note on the colonial nature of this post: Throughout this short post, I refer to several colonial expeditions to the land many of us call Canada. Although I attempt to be cognizant of my language, it is important to note that the Inuit people who live in the arctic regions that I reference have navigated the sea ice for thousands of years (Panikkar et al., 2018) and that the written history of this region are often hegemonic and euro-centric narratives that were formed within colonial frameworks.
More information on the Inuit and their culture, language, and traditions can be found here: https://www.itk.ca/about-canadian-inuit/
References are at the end. If you like this post, you might also like the speculative post I made about the influences of the Eros/Psyche quote in the which is also endless academic yapping.
Exploring the Northwest Passage- a bit of context
In August of 1820, Lieutenant Edward Parry, a member of the British Royal Navy observed the dense ice and snow of arctic land and sea that was thought to be the location of the mysterious Northwest Passage. From a simple look, he knew that no ship in existence would be able to pass through ice sheets of such a great thickness and that extended for such a long distance (Brandt, 2011). Despite his pessimism, by Parry’s time, British sailors and explorers had been explicitly seeking the passage for hundreds of years (Williams & Costley, 2010; Day, 2006, p. xxiv), dreaming of exploiting the desirable economic prospect of a Western route from Europe to burgeoning Asian markets.
First encounters: When European sailors first encountered North America, it was in pursuit of a route west to Asia. They were, of course, incorrect about the location of Asia. And although a great deal of interest shifted to mapping the new continent, there was also an acknowledgement that there would be great economic benefits to finding a way around this newly encountered landmass (Day, 2006). Over time, the reasons and methods of locating the Northwest Passage changed and evolved, but interest never truly went away.
Renewed British interest: Notably, at the end of the 15^th century, when the Ottoman Turk’s empire extended into the Mediterranean and eastward, European merchants were no longer allowed to move and trade freely (Day, 2006). Seeking new routes for the Pacific, European (and especially British) explorers turned West. The Northwest Passage was a concept, a theoretical possibility, for European explorers. It was seen as a potential commercial sea route to the trading markets that were already established and burgeoning in Asia. The Passage was a route with phenomenal economic potential, especially as European consumers sought spices, materials, salts, and woods from foreign markets (Williams & Costley, 2010).
Based on their knowledge of the Southern Hemisphere and the potential geography of the world, many believed that a similar passage would be reflected in the earth’s northern pole (Day, 2006). As a result, there was a massive potential for financial gain for colonial governments and individuals, should such a passage ever be found.
Public fascination: The passage became a point of national fascination for many members of the public. In pursuit of this fascination, many enthusiastic researchers “persuaded persons of influence and wealth to send out discovery expeditions” (Williams & Costley, 2010, p. xv). With governments in Europe stabilizing, the emergence of an economy of cheap labour (lower class men who were willing to take on the dangerous work at sea), and the rapid development of ship technology, the 1600s was a prime time to set out on expeditions.
The fascination with the Passage continued for 300 years until a passage was finally navigated by sea in full in the 1900s. Over the course of history, Anthony Brandt describes the fascination with the Passage’s discovery as a tragedy (2011). He writes: “hubris, an all-too-human arrogance and pride that triggered a particular calamity” (p. 5) as being the tragedy of the exploration for the Passage. Despite the fascination of the public with it, the ice “remained intractable, impenetrable, and, for those who challenged it, a kind of fate” (p. 5) George Malcom Thomson reported that the Passage did not exist where popular imagination speculated it must be (Day, 2006). He noted: “the whole enterprise was founded on a misapprehension, a geographical fiction, a fairy-tale … and downright inventions that scholar manufacture to amaze themselves” (p. xxv).
The danger of the passage: Voyages to and in search of the passage were fraught. Many never returned, and those who did survive faced immense physical and mental challenges. There were, of course, significant difficulties with massive ice drifts and shelves. However, the relative location of the expeditions to the north pole led to issues with magnetic variation for compasses. Fog further complicated travel (Williams & Costley, 2010).
There were also extreme mental dangers to pursuing the NWP. MooSmith’s expedition in the mid-1700s reported “potentially murderous quarrels between officers” (Williams & Costley, 2010, p. xvi); John Franklin noted that the things that occurred on his ship “must not be known” (p. xvi); and it was noted that on the McClure, Beckler, and Collinson expeditions, “tensions” erupted “as captains and subordinate officers exchanged threats of court martial, and some officers spend years under close arrest on their ships” (p. xvi).
In the time of Bridgerton: The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 allowed for greater expeditions by the British Royal Navy (Day, 2006). This would have included surveys of a large portion of the global north and the Arctic. There were a large number of “successful” (depending on how you define it) land expeditions that had made progress in producing surveys and maps of the region. Despite significant ongoing interest in discovering the Passage, in particular, little progress had been made. Later still, despite more advanced mapping by the Hudson Bay Company and expeditions by many notable sailors, there was still no route by the 1820s (Day, 2006).
What does it signify? If a character in Bridgerton was voyaging to the Arctic, it could take them less than a year to reach areas of the Hudson Bay that would be suitable for a scientific voyage. That in itself is not overly dangerous. However, the reference to the Northwest Passage is an interesting literary point. Of all of the places to voyage in the Arctic, even at the time, it would have been an immensely dangerous trip to set out on. The persistent lack of success for a solid 30 years after this season takes place may reference the fact that this is a voyage that Debling is unlikely to ever return from.
It doesn’t help that Debling’s odds are really stacked against him. He does not eat meat, one of the only renewable sources of food for arctic expeditions. There is little to no fresh naturally occurring produce (during the Coppermine expedition, the surviving crew members famously ate lichen to survive once they lost the favour of local indigenous groups and fur traders) and did not do well.
Certainly, it lends a very tragic potential element to the story. The Arctic, if mentioned alone, is not necessarily an overly dangerous location to travel to. Yes, marine travel in the 1800s was still a dangerous endeavour in its own right, let alone in an area as unnavigable by sea as the Arctic. However, the North, in many regions, had active whaling expeditions, Indigenous populations that were willing to trade and work with sailors, and (in some areas) active fur trades. If the purpose of Debling’s travel was only to highlight his unique interests and sense of purpose, the show had many methods of doing so. The choice to reference a notorious and dangerous Northwest Passage, there is an extremely interesting element of danger that is introduced.
What would this potential marriage mean for Penelope? Of course, Penelope’s name is a reference to the wife of Odysseus, who unwillingly takes ten years to return home after the Trojan war. In contrast to Colin, who returns with a steadfast conviction, Debling may represent a kind of eternal limbo for Penelope, should she marry him. Although Debling’s trip is set to take 3 years, it would be hard to prove his death. Likely, she would be a widow for years, if not her entire life, before they were able to locate his ship. The HMS Terror was famously lost in 1845 and not located until 2016(!). As a result, Penelope would likely be stuck at home, awaiting his return, in the same tragic fashion of her namesake in Greek mythology.
As such, not only is there a potential tragic reference to Debling’s future, but there is also a dark illusion to what Penelope’s life may look like as his wife. Of course, this is all based entirely on implication, but it is an interesting act of speculative foreshadowing.
Thanks for reading!
References
Brandt, A. (2011). The man who ate his boots: the tragic history of the search for the northwest passage. Anchor.
Day, A. (2006). Historical dictionary of the discovery and exploration of the Northwest Passage (Vol. 3). Scarecrow Press.
Panikkar, B., Lemmond, B., Else, B., & Murray, M. (2018). Ice over troubled waters: Navigating the Northwest Passage using Inuit knowledge and scientific information. Climate Research, 75(1), 81-94.
Williams, G., & Costley, S. (2010). Arctic labyrinth: The quest for the Northwest Passage. University of California Press.

“This book is on voyages to the North, where Lord Debling intends to travel.”
“Miss Featherington, are you reading about the fabled Northwest Passage?”
(S3 E4 11:16)
Hi everyone! I posted a comment about it right after season 3 dropped, and I have seen a bit of interest in the Northwest Passage on here recently. I thought that for those of you who didn’t learn about it extensively in school in the small corner of Canada that I did, I’d put together a little informative post on the extremely brief (and perhaps even inconsequential!) reference to the Northwest Passage in Episode 4. I’ll provide an overview of the Passage and its history, touch on some characteristics of travel to this region, and conclude with some completely speculative comments on the literary purpose of evoking the passage in this scene in Season 4.
A quick note on the colonial nature of this post: Throughout this short post, I refer to several colonial expeditions to the land many of us call Canada. Although I attempt to be cognizant of my language, it is important to note that the Inuit people who live in the arctic regions that I reference have navigated the sea ice for thousands of years (Panikkar et al., 2018) and that the written history of this region are often hegemonic and euro-centric narratives that were formed within colonial frameworks.
More information on the Inuit and their culture, language, and traditions can be found here: https://www.itk.ca/about-canadian-inuit/
References are at the end. If you like this post, you might also like the speculative post I made about the influences of the Eros/Psyche quote in the Polin sub which is also endless academic yapping.
Exploring the Northwest Passage- a bit of context
In August of 1820, Lieutenant Edward Parry, a member of the British Royal Navy observed the dense ice and snow of arctic land and sea that was thought to be the location of the mysterious Northwest Passage. From a simple look, he knew that no ship in existence would be able to pass through ice sheets of such a great thickness and that extended for such a long distance (Brandt, 2011). Despite his pessimism, by Parry’s time, British sailors and explorers had been explicitly seeking the passage for hundreds of years (Williams & Costley, 2010; Day, 2006, p. xxiv), dreaming of exploiting the desirable economic prospect of a Western route from Europe to burgeoning Asian markets.
First encounters: When European sailors first encountered North America, it was in pursuit of a route west to Asia. They were, of course, incorrect about the location of Asia. And although a great deal of interest shifted to mapping the new continent, there was also an acknowledgement that there would be great economic benefits to finding a way around this newly encountered landmass (Day, 2006). Over time, the reasons and methods of locating the Northwest Passage changed and evolved, but interest never truly went away.
Renewed British interest: Notably, at the end of the 15^th century, when the Ottoman Turk’s empire extended into the Mediterranean and eastward, European merchants were no longer allowed to move and trade freely (Day, 2006). Seeking new routes for the Pacific, European (and especially British) explorers turned West. The Northwest Passage was a concept, a theoretical possibility, for European explorers. It was seen as a potential commercial sea route to the trading markets that were already established and burgeoning in Asia. The Passage was a route with phenomenal economic potential, especially as European consumers sought spices, materials, salts, and woods from foreign markets (Williams & Costley, 2010).
Based on their knowledge of the Southern Hemisphere and the potential geography of the world, many believed that a similar passage would be reflected in the earth’s northern pole (Day, 2006). As a result, there was a massive potential for financial gain for colonial governments and individuals, should such a passage ever be found.
Public fascination: The passage became a point of national fascination for many members of the public. In pursuit of this fascination, many enthusiastic researchers “persuaded persons of influence and wealth to send out discovery expeditions” (Williams & Costley, 2010, p. xv). With governments in Europe stabilizing, the emergence of an economy of cheap labour (lower class men who were willing to take on the dangerous work at sea), and the rapid development of ship technology, the 1600s was a prime time to set out on expeditions.
The fascination with the Passage continued for 300 years until a passage was finally navigated by sea in full in the 1900s. Over the course of history, Anthony Brandt describes the fascination with the Passage’s discovery as a tragedy (2011). He writes: “hubris, an all-too-human arrogance and pride that triggered a particular calamity” (p. 5) as being the tragedy of the exploration for the Passage. Despite the fascination of the public with it, the ice “remained intractable, impenetrable, and, for those who challenged it, a kind of fate” (p. 5) George Malcom Thomson reported that the Passage did not exist where popular imagination speculated it must be (Day, 2006). He noted: “the whole enterprise was founded on a misapprehension, a geographical fiction, a fairy-tale … and downright inventions that scholar manufacture to amaze themselves” (p. xxv).
The danger of the passage: Voyages to and in search of the passage were fraught. Many never returned, and those who did survive faced immense physical and mental challenges. There were, of course, significant difficulties with massive ice drifts and shelves. However, the relative location of the expeditions to the north pole led to issues with magnetic variation for compasses. Fog further complicated travel (Williams & Costley, 2010).
There were also extreme mental dangers to pursuing the NWP. MooSmith’s expedition in the mid-1700s reported “potentially murderous quarrels between officers” (Williams & Costley, 2010, p. xvi); John Franklin noted that the things that occurred on his ship “must not be known” (p. xvi); and it was noted that on the McClure, Beckler, and Collinson expeditions, “tensions” erupted “as captains and subordinate officers exchanged threats of court martial, and some officers spend years under close arrest on their ships” (p. xvi).
In the time of Bridgerton: The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 allowed for greater expeditions by the British Royal Navy (Day, 2006). This would have included surveys of a large portion of the global north and the Arctic. There were a large number of “successful” (depending on how you define it) land expeditions that had made progress in producing surveys and maps of the region. Despite significant ongoing interest in discovering the Passage, in particular, little progress had been made. Later still, despite more advanced mapping by the Hudson Bay Company and expeditions by many notable sailors, there was still no route by the 1820s (Day, 2006).
What does it signify? If a character in Bridgerton was voyaging to the Arctic, it could take them less than a year to reach areas of the Hudson Bay that would be suitable for a scientific voyage. That in itself is not overly dangerous. However, the reference to the Northwest Passage is an interesting literary point. Of all of the places to voyage in the Arctic, even at the time, it would have been an immensely dangerous trip to set out on. The persistent lack of success for a solid 30 years after this season takes place may reference the fact that this is a voyage that Debling is unlikely to ever return from.
It doesn’t help that Debling’s odds are really stacked against him. He does not eat meat, one of the only renewable sources of food for arctic expeditions. There is little to no fresh naturally occurring produce (during the Coppermine expedition, the surviving crew members famously ate lichen to survive once they lost the favour of local indigenous groups and fur traders) and did not do well.
Certainly, it lends a very tragic potential element to the story. The Arctic, if mentioned alone, is not necessarily an overly dangerous location to travel to. Yes, marine travel in the 1800s was still a dangerous endeavour in its own right, let alone in an area as unnavigable by sea as the Arctic. However, the North, in many regions, had active whaling expeditions, Indigenous populations that were willing to trade and work with sailors, and (in some areas) active fur trades. If the purpose of Debling’s travel was only to highlight his unique interests and sense of purpose, the show had many methods of doing so. The choice to reference a notorious and dangerous Northwest Passage, there is an extremely interesting element of danger that is introduced.
What would this potential marriage mean for Penelope? Of course, Penelope’s name may be a reference to the wife of Odysseus, who unwillingly takes ten years to return home after the Trojan war. In contrast to Colin, who returns with a steadfast conviction, Debling, as a traveler, may represent a kind of eternal limbo for Penelope, should she marry him. Although Debling’s trip is set to take 3 years, it would be hard to prove his death. Likely, she would be a widow for years, if not her entire life, before they were able to locate his ship. The HMS Terror was famously lost in 1845 and not located until 2016(!). As a result, Penelope would likely be stuck at home, awaiting his return, in the same tragic fashion of her namesake in Greek mythology.
As such, not only is there a potential tragic reference to Debling’s future, but there is also a dark illusion to what Penelope’s life may look like as his wife. Of course, this is all based entirely on implication, but it is an interesting act of speculative foreshadowing.
Thanks for reading!
References
Brandt, A. (2011). The man who ate his boots: the tragic history of the search for the northwest passage. Anchor.
Day, A. (2006). Historical dictionary of the discovery and exploration of the Northwest Passage (Vol. 3). Scarecrow Press.
Panikkar, B., Lemmond, B., Else, B., & Murray, M. (2018). Ice over troubled waters: Navigating the Northwest Passage using Inuit knowledge and scientific information. Climate Research, 75(1), 81-94.
Williams, G., & Costley, S. (2010). Arctic labyrinth: The quest for the Northwest Passage. University of California Press.

I apologize for the long rant but all the negativity is such a buzz kill and I had get a few things off my chest.
Some of you need to stop with the negativity. The nasty, denigrating comments about Boston, Wheeler, Sides, etc. has to stop.
It's game 3, not including preseason. Give the team time to get into a rhythm with Clark. The WNBA has never seen a player who plays like Clark, and that fact cannot be overstated.
Her skill sets are unique and its a matter of finding a system where she can work within a team and still be herself. No other team in this league has ever had a player like this, or this kind of challenge. They've built winning cultures by playing a more traditional, conventional style of play.
Her teammates' challenge is to adjust to her style of playing, which is faster, more free-style than what we generally see in the WNBA, and that's why you can't take your eyes off of her, even when she misses shots.
You're expecting her teammates to suddenly become Clark clones. Her Iowa teammates were not superhuman, and it took 3, 4 years to learn how to acclimate to her style, that didn't happen overnight and they were often struggling to keep up with her, yes, even Martin.
Boston was Rookie of the Year last year. Sides is in her second year as HC. Mitchell is coming off an injury. Temi has been in practice for 2 weeks. Give them all a few minutes and more to catch their breath.
And Wheeler is a gem: deep-diving into old interviews, you get a sense of her charisma, character and integrity as a player and of her knowledge about the game and how to navigate on and off, and that's not going to show up in the cutesy little clips the team's social media pushes out. So many athletes talk about game, she talks about life.
I found this quote from her after she was brought back to Indiana about being on a struggling team.
"There's always better out there but do you want to get out and see what's better or take a route that may be tough, but will make you a better person? A lot of people want it easy, a lot of people don't want to go through the bumps and bruises to get to where they want to be."
Do some of you ever consider that mentorship doesn't always show up in stats or on the court? Clark is already a phenomenal player, that comes easy to her, and its always come easy for her. Learning from someone with personal integrity, who has experienced adversity can be valuable to Clark as a human. That's what they mean by building a culture, and I imagine what Sides means when she praises EW for her contribution.
Stop diminishing her value to this team because she missed a few shots.
Give this coach and team a grace period to figure out how to build a team around her where she can elevate the sport. Once they find that recipe, you will be rewarded for your patience.
And who doesn't want to root for an underdog team? Its so much more rewarding when it finally comes together.

I read a quote recently that said “if you want something be the type of person who has it.” So, for example, if you would like to receive love letters, be the type of person who writes them. If you would like to be invited to parties, be the type of person who hosts them, so on and so forth.
I’m trying, still, after two years to process the grief of losing you and to process the grief of all that was lost during our relationship, including pieces of my innocence and my dignity, pieces, I dare say, I will never be able to recover. You hurt me in the worst ways imaginable yet still I can’t hate you. I won’t. Everybody says that I should and that whatever love I have fantasized in my head towards you is merely the limerence that results from Stockholm Syndrome. An obsession one would hold towards a hateful caregiver in an infantilized state.
Though, I’m not so sure. I am loathe to believe the love I hold towards you is fetishized grief. I am hoping that by putting these letters out into the void I will gain some temporary relief from the pain of your absence, at the least, and at most I will begin to build a bridge over that dark and glowering moat of grief that has kept me tethered to the past, tethered to the abusive and turbulent relationship which left me with nothing but debt to be repaid by a wandering life of pain, misery, and an emptiness never to be filled by love in the same way.
Oh how I admired you, oh man of mine. How I wanted to grasp onto every word that came out of your mouth when you were discussing your ideas. How your poems, though a little prose-like and robotic, made me sink faster into the pit of infatuation. I was in love with you. Obsessed. I wish I could have recorded the sound of your voice when you talked about science. I wish I could have mended the pain of your abandonment in adolescence. I wish I could have been the support you needed even when you pushed me away and put me down. I wish I could have healed the parts of you that were so broken to make you believe that stealing from me would somehow fill your empty cup.
But you cut off the bottom of the glass and no amount of debauchery could ever leave you more full than you were before. No amount of purity stolen from me could mend the agony you had held onto for far too long.
I am still left wondering, now, without you even by my side to soothe the wounds you had inflicted, why you chose me to steal from? Was everything really as you said? Was I too unlovable for the mistakes I had made in the past? Hadn’t I more than atoned for them with everything you had put me through? Was I really someone you loathed, who you couldn’t rest easy with at night? Was I really such a burden because I was too nervous around the crowds you chose to surround us with at the nightclubs or too sheepish about my femininity to ever be as sexy as you wanted? Where is the line? What was real and what was fake? Was there anything you liked about me at all, or did you just enjoy the joy and admiration I had for you?
When will my lonely heart stop pining over someone who hates me? If you hated me so, why didn’t you simply leave? Why did you always persuade me back into staying with your sweet words and your grand gestures?
I would say I miss you, but to miss someone is to know them truly and be abashed by their absence. I don’t know you anymore so I can’t miss you. Did I ever know you?
Part of my life has come full circle and now I am starting to wonder if any of it was ever real? The memories are so fleeting and time has warped along with everything around it. I feel alone in this universe. Nothing feels real. Were we just a dream? A requiem for a nightmare? Did any of it ever happen? Why has it all just faded into a distant memory, seared like a firestone against the forefront of my subconscious?
How are you? Do you think this way too? Why did you hurt me so much that I had no choice but to leave? Was I really so reprehensible?
Or, was it you whom you hated for your inability to love someone who had given everything to be with you?
All I know is that I didn’t deserve to be discounted and discarded the way I was. I may never be able to recover some of the innocence I lost while we were in it, but my heart, with each passing day, still feels mightily pure. Your hatred did not win, and my love for you does not cease.
From M. To J.

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

This might be a slightly philosophical post. But the aim is to get to the bottom of what you should be truly doing. To truly get the most results.
There seems to be a MASSIVE amount of conflicting information online about how to do this.
“Do stuff that moves the needle forward”
“Do stuff that brings in revenue”
What does this truly mean though. And is it even the right thing. That’s the purpose of this post, to uncover.
When I’ve spent my time on actual needle-moving forward things, like taking business from 0 to revenue, doing all offer development, operations, sales process, marketing myself, it generally has taken me about 6 months to fully ‘try out’ a business idea I’ve had.
Most times it hasn’t worked.
Either it wasn’t profitable. Or there was a big problem somewhere.
I believe fundamentally it’s because I’m moving too slow.
Because it usually takes me around 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential.
When you haven’t sold it or developed expertise in it yourself yet.
And I would say about 5% of the time it does work.
So if it takes 6 months and only 5% of the time it works (where you bring in revenue, no major issues), and each time it doesn’t work you try a new variation of it or something new based on what you learned, then it might take 10 years of trying different things to get the business to work.
Which sounds like it takes way too long.
So I thought about how the top companies move much quicker.
What separates them and my strategy.
And realized they simply had much more people on their team.
If you think about any successful organization who has achieved great things, and is world-leading, usually there is not 1 person on the team.
There seems to be a correlation between number of people on the team and speed of progress they can make in business.
Which goes against what most conventional startup wisdom tells you, most small business content creators etc all tell you to do it all yourself.
Which I’ve done for quite a few years and it’s gone so slowly in terms of overall progress.
If you should ‘do everything yourself’ then most Fortune 500 companies would’ve had single founders, and 1 person on their team. But the vast majority of successful Fortune 500 companies had co-founders.
And most successful businesses I know of, had co-founders.
And as they succeeded, they got more people on the team, and these people helped bring more success, then they brought more people.
Obviously there can be bad staff and not everyone contributes to the success of the company.
But I do believe, based on this, and observing top companies, that generally the more successful they are, the more people were involved with bringing about the success.
Which completely contradicts most information given to startups about ‘lone wolf’, ‘go it alone’. If that were true, Google would have 1 employee. Apple would have 1 employee.
And they would have never gotten off the ground.
Anyway, I may not have explained this perfectly but I do strongly believe the more & higher quality people are working together on something, the stats show these companies tend to do better, and successful companies you see often have more people than less working on them.
From the very beginning and now.
Regardless of the stage they were at.
So going based off this information, that the more people, the better, I have hired 30+ different people for different roles. Over the past few years. Across different businesses. To help speed up the progress in different areas.
From marketing roles, sales process roles, web development, app development, customer service, delivery of services.
And I would say there have been maybe 1 or 2 of them where I was actually happy with the result.
Most times, I would hire someone to do a job, and they didn’t do the job well, despite saying they were experienced.
And showing past examples of their work. And telling me everything I wanted to hear about how good they were.
It would often be that they would end up performing badly in the KPIs I set for them, giving many excuses, asking for help/questions/not solving anything on their own.
And just so many other problems. Like when there were multiple people at the same time on a team, working on the same project, they would blame each other and no one took responsibility despite clear responsibilities.
All telling me how other staff were bad and they were good, but getting conflicting info from all staff where they blame each other for everything so it’s difficult to know who to trust and who is being truthful.
Oftentimes not being reliable or doing what they were clearly asked to do.
Oftentimes trying to outsource the work I game them, to other people and not caring about the quality.
At my expense.
So I lost lots of clients, had low performing areas in the areas I hired for a lot of the time.
To be fair, things happened faster the more people there were.
But they often needed much more from me than they were contributing.
Like they always wanted to get paid more, for doing less work, weren’t reliable, did low quality work, didn’t hit KPIs, missed clear deadlines, always gave excuses, blamed others/external things, always asking how “I” wanted their job to be done, to the point where I was having to literally tell them every single thing to do and become an expert at their job myself, and show them how to do what they were put there to do, or do it myself, and still get a low quality result from them.
Anyway, the list goes on in all the problems I have experienced hiring people.
It really seems like a minefield.
But there were 1-2 people who did actually do well, who were responsive, who did what they committed to do, who hit deadlines, who did what they were asked, who didn’t give excuses. Who were actually honest hard workers who figured out how to solve problems and actually do the job that was asked from them.
Because of the amount of people I hired and the very low % of people who seemed to do their job well, it made me think that I am probably the problem here. If so many people are doing a bad job and not doing what they were actually hired to do. When most other companies seem to succeed at hiring people.
Then it must be a problem with myself and how I am hiring and managing them.
So it makes me think I need to level up in how I hire and manage people.
I’ve tried lots of different businesses and variations of them and some have done okay, some have not.
Mainly the most success I’ve had is in my own freelancing, where I don’t have other people on my team.
Because it’s kind of turned into a headache working with others. Who just seem to have mostly never been able to deliver what they promised without it becoming pointless to hire them in the first place with all the work I’m doing on their behalf and trying to pick up after all the problems and failures they’ve done.
So I’m not sure exactly what to spend my time and resources on.
I have money saved up from freelancing.
Where I can continue to hire people.
But I do feel I’ve had many many bad experiences.
And I believe it’s mostly my fault. Maybe my training, my hiring, my management, at places along the line I’ve not done it well enough.
I’ve tried to make improvements each time but it has kind of seemed like luck to get people who do actually do their job well.
I genuinely want to hire people and succeed in this.
Because if I can successfully work with people to achieve outcomes, rather than relying only on myself, I can build a real business and not just do freelancing.
In freelancing, I was able to make $3k-5k/month but it was very stressful and I hated speaking with clients, and was constantly stressed.
I generally really don’t like socialising with people. Including clients and staff.
And staff often try to get me to socialise unnecessarily so they can avoid doing their job, and pull me away from mine.
So trying to make it work.
I want to make it work with hiring people because if I can do this, I can make 10x-100x-1000x faster progress with other people on the same team.
But I do have a very bad track record so far. So it’s kind of painful returning to it and continuing to have bad experiences.
But at the same time I know it’s me who’s probably at fault because there can’t be this many bad people I’ve hired and it surely can’t be this bad for everyone.
I think the reason is that I’ve been better at managing myself and doing things successfully solo throughout my life.
Like I’ve achieved very good things in solo sports, in academia, and in many areas that don’t require a team, but often become frustrated working in a team.
But I don’t want my business success to be limited to 1 person.
So I truly want to make it work in improving my ability to manage (ideally a large amount of) people in a way where they can actually deliver and it work well.
Because I was capped in freelancing to making $3k-5k/month because I couldn’t take on more clients because I was undercharging and overdelivering and couldn’t handle more due to being massively stressed out and hating it. I was able to work with less clients at times and charge higher, but they never wanted me to ‘outsource’ my work to others or bring on a team, and I felt bad about it because had bad experiences where I had felt like I let clients down, and oftentimes they told me they had hired me because of me, and not wanted me to ‘outsource’ the work.
But I want to make it work.
Building a real business with a team. Not just doing freelancing and relying just on myself.
So I have time and money and resources to put into this.
I have 1 staff member currently who is unproductive. But we have an equity deal so it doesn’t cost me money for them to perform. But costs me lots of time and their performance is extremely weak. Don’t even want to go into detail, but it’s a nightmare. Their performance is about 1/10 but I believe I can raise their performance if I improve my ability to raise their performance.
Anyway. I want to build a team, but not sure exactly what activities are best ways to spend my time.
If I am physically making improvements, I feel I am slowing down the business progress.
Whereas I want to hire and manage people.
I’ve built training so that this co-founder is able to hire people. And these people can use the same training to hire people.
But I don’t currently have training to enable them to manage people.
My fear is that without training, people just ask unlimited questions on how to do something in their role and it becomes pointless to have hired them because I have to do everything they should have done to do it, so they basically just become a robot following very specific instructions. Rather than a human being who can achieve things independently.
So for example, if I made this training, it would take up all my time, whereas I have savings I’ve accumulated from freelancing which I can put into either having the co-founder manage staff, or have the co-founder make management training at the same time to enable more and more staff to hire and manage new staff. To achieve overall objectives and KPIs.
Or I could have the co-founder hire someone to make the training.
Then that frees up my time, my co-founders, time and only takes financial resources to accomplish.
What I want to achieve, is a scenario where I can give staff KPIs and objectives, and they are enabled to hire and manage people who can meet these objectives. Independently without my help required.
They give feedback, and I have a system for feedback to internal improvements can be made based on staff feedback.
Without it being unfiltered, it’s structured and organised so people can’t just get unlimited help/training/whatever from me.
Where they should be able to take actions, iterate, learn, improve, and act as independent thinking people who can achieve objectives themselves. Or within a system where it’s not all tied directly to me.
E.g. I have direct reports going to me.
But they have direct reports who go to them.
Previously I had a system where I did this, but then staff at the bottom of the hierarchy would ask their managers questions, and the managers wouldn’t know the answer so would then ask me the questions, and so jumping over the managers and making me deal with everything.
Whereas I want to build a system where people can make business progress in their specific area, independently without everything going to the CEO. Only important/urgent things are feedbacked to the CEO.
This way I believe much faster progress can happen.
Because I won’t be bogged down by exponentially growing problems.
Like with how it works in any successful organisation.
Tim Cook has only a handful of direct reports. Who each only have a handful of direct reports. And so on.
He’s making the most important decisions, dealing with what’s most important and strategic, with top authority, dealing with everything as a birds eye view, but not doing every employee’s job for them, teaching every employee how to do their job. Picking up the pieces after every employee misses their deadlines, doesn’t do their work, gives excuses, does poor work that doesn’t help the company.
Even in any successful organisation. Each unit/person is making their own decisions, taking their own action, learning from it, practicing themself at improving, gaining their own experience, not all relying on 1 person, every single person in the organisation, just for them to do their job.
In successful organisations, people at every level experience new problems all the time, and don’t need to contact the #1 person at the top just to deal with it.
They come up with a solution and go for it. And iterate. Learn, try to do something better next time. And there’s a constant learning/feedback process going on across the organisation which everyone takes part in, not just 1 person doing every part for everyone.
I believe this structure of modelling what actually successful organisations do is the correct way. Because they’re successful for a reason.
Not this ‘hustle grindset’ BS in the startup/business world where lots of information seems to be saying the wrong thing. It just makes no sense to make every single person 100% reliant on you for them to do their job.
Anyway so I’m thinking about what I should do with my time.
What I want to do, is tell my co-founder what to do, which involves hiring and managing people who do things that move the needle forward in the business, as defined by me, and some of those people also hire and manage people. To have an exponentially growing system of people growing the organisation. And a communication and feedback and learning system and autonomy within the system itself so it can take action, learn, grow, thrive. As a system within itself.
I believe if hypothetically, I did everything myself, then it takes about 6 months to ‘validate’ whether a business has good potential, and 5% of the time it does. So if I do everything myself, I believe it will take me 10 years to get a business off the ground.
But if I utilise my money and time more efficiently, I can have as many people working on each part involved in validating these businesses as possible.
I don’t know if that is lazy or smart.
I believe it’s both. But mostly smart. Because I believe I can convince, hire, organise, manage people to either work on equity deals or pay in a way where businesses can realistically bring in profit.
My co-founder does very little of what I ask him to do.
And he wants me to be doing individual things.
He objectively is financially and intelligently very poor and has very minimal skills or experience.
Not to be offensive. Just to paint a picture. So since there is conflicting information everywhere in the business world and you need to choose who to trust, I don’t trust what he believes.
Objectively I am much richer in all these areas than him.
So I used to operate on a democratic system with them. But it’s kind of like, in a vote for president, if you have 80% of the population being easily controlled by the media and being very dumb and easy to sway and manipulate into believing anything, and they vote for things which are objectively dumb and go against what the smartest and objectively most valuable people vote for, I don’t want to be held back by a dumb population having authority or being listened to, if they have a clear, long track record of making very bad decisions.
If you were to take business advice from a homeless person with no experience, money or intellect, or a Fortune 500 CEO, who let’s say objectively has massive experience, money, intellect and success. Then I would probably take what the CEO has to say.
If you had to listen to what a scientist vs 12 year old had to say about a scientific topic, you’d probably want to listen to the scientist who studied the topic and is well respected in their field.
So I believe it would be dumb for both of us, if he made decisions, objectively.
But at the same time it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
The Fortune 500 CEO could be telling you what you want to hear, and could have an incentive to lie to you to send you in the wrong direction with bad business advice so you don’t become competition to them, and the homeless person could be honest.
The scientist could be trying to gain fame and get attention to themself to build their career on a lie and fake experiments whereas the 12 year old could be a science savant.
So it’s difficult to truly know what the truth is.
If I should listen to him or myself.
Objectively.

1. I believe if I spend time building the business via this logic I’ve described above, it can grow much faster, with unlimited people working on it and performing well, if the necessary improvements are made.
   
2. And I believe if I were to do the individual things necessary to do it, it would take 6 months to ‘validate’ each’s potential. I.e. try everything in that timeframe to make it work, build a good service/product, build good sales process, build good marketing, deal with customers, etc, all on your own.
   

Whereas in the first option, other people could do all these things.
Human development over history has happened due to the input of millions, if not billions of people.
There wasn’t 1 person who did all the work to get Carnegie or Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg to gain the success they’ve achieved.
They all build an empire off the backs of others.
Did the slave owners do the slave work themselves when they brought slaves to America? No.
Does Elon do all the individual parts necessary to grow the company? No. He leads and controls the people in order to do that.
Does Mark Zuckerberg single handedly get Facebook off the ground? No. There were 10+ people involved. He stole code from others. Who sued him.
All of these people had exponentially growing staff as the company grew, as fuel to grow the company.
So if you have the money and strategy to lead them to success, I believe it surely is possible.
So long story short this is a long rambling piece of writing but I believe there’s very little impact 1 individual person has on the success of a company. Controlling and amassing an army of people who build the company up and contribute to the company sounds more true.
Does 1 person do everything involved in every sports team? No. Each player plays their respective part. Directed by the coach/manager.
Does 1 person do everything involved in musical orchestras? No each musician plays their part. Directed by the conductor.
And so on.
If you can build an exponentially growing team of staff who effectively work together, bring others on, take action to grow the business, learn from mistakes, make improvements, are highly motivated, are led successfully, it can achieve great things. I feel like it’s a delusion that individual people single-handedly grow companies without others.
So what should that person spend their time doing?
Doing all the millions of things necessary to grow the company? Or bring and manage others who some make progress themselves, some bring and manage others, to gain more and more resources to make progress at faster and faster rate.
Do successful people really have only 1 person responsible? No. They have teams of people behind them.
So trying to do the work of 1,000 people as 1 person sounds 1,000x as hard as getting 1,000 people to each do the work of 1 person.
So if you can finance the growth of the company via hiring others.
Let’s assume I can finance this exponential staff growth. Then surely I should do it right?
Like if I were to compete with 1 person trying to grow their business, and I had 1,000+ people, all doing their jobs effectively, being organised, working as a system not all relying on me, the competition where it’s 1 staff member on average would get beaten.
And surely any excuse you could give, I could just hire someone to solve that excuse.
Like “oh but what roles do you hire these people to do?” well I could hire someone whose role is to figure out what roles they should do. “But what if x?” well I could hire someone whose role is to solve that too. And so on. “Oh but do you have enough money to pay these staff?” Yes. And I can hire people whose job is to bring in money. Whether it’s fundraising, raising from
Did Hitler fight WW2 with 1 person? No. He fought it with millions, if not hundreds of millions of people.
Did Amazon/[insert any Fortune 500 company] get to their size today from having 1 staff member who did everything? No. They had thousands if not hundreds of thousands of staff.
Did any successful mom and pop shop/small business get to their size today from 1 staff member? No. They are one of the largest employers in the USA. Which means they hire a lot of people. Successful mom & pop shops generally have more staff the more successful they are.
Armies generally have more success the bigger and more effective they are.
Companies generally have more success the more staff and more effective the staff are.
So surely we shouldn’t hold ourselves back, to use the example of war, it’s like trying to go to war with others who have hundreds of thousands of people in their army, with just 1 person, yourself. Who is going to win? Them.
How are you going to compete with companies with way more staff, and way more effective staff than you? You would have to become exponentially more effective as 1 person which I just don’t know if it’s realistic.
I think it’s more delusional to believe that 1 person can do as well as 10 or 20 or 50 or 100 or more people who are each as effective as that 1 person.
So if you were to win, you would probably want to expand your army/staff and make them more effective, rather than try to make yourself somehow perform on the same level as armies/companies with thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It’s just delusional to believe you can beat them in my opinion.
In business, you’d have to be extremely skilled at hundreds of different skills, spend 10+ hours on 100+ individual areas of the business each week to compete with 1,000+ staff who, if performing effectively, would crush you.
This is just my thoughts.
Am I being delusional? Come on…
I just feel like this is the way. Just look at the most successful organisations in history. Was it 1 person?
No, 1 person cannot realistically win a war against 100,000+ people. No matter how good they are. They would need to be top 0.00000000001% in skill in the world at what they’re beating the other side at.
Could 1 footballer beat a football team of 100 people of equal ability than them? No.
Could a company of 1 person outperform a company of 1,000 people? No.
So I believe if I can solve the ability to do this, I can grow a team of unlimited size to conquer and beat any problem thrown at us.
It’s just down to control of people.
Money doesn’t exist.
Even biggest most successful companies in the world mostly didn’t get there on their own.
I believe less than 1% of Fortune 500 Companies were bootstrapped. Or something similar.
And this is what I’m saying.
People in the small business/entrepreneur world tell you you need to have everything yourself.
How are you going to outfinance, outcompete companies on complete other levels without acquiring these resources from others? Just relying on yourself.
How could 1 person get more financing/investment in a company from investors compared to 1,000 of equal ability.
It’s never 1 person ‘beating the world’. Or beating the industry on their own.
Maybe if your aspiration is to be an average business.
“Oh but you should do what is best at each level, and it’s different for each level. Start just by yourself until you get X revenue. THEN hire people”
…..Well if you struggle to get X revenue on your own, how are you ever going to hire others?
The others help you grow the revenue in the first place.
I feel like the small business world is too overreliant on the founder and delusional about the capabilities of 1 person when competing against units 100-1,000x + bigger than them.
Come on.
Anything you want to compete in. In business.
Generally you already have competition.
And if you manage to somehow “spot” something they’ve “missed”, they could just copy you and wipe you out with their massive resources anyway.
In my opinion you need to expand your resources as FAST as possible.
Not this BS “oh wait until you get X profit on your own to hire other people”
Well if you’ve only made good profit on your own as a freelancer, and you’ve spent a lot of years trying to get a business off the ground solo, what are you meant to do?
“Oh just make it work” Great advice.
I just feel like there’s too much delusion into what it actually takes.
In a job or as a freelancer. It’s easier to make $3k-5k/month revenue because you’re only competing against individuals.
But when you try to compete against other businesses to make $3k-5k/month profit, you’re competing against businesses with 10x-100x the people, the money, the resources, the everything, to beat you.
So how are you meant to realistically beat them on your own? Without expanding your resources as quick as possible.
So because of this I believe if 1 person on their own is somehow meant to take a business from $0 to $10k/mo profit, then surely it will happen quicker if more people, of equal ability, are trying to make the business $0 to 10k/mo profit.
To be honest I don’t know what the truth is. This is just what I believe the truth is.
Because I’ve consumed so much wrong information from people acting like they have the correct advice in business.
All Youtube videos, articles, courses, claiming to make you successful in business, when in reality it’s just advice that sounds either easy to say or easy to hear.
Like it’s easy to say as a comment to this post, a response that takes 5 seconds to write, like the first thing that comes to your mind, like “just figure it out on your own”. But that’s not necessarily the truth, it’s just easy for you to say as a commenter. Comments aren’t necessarily the truth.
And on the other side business advice is easy to hear. Like “work on your own, make $1m/month, move to X country, live the life, working 2hours/day” which is just pure delusion. And most of the time the content/advice’s purpose is to benefit the business who made it, not the receiver of the advice. Because it’s selling a course or they have ad sense so they just want maximum engagement and views.
And anyone who is successful in business doesn’t need to give any advice. Because they’re applying the advice. Not giving it. Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos etc have no strong incentive trying to help others get to their level because they could just make an extra $10M-100M from spending the same time/energy/resources giving advice into growing their business.
They’re never gonna have advice that would help you beat them because otherwise they would’ve applied it themself.
And they are actually incentivized to not want others to truly succeed. Because it means more competition for them and less success for them.
So 99%+ of info online just seems like it’s not true.
I’m trying to figure out what is true and what isn’t.
Honestly though it’s difficult to even trust what anyone says in business. Any advice or feedback. For the reasons given.
Because 99% of feedback is either from people who haven’t truly grown a successful business, or it’s not related to you, or it involved luck, or it’s just like a motivational quote they tell you, or it’s a snarky comment they tell you.
It’s only helpful to them. And you are actually their customer or viewer or their entertainment. Not a successful business yourself. Because it’s just all misinformation that all contradicts with the truth.
So not even sure if it’s worth trying to get advice or if it’s all just pointless, just to figure it out myself from experience, trial and error and learning from my own thinking than relying on any other thinking.
Anyway do you think this is just crazy and I’m going crazy or is there any truth to what I’m saying?
Let me know your brutal honest feedback

The now deceased guru Robert Adams was Robert Spiegel, and there is a huge history.

Did Robert Adams really meet Ramana Maharshi? The answer is a decisive NO! His claim of being at Ramana Ashram anytime between 1946-1950 has been proven false.
Some things that stand out in this report is that Robert Adams is obviously Robert Spiegel by the pictures. Also, by his marriage certificate to Leonie Maxwell who has been positively identified as Nicole Adams and linked to the Infinity Institute. The address listed as “1985 Bathgate Ave. Bronx, N.Y.” on his marriage certificate and military record leaves no room for doubt: we are referring to the correct Robert Spiegel. He was born in 1932, making him 16 years old in 1948.
If you scroll to the bottom and examine his military record he worked from 1948-1951 as a General Clerk for the Brazilian Trade Bureau in NYC before he began active duty from 1951-1954 where he served in Korea and was awarded a Bronze Medal for valor in combat. He separated from the US Army in Jan. 14, 1954, married Nicole (Leonie) in 1954 and had his first child Sharon (aka Melanie/Amber) in 1957; second daughter Michelle (aka Avantae) in 1960. He obtained a mail order doctorate degree from the “College of Divine Metaphysics,” in Indianapolis, Indiana (still around) and traveled the USA lecturing on “Science of the Mind,” and a “7 Day Stop Smoking” program as Dr. J. Robert Spiegel.
At this writing Nicole Adams (aka Leonie Maxwell) is alive, 95 years old, and in a hospital (Cape Fear Valley Medical Center) in Fayetteville, North Carolina; two of her grandchildren are missing and there is an ongoing police investigation regarding their adoptive mother Michelle/Avantae who now goes by the name Avantae Deven. Avantae continues to post quotes about love, light, and peace, her idyllic childhood with saintly (rarely home) Robert Adams, and human brotherhood while refusing to answer questions about her two missing children —their possible whereabouts — or why she waited almost 1.5 years to make her strange 911 call to report them missing. https://selfreflexiveloopphotography.photo.blog/2024/05/16/advaita-teacher-robert-adams-was-really-robert-spiegel/

Today I want to tell my story of how I self-advocated and what I did to achieve that goal. I'm telling my story to help those who are in a similar position to what I was in and to inspire those to self-advocate.
To recap from my earlier posts. I have ADHD and fell under the "multiple disabilities" characterization. My high school teacher claimed that I have autism (Not diagnosed). I personally don't believe I have autism or at the very least I have a high functioning autism. Throughout most of my school career, I was in a self-contained classroom with kids with severe disabilities. Even if I was in the general population I had a paraprofessional or peer tutor. I never believed that I should have been in that position. As a consequence, I never really learned any social skills, I was segregated, and felt like that people didn't want anything to do with me because I was sped. The reason why I ended up in this position was probably a combination of me having the "multiple disabilities'' characterization and me testing low in three year revaluation tests. If you want more info on this then feel free to search my profile. This is an alt account and is primarily used to ask questions about special ed so It's really easy to find stuff about me.
Before I get into my story I just want to make it clear that I'm not against special ed. There's good and bad people in every profession. I believed I was in danger for myself and for my future. I don't believe that my teacher was evil and had the best of intentions but he was putting me in a position that was hurting me and I had to act. If you have any questions or feedback feel free to let me know in the comments. Another thing is that this post has been really hard to make. It opened up some old wounds and as a result took several days to write.
Here's my story: So in late middle school I was tired of the placement that I was in. I was tired of not having friends, Not being able to socialize with my peers, not being able to date. I also was thinking about what my life will look like after high school, I was concerned that I was going to never have friends, Never be in a relationship, and not have the social skills to make those friends. I was generally very concerned for my future. So I decided that for my 8th grade year (2017-2018) I would do my absolute best for both my behavior and academics. Throughout the year nothing changed. I was hoping that me doing well would show that I didn't need any support but at the end of the year I still had paraprofessionals in most of my classes and was being pulled out for tests. In the summer between middle school and high school all I can think about is I want high school to be different. I wanted friends, I wanted a relationship, and I had dreams of me in the student council. When I got into high school I had peer tutors along with paraprofessionals (Peer Tutors are general ed students who sign up as an elective to help special needs kids. They basically serve the role as paraprofessionals with less responsibility). I did everything again and had the exact same result. In January of 2019 (freshmen year) I decided that my current strategy wasn't working. They also started making the peer tutors fill out behavioral checklists for their student(s) by grading them on how well they behaved/followed directions and gave them badges that say "peer tutor" which made me feel singled out. Because of that the peer tutors felt more like babysitters then someone that is an equal. So I went to my special ed teacher and asked him to remove the paraprofessional and the peer tutors. He told me no and said that I needed them. I changed my strategy again and I was going to ask for the Peer Tutors to be gone first, then focus on removing the paraprofessionals. I was more concerned about the peer tutors over the paraprofessionals because I was concerned that since they were part of the student body that this was going to affect me when I was running for the student council. I was worried that they'd tell others I was special needs then people would think I was incompetent. So every 2 weeks I would ask him again to remove them and each time he would give me a different excuse on why I couldn't be alone. Here's some of the excuses he gave me: "The peer tutors need to be there to collect data", "You need to prove that you can do the work yourself", "It's not up to me. It's the general education teacher that decides if you need a peer tutor or an aide", "Peer Tutors are supposed to represent a trainer for a job. If you refuse training then you're going to get fired". I brought it up again during my yearly IEP which took place in March. Once again my teacher said no, bringing up another excuse. As far as I can remember, my parents were neutral about the aide situation. Later one peer tutor was removed, what happened is that the peer tutor moved to a different town and they didn't bother on sending a substitute. A win is a win so I celebrated it. At the end of my freshman year I was pretty much defeated and didn't achieve the goal of being 100% independent. Over the summer I took a look at my situation and decided that my current plan is not working. I knew that when my sophomore year of high school starts I will have aides and peer tutors in classes. I knew that if I wanted to get what I wanted I would have to do something big. I knew that I would have to put up a fight, and put in a lot more effort. Over the summer I developed a war mindset inspired by two quotes from Sun Tzu:
"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
I knew that I can't be going into sophomore year blind, so I started drafting a plan. I created a Google doc outlining my goals and what I wanted to accomplish. I knew that I won't be able to win every battle and that I need to choose which fight is worth fighting for. I thought to myself, “Well the peer tutors we're given training on the first day of school and probably have strategies to deal with poor behavior but what about planned well organized protests?” So I began researching strategies on how paraprofessionals/peer tutors dealt with negative behavior and reverse engineered those tactics. I read forms, I Watched YouTube videos and found as much information that I could find. For the peer tutors I didn't know too much about them. I didn't know if it was something that only my school did or if other schools did it. I did some research and found out that other schools had a peer tutor program and some have uploaded training videos on YouTube. Some peer tutors told me that they did babysitting and did nanny work so I looked up babysitting tips. I reverse engineered all of those tactics and came up with strategies to counter those techniques and put all that information that I learned into a google doc that I can use for future reference. During this time I also researched how to become a better negotiator and started learning a little bit of psychology. The plan was to first negotiate and if that doesn't work I will protest and make demands and negotiate. Over the summer I got really good at negotiating and practiced a lot on my father and my sister (they were totally oblivious). To this day I use those negotiating tactics. After I created my document and was satisfied with all the information, I went to bed that night and knew that I have already won and that my sophomore year will be my last year that I 1-1 peer tutor or aide.
Fast forward to the first day of school, as expected I had peer tutors and aides assigned to me in classes. My sped teacher had a chalkboard On the back wall full of sticky notes that had everyone's schedules and a name of someone was assigned to that student for each class. This time around I only had one peer tutor outside of the special ed classes. This is a big improvement over the three I had before but I still have my original goal of having none. For the paraprofessionals I had 2 in Gen classes.The goal was to first remove the peer tutors then the paraprofessionals. Even though this seems to be an improvement I continued with the plan. Since this was the first day, the peer tutors were in another classroom learning policies and other stuff they needed to know so I was alone for the day. I walked over to my special ed teacher and ask him one final time to remove the peer tutor he says no and then I asked him to let me be alone for 2 weeks so I can prove I don't need help and he still denies me. I then tell him that I will allow the peer tutor for 2 weeks and after that she needs to go. My teacher doesn't respond. (To add context the peer tutor that I had, she was a peer tutor in my math class in the prior semester so I already know who she was. We used to talk a lot and was surprised when I saw that she was assigned to me.)
For 2 weeks she mostly left me alone with her occasionally checking up on me. For those 2 weeks I purposely close my self off and adopted a body language that would subconsciously discourage her from approaching me. I did this by keeping my head low and staying as focused as possible. The only thing she did was confront me when I start packing up 2 minutes before the bell rings. She tells me that I shouldn't be packing up and to pull my stuff out again. I tell her no and hold my ground. She writes in my planner that I packed my stuff up early and refuse to pull it out. That happened like 2 or 3 times. On Thursday on the second week my class was tasked to create a PowerPoint. FYI this was a mythology class, while I was doing this PowerPoint I decided instead of manually trying to type in the locations and people from this mythology which the names were very long and complicated. I decided would be easier just to copy and paste them in. My peer tutor sees me doing this and doesn't say anything. At the end of class she writes that I plagiarized in my planner and tells my special ed teacher in person what happened. My sped teacher pulls me out of class (I had his math class right after mythology) and starts telling me that my peer tutor has seen me copy and pasting paragraphs and goes on this lecturing on why plagiarizing is bad. I explained to him that I wasn't copying paragraphs It was only copying names and locations and explain my reason for it. He didn't believe me but he didn't make me retake the assignment. After that I was pissed off and the next day I confronted her about it. I forgot what her reasoning for not telling me was but I told her that she needs to look into things before she makes false reports. After that incident, I decided to wait a week before I ask my teacher to remove her. Also during those first 3 weeks I turned down help from peer tutors and paras if possible In the special ed classroom. I did this to prevent sending any mix signals. I personally didn't mind if I had to work with a peer tutopara or not In the actual sped classroom. I only cared if it was in any of the general education classes. I just thought it would look contradictory if I was accepting help in the sped class and then requesting peer tutors to be removed from my gen classes.
At the beginning of the fourth week I went to school early and went to my sped teacher's class before first hour starts and then I again asked him to remove the peer tutor and the paraprofessionals. He says no again and brings up that I was being academically dishonest by plagiarizing. I tell my side of the story once again on what happened and he still doesn't believe me. At this point I leave and more pissed off. At this point negotiations didn't work so I started small protests by preventing the peer tutors from filling out my planer and the behavioral checklist. Most of them didn't care since there was other students they can fill out and they only need to fill out one to be graded for the day. One peer tutor gave me the puppy dog eye treatment and I eventually cave and let her fill it out. I still let the one peer tutor that was assigned to me in the gen class due to me being the only student and my intention wasn't to ruin, her grade. During the fourth week I began brainstorming ideas on how I can do a massive protest.
On Thursday of the fourth week of school, a walk into the mythology class and it started out like any other day. Class started and my teacher starts talking. I pull up my phone to respond to some messages and my peer tutor sees me. She asks me to hand my phone over to her and I tell her no. She tells me that I can't be on my phone and I tell her okay but I'm still not giving it to you. She then pulls out her phone and puts it on the table. She then tells me to put my phone on the table. I tell her no again. A few minutes past and the teacher finishes up talking. She passes the assignment and immediately my peer tutor begins to try and help by reading the questions. I slide the packet over closer to me and start ignoring her. I was hoping that she will get the hint and leave me alone. She doesn't so put on my hoodie and tried to mentally block her out. I don't remember what she said during all this since I was blocking it out but I do remember her touching me and the general ed teacher coming over and start assisting the peer tutor. It was a lot of pressure and I was actually about to give up because it was too much. But they both gaved up before I did and I was very relieved. After that, the class was pretty much quiet. The peer tutor wrote an entire paragraph on what happened. I walked to my math class and sat down. I then see my peer tutor walking into class and ask for my sped teacher. I already knew it was about me. I see them talk for 2 minutes and sure enough I see my teacher calling me over. I walked outside the classroom and me and the teacher begin to go at it. We end up saying the same things we have said before. However, my teacher this time mentioned that if I keep up my behavior that he's going to call in a meeting with my parents. The rest of math class was pretty much the same. However, my English class with the same teacher he went on a rant about using accommodations seeing that he had a disability growing up which was tourette's and he were love to have a peer tutor. I was quiet for the whole class since I was already exhausted because of everything else that had already happened. For the rest of the weekend, I've been coming up with plans on how I would be able to pull off a massive protest.
Now for the good news. On the fifth week of school, I noticed that my peer tutor was missing. My teacher pulled me aside again and told me that he decided that he was going to pull her for 2 weeks to see how well I would do without her. I told him thank you, that's what I wanted since the beginning of the school year. After those 2 weeks he didn't reinstate her and I didn't have a peer tutor or paraprofessionals in gen classes since. The deal moving forward was as long as I had a D or better he wasn't going to send any support unless I asked for it. My relationship with that sped teacher also had improved significantly. Later in my Junior year of high school I ran in my school's election and won. I was given the social media position.
In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't have to pull off a big protest. But the same time I wish that this situation could have ended in a different way.
Everything that I just told you is only the tip of the iceberg. There's so much detail that I had to leave out just to make this story shorter. Lot of it I'm still processing even though I found great strength in myself fighting back against a system that I believe was ruining my life. That war mindset hasn't left my mentality yet. I'm still dealing with the consequences of me being in special ed. Everything I told you happened 5 years ago and I'm still living through it like it just happened. I'm mentally recovering and eventually I will recover. Right now I'm in therapy and I'm writing down everything I can in a Google doc to process everything emotionally. Maybe one day I'll give that story to a writer and make a book out of it.
If you have any questions feel free ask them, I would love to answer them.

Today I want to tell my story of how I self-advocated and what I did to achieve that goal. I'm telling my story to help those who are in a similar position to what I was in and to inspire those to self-advocate.
To recap from my earlier posts. I have ADHD and fell under the "multiple disabilities" characterization. My high school teacher claimed that I have autism (Not diagnosed). I personally don't believe I have autism or at the very least I have a high functioning autism. Throughout most of my school career, I was in a self-contained classroom with kids with severe disabilities. Even if I was in the general population I had a paraprofessional or peer tutor. I never believed that I should have been in that position. As a consequence, I never really learned any social skills, I was segregated, and felt like that people didn't want anything to do with me because I was sped. The reason why I ended up in this position was probably a combination of me having the "multiple disabilities'' characterization and me testing low in three year revaluation tests. If you want more info on this then feel free to search my profile. This is an alt account and is primarily used to ask questions about special ed so It's really easy to find stuff about me.
Before I get into my story I just want to make it clear that I'm not against special ed. There's good and bad people in every profession. I believed I was in danger for myself and for my future. I don't believe that my teacher was evil and had the best of intentions but he was putting me in a position that was hurting me and I had to act. If you have any questions or feedback feel free to let me know in the comments. Another thing is that this post has been really hard to make. It opened up some old wounds and as a result took several days to write.
Here's my story: So in late middle school I was tired of the placement that I was in. I was tired of not having friends, Not being able to socialize with my peers, not being able to date. I also was thinking about what my life will look like after high school, I was concerned that I was going to never have friends, Never be in a relationship, and not have the social skills to make those friends. I was generally very concerned for my future. So I decided that for my 8th grade year (2017-2018) I would do my absolute best for both my behavior and academics. Throughout the year nothing changed. I was hoping that me doing well would show that I didn't need any support but at the end of the year I still had paraprofessionals in most of my classes and was being pulled out for tests. In the summer between middle school and high school all I can think about is I want high school to be different. I wanted friends, I wanted a relationship, and I had dreams of me in the student council. When I got into high school I had peer tutors along with paraprofessionals (Peer Tutors are general ed students who sign up as an elective to help special needs kids. They basically serve the role as paraprofessionals with less responsibility). I did everything again and had the exact same result. In January of 2019 (freshmen year) I decided that my current strategy wasn't working. They also started making the peer tutors fill out behavioral checklists for their student(s) by grading them on how well they behaved/followed directions and gave them badges that say "peer tutor" which made me feel singled out. Because of that the peer tutors felt more like babysitters then someone that is an equal. So I went to my special ed teacher and asked him to remove the paraprofessional and the peer tutors. He told me no and said that I needed them. I changed my strategy again and I was going to ask for the Peer Tutors to be gone first, then focus on removing the paraprofessionals. I was more concerned about the peer tutors over the paraprofessionals because I was concerned that since they were part of the student body that this was going to affect me when I was running for the student council. I was worried that they'd tell others I was special needs then people would think I was incompetent. So every 2 weeks I would ask him again to remove them and each time he would give me a different excuse on why I couldn't be alone. Here's some of the excuses he gave me: "The peer tutors need to be there to collect data", "You need to prove that you can do the work yourself", "It's not up to me. It's the general education teacher that decides if you need a peer tutor or an aide", "Peer Tutors are supposed to represent a trainer for a job. If you refuse training then you're going to get fired". I brought it up again during my yearly IEP which took place in March. Once again my teacher said no, bringing up another excuse. As far as I can remember, my parents were neutral about the aide situation. Later one peer tutor was removed, what happened is that the peer tutor moved to a different town and they didn't bother on sending a substitute. A win is a win so I celebrated it. At the end of my freshman year I was pretty much defeated and didn't achieve the goal of being 100% independent. Over the summer I took a look at my situation and decided that my current plan is not working. I knew that when my sophomore year of high school starts I will have aides and peer tutors in classes. I knew that if I wanted to get what I wanted I would have to do something big. I knew that I would have to put up a fight, and put in a lot more effort. Over the summer I developed a war mindset inspired by two quotes from Sun Tzu:
"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
I knew that I can't be going into sophomore year blind, so I started drafting a plan. I created a Google doc outlining my goals and what I wanted to accomplish. I knew that I won't be able to win every battle and that I need to choose which fight is worth fighting for. I thought to myself, “Well the peer tutors we're given training on the first day of school and probably have strategies to deal with poor behavior but what about planned well organized protests?” So I began researching strategies on how paraprofessionals/peer tutors dealt with negative behavior and reverse engineered those tactics. I read forms, I Watched YouTube videos and found as much information that I could find. For the peer tutors I didn't know too much about them. I didn't know if it was something that only my school did or if other schools did it. I did some research and found out that other schools had a peer tutor program and some have uploaded training videos on YouTube. Some peer tutors told me that they did babysitting and did nanny work so I looked up babysitting tips. I reverse engineered all of those tactics and came up with strategies to counter those techniques and put all that information that I learned into a google doc that I can use for future reference. During this time I also researched how to become a better negotiator and started learning a little bit of psychology. The plan was to first negotiate and if that doesn't work I will protest and make demands and negotiate. Over the summer I got really good at negotiating and practiced a lot on my father and my sister (they were totally oblivious). To this day I use those negotiating tactics. After I created my document and was satisfied with all the information, I went to bed that night and knew that I have already won and that my sophomore year will be my last year that I 1-1 peer tutor or aide.
Fast forward to the first day of school, as expected I had peer tutors and aides assigned to me in classes. My sped teacher had a chalkboard On the back wall full of sticky notes that had everyone's schedules and a name of someone was assigned to that student for each class. This time around I only had one peer tutor outside of the special ed classes. This is a big improvement over the three I had before but I still have my original goal of having none. For the paraprofessionals I had 2 in Gen classes.The goal was to first remove the peer tutors then the paraprofessionals. Even though this seems to be an improvement I continued with the plan. Since this was the first day, the peer tutors were in another classroom learning policies and other stuff they needed to know so I was alone for the day. I walked over to my special ed teacher and ask him one final time to remove the peer tutor he says no and then I asked him to let me be alone for 2 weeks so I can prove I don't need help and he still denies me. I then tell him that I will allow the peer tutor for 2 weeks and after that she needs to go. My teacher doesn't respond. (To add context the peer tutor that I had, she was a peer tutor in my math class in the prior semester so I already know who she was. We used to talk a lot and was surprised when I saw that she was assigned to me.)
For 2 weeks she mostly left me alone with her occasionally checking up on me. For those 2 weeks I purposely close my self off and adopted a body language that would subconsciously discourage her from approaching me. I did this by keeping my head low and staying as focused as possible. The only thing she did was confront me when I start packing up 2 minutes before the bell rings. She tells me that I shouldn't be packing up and to pull my stuff out again. I tell her no and hold my ground. She writes in my planner that I packed my stuff up early and refuse to pull it out. That happened like 2 or 3 times. On Thursday on the second week my class was tasked to create a PowerPoint. FYI this was a mythology class, while I was doing this PowerPoint I decided instead of manually trying to type in the locations and people from this mythology which the names were very long and complicated. I decided would be easier just to copy and paste them in. My peer tutor sees me doing this and doesn't say anything. At the end of class she writes that I plagiarized in my planner and tells my special ed teacher in person what happened. My sped teacher pulls me out of class (I had his math class right after mythology) and starts telling me that my peer tutor has seen me copy and pasting paragraphs and goes on this lecturing on why plagiarizing is bad. I explained to him that I wasn't copying paragraphs It was only copying names and locations and explain my reason for it. He didn't believe me but he didn't make me retake the assignment. After that I was pissed off and the next day I confronted her about it. I forgot what her reasoning for not telling me was but I told her that she needs to look into things before she makes false reports. After that incident, I decided to wait a week before I ask my teacher to remove her. Also during those first 3 weeks I turned down help from peer tutors and paras if possible In the special ed classroom. I did this to prevent sending any mix signals. I personally didn't mind if I had to work with a peer tutopara or not In the actual sped classroom. I only cared if it was in any of the general education classes. I just thought it would look contradictory if I was accepting help in the sped class and then requesting peer tutors to be removed from my gen classes.
At the beginning of the fourth week I went to school early and went to my sped teacher's class before first hour starts and then I again asked him to remove the peer tutor and the paraprofessionals. He says no again and brings up that I was being academically dishonest by plagiarizing. I tell my side of the story once again on what happened and he still doesn't believe me. At this point I leave and more pissed off. At this point negotiations didn't work so I started small protests by preventing the peer tutors from filling out my planer and the behavioral checklist. Most of them didn't care since there was other students they can fill out and they only need to fill out one to be graded for the day. One peer tutor gave me the puppy dog eye treatment and I eventually cave and let her fill it out. I still let the one peer tutor that was assigned to me in the gen class due to me being the only student and my intention wasn't to ruin, her grade. During the fourth week I began brainstorming ideas on how I can do a massive protest.
On Thursday of the fourth week of school, a walk into the mythology class and it started out like any other day. Class started and my teacher starts talking. I pull up my phone to respond to some messages and my peer tutor sees me. She asks me to hand my phone over to her and I tell her no. She tells me that I can't be on my phone and I tell her okay but I'm still not giving it to you. She then pulls out her phone and puts it on the table. She then tells me to put my phone on the table. I tell her no again. A few minutes past and the teacher finishes up talking. She passes the assignment and immediately my peer tutor begins to try and help by reading the questions. I slide the packet over closer to me and start ignoring her. I was hoping that she will get the hint and leave me alone. She doesn't so put on my hoodie and tried to mentally block her out. I don't remember what she said during all this since I was blocking it out but I do remember her touching me and the general ed teacher coming over and start assisting the peer tutor. It was a lot of pressure and I was actually about to give up because it was too much. But they both gaved up before I did and I was very relieved. After that, the class was pretty much quiet. The peer tutor wrote an entire paragraph on what happened. I walked to my math class and sat down. I then see my peer tutor walking into class and ask for my sped teacher. I already knew it was about me. I see them talk for 2 minutes and sure enough I see my teacher calling me over. I walked outside the classroom and me and the teacher begin to go at it. We end up saying the same things we have said before. However, my teacher this time mentioned that if I keep up my behavior that he's going to call in a meeting with my parents. The rest of math class was pretty much the same. However, my English class with the same teacher he went on a rant about using accommodations seeing that he had a disability growing up which was tourette's and he were love to have a peer tutor. I was quiet for the whole class since I was already exhausted because of everything else that had already happened. For the rest of the weekend, I've been coming up with plans on how I would be able to pull off a massive protest.
Now for the good news. On the fifth week of school, I noticed that my peer tutor was missing. My teacher pulled me aside again and told me that he decided that he was going to pull her for 2 weeks to see how well I would do without her. I told him thank you, that's what I wanted since the beginning of the school year. After those 2 weeks he didn't reinstate her and I didn't have a peer tutor or paraprofessionals in gen classes since. The deal moving forward was as long as I had a D or better he wasn't going to send any support unless I asked for it. My relationship with that sped teacher also had improved significantly. Later in my Junior year of high school I ran in my school's election and won. I was given the social media position.
In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't have to pull off a big protest. But the same time I wish that this situation could have ended in a different way.
Everything that I just told you is only the tip of the iceberg. There's so much detail that I had to leave out just to make this story shorter. Lot of it I'm still processing even though I found great strength in myself fighting back against a system that I believe was ruining my life. That war mindset hasn't left my mentality yet. I'm still dealing with the consequences of me being in special ed. Everything I told you happened 5 years ago and I'm still living through it like it just happened. I'm mentally recovering and eventually I will recover. Right now I'm in therapy and I'm writing down everything I can in a Google doc to process everything emotionally. Maybe one day I'll give that story to a writer and make a book out of it.
If you have any questions feel free ask them, I would love to answer them.

Hi, I (20F) have been in a polyamorous relationship with a guy (21M) for 1 year. Polyamory is pretty nuanced but our agreement is that while we are in a committed relationship, we can still explore our sexualities since we are both bisexual. I can see girls, he can see guys.
This is quite unusual, I know and a lot of people judge the quality of my relationship immediately when I say I’m polyamorous but it works for us and we’ve been really happy and hope to get married after we graduate.
In the beginning of our relationship, I was seeing a girl, we’ll call her Kelly who identifies as a lesbian. I absolutely adored her and she got on really well with my boyfriend. The three of us would watch movies together and fall asleep in the same bed without feeling uncomfortable. There was one problem, she would occasionally ghost me for 2-4 weeks due to health reasons. She is chronically ill and struggles with mental health. I have also struggled with mental illness and had to leave university for one year because of how bad it got. Nevertheless, I am on treatment now and mostly better. Because I can relate to having mental health issues, I tried to be as supportive as possible but her ghosting me for weeks at a time hurt very much especially because she would not communicate that she intended on having alone time. I would understand if it had been a few days. When she returned each time, she would not apologise until one day I started sobbing because she made me feel really confused and unwanted. She only ever apologised after I revealed that her actions hurt me but if I didn’t, she thought this behaviour was completely normal. It wasn’t the ghosting that hurt the most, it was the lack of communication about when she needed space and, the inability to recognise that her actions hurt me on her own, without any kind of prompt from me.
I eventually ended things with her which was extremely painful and hard to do because I truly loved her and my boyfriend and I enjoyed her company even if it was just sitting and chatting for hours.
Fast forward: I start seeing a new girl, we’ll call her Mary. Mary is a wonderful girl, but I was still hurting a lot from my experience with Kelly and I made her aware from the start that I am still processing a lot of the pain from my experience with my ex and that I’m working on it but that unhealed part of me might cause distrust.
Months go by, Mary and I become a lot closer. Exams start approaching and we’re seeing each other a lot less. It’s difficult to see each other because she doesn’t feel comfortable around my boyfriend and wouldn’t want to come over while he was there so he would have to leave every time we made plans and I hated doing that to him.
I need to give some context before we dive deeper. Over these few months, I spent time with her friends almost everyday at least for an hour and made an effort to get to know each and every single one of them and be on good terms with them. One of her friends called me pretentious to my face solely because I used the word, “idiosyncratic” in a conversation. This caught me off guard and when it happened, all her friends laughed at me including Mary which really hurt me because I would never let that slide if one of my friends said something like that to her let alone laugh. Some of her friends made me uncomfortable and were kind of mean to me? But I sat with them frequently anyway because I cared about her and wanting to make that sacrifice to spend time with her. In contrast, I have few close friends but the person closest to me is my boyfriend, naturally. Mary made no effort to get to know him or even be nice to him and this hurt me because my boyfriend is genuinely a soft and sweet person and I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t attempt to get to know him seeing as I made so much of an effort with her friends.
I would initiate all our dates, pay for her and essentially give her princess treatment, listen to her and give her advice when she was depressed late at night even if I had a test the next day. I went to my 10am lecture venue 20 minutes early everyday just so I could pass her and chat to her for a bit. I wasn’t perfect but I did give her a lot of my effort and time.
A few times, I vented to her about Kelly and I apologised, saying I hate being that person to talk about their ex. She reassured me that it was okay and she was there for me which brought me so much comfort.
Things go steadily until we got closer to exams and we could barely see each other because her friends are kind of rowdy and rambunctious and it was too hard to study around them so close to exams. In addition, she never wanted to come over unless the boyfriend wasn’t there. We made plans multiple times but something came up each time. I started to miss her a lot and asked my boyfriend if I could have the apartment some time during the week to see her and he was more than happy to stay at res that night. I got her roses, unwrapped and cut them, got rid of all the thorns, spray painted one black because she likes black, rewrapped them, got her chocolates and spent 4 hours cleaning my house.
She texts me asking to move the time we were supposed to meet up from 6pm to 9pm and this initially upsets me because I get anxiety when plans are changed last minute but I said it was fine.
9pm comes, no text. 9:20, nothing. I begin to freak out. She eventually texts me saying she lost her phone in an Uber and is texting from her pc and can’t make it. The exact message was, “I lost my phone in an Uber, i can’t make it.”
I immediately started searching online for ways to track her phone. Tried helping her login to Uber on her laptop and place an enquiry for a lost item, then helped her track the phone using her google account and she found where it was. I googled a bunch of things about the safety of the area to make sure where she was going was safe and told her to take a friend. She gets her phone back and all is well. Then goes to sleep.
Now I don’t know if I’m being dramatic but what stood out to me was the lack of, “I’m sorry that I couldn’t make it, I know you really wanted to see me and probably made your boyfriend leave and put a lot of effort into this. It was a mistake but I am sorry for how it affected your day and feelings.”
This is what I would have said asap if it was me. Yes, she lost her phone by accident but that doesn’t mean that it had no consequences for anyone else. I’ve lost things by accident before and still recognised that I should have been more aware/ responsible and apologise. I am always the first to apologise in situations and sometimes profusely even if it’s not a big deal because I feel really bad when I inconvenience/ upset people.
I messaged her saying it really bothered me that she did not apologise and disregarded how that affected my day, plans and feelings. She messaged back saying she meant to apologise but she was tired and forgot and a bunch of excuses. This didn’t make it better for me. A simple, “You’re right, I did mean to say sorry but it slipped my mind and I should have said that immediately. I appreciate all the effort you made and I’m gonna make it up to you.”
I started to get more upset the more she made excuses and told her that it was resurfacing trauma from my ex because Kelly would only apologise after I said I was hurt and have a million reasons to justify it. I told her I was feeling triggered and I felt like I was reliving bad memories. She sent me a long paragraph saying it’s not okay for me to compare her all the time (I’ve never compared her to Kelly other than this time) and said me talking about how Kelly hurt me put pressure on her to not do the same things. I said I was so sorry for comparing her and I didn’t mean to make her feel bad, I was just expressing that I was feeling triggered and wanted her to stop explaining herself because it was making bad memories resurface. Regardless, I was wrong and I promised that it would never ever happen again and while I was not aware that talking about Kelly pressured her, I am now and want to discuss it more in person BUT I felt like this was the wrong time for her to bring up everything I had done wrong and could do better when she had literally just done something that hurt me and we were discussing that and the conversation just shifted. I said I felt that she was deflecting and that while her points are valid, I wish she had asked to speak in person, apologised and then said she wants to address another issue with me and bring all of those concerns up. I feel like if something has been bothering someone for months in a friendship OR relationship, they shouldn’t choose to finally bring it up in the middle of being called out.
She got defensive then I got defensive, I said I was sorry and never wanted to make her feel that way again and will give her space and she should message me when she is ready to talk. I asked if she still wanted the flowers, she said yes and I brought them to her on Friday.
No text from her after that, nothing. I text on Sunday asking her what’s wrong and she says and I quote, “I've thought about it and I don't think we should keep hanging out or whatever. The way you reacted to me and made me feel really horrible about myself on Wednesday just made me think that that's not how I want to go about situations like those in the future and that I don't think we're suited for each other.”
This gutted me not only because she referred to our relation as “hanging out or whatever” but because I thought we had resolved our problems and were going to work through them together. It also hurt me because she broke up with me via text knowing she would see me the next day on campus after her lecture. It also hurt because she had only said she doesn’t want to see me anymore when I messaged to ask what was going on knowing I had told her I am giving her space and she should message me when she is ready to talk. But this wasn’t talking, it was a definitive decision and instead of telling me, she left me hanging for days, freaking out while waiting for an update. Lack of communication, once again.
I also felt like while I had made a mistake, I gave her a genuine apology, promised not to do it again and wanted to discuss it more. How did I become the villain of the story all of a sudden?
I felt like I had been so good to her and this issue, while valid, wasn’t big enough to break up over and speak to me like I meant nothing. An in-person conversation with something approximating, “You were good to me and I appreciate the effort you made and enjoyed our time together but the way you handled our last argument made me realise that we are not suited for each other. I wish the best for you.” would have been so much kinder and I reread her text over and over again asking myself what I did to deserve a breakup like that.
AITA for comparing her to my ex and saying that she should have brought up the issues she had with me and what I had been doing wrong separately after a genuine in-person apology.

Hi! 👋
I need help and I also wanted to share a story or two, if that’s ok. So this is LOOONG. Please forgive any mistakes or wrong words
I’ve put the questions up top so feel free to ignore the rest. I just wanted to tell people about her.
Thank you so much in advance!
TL;DR
Part one: My beloved 98-yo Catholic grandmother in Sweden is dying, no other family member is Catholic. We don’t know what we need to do now before and after her passing.
Part two: Gran’s story and the Cardinal who Didn’t Forget.
——-
Part one
My Grandma is 98 and nearing the very end. She is a devout Catholic who converted in her 60s. No one else in the family is Catholic and there are very few Catholics in Sweden overall.
Her faith is incredibly important to her and I want to make sure she leaves the world properly from a religious standpoint.
Only I don’t know anything about it and I don’t know who to ask.
I would be so grateful for any guidance.
Questions:
1. Are there things we need to do for her from a religious perspective when the end comes? Last rituals?
Any special handling of the body?
Should we call a priest but who?

2. Swedish funerals usually don’t take place in three or four weeks after death. Is that okay?

3. Her service will be held in a Protestant church with a Protestant priest and buried in the family plot that’s there.
She has okayed this. She originally wanted to Catholic service in this particular church but it’s not allowed.
Are there any things (prayers, rituals etc) we can include to honor her faith?

4. Do I need to notify her local church? She is a member of the Secular Carmelites as well.

5a. Obituaries work a little differently in Sweden but I figured I’d ask. It’s common to include a little picture or symbol in them, everything from roses to sports team logos (yes, truly! 😂)
Most of the Catholic obituaries I see simply have a cross and . Is that the proper way to do it?

5b. Most obituaries include a quote.
Would this be appropriate?
”I am going towards you whom I have always sought, loved and always desired.”

It may sound odd I watched Sister Claire Crockett’s final vows and heard it and just knew instantly it should be in Gran’s obituary.
I haven’t been able to trace the source though.
THANK YOU! If you made it this far! —————————
Gran and the Cardinal
Now it’s story time!
Gran converted in her 60s “after a lifetime of searching” and was an eager theological correspondent.
She is a passionate fan of St John of the Cross and mysticism in general and is a member of the Secular Carmelites.
My Gran is Dutch, spent her first decade in Indonesia before coming back to Holland just in time for the German occupation.
She grew up Protestant but the war planted a seed in her mind and she set out to discover the spiritual world and learning as much as possible about every religion she could find, Taoism, Shinto, Hindu gurus, the works.
—
I asked her once what made her choose Catholicism in the end. She said that she had seen a small bookstore that interested her and unbeknownst was in a small, nondescript church.
Gran said she went in through the door and felt a “flash” or a rush or something she couldn’t quite describe and just knew. She spoke to a priest that very same day.
—-
Gran never quite lost hope that one of her children or grandchildren would convert (I was her best candidate but that has not happened. 😅)
—-
My grandmother had to stop going to Church maybe 10–15 years ago since hearing is so bad and it still grieves her.
She misses the community of the church, theological discourse, the connections she has made over the years. She felt lonely.
—
I don’t know how much the “regular Catholic” knows about different cardinals but we actually got a Swedish one, Anders Arborelius, a few years ago.
Gran knows him through the Carmelites and she has corresponded quite extensively with ”Bishop Anders”.
On one bleak day when Gran felt so along in the world, I tried to think of ways to cheer her up.
I did some googling and found an email address to the Cardinal himself and also to his secretary.
—
I wrote a long email asking of “Bishop Anders” would be willing to send her a card to remind her the church hasn’t forgotten her.
I didn’t expect an answer but later that same night, his secretary responded and it turned out she used to know my gran quite well.
The Cardinal was in Rome, she said, but he would probably look at the email when he got back.
That night (say 2AM), I got a response from the Cardinal about how well he remembers my Gran, and how much he likes and appreciates her.
A few day later, a lovely little letter with encouraging words and a blessing arrived in the mail.
One funny thing though! He had absolutely dreadful handwriting, so bad we actually send around a picture of it to family members asking them if they could decode it. 😂😂😂

i don’t usually post on reddit but here we go because i have no where else to put this rant that’s been in my head since HMHAS came out lmao
the SECOND i heard birds of a feather, i was like “oh the tiktok girlies are going to be CONFUSED about this one” and i think i was right
on social media i have seen the chorus being used to show how in love someone is with their partnefriend/dog/etc. which is all cute and i know it’s not this deep but THEYRE USING THE SONG WRONG?
let’s recap: she uses a theramin (notoriously foreboding instrument) and plays the backing instrumentation a quarter tone below the actual melody to make the whole thing feel Slightly Wrong™️ and we’re supposed to believe this relationship is healthy and good?
quote the song:
“i want you to stay… til i’m in the casket YOU carry”, he bears responsibility for her BEING in the casket.
“and if i’m turning blue please don’t save me, nothing left to lose without my baby”, the all-or-nothing thinking gives me throwbacks to college dear god
“say you wanna quit, don’t be stupid” yikes
this song is a haunting and beautiful and sounds like it could be sung by queen miss gabriella montez, but it’s also FOREBODING AS SHIT and i don’t understand why people are comparing their beautiful and loving relationships to it!!

Ok where to begin.. I've been with my wife since 2021, she was already separated (but not dicorced) and had a 4 yo son and 2.5 yo daughter. She left her ex because it just wasn't working and around the time we got together she found messages and nudes he'd (at the time 28m) swapped with her friends baby sitter (16f). She reported it to the army MP's and it was all swept under the rug which is fucked up enough but he was kicked out of the army. Needless to say, not a great guy.
So my wife and I start dating, it takes time but the kids warm up to me, wife and I get married, and seeing I need to provide I join the USAF and go through the recruitment process in 2022, BD knows im joining and even being kicked out of the army knows there's a timer on when his ex and the kids move away when I get stationed somewhere.
He was only 45 min away from us at the time of me starting enlistment and by the time I finished basic and tech training which took 6 months (in total was about a year process) and he only came to see the kids about 6 or 7 times.
We got to our base in July 2023 and it wasn't until December 2023 that he even asked what our address was because he needed it for some paperwork. He never actually initiates calls or even text my wife to ask how the kids are, all contact he has with them is when my soon to be 5 SD ask to call him. He knows absolutely fuck all about what's going on in the kids lives, anything about their interest, he just doesn't care but yet every time he talks to them (which is on average once a month for about 20 min) he tells them how much he loves them etc. And how much he cares about them.
Back at new years he told the kids he'd come to us to visit (about a 10 hour drive which my wife and I have made twice to go back home for holidays since we left in July 2023) by the end of February. We'll surprise surprise he didn't show.
A couple days ago my SD asked to call him and asked if he'd be at her birthday party in 2 weeks, he said that "he'd try to be there but wasn't sure". Well my wife ans i got confirmation today from him that he was going to be here because, and I quote, "I haven't missed a birthday and I'll be dammed if I miss one now." WE asked what his exact travel plans were so we knew how to plan for his visit, and he actually hadn't made plans yet and is just saying he'll be here. Also, this whole "I'll be dammned if I miss a birthday" shit is just so infuriating because if my SD didn't ask, he wouldn't have even entertained the idea of coming out to us.
He makes about 80k/yr and we only ask for 1k/mo in child support for 2 kids despite the fact that it should be 25% of each pay check per our states laws, and he's complaining saying "well I'll be out there but I have to put everything on a credit card to make the trip because I'm saving to buy a house". We have 0 idea where all his money goes and we frankly don't care, but his financial literacy is crazy bad.
Now I have to figure out, if he does actually show up, how to handle this with the kids, make a list of ground rules for him being in my fucking house which I don't want to begin with but the kids want to see him, and making sure I don't fucking deck him when I hear him inevitably say "well they're my kids".
TLDR; BD is a piece of shit who does nothing but make empty promises to my kids just for me and my wife to clean up his mess and be the bad guys.

I'm evaluating solar panels for my area. I'm in the PNW. A local company gave me a quote for:
1) 32x 400watt panels (REC N-Peak 3 Black Series)
2) Invisimount mounting system
3) Enphase monitoring system
They predict I'll generate 11203 kWh per year based on the shade report.
The quote is around $35K. Then I get a federal credit reduction of ~30%. So $23K total upfront cost.
Does this seem reasonable or am I missing something? When I priced out the panels they are about $250 each. The enphase/converter is around $6K. So around $15K+ to buy the components myself, and then I'd have to do my own install.

"....... The war affected my Master in ways I couldn't see at the time, yet it was her actions during the war that cloud my memory of her. Perhaps I was selfish, so focused on my own pain and feelings of injustice that I couldn't see she was suffering the same as I was. Perhaps she was able to deal with it in a far more healthy way. Or perhaps instead it burned her out on the inside to the point where she didn't care anymore or was force to surround herself with doctrine.
I don't know, and I don't know if I want to know as then I could not longer hope it was the better answer. I try to hold onto the memories of her before the war, a warmer, kinder woman, a mother like figure who's advice in hindsight, I wish I had followed more often.
While most would ascribe my political views to that of my father, Senator Fi Lor who's Senate seat I now hold. My political philosophy surprisingly came from my Jedi Master in a way. It was a consistency in her view of power.
During a discussion on the Dark Side, my Master stated something profound to me, something I internalized and ensured that I remembered. The quote, as best I can remember is this.
"Barriss, remember this: Power wants to be used. It must be kept under constant vigil, else it will seduce and corrupt you. One moment you’re swatting an annoying training toy; the next you’re paralyzing an offending being’s lungs and choking him to death. You do it because you can. It becomes an end in itself. As a Jedi, you live always on this edge. A single misstep, and you can fall to the dark side. It has happened to many, and it is always a tragedy. As with an addictive drug, it’s too easy to say, ‘I’ll do it just this once.’ That’s not how it works. The only thing that stands between you and the dark side is your own will and discipline. Give in to your anger or your fear, your jealousy or your hate, and the dark side claims you for its own. If that happens, you will become an enemy to all that the Jedi stand for and an enemy of all Jedi who hold to the path of right."
I asked her if she had ever given into the Dark Side, and she admitted she had on one occasion, I asked what it was it was like and if it would feel evil. She said no, said it would feel good, empowering, satisfying, and worst of all, it would feel right and justified, and that was the danger.
She was right, not just about the Dark Side but about power in general.
Had I listened and processed that at the time, perhaps so much pain I have inflicted could have been avoided, or perhaps not, the Force is mysterious like that, but It did not take the power of Dark Side to bomb the temple, nor to do any part of my plan or subsequent attempts to repair the situation. In fact, I made sure of it, yet, despite not using the power of the Dark Side, I fell into it, the trap, the drug.
I have used the Dark Side many times since then, trusting my own discipline and restrictions to keep me from falling deeper, tapping into a dangerous fire, every time more addicting and every time more tempting to throw away my restrictions that limit it, every time it always feels like the right solution, the only solution, it is essential, it must be done or else something worse will happen, just give in again, take another dose of power and you can solve whatever issue lies in front of you.
It is not just with the Force. It is any power. The power of a politician to force people to comply with their vision, the power of a business-leader to abuse their workers. The power of a parent over their child, the president of a home owners association, a landlord, a reporter, even how we treat animals. Power must be kept under constant vigil and no one in power is immune to the temptation of abusing it, we must actively choose every day to resist it and ensure our path is true, it is often harder, but is the right way and in the long run, that is what will matter.
I could be considered a recovering addict in a way, no matter what I do and how long I live I will always be fighting the urge to relapse. And like a recovering addict, I am often ashamed of my actions and seek to prevent others from falling into the same path as I once walked. Having walked it, I can honestly say that the benefits never outweighed the cost.
My Master's Saber now sits on my shelf at eye level, and looking at it I wonder what she would think of me. Should I care? Had she lived would the mother like figure I knew before the war return with peace, or was her true nature the cold and harsh one I saw during the war?
I miss her still."

this morning i thought today would be great, usually i get 180-200 stops, but this was only 129 stops, in Idaho Falls Rigby (if you live around here then you'll see the problem) couldn't even finish today. why? because 90 percent of the problem was all dogs. I don't know what is so great about having your dog in the front yard, no leash, no cage, they can wander off anywhere he want while the owners are gone. I got chased by dogs 4 times, the other one i got bit all today. I was fooled because when i called the owner he said and i quote"don't worry hes super friendly" I had to cancel over 20 packages today just because the dogs were out with no leash, no one watching them, ect. and yeah i got really nervous so i was a lot slower and im sorry. I just want to know why? like whats the whole point of having your dog roam around your house with no leash, fence, ect? what am i missing here is it me?

For context this all started 9 years ago I have had a lot of time to reflect on this and I guess I just want to share my story.
Back in 2014 during my (18 m) freshman year of college I met a girl (18 f) I'll call her A. She was fun and cool with lots of common interests. We were in the same clubs and I developed a crush on her. She had some emotional issues which made her drop out of school but she came back in the spring semester. Looking back on it I did a bit of "white knighting" for her to try to be there for her in order to have her like me. Eventually that summer we ended up fake dating because she wanted her parents to stop asking her if she was going to date anyone. Later that summer we made it official and actually dated. I visited her once during the summer and she visited me during the following fall semester because she decided that she wasn't going back to college, but I slowly started to feel more and more distant from her.
During my sophomore year I met another girl (19) (I'll call her B) and we started to get along. I was feeling lonely so I would invite her to watch a few shows in my dorm common room. I knew she had a boyfriend but I kinda got the feeling she didn't care about him much. At first I was trying to encourage my friends to date her, because they were single. She started to develop feelings for me and I developed feelings for her and we ended up hooking up. I felt terrible about it and the line from Hamilton "I wish I could say that was the last time, I said that last time, it became a pastime." Kept ringing in my head.
In the end A broke up with me. I assume that a friend of hers from the college told her what was happening. She never confronted me about it, she simply said we were better as friends abd ended it there. I felt like crap and wanted to end it there with B. B ended up using guilt to encourage me to date her properly after her boyfriend broke up with her.
We dated through out college, at first people were excited because they thought we were a cute couple. Then for a while my friends started asking me if I was happy in my relationship with B. I would tell then yes because I was young and stupid.
Skip to 2020 during the pandemic we were fresh out of college and living together. We would still have my 2 best friends over but didn't really talk to anyone else or go out much due to covid. She never liked me leaving the house or doing anything because of covid. She ended up making me miss my grandfather's birthday. Which should have been a sign, but I kept trying to rationalize it as her being worried about covid. My friends were still asking me if I was happy and it kept getting harder to say yes. I watched philosophytube's video "Men.Abuse.Trauma" and started tearing up and I couldn't understand why. I kept rationalizing it as "She isn't as bad as thier ex."
In December she broke up with me. I felt devastated because I kept trying to sacrifice more and more for her. I kept hoping and praying that there was something that I could do to make myself the perfect boyfriend agian.
4 years later I am only left with the quote from Romeo and Juliet "These violent delights have violent ends And in their triumph die, like fire and powder, Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey Is loathsome in his own deliciousness And in the taste confounds the appetite. Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."

The beautiful thing about Villeneuve's movies is that they are highly rewatchable, and you can pick up on more subtleties with each viewing. We know Villeneuve prefers visual storytelling to explicit dialog, and he uses key shots to portray plot points, requiring the viewers to go further than simply listening to lines but rather to pick up on visual cues. One way he does this is through the characters' gaze, their eye contact--for Paul and Chani, what the cast has referred to as "glance passes."
There are actually some deep plot points we can infer from the glance passes throughout the film. In this post, I will specifically analyze the shots where Paul looks at Chani during the final fight scene. Paul's glances here indicate his motivations at this point in the story.
(Note: This commentary is my one humble interpretation, of course! It is based on my reading of Dune: Messiah and Children of Dune. I've redacted my references to those books as spoilers. My interpretation is also based on my understanding of Villeneuve's narrative goals for Dune: Part Two and the hints he has dropped in interviews about his plans for the Messiah film. Villeneuve has clearly stated that the love story between Paul and Chani is at the heart of this film. He has also stated that his favorite book is Dune: Messiah, which absolutely centers Paul's love for Chani and fears about her death.)
You can interpret these shots of Paul's glances on two levels, by design: (1) the level of a viewer who is casually enjoying the scene, and (2) the level of someone who knows the other "possible futures" that Paul saw after drinking the Water of Life and who generally knows what is likely coming in Dune: Messiah (the film version). This latter level is the level Villeneuve is operating on.
Key Background: Paul's Two Fears
To appreciate Paul's expressions during the Feyd fight, you have to reflect on his major motivations in this film. Without this background, you might miss the looks between Paul and Chani, and when you see them, you might think it's purely for the drama of the scene, but these glances are weighty: they communicate Paul's fears, which relate to his visions, what he saw when he drank the Water of Life, and what is to come in the next film.
The third act of the film is Paul acting out his "narrow way through." The clear vision that he saw when he drank the Water of Life becomes his battle plan; it's the only path where their enemies do not prevail. How did Paul determine this plan? Well, initially, the last thing he wanted to do was go South, because going South seemed to suggest (1) a war in his name where billions of people die, and (2) Chani dying. These are the two visions that he has during the film. He conjures these two separate visions up after Feyd's forces attack Sietch Tabr and he is talking to Stilgar. These two separate visions are what make him initially refuse to go South. It's important to note, in the book Dune: Messiah, these are also the two things that haunt Paul: "And he saw how he'd been hemmed in by boundaries of love and the Jihad." (p. 46).
But before going South, he conjures a vision of Jamis, who informed him, "You need to see"--you need to clearly see the future so that you can stop these bad things from happening. Paul still had his doubts, even after this message from Jamis. This is why he tells Chani, "If I go South, I might lose you." He does not mean "You might walk out on me," he means, "You might die." And she tells him, "you'll never lose me as long as you stay who you are," (she clearly didn't interpret his statement as meaning she might die). Paul in that moment resolves to go South, to drink the Water of Life so he can see his past (that's what the Water of Life does, gives you intergenerational memory) in order to gain clearer visions of the future. The voices in his Jamis vision tell him, "you cannot see your future without seeing our past." Paul wants this new and improved future vision so that he can figure out how to prevent his two big fears: billions of people dying and Chani's death.
Notably, by including Paul's vision of Chani's death in this film, Villeneuve made the choice to embed elements of Dune: Messiah into Dune: Part Two. Pauls' vision of Chani's death is not in the first Dune book. This is a plot point Herbert developed in Messiah, when Paul is essentially trapped into his vision and afraid to veer from its path, lest worse consequences ensue. As a reminder, Paul has a vision of the "moon falling," and he spends most of Messiah lamenting his role in the Jihad and grieving Chani's future death while desperately trying (and failing) to save her (recall his bargaining with Reverend Mother Mohaim to save Chani's life). He basically settles on the fact that the path he chose was Chani's least terrible death, with alternatives being her put in a cage, tortured, put in slave pits, etc. (See Dune: Messiah pp. 196, 314).
His Water-of-Life vision is never fully visually revealed to us, the viewers, but when he mentions the "narrow way through," we get a quick shot of Paul's hand stabbing Feyd. The "narrow way through" is the one path where their enemies do not prevail--where the crisis of Chani's death is averted. I actually think this is why Paul answers Chani's "Are you okay?" with "Thanks to you" after he wakes up from drinking the Water of Life. I think that "Thanks to you" has a double meaning--thank to you for waking me up and thanks to you for being my compass, essentially, the determining factor guiding my decision on which possible future to choose. Remember, Paul sees multiple possible futures, so the path we see in the third act of film is not an inevitable future: Paul still has to make choices and act out the future that he wants to happen. He still has to work to make that narrow path happen. Otherwise, another possible future will happen and his enemies will prevail, Chani will die, and everything will be terrible.
What does all of this mean? By the time we get to the Feyd fight, preventing Chani's death has become one of Paul's main motivations. What about preventing the billions of deaths in the upcoming Jihad!? Welp, the Jihad ultimately pops off despite this "narrow way through," so apparently Paul realized he couldn't prevent the Jihad (or maybe he could have...but at a price he didn't want to pay). In fact, based on the books, you can make a good argument that Paul makes a choice: to save Chani's life at the cost of billions of lives. We get some insight into Paul's choices regarding Chani in Messiah and in Children of Dune. (Messiah, p. 46: "And what was one life, no matter how beloved, against all the lives the Jihad was certain to take? Could single misery be weighed against the agony of multitudes?"; Children of Dune, p. 518: "I accepted the Mahdinate. I did it for Chani, but it made me a bad leader." <--these quotes suggest that Paul chose Chani--and for a while really thought he could save her--by allowing himself to become a religious figure and allowing the Jihad to happen. Basically, he chose one life over billions of lives.)
So: the "narrow way through" is how Paul saves Chani. And this is his internal monologue when he looks at her throughout the fight. I invite you to rewatch and pay particular attention to every instance when Paul looks at Chani during this fight.
Glance right before the fight: As Paul is positioning himself across from Feyd before they fight, he walks near Chani, looking at her. We get a clear shot of this look and Paul's lingering gaze on Chani as he turns towards Feyd. This is not just an empty glance. It is Paul is reminding himself what is at stake in this fight: Chani's survival.
Glance from the floor when Paul gets knocked down: Paul also glances at Chani when he is knocked down by Feyd's kick. He immediately looks at her, because falling means he is potentially losing the fight, and he knows if he loses, she dies. The "narrow way through" is for Paul to win this fight, and if he fails to enact that future, one of the other possible futures is in play--one in which Chani dies. So this fearful glance at Chani communicates, "Oh no! I'm potentially going to lose this fight and Chani's fate is sealed."
"She's your pet?" glance. Feyd just aggravates Paul's fears when Feyd follows Paul's eyeline, sees that Paul is looking at Chani, and taunts Paul, "She's your pet?" Paul hears this and looks at Chani again. We, the viewers, know at this point that Feyd keeps women as his pets. While, yes, calling Chani a "pet" is a belittling insult to Chani and to Paul, it is serving another purpose in the story: It clearly evokes one of the terrible possible futures where their "enemies prevail" and Chani actually becomes Feyd's pet>! and, if Villeneuve is borrowing themes and content from Dune: Messiah, in that book, a possible future Paul envisions for Chani is her literally being put in a cage (pp. 196, 314)!<. This, of course, reinvigorates Paul to get back on his feet and get back on that narrow path. He is now laser-focused on fighting Feyd and winning.
Glance after getting stabbed. The next glance, though, is after Paul gets stabbed by Feyd. Feyd flings him across the room and he stumbles backs toward the area where Chani is. Feyd advances towards Paul, and then there is a clear, almost slow-motion shot of him turning to look at Chani. Paul doesn't look at anyone else but Chani. And his expression is outright worry, essentially panic. Why is he panicked? He knows the future? Reminder: He's not locked into a particularly future; he knows possible futures, and he has to stick to the "narrow way through" by making choices and taking actions to commit to that path. So at this moment, he is openly concerned that he may fail and that he is truly about to die--and if he dies, we jump to one of the possible futures where Chani dies. We then get a shot of Chani looking right back at him, drawing in a desperate breath, panicked as well. Paul sees her panic. With every glance at her, Paul is getting a reminder of what is at stake. He looks back to Feyd, motivated again to try anything to win--including grabbing the knife end of Feyd's blade. Again, these are not throwaway shots; knowing Villeneuve's style and thoughtfulness, these are all very intentional moments.
Glance when he stands up after winning the fight. After Paul stabs Feyd, Paul takes the knife out of his shoulder, stands up, and what is the first thing he does? He immediately looks at Chani. We see him look at her and literally sigh with relief. Chani's expression is certainly relief that Paul survived, but Paul's expression is not mere relief that he, himself, survived. His face is communicating relief with respect to her, to Chani. It's saying, "Good. I saved her." By winning the fight and acting out his vision of the "narrow way through" (stabbing Feyd, which we literally saw as a snippet of his Water-of-Life vision), he ensured that Chani did not die. He then turns his attention toward the Emperor.
Final glance at Chani. The last glance between Paul and Chani is right before Chani exits the room. The thing I'll note about this is that, in this adaptation, Paul probably knows Chani is going to leave before he even looks at her. This was all part of his vision. So, he is turning to look to get his final glance at her, at least for the time being. And after she leaves, he sort of looks down as if to say, "It's okay. This was the only way...the way that keeps her alive." Also, we know from earlier that Paul foresaw that Chani would "come to understand." So he might also be thinking, "It's okay--she is upset now, but she will come to understand why I made these decisions." Also, since we know their relationship is at the heart of the Messiah plot, he might also be thinking, I know I will see her again. We then see Paul turn back towards the Emperor, but then turn around again to anticipate Gurney's statement that the Great Houses have refused to accept his ascendancy.
And then the "Holy War" begins...apparently, Muad'Dib's "narrow way through" was not a path where the Holy War didn't happen. Which goes to my point that maybe Paul made a choice between his two fears, the two visions that plagued him: The Holy War and Chani's death. And he chose Chani.
I hope you enjoyed this read, Dune fam! As always, these are just my interpretations, my lone opinion. You may have an entirely different take. Or you may agree with aspects of mine. Regardless, I'd love to hear what you think!