I'm almost done. Less than a year and I'll have graduated with my RRT.
I've been a CNA for almost 7 years come October. It's an exhausting profession.
I've worked in nursing homes and hospitals, I worked a COVID floor through the pandemic and every level of care from palliative and hospice to med surg and ICU. I've saved lives and helped those who are it it's end pass peacefully.
I hate it, but I know I'll miss it too.
That said, the day I never have to take another person to the bathroom will be one of the greatest of my life.

Hi all, I currently have a Bachelors degree in health administration. I then went back to school and got my ADN.
Since pretty much all the hospitals require a Bachelors IN Nursing within five years of hire, I’m now looking at online programs.
I’m not very interested in earning a second Bachelors degree. If I go through all the headache and cost of school again, I’d prefer it to be towards a graduate degree.
Does anyone know of any MSN programs for licensed nurses that have a non-nursing bachelors already?
Thanks!

I graduated 3 years ago and landed a job as a school nurse right out of school. I’ve enjoyed my time working there and now I know I definitely want to do bedside as a pediatric nurse.
I’m having some trouble finding jobs in my area Orange County (CA) because most non-new grad jobs require 1+ years of experience.
I was wondering if anyone had any tips or suggestions on what I can do to improve my chances. Thank you!

Hello all,
I'm currently taking a statistics class. I have been doing extremely well but I'm completely stumped on one problem. It goes as follows:

An experimental psychologist plans a study in which a crucial step is offering participants a food reward. It is important that the three food rewards be equal in appeal. Thus, a pre-study was designed in which participants were asked which of the rewards they preferred. Of the 60 participants, 16 preferred cupcakes, 26 preferred candy bars, and 18 favoured dried apricots.
a. Do these scores suggest that the different foods are differentially preferred by people in general?(Use the .05 significance level.)
b. Use the five steps of hypothesis testing and decide whether to accept or reject the null.

So...my question is that I don't understand which test/distribution that I'm supposed to use for this. I have done some Googling and Google tells me that I should use a chi-squared test but this chapter is about t-tests, not chi-squared.
But I can't use a t-test here because I have 3 samples, right? So I'm very confused.
I thought maybe I'm supposed to use the pooled estimate of population variance but the examples of that only seem to use 2 samples, not 3.
I'm going to re-read the chapter because maybe I missed something but if you could guide me as to what topics might help me figure this out, that would be greatly appreciated!

Long story short, I'm writing a wrapper for a library and I have a little problem.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that I have two structs.
The first one "Foo" wraps around a "*mut c_void" that is provided and managed by the library I'm wrapping:

#[derive(Debug)] struct Foo<'a> { external: *mut c_void, marker: PhantomData<&'a mut ()> } impl <'a> Foo<'a> { pub fn new<'b>() -> Self { // call library to get the *mut c_void let external: *mut c_void = ... from the library ... Self { marker: PhantomData, external } } } 

The second one "Bar" wraps around *invoking* a function in the library. The library will eventually call us back _in the same thread_ (so no `Send` or `Sync` needed) but will potentially drop the pointers stored in Foo (thus rendering anything in Foo unusable).

#[derive(Debug)] struct Bar<'a> { marker: PhantomData<&'a mut ()> } impl <'a> Bar<'a> { pub fn new() -> Self { Self { marker: PhantomData } } pub fn call<'b, F>(&self, _function: F) where F: Fn() + 'static, 'static: 'b, { // We'll call our library here which will // eventually call us back at a later time, in // the same thread, but will destroy the pointers // stored in Foo... } } 

We can write a function like this then to use our library:

pub fn main() { let str = "hello, world"; // can be moved in closure let foo = Foo::new(); // can not be moved in closure let bar = Bar::new(); bar.call(move { // when the library calls us back here what's in // "foo" is completely gone and I'll seg-fault // trying to use it.. so we can not _move_ it, // but really anything else can be moved in here // no problem! println!("{:?}", foo); }) } 

Obviously, removing the `move` from the closure makes some things work, but I would still have the ability to _move_ stuff in there that isn't `Foo`...
Any idea???

~Rayray~
It felt frustrating in Chongqing. I was rather stuck in Hechuan. I got accustomed to lajiao (spice) there. I was a Midwesterner at the age of 22. I was raised in Illinois. I became a manic—a Ferris wheel on fire—I was hiding under a bed in a hotel. Bold like napalm. Sometimes I can never stop. Even when I was 18 in a ward arguing with staff. Always want to fight things. That’s why I refused the meds and went on a plane from America to China. I was going to be an English teacher. And like a light switch, the change and SSRIs turned me into a mess. It would be my first time experiencing psychosis. My biggest issue. I never imagined I would be stuck illegally in a country suffering a psychotic episode in my early twenties.
Transplanted as pollen. I was left with a backpack and a cellphone. With a downloaded app called WeChat. I had arrogantly quit a university job in a fit. Spent the past months full of energy and not sleeping and neglecting myself, including not eating, to work on a novel. Not considering myself normally religious, I had obsessed over occult ideas during that time. Spending nights reading Aleister Crowley—haven taken a rusty pocket knife to carve a pentagram on my chest for spiritual protection.
I did not have funds to fly home. My visa was connected to my previous job, which meant I had now made it void. I was an illegal resident now in China.
I used a nifty app called WeChat as a messaging app, it allows users to find people near them that are also looking for others. It was like a virtual pond. All kinds of people, including sex workers trying to make things happen.
It could with luck be used to find people looking for people in terms of other kinds of work. It was helpful on many occasions for finding gigs working at English training schools and also finding work as a private tutor for people.
WeChat also works as a digital wallet.
Mania makes me irritable. Enough to tell a boss to fuck off. Thoughts ricochet within me. Bumper cars collide.
Being stuck and angry sucks. I scrolled and scrolled on a Huawei phone.
Absolutely pissed off at this world.
Pissed at the times police wanted to take me away for being a mess.
Sometimes women get pissed. Scrolling through their phones. Angry at their cheating husbands. It really is not that hard to have flair—be a damn white oddity. Like moths to a porchlight. Particles of sand through hands. This is when I first started the habit of it…
I rather go by a rather empty name of Rayray… with further explanation needed but now is not convenient. But I assure it is interesting enough and has some importance.
Habits are various in nature in how they attach to and eat at marrow—like atom bombs flashing as rays evaporating DNA—sets in a way less than human as putting myself in the cage of bad things taken up—my time as a former heroin addict is left as stretch marks on me in various ways. The same goes for the first time I found myself making arrangements with middle aged married women while desperation of waves whiplashed me like sandpaper hands coming at me to leave me in a tiring state of abrasion.
I had spent a night snuck away into a hotel. Found someone on a business trip. Instead of registering I waited to sneak along into the hotel elevator amongst a group of others attending the hotel, as I had no card. I headed to a designated room number. Originally I was sitting in a park. Playing on WeChat and found someone in their mid-thirties. Pictures were exchanged and I said no. She brought up paying for the hotel if I arrived. I agreed and went along.
When I met I washed up after her and we used our phones to awkwardly translate what we would do.
Room service knocked. I found myself hidden under a bed as I was not registered to be there.
It seems unusual that it was around this time I had started working on a story of my life as a heroin addict when I got caught up in my worse manic episode ever experienced during my age of 22. Finished half that story before never going back to it after my manic episode had ended. Now I am here writing about it and wondering if the same can happen again in the process of this work.
It feels extremely cliché I would write a novel about struggles with heroin addiction. It has been done many times. It’s just lame of me.
I feel like my thoughts are bit off. I left the hotel the next morning with the little money I did have on a debit card. Turns out the woman was from Taiyuan. It is a city in the northern part of China in the province of Shanxi—coal country with the worst air pollution in China. She has a colleague in Taiyuan that takes courses at an English training center. I was able to contact this place in the morning via a shared contact on WeChat given to me by the stranger I met that night.
Before I knew it I was sending my information and documents in my backpack at an internet café in a fax—with the intent that the woman agreed to share my information to the training center as she shared my contact to its hiring manager. It would land me a job that day that would help me out of my situation. Things turned not quite out as I expected though. I was shifted like a ball to somebody else to contact for a training center geared to teaching children.
I took what I had and ran off to a train station after taking the public transit. Unfortunately I was shit for money and could not afford a high speed rail pass. The slow train would take thirty-two hours to get to my destination. I would have taken a room with a bed but all I could afford was a hard seat for the travel.
Things were getting better for me in the circumstance considering I had found someone willing to take me for work despite my visa situation.
The thirty-two hour train ride was horrendous in some ways, but mostly I was in excitement despite the circumstances. I’m always giddy when disappointed. I moved up and down the aisle of the train. I could not speak mandarin, but it did not stop me from trying to interact with everyone. I talked many ears off during the train ride. I went up and down the aisle trying to interact as a moth to porchlights—I could not stop even if I had wanted to. I found great enjoyment the times I did get to sit across a table from somebody my age heading to Taiyuan from Chongqing. They were a university student returning to their hometown. Another passenger who sat beside me was an elderly man with hard boiled eggs, he was eating one after another one. I highly enjoyed each and every conversation that I had. It was like my head was a lightbulb wanting June bugs to bang against it with the intensity of Roman candles shot at my mouth of nicotine tinged teeth.

“If you find someone in Shanxi it is practice to pay the family money before you can get married. You would also have to already own a home and a car,” told my new friend across in their seat from me—a university passenger friend named David.

“Not necessarily what I was looking for. When is the next stop for snacks?” When the train stops I am able to get out and to have a walk onto the platform to buy various goods from the vendors to take back with me to eat along the ride to Taiyuan.

I had all my important documents tucked in my bag. This included my health clearance and obviously I made no mention of my mental health diagnosis or history to the doctor who had to evaluate me. My diploma and TEFL certificate were tucked away securely. A TEFL is a certificate that stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, it qualifies me to teach English as a second language abroad—it had only took a few months of taking a course online that I had paid for to obtain.
It is easy to be happy when you can trick yourself as your own con artist. Mania can make you deceive yourself. One can be doused in napalm and still not fully recognize what is actually going on. Same goes the flicking of psychosis. Even when I have nothing I find myself in my radiating irritation the most qualified of things—the velocity of my rhythm sets me out of an orbit.
The pressure cooker keeps me moving like a propeller at times. I finally arrived at Taiyuan. I arrived at the station to be greeted by Ryan my manager and his assistant Jennifer. We had our hello and introduction and they helped me get to a taxi that would bring me to my new apartment. I finally had a residence again. Apparently they were desperate for a teacher. The last teacher was from New Mexico and apparently they pulled a midnight run—that is when a teacher in the middle of the night disappears onto a plane back home without any notification of it.
The apartment was okay. On the fourth floor with no elevator, so it was a bit of a climb up a dark stairwell not lit correctly.
My job was a training center that had a location near Yingze Park in the center of the city. I was to be paid in cash via envelopes. I would assist in teaching kindergarten all the way up to high school aged students there in private lessons paid by their parents. I would also be assigned by my company to various primary schools in the city. I would take public buses to various schools paid by the company I worked for to give English lessons as I bounced around to various classrooms and schools in the city. Often I would receive a phone call to avoid going to work that day if my boss got inside input that officials would be doing raids to check foreigners’ visas that day.

A taxi ride would always be a thrill. Caused me nerves at first, but I came to love the flying in dangerous ways along a busy road. I remember a driver beeping their horn away as they drove onto the sidewalk to pass people. They treated the pedestrians as if they were in the wrong. I came flying in front of a primary school at its front gates. I was going to start teaching a first grade classroom and a kindergarten classroom. The way schools are set up is with a wall around the entirety of the exterior of the school. There is a gate at the front where one or two security will be waiting to let people in and out of the complex of the school.

I walked in front of the gate to greet the security. It was my first time with an assignment at this school. The guard said they had never seen me before and wouldn’t let me in. Not a big nuisance while I called my boss who then called the school to sort out the situation.

I miss the classroom so much. I ended up teaching in China for five years at various training schools. After returning to Illinois, I still taught as a primary school teacher in a public school.

I often feel extremely ugly from inside to my outside, but something is attractive there. This does not come just in terms of flirting and relationships—mania makes me a genuine lightbulb that flickers in a way that encourages the insects to me—everyone looks like a June bug—this is what I have come to understand about life. But that ugly does kind of stay like rot in a cavity that leaves a bad taste in the mouth that smells foul—hoping nobody catches the smell near me—it must tie into my struggles with bulimia over the years.

The same goes for my years as a teacher—in relation to the whole lightbulb phenomenon—I’m positive it is tied to mania and hypomania. The younger students always were fixated on the information I was teaching to them. I kept over the years methods taught to me and self-taught that I found extremely effective with younger students when it comes to teaching.
Everything was physical in learning in terms of intensity and ambition. When teaching my first grade classroom I would create flashcards for the vocab we would work on and implement in creating new sentences with. We would chant these words together in a way that made me a clown while teaching. Students would yell out the word that I presented with intense enthusiasm. As I walked by students it was expected that while they yelled out the word they would also physically hit the card. Later I would also work on physical gestures and acting out of vocab words and they would follow the actions and phrases with me.
I would often eventually turn the class into two teams. When students got an answer right I would behave comically and full of energy—I would give them a high five and pretend they were so strong with it that it hurt my hand in the process with much exaggeration—the students always seemed to never get tired of this act.
One game I would play involved drawing two stick figures with happy faces on them. Each figure would represent one of the teams for the classroom. I would draw a hungry alligator under the figures. Their faces would also be comical in appearance and full of exaggerations. Each figure had a parachute placed over them and four strings attached. During the game the students would race to say the word correctly represented on the flashcard or the correct word for the gesture I was making. The team that was not the slowest would lose a string on the parachute. If a team lost all four strings they would fall to the alligator who would eat them. The students found it hilarious with my actions involved in it. I would also draw tears and a person praying to represent anticipation and worry of falling down each time they lost a string.
I had a tooth game too. I would draw too large faces for each team. The team that could answer the flashcards and gestures the quickest would have a tooth drawn in their mouth. The team with the most teeth would win and it would look rather funny as the mouth grew and grew with an abnormal and extreme amount of teeth.
I often did other physical and interactive games like having students run to the word I showed a card to or gestured—each word would be attached to a point in the classroom on a wall.
I know it sounds grandiose, but the parents always seemed to think I was great at my job.
The word vulnerable means so many things to me. That word is like the coal to form the generator that makes the guiding energy for the ethics I follow in my life—I hold very strongly to these values that have developed on how to live—I can express it more later but I greatly attach a kind of Christian value system to it, which makes sense considering I was raised in a Lutheran household and always went to church, Sunday school, and went to my courses and went through my confirmation—everyone is a bit of a mop—some pick up clean water and others dirty or a mix of it—waiting to find the people to drain them voluntarily or involuntarily. I was born vulnerable. I walk pigeon-toed and grew up tripping on my feet—I speak with a soft feminine voice. Bipolar disorder makes somebody vulnerable. There was much vulnerability in being eighteen and hospitalized involuntarily for my first manic episode—tied to a stretcher. I have almost a sense of us vs them—the vulnerable and those that harm the vulnerable—take advantage of the vulnerable—I feel this is a very much Christian in the idea of the unfortunate are more holy than the rest of the bunch—children are like that in terms of being born into a cruel existence—a cruel existence I felt at times in my life and so many do—making sure harm does not come to those in need gives the light of purpose to go bright inside like a Christmas tree in my brain—this light of happiness and warmth. I never expected I would fall in love for teaching due to the antidepressant effect provided. It would become my career for a decade. Some grow up wanting to be a teacher, I became one by accident, desperation, and being saved.
Sometimes I inflate on self-hate like a helium balloon that needs to be tied to a wrist to not float away.
In my early teens I started struggling with bulimia and image. I remember when my mother caught me in the act. I was not offered help but criticized. I was called a girl for my problems and threatened to be taken somewhere to be fixed of my confusion. I don’t identify as transgender. I identify as a man that struggles with bulimia and happens to have feminine qualities.
I attribute it to circumstances that happened to me—a justification for the pain at times—an attack on aspects of bisexuality.
After a long day of work I did what my young self often did. I went clubbing with friends. I feel like even if I hide aspects of myself such as being bisexual, people can spot it regardless. I’m extremely secretive about it and not comfortable displaying that vulnerable aspect of myself.
My friend from England went with me. He was about six years my senior. Big guy. Tall. The clubs name was Maoye.
I always enjoyed the free drinks available to foreigners—it was done to attract Chinese clients, as the idea was foreigners being there would attract people.
Amongst the hot and sweltering crowd a man grabbed ahold of me. I felt stuck. I was taken off guard. Pushed and cornered. While on me I managed to push him off. But it all serves as a reminder of the vulnerability of my life.
A nail was placed into my hand—a constant burn and reminder of that vulnerability.

Part 2
From self-hate I can also be so grandiose. I am like a Christmas tree that is lit up. Sparklers so pretty that you cannot let go of them, even if it burns your fingertips and hurts.

From heroin to sex, you can smother the pain. You drain the ocean to fill a void in these times. It ties to mania as well. That restlessness and irritability is extinguished by the paradox of throwing kerosene to everything burning. I’m so grandiose to hide my insecurities, I mistake my misfortune as a mark of something ugly virtuous—the neon of vulnerability pulsating like a star within me. Swelling on a pain.

Bad habits. I want you to judge me and tell me what’s wrong with me. Give me a verdict.
Stress a trigger for mania, and I was stressed from the incident I had experienced at the club. I bloated like a tick to distract from locusts of thoughts that could not shut up with their commotion.
I had been sleeping around more than before. My brain was Christmas tree lights. I accelerated on a generator—I made a mixed episode worse.
Tease a disaster when you are heightened like a blimp. Full of hydrogen. Hoping to burn up ad rain down like napalm.
When the pretty candles on the Christmas tree are left untouched—not looked at like a kettle on burner that has been forgotten—the dry neglected tree will into a house fire.
I’ve had four attempts in my life so far.
When I attempt I don’t cry for help. I feel too vulnerable. I’m afraid.
Hate police and wards.
Downing pills.
My past failed attempts made me aware of everything done wrong before. The sleeping pills alone might not do what I was looking for at that time. I bought an electrical cable. This way if it failed I would still be unconscious and choked out by the cord—fail safe plan to end my life.
The words coming out of my mouth slowed down. I started getting second thoughts. Stuck my face towards the toilet bowl while on my knees. Sticking my fingers down my throat. Leaving blood vessels bursting in my eyes.
Went stumbling outside and waved a taxi down and asked to be taken to the local hospital.
Never expected finding myself checked into a psych ward in a foreign country.
Nietzsche has a quote in reference to chaos in life and how it is needed to create a star—this reference holds so much value to me. Sometimes stars hit together just right to create fate out of the worst of things. The ward lead me to meet the woman made of paper. She would one day become my wife. I would have two daughters with her. Forge together as soldiers to face the obstacles in life. Someone who would save my life during a future attempt when I was found unconscious from an overdose. The smartest and toughest woman I have ever known. Someone to build trenches with.
I liked it when she stuck that needle in me for an IV. It must correlate to being a heroin addict. The pushing of something in my vein correlates to happiness and purity.
The woman made out of paper was my nurse in the ward I was stuck in. What attracted her to the mess that is me I will never understand fully.
The woman made out of paper is named Lilu. She was one year older than me and one of my nurses at that ward in Taiyuan. She was from Zhengzhou—a city in the province of Henan that is based in the center of China. I am sure as the reader it would be nice to know why I call her the woman made of paper.
She struggled with her own demons. She also deserves much praise for her resilience and brains. When she was born she was raised by a family that adopted her and often neglected and abused her growing up. Her biological family is distant from her, even though she has an identical twin—they felt too poor to take care of her and made the choice that they needed to be less of one child as she also has an older sister—her twin got to stay with that family but she was given up and adopted. I am sure this must bother her even if she never will talk about it to anyone in her life—as she is one to refuse ever discussing emotions and feelings, as this is not her personality type—she is very much a fighter. I think most would struggle with wondering why they were the one let go of—it also must hurt her knowing that the family would have a son and keep him.
Despite all these circumstances, she graduated top of her class of four thousand students—Chinese high schools can be quite large serving a large region—they often serve as boarding schools. She was a smart and hardworking student. Circumstances never made her stop trying to be the best and moving forward and she never made excuses for herself. In university she also did well and got accepted at the most studious and hard to obtain nursing position at the number one hospital in Shanxi.
I have already ranted and gone on about my affection and feelings tied to heroin. Drinking of entire oceans to fill voids.
Paper is a void. It asks for calligraphy to be written on it to make braille. This way when fingers run over skin to tell its worth—the reason for its troubles on display—it forms connection through those words of declaration—the whining for why things are the way they are—the filling of a void like a heroin addict needing a cure to cure kicking legs—two papers come together to write upon one another—as a paper I am her typo—I stand as a falling mess with nerves like tripwire, I keep failing and losing my composer, while she stands stronger as a declaration that has been written on me, my very own typewriter—when I was chased I listened to her and joined as one. I wish and intend to always serve the woman made out of paper who has saved my life and has always been there for me, being so strong despite circumstances—amongst the wind of turmoil in life I follow along her path like a sail.
It was love at first sight for her but not for me. I had no interest in dating her at the time. I worked across the street of that hospital in an office building for a training center as a part time job. I would teach adults English who paid for private lessons near to Yingze park in the center of Taiyuan. She signed up for classes for me to teach her and brought me food on almost every other day that she had prepared. Eventually we found ourselves coupled fully.
As paper we write on each other—eat each other.

~Rayray~
It felt frustrating in Chongqing. I was rather stuck in Hechuan. I got accustomed to lajiao (spice) there. I was a Midwesterner at the age of 22. I was raised in Illinois. I became a manic—a Ferris wheel on fire—I was hiding under a bed in a hotel. Bold like napalm. Sometimes I can never stop. Even when I was 18 in a ward arguing with staff. Always want to fight things. That’s why I refused the meds and went on a plane from America to China. I was going to be an English teacher. And like a light switch, the change and SSRIs turned me into a mess. It would be my first time experiencing psychosis. My biggest issue. I never imagined I would be stuck illegally in a country suffering a psychotic episode in my early twenties.
Transplanted as pollen. I was left with a backpack and a cellphone. With a downloaded app called WeChat. I had arrogantly quit a university job in a fit. Spent the past months full of energy and not sleeping and neglecting myself, including not eating, to work on a novel. Not considering myself normally religious, I had obsessed over occult ideas during that time. Spending nights reading Aleister Crowley—haven taken a rusty pocket knife to carve a pentagram on my chest for spiritual protection.
I did not have funds to fly home. My visa was connected to my previous job, which meant I had now made it void. I was an illegal resident now in China.
I used a nifty app called WeChat as a messaging app, it allows users to find people near them that are also looking for others. It was like a virtual pond. All kinds of people, including sex workers trying to make things happen.
It could with luck be used to find people looking for people in terms of other kinds of work. It was helpful on many occasions for finding gigs working at English training schools and also finding work as a private tutor for people.
WeChat also works as a digital wallet.
Mania makes me irritable. Enough to tell a boss to fuck off. Thoughts ricochet within me. Bumper cars collide.
Being stuck and angry sucks. I scrolled and scrolled on a Huawei phone.
Absolutely pissed off at this world.
Pissed at the times police wanted to take me away for being a mess.
Sometimes women get pissed. Scrolling through their phones. Angry at their cheating husbands. It really is not that hard to have flair—be a damn white oddity. Like moths to a porchlight. Particles of sand through hands. This is when I first started the habit of it…
I rather go by a rather empty name of Rayray… with further explanation needed but now is not convenient. But I assure it is interesting enough and has some importance.
Habits are various in nature in how they attach to and eat at marrow—like atom bombs flashing as rays evaporating DNA—sets in a way less than human as putting myself in the cage of bad things taken up—my time as a former heroin addict is left as stretch marks on me in various ways. The same goes for the first time I found myself making arrangements with middle aged married women while desperation of waves whiplashed me like sandpaper hands coming at me to leave me in a tiring state of abrasion.
I had spent a night snuck away into a hotel. Found someone on a business trip. Instead of registering I waited to sneak along into the hotel elevator amongst a group of others attending the hotel, as I had no card. I headed to a designated room number. Originally I was sitting in a park. Playing on WeChat and found someone in their mid-thirties. Pictures were exchanged and I said no. She brought up paying for the hotel if I arrived. I agreed and went along.
When I met I washed up after her and we used our phones to awkwardly translate what we would do.
Room service knocked. I found myself hidden under a bed as I was not registered to be there.
It seems unusual that it was around this time I had started working on a story of my life as a heroin addict when I got caught up in my worse manic episode ever experienced during my age of 22. Finished half that story before never going back to it after my manic episode had ended. Now I am here writing about it and wondering if the same can happen again in the process of this work.
It feels extremely cliché I would write a novel about struggles with heroin addiction. It has been done many times. It’s just lame of me.
I feel like my thoughts are bit off. I left the hotel the next morning with the little money I did have on a debit card. Turns out the woman was from Taiyuan. It is a city in the northern part of China in the province of Shanxi—coal country with the worst air pollution in China. She has a colleague in Taiyuan that takes courses at an English training center. I was able to contact this place in the morning via a shared contact on WeChat given to me by the stranger I met that night.
Before I knew it I was sending my information and documents in my backpack at an internet café in a fax—with the intent that the woman agreed to share my information to the training center as she shared my contact to its hiring manager. It would land me a job that day that would help me out of my situation. Things turned not quite out as I expected though. I was shifted like a ball to somebody else to contact for a training center geared to teaching children.
I took what I had and ran off to a train station after taking the public transit. Unfortunately I was shit for money and could not afford a high speed rail pass. The slow train would take thirty-two hours to get to my destination. I would have taken a room with a bed but all I could afford was a hard seat for the travel.
Things were getting better for me in the circumstance considering I had found someone willing to take me for work despite my visa situation.
The thirty-two hour train ride was horrendous in some ways, but mostly I was in excitement despite the circumstances. I’m always giddy when disappointed. I moved up and down the aisle of the train. I could not speak mandarin, but it did not stop me from trying to interact with everyone. I talked many ears off during the train ride. I went up and down the aisle trying to interact as a moth to porchlights—I could not stop even if I had wanted to. I found great enjoyment the times I did get to sit across a table from somebody my age heading to Taiyuan from Chongqing. They were a university student returning to their hometown. Another passenger who sat beside me was an elderly man with hard boiled eggs, he was eating one after another one. I highly enjoyed each and every conversation that I had. It was like my head was a lightbulb wanting June bugs to bang against it with the intensity of Roman candles shot at my mouth of nicotine tinged teeth.

“If you find someone in Shanxi it is practice to pay the family money before you can get married. You would also have to already own a home and a car,” told my new friend across in their seat from me—a university passenger friend named David.

“Not necessarily what I was looking for. When is the next stop for snacks?” When the train stops I am able to get out and to have a walk onto the platform to buy various goods from the vendors to take back with me to eat along the ride to Taiyuan.

I had all my important documents tucked in my bag. This included my health clearance and obviously I made no mention of my mental health diagnosis or history to the doctor who had to evaluate me. My diploma and TEFL certificate were tucked away securely. A TEFL is a certificate that stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, it qualifies me to teach English as a second language abroad—it had only took a few months of taking a course online that I had paid for to obtain.
It is easy to be happy when you can trick yourself as your own con artist. Mania can make you deceive yourself. One can be doused in napalm and still not fully recognize what is actually going on. Same goes the flicking of psychosis. Even when I have nothing I find myself in my radiating irritation the most qualified of things—the velocity of my rhythm sets me out of an orbit.
The pressure cooker keeps me moving like a propeller at times. I finally arrived at Taiyuan. I arrived at the station to be greeted by Ryan my manager and his assistant Jennifer. We had our hello and introduction and they helped me get to a taxi that would bring me to my new apartment. I finally had a residence again. Apparently they were desperate for a teacher. The last teacher was from New Mexico and apparently they pulled a midnight run—that is when a teacher in the middle of the night disappears onto a plane back home without any notification of it.
The apartment was okay. On the fourth floor with no elevator, so it was a bit of a climb up a dark stairwell not lit correctly.
My job was a training center that had a location near Yingze Park in the center of the city. I was to be paid in cash via envelopes. I would assist in teaching kindergarten all the way up to high school aged students there in private lessons paid by their parents. I would also be assigned by my company to various primary schools in the city. I would take public buses to various schools paid by the company I worked for to give English lessons as I bounced around to various classrooms and schools in the city. Often I would receive a phone call to avoid going to work that day if my boss got inside input that officials would be doing raids to check foreigners’ visas that day.

A taxi ride would always be a thrill. Caused me nerves at first, but I came to love the flying in dangerous ways along a busy road. I remember a driver beeping their horn away as they drove onto the sidewalk to pass people. They treated the pedestrians as if they were in the wrong. I came flying in front of a primary school at its front gates. I was going to start teaching a first grade classroom and a kindergarten classroom. The way schools are set up is with a wall around the entirety of the exterior of the school. There is a gate at the front where one or two security will be waiting to let people in and out of the complex of the school.

I walked in front of the gate to greet the security. It was my first time with an assignment at this school. The guard said they had never seen me before and wouldn’t let me in. Not a big nuisance while I called my boss who then called the school to sort out the situation.

I miss the classroom so much. I ended up teaching in China for five years at various training schools. After returning to Illinois, I still taught as a primary school teacher in a public school.

I often feel extremely ugly from inside to my outside, but something is attractive there. This does not come just in terms of flirting and relationships—mania makes me a genuine lightbulb that flickers in a way that encourages the insects to me—everyone looks like a June bug—this is what I have come to understand about life. But that ugly does kind of stay like rot in a cavity that leaves a bad taste in the mouth that smells foul—hoping nobody catches the smell near me—it must tie into my struggles with bulimia over the years.

The same goes for my years as a teacher—in relation to the whole lightbulb phenomenon—I’m positive it is tied to mania and hypomania. The younger students always were fixated on the information I was teaching to them. I kept over the years methods taught to me and self-taught that I found extremely effective with younger students when it comes to teaching.
Everything was physical in learning in terms of intensity and ambition. When teaching my first grade classroom I would create flashcards for the vocab we would work on and implement in creating new sentences with. We would chant these words together in a way that made me a clown while teaching. Students would yell out the word that I presented with intense enthusiasm. As I walked by students it was expected that while they yelled out the word they would also physically hit the card. Later I would also work on physical gestures and acting out of vocab words and they would follow the actions and phrases with me.
I would often eventually turn the class into two teams. When students got an answer right I would behave comically and full of energy—I would give them a high five and pretend they were so strong with it that it hurt my hand in the process with much exaggeration—the students always seemed to never get tired of this act.
One game I would play involved drawing two stick figures with happy faces on them. Each figure would represent one of the teams for the classroom. I would draw a hungry alligator under the figures. Their faces would also be comical in appearance and full of exaggerations. Each figure had a parachute placed over them and four strings attached. During the game the students would race to say the word correctly represented on the flashcard or the correct word for the gesture I was making. The team that was not the slowest would lose a string on the parachute. If a team lost all four strings they would fall to the alligator who would eat them. The students found it hilarious with my actions involved in it. I would also draw tears and a person praying to represent anticipation and worry of falling down each time they lost a string.
I had a tooth game too. I would draw too large faces for each team. The team that could answer the flashcards and gestures the quickest would have a tooth drawn in their mouth. The team with the most teeth would win and it would look rather funny as the mouth grew and grew with an abnormal and extreme amount of teeth.
I often did other physical and interactive games like having students run to the word I showed a card to or gestured—each word would be attached to a point in the classroom on a wall.
I know it sounds grandiose, but the parents always seemed to think I was great at my job.
The word vulnerable means so many things to me. That word is like the coal to form the generator that makes the guiding energy for the ethics I follow in my life—I hold very strongly to these values that have developed on how to live—I can express it more later but I greatly attach a kind of Christian value system to it, which makes sense considering I was raised in a Lutheran household and always went to church, Sunday school, and went to my courses and went through my confirmation—everyone is a bit of a mop—some pick up clean water and others dirty or a mix of it—waiting to find the people to drain them voluntarily or involuntarily. I was born vulnerable. I walk pigeon-toed and grew up tripping on my feet—I speak with a soft feminine voice. Bipolar disorder makes somebody vulnerable. There was much vulnerability in being eighteen and hospitalized involuntarily for my first manic episode—tied to a stretcher. I have almost a sense of us vs them—the vulnerable and those that harm the vulnerable—take advantage of the vulnerable—I feel this is a very much Christian in the idea of the unfortunate are more holy than the rest of the bunch—children are like that in terms of being born into a cruel existence—a cruel existence I felt at times in my life and so many do—making sure harm does not come to those in need gives the light of purpose to go bright inside like a Christmas tree in my brain—this light of happiness and warmth. I never expected I would fall in love for teaching due to the antidepressant effect provided. It would become my career for a decade. Some grow up wanting to be a teacher, I became one by accident, desperation, and being saved.
Sometimes I inflate on self-hate like a helium balloon that needs to be tied to a wrist to not float away.
In my early teens I started struggling with bulimia and image. I remember when my mother caught me in the act. I was not offered help but criticized. I was called a girl for my problems and threatened to be taken somewhere to be fixed of my confusion. I don’t identify as transgender. I identify as a man that struggles with bulimia and happens to have feminine qualities.
I attribute it to circumstances that happened to me—a justification for the pain at times—an attack on aspects of bisexuality.
After a long day of work I did what my young self often did. I went clubbing with friends. I feel like even if I hide aspects of myself such as being bisexual, people can spot it regardless. I’m extremely secretive about it and not comfortable displaying that vulnerable aspect of myself.
My friend from England went with me. He was about six years my senior. Big guy. Tall. The clubs name was Maoye.
I always enjoyed the free drinks available to foreigners—it was done to attract Chinese clients, as the idea was foreigners being there would attract people.
Amongst the hot and sweltering crowd a man grabbed ahold of me. I felt stuck. I was taken off guard. Pushed and cornered. While on me I managed to push him off. But it all serves as a reminder of the vulnerability of my life.
A nail was placed into my hand—a constant burn and reminder of that vulnerability.

Part 2
From self-hate I can also be so grandiose. I am like a Christmas tree that is lit up. Sparklers so pretty that you cannot let go of them, even if it burns your fingertips and hurts.

From heroin to sex, you can smother the pain. You drain the ocean to fill a void in these times. It ties to mania as well. That restlessness and irritability is extinguished by the paradox of throwing kerosene to everything burning. I’m so grandiose to hide my insecurities, I mistake my misfortune as a mark of something ugly virtuous—the neon of vulnerability pulsating like a star within me. Swelling on a pain.

Bad habits. I want you to judge me and tell me what’s wrong with me. Give me a verdict.
Stress a trigger for mania, and I was stressed from the incident I had experienced at the club. I bloated like a tick to distract from locusts of thoughts that could not shut up with their commotion.
I had been sleeping around more than before. My brain was Christmas tree lights. I accelerated on a generator—I made a mixed episode worse.
Tease a disaster when you are heightened like a blimp. Full of hydrogen. Hoping to burn up ad rain down like napalm.
When the pretty candles on the Christmas tree are left untouched—not looked at like a kettle on burner that has been forgotten—the dry neglected tree will into a house fire.
I’ve had four attempts in my life so far.
When I attempt I don’t cry for help. I feel too vulnerable. I’m afraid.
Hate police and wards.
Downing pills.
My past failed attempts made me aware of everything done wrong before. The sleeping pills alone might not do what I was looking for at that time. I bought an electrical cable. This way if it failed I would still be unconscious and choked out by the cord—fail safe plan to end my life.
The words coming out of my mouth slowed down. I started getting second thoughts. Stuck my face towards the toilet bowl while on my knees. Sticking my fingers down my throat. Leaving blood vessels bursting in my eyes.
Went stumbling outside and waved a taxi down and asked to be taken to the local hospital.
Never expected finding myself checked into a psych ward in a foreign country.
Nietzsche has a quote in reference to chaos in life and how it is needed to create a star—this reference holds so much value to me. Sometimes stars hit together just right to create fate out of the worst of things. The ward lead me to meet the woman made of paper. She would one day become my wife. I would have two daughters with her. Forge together as soldiers to face the obstacles in life. Someone who would save my life during a future attempt when I was found unconscious from an overdose. The smartest and toughest woman I have ever known. Someone to build trenches with.
I liked it when she stuck that needle in me for an IV. It must correlate to being a heroin addict. The pushing of something in my vein correlates to happiness and purity.
The woman made out of paper was my nurse in the ward I was stuck in. What attracted her to the mess that is me I will never understand fully.
The woman made out of paper is named Lilu. She was one year older than me and one of my nurses at that ward in Taiyuan. She was from Zhengzhou—a city in the province of Henan that is based in the center of China. I am sure as the reader it would be nice to know why I call her the woman made of paper.
She struggled with her own demons. She also deserves much praise for her resilience and brains. When she was born she was raised by a family that adopted her and often neglected and abused her growing up. Her biological family is distant from her, even though she has an identical twin—they felt too poor to take care of her and made the choice that they needed to be less of one child as she also has an older sister—her twin got to stay with that family but she was given up and adopted. I am sure this must bother her even if she never will talk about it to anyone in her life—as she is one to refuse ever discussing emotions and feelings, as this is not her personality type—she is very much a fighter. I think most would struggle with wondering why they were the one let go of—it also must hurt her knowing that the family would have a son and keep him.
Despite all these circumstances, she graduated top of her class of four thousand students—Chinese high schools can be quite large serving a large region—they often serve as boarding schools. She was a smart and hardworking student. Circumstances never made her stop trying to be the best and moving forward and she never made excuses for herself. In university she also did well and got accepted at the most studious and hard to obtain nursing position at the number one hospital in Shanxi.
I have already ranted and gone on about my affection and feelings tied to heroin. Drinking of entire oceans to fill voids.
Paper is a void. It asks for calligraphy to be written on it to make braille. This way when fingers run over skin to tell its worth—the reason for its troubles on display—it forms connection through those words of declaration—the whining for why things are the way they are—the filling of a void like a heroin addict needing a cure to cure kicking legs—two papers come together to write upon one another—as a paper I am her typo—I stand as a falling mess with nerves like tripwire, I keep failing and losing my composer, while she stands stronger as a declaration that has been written on me, my very own typewriter—when I was chased I listened to her and joined as one. I wish and intend to always serve the woman made out of paper who has saved my life and has always been there for me, being so strong despite circumstances—amongst the wind of turmoil in life I follow along her path like a sail.
It was love at first sight for her but not for me. I had no interest in dating her at the time. I worked across the street of that hospital in an office building for a training center as a part time job. I would teach adults English who paid for private lessons near to Yingze park in the center of Taiyuan. She signed up for classes for me to teach her and brought me food on almost every other day that she had prepared. Eventually we found ourselves coupled fully.
As paper we write on each other—eat each other.

Hello out there! I am posting this because I just had surgery 6/4/24, I am 4 days post op, and before my surgery I had a lot of anxiety and couldn’t find a ton of information about my specific mix of surgeries and the associated recovery. I have a moderate amount of anxiety (like every 45yo probably does) and spent a lot of time trying to ease my fears online prior to the surgery without really getting any comfort! lol
I had a total hysterectomy ( left my ovaries in place) along with a cystocele and rectocele repair. The doctor also used a bladder sling. Here is a summary of my recovery timeline to date:
Day zero - walking up from surgery I felt a lot of pressure in my abdomen, like I needed to poop and I felt uncomfortably full. I had the nurse help me attempt to go to the bathroom several times (hint: no poop!!!) However I did not have much actual pain. Maybe a few twinges and a hard time sitting up because of the pressure but my husband drove me home and I went right to sleep. I was sent home with a Foley catheter, and was prescribed Percocet and ibuprofen. Also was told to take stool softeners in prep
I didn’t feel like eating but tried to take a couple bites of granola bar every time I took medication.
Day 1: I took the prescribed pain meds regularly but a little longer apart- maybe 7 hrs, and there was never any real “pain” as I would describe it, more discomfort and pressure. I was able to eat a little more on day 2- stayed in bed most of the day slept on and off. Took Senokot laxative at night.
Day 2: Still took prescribed pain meds, but my abdomen almost felt normal- the catheter has been the most irritating part of my recovery since day 2. I ate a little more than the day before and again spent all day in my room, however was walking around periodically. I was getting impatient and nervous about not pooping so I sat on the toilet and put my feet up on a squatty potty. This was a mistake- for the first time since surgery I had a small amount of actual cramping after I laid back down (and no poop). The cramping I had was NOT what I would normally call moderate or severe, it was mild- however I took pain meds and Senokot and went to sleep.
Day 3 Took Percocet at around 4:30 am and stopped taking it after that, switched to only ibuprofen. Rested most of the day however was able to go downstairs and eat dinner with my husband (it was our 10 yr anniversary- super cool timing for this). Felt no “pain” - again the biggest pain in the butt is still the catheter. Took ibuprofen and Senokot and went to sleep. STILL NO POOP! by this point I feel like I have eaten a lot so I was a little nervous.
Day 4 This morning I finally pooped- prior to pooping I had a couple mild pains (kind of shooting up my side) but the BM itself was not painful and my abdomen feels pretty normal this morning. I am walking around without pain and just taking it easy- if only I could get this catheter out but the Dr said to wait till Monday.
During this recovery I have realized that the pain I had prior to the surgery due to the multiple prolapsed organs was SOOO much worse than anything I have experienced post-op. I was minimizing the pain of my normal - splinting/twisting to poop. I also experienced pain during intercourse, difficulty with tampons, peeing when I coughed, pain with passing gas- if my pre- op experience sounds at all familiar- the surgery is worth it!!!!!!
Sorry this is so long 😊 I just wanted to be thorough!!!!

Consider offering your guests shots when you need to spice up your party, whether you provide them one at a time or as part of a game.
There are different types of shot drinks for you to choose from, guaranteed to get the party started. Here are different types of shot drinks you can serve at your next gathering!

Pina Colada

If you're looking for something fruity and fun, this type of shot drink is hard to beat. A traditional pina colada uses white rum, pineapple juice, and coconut cream, and it can be served in a coconut or pineapple-shaped glass as a bonus.
Pro tip: Skip ice if you want your frozen drink to be slightly diluted (we're not judging). You can opt for equal parts alcohol and liquid ingredients. Serve in cocktail glasses rimmed with sugar or salt.
Whether you like your tropical smooth or on the rocks, we think you'll love our take on one of the summer's most popular shots—but don't take our word for it!

Strawberry Daiquiri

Start your party off with a fun drink everyone will love. This type of shot drink is excellent for every occasion, and it's also a simple drink that everyone can make. It's perfect for summertime or when you have friends over at home.
You can also add different fruits, like blueberries if you want something even tastier. To get started making your own Strawberry Daiquiri. Take one part white rum and two parts sugar syrup (equal parts sugar and water).
Fresh strawberries and shaved ice in a cocktail shaker with a few dashes of lime juice will also be added. Shake up your mixture and pour over more ice in a rock glass before serving. You can get your different types of hot drinks as simple as that!

Classic Jagermeister

You may have had a few different types of hot drinks back in college, like Jager bombs. But you're likely going to want something more elegant than Red Bull and blue curacao once you reach adulthood. This type of shot drink is as simple as it gets.
Drop a sugar cube into your jager and let it dissolve. For an extra kick, light your jager on fire before drinking; (Nb: avoid doing shots if you plan on driving.)

Singapore Sling

This traditional drink is made with cherry brandy, Benedictine, and gin. It originated in Raffles Hotel Singapore during a period of British colonial rule. This shot drink was initially invented as a hangover cure, unlike the other different types of hot beverages.
The drinks' cherries came from Sir Stamford Raffles, founder of Singapore, and he brought them back from Malacca (Malaysia), where they are native.
However, his original recipe for it has been lost. If you know your history, please put that information into context. Thanks!

Bazooka Joe

A Banana, whipped cream, and vanilla ice cream are served with a gumball (Also known as Bananarama). A shooter shot with 1/2 oz Banana Liqueur, and 1/2 oz White Crème de Cacao. With two scoops of Vanilla Ice Cream. Shooters should be enjoyed responsibly and in moderation.
It will get you moving for sure! You can consume these shot drinks that are best consumed while playing twister on your living room floor!

Jack and Coke

As America's favorite whiskey and soda, Jack and Coke is one shot that's sure to please. Suppose you like your drinks a little on the sweet side. You can try adding a few extra ounces of cola (which also lightens it up).
It doesn't have quite as strong a bite as some other options. If you're trying out different types of hot drinks for the first time, this could be a good starter. For a bonus, make sure you don't add ice—the lack of dilution makes it more robust than it looks!
Finally, take it up another notch without watering down your drink too much. You can consider adding an ounce or two of 151-proof rum.

Shamrock

It is a traditional shot drink, usually done for St. Patrick's Day. It is a combination of Midori Melon Liqueur and Bailey's Irish Cream.
One-third Midori, one-third Bailey's, and one-third Green Crème de Menthe, or Grenadine (sweet syrup) are poured into a shot glass.
The name comes from how you must shake it before drinking it: shamrock. These different types of shot drink colors are unique, and it's green on top, white in the middle, and red on the bottom.

PB&J (Shaken Shot)

2 oz. Chocolate Liqueur, 2 oz. Peanut Butter Liqueur, 3 oz. Orange Juice, Ice, and Whipped Cream for garnish. Use a shaker and blender with ice.
You blend all ingredients until smooth before pouring them into shot glasses. Then rim your glass with peanut butter and sugar.
And turning it upside down in an orange juice glass to dip gives it a fantastic taste. Also called a Wham Bam or a Bam Bam! This is an excellent different type of hot drink.
It tastes like you spent hours making it (which you did) but takes only seconds to prepare!

Spicy Pineapple Shot

This type of shot drink is as good for you as delicious, unlike many other different types of hot drinks. Served in a small glass, add just a splash of Bacardi 151-proof rum and fill it with pineapple juice.
Then top it with fresh slices of jalapeno pepper. Be careful – you can't taste precisely how spicy they are! Warning: The natural heat here comes from both ends, first in your mouth with that hot pepper flavor and then – surprise! — at the end, you get a little burn from all that liquor.

Blue Kamikaze

This type of shot drink is made by mixing one part vodka, 1 part blue curacao, and two parts sweet and sour mix. Pour ingredients over ice cubes in a shot glass—drop shot into a collins glass filled with beer and serve.

Young Puss

11⁄2 ounces peach schnapps, 1⁄2 ounce melon liqueur.One tablespoon orange juice, dash grenadine syrup. Shake with ice; strain into a shot glass, and serve chilled.

Merry Gorilla

Two-ounce banana-flavored rum, 1⁄4 ounce coconut-flavored rum (or 1⁄2 ounce dark rum). Also, one scoop of vanilla ice cream or frozen yogurt, 11⁄2 ounces pineapple juice. Blend well with crushed ice in blender; pour into shooter glasses.

BMW (Shaken Shot)

The BMW shot is made with Jägermeister, Bacardi 151 Rum, and Red Bull. A BMW contains about as much alcohol as a six-pack, according to Business Insider.

Lumpy Dumpy (Shaken Shot)

The Lumpy Dumpling is made with Bailey's Irish Cream, Kahlúa, and a splash of Coca-Cola. These different types of hot drinks will leave you feeling dazed and confused—in other words, lumpy dumplings! The Irish cream should help counteract any nausea from consuming such large amounts of alcohol in one sitting.

Butterball

Liquor is dropped into a hot glass of black butter. It quickly separates into yellow fat (the drink) and brownish-gray scum (the bull). The scum is chased with a spoon.
Toby Maloney invented these different types of shot drinks at Chicago's Violet Hour bar. The name comes from its appearance—it looks like turkey gravy—and also because it kicks like one.

Cement Mixer

This combination tastes like a sweet, fruity version of Jägermeister—with a kick. Mix equal parts orange juice and Malibu coconut rum for this type of shot drink. Consequently, you can use these proportions for different shot drinks you prefer.
One part rye whiskey, two parts fresh lemon juice, and 1 part orange juice. Put them all in a cocktail shaker with ice, then add one scoop of vanilla ice cream.
Shake vigorously (or blend) until well mixed, then strain into two shot glasses through a fine-mesh strainer. Enjoy! It tastes just like Cement Mixer!

Chocolate Cake (Shaken Shot)

This shot drink is made with Irish cream and brown crème de cacao, and it's topped with whipped cream and chocolate cake sprinkles. Furthermore, the Ingredients are 2 oz. Bailey's Irish cream liqueur; 1 oz. crème de cacao (dark chocolate).
For the whipped cream, chocolate cake sprinkles. Instructions: Pour Bailey's Irish Cream into a glass and top with Crème de Cacao. Garnish it with a swirl of whipped cream and sprinkles.

Flaming Dr. Pepper (Bomb Shot)

This type of shot drink is made by dropping a flaming Dr. Pepper bomb into a pint glass filled with beer. If that sounds difficult, it's because it is.
Getting both lit and in place without extinguishing your drink or starting an unfortunate conflagration takes practice.
It's worth it, though. However, once you pop open a flaming drink, you can use that same fire for many other shots (see below). However, you get a different type of shot drink taste!

Flaming Jägermeister

Once you get started doing flaming shots, you can do lots of fun things with them. This shot involves dropping a single full Jägermeister shot into a pint glass filled with beer. Lighting it on fire and then chugging away before all of your alcohol burns off.

Four Horsemen

Many Americans recognize that Four Horsemen is also an excellent different type of shot drink. Moreover, these four drinks are made with Tequila, Jagermeister, Rumple Minze, and peppermint schnapps—and they're ready for action! They're easy to prepare.
To make it easy on yourself:

1. Try making them in layers.
2. Mix a couple of tablespoons of each shot into equal parts (by volume) of cream liqueur and sour mix.
3. Top each glass off with cola or root beer and stir it.

You can rim your glasses with salt or sugar, but it's optional!

Irish Car Bomb

This recipe is for one shot and has quite a bit going on. This shot drink is made by placing Irish whiskey, Bailey's Irish Cream, and Jameson in a pint glass. Therefore, you dropped them into a cup of coffee.
The coffee works as an accelerant to make all three ingredients pour more quickly. Better than if they were just run individually. A spoon is used to stir until it's evenly mixed.
Lastly, add whipped cream with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top for extra flair. This, however, creates different types of hot drinks!

Jolly Rancher

This candy-inspired shot includes vodka, are ̀me de Menthe, and Irish cream liqueur. Trust us. This is one you won't want to miss. (via The Tipsy Bartender) First off, these are shots, not a drink!
There are no mixers involved, and it's just straight liquor poured into a glass with some flavoring agent or sweetener. And they have shot drinks! Shots can be sweet or sour, transparent or opaque.
It can have different liquors depending on what flavor profile you're going for, even though there is no limit to creating different types of shot drinks flavors.
You make sure your liquids don't contain any additives, preventing them from being consumed quickly (such as water).

Red Snapper

It's not a fish! The red snapper is one type of shooter. This type of shot drink starts with one shot of Bacardi 151 (the most substantial variety).
Followed by 1 shot each from amaretto, blue curacao, creme de banana, Jagermeister, and Tuaca. While known for being potent, these different types of shot drinks don't taste as strong as you would think.

Lime Drop

A lime drop shot is made by adding equal parts water and sugar syrup, 1/2 oz. Vodka, and 2 tsp. Lime juice. The mixture is then shaken over ice and into a shot glass before it's garnished with a wedge of lime.
Depending on your preference, it can also be served straight up without mixing. Suppose you want to mix things up even more.
Attempt making a Watermelon Lime Drop by replacing some or all of the water in your recipe with watermelon juice! These different hot drink types will give you an entirely new flavor perfect for summertime parties.
Conclusion
So whether you're looking for something substantial, sweet, fruity, or alcoholic, these different types of shot drinks are all delicious ways to get your party started. And if you don't have any alcohol on hand? No worries—these recipes will still make a great party drink. Enjoy!

The medication has pretty much stopped working. It was amazing for the first nine days, then pretty good for a few months and then slowly back to square one.
I was wondering if anyone has ever tried to stop and restart as to get that beginning stage back? I want to feel good again. It’s a cruel joke to feel the best I ever had and see what that feels like for it to be slowly ripped away.
I asked my prescriber about it and as usual, she shows her scary level of knowledge about medications and psych care in general. She’s a nurse practitioner and I can’t even understand how this woman graduated to a point where she is allowed to treat and medicate people.

So, I've read through many posts looking for a system for my recipes. I am wondering what you would do different as far as categories. I have;
Appetizers/Dips, Bar Cookies, Beef, Beverages, Breads/Rolls, Breakfast, Cakes, Candy/Fudge, Casseroles, Chicken/Poultry, Cookies/Balls, Crusts/Dough, Desserts, Ethnic, Fish/Seafood, Frostings/Glazes, Gravies/Sauces, Holiday, Home Remedies, Jellies/Jams, Marinades/Seasonings, Misc, Muffins/Biscuits, Pasta, Pastry/Doughnuts, Pickles/Brines, Pies/Tarts, Pizzas, Pork/Ham, Potatoes, Quiches, Rice Dishes, Salads -Veg/Dessert, Sandwiches, Sides, Soups/Chili, Vegetables, Veggie Dishes
I am trying to get away from sub categories.

EDIT I meant 12 years and I am 25f. Clumsy fingers.
I (25f) have two children with my boyfriend (28m). I love my kids and they bring me so much joy and happiness. I had my oldest when I was 18 and I had my youngest a couple years ago. I have been with my boyfriend since high school. We both have been through so much in life together from meeting in high school, him moving in with me my family due to his upbringing. We both came to an agreement that I would stay home with our kids while he worked since daycare so expensive. He left his 9-5 to pursue his own business. When he decided to do this, it made a lot of stress off his shoulders and he wasn’t working morning til night. He can make his own schedule and be home a lot more. I love this for him. I do. He will put most of his jobs into 2-3 days a week so he can do things he loves like fishing, doing outdoor things etc. I’ve been a SAHM since I graduated from high school. Now that he runs his own business and his own hours, I thought that we would have more time to do things together and individually. When he doesn’t have a job to do he normally will wake up around 5:30-6:00 and be ready to start his day. He takes a nap around 5pm and will wake up around 10. That is when I am normally in bed watching TV getting ready for bed since I have to be in one to watch our little ones and get them fed and ready for bed. If he sees me on my phone when he wakes up, he will make comments about how I have a phone problem and we never hang out or talk because I’m always glued to my phone.
When I wake up in the mornings from him blurring the TV or getting up and moving around, he has his and I don’t ever say anything. I did this morning and he called me a hypocrite and I didn’t have room to talk because I am always on mine. We got into a huge fight that escalated really fast once he left to take trash off.
I told him that I never get a break from kids and it’s not fair that everytime I want to do some thing for myself or even go to the store alone, he takes it as me being shady and questions, me on why I can’t have my kids with me. I told him he goes fishing at least three times or even more. He goes out on the boat alone or with friends and that is completely fine. When I say these things he always says that I’m more than welcome to come but he doesn’t understand that a 3 year old toddler with sensory issues can be very stressful and I don’t want to be stressed out every time I want to do something, so that is why I choose to stay home. When I went to get my hair done, my toddler was with me and stayed his stroller because He wanted to ride his bike since it was pretty out. Another time I had a doctor appointment and he took me. I went to get out of the car and he said he was going to the Mexican restaurant next-door to eat chips and salsa while he waited on me. I did not grab our youngest and he asked if I was going to take him and I said no you can, he will eat chips too.
He made it a big deal about how it would be hard to sit at the bar and those big seats with a toddler and was a big deal for me to take him. I was frustrated so I went to grab him and that’s when he said no forget it We will just wait here. I thought it was very immature that he couldn’t take him with him and he made him sit in the car seat the entire time. He loves to throw it in my face that I have it easy staying home and taking care of the house while he gets up and works and pays for everything and he deserves to do things. I agree, but I think I should be able to do things by myself, and he should sacrifice a few hours.
Eventually, we will get nowhere and he will say I ruined the day by starting a petty argument all because I want to do things by myself. He will ask me what I want to do or where I want to go and he doesn’t want to be alone and he wants to do things with me. I would love that, but that defeats the whole purpose because I will be the person who ends up taking care of the toddler and still getting stressed out. He won’t sacrifice any hours to stay home with our little ones while I go do something for myself like getting my hair done or going to the grocery store. I finally broke down this morning and told him I need to get a few hours to myself because it’s not healthy from my mental health to be the stressed out all the time. He takes what I say and turn it around on me like I don’t want to be around him and he will question me on why I want to get rid of my kids so bad and doesn’t want him around. I just want me time even if it is just going to the grocery store and shopping by myself. He loves doing things with the kids when it’s fun but when it has to do with watching them while I have “me time” it’s not fair that he has to sit at home while I’m “having fun”. He has even accused me of wanting to pawn my kids off to get screwed or meet up with people whenever I am very adamant and not backing down during a conversation. We can’t ever have a conversation because he just says I’m complaining and he always says I am starting an argument when all I’m doing is trying to have a conversation.
I’m so sorry for the long post. I guess I’m just wondering what else I should do or how I should go about fixing this. Do you have any tips on things I could do or how I can go about talking to him. I feel like I have tried everything and I get nowhere.

I am going into my last nursing year but I’ve been an aide for 4 years and 2 at my current hospital. I’ve always had really great evaluations. I’m worried it’s my resume or my cover letter. I was hoping for suggestions with getting jobs within the company, specifically a student-graduate internship. I’ve been passed up for 3 ER student positions I’ve wanted so bad and I have so many hours in this ER as a float, what am I doing wrong?

~Rayray~
It felt frustrating in Chongqing. I was rather stuck in Hechuan. I got accustomed to lajiao (spice) there. I was a Midwesterner at the age of 22. I was raised in Illinois. I became a manic—a Ferris wheel on fire—I was hiding under a bed in a hotel. Bold like napalm. Sometimes I can never stop. Even when I was 18 in a ward arguing with staff. Always want to fight things. That’s why I refused the meds and went on a plane from America to China. I was going to be an English teacher. And like a light switch, the change and SSRIs turned me into a mess. It would be my first time experiencing psychosis. My biggest issue. I never imagined I would be stuck illegally in a country suffering a psychotic episode in my early twenties.
Transplanted as pollen. I was left with a backpack and a cellphone. With a downloaded app called WeChat. I had arrogantly quit a university job in a fit. Spent the past months full of energy and not sleeping and neglecting myself, including not eating, to work on a novel. Not considering myself normally religious, I had obsessed over occult ideas during that time. Spending nights reading Aleister Crowley—haven taken a rusty pocket knife to carve a pentagram on my chest for spiritual protection.
I did not have funds to fly home. My visa was connected to my previous job, which meant I had now made it void. I was an illegal resident now in China.
I used a nifty app called WeChat as a messaging app, it allows users to find people near them that are also looking for others. It was like a virtual pond. All kinds of people, including sex workers trying to make things happen.
It could with luck be used to find people looking for people in terms of other kinds of work. It was helpful on many occasions for finding gigs working at English training schools and also finding work as a private tutor for people.
WeChat also works as a digital wallet.
Mania makes me irritable. Enough to tell a boss to fuck off. Thoughts ricochet within me. Bumper cars collide.
Being stuck and angry sucks. I scrolled and scrolled on a Huawei phone.
Absolutely pissed off at this world.
Pissed at the times police wanted to take me away for being a mess.
Sometimes women get pissed. Scrolling through their phones. Angry at their cheating husbands. It really is not that hard to have flair—be a damn white oddity. Like moths to a porchlight. Particles of sand through hands. This is when I first started the habit of it…
I rather go by a rather empty name of Rayray… with further explanation needed but now is not convenient. But I assure it is interesting enough and has some importance.
Habits are various in nature in how they attach to and eat at marrow—like atom bombs flashing as rays evaporating DNA—sets in a way less than human as putting myself in the cage of bad things taken up—my time as a former heroin addict is left as stretch marks on me in various ways. The same goes for the first time I found myself making arrangements with middle aged married women while desperation of waves whiplashed me like sandpaper hands coming at me to leave me in a tiring state of abrasion.
I had spent a night snuck away into a hotel. Found someone on a business trip. Instead of registering I waited to sneak along into the hotel elevator amongst a group of others attending the hotel, as I had no card. I headed to a designated room number. Originally I was sitting in a park. Playing on WeChat and found someone in their mid-thirties. Pictures were exchanged and I said no. She brought up paying for the hotel if I arrived. I agreed and went along.
When I met I washed up after her and we used our phones to awkwardly translate what we would do.
Room service knocked. I found myself hidden under a bed as I was not registered to be there.
It seems unusual that it was around this time I had started working on a story of my life as a heroin addict when I got caught up in my worse manic episode ever experienced during my age of 22. Finished half that story before never going back to it after my manic episode had ended. Now I am here writing about it and wondering if the same can happen again in the process of this work.
It feels extremely cliché I would write a novel about struggles with heroin addiction. It has been done many times. It’s just lame of me.
I feel like my thoughts are bit off. I left the hotel the next morning with the little money I did have on a debit card. Turns out the woman was from Taiyuan. It is a city in the northern part of China in the province of Shanxi—coal country with the worst air pollution in China. She has a colleague in Taiyuan that takes courses at an English training center. I was able to contact this place in the morning via a shared contact on WeChat given to me by the stranger I met that night.
Before I knew it I was sending my information and documents in my backpack at an internet café in a fax—with the intent that the woman agreed to share my information to the training center as she shared my contact to its hiring manager. It would land me a job that day that would help me out of my situation. Things turned not quite out as I expected though. I was shifted like a ball to somebody else to contact for a training center geared to teaching children.
I took what I had and ran off to a train station after taking the public transit. Unfortunately I was shit for money and could not afford a high speed rail pass. The slow train would take thirty-two hours to get to my destination. I would have taken a room with a bed but all I could afford was a hard seat for the travel.
Things were getting better for me in the circumstance considering I had found someone willing to take me for work despite my visa situation.
The thirty-two hour train ride was horrendous in some ways, but mostly I was in excitement despite the circumstances. I’m always giddy when disappointed. I moved up and down the aisle of the train. I could not speak mandarin, but it did not stop me from trying to interact with everyone. I talked many ears off during the train ride. I went up and down the aisle trying to interact as a moth to porchlights—I could not stop even if I had wanted to. I found great enjoyment the times I did get to sit across a table from somebody my age heading to Taiyuan from Chongqing. They were a university student returning to their hometown. Another passenger who sat beside me was an elderly man with hard boiled eggs, he was eating one after another one. I highly enjoyed each and every conversation that I had. It was like my head was a lightbulb wanting June bugs to bang against it with the intensity of Roman candles shot at my mouth of nicotine tinged teeth.

“If you find someone in Shanxi it is practice to pay the family money before you can get married. You would also have to already own a home and a car,” told my new friend across in their seat from me—a university passenger friend named David.

“Not necessarily what I was looking for. When is the next stop for snacks?” When the train stops I am able to get out and to have a walk onto the platform to buy various goods from the vendors to take back with me to eat along the ride to Taiyuan.

I had all my important documents tucked in my bag. This included my health clearance and obviously I made no mention of my mental health diagnosis or history to the doctor who had to evaluate me. My diploma and TEFL certificate were tucked away securely. A TEFL is a certificate that stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, it qualifies me to teach English as a second language abroad—it had only took a few months of taking a course online that I had paid for to obtain.
It is easy to be happy when you can trick yourself as your own con artist. Mania can make you deceive yourself. One can be doused in napalm and still not fully recognize what is actually going on. Same goes the flicking of psychosis. Even when I have nothing I find myself in my radiating irritation the most qualified of things—the velocity of my rhythm sets me out of an orbit.
The pressure cooker keeps me moving like a propeller at times. I finally arrived at Taiyuan. I arrived at the station to be greeted by Ryan my manager and his assistant Jennifer. We had our hello and introduction and they helped me get to a taxi that would bring me to my new apartment. I finally had a residence again. Apparently they were desperate for a teacher. The last teacher was from New Mexico and apparently they pulled a midnight run—that is when a teacher in the middle of the night disappears onto a plane back home without any notification of it.
The apartment was okay. On the fourth floor with no elevator, so it was a bit of a climb up a dark stairwell not lit correctly.
My job was a training center that had a location near Yingze Park in the center of the city. I was to be paid in cash via envelopes. I would assist in teaching kindergarten all the way up to high school aged students there in private lessons paid by their parents. I would also be assigned by my company to various primary schools in the city. I would take public buses to various schools paid by the company I worked for to give English lessons as I bounced around to various classrooms and schools in the city. Often I would receive a phone call to avoid going to work that day if my boss got inside input that officials would be doing raids to check foreigners’ visas that day.

A taxi ride would always be a thrill. Caused me nerves at first, but I came to love the flying in dangerous ways along a busy road. I remember a driver beeping their horn away as they drove onto the sidewalk to pass people. They treated the pedestrians as if they were in the wrong. I came flying in front of a primary school at its front gates. I was going to start teaching a first grade classroom and a kindergarten classroom. The way schools are set up is with a wall around the entirety of the exterior of the school. There is a gate at the front where one or two security will be waiting to let people in and out of the complex of the school.

I walked in front of the gate to greet the security. It was my first time with an assignment at this school. The guard said they had never seen me before and wouldn’t let me in. Not a big nuisance while I called my boss who then called the school to sort out the situation.

I miss the classroom so much. I ended up teaching in China for five years at various training schools. After returning to Illinois, I still taught as a primary school teacher in a public school.

I often feel extremely ugly from inside to my outside, but something is attractive there. This does not come just in terms of flirting and relationships—mania makes me a genuine lightbulb that flickers in a way that encourages the insects to me—everyone looks like a June bug—this is what I have come to understand about life. But that ugly does kind of stay like rot in a cavity that leaves a bad taste in the mouth that smells foul—hoping nobody catches the smell near me—it must tie into my struggles with bulimia over the years.

The same goes for my years as a teacher—in relation to the whole lightbulb phenomenon—I’m positive it is tied to mania and hypomania. The younger students always were fixated on the information I was teaching to them. I kept over the years methods taught to me and self-taught that I found extremely effective with younger students when it comes to teaching.
Everything was physical in learning in terms of intensity and ambition. When teaching my first grade classroom I would create flashcards for the vocab we would work on and implement in creating new sentences with. We would chant these words together in a way that made me a clown while teaching. Students would yell out the word that I presented with intense enthusiasm. As I walked by students it was expected that while they yelled out the word they would also physically hit the card. Later I would also work on physical gestures and acting out of vocab words and they would follow the actions and phrases with me.
I would often eventually turn the class into two teams. When students got an answer right I would behave comically and full of energy—I would give them a high five and pretend they were so strong with it that it hurt my hand in the process with much exaggeration—the students always seemed to never get tired of this act.
One game I would play involved drawing two stick figures with happy faces on them. Each figure would represent one of the teams for the classroom. I would draw a hungry alligator under the figures. Their faces would also be comical in appearance and full of exaggerations. Each figure had a parachute placed over them and four strings attached. During the game the students would race to say the word correctly represented on the flashcard or the correct word for the gesture I was making. The team that was not the slowest would lose a string on the parachute. If a team lost all four strings they would fall to the alligator who would eat them. The students found it hilarious with my actions involved in it. I would also draw tears and a person praying to represent anticipation and worry of falling down each time they lost a string.
I had a tooth game too. I would draw too large faces for each team. The team that could answer the flashcards and gestures the quickest would have a tooth drawn in their mouth. The team with the most teeth would win and it would look rather funny as the mouth grew and grew with an abnormal and extreme amount of teeth.
I often did other physical and interactive games like having students run to the word I showed a card to or gestured—each word would be attached to a point in the classroom on a wall.
I know it sounds grandiose, but the parents always seemed to think I was great at my job.
The word vulnerable means so many things to me. That word is like the coal to form the generator that makes the guiding energy for the ethics I follow in my life—I hold very strongly to these values that have developed on how to live—I can express it more later but I greatly attach a kind of Christian value system to it, which makes sense considering I was raised in a Lutheran household and always went to church, Sunday school, and went to my courses and went through my confirmation—everyone is a bit of a mop—some pick up clean water and others dirty or a mix of it—waiting to find the people to drain them voluntarily or involuntarily. I was born vulnerable. I walk pigeon-toed and grew up tripping on my feet—I speak with a soft feminine voice. Bipolar disorder makes somebody vulnerable. There was much vulnerability in being eighteen and hospitalized involuntarily for my first manic episode—tied to a stretcher. I have almost a sense of us vs them—the vulnerable and those that harm the vulnerable—take advantage of the vulnerable—I feel this is a very much Christian in the idea of the unfortunate are more holy than the rest of the bunch—children are like that in terms of being born into a cruel existence—a cruel existence I felt at times in my life and so many do—making sure harm does not come to those in need gives the light of purpose to go bright inside like a Christmas tree in my brain—this light of happiness and warmth. I never expected I would fall in love for teaching due to the antidepressant effect provided. It would become my career for a decade. Some grow up wanting to be a teacher, I became one by accident, desperation, and being saved.
Sometimes I inflate on self-hate like a helium balloon that needs to be tied to a wrist to not float away.
In my early teens I started struggling with bulimia and image. I remember when my mother caught me in the act. I was not offered help but criticized. I was called a girl for my problems and threatened to be taken somewhere to be fixed of my confusion. I don’t identify as transgender. I identify as a man that struggles with bulimia and happens to have feminine qualities.
I attribute it to circumstances that happened to me—a justification for the pain at times—an attack on aspects of bisexuality.
After a long day of work I did what my young self often did. I went clubbing with friends. I feel like even if I hide aspects of myself such as being bisexual, people can spot it regardless. I’m extremely secretive about it and not comfortable displaying that vulnerable aspect of myself.
My friend from England went with me. He was about six years my senior. Big guy. Tall. The clubs name was Maoye.
I always enjoyed the free drinks available to foreigners—it was done to attract Chinese clients, as the idea was foreigners being there would attract people.
Amongst the hot and sweltering crowd a man grabbed ahold of me. I felt stuck. I was taken off guard. Pushed and cornered. While on me I managed to push him off. But it all serves as a reminder of the vulnerability of my life.
A nail was placed into my hand—a constant burn and reminder of that vulnerability.

Part 2
From self-hate I can also be so grandiose. I am like a Christmas tree that is lit up. Sparklers so pretty that you cannot let go of them, even if it burns your fingertips and hurts.

From heroin to sex, you can smother the pain. You drain the ocean to fill a void in these times. It ties to mania as well. That restlessness and irritability is extinguished by the paradox of throwing kerosene to everything burning. I’m so grandiose to hide my insecurities, I mistake my misfortune as a mark of something ugly virtuous—the neon of vulnerability pulsating like a star within me. Swelling on a pain.

Bad habits. I want you to judge me and tell me what’s wrong with me. Give me a verdict.
Stress a trigger for mania, and I was stressed from the incident I had experienced at the club. I bloated like a tick to distract from locusts of thoughts that could not shut up with their commotion.
I had been sleeping around more than before. My brain was Christmas tree lights. I accelerated on a generator—I made a mixed episode worse.
Tease a disaster when you are heightened like a blimp. Full of hydrogen. Hoping to burn up ad rain down like napalm.
When the pretty candles on the Christmas tree are left untouched—not looked at like a kettle on burner that has been forgotten—the dry neglected tree will into a house fire.
I’ve had four attempts in my life so far.
When I attempt I don’t cry for help. I feel too vulnerable. I’m afraid.
Hate police and wards.
Downing pills.
My past failed attempts made me aware of everything done wrong before. The sleeping pills alone might not do what I was looking for at that time. I bought an electrical cable. This way if it failed I would still be unconscious and choked out by the cord—fail safe plan to end my life.
The words coming out of my mouth slowed down. I started getting second thoughts. Stuck my face towards the toilet bowl while on my knees. Sticking my fingers down my throat. Leaving blood vessels bursting in my eyes.
Went stumbling outside and waved a taxi down and asked to be taken to the local hospital.
Never expected finding myself checked into a psych ward in a foreign country.
Nietzsche has a quote in reference to chaos in life and how it is needed to create a star—this reference holds so much value to me. Sometimes stars hit together just right to create fate out of the worst of things. The ward lead me to meet the woman made of paper. She would one day become my wife. I would have two daughters with her. Forge together as soldiers to face the obstacles in life. Someone who would save my life during a future attempt when I was found unconscious from an overdose. The smartest and toughest woman I have ever known. Someone to build trenches with.
I liked it when she stuck that needle in me for an IV. It must correlate to being a heroin addict. The pushing of something in my vein correlates to happiness and purity.
The woman made out of paper was my nurse in the ward I was stuck in. What attracted her to the mess that is me I will never understand fully.
The woman made out of paper is named Lilu. She was one year older than me and one of my nurses at that ward in Taiyuan. She was from Zhengzhou—a city in the province of Henan that is based in the center of China. I am sure as the reader it would be nice to know why I call her the woman made of paper.
She struggled with her own demons. She also deserves much praise for her resilience and brains. When she was born she was raised by a family that adopted her and often neglected and abused her growing up. Her biological family is distant from her, even though she has an identical twin—they felt too poor to take care of her and made the choice that they needed to be less of one child as she also has an older sister—her twin got to stay with that family but she was given up and adopted. I am sure this must bother her even if she never will talk about it to anyone in her life—as she is one to refuse ever discussing emotions and feelings, as this is not her personality type—she is very much a fighter. I think most would struggle with wondering why they were the one let go of—it also must hurt her knowing that the family would have a son and keep him.
Despite all these circumstances, she graduated top of her class of four thousand students—Chinese high schools can be quite large serving a large region—they often serve as boarding schools. She was a smart and hardworking student. Circumstances never made her stop trying to be the best and moving forward and she never made excuses for herself. In university she also did well and got accepted at the most studious and hard to obtain nursing position at the number one hospital in Shanxi.
I have already ranted and gone on about my affection and feelings tied to heroin. Drinking of entire oceans to fill voids.
Paper is a void. It asks for calligraphy to be written on it to make braille. This way when fingers run over skin to tell its worth—the reason for its troubles on display—it forms connection through those words of declaration—the whining for why things are the way they are—the filling of a void like a heroin addict needing a cure to cure kicking legs—two papers come together to write upon one another—as a paper I am her typo—I stand as a falling mess with nerves like tripwire, I keep failing and losing my composer, while she stands stronger as a declaration that has been written on me, my very own typewriter—when I was chased I listened to her and joined as one. I wish and intend to always serve the woman made out of paper who has saved my life and has always been there for me, being so strong despite circumstances—amongst the wind of turmoil in life I follow along her path like a sail.
It was love at first sight for her but not for me. I had no interest in dating her at the time. I worked across the street of that hospital in an office building for a training center as a part time job. I would teach adults English who paid for private lessons near to Yingze park in the center of Taiyuan. She signed up for classes for me to teach her and brought me food on almost every other day that she had prepared. Eventually we found ourselves coupled fully.
As paper we write on each other—eat each other.

For those who will graduate in June and will be taking the 2024 Bar, what books will you use given the time constraints?
Law school 4th yr notes or fresh new books (like divina series and Rabuya Pre-Bar)?
Thank you. 😊

I’m supposed to see my rheumatologist next Thursday. I don’t care for him much, but I’ve been having quite a bit of left hip pain…like I can only sleep on my back with my legs slightly turned. Either side causes hip pain. Sitting causes bilateral hip pain and my butt is asleep a lot of the time. I work 12-13 hour shifts and I don’t sit, ever..because of my ass being asleep. I’ve had a MRI of my L-spine which just showed mild broad-based disc bulges in all the discs and L3-L4 facet hypertrophy which is unchanged from 1.5 years ago. I don’t have back pain. I had a left hip X-ray which was fine. Yesterday, I went to a graduation with my kids and we sat in the bleachers. I could slowly climb up, but after sitting for 1.5 hours my son had to help me down because I couldn’t lift my legs up enough over the bleachers. This was noticed by people around me which is mortifying…because small town, local ER nurse who everyone knows…This happens when I try to step into my house at times also. Would it be worth it to try and get a sacroiliac MRI? I think I have SI joint issues.
I’ve been on MTX since December and HCQ since September. I am worse physically, but I have had Covid 2x and probable RSV during this time frame. I’m SNRA, but maybe PsA…I have tendinitis in both elbows for sure, bursitis in my R. Shoulder I think, and when I am “flaring” (?), my fingers hurt so bad and can’t grip my steering wheel, or broom, or pans…

hey I’m wondering if there’s any nurse here I just graduated and I’m nervous since it’s a huge transition period for me.

~Rayray~
It felt frustrating in Chongqing. I was rather stuck in Hechuan. I got accustomed to lajiao (spice) there. I was a Midwesterner at the age of 22. I was raised in Illinois. I became a manic—a Ferris wheel on fire—I was hiding under a bed in a hotel. Bold like napalm. Sometimes I can never stop. Even when I was 18 in a ward arguing with staff. Always want to fight things. That’s why I refused the meds and went on a plane from America to China. I was going to be an English teacher. And like a light switch, the change and SSRIs turned me into a mess. It would be my first time experiencing psychosis. My biggest issue. I never imagined I would be stuck illegally in a country suffering a psychotic episode in my early twenties.
Transplanted as pollen. I was left with a backpack and a cellphone. With a downloaded app called WeChat. I had arrogantly quit a university job in a fit. Spent the past months full of energy and not sleeping and neglecting myself, including not eating, to work on a novel. Not considering myself normally religious, I had obsessed over occult ideas during that time. Spending nights reading Aleister Crowley—haven taken a rusty pocket knife to carve a pentagram on my chest for spiritual protection.
I did not have funds to fly home. My visa was connected to my previous job, which meant I had now made it void. I was an illegal resident now in China.
I used a nifty app called WeChat as a messaging app, it allows users to find people near them that are also looking for others. It was like a virtual pond. All kinds of people, including sex workers trying to make things happen.
It could with luck be used to find people looking for people in terms of other kinds of work. It was helpful on many occasions for finding gigs working at English training schools and also finding work as a private tutor for people.
WeChat also works as a digital wallet.
Mania makes me irritable. Enough to tell a boss to fuck off. Thoughts ricochet within me. Bumper cars collide.
Being stuck and angry sucks. I scrolled and scrolled on a Huawei phone.
Absolutely pissed off at this world.
Pissed at the times police wanted to take me away for being a mess.
Sometimes women get pissed. Scrolling through their phones. Angry at their cheating husbands. It really is not that hard to have flair—be a damn white oddity. Like moths to a porchlight. Particles of sand through hands. This is when I first started the habit of it…
I rather go by a rather empty name of Rayray… with further explanation needed but now is not convenient. But I assure it is interesting enough and has some importance.
Habits are various in nature in how they attach to and eat at marrow—like atom bombs flashing as rays evaporating DNA—sets in a way less than human as putting myself in the cage of bad things taken up—my time as a former heroin addict is left as stretch marks on me in various ways. The same goes for the first time I found myself making arrangements with middle aged married women while desperation of waves whiplashed me like sandpaper hands coming at me to leave me in a tiring state of abrasion.
I had spent a night snuck away into a hotel. Found someone on a business trip. Instead of registering I waited to sneak along into the hotel elevator amongst a group of others attending the hotel, as I had no card. I headed to a designated room number. Originally I was sitting in a park. Playing on WeChat and found someone in their mid-thirties. Pictures were exchanged and I said no. She brought up paying for the hotel if I arrived. I agreed and went along.
When I met I washed up after her and we used our phones to awkwardly translate what we would do.
Room service knocked. I found myself hidden under a bed as I was not registered to be there.
It seems unusual that it was around this time I had started working on a story of my life as a heroin addict when I got caught up in my worse manic episode ever experienced during my age of 22. Finished half that story before never going back to it after my manic episode had ended. Now I am here writing about it and wondering if the same can happen again in the process of this work.
It feels extremely cliché I would write a novel about struggles with heroin addiction. It has been done many times. It’s just lame of me.
I feel like my thoughts are bit off. I left the hotel the next morning with the little money I did have on a debit card. Turns out the woman was from Taiyuan. It is a city in the northern part of China in the province of Shanxi—coal country with the worst air pollution in China. She has a colleague in Taiyuan that takes courses at an English training center. I was able to contact this place in the morning via a shared contact on WeChat given to me by the stranger I met that night.
Before I knew it I was sending my information and documents in my backpack at an internet café in a fax—with the intent that the woman agreed to share my information to the training center as she shared my contact to its hiring manager. It would land me a job that day that would help me out of my situation. Things turned not quite out as I expected though. I was shifted like a ball to somebody else to contact for a training center geared to teaching children.
I took what I had and ran off to a train station after taking the public transit. Unfortunately I was shit for money and could not afford a high speed rail pass. The slow train would take thirty-two hours to get to my destination. I would have taken a room with a bed but all I could afford was a hard seat for the travel.
Things were getting better for me in the circumstance considering I had found someone willing to take me for work despite my visa situation.
The thirty-two hour train ride was horrendous in some ways, but mostly I was in excitement despite the circumstances. I’m always giddy when disappointed. I moved up and down the aisle of the train. I could not speak mandarin, but it did not stop me from trying to interact with everyone. I talked many ears off during the train ride. I went up and down the aisle trying to interact as a moth to porchlights—I could not stop even if I had wanted to. I found great enjoyment the times I did get to sit across a table from somebody my age heading to Taiyuan from Chongqing. They were a university student returning to their hometown. Another passenger who sat beside me was an elderly man with hard boiled eggs, he was eating one after another one. I highly enjoyed each and every conversation that I had. It was like my head was a lightbulb wanting June bugs to bang against it with the intensity of Roman candles shot at my mouth of nicotine tinged teeth.

“If you find someone in Shanxi it is practice to pay the family money before you can get married. You would also have to already own a home and a car,” told my new friend across in their seat from me—a university passenger friend named David.

“Not necessarily what I was looking for. When is the next stop for snacks?” When the train stops I am able to get out and to have a walk onto the platform to buy various goods from the vendors to take back with me to eat along the ride to Taiyuan.

I had all my important documents tucked in my bag. This included my health clearance and obviously I made no mention of my mental health diagnosis or history to the doctor who had to evaluate me. My diploma and TEFL certificate were tucked away securely. A TEFL is a certificate that stands for Teaching English as a Foreign Language, it qualifies me to teach English as a second language abroad—it had only took a few months of taking a course online that I had paid for to obtain.
It is easy to be happy when you can trick yourself as your own con artist. Mania can make you deceive yourself. One can be doused in napalm and still not fully recognize what is actually going on. Same goes the flicking of psychosis. Even when I have nothing I find myself in my radiating irritation the most qualified of things—the velocity of my rhythm sets me out of an orbit.
The pressure cooker keeps me moving like a propeller at times. I finally arrived at Taiyuan. I arrived at the station to be greeted by Ryan my manager and his assistant Jennifer. We had our hello and introduction and they helped me get to a taxi that would bring me to my new apartment. I finally had a residence again. Apparently they were desperate for a teacher. The last teacher was from New Mexico and apparently they pulled a midnight run—that is when a teacher in the middle of the night disappears onto a plane back home without any notification of it.
The apartment was okay. On the fourth floor with no elevator, so it was a bit of a climb up a dark stairwell not lit correctly.
My job was a training center that had a location near Yingze Park in the center of the city. I was to be paid in cash via envelopes. I would assist in teaching kindergarten all the way up to high school aged students there in private lessons paid by their parents. I would also be assigned by my company to various primary schools in the city. I would take public buses to various schools paid by the company I worked for to give English lessons as I bounced around to various classrooms and schools in the city. Often I would receive a phone call to avoid going to work that day if my boss got inside input that officials would be doing raids to check foreigners’ visas that day.

A taxi ride would always be a thrill. Caused me nerves at first, but I came to love the flying in dangerous ways along a busy road. I remember a driver beeping their horn away as they drove onto the sidewalk to pass people. They treated the pedestrians as if they were in the wrong. I came flying in front of a primary school at its front gates. I was going to start teaching a first grade classroom and a kindergarten classroom. The way schools are set up is with a wall around the entirety of the exterior of the school. There is a gate at the front where one or two security will be waiting to let people in and out of the complex of the school.

I walked in front of the gate to greet the security. It was my first time with an assignment at this school. The guard said they had never seen me before and wouldn’t let me in. Not a big nuisance while I called my boss who then called the school to sort out the situation.

I miss the classroom so much. I ended up teaching in China for five years at various training schools. After returning to Illinois, I still taught as a primary school teacher in a public school.

I often feel extremely ugly from inside to my outside, but something is attractive there. This does not come just in terms of flirting and relationships—mania makes me a genuine lightbulb that flickers in a way that encourages the insects to me—everyone looks like a June bug—this is what I have come to understand about life. But that ugly does kind of stay like rot in a cavity that leaves a bad taste in the mouth that smells foul—hoping nobody catches the smell near me—it must tie into my struggles with bulimia over the years.

The same goes for my years as a teacher—in relation to the whole lightbulb phenomenon—I’m positive it is tied to mania and hypomania. The younger students always were fixated on the information I was teaching to them. I kept over the years methods taught to me and self-taught that I found extremely effective with younger students when it comes to teaching.
Everything was physical in learning in terms of intensity and ambition. When teaching my first grade classroom I would create flashcards for the vocab we would work on and implement in creating new sentences with. We would chant these words together in a way that made me a clown while teaching. Students would yell out the word that I presented with intense enthusiasm. As I walked by students it was expected that while they yelled out the word they would also physically hit the card. Later I would also work on physical gestures and acting out of vocab words and they would follow the actions and phrases with me.
I would often eventually turn the class into two teams. When students got an answer right I would behave comically and full of energy—I would give them a high five and pretend they were so strong with it that it hurt my hand in the process with much exaggeration—the students always seemed to never get tired of this act.
One game I would play involved drawing two stick figures with happy faces on them. Each figure would represent one of the teams for the classroom. I would draw a hungry alligator under the figures. Their faces would also be comical in appearance and full of exaggerations. Each figure had a parachute placed over them and four strings attached. During the game the students would race to say the word correctly represented on the flashcard or the correct word for the gesture I was making. The team that was not the slowest would lose a string on the parachute. If a team lost all four strings they would fall to the alligator who would eat them. The students found it hilarious with my actions involved in it. I would also draw tears and a person praying to represent anticipation and worry of falling down each time they lost a string.
I had a tooth game too. I would draw too large faces for each team. The team that could answer the flashcards and gestures the quickest would have a tooth drawn in their mouth. The team with the most teeth would win and it would look rather funny as the mouth grew and grew with an abnormal and extreme amount of teeth.
I often did other physical and interactive games like having students run to the word I showed a card to or gestured—each word would be attached to a point in the classroom on a wall.
I know it sounds grandiose, but the parents always seemed to think I was great at my job.
The word vulnerable means so many things to me. That word is like the coal to form the generator that makes the guiding energy for the ethics I follow in my life—I hold very strongly to these values that have developed on how to live—I can express it more later but I greatly attach a kind of Christian value system to it, which makes sense considering I was raised in a Lutheran household and always went to church, Sunday school, and went to my courses and went through my confirmation—everyone is a bit of a mop—some pick up clean water and others dirty or a mix of it—waiting to find the people to drain them voluntarily or involuntarily. I was born vulnerable. I walk pigeon-toed and grew up tripping on my feet—I speak with a soft feminine voice. Bipolar disorder makes somebody vulnerable. There was much vulnerability in being eighteen and hospitalized involuntarily for my first manic episode—tied to a stretcher. I have almost a sense of us vs them—the vulnerable and those that harm the vulnerable—take advantage of the vulnerable—I feel this is a very much Christian in the idea of the unfortunate are more holy than the rest of the bunch—children are like that in terms of being born into a cruel existence—a cruel existence I felt at times in my life and so many do—making sure harm does not come to those in need gives the light of purpose to go bright inside like a Christmas tree in my brain—this light of happiness and warmth. I never expected I would fall in love for teaching due to the antidepressant effect provided. It would become my career for a decade. Some grow up wanting to be a teacher, I became one by accident, desperation, and being saved.
Sometimes I inflate on self-hate like a helium balloon that needs to be tied to a wrist to not float away.
In my early teens I started struggling with bulimia and image. I remember when my mother caught me in the act. I was not offered help but criticized. I was called a girl for my problems and threatened to be taken somewhere to be fixed of my confusion. I don’t identify as transgender. I identify as a man that struggles with bulimia and happens to have feminine qualities.
I attribute it to circumstances that happened to me—a justification for the pain at times—an attack on aspects of bisexuality.
After a long day of work I did what my young self often did. I went clubbing with friends. I feel like even if I hide aspects of myself such as being bisexual, people can spot it regardless. I’m extremely secretive about it and not comfortable displaying that vulnerable aspect of myself.
My friend from England went with me. He was about six years my senior. Big guy. Tall. The clubs name was Maoye.
I always enjoyed the free drinks available to foreigners—it was done to attract Chinese clients, as the idea was foreigners being there would attract people.
Amongst the hot and sweltering crowd a man grabbed ahold of me. I felt stuck. I was taken off guard. Pushed and cornered. While on me I managed to push him off. But it all serves as a reminder of the vulnerability of my life.
A nail was placed into my hand—a constant burn and reminder of that vulnerability.

Part 2
From self-hate I can also be so grandiose. I am like a Christmas tree that is lit up. Sparklers so pretty that you cannot let go of them, even if it burns your fingertips and hurts.

From heroin to sex, you can smother the pain. You drain the ocean to fill a void in these times. It ties to mania as well. That restlessness and irritability is extinguished by the paradox of throwing kerosene to everything burning. I’m so grandiose to hide my insecurities, I mistake my misfortune as a mark of something ugly virtuous—the neon of vulnerability pulsating like a star within me. Swelling on a pain.

Bad habits. I want you to judge me and tell me what’s wrong with me. Give me a verdict.
Stress a trigger for mania, and I was stressed from the incident I had experienced at the club. I bloated like a tick to distract from locusts of thoughts that could not shut up with their commotion.
I had been sleeping around more than before. My brain was Christmas tree lights. I accelerated on a generator—I made a mixed episode worse.
Tease a disaster when you are heightened like a blimp. Full of hydrogen. Hoping to burn up ad rain down like napalm.
When the pretty candles on the Christmas tree are left untouched—not looked at like a kettle on burner that has been forgotten—the dry neglected tree will into a house fire.
I’ve had four attempts in my life so far.
When I attempt I don’t cry for help. I feel too vulnerable. I’m afraid.
Hate police and wards.
Downing pills.
My past failed attempts made me aware of everything done wrong before. The sleeping pills alone might not do what I was looking for at that time. I bought an electrical cable. This way if it failed I would still be unconscious and choked out by the cord—fail safe plan to end my life.
The words coming out of my mouth slowed down. I started getting second thoughts. Stuck my face towards the toilet bowl while on my knees. Sticking my fingers down my throat. Leaving blood vessels bursting in my eyes.
Went stumbling outside and waved a taxi down and asked to be taken to the local hospital.
Never expected finding myself checked into a psych ward in a foreign country.
Nietzsche has a quote in reference to chaos in life and how it is needed to create a star—this reference holds so much value to me. Sometimes stars hit together just right to create fate out of the worst of things. The ward lead me to meet the woman made of paper. She would one day become my wife. I would have two daughters with her. Forge together as soldiers to face the obstacles in life. Someone who would save my life during a future attempt when I was found unconscious from an overdose. The smartest and toughest woman I have ever known. Someone to build trenches with.
I liked it when she stuck that needle in me for an IV. It must correlate to being a heroin addict. The pushing of something in my vein correlates to happiness and purity.
The woman made out of paper was my nurse in the ward I was stuck in. What attracted her to the mess that is me I will never understand fully.
The woman made out of paper is named Lilu. She was one year older than me and one of my nurses at that ward in Taiyuan. She was from Zhengzhou—a city in the province of Henan that is based in the center of China. I am sure as the reader it would be nice to know why I call her the woman made of paper.
She struggled with her own demons. She also deserves much praise for her resilience and brains. When she was born she was raised by a family that adopted her and often neglected and abused her growing up. Her biological family is distant from her, even though she has an identical twin—they felt too poor to take care of her and made the choice that they needed to be less of one child as she also has an older sister—her twin got to stay with that family but she was given up and adopted. I am sure this must bother her even if she never will talk about it to anyone in her life—as she is one to refuse ever discussing emotions and feelings, as this is not her personality type—she is very much a fighter. I think most would struggle with wondering why they were the one let go of—it also must hurt her knowing that the family would have a son and keep him.
Despite all these circumstances, she graduated top of her class of four thousand students—Chinese high schools can be quite large serving a large region—they often serve as boarding schools. She was a smart and hardworking student. Circumstances never made her stop trying to be the best and moving forward and she never made excuses for herself. In university she also did well and got accepted at the most studious and hard to obtain nursing position at the number one hospital in Shanxi.
I have already ranted and gone on about my affection and feelings tied to heroin. Drinking of entire oceans to fill voids.
Paper is a void. It asks for calligraphy to be written on it to make braille. This way when fingers run over skin to tell its worth—the reason for its troubles on display—it forms connection through those words of declaration—the whining for why things are the way they are—the filling of a void like a heroin addict needing a cure to cure kicking legs—two papers come together to write upon one another—as a paper I am her typo—I stand as a falling mess with nerves like tripwire, I keep failing and losing my composer, while she stands stronger as a declaration that has been written on me, my very own typewriter—when I was chased I listened to her and joined as one. I wish and intend to always serve the woman made out of paper who has saved my life and has always been there for me, being so strong despite circumstances—amongst the wind of turmoil in life I follow along her path like a sail.
It was love at first sight for her but not for me. I had no interest in dating her at the time. I worked across the street of that hospital in an office building for a training center as a part time job. I would teach adults English who paid for private lessons near to Yingze park in the center of Taiyuan. She signed up for classes for me to teach her and brought me food on almost every other day that she had prepared. Eventually we found ourselves coupled fully.
As paper we write on each other—eat each other.

First time posting on reddit after reading tons of other posts.. not sure how this goes but here goes some context to better understand my question.. I dated someone from work for about 8 months or so, everything happened organically and naturally over time to where we both eventually fell in love with eachother.. unfortunately she broke up with me on valentines day, ironically enough.. her reasoning was she started going to therapy for the loss of her father about a year and a half to 2 years ago whom she was extremely close with as well as certain things that happened with her ex before me.. she insisted I did nothing wrong and that ive done everything perfectly but with going to therapy she found that she's emotionally unavailable.. prior to valentines day she did seem a bit distant, yet still showing her love and expressing it to me until that day..
Granted, I was devastated.. she said she needed space to figure herself out.. I told her I hope we can pick up where we left off to which she got close and said "that I can absolutely promise you". But, unfortunately my feelings overtook my logic and kinda fucked things up a bit.. I ended up writing her a long letter expressing myself and how I'm still gonna be here for her with whatever she needs and blahblahblah to which she told me was extremely overwhelming and made it hard for her to even want to talk to me.. didn't really kick in until she told me that I was unfortunately exhibiting similar behaviors of her ex.. 🤦🏽‍♂️ so yeah.. bad on my part.. so I've kind of kept my distance but still tried to be cool with her at work and what not.. we would talk here and there and then she went super cold out of nowhere.. I asked one day if we were ok to which she kind of exploded on me and essentially said that she wants nothing to do eith me or anyone and how she feels nothing for no one.. because I didn't respect her boundaries is the reason she wants absolutely nothing to do with me.. I expressed my apologies and how I'm just trying my best to understand her viewpoint and what not.. then, let her be for a while..
We've recently talked a couple times mainly because of some shenanigans at work to where she expressed how certain people are making things up about her but how she doesn't care because she has more important things to deal with in life right now.. she had a conversation with another coworker about us but that coworker didn't tell me everything.. "Yeah she didn't tell you everything else I said huh.. figures.. I basically told her like yeah we actually dated for a while, he's an amazing guy, he's fantastic, he treated me great, it just didn't work out I'm just not in the headspace to be with anyone right now but I wish him nothing but the best." About a week or two after that conversation I talked to her about me defending her name amongst certain people at work to where she thanked me and said she appreciates me doing so.. about another week later I ended up walking outside with her and had a casual conversation about her niece graduating kindergarten and how she's gonna have to go to new York for like 2 days to drop her mom off to her aunts house.. she did confide in me when talking about the work shenanigans how her mother has been in and out of the hospital lately and how that's taking up all of her time, but she immediately shut it down when I asked how her mom was doing to which I said ok, sensitive subject, I won't ask any further..
Basically, I'm still in love with this girl.. she means the absolute world to me.. I don't wanna give up on her but at the same time I'm new to this whole "emotionally unavailable" concept.. she said what she said about me being overbearing in the beginning, which I understand is completely my fault.. the whole I want nothing to do with you hurt alot, yet, for someone who doesn't care about me at all believe it or not she's always, if not almost always one of the first people to view any story I post on instagram.. there's been a couple times to where I'm working and we're within the same confines and as I walk past she'll look or stare, but if I try and engage conversation it's a different thing so I've been actively not trying to engage as much conversation as before to continue to give her space.. there was one conversation we had where she said something like "I'd rather tell people I'm insane than to actually admit I talk to people about you and us" "oh so you talk about me huh?" Which she ended up giving me an eye roll.. our humor and stuff together has always been sarcastic in some form so joking with her like that feels good but I try not to be too pushy..
Basically, I want to know if there's any way I could win her back.. I haven't felt a connection like this in quite a long time and would do anything to fix it.. she's told me when we first got together "when I fall in love I fall hard, like there's nothing that can steer me away from the person I love" she's said so many great things to and about me so to go completely cold within an instant is wild to me.. I've given her distance and space, she said she wants nothing to do with me yet still engages with my stories on social media, gives me random glances from time to time, it's all so confusing.. my birthday is coming up and I'm going to said restaurant we work at for dinner at the bar myself, I want to reach out and just tell her something along the lines of how I know she's going through things and I know I've been overbearing and intrusive with her and I apologize I unfortunately let my feelings take control, but I miss how close we were and would like to slowly work on being close again, but I feel that's super intrusive in its own.. I'm just trying to figure out if this is even the best plan of attack or how to possibly word it or if it's even worth it at all.. to me, this girl is absolutely worth it.. and I know you might think this is just the fantasizing aspect of it but I absolutely mean that she's worth it..
So.. idk.. alot to read/type here I feel like I'm steering off course of the main topic.. Basically, I would like this girl back in my life no matter what it takes but dealing with this emotional unavailability I have no idea how to maneuver or work with this.. I've read random articles here and there but I'm interested in any real life accounts from both men and women.. anything helps and if needed more context, feel free to ask away..
Thank you in advance 🙏🏼

Title basically. I will soon be returning to college after dropping out several years ago because I did not know what I wanted to do.
I am 31 years old right now. I'm doing my research about accounting and have heard the stories of people working in bigger firms for 50-120 hours a week, which is insane. I understand that this will lead to better job offers, but I would absolutely refuse to live in such a way no matter how much they paid me. 2 years and even just 1 year of that hell could make me age a decade or more, and that's the last thing I want approaching my mid-30s.
IMO, it just isn't worth the effects on my mental and physical health. By the time I graduate, I'd be in my mid-30s, so there's even more reason to be concerned with my health. Heart attacks are very real.
Another factor is that I will be married soon, and my wife will be a nurse around the time I graduate, so job security and not having an income shouldn't really be an issue. We will be going the community college transfer route, so hopefully, we can come out of school without too much debt. Therefore, I can likely afford to be more choosy when entering the job market.
If anyone's curious, my ultimate goal in accounting would be to get my CPA (and maybe an MBA if an employer-sponsored it) and sufficient work experience in places like industry or government with better work-life balance, then focus on opening my remote practice/business. Then, I will focus on services like bookkeeping and taxes. Once established, I will start traveling the world with my wife (perhaps she will also do remote nursing/telehealth). That's our dream.
I figure that I can get the necessary experience to open my own practice offering remote services (tax and bookkeeping first and maybe eventually consulting, etc.) without experience from the Big 4 or other sweatshop firms. But is this actually realistic? Would prospective clients expect to see the Big 4 experience on my professional website? Or would the CPA be enough? I.e. being qualified to do the job? My instinct tells me they wouldn't really care about that kind of experience as long as I have a CPA and know how to do the services they're paying for.
Would love to hear from experienced accountants.