u/Aethelmaew

Got offered my first job today on a large ropax ferry, very excited. It's doing domestic routes on a route known to be pretty rough (Cook Straight) but I'm pretty excited for it. It's for a cabin/deck rating, I believe essentially an OS with some customer service duties.

I really want to do well in it and progress. Does anyone have any tips?

Also this gets asked a lot, but how do people deal with seasickness? I've only been seasick once in my life when I was a little kid and have been fine since (on plenty of voyages) but this route seems to be notorious for it among staff and passengers...

I'll try and keep this short because I feel like i could go on for ages about this. I will also probably delete this after a few weeks.

So I'm late 20s male, and have had OCD for around 15 years. When i was younger it was all pretty basic stuff, I'd check the door was locked a lot, or I'd turned off the heaters way too many times, etc. Nothing dramatic. I don't know how it started, I had a great childhood and absolutely no issues at all. My sister also has OCD and I saw her doing some OCD type stuff so maybe it started from there.

At 18 I moved away from home and got a job in law enforcement, which I feel didn't help. The training is very much like 'everything is out to get you, everyone wants to kill you, if you make one mistake someone dies', but I was good at my job and even then it didn't actually affect me at work. It was more just again, checking the door is locked 100x, checking the car handbrake is on way too much, checking I turned the oven off 10x a night before I can sleep. I actually got PTSD during this period due to a couple of traumatic jobs I went to. My girlfriend at the time encouraged me to get CBT, which I did. I did 10 weeks of 2hr CBT sessions and came out exactly the same, basically lying to my therapist at the end that I felt different.

I then changed job after around 4 years and became a paramedic (equally bad idea of course but I can't see myself doing any other type of work). My OCD got slightly worse still, but nothing major. I'd just be checking dates or medication names 100x instead of just reading them once and starting to believe my eyes less. It would be like I could read the word 'Diazepam' on a drug bottle, and be looking at it, but my brain would still be like 'Yeah but what if you're not looking at it right and it actually says Morphine'.

I then got in a new relationship with a girl who was pretty bad news. She was an alcoholic, completely reliant on me for money because she didn't work, and turns out she was also cheating on me. Kind of not super relevant, but I was also drinking a fair bit during this time. Never to the point I was dependent on it or it was affecting my work or relationship, but very much like 'well a few beers this evening won't hurt' but most days.

During this relationship something that *I think* probably gave me the most stress currently happened and it's not really a major thing. I was reversing out of my street in a not so nice part of town, and as I'm reversing my car some crackhead homeless type guy starts shouting at me. Now this wasn't *hugely* uncommon. As I say, it wasn't the best part of town and there was accommodation for homeless people a little way down the street, so it wasn't that rare for drunk/high homeless people to be in the street shouting at people or themselves. He kind of semi came up to the window and I just sort of waved him a little bit and then drove assuming he wanted money, but he fully chased my car and slapped the back of it angrily as I drove off.

As I drove off I suddenly thought 'shit, what if I hit him? What if he had a dog I ran over, or a kid? What if I didn't know?' So I turned around and went back and he was gone and I couldn't see anything there.

But since then I have had MAJOR issues with hit and run OCD in my car. I used to LOVE driving, fuck when I was in law enforcement I'd be blasting around at 160kmph+ through the middle of towns at 3am doing 3 things at once. I used to just go out in my own car (I love my car, it's nice) just for fun if the weather was good. But over the next 2 or 3 years it's become terrible. I'd be driving home from work at 2am and have to circle back for 20 minutes because I wasn't sure if I hit anyone at a crossing. I have to basically stare at traffic lights and say out loud ITS GREEN before I drive through them. If I overtake a cyclist or pedestrian I spend the rest of the day worrying I killed them. I genuinely feel like I struggle to physically even drive anymore, I'm so focused on other stuff and not doing anything wrong that I actually just can't drive properly. It's like manual breathing, but in a car.

I think it was also significantly worsened by being a paramedic. I went to multiple fatal car accidents and car vs pedestrian jobs within a few months of each other. One was a guy just driving down a normal road in the daytime doing nothing wrong, when a young kid just pulls away from his mother and runs straight in front. Hit by the car and is dead. That didn't help.

The last year though my OCD has fucking ramped up. It's hugely affecting my relationship now and almost every aspect of my life. I'm with a girl who is incredible in every way, and insanely understanding (also a paramedic so she gets a lot of it). But I keep getting this weird retrospective jealousy thing I've never had before? It's so weird. It's like I see her and I get these weird compulsions to ask about her past, exes, which is so fucked up because it's like I don't actually want to know, but my brain fixates in the OCD way until she answers and it sounds right. I also just need to hear he say she loves me, or isn't leaving, or whatever and it sound right, I sometimes must ask 50x in a row until it does. It's like every time I see her I get some gross intrusive thought about something to do with her past, or her doing something with my friends. I cant even look at her and relax.

And I've lost my friends because of it. I asked about some time she met some of them a while back, and if she did anything with them. She said no, but it never once sounded right and to my OCD brain just sounded like she was lying. So I asked them too, and they denied, but all got pissed off I was accusing them of something, and now haven't spoken to me for nearly a year.

And on top of this it just affects every single thing. I wake up, unplug my phone but have to redo it until it feels right. Get up and use the bathroom, gotta check the door is locked 100x. Go down and make a coffee, spend a few minutes making sure the tap is off. Sent a text to my boss, gotta check 300x that I didn't accidentally send him a dick pic or a racist rant, need to go shopping - fuck that means I gotta drive and spend all morning stressing about it, then when I do I zone out the whole drive in a mild panic attack and feel even less reassured.

I have no idea what to do, it's fucking ruining my life. I went to a therapist once again at the start of this year which was insanely expensive, she said virtually nothing the whole time, and then midway through said 'umm I think you might need a psychiatrist not a therapist' and that was it, so I never went back.

I'm also fucked because I can't get medication. I'll lose my job either in medicine or law enforcement if I do, because they have access to my medical history and any psychiatric treatment makes me 'medically unfit to work', and I'm not qualified or experienced in anything else. Therapy is extremely expensive in my country, literally unaffordably so for a normal person. My work has assistance schemes for PTSD, but again you will be made to leave work and it doesn't address any mental health issues not directly related to employment.

I have no friends anymore to talk to, my family are all either 'mental health doesn't exist' people or 'holy shit he's mental we need to take this seriously let's all sit down in a circle and discuss sectioning him'. My girlfriend is awesome actually with this stuff, but I think even she's getting a bit done with being asked if she fucked a random guy 10 years ago 100x a day, and a lot of the stress is related to her anyway.

I genuinely don't know what to do. Not being able to drive is ruining my life, I can't do anything anymore. I used to go to the gym 6x a week, play sports, have a great social life, socialise all the time, be a great boyfriend. Now I'm just none of that, I'm a borderline fucking recluse who does nothing because his brain won't let him.

Help basically lol

The other day I was playing a battle as a musician, there was another musician with a violin (I had a flute) and we were playing Wiz Khalifa together in a band (a great moment). Smashing out that song like our lives depended on it, bodies flying all around us but our music cut through the chaos. I look to my right and this other musician is just straight up vibing, he's just fully feeling the music, getting truly into it. His character is like borderline dancing, completely in the zone, locked in. Playing the Charlie Puth part like it was straight from the soul, meanwhile my guy was just stood there rigid, clearly not locked in. How do I vibe like him? How do I make my character really feel it? He was also doing it while walking around slowly. Impressive.

So I've recently bought myself a pair of 1460s new (not boxed, bought them from someone who was bought them new as a gift and never wore them as wrong size, tags still on, I've confirmed they're real with a retailer) and I love them. They're uncomfortable as fuck to wear right now, but it's only been a couple of days.

I'm aware they used to be made in England (ironically I lived right by the factory for a while but never bought any) and are now made in China. And I see so so SO much slander in this subreddit about how there's 'no point' buying made in China docs, and how the made in England ones are the only 'real' docs and anything else is a fake clone.

Is this actually true? Or is it just reddit gatekeeping like in other subreddits? I've worn boots my entire life for work, currently Lowa, previously Adidas and Magnum and the docs seem like the same or higher quality than these. They look great, seem to fit well, and I can't find any faults of parts that seem low quality.

I'm not necessarily expecting them to last 20+ years, but maybe 5 years or 10 at a push would be good.

My question is basically are the Chinese docs *that* bad as a lot of people on here say, or is that an exaggeration with there only being a slight decrease in quality compared to the made in England ones? I'm inclined to trust my own judgement and think they're still decent boots, but I keep reading everywhere that the Chinese version are just overpriced crap that break after a month so I'm unsure.

Thanks all!

This sub certainly has a unique personality, and I can't imagine many women having this same sense of degeneracy and humour. But does one exist? What's the closest

A thread about things guys are insecure about but women love. There's so many comments being like 'short guys/fat guys/skinny guys/bald guys' etc. Is this yet again women just lying online, or are we actually missing something here?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/s/HC9rQlNrqu

I'm currently doing a bit of a project on the Ju-390 and it's supposed (or not) flight to the East Coast of the US during the war. I've read tons about the design and all the competing designs with the obvious issue they all had to overcome being range and fuel capacity.

And it got me thinking, instead of flying from Brittany or elsewhere on the West Coast of France, and doing a full round trip on one tank to the US and back, wouldn't it have made more sense to use a flying boat and refuel halfway across the Atlantic via a rendezvous with a ship?

Obviously this would be completely logistically pointless for a large scale bombing campaign against the US, but it seems to me everyone involved knew that wouldn't happen anyway. The project was mostly about the propaganda value of Germany being able to reach the mainland US. I'm aware they'd have never been able to do it on a large scale, but a few aircraft for a prototype propaganda mission? Sounds doable.

They already had tons of experiences with large flying boats (BV238 and 222 being a good example) and while not common that late in the war, were still operating in the Atlantic. The Atlantic Ocean is rough (ive sailed on it plenty of times) but it isn't always and I've personally seen times it would be still enough to land on.

I've had a google and can't find anything about it, but it seems like something obvious they could've tried. The BV238 had a range of 6600km which seems like it would be enough anyway to refuel mid Atlantic and take off again, without them even needing to develop a new aircraft.

I'm sure there is a good reason they didn't (likely political, I feel like maybe Hitler was the only one involved who didn't see it as a propaganda mission and wanted to *actually* commit to a large scale bombing campaign) but I don't what it is.

Googled this and got mixed results. I've just noticed in personal experience that when I have kava in the evening, I tend to get up needing to pee multiple times in the night, and am also insanely thirsty. Has anyone else had similar experiences with this? It's honestly kind of putting me off it at the moment - it's kinda relaxing and I fall asleep easily, but then I just wake up again to pee every 2hrs after so it's less restful than I don't have it.

So I'm still awaiting a delivery of some decent kelai traditional I bought online, but there is a shop near me that sells 2 types of kava. They sell a traditional powder which I've used before (pretty mid) and a micronised.

Ive only used traditional before and have never once tried a micronised or instant kava. I've heard from friends irl and read online that micronised and instant basically don't do anything and are a complete waste of money, said I won't feel any different at all and will get absolutely no effect from it.

Is this the case? Seems like they wouldn't still be sold if it was, but I really have no idea. Considering trying out the micronised tonight if people recommend it.

Very interested in trying this as I hadn't heard about it before and hoping to pick some up after work today. I know there's a place in Upper Hutt that sells it but I won't be able to get there in time. Does anyone know somewhere central that would sell it?

So I stopped any and all caffeine 3 days ago. I used to be having 4-5 coffees and an energy drink most days. For the last three days I've felt very irritable, genuinely depressed, slightly randomly emotional and mood swingy, constantly sleepy, weak and lethargic, and spaced out and mentally very slow.

I'm slightly concerned because this seems like a lot of change. Is this all pretty normal for quitting caffeine completely or is there likely something underlying going on? Also, how long am I going to feel like this?

I originally quit to reduce OCD/anxiety symptoms, and try and live more in the 'real world'. I've been feeling spaced out and derealised for about 3 years now, always feeling like I'm in a dream or watching life on TV and am trying to see if caffeine is why. Will this have any impact on that? And how long will it take?