u/After-Offer3213

Hej! I've got three months to kill next summer between my current lease ending and my job in a new country starting. Since a short term rental in NYC costs about the same as camping and hostle hopping in sweden for that long, and I'll be living off savings and between both jobs and countries anyways, might as well kick around sweden for the 90 days I'm allowed to be in the EU lol

I've got family heritage in Malmo and Lysekil, so, I'd really like to bike between the two. Its funny, but seeing this tiny little fishing village is the only part of my trip that's a must

Theres a few solid trails that'd take me as far as Gothenburg, but i cant find anything for that final stretch. Its not the end of the world if I need to sell the bike in Gothenburg and hitchhike or bus the rest of the way, but it'd also be neat to roll in on my bike after getting so close.

I know sweden is criss crossed in hiking and biking trails, so, wondering if maybe theres a route not found on swedenbybike

apologizes in advance for being blunt and crass, I have nobody to talk to and am at my wits end

for context, im not trying to go back to living as a man or a cis guy. since im post-op, it just doesn't feel possible even if that is how I wish I could be. im trying to meet my body where it is, to wear whatever I want, and to let other people deal with figuring out what gender to put on me. if they can't figure me out, that's their problem, im just too tired to keep doing that labor myself. also, im bi and sleep with a wide spectrum of genders and body configurations. just saying that all since I know it's going to color how I approach all this.

anyways. being back on testosterone I find myself with libido like I did before transitioning. it's really nice having energy and libido, but it's also kind of crushing, because I can't do any of what my body wants to do and I have the memory of what was lost. because the first bit of the vaginal canal in a neo-vagina is created out of scrotal skin, the sensitive part of the penis seems to just be gone, I can't seem to get that sensation and so I guess those nerves were winnowed away just like the 80% of the glans that were removed. but I remember what it use to feel like, what was lost. it sucks. it fucking sucks having lost that and that I was sold on the tissue being conserved and the sensation being, if anything, more than how it had been before surgery. what a cruel lie. I wish I at least could forget how it was before I transitioned. im trying to just move on and not feel anger or regret and to just pick up the pieces and go from there, but man. it's fucking hard. sex just isn't satisfying. it's like drinking salt water, where you're drinking but it's not quenching any thirst.

and in terms of the actual act, I'd like to be the penetrating partner, but a strap on is numb outside of the phantom limb effect, that plus the pressure is something at least, but it's just really disappointing. I don't know what to do. there's no "sex ed for men who paid to have their penises inverted" pamphlet or anything, nobody is supporting us and there's so little information out there

so. idk. what are you guys doing? y'all just celibacy-maxxing? anyone figure out how to make sex not just a painful reminder of how deep a hole you dug yourself into? it's such a fucking curse to be back on a sex hormone that gives me a libido while having given up the means to actually do anything. im trying to keep my head up and just move forward but it sometimes doesn't feel like there's a path out of here. a life of being hungry and not being able to eat doesn't sound too great.

A huge reason why I transitioned is that it was so clear what needed to be done. I expressed what was coined as dysphoria to friends and therapists and was immediately handed a framework for understanding all that was wrong with me and all that I could do to address these issues, in order no less!

Hormones, picking a name, getting new clothes, coming out, voice training, surgeries, court orders, more surgeries, laser, electrolysis, even more surgeries, and at the end of the road, self actualization! Supposedly. I'm sure this is great for people for whom this is actually helpful, but for me, it just meant getting lost in the process and ignoring all of my misgivings.

It was hard as hell, but it was all straight forward, and crucially, it was easy for people to wrap their heads around it all. I was alienated from male social roles and felt more comfortable relating to society as a woman would, obviously, this is due to some innate yet metaphysical substance called "gender", so naturally I should take X, Y and Z medical interventions, instead of unpacking the way that parental neglect forced me to take on the domestic and emotional labor that's usually gendered as feminine, or the way that CSA made me terrified of my own homosexuality, or the fact that I had just entered college, all resulting in me drowning upon being expected to live as an adult man. No, none of that needed addressing. If anything, it would get in the way of My Journey and should never be mentioned lest some pesky "gatekeeper" use it as an excuse to unfairly stop me from exerting agency by following along a pre-set path. I lovvve blindly following along a prescribed path all in the name of individualism, agency and self expression. Makes sense.

Ten years on that road and I'm realizing that I feel just as inauthentic when someone she/her's me as I did on day one, the only difference is I no longer have dysphoria to hide that feeling behind. I can no longer say "oh, if only I'd finished The Next Step, then I'd feel an innate sense of validity and connection to womanhood". I can't blame it on internalized transphobia because hell, being trans does not come up in my day to day, my transition has been done for years. Instead, I feel forced to acknowledge that being seen as a woman feels wrong because it is wrong and that I went down a path that was not the path I should have taken.

But, there's no burgeoning industry for this experience, no influencers, no books or blogs or local community or, well, there's no set path to follow. I feel lost and aimless.

It's freeing, but terrifying. Maybe those two are the same feeling.

I just don't know what to do. I can't go back to living as a cis man, I no longer have the required parts for that. How do I explore my sexuality, how do I enter the gay MLM community, without a penis? How can I call myself a man with a straight face, with this body? How can I possibly hope to find anyone to love me if I have no box to put myself in, how can I expect anyone to connect with me if people can't understand what I am? It's really scary haha. I have to try though, because staying on this side of the journey is untenable too. The way men treat women is fucking intolerable, even moreso when one is faking that womanhood just to get by. I just don't know what to do. Living as a castrated man feels somehow even more shameful and embarrassing than pretending to still be a trans woman, but living as a woman is just grinding me down. So I need to do something. Where do I even start?

I've been dating this really great guy for the last five or so years, he's really supported me through some of the hardest times in my life and I am so grateful to have him in my life. He got married to his nesting-partner about a year ago, they just bought a house together even, and they're talking about having kids in the near-ish future. On my end, I'm pretty much solo poly. I have a few people I see, but nobody in that "primary" slot, everyone in my polycule is either uninterested in something serious or has already settled down with somebody else. Suffice it to say that I am a bit "up for grabs".

As they navigate these life changes together, he's told me that he wants me to be involved. He would like me to move in at some point, to help raise the kids that him and his spouse have, to even have those children see me as one of their parents if we are so lucky. He wants to build a life with me, while also building it with this other person who is just a friend to me. He says that both me and this other person are his primary partners, but they bought a house together, and I was not involved. I really struggle to see how what he says could be possible, even just logistically.

I know it's possible for three people to build family and life together, but the only times I've seen that happen are when the three all love one another, which isn't the case here. I also think it would be totally possible for me and him to raise this child together with the dynamic of a divorced couple, where we both have our own life and home, but those two lives intercept in the support of this kid, except in this case we'd love each other still. That sounds difficult and straining but possible. What I don't see as possible is for me and him and this other person who to me is just a friend, to live together and to build something together. It is hard to believe that if push came to shove that my needs and wants or feelings could possibly have the same weight as the person to whom he is married and who will have given birth to his child, and if that's the case, then it isn't my life, it's a life that has a me-shaped hole carved into it, a life that I get to be a passenger in. Another alarm bell is that he's mentioned off hand here and there that some things they want about how they raise these children would only be possible with another income in the house, and the possibility that I'm being invited in solely for what I could provide financially is bone-chilling.

To be clear, I don't think that's the case, I don't think he's lying. I just worry that what he *wants* us to be is clouding his ability to see the limits to what we all *could* be, that he's calling our dynamic something that it can't be. But I want to be wrong.

The insight of other people could be really helpful, because maybe I just am overly anxious, maybe my lack of queer and poly community is hiding from me what is possible, I would really like to be wrong. I love this man and want so much to be a coparent with him, I really want this to be possible, I just am so terrified to wake up a decade from now in a house that isn't mine, with a child who isn't mine, realizing that the life I have isn't mine either. I only get one life here, and while I don't want to throw this opportunity for parenthood away, I also am so scared to find that I never lived and instead just tagged along with somebody else's life.

Tldr: after a year and a half of trying to get medical care for facial pain/pressure and an inability to breathe through my nose, I smoked a cigarette given to me at a show, and could breathe clearly for the first time since I can remember. I need to translate this to something other than "take up smoking" lol

To kvetch: a year and a half ago my sinus issues had gotten worse so I went to an ENT.

* The first guy assumed I was lying about my issue to get a rhinoplasty because I'm trans, so, he referred me to an ENT who specializes in cosmetic surgery against my wishes

* after six months on a wait list (she specializes in trans health care, so I'm lucky it wasnt a year long) I met with her. She actually listened, so looked and saw signs of swollen turbinents and a deviated septum, but needed to see an CT

* it took another three months to get the CT and another appointment with her. The CT confirmed that I had swollen turbinents and a deviated septum, so, she referred me to an ENT that specializes in sinus issues specifically

* wouldn't you guess it, but it took another three months to meet with that guy! He looked at my CT and, wow, whatda know, its swollen turbinents and a deviated septum! Huh!

* he wants me to meet with an allergenist or whatever, but hinted that reeeally the last ENT should have been able to do the surgery, so I should honestly probably go back to see her after the allergy specialist. Really just mealimouthed his way out of offering to operate

Its at this point that I just crash out and just. Fucking hell healthcare sucks. Who god damn knows who she or the allergy fucker would send me to. I might as well be miserable but keep my pto

Been sitting on my ass since, trying out a litney of sprays and allergy meds and whatever, nothing works

Then! I smoke! And my sinuses open up so dramatically that I hear cracking and can feel the drainage, and now I can breathe! And my face doesnt hurt! Its so fucking good and I'm emotional knowing that it 20 minutes the nicotine will wear off and it'll, slowly or quickly, go back to how it was

I cant just start smoking to self medicate lol. What can I do with this newfound knowledge that nicotine is the folk remidy that works?

Shabbat shlom. This is about signed Hebrew, not spoken hebrew, so please excuse me.

I'm trying to find the brachos in ISL (israeli signed language). When I search for signed versions of the brachos, I find nothing but ASL versions. I don't use english when voicing the prayers, so as my hearing fades and with it my comfort voicing, I dont want to be using ASL instead. I voice my prayers in Hebrew, I want to sign them in ISL.

Any resources would be hugely helpful. Obviously too late for this week unfortunately haha

I'm learning a language right now with an absolutely obnoxious conjugation system (modern hebrew - where both nouns, pronouns and verbs are all conjugated by gender and number). Because it's not a proto-indo-european language, I'm so lost when it comes to how it handles conjugation. Usually the suffix changes, but sometimes it's the prefix, occasionally there's instead an insertion in the middle of the root, it's bonkers!

I put together a list of top 500 most used words with example sentences and am just brute forcing this a basic foundation, but I don't know how to handle all the different conjugations. Do I make three cards for each verb or noun? Do I just learn the root and hope that I'll pick up the conjugations later? I feel like including all conjugations on each card is too much information, but if I do the "separate card for each case" they'll all be too similar to really stick.

Also curious what people do for card structure! Right now I have english in the front, TL + sentence + audio on the backside. I don't want to get caught up in trying to find the optimal way of doing things, and thus never actually doing the thing, but things haven't been terribly successful so far. It feels like I'm pressing "again" like a million times for each card and not getting very far, so maybe this approach is just bad.

For a year now I've been working as a data assistant, a role that I told was going to be basically "the grunt work of data analysis", as in cleaning and routine transformations. As someone just starting out in tech and working on a data science degree, this sounded perfect.

Unfortunately, from the jump they only gave me administrative tasks (ordering supplies, scheduling meetings, ect). I worked so hard on getting any responsibilities within my sphere of interest or training, and outside of hard-fought crumbs I've gotten nothing. Coworkers dismiss any ability I may have, very obviously looking down on me for not having a specialized degree, so everyone is very reticent to see me as anything other than a human version of ChatGPT. Sensing, I think, my dissatisfaction with being a secretary, management has started to steer things towards me taking on the responsibilities of a project manager, with that expectation being explicitly mentioned in a team meeting today, basically voluntelling me that this was to be the role I was to take on for the team.

Thing is. Although I have training in PM and have an understanding of how to do it, it sounds like literally my nightmare position.

The entire reason I wanted to move into tech is that I'm autistic. I struggle with open ended instructions, social dynamics, and unspoken rules or expectations. I wanted a job where I'd be given specific things to work on and I'd get to work on them with my head down. Instead, my career is growing into a job where it seems like the entire shtick is translating open-ended instructions, unspoken expectations, and vague suggestions into concrete tasks, all while managing social dynamics and keeping on top of other people's tasks and progress. Again, a literal nightmare, as in, I've had nightmares where I have to do this sort of thing.

A job where I delegate to the people doing the role that I want to be doing, then have to follow up with them periodically to keep them on task, all while masking as allistic and being sociable and pleasant and keeping a grin on my face, it all makes me want to cry just thinking about it haha.

My skill level and the job market are lousy enough to where I really can't go anywhere, so I have to just make due until idk something changes or I finish my degree or whatever. I really don't know, but I see no way out.

All the guides and trainings about PM are on the technical aspect; they cover gnatt charts and tools and theory, assuming the student just knows the social side of it, but that's the side I have decencies in. Would anyone have advice on where I can learn that side of things so that this role can become easy enough to at least ignore? Is anyone here also autistic and would be able to help explain to me how to not be crushed by what this role entails?

Hey! I'm looking to connect more with the local Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, and I see online a few mentions of a meetup at the starbucks on South and 11th on Wednesday nights, but the comments are all from awhile ago, and they're on Facebook (so I, not having FB, can't message the commenters). My Wednesday nights are kind of busy, and I wouldn't want to go to a Starbucks over better shops near there, so I'm hesitant to go if the meetups have died out.

Since they were pretty ad-hoc, I can't really reach out to An Organization to check or anything, so I'm curious if anyone here has any connection to that and can speak to if they're still happening? If not, I'd love to hear what else is out there. I've been following DHCC, but their events are usually in the suburbs or few and far between, not sure where else to turn to find other signers.

About half way through the master's degree at Eastern, and seeing fellow students struggling with extremely basic technical issues is making me realize that this program really is just for people looking to get a piece of paper to appease HR. I kept telling myself that "oh I'm still in the intro level classes, it'll ramp up eventually" but it's getting harder to believe that. I have had many doors closed on me due to the lack of abbreviations next to my name, so I'll keep plugging away at this, but that doesn't change how unsatisfied I am with what is being covered.

One thing sorely lacking is anything at all about the underlying mathematics at play. They're teaching us the tools, yes, but not why they matter or the logic behind their use. It's like being taught how to use a hammer and then calling yourself an architect. We had a single "statistics for data science" class, which again taught us how to get the numbers we needed in R, but not really what those numbers mean or how they're used, so it's not really useful.

Where can I go to learn the things this program is not bothering to teach us? It's really frustrating to pay $900 every eight weeks and still feel like I need to go elsewhere to actually learn what I need to learn, but here we are.