u/BowserBuddy123

Hi all! I’m a M/35 who has lived in the same place for a long time. I live in the US. For the last seven or so years I’ve wanted to move across the country and am finally doing so. My dad passed away decades ago and my mom never really moved on. She has lived in the same family home we grew up in and she had bought with my dad nearly 50 years ago. My mom is older for sure.

I grew up nearby where I live currently and used to live in another part of the state. However, because my mom was having health issues about 10 years ago, I moved down to be close to her. That wasn’t my plan, but I love her and felt a duty to do so. I loved with her a bit after getting out of a long, difficult relationship. That was my first relationship so I stayed in it over long. I left my girlfriend of the time because we had agreed to move closer to our parents years earlier only to have her change her mind on me. I had sacrificed a lot of career prospects for that girl, but it was so freeing to leave and move back home to be close with my mom who needed help.

I felt good about myself at that time, though it took me a bit to find a job and once I did, it was not the best job possible. However, I’ve moved up a bit in my company and while I don’t make much, I’m proud of where I have come. I’ve been in a couple relationships down here but none have worked out.

The last two years, I’ve actively been looking into moving and finally signed a lease elsewhere. My mom is very sad, but she doesn’t speak about it much. The idea is that I will move, but my sister who actually moved away 10 years ago will come down and be with my mom a bit before my mom eventually moves to be with my sister in a much colder weather state.

My mom is very sad. I have an ex girlfriend who I dated for eight months or so who also would have liked to move with me, but we had some issues and I felt she wasn’t the one. We are still close, though I feel this was a bad choice for both of us, because as I get closer to moving, she and my mom are both very distraught.

My mom has always been there for me and I feel in a way, I’m abandoning her. Idk how else to think of it. She made a choice to stay where she was not surrounded by friends or family and I chose to move near to her to be her sole family and support here. It’s been ten years and I talk to my mom all the time and see her at least once a week. We’ve always been close and she wanted to get old and die in her home, but being in the same place I grew up feels stifling.

I’m feel so guilty for leaving my hometown. My mom is being a bit snippy. She doesn’t talk about it unless I ask, but when I bring it up, she always acts like everything is so easy for me. That this is all fun and games for me. She spoke about how leaving the familial home will be a big life change and I said, “sure” and I was going to go on about how we frame changes, but she said, “it’s easy for you to say!”

She is a good person. I feel I’m a good person since I moved to be close to her, supported her through medical issues over the past ten years and was always at her side, but I feel so guilty. I feel like I should be happy to go off and try something new, but it is all just so stifling. My ex is also very sweet, but she is an immigrant and would have liked to get married. She’s more American than I am and admittedly, she does want a green card, but given she has mentioned that several times, I’m not sure I could marry her ever thinking she loved me for anything more. She’s brings up that my mom is old and that it will be difficult for her to leave the home and be in a colder state. It will. She’s not wrong. I swear I’m painting my ex as a bad person, but I know she is not. She is just holding out hope we will get back together after breaking up 5 months ago. It’s just, she asked a lot of me and I feel I never asked a lot from her. There wasn’t balance in that way. I always needed to be there for her, support her dreams and her goals and mine always seemed secondary. I couldn’t do it any longer.

When am I allowed to love my own life? I’m 37 and single and just want to be in a place more aligned to my values and my desires. I can’t wait to be out in nature. But moving has become a dark cloud. My friends are all supportive, but those closest to me are so sad as to feel not supportive? I understand their perspectives, but I am my own person and I feel I have paid my dues and that I don’t owe anyone anything I can no longer offer. I’m majorly burnt out and just trying to hold things together.

My ex wants to hang out for the fourth and I’m thinking that is a mistake. We care for each other, but I don’t want to lead her on and that’s why we broke up 5 months ago. We’ve only seen each other 3-4 times since, but it is always difficult. Not the time together which is nice, but the pulling apart. Breaking up over and over again. That’s what it feels like. Being friends as exes feels like a mistake unless everyone is totally on the same page and rarely, I imagine, is that the case.

I’m just kind of ranting as I’m depressed by all this. I want to be happy, but wonder if I deserve it or if I should feel guilty.. if I am abandoning my family.

If anyone can share any thoughts, advice, encouragement or their own experiences, I’d appreciate it.

TL;DR: Moving away from mom after being her lone support for ten years. My mom will likely need to leave our family home to move states to be with my sister. She makes it very known she is sad not just about me leaving, but possibly having to move. I have an ex I care about who is also distraught at my moving. I don’t know how to feel about something I wanted to do for so long coming to fruition, at the expense of the happiness of some of those around me about whom I care so much.

Sorry if this is discussed often, but needed to vent a bit:

I work in the US in large e-commerce. Not the biggest at all, but a national, recognizable brand for sure. In the last year, we’ve gone full-bore into adopting AI and our seniorest of leaders had mentioned in the past that everyone should be using AI in some way for pretty much every project on which they work.

I’m in a data analytics department and interestingly, my leadership isn’t the greatest at actual data analytics. They have no issues basically using ChatGPT to help write white papers that sound good enough, but are more or less bereft of a lot of meaning. It’s often just word salad. Our leaders write papers and the analysts work on projects and there is not a ton of connection between the papers written and all the P0s, roadmaps and everything else and the actual day to day work.

This could just be bad leadership generally, but it’s gotten worse since we’ve adopted more AI tools. We now have AI basically connected to our database infrastructure such that we can ask large business questions to the AI and get responses. A couple things though, not all the data feeds into the AI, but senior leadership on my team at least doesn’t seem to appreciate that. It’s spit out any old answer and sometimes the “answer” is an AI derivative of AI-derived outputs. My leadership will spend a couple hours putting out an “analysis” of some big business question and reading the paper with any expertise or knowledge and you realize its gibberish or that the recommendations can’t be justified by the evidence.

When confronted with this fact, leadership just explains we are basically in this “AI or die” death spiral where everyone is expected to 5-10x their productivity even if they don’t have a solid foundation with AI. My leadership team doesn’t validate or verify any of their output, or they do so just enough that it is “believable” without being actionable.

It’s causing a lot of fissures as some folks are AI skeptical, some like myself realize that AI is a tool and has its uses, but shouldn’t be taken at face value all the time and others use it for every task thinking that producing work output is the goal unto itself. Our stock is plummeting, senior leadership are tightening the boot straps and middle management is fractured as stated above. Myself and my teammates see it occurring and are stressed ourselves, because our leadership can’t commit to a goal or project and stick with it.

Is anyone else experiencing this in the corporate world? I’m sure this type of environment is not new, but the emergence of AI and our tight bottomline have made it tough for our company currently. I would say maybe it is just my department or my poor leadership, but the entire company stock is down almost 50% YTD. I mean, my leadership has sucked for a while, but AI and our quickened adoption of all things AI seems to be making it worse.

I really think a lot of the mid-sized companies that invested heavily early on in AI may experience all the bubble that AI companies themselves likely will. Too much money spent too quickly creating massive tech debt to tools that were amazing yesterday but perhaps obsolete tomorrow. Idk, I understand this is a different concern, but my company went so heavily into it and now it seems like the quality of everyone’s work is just absolute trash.

Note: this isn’t really asking for dating advice, but what could eventually lead to dating advice. That is, I wasn’t sure really into this girl, but can see a future where I don’t want to drop this ball. This was removed from r/askmen as they assumed I was looking for dating advice, when I just wanted to know how to tell if someone may be flirting or being friendly. There is no “is this flirting?” sub to my knowledge.

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Hi all, question for you all as I’m sure someone would know. I’m a 37M and I’ve always been kind of a big guy at 6’2” and anywhere between 210 and 250lbs. Right now, I’m a bit on the higher end, but going to the gym consistently. 

I’m sure this is common for most men, but working out, it is pretty uncommon for attractive women to acknowledge let alone smile at guys. I’m pretty average looking even if I’m pretty muscular/big.

nyways, I was using a foam roller and lacrosse ball for myofascial release at the gym. As I was using a lacrosse ball on my hamstring, a younger woman walked by and smiled at me. It was noticeable enough to be different. I just kind of stored that away and figured she was just being nice. She was much younger than me. Probably mid 20s max. 

I’m doing my thing and trying to fix my hamstrings and then as I’m using that lacrosse ball up on these plyometric boxes—so I could extend my knee as I apply pressure—she asks me if foam rolling “actually works.”

Again, she was probably just being nice or I thought maybe she was really interested, so I started going into way too much depth about the fascia covering your muscles and how you can get these knots from working out, sitting too long or just from built up scar tissue. I went into this whole thing about what the fascia is and even explained it as that thin membrane you see on chicken breast under the skin when cooking. Anyways, about 45 seconds in to her simple “yes/no” question, I could tell she could not care less.

It basically ended there and after about five minutes I was done with the club’s foam roller. I asked her if she wanted to use it and she was not interested at all and while declining didn’t even really look at me. 

Was she legitimately asking or just trying to make conversation? What is a general rule of thumb here? How best should one answer these questions where it may be a simple icebreaker or they could be genuinely interested in the subject asked about? I’d be interested in folks’ opinions. I speak like I write, so I’m wordy in person too. Maybe not totally self aware in that way.

I mean, fuck the Knicks, but that comeback was nuts. Go Heat. Fuck the Knicks.