u/BugEyedCollector

I had an appointment this morning that I forgot to remind my boss of yesterday, albeit already having notified him of this a month ago - it seemed like the planning he had made for the day included me being there in the morning.

I texted him at 12PM, felt stressed and bad about going there, and at 7AM I got a message from him saying that he remembered so it was all good. Anxiety gone.

My boss often gets angry with me, directly or passively, for small mistakes I make so I'm always on my toes around him.

My behaviour with this isn't just with him, it's towards a bunch of people - except the ones that vibe with everything.

I'm afraid of upsetting someone, having them be annoyed or pissed with me, so I choose to please and keep the calm even if that means not doing the thing I want to do. I'm not a huge people pleaser however, only if I know they'll actively get upset with me.

I dislike how it impacts me and has my entire body feel stressed. I try to be bigger, but then I get scolded once or a nasty look and I feel like crap - needing to make things good or I don't feel nice.

Any advice on this? It's tiresome and doesn't feel good to be putting myself below people like this.

Many thanks in advance!

I've reiterated this title at least ten times, but that's basically what it boils down to.

As a kid, I always received plenty of praise for whatever I made - which has led to me feeling like my work isn't good or wasn't worth it if I do not receive positive reactions from it.

I do enjoy creatively working, get into a good flow of working on something, and then as soon as I think about "what happens with this once it's finished?" I realize nothing much will come of it, audience - impact wise, and all my motivation goes away.

I have a masters in animation and a game design degree. Many years of making things with a purpose. If I just play around with something and it doesn't lead to anything I feel like I've wasted my time. I've always had huge dreams of making it big in the game or animation industry, but I know that's not realistic with how things are.

This also goes in hand with me feeling like I'm just not very good at things and don't have what it takes, but that's not my focus for this post.

I want to find joy in making things, and in making things with the intention of showing it to others or the world, without feeling like a failure when the responses I get from it aren't what I expected - or there are none.

Finished something that I worked on for months or years? Got a few "nice" comments and that's it? Cool! Next project.

Instead it just makes me rethink what I've been doing and has me ready to drop it all, thinking if I made the right choice to do this after all.

It's a crappy feeling to have fun doing things yet have that fun taken away so fast. I can't fully explain all of this since it's a deep rooted issue. I am also seeing a perfectionist coach for this (as weird as that sounds), but I was hoping I could find some good Reddit wisdom. Anything helps.

Have a nice weekend! 🙏

I often catch myself rushing to places while I have plenty of time left, since I left early. I have difficulty choosing what to do because I want to optimize the hours I have left, and to my mind it doesn't feel like I can just do the thing I didn't choose another day.

Plenty of social events and hangouts I said no to because I wanted to work on something or do something specific.

When something comes up that wasn't planned (even something simple like me forgetting a certain ingredient I needed and needing to go to the store) it messes up my entire schedule and makes me stress out even more.

I plan my days the evenings before down to 15 minutes, but it's so tiresome to live like this.

I have ADHD so nothing I do ever goes as fast as planned, which adds fuel to feeling like I'm constantly trying to be on time for things - which has me trying to just be earlier for everything. In turn, I just constantly live from schedule to schedule and am extremely inflexible.

Aside of why time seems like such a big problem and stress factor for me, does anyone have advice on how to not feel like you're being chased by a clock and fearing the end of the day constantly?

Any tips are immensely appreciated.

My girlfriend and I work 8-9 hour shifts, and when we're home we play with our cat a few times, give her snacks, throw some foam balls she absolutely loves, and let her smell the food or drinks we make to let her experience some new things.

She's very energetic however, so those few play sessions in the morning and evening still leave her with enough energy that I feel she can't really use on anything in the house. For a cat, our place is pretty boring. We have a cat tree, a cat dancer she ignores, some of her favorite foam balls left behind from the end of her play sessions, and that's it stimulation wise. Aside of that, it's just some nice hiding spots, a cold tile, the couch, her blanket and two big windows where she can look at the city.

She's not showing any negative signs of boredom, but she is a very curious cat and I think it'd be nice to give her some more exploration opportunities.
Do you guys have any suggestions, bought or DIY, for things we can get so she has something interesting to look at or play with by herself?

Thanks in advance!

When I think about early civilizations things that come to mind are their wide knowledge about nature and how they optimized that in order to have a more comfortable life theirselves. Their agriculture, their "manual industry" that didn't rely on exhausting natural resources or putting tons of animals in tiny cages.

I think this is a huge idealisation in my mind though, and there must have also been a ton of practices that weren't animal or nature friendly at all.

However, compared to how humans now seem to bring destruction with them wherever they go, what was that like in the past? What changed? Or what are some dark truths that I just don't know, have humans always been this inconsiderate towards the earth and life on it?

Some context; we live in an appartment right under the (flat) roof, meaning - when it's nice and windy outside it's an absolute sauna at our place.

Since we got our cat we've only been opening our windows with the tilted option, and twice we've closed the door of her safe room because the heat was too much to take (her safe room had the fan on).

Right now it's nice and cold outside, and our place is again way too hot. It'd be great to be able to open all the windows fully for 30mins-1 hour to get it down to outside-temperatures, but I feel bad about locking her into that one room. It does have everything she needs, it's just the thought I find sad.

Any advice for how to deal with this?

We have cat safety borders for the tilted stand, but not for the fully open windows. I don't want her diving out and realizing we're on the third floor 😅

We've always had cats when I was a kid. I loved all of them and spent a lot of time with them, however, being a kid... I didn't always do the right thing when it came to cat care.

We didn't give them fresh water every day, sometimes we were home late and only then gave them their dry food, not playing enough with them,...

I've had a lot of regrets regarding the way our kitties got treated, although in the end I was just a kid and my mom should've taken better care of these things.

HOWEVER!! We adopted a kitty a week ago and I've learned from my mistakes.

Playtime minimum twice, 15mins in the morning and evening, a variety of snacks and food at specific times (with automatic feeder if anything ever came up), fresh clean water every day, really taking her into account with everything.

Cats are independent but their lives are really what we make them. I wish for my kitty to have a long and happy and enriched life where she gets to experience a bunch of things.

Thank you for reading this long post! Off to petting kitty now

I get that people have different views and experiences. I also get that as a parent you will often automatically project this onto yourself.

But the amount of times I've explained to people that I have gone no contact with my mom and brother for very good reasons, and am happier now, only to get the reply of "it's still your mom" "you just need some time away" PISSES ME OOOFFF

It feels like they're dismissing the thought that maybe I've spent a ton of time trying to fix this, to then grieve over it, and to then take the steps that are the best for me.

In the end people don't have to understand and I just stop explaining at some point and "agree" to get the topic over with, but man it'd be nice if people didn't automatically give me that sentence.

I've always been a creative kid celebrated for my talent when it came to drawing and creating projects, leading to perfectionism (hah!) at a young age.

Nowadays, I work as a game artist in a small game studio. I have immense impostor syndrome and there's only been a few times throughout my entire creative journey where I've actively been happy with what I made.

My main struggle is a constant pressure and paralyzing fear but also knowledge of not being good enough. I am genuinely nowhere near the level of concept artists that work on AAA-games, and to top it all off I have ADHD which makes learning new things a lot harder than I imagine it could be.

I fear I won't ever reach what I want, and I'll always be stuck in this... Mediocre-being, while I so desperately want to achieve more and be better.

It's tiring. I also barely practice or do things for fun because of this, which obviously also doesn't get me anywhere.

Any other people who are in the field struggling with OCPD? How do you do it? Any tools/exercises that have made it better or kept it at bay?

I have a remote job that has me work on my computer for 8 hours a day.

While it's a job I love in an industry I love, I find it harder and harder to not constantly search for stimuli that gets me out of my boredom.

I find this by playing games, chatting with people, trying out new Pomodoro apps, doing house chores or drinking something nice.

As you might be able to guess, not exactly the best thing productivity wise.

The problem is that me sitting behind my desk and actually doing the work doesn't give me enough stimuli and it has me ending up with way too much energy.

So; to those who have experience with being stuck behind their desk all day and not getting a lot of input, do you have any tips or rituals you do to keep it interesting - that doesn't involve me not working for an hour or more?