u/Free_Divide195

TL;DR - I received my temporary RealID today. I do not have a valid passport, military ID, etc. My only other documents with both a photo and my information are old drivers licenses.
I have a million other identifying documents - bank cards, marriage licenses, birth certificate, SSN, etc - but my RealID will not arrive by the date I am expected to fly.

SEATAC does offer TSA ConfirmID within 10 days of travel, which I do intend to pursue in addition to other precautionary measures.

Due to conflicting information on this sub / online, I am looking for personal stories from folks who specifically only had temporary documents and did not have valid alternative documents like passports or military IDs during domestic travel.

1. What did you bring with you to talk with TSA?
2. What didn't you bring with you that might have made the experience easier to navigate?
3. Did you complete TSA ConfirmID before your flight, and if so what impact did it have on the verification process?

( All of this is happening because I have a very exciting out-of-state job interview - so I'm both eager to travel *and* on a razor-thin timeline. I haven't been on a plane in probably close to 20+ yrs, so trying to get caught up on where there's wiggle room and where there's hard lines. Appreciate all the personal stories from folks who have been in my shoes. )

I tried calling around to the numbers that come up when you Google "Tacoma cancer support group" and they're all either disconnected or closed today.

Hoping to connect to an in-person meeting urgently, so any help is appreciated.

My brother has terminal cancer, and a secondary infection from a recent surgery has reduced his lifespan from 4-8 months to 48hrs.

This transition has been extremely hard, as my brother is an addict. Anyone who has addict family knows that caring for an addict is like a heavy stone on your chest - crushing, a little more every day. It has made a process which should be so simple - be at the bedside of a dying man - very complex.

All that we've been navigating, but now we're here. He's dying in a hospice shelter for terminally ill homeless folks.

- Mom is furious with dad because he was supposed to bring my brother home for end-of-life care months ago. Mom feels like dad dragged his feet, and his new wife pushed back on having an unknown addict die in her house. Lots of made and broken promises.

- Dad is furious with mom because she's been through the end-of-life process so many times before and didn't help him beyond the bare minimum. Dad feels like mom gave him the silent treatment in an attempt to 'teach him a lesson'.

Meanwhile, he's dying in a homeless shelter. Meanwhile, I'm answering phone calls saying "Hi Dad. Mom said...." "Hi Mom. Dad said..."

So dad leaves breakfast with his grand kids to go pick up the car and drive four hours to the hospital. He doesn't outright say it, but I feel the frustration - he's dying at an inconvenient time. Mom is blind, sitting in her living room on the phone with my brother. I ask her if she's going to go see him. She just breaks down crying, because she could find a way to get there if she wanted to but she doesn't know if she can. I know what she means be 'can'.

I have my own issues. Years of fear and confusion at the hands of this person who is my brother in name but not in blood... or practice... or spirit. That strange pull between 'I don't want a human being to die alone' and 'I do not want to sit at the deathbed of a man I've feared for 40 yrs'.

All I can think is how this is the best outcome my brother could have.
He's not dying in a tent by the river after an overdose. He's not dying on pile of trash under an overpass. He's not dying on the train tracks, or after being hit by a car while walking on the road at night. He's dying in a bed, with pain management, with his dad beside him (hopefully) and his mom on the phone (hopefully). Maybe I'll even figure out how to bear looking at him one more time before he dies.

God, it's such a fucking mess. This man's life, all 50+yrs of it, have just been indignity and strife and pain and anger and struggle after struggle after struggle. None of us will say it out loud, but we all talk around how him passing will be the most peaceful experience of his life.

What a mess. I feel guilty that I've made so many of the same choices he did but I made it. I have a home and a family and a career and friends and I know our parents would tear their own hearts out to keep mine beating. I survived every thing that he didn't. I was the baby brother who watched where he slipped so I knew where not to step.
I'll never forget the first time he begged me for money after mom and dad cut him off. Or the fifth time. Or the hundredth time. We are all guilty for our role in his suffering.

My brother will be dead soon. I might see him before then. I might not. Once, I looked at hundreds of dead men looking for his corpse when we'd thought he'd died. I saw his face in every single one of them - sallow, sunken cheeked, toothless jaw, milky eyes. I looked at all those unclaimed remains for days and days and thought how every single one of them was my brother.

He can't think anymore. He doesn't remember his own last name. He doesn't remember where he is most days, or that he's dying. He refused treatment because 'I heard it gives you cancer' while he's dying of cancer. I would laugh if it was someone else saying it.

He'll be dead soon, and all I can think is that this is the best it could be. This is the best way his life could end. This is the best thing that could happen for our family at this point. This is the best outcome of a horrible, crushing, terrible situation. He will not be photographed laying on a table, filed under 'John Doe', and placed on a list of all the other men who died alone and forgotten. This is the best we could hope for. This is the best he could do.

I am not afraid of death. I have been at the bedside of others when the died. I just wish it were different. I wish his life had been easier. I wish he could have been the person I know he wanted to be - good husband, father, caregiver, friend. His wife - last we heard arrested for being passed out naked and high in the park - will never even know he died. She will probably be the next face on that list of unclaimed remains. I wonder what her family will feel - will it be the same thing I felt.

I am waiting on the call that tells me he has died. I don't know what I'll feel when it arrives.

TL;DR - I have struggled with exiting jobs that I enjoy over what I understand to be fairly standard workplace friction. I do not exhibit these behaviors in my personal / social life.
Looking for guidance exclusively from therapists on what to look for.

- I have built a high-impact career in my field over the last 15+ yrs. I have a great deal of skill across a number of focus areas as a result.

- My biggest hurdle is that I struggle to remain at any one organization for more than 3yrs. Typically, I start to feel a high degree of dissatisfaction at the 1.5yr mark.

- Generally, this dissatisfaction is around leadership / leadership communication or inadequate compensation (working in NPO space).

- My behavior tends to follow a pattern: attempt to engage with employee resource groups, unions, etc in order to change the unsatisfactory conditions I'm seeing -> change is either slow or non-existent and I become frustrated -> I begin to feel like I'm not progressing my career or otherwise stagnating -> I exit citing the desire to take on more challenging roles.

I do want to call out that this behavior has not (as of yet) hurt my career, and has in fact helped me secure better roles + higher pay. Still, I have prematurely exited several organizations which generally met my needs. I feel that, had I cultivated a greater tolerance for some of the more frustrating bureaucratic elements of working in an office, I could have made a case for advancing my career in those spaces.

-

I think it's important to note that I don't express these behaviors, at least not to this degree, in my personal life. I am in a long-term committed marriage, maintain a robust circle of friends who both welcome and practice generative conflict, and devote a great deal of my social energy towards nurturing complex relationships within my community.

I believe that I have some complex feelings to unpack re. my work in the nonprofit space / some beliefs around work and earning money in general that might be holding me back. I would like to devote more time to talking about these things through an occupational lens, but I'm unsure where to begin as I've only ever seen a therapist as part of my mental healthcare plan.

TL;DR - For a number of years, seemingly every employer I worked for offered a retirement plan. Now, I have four different plans I've never touched beyond contribution matches that I need to start managing.

What sort of professional would be most appropriate to talk to about:

1. Understanding my extant accounts and what can be done with them.
2. Offering guidance re. what *should* be done with them.
3. Verifying I don't have any other accounts out there that I've somehow missed.

I do a fair job managing my day to day finances, but I've avoided dealing with these accounts for far too long due to the perceived complexity. Realizing sitting down with a professional may give me the boost needed to be utilizing these more effectively.

The perfect plain white T.
The perfect selvedge denim.
The perfect waxed chore coat.

The Great Renunciation may have cut men off from bold fashion choices, but it didn't cut them off from dogmatic obsessions with 'perfection'.
Instead, that energy has been channeled into micro-analyzing a $250 cotton shirt to determine if the binding is oblique enough to prevent puckering after 500 wears. Or to determine if the wear pattern on a pair of jeans effectively mirrors that of Levi's found in an 1890's-era mineshaft.

This has nothing to do with rejections of quality, sustainable clothing - I love fashion and enjoy the increased tolerance for visible wear, repair, reuse, etc within the industry / consumer base. That said, the vast majority of the "Perfect ____" discourse has little to do with actual personal enjoyment and use of the clothing and more to do with peacocking without actually taking any personal risks.

It feels like fashion shorthand, where if I wear the *best* t-shirt and *best* jeans and *best* coat I'll be instantly fashionable without actually having to curate my wardrobe around my lifestyle and interests. It's washing your face with Satatoga but drinking nothing but energy drinks. It's the Eames 670 in a Millennial grey apartment.

Luxury out of context doesn't feel luxurious. It feels lazy.
IMO there's no shortcuts in self-expression.

TL;DR - I need to buy a *lot* of stamps today. Most places I've gone to just have the plain old flags. What branch has the best variety of currently available stamps?

I would order online, but the end of the month has snuck up on me and I have a mass mailer going out on the first. Happy to visit multiple branches in the area, but looking for at least 200-350 non-flag forever stamps. Any philatelists in the area have a go-to branch?

UPDATE: Hit up the downtown branch and they had a great assortment + quantity! Walked out with 15 books of different designs (and no boring flags!)

I just got a job as the Major Donor Officer at a downtown non-profit! This means I'll be meeting many HNWIs over the coming months, and need a place to sit over a cup of coffee or a cocktail to discuss proposals.

Here in Tacoma, I generally take folks to Field Bar, En Rama, Browne Family, etc.

Looking for an upscale small bites restaurant or cocktail bar within 15-20min walking distance of Westlake Station.

Ideally these are slightly smaller, quieter (since we'll be talking business), and (ideally) have a bit more of an artsy feel.

Anyone have favorites, AND and favorites from those?