u/HeftyArgument6326

Is there a difference?

I was raised in a small, family-led independent fundamentalist Christian church that sat somewhere between Pentecostalism and Brethren traditions. There were about 50 of us, made up of around nine families plus a few single people.

The founder was a huge man with a very black-and-white way of thinking and extremely strict about arbitrary things. Half the church were his children and their families. His sons-in-law became the church elders.

He shouted when he preached. Everyone was afraid of him. I remember my parents being “disciplined” several times, not physically, but sternly spoken to in private over various bits of nonsense.

I left in my early 20s after being kicked off the worship team for dating a non-Christian.

The main thing I remember feeling there was fear. So I guess with that level of fear and control, it was a cult?

After that, I attended a more “progressive” church. People were kind, I never felt afraid, and I could disagree with leadership or other members without repercussions. I eventually left because my faith disappeared, but I never considered that church a cult because the atmosphere felt completely different.

I’m now studying psychotherapy, and in class I mentioned being raised in a cult. A woman in my class asked which church it was, and we realised we had some mutual connections through another church. She was curious about why I called my church a cult when she believes the connected church was not one.

What do we think makes one church a cult and another not a cult?

I was looking at another post in r/musicians and there were comments about singers being "a dime a dozen" or "they're just a singer do they don't really understand a musician's craft".

I (41f) am a vocalist but I also play other instruments. But I remember a jazz vocalist friend who doesn't play other instruments but who has an incredible voice and career, still encountered this mentality from her bandmates who were "serious jazz musicians unlike her." She had been developing her voice for years, studied vocal performance at postgrad level, and does a serious amount of maintenance and preparation of her voice to maintain her stamina.

Training and taking care of your voice is a craft. There's a lot of technique and skill that goes into a great vocal performance. The lead singer's voice can make or break a band.

The voice is an instrument and I question the motive or mindset behind the idea that it isn't. Sometimes I wonder if it's because vocalists are often female that it's under-valued.

So many buddy comedy shows and movies have a scene where the characters are tripping after taking mushrooms or they're feeling dozey after a joint etc. It is usually intended to be funny for the audience but I find them so tedious to watch.

Actually being stoned is great fun obviously. Watching it on a screen, not so much.

Has anyone seen a scene of this type that's actually original and funny?

Coz I sure do.

Sigh.

It is honestly like I had a part time job from the age of 1 😆 20 years of spending 1/3 of my week every week in a joyless, repressive place, trying to brainwash myself into believing all of it and conforming to what all the adults in my life expected of me. When I should've just been enjoying being a kid and teenager.

It's sad to think about tbh.

I'm grateful to have the rest of my life to get to know myself, heal, discover the world around me, see the beauty in people and nature, and just enjoy life.

Not everyone gets that chance so I don't take it for granted.

It's sold out online on asiamarket.ie. Some people suggest Aromat as an alternative but that has additional spices that I don't want to add.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!

I'm 40F and work as a professional musician. Music had always been a dream of mine, but I didn’t find people to make music with until my late 20s. Our band did well, but after a few years I wanted to go full-time, while for the others it was more of a hobby. We agreed to call it quits, and I found a new collaborator. She and I had kind of known each other beforehand through a sibling.

We started working together in 2015, and we became obsessive about the band. We practiced most days and continued to do well, making scraps of money from shows and sync deals. We had similar upbringings and spent loads of time together outside of practice as friends, and our spouses became friends too. We spent hours dreaming and mapping out our future.

We were both utter control freaks. I was the band manager, looking after boring admin, social media, bookings, etc., while she was the creative lead. She struggled with social anxiety, so I introduced her to everyone I knew, doing enough networking for both of us. We wrote the songs together.

I leaned towards overconfidence and that special blend of insecurity and arrogance, while she leaned towards self-sabotage, having freakouts due to lack of confidence and making last-minute changes before shows. Then we’d be so terrified during the set because of those changes that most performances became pure stress rather than fun. Even the studio, which had always been my happy place, became a source of anxiety for her, and she would scrutinize and criticize every note we recorded.

Looking back, it almost makes me laugh how much pressure we put ourselves under. Who did we think we were, the next Beatles?

Anyway, unsurprisingly, when things are that unhealthy, intense, and pressurized, it all came to a head. In 2018 we collaborated with another artist on a project, and my bandmate and the collaborator started ganging up on me, culminating in me being shouted at publicly like a misbehaving child. We were grown women in our 30s acting like teenagers, honestly.

In true form, afterwards my bandmate and I spent months obsessively trying to untangle what had happened, apologizing to each other, etc. Then I got pregnant, which felt like the perfect reason to disband.

I thought that now the band was over and we had worked things out, maybe we could try just being friends without all the insane pressure we had put ourselves under. But when I had my first child, she basically stopped contacting me. I eventually reached out to her and she sobbed and apologized. Then I had my second child two years later, and she did the same thing again. This time I didn’t reach out.

It’s been four years now.

She’s still friends with the people I introduced her to, but because my lifestyle is different now with having kids and living away from the city, those friendships faded a bit on my side. Through my contacts, I had also helped her get employment in an arts organization, and she’s still working there, flying all over the world to music conferences.

I was a stay-at-home mum for a while, but when I started recovering from the music-related burnout and stress, I reached out to an older artist for encouragement. She encouraged me to look for:

A. A peer support network

B. A mentor

C. A collaborator

That advice rejuvenated my practice, and over the last few years I’ve picked up music again and now make my living from it through public arts funding. Ironically, my former bandmate wouldn’t be eligible for that kind of funding because she works for the arts organization, so her own creative practice is dormant.

Obviously it’s no surprise things ended as badly as they did. Looking back, I was living out my teenage dream of being a star and acting like a teenager while in the body of an adult. She was the same.

Despite all that, I still care about her deeply and miss the healthier parts of our friendship. I still think about her a lot and wonder how she’s doing.

Someone once told me that even if a band is short-lived, if the experience is intense enough, losing a bandmate can feel like losing a sibling relationship. And honestly, I feel that.

Anyone else?

TL;DR: I was in a duo for a few years, and we put ourselves under an insane amount of pressure and became the worst versions of ourselves. The band and friendship ended, and it still hurts years later.

Admittedly this is personal because I suffered with gestational diabetes during two pregnancies, but I HATE when people chuckle and say "this dessert will give me diabetes'". No you won't, that's not how this works!! Morons.

Edit: thanks to those who are educating me on what jokes are! What I do need an education on is why a specific joke can't be considered a pet peeve.

I'm 41f and I've been mostly a SAHM for a few years. I had been paying into a New Ireland Master Trust pension for a short while prior to the career break so my pension balance is only €45kish. My OH 39m has zero pension, is on a low wage and part of that wage is auto enrolled into the govt pension.

We're asset rich in that we own our house, two cars and a mobile home outright, but we're cash poor and obviously we need to get serious about pensions.

We've started renting a room out and will also be airbnb'ing the house out over the summer to raise some funds. I work in the creative field so occasionally get grants and am paid in lump sums. We're hoping to put most of this into our pensions.

What's the best way to go about setting up pensions if you're self employed and money is inconsistent? Setting up as a company and paying ourselves pensions that way?

Also, because we're quite behind, ideally how much should we start putting into our pensions so we can catch up.

And yes I realise the easiest would be for both of us to go PAYE / earn more and build our pensions that way, but before we go that route, we'd like to see if there are creative alternatives.

Thanks in advance.

I remember us washing our groceries.

Edit for clarity: I was referring to funny things we did during lockdown. Antivax or "COVID was or is a conspiracy" comments are boring AF. COVID is still real and should be avoided 👍

I'm only in my 40s (41f) so I realise depending on what age you are reading this, I might be considered too young to hold this opinion. But I absolutely love being in my 40s and I'm looking forward to (hopefully) continuing getting older.

I'm happy in my own skin, I only spend time with people I actually like, I only consume things I enjoy. I'm not rich but I'm not student-poor anymore. In my 20s I continually got sexually harassed but now I'm generally invisible and the silence is absolutely golden. Now that my kids are slightly older, I have more time to spend on myself and am fitter than I've ever been.

I realise that reaching my 70s or 80s will be another kettle of fish but I'd still prefer that than the alternative. My mother's best friend died suddenly at 49 and it reminds me that getting older is a privilege and not something to dread.

Anyone else feel like this?