u/Juan_Pablo_Secundo

I've seen plenty of posts saying this exact thing, but they helped me relax before the official exam and approach it with confidence, so I'm posting ANOTHER ONE of those to lift someone's spirit up. Boson exams are an entirely different experience, I'd compare it to training volleyball setups with a heavy basketball. Once you switch to the light one (official exam), it feels like a breeze.

I failed every boson practice exam. My total scores were as follows (A to E): 78, 76, 73, 81, 77. Close, but never close enough. I just passed my CCNA today with following scores:
Automation and Programmability: 90%
Network Access: 100%
IP Connectivity: 96%
IP Services: 100%
Security Fundamentals: 80%
Network Fundamentals: 95%

I've seen people with similar results after they got 5x 60% on bosons. Don't worry about your scores. Do the exams. Read the explanations. You'll be fine.

***Typo, meant Sold Soul of course. Forgive me guys, I'm on some painkillers today 🙏.

Just tried to listen to it - it's not up on spotify, yt, or bandcamp. Hope it's just something temporary, and it's not second thoughts sparked by lashback (read: loud, virtue-signaling minority) over CJ feature.

Edit: Found a half statement:

>For those of you who are still finding this video, I've unlisted it & decided to take down the song & all of it's promotion.

>There has been a lot of really nasty discourse over this track & the CJ feature. I don't want any part of helping to generate hostility. I'll be posting more about this decision tomorrow on the Sold Soul socials.

>I believe the album will still come out someday, but for now I need to withdraw for some more time.

Given that youtube's like-to-dislike ratio is 561-5, that's crazy how just a few crazy, loud, obnoxious, chronically online and morally rotten people can bully an artist out of their creation. Beyond disgusting.
(For Stevie, I know you'll probably be scrolling the subreddit - my intention was to spread the word. If that early statement was aimed only to the few people that would find it, I'm sorry and I'll delete the post upon request in a comment/dm.)

In the first half of January I (M25) met a girl (F25) online through our mutual interest, gaming. Quickly we realized that we do have quite chemistry and gotten closer over just a few weeks, spending whole days (or nights) together on calls. We agreed to meet somewhere at the end of march~start of april, but we postponed it due to me having to finish my thesis & graduating my degree. As I was about to get free again, she started doubting if we will actually work out in the long run for many reasons (we haven’t met after the initial doubt, due to being scared that if it won’t work, then meeting is just going to get us more attached and harder to split if needed):

1. First of all, I’m from Poland, she’s from Italy – points below are related to it. Though, two things to it: she’s half Egyptian, half Polish. She understands some of spoken polish (could make a summary of my phonecalls she overheard, or we watched some old Disney movies in polish & she was able to understand them. Second thing, her only family in the country is her father (important later).
2. Logistics of meeting regularly (she’s had a long distance relationship before where meeting even within the same country was difficult for them, some kind of leftover ‘trauma’). Meeting over such distance while also having jobs is going to be incredibly difficult.
3. Both of us being at transitional stages in life – we’re both graduating universities this year and we’ll need to find first jobs with no experience – and she’s planning to start a Master’s degree, too. We both still live with a parent, none of us could guarantee a comfortable moving experience (naturally we don’t have to do it just yet).
4. Most important thing – her father started showing early signs of Alzheimer's, and he has big Alzheimer history in family. Because of this, we can be pretty much sure she won’t be ever able to move – though, years back he suggested willingness to move to Ireland, where his brother lives. But afaik it wasn’t a “plan”, he just spoke of it once, saying he might move after she’s fully independent, graduated, with a stable job, can afford to move out, etc. When writing this, I’m actually a little confused, she also mentioned he just loves the city they live in, so she doubts he’d really move – and (as far as I understood, I might have a distorted memory) she doesn’t want to ask him about it, putting pressure.
5. (I don’t know much about this part, I’m not up with the news, that’s a point she made) Airports shutting down/cancelling flights due to the war & fuel costs, possibly getting much worse in the future.

Also, I’m quite sceptical about making a decision if I’m open to moving to Italy – I just graduated a degree in ICT, studying for an extra certificate right now, looking for a job, but it’s so incredibly difficult to get the first job in IT (networking) without prior experience. I’m so incredibly scared about not being able to find a job in my field if I were to move there in a year or so, without much experience and without the language (yet). Italy’s economy has been stale in comparison to Poland, there’s a lot more IT offers (afaik).
I also just love Poland – the culture, language, weather, people – reddit will call me racist for it, but I remember being in germany for a day once (a big city near Cologne) and I was feeling incredibly unsafe and uncomfortable with the amount of non-european immigrants. I’m very much worried I’d be just unhappy in such foreign environment – a reminder, I live in a major city and the only non-polish people that I see are the ones in kebab restaurants.
Lastly, metal music is one of my 2 biggest passions, I attend numerous shows a year – and the tours I’m interested in always skip Italy. Those can be seen as ‘small’ things, but they really matter to me and they just accumulate.

For past 2 months we’ve been going from one important conversation to another (with like 1-3 week gaps inbetween) with no solid conclusions, just going back to our everyday lives after every one of them, though disconnecting slowly day by day. 3 days ago we talked and made the ever so painful decision to stop talking (maybe it was mutual, maybe mostly me, since we both lacked the balls to make a decision despite not having a plan or hope). By my choice it was either all or nothing – I can’t stay potentially friends since it would not only be a hurtful reminder, but also the feeling would never be gone. We did develop kind of a bond in all the hours be spent together, and we deeply care for each other. It’s been just 3 days and the decision hurts so bad. I want to talk to her, I want to talk about it, but I don’t know if it’s not going to be just more pain.

As a counterargument, an ldr of ~2 years is not that uncommon, we’d have time to get some experience in our fields and see what life brings ahead. We can’t tell how we vibe irl if we have never met. And I’ll never be able to fully say if I’m open to moving or not if I don’t visit and try to see how I feel there for at least a weekend, or a week – a few times. But maybe thinking that I'd change my mind is just coping? Maybe subconciously it won't change, and meeting would just make it harder to split later? For most of the time I was asking her to meet, but at the end I did admit her that I feel like she's right, that taking the "fuck it, we ball" approach might just hurt us more in the end.
I feel really terrible with that decision and with myself, especially with how she’s simply unable to move (to not leave her father alone), and I’m literally unwilling, which feels like a moral failing of mine, prolly showing I don’t care, but I really do. I don’t want to lose her forever. I don't know my thoughts, what do I do?

tl;dr Knew a girl for 5 months, unofficial ldr (Poland to Italy) but feelings were clear & two sided. Hard life stages and personal biases make it very difficult to have an optimistic vision of living together one day.

A new post/profile pictures on Sold Soul medias (post got autodeleted when I tried to include the link, sorry)! Stevie responded to one of the comments under a facebook post:

>the gnarled horns material got absorbed into sold soul, again

Also who I assume to be Stevie's girlfriend commented "23 when the song drops" - not sure if that means that it's... tomorrow? Maybe it's on someone's birthday and they turn 23...?

I feel weird finding the details, BUT I'M SO HAPPY, GIVE US THE DROP ALREADY.