u/Moistowletta

Hello,

I work for Child Protective Services and am experiencing secondary trauma and burnout. It is affecting my work and home life. I would like to request 1 month to 2 months of FMLA while I work intensively with my counselor and dietician, as well as while I adjust my medication with my PCP.

I have a few questions.

• Is this something I first address with HR to receive the paperwork for my PCP, or do I first address it with my PCP?

• What can I expect the process to look like as far as approval?

• I am worried about my superiors knowing the reason why I am taking FMLA (related to mental health and not physical health). How much information will be provided to my direct superiors? I believe HR will receive the information in its entirety.

• Does this seem like something it is possible to be granted FMLA for or am I expecting a miracle?

• Most of the month to 2 months will be unpaid due to limited time available (I have been using up a lot of my leave due to the mental health issues). Will that affect approval?

Note: I have been with the same counselor since March and with my PCP for several years. They both know of my ongoing mental health difficulties. My PCP is well aware of my ongoing mental health struggles. I am considering asking for intensive outpatient.

Thank you for the help and I apologize for the silly questions

Developer: Mighty Yell

Publisher: Skybound Games

Released: 2021

Ali, a rad 90's teenager, has to come up with an obscene amount of money to save her family's video rental store from loan sharks. Luckily for her, a strange man takes her on a cross country pickpocketing tour around American.

The game is divided into several levels which are represented by different locations. You will get tasks to do and have to reach a certain level of income in each area to move on to the next. A lot of this is done by pickpocketing, which is basically a timed press, by distracting people goving you change, or by completing other little tasks like finding a certain toy to sell to someone rich. There's a few side things to do as well like find collectable stickers and playing a little arcade game or cracking suitcase codes.

This game had a lot of personality. It was genuinely funny at times and it went all in aesthetically. Unfortunately the gameplay loop got dull pretty fast and as the levels got bigger it just felt more annoying to me than fun. I do think if it sounds interesting you should still give it a try. It appears that a lot of care was taken with it and it has a lot of heart. I am sad I didn't like it more than I did.

Ask me questions and I will answer them. Some basics about me are that I have a house, I am married, I have pets, I have a job, and I am planning to go back to school to get my masters degree. I have a really stressful day coming up tomorrow and would like to get my brain on something else so I wanted to do an AMA : )

Developer: Peachy Keen Games

Publisher: Whitethorn Games

Released: 2020

Playtime: 4.6 hours, beat but not complete

Calico is a slice-of-life style sim game where you create a character and run a café on a magical island. Most of the island is initially blocked off and you will have to complete tasks to unlock those areas.

The gameplay has a few different aspects. You can purchase and place different furniture in your café and change its colours. You can change and colour your clothing and appearance. The animals on the island are all tame so you can pet them, pick them up, put them on your head (if small enough), ride them (if big enough), use potions on them to change their shape and appearance, as them to follow you, and send them to your café.

At the café, you can do mini games to bake goods. These are things like playing pool but the pockets are tarts and the balls are fruit. Or pressing buttons at a specific time to mix ingredients. Or pressing buttons at a specific time to place ingredients. Or pressing buttons at a specific time to cut ingredients...

You can also walk around the island doing quests for villagers like bringing people donuts or placing specific furniture in your café. Those are whay comprise the main gameplay loop.

I have a hard time expressing my feelings for this game. It was not a good game. It was buggy, things moved weird, a cat wouldn't stop orbiting me for a while, I clipped a few places. It was also just very... empty except for the first area. Unlocking new places wasn't fun because it was like "yay even further to run to go talk to the 2 people who live here and see if they have any quests for me." The quests themselves were forgettable. The baking mini games were either dull or annoying. Bringing pets to the cafe and playing with them was not very fun because the pets would get stuck in the ground or barely move so you just have a pile of wild animals in mostly one spot and I just felt bad for them.

With that being said, it still had some charm to it. I liked the character designs and it had some fun moments and dialogue. It felt really sweet, wholesome, and cozy. Unfortunately it felt a bit frustrating because it had the bones of something really good and it didn't quite get there. I don't regret my time with it but I also didn't like it enough to do the few remaining tasks it took to complete it at a certain point.

This is my foolproof laundry folding process

Step 1 (Day 1): Put clothes in dryer

Step 2 (Day 2): Take clothes out of dryer and put in the Clean Clothes hamper in the laundry room

Step 3 (Day 3): Carry clothes hamper to bedroom

Step 4 (Day 4): Fold the laundry!!!

With these four steps, you too can be a laundry folding pro!

Developer and Producer: ebi-hime

Released: Oct 2017

Total playtime: 4.6 hrs

Blackberry Honey is a visual novel following maid Lorina as she falls in love with fellow maid Taohua while being bullied relentlessly by the Mistress of the house's bratty 12 year old and some catty fellow staff members. This is a visual novel without choices or branching paths. You are just along for the ride as the story unfolds.

I have played 4 or 5 other ebi-hime games and while I would not say they are the pinnacle of good writing or must play VNs, they do tend to be sweet and cozy with some pretty artwork to look at. I don't know if I just got lucky with my previous selections or not but I was greatly disappointed in this one. The writing was worse than usual and the art was something else entirely. While I know that there is a long list of VNs where the purpose of the art is for sexy anime women to be sexy and boob boobily down the stairs, this is not an experience I have had in the other ebi-hime games I have played. So when main character Lorina showed up with boobs that could eclipse the sun, it was a bit off putting and hard to take seriously. There was also an old lady character who, while her boobs did not have their own gravitational pull, were quite large and she, for some reason, had a skin tight(?) dress showing off the exact outline of her boobs. Now while I am not ignorant of what happens in retirement homes, this is a rather demure and proper old lady in Victorian England and I don't see it being consistent with her character to lather on some body paint and pretend it is a dress.

Silly breasts aside, the writing itself was just kind of poor and inconsistent. For example, main character Lorina is shown to be hot tempered and easy to anger, while Taohua is much more laid back and relaxed. At one point, Taohua becomes very angry about a situation and Lorina is like "oh well, no use getting angry about these things." There had been nothing up to this point to suggest she planned to work on her outlook and change her angry ways, so it just seemed like they swapped personalities for a few minutes for Plot Reasons. This is not the only example, but one of the most glaring. Characters act in ways that don't make sense and make me pause to wonder if I missed some developments somewhere, or if they picked the wrong person for the text box. I am glad it was as short as it was because I was about ready to be done with it and would have dropped it once it hit the 5 hour mark.

Unfortunately this one is a no from me.

Developer and Publisher: evilalbert

Released: Feb 2025

In Utter a Name, you find yourself wandering the halls of a mansion filled with disembodied souls. Your job is to use the clues and memories scattered around the house to name both the soul and the soul's killer.

The gameplay loop is essentially what I said: you go into a room, look at a memory and a few clues, and try and name a soul and their killer. The style and visuals are very minimal and your task is to use your big brain to piece together what you learned in order to name everyone and their murderer. If you played Return of the Obra Dinn, this game will be very familiar to you.

I liked it okay. It didn't last long enough for me to really get invested. I also just struggle with some puzzle games in general due being bad at the thinking. But if you enjoy this style of game, it should be a fun afternoon for you

Hello, I have a great therapist I see every 2 weeks. I only ever contact her out of session if I need to reschedule. I was having a very very bad weekend and unregulated and wanted to get my thoughts out in the moment because often times after that I will feel better and not process it in session. I sent the message via the patient portal and am worried I violated a boundary with her and was not a good patient. Thank you for any insight. I will paste the message below:

"Hello, I am not expecting you to answer this at all I am just incredible upset and overwhelmed and want to put it here so we remember to talk about it in session.

I have had a very bad few days. I was on call Friday and worked from 8 am to 4:30 pm and then from 10 pm to 8:30 am the following morning (Saturday). Making 18 or 19? hours worked out of 24. I was absolutely exhausted and slept most of the day Saturday. In the evening I planned to just relax and eat and go back to bed early but the fireworks led to my dog having severe anxiety and we couldn't fall asleep until around midnight. As soon as I fell asleep she peed the bed and I had to wash it and wait for it to dry and didnt get to sleep until around 3 am. Today I have been in and out of sleep. I have an incredibly busy week with nonstop appointments and meetings including 3 on Friday and at least 2 nights I will have to work late so I cant take time off. What makes me even more upset is that I packed my schedule so I could get my cases closed before my boss goes on maternity leave and she is leaving early so I packed my schedule for nothing. I feel so tired and overwhelmed that I want to scream. I have a massive headache and its so hard to not snap at everyone. I dont know how to manage my emotions well and would like to process it in session and I wanted to get it out while in the moment. Thank you for reading and I look forward to session"

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Release Date: 2017

Developer and Publisher: KEMCO

Genre: Visual Novel

**Story**

Raging Loop is a visual novel in which protagonist, Haruaki ends up in a small isolated mountain village. After meeting a colourful cast of characters, Haruaki works to fix his motorcycle and leave, but is suddenly prevented from doing so by a strange mist enveloping the town. Haruaki finds himself entangled into a death game where some of the villagers have turned into villains who kill their fellow townspeople under the cover of night. Due to the laws of what is known as the Feast of the Yomi Purge, the only way for the villagers to fight back is to vote to hang someone every day, hoping to discover the traitors. However, things don't end there for our protagonist who soon discovers that he is forced to undergo this "game" over and over again.

**Gameplay**

Raging Loop is a visual novel, meaning the entire game is essentially reading what is happening. There are a few points in which the player is invited to make a choice. However, as will quickly be discovered, choices are not actually choices in this game. Essentially, almost every choice leads to a "bad end" or to the continuation of the story. Getting a bad end will sometimes give you a "key" which is needed to unlock other options at the choice point. Almost every bad choice will need to be selected to complete the game and most of them cut off pretty quickly. The story is actually very linear and it is not a "your choices matter" kind of game. After you finish the game, a few little epilogue stories unlock for you to view and you also unlock a "Revelations" mode you can turn on to see some hidden scenes and read different characters thoughts and chats that happened through the game.

**Characters**

There are 15 main villagers and aome side characters. They are almost all villagers with their own histories together and the game centers around the lore and history of the village as a whole. These include a stern old man and his teenage granddaughter, a superstitious old lady, the woman in charge of all of the village meals and her two teenage sons: one a genius and one a punk, the hard working man in love with the mother, a senile old man, an eccentric teen with strong intuition, the unlikeable village head, a clumsy religious figure, and the main love interest. In addition, there is also our protagonist, a journalist and her photographer, and a strange girl who wandered into the village.

**Review**

I simultaneously have a lot to say and nothing to say about this game. I think if I had to pick a word it would be "frustrating." I am a bit frustrated with the way the game chose to go about things. It fell short of its potential. Having a death loop game is a gun premise and, even if you aren't going to go all out with player control in the game a la Gnosia, I would have lived to have *some* output. There were very few times when you could actually make a choice in the game, reason for yourself, or try and put the pieces together on things like who to vote for. Instead you are just watching the main character do it all for you.

Something else I found frustrating was the inconsistencies. I am all for a mystery game that doesn't reveal all of its cards and hand waives the things that don't make sense, but Raging Loop went out if its way to try and reveal every piece of the puzzle, which made the inconsistencies all the more glaring. The characters had a ton of potential to he fleshed out and interesting and it fell short. The game even introduced the concept of characters changing their behaviour with their roles, but it didn't matter much. Again, there were a few choice points a bit over halfway through the game but the game does not let you fail. Picking the wrong option either ends the game very quickly or gives you a key to progress. There's no intertwining narratives that would make any of the choices mean anything. The last section of the game is the protagonist leaving the player out of the loop (hehe) while dragging them along the plot before they masterfully reveal all of the puzzle pieces.

I really wanted to like this game more than I did. It was good enough to finish and play, but it is not something that will stick with me or that I would highly recommend.