u/No_Ant_5064

Alright guys here's where I'm at. I got into playing music in high school, tried to make some bands work but mostly didn't, got out of it in college. A few years ago got back into music. Spent a few frustrating years getting bands off the ground till finally we got somewhere. At one point I was in 3 bands all gigging and recording. Then two of those bands fell apart, but the 3rd picked up the slack. We were playing out basically every weekend, we even did a small tour and played a big festival.

Things slowed down and I honestly fine with taking it easy for a bit, but we lost a member because of it. Took a few months to find a new member to replace him, but we managed. Right around when the new member was up to speed, another original member quit, so we replaced him and we almost have the band with 2 new members up to speed. But then the first replacement member quit out of the blue!

Here's the thing - I love playing in bands but I feel like I've done a lot of it in the past few years and I feel like I can take it or leave it at this point. I was excited to play shows with the new lineup, but I'm not heartbroken about it. The thing is, the thought of once again waiting months for people to respond to our ad for a new member, dealing with people not showing up to auditions, dealing with people showing up to auditions who clearly didn't even listen to the material, then once we find someone good showing up to practice week in week out playing the same songs over and over and over and over again to get them up to speed, after having gone through that twice already recently..... I just don't wanna do it.

There's another wrinkle too that I just got married and we're talking about starting a family now. The thing is I love music and I will always want to create it. I'm sure in the future I'll want to do the band thing again. But right now I'm just really discouraged, and with me potentially starting a family soon, I feel like the timing works out for me to walk away from this, focus on that a bit, maybe try the band thing again in a few years.

What does the community say?

Right now I have 3 painted turtles in indoor tanks. I have water heaters and UV lights and all that, but I still feel like they're not very happy where they're at. I was thinking I could move them outside, but putting a pond in the ground is out the question.

I was thinking I could get a kiddie swimming pool, or a stock tank or something like that. Get lumber and build a box to enclose it with the top being a screen or chicken wire or something, and close it and lock it so predators can't get in. In my area we have raccoons, foxes, possums, even hawks so it has to be predator proof.

Has anyone done anything similar? Any tips?

My team is hir ing for a new position, and we're currently 75% remote, 25% in office. Thing is we can't find anyone who is qualified in our geographical area who doesn't need sponsorship (not sponsoring for the role). I asked the recruiter if we could waive the 25% in office requirement and that would basically open up the entire country but he said no. Apparently it's a hard HR rule.

The thing is, the 25% of the time we are in the office we're all taking teams calls at our desk and struggling to focus with all the side bar conversations happening around us. We are literally less productive in the office than we are at home.

I just have to vent how absurd this is that we're kneecapping our ability to find a qualified applicant to enforce some arbitrary in office requirement that makes our team less effective.

So stupid.

EDIT A lot of HR tears in this thread. Don't care who makes the decisions. You enforce them. You could push back if you really cared.

I know you're not supposed to leave them compressed for a long period of time, but I like to pack for trips ahead of time. Say I'm leaving Friday and I pack it up Tuesday or Wednesday and it sits in my bag till I roll out - is that okay?