u/Proper_Active9179

Some context- I (28ftm) was on the dance team and cheer team in high school. If i was given a choreographed routine i could memorize it quickly, had a lot of fun doing it, and received a lot of positive feedback. But, as an adult in social settings, i absolutely cannot dance to save my life.

i even have a spouse as a set partner, so its not like i have to worry about the social part of dancing with someone. i took a hiphop class a while back, hoping it would teach me some fundamentals i could apply, but NOPE. The worst part is sometimes ill be having fun and getting in a groove, but then i become HYPERAWARE of everything im doing and just start barely moving.

Does anyone else have this issue? has anyone overcame it?

I’ve been playing Solarpunk for a few days, and I’m hooked. Ive just gotten to the part of the game where you can build chicken coops. I really need wheat right now, but I have a huge excess of watermelon and berries, and I’m a solo player.

Is there any way to sell these crops at a later stage, or to repurpose those crops for anything other than food? Ig I could just stop growing, but I’m trying to maximize.

I have had SCP referred to me multiple times- in my understanding (please correct me if I’m wrong), this is a database of paranormal entities or objects that people can write or consume entries for.

I’m interested and have engaged with a lot of media tangentially related to SCP: Control, Alan Wake, “There is no Antimemetics Division”.

Is the best approach to just jump in and start reading?

I have a really bad habit of downplaying my birthday, and then getting upset at the lack of acknowledgement or attention.

Growing up, my sister’s, my dad’s, and my birthdays were all within the same two weeks, as well as Father’s Day, and the parties were frequently lumped together until I was a teenager. I lived in a rural area, and because I was a summer baby I never saw other kids on my birthday unless we made formal plans well in advance.

I did not have a happy home life, and my last formal party was when I was five years old. I didn’t have a lot of friends and my parents contributed to that isolation. I spent about five birthdays at 4-H camp when I was a kid, and when I got home I was told we didn’t need to celebrate because it wasn’t actually the day, and I was old enough that it shouldn’t matter.

When I was a teenager, I was expected to work, do weightlifting practice, and do chores on my birthday. Frequently we would not make plans until the day of, my mom would make a Betty Crocker mix cake, and if I drew too much attention to myself or appeared to be ungrateful (in my parents’ POV), I was yelled at and ended the day in tears. I also had to pick out most of my own presents- I would be asked the day of what I wanted, and if it was too expensive I had to pay half. We would spend 1-2 hours in the car driving to pick up the gift, and there was usually a lot of bickering and conflict on the way. I never received a card or had any presents wrapped, and we didn’t blow out candles or sing.

During college I had a best friend who would make sure my birthdays went well, but I still felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. My friend and I drifted apart, and my boyfriend, now husband, does his best with the pressure to give me a good birthday. But, I have a hard time coming up with plans for my birthday. I’m autistic and hate the heat in the summer, I feel like I can’t ask for too much effort, but I’m also scared of him not making a big deal about the day.

My parents haven’t spent a birthday with me in about a decade, and my mom will ask me what I want for a present and Venmo me money to order it myself, claiming that they don’t want to order me the wrong thing. my dad usually doesn’t even know what my present was, and lets my mom handle it. My sister doesn’t do gifts. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but it takes all of the sentimentality out of the day. On the actual day I’ll get a text message like “Happy birthday! I hope you do something fun,” but never an offer to actually celebrate with me.

This year I went on my first family vacation in a long time, with plans to be back a few days before my birthday. I would be going back to work on my actual birthday, which was yesterday. The family vacation was a bit of a disaster, and I had some emotional wounds that had resurfaced.

Apparently my husband had asked me a month ago what I wanted to do for my birthday and I had said I didn’t know, since I’d be working and would be tired from my trip. He had gotten me a present that wasn’t super sentimental and that he didn’t wrap, and didn’t get me a card like he usually did. He offered to make me a dinner by request, but the legwork to actually get the ingredients was a bit much and we pushed it to the next day. He did make sure to take me through a drive thru to get coffee before work, and wished me happy birthday multiple times, but everything felt a little lackluster. After work I asked him if we had any plans, and he asked what I wanted to do. I broke down and started sobbing about feeling stupid and ungrateful, but also like I didn’t matter.

I got all my feelings out and we agreed to do a few special things over the next weekend. I think a lot of it has to do with a lack of tradition or sentimentality. The last thing I want is for him to feel bad about not doing a lot with a lack of direction from me. I also have very few friends right now, which I’m trying to remedy, and all of the pressure shouldn’t be on him. We‘ve also been together for 7 years and do wildly different things each birthday. He struggles with his birthday as well. We’ve both developed food allergies over our relationship, which make it really hard to eat out or make dinner plans where we live. I think I’ve figured out that I need candles and wrapping paper to be a part of the day.

Is there anyone who has a lot of birthday trauma that learned how to enjoy their birthday? I don’t want to build up a romantic idea of a birthday, but I also don’t want to never expect anything and disappointed myself out of self-preservation.

I was a heavy instagram and TikTok user, and tried to cut out Instagram when Meta changed their terms of service to be more transphobic. It didn’t last long. I also tried to move on to YouTube shorts when TikTok was taken down temporarily, but found that more and more conservative content and AI was being pushed on me. I tried substack, but everything was so doom and gloom and fed into my bipartisanism, anxiety, and hopelessness.

I decided to be more intentional about my social media content, and wanted to find the “gems” of a pre-2020 internet- curated blog posts, thoughtful video essays on YouTube like Pop Culture Detective and Vsauce, and other seemingly positive content. But, honestly, everything I found was lackluster. I think content like this is no longer sustainable without subscribing to a Kofi or Patreon.

After finding this subreddit, I decided to preorder a dumbphone. I tried so hard to make it work, but I think we’ve been scammed by all of the features on our phones we may use 1-2 times a month, if that. The catch? I wouldn’t have access to social media, and I felt like my scrolling thumbs would go through a withdrawal.

I started turning my phone off for the weekend, and started deleting apps one by one. Now, I can only use social media on a desktop shared by my husband. I’m reading more, writing more, gaming more, and taking more moments to just sit.

One of the biggest cons, you will feel like the odd one out. I went on a family vacation and I was the only person without my head buried in my phone a few times a day during the trip. I sat in the truck for about 30 minutes waiting for my dad to finish shopping without using my phone or reading a book- I just sat with the window down. If I go to a coffee shop with a long line, I’ve started reading my book while standing.

A month ago I spent about 6 hours a day on my phone. This past week I’ve spent about 45 minutes, not counting the map app or messaging app. That is 5 hours a day I’ve reclaimed from the technocrats, for anything I want!

Excited to see how things change when I get a dumbphone- let me know if you have any questions about my experience.

The title is a little snarky, but I went on a five day long family vacation with my Gen-x parents and millennial sister, and everyone was constantly on their phones.

The first interaction I had with my dad after arriving at the $1000+ Airbnb he paid for was him forcing me to watch a seven minute long video of him, rather uneventfully, catching a fish instead of eating dinner after forgoing food all day on my drive. My dad has developed a bad habit of entering a room other people are in and immediately blaring tik toks or watching terrible quality fishing YouTube videos on the flatscreen.

Im autistic and have ADHD, so not only does the audio overstimulate me terribly, my attention is now divided from the thing I’m actually trying to do. My sister and I had a competition going of who could read the most pages over the trip, and would leave the room whenever his audio started blaring. This happened multiple times a day over the course of the trip. He would also spend most meals in the easy chair watching tv, instead of at the table with us.

Any question he had, whether it was about the weather or the safety of train rides vs. flights, immediately went to Siri or an AI search engine. I literally showed him how the information was inaccurate or lacking context by looking it up myself, and he had no response. He started watching a TED talk about how “AI is the future” in the cellphone lot while waiting for my sister’s flight. He had me type something into his phone and immediately I turned the video off.

i told my dad that i preordered a dumb phone and he went on a rant about how im just trying to disconnect from reality and ”fix my life” by buying another product. I realized that his phone is more important to him than his kids, and his addiction is threatened by me not feeling the same way.

My mom and my sister were both on their phones, but more sparingly. My sister was texting friends back home and telling me facts about people I’d never meet, or showing me text threads about inside jokes I didn’t get. My mom was telling me about everything she learned about family members on social media, but just surface level info: someone got married, someone had a baby, someone died.

Over the trip, not counting using map apps or messaging my husband, I was on my phone for about 45 minutes a day and there were long stretches of people doing nothing but staring at their phones while I sat quietly on one of the many decks overlooking the lake of our Airbnb. next time I go on vacation I want to ask my husband to just call me, because there was nothing to talk about after texting back and forth.

I know my dad is going to hug me tomorrow when i leave and tell me it was wonderful spending time with me, but we didn’t spend any time together. We just spent time in the same room, when he was courteous enough to not blare his tik tok audio.

I am someone who, over the past few years, started cutting out purchases that don’t align with my values. It started with mainstream boycott campaigns, and has escalated recently. I’m trans and the support of a certain terf-y author is one of the main reasons I’m particularly passionate about not supporting people who will do me harm.

I won’t see certain movies if i disagree with the “face” of the movie’s POV, because in my mind I’m funding this person’s influence. I won’t read books from an author who casually posts AI slop, no matter how many times it, and the popular film adaptation, are recommended to me. I won’t make purchases from Amazon, unless it is the only place I can get the product after multiple attempts of buying it in person. I’ll buy more expensive fabric from a local fabric store instead of Michael’s or online.

This now extends to social media- almost all social media is now an advertising platform designed to profit off of the data you give to the company that they can then sell to their partners. I have deleted all social media apps off my phone, and now only access reddit and youtube from a shared computer. I have also pre-ordered a dumbphone that doesn’t allow me to have any apps.

I went on a family trip with my parents, during which they frequently used AI and brushed off my and my sisters’ attempts to request it not be used in our presence. They recommended multiple films that featured zionists, which I turned down and explained why. My dad made a joke that his retirement investment fund increased, and claimed that it probably invested in oil and was going up because of the war in Iran. While I would be disgusted and alarmed, he laughed about it openly and when I challenged him he tried to turn it back around on me about what i was investing in, and when I told him I will check next time I’m at home because that’s a good question, he huffed and changed the subject. In reality I’ve avoided looking at my retirement account because it’s tied to my deadname, but now I’ve decided to give the info to my husband to correct.

I could tell my parents thought I was being pretentious, and when my dad complained my aunt had been using the same fishing rod since 1979 and needed to upgrade her technology, my sister and I said it was good and sustainable. My dad was also talking about how he didn’t want to move to a more liberal urban area was because the houses are more expensive and he wouldn’t be able to house his 9 float tubes and other fishing gear on a smaller property. He only ever fishes by himself.

My parents offered to buy my sister and I a fountain drink from McDonalds, and I considered saying yes because, what difference will $1.50 make? And ultimately I checked to see if it aligned with my values and told them no without saying why.

I think I need to hear from other people on this topic. Do our little choices matter? Is it actually worth it to deal with the social pushback of explaining why you won’t give your money to something?

I transitioned from nebula to youtube a few months ago, and I’m having trouble finding new creators to follow.

Right now I follow:

• Abolish Everything
• Amy’s Dead End Dreamhouse
• Curious Archive
• Half of Interesting
• Jacob Geller
• Jared Henderson
• Jessie Gender
• Lindsay Ellis
• Philosophy Tube
• Tale Foundry

Im really interested in movies, writing, video games, philosophy, urban planning, food insecurity, and social issues. I always crave videos that talk about how media and philosophy intersect.

I do consume a lot of video content, so it’s possible that I’m just asking too much of this niche, newer platform.

Do any of you have creators that you think are a good “starting point” for someone trying to sample the best of what nebula has to offer?

I’m on anxiety meds and adderall for my ADHD. I’ve been going to therapy for ~5 years and started a new therapist a few months ago.

Ive been dealing with some family and friendship issues, and my therapist said they’ve heard a lot about what I don’t like about someone, and very little about what I do like about someone. In almost every single relationship, I can’t think about what I like, even though I know i do like being around someone or think fondly of them.

I started worrying that something must be terribly wrong with me that I can’t find a single thing I like about people, and I realized that if my brain was a computer, it only stores red flags. So when someone asks what I think about someone, I can only produce those search results.

I shared that with my therapist today and she said it makes a lot of sense from a self-preservation standpoint, and can help guide us moving forward. I also realized that growing up I felt like it was bad to express that I like someone in any capacity, either because my family would judge my choice of friends, or because people would avoid me if they found out I wanted to be their friend, since I was a weird chubby queer kid with underdeveloped social skills.

Now that I know this I feel a little less hopeless when it comes to making friends. Curious to see if anyone has similar thought processes.

My institution typically uses Sign Up Genius to organize volunteers for events. Our own employees usually volunteer for events led by other departments, but we want people to also indicate what department they are from. I don’t see a way to do this with the free version of Sign Up Genius.

Ive poked around a bit, but is there a free sign up form that displays what spots are taken, but also has an additional customizable field?

Microsoft Forms and Qualtrics are provided by my institution, but I don’t see a way to do that with them either. The long way would be to ask them to only use their institutional email address in the description of the form, and compare the addresses to our list.

I have ADHD and need a certain level of stimulation to get tasks done. I started the bad habit in college of watching YouTube while I work, usually video game let's-plays. I primarily write, video edit, and make illustrations for graphic design. I eventually got so bad that I would watch tik toks and scroll while editing to stay stimulated. I work in a quiet office in a different building than my boss, and sometimes go a full day without talking to anyone. I also have a habit of sucking people into conversations if they start one with me, and a 10 second question can turn into an hour chat about anything.

I preordered a dumb phone and have deleted the social media apps on my smartphone in the meantime, and have succeeded in staying off for about a month. The issue is I still have YouTube, Dropout, and Nebula that I use at work, and I'm wanting to wean off of those before I transition to the dumbphone and just watch videos on a TV or my PC at home.

What do most of you do at work to stay stimulated? I've tried podcasts and audiobooks, but the quality of what I'm finding isn't enough to keep me engaged. I also try to keep personal things off my work computer. I typically read on my lunch break, but YouTube has cut into that time in the past.

I started the bad habit in college of watching videos while I work, usually video game let's-plays. I primarily write, video edit, and make illustrations for graphic design. I eventually got so bad that I would watch tik toks and scroll while editing to stay stimulated. I work in a quiet office in a different building than my boss, and sometimes go a full day without talking to anyone. I also have a habit of sucking people into conversations if they start one with me, and a 10 second question can turn into an hour chat about anything.

I preordered a dumb phone and have deleted the social media apps on my smartphone in the meantime, and have succeeded in staying off for about a month. The issue is I still have video apps on my phone that I use at work, and I'm wanting to wean off of those before I transition to the dumbphone and just watch videos on a TV or my PC at home.

What do most of you do at work to stay stimulated? I've tried podcasts and audiobooks, but the quality of what I'm finding isn't enough to keep me engaged. I also try to keep personal things off my work computer. I typically read on my lunch break, but videos have cut into that time in the past.

I started the bad habit in college of watching YouTube while I work, usually video game let's-plays. I primarily write, video edit, and make illustrations for graphic design. I eventually got so bad that I would watch tik toks and scroll while editing to stay stimulated. I work in a quiet office in a different building than my boss, and sometimes go a full day without talking to anyone. I also have a habit of sucking people into conversations if they start one with me, and a 10 second question can turn into an hour chat about anything.

I preordered a dumb phone and have deleted the social media apps on my smartphone in the meantime, and have succeeded in staying off for about a month. The issue is I still have YouTube, Dropout, and Nebula that I use at work, and I'm wanting to wean off of those before I transition to the dumbphone and just watch videos on a TV or my PC at home.

What do most of you do at work to stay stimulated? I've tried podcasts and audiobooks, but the quality of what I'm finding isn't enough to keep me engaged. I also try to keep personal things off my work computer. I typically read on my lunch break, but YouTube has cut into that time in the past.

Growing up, everything needed to be “practical”. When I asked my mom if I was good looking as a kid, she told me “that shouldn’t matter”. My parents would openly joke about how being married was an annoying, yet necessary, inconvenience. When I asked why they had kids they said “it was just that time, I guess”.

My spouse upset me recently and I admitted to my therapist that I guiltily do a pro and con assessment in my head about being married when my relationship feels unstable, and try to imagine what my life would be like if we weren’t together. She told me that it’s actually a good thing to assess as a relationship develops, and asked what the pros were.

I was taken aback, and shared that I was surprised anyone cared about the pros, because when I thought about them I feel irresponsible. I like that they try to understand me, make me feel safe, and help accommodate my neurodivergence. I think they have genuinely interesting hobbies that they share without being pretentious. When our mental health is fine, I like goofing around with them. I think if we have kids one day that they’ll be a good parent. But frankly, I don’t know if that is “enough” to appreciate about someone. I think my parents would want my list to be “self-sufficient”, “a provider” and “focused”.

But I don’t think I’ve allowed myself to really think about what I like about someone, because that’s not what my parents encouraged me to think about. Almost everything that goes through my head are the negatives.

I guess I’m trying to retrain my brain to figure out how “I” feel.

Just got paid and ordered my light phone 2, I think it’s supposed to come in in June.

My parents still pay for my phone bill and I told them I’d be switching to my own plan, since it’ll be much cheaper. When I told my mom she acted like I was coming out. “Well, if you think that’s what’s best for you,”

I told her I’d be able to call and text, and that I’m avoiding social media, and she asked why I couldn’t just delete the apps. I have on my iPhone, but I’m gonna find whatever reason I can to waste time. Even Reddit is an issue for me sometimes, but I’m cutting out one app at a time until the light phone is delivered.

I was recently diagnosed with ADHD but knew I had it since college, and just now she’s acknowledging it with the diagnosis. I told her that I have ADHD and depression, and I am trans and gay, so I’m a population that technocrats want to take advantage of by stealing my attention and making me even more depressed by flooding the zone.

I don’t think it’s going to fix everything. I need to figure out how I’ll stay sane at work without something running in the background at all times, but I don’t think I’ll have my hand creeping into my pocket whenever I’m doing anything remotely boring.