u/chamomileyes

For context, I’m not rich. I made slightly over minimum wage in Canada and was renting an apartment. I own no property, car, investments etc either in Canada or abroad. I moved in with family abroad when I left Canada. There is zero property or anything of value in my name. 

The most I sold when I left Canada was furniture and I actually gave more away than I sold. 

I left Canada in August, 2024. That first year I had already filed my taxes before I left. 

The second year, I filed again for the Canadian income I had made the previous year before I left (I hadn’t found employment abroad in the latter part of the year so nothing to add there). 

The third year (for 2025) I finally didn’t file. 

I considered my ties with Canada pretty cut at this point but apparently there is more to do. 

I changed my address with my bank (still have my Canadian account) as soon as I left and the CRA about 6 months later. In my delulu head this was enough of a declaration but I get now that for legal purposes, it was not.

I keep reading about a departure tax when you officially leave Canada and it’s freaking me out. Would such a thing apply to my situation when I have no big assets to tax? What forms exactly do I need to send them? And should I send them in now or wait for the next tax cycle? Any help appreciated. 

I never used an accountant in Canada and simply filed electronically because my tax situation was uncomplicated. If you have a recommendation for cheap remote accountants, I’ll take that as well. But if it’s something uncomplicated I can figure out myself, I just need to know what to do, because the online sources I’ve found seem geared towards people wealthier than me.

For further context, I have citizenship in the country I live in now and no intent to return to Canada for long term residential purposes. Love Canada a lot but can’t live with the weather.

Again, mostly looking for advice as to what I would need to file exactly and if I need to care about doing it as soon as possible vs the next tax cycle.

TIL the reason I was experiencing disappearing items as I scrolled on my computer + phone was because of my ad blocker. Items that are ads/ paid to be in front of my eyes were getting blocked. The issue is I would sometimes like those items and be frustrated when they would suddenly disappear as I was scrolling.

So just passing the info on for anyone else flummoxed by this. You have to pause your ad blocker on Temu to not get disappearing items.

I’ve been discussing my conflict avoidance in therapy for many years and it has gotten slightly better, but not by much. I’ve added a bunch of “saying no”, “dont just be nice” type books to my to-read list but wondering if anyone has any pieces of insight they can offer here.

Basically I am totally fine at stating what my needs and preferences are, even repeatedly. It’s the holding people accountable part and standing up for myself that feels extremely difficult. Being willing to show that I’m hurt, upset, dissatisfied etc. with another person and not just swallowing it in front of them and pretending everything is fine.

I can tell there’s something larger going on with it because sometimes entering into what I perceive as even the slightest hint of conflict or disagreement feels like death. It just feels absolutely unbearable.

I am fine in my very close partner/ close family relationships being assertive and very expressive, because I feel a safety to do so, but with strangers, service people, doctors, vets, renovators, etc, it’s extremely difficult. For example, I recently left the optician with a prescription I knew was wrong because after repeating many times what I knew the issue was with the provided glasses, and their making excuses and saying everything should be fine, I didn’t know what else to do but say thank you lmao.

My therapist recently asked me to name all the times that being explicitly upset, angry or rude with someone had caused issues in my life. I could not name many instances. It’s not that I have any huge body of evidence in my larger life of oh if I act a bit more aggressive or assertive, there will be a bad reaction.

I think it’s more to do with growing up in an emotionally abusive family where I was made to feel like a bad kid even I was just having NORMAL levels of emotional responses and behavior. That more so than negative reactions to my actually being more aggressive/ angry in my family has made me extremely hyper vigilant about being perceived that way and being mistreated for that perception.

But I don’t really know where to go from that understanding. It’s not that I want to be cruel or hurtful towards people but sometimes I do want to be able to say hey, wtf, I told you so many times this was the issue and you ignored me. Or how you’re behaving actually isn’t okay, or actually, sorry, this service is not being completed very well. I want to be able to hold people a little bit more accountable without it feeling like I’m holding my hand over the stove.

I used to view people who had these aggressive assertive responses in public as too much, and yeah depending on the situation it is, but I’m understanding more and more that there’s something healthy in being able to state your experience and hold people accountable even if it creates some tension. Even if it doesn’t change the end result, even if you never see them again and are happy to go your separate way, just being able to take up the space of not being okay.

Has anybody seen bioluminescence recently at any of the beaches? It’s the season for it and I’d like to know if anyone has any updated recommendations for spots to see it at night.

Had a few experiences this month that have kind of emotionally exhausted me.

I went to the optician today for a re-check appointment because my prescription was not right. I was very clear from the start that I believed the main issue was that the astigmatism in my right eye wasn’t correct because at night lights looked abnormally smeared, which should not be happening with a correct prescription. Also just wearing the glasses literally felt like torture and had me almost crying. I further mentioned that I believed the myopia in that eye was sharp and correct but a bit sharper than my left eye so maybe my left eye could be increased.

I probably repeated 20x during the appointment, that I was certain my right eye had not been right. Anyway, trying to keep it as concise as I can: During the eye exam, I made clear I was scared of choosing the wrong option and would like to take a little more time deciding for some of the less obvious choices (nothing crazy, just asking for a minute vs 5 seconds for a few of the questions because I knew if it was wrong again I would have to pay out of pocket).

However, the optician repeatedly read this as my being unable to choose, despite that not being the case or what I said. He said on multiple instances “let me choose for you” despite the fact that I was literally coming in because I needed to figure out my correct prescription. He would move on from things before I’d gotten a chance to choose by saying one second let me show you this, making me think he would return but he didn’t.

At the end of the exam, he had answered for me about 4x and skipped several before I could answer, including another option I was leaning towards. If I had known he would never go back, I would have protested more but I didn’t understand that was what was happening. He then concluded in the end that he could raise the myopia in my left eye if I really insisted but that my right eye was ‘confirmed’ to be the same as originally prescribed.

I think I said just about 6x at the end, that the right eye had not been correct to me, hoping he would go back to the tests I hadn’t even answered on, and he refused to listen. I couldn’t have repeated it more without being outright rude so it was a struggle. He offered weak excuses each time that because the left eye was off it may have affected the perception of the right, that I just needed to get used to it, and that “my“ choices confirmed it (which was certainly not fully true as I wasn’t given the time to choose between other options and he rushed through the astigmatism tests without my even having a chance to answer MOST of the questions there).

So I left, feeling meek and acting pleasant, knowing full well I would have to pay out of pocket to another optician to fix the right eye. I could not figure out what to say to make this person listen without being what would feel like outright rude to me. I had already said “no” nicely literally so many times, and I expected I would be made to feel like an unpleasant burden if I pressed more (despite the fact that I paid a lot of money for those glasses sigh).

Similarly, our family car recently got new tires. Going to be frank, I knew nothing about tires beforehand and just trusted the guy selling them to sell us what was appropriate. I noticed that the road was feeling a lot more bumpy and unpleasant afterward though and asked the tire guy if there was anything that could be done to fix that or if another kind of tire might be better (as I’d researched the issue after the fact and learned that type of tire apparently makes a difference to road smoothness).

He replied that I just wasn’t used to how properly inflated tires felt and that it was normal, as if I hadn’t been riding in vehicles for thirty years of my life to know what a car ride should feel like. (Also I’d already deflated the tires from the extra he’d put past the car manufacturer’s recommendation.) I didn’t even know what to respond to someone who so clearly had limited empathy and/or no sensory awareness. One month later, it’s still bumpy city. Yay.

Anyway, if anyone knows some great lines for combatting these situations, I’d love to know. Or if you just want to commiserate. It’s rough out there.

It’s been a while now I’ve been recognizing this dynamic in my relationship with my mother and it’s been slowly destroying our relationship to the point we hardly speak anymore.

When I was a new driver and not comfortable talking in the car, my mom suddenly started screaming and crying that I was sadistic and purposefully trying to hurt her by ‘limiting’ her speech in the car. This was while I was driving.

There was an incident where we were at the mall together and my mom legit had an emotional break down because she felt I was abandoning her by asking for 15min to go to the food court by myself since I was hungry and she wasn’t (and I get uncomfortable having people watching me eat).

^This was in my late 20’s BTW, full grown adulthood. I’m perfectly aware its enmeshment but even years later I don’t think my mom would recognize the inappropriate scale of that response (or how she was projecting her triggered state onto me). Anyway, same theme: I’m a bad, mean daughter.

About a year ago we were on our way to an event together and my mom asked to stop on the side of the road about 1km from the event to look at a lunar eclipse. I was happy to oblige but after a few min got back into the car, ready to head down the road. I didn’t rush her or anything and basically said ready when you are.

My mom had another emotional breakdown then, screaming and crying that I was purposefully trying to hurt her and punishing her because I wouldn’t spend more time looking at the eclipse with her. No amount of reasoning with her could convince her that I wasn’t being purposefully cruel to her by wanting to get onto the outdoor event just down the road with I‘m sure a very similar view.

Most recently, I got upset with her for spraying a more poisonous type of ant killer right where I feed a stray cat outside our house. I told her it wasn’t okay, that I was very upset with her and that I’d already discussed it with her multiple times before. She never addressed what I actually said (in classic form) so I told her again that I was frustrated with her lack of accountability and listening. She then reacted by saying that I was insulting her, personally attacking her and putting her down to make myself feel better about myself.

My jaw really hit the floor at that and how obscenely she could twist my being upset at her doing something I’d repeatedly asked her not to do into “insulting” her. It’s also this reoccurring narrative my mom will have whenever I‘m asking her to be more accountable to paint me as some kind of sadistic villain acting for no other reason but to wound her.

And this narrative keeps her a perpetual victim no matter the hurt she causes. Any negative reaction I have to her negative behavior is decontextualized into simply being mean to her. The dynamic is also a symptom of her not being able to actually empathize with why I might be upset with her. My feelings and values don’t take up space with her, so I must only act (or have a negative reaction to her behavior) out of spite.

She will suddenly hold the unshakeable conviction that the true reason I’m upset is to hurt her and not, no matter what I say, because I’m actually… upset... because I’ve been negatively affected by her behavior. It’s extremely difficult to deal with someone who enters a state where no shred of evidence, empathy or reasoning makes a difference.

But seeing the pattern of what she’s doing doesn’t make it hurt less or the gaslighting affect my mental health less. It’s truly crazy-making to have someone close to you literally just feel like they do not want to live in the same reality with you. And even though my mom has been frequently verbally loving towards me throughout my life, her tendency to suddenly accuse me of sadism whenever I offer the slightest critical feedback really disturbs me. Plus, it makes me feel terrible about myself even when I know it’s totally irrational!

I also truly struggle to comprehend how she can have so little self-awareness or willingness to reflect on the pattern of her behavior, even when I explicitly name it for her, and even when it results in her losing a relationship with me that she claims to deeply want (even while calling me a terrible person!).

I just had to get this off my chest.

I work remotely so my main way of making friends these days is through Bumble BFF. And I have made a few friendships through that app.

But it’s always the same pattern: I say some version of how have things been going for you/ how has your week been? Most will answer with the absolute bare minimum “good”. I will then try to share a bit more about my life and hobbies to encourage them. They will say a bit more about themselves. I’ll maybe ask about some thing they mentioned on their profile and we’ll exchange some back and forward about hobbies, interests or life experiences.

I very often feel like I have to initiate or move the conversations along, which is what it is. I know not everyone has the same social skills for knowing how to move a conversation forward. (Not saying mine are great but I try.)

But usually I will run into a wall where I just feel bored. Like socializing just starts to feel like boring work rather than fun, interesting or supportive. Because with these early relationships, it just kind of is more work than genuine friendship. And then life gets busy or stressful and I have a tendency to drop out of socializing for a while because I just want to rest more rather than do things that take more effort and energy.

I don‘t even necessarily believe that these people are incompatible or that we wouldn’t make interesting friends, if we could get to that point, but it’s the getting there part.

It‘s like the rare reward for the process of actually finding a good friend is amazing. But getting there can feel like such a dredge.

Idk, I guess I’m looking for some tips in terms of maybe there are more interesting questions I could be asking that would make conversations feel more engaging?

Does anyone else go through this?

Edit: I think too that because I always am the one initiating, it contributes to it feeling more like pulling teeth. So even when the person is responding with more interesting tidbits, I just feel kind of burnt out from the dynamic of feeling like I have to carry things for very little reward. Gonna try an approach of initiating less and letting people tank the conversation if they want.

From my understanding the Viltrox gives the shallowest DOF but I don't really trust Viltrox's quality control or customer service. I've heard the 50mm f/1 can be a bit slower to focus and softer but I prefer that focal length.

Can't choose. Please let me know your experiences (+example shots if you have them).

**Oops, meant to say 50mm f1 in the title but don't think I can edit it now.

Curious if there's anyone who has used both systems who can speak to how similar/ different they are. It seems like Nikon is following in Lumix's footsteps and I can't decide what camera to buy x).

TL;DR: Still on my camera search and wondering what cameras have the most natural output when it comes to taking pictures of greens in nature? (Minimum fiddling.)

I currently own a Sony A7riii and am looking to upgrade, in part due to frustrations around the greens looking unnatural and my not wanting to have to post-edit so much. I was looking at the A7V but I'm concerned it will also have the same issue.

https://preview.redd.it/jgwi6xnvgbyg1.png?width=1919&format=png&auto=webp&s=54c65b11ea7d9a77e9bfe3684d6edb94a45be5fa

This video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV8aYRQhcko ) kind of shows what I'm really trying to avoid. Grass that looks so oversaturated and off-tone (especially in comparison to normal human skin tones) that it just looks fake.

I've recently been most considering the Nikon z5ii and Lumix S5ii. But I've been noticing the Nikon Zs in general, including the Z5ii, seem to have different color luminosities/ almost seem to lift shadows on colors a bit compared to the other major brands and idk how I feel about tinkering with that. From what I've seen, the Lumix has cooler, more blue tinted greens, which I think sometimes contributes to more natural looking greens, depending.

https://preview.redd.it/wuvzotyehbyg1.png?width=2106&format=png&auto=webp&s=fd446393a7832ba83e05be0d27b43194762c6054

(Also going to attach a still from this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moRwoEhywZ8 which shows the differences I've been noticing elsewhere. The Nikons have more lifted/ lighter greens, the Lumix S5ii is more blue tinted, and the Sony idk- looks good in this example.)

• Budget: <2.5k euro camera body
• Country: EU
• Condition: New/ used, doesn't matter
• Type of Camera: Mirrorless
• Intended use: Mostly photography
• If photography; what style: Mixed, focused on getting nice greens sooc in landscapes without crying.
• If video what style: Mixed
• What features do you absolutely need: Greens that make me cry less.
• What features would be nice to have: Greens that don't make me cry.
• Portability: <700g preferred
• Cameras you're considering: Something that gives more natural greens.
• Cameras you already have: What do you like or dislike about them? The greens.