HN user

ravishi

256 karma
Posts2
Comments125
View on HN

It's probably very cultural thing. I understand how one can consider a studio and a gym to be the same, but around my area the studios are very different from gyms.

For me, the gym has a gym energy, kinda intimidating. There's lots of people and everyone is wearing hadphones, you don't know where to look at, you have to wait for equipment, share equipment, etc. I don't like personally.

gym everyday: I found great success with Pilates. It's usually me + 2-3 other people and the instructor. There's chatting during the session after you become regular. You get to have some social life while exercising. It also helps tremendously with posture, specially for someone who spends all his day in a chair.

It's still hard to do sometimes, like in stronger depressive episodes. But it's way easier than gym at least for me.

It's all PR. Some people won't read the details and just assume it will train on all data. Some people might complain and they tell it was a bug or a minor slip. And moving forward, after a few months, nobody will remember it was ever different. And some might vaguely remember them saying something about it at some point or something like that.

What about reframing therapy as counseling?

I'm not there to be healed, I'm there to talk to someone about my problems, my insecurities, the shit I can't (or don't want to) talk to anyone else.

In my current routine with work, two kids and a challenging marriage I don't have the opportunity to get an hour a week of talk with a friend. I have nowhere to vent. So what do I do?

I do therapy. I think of the therapist as some sort of counselor. I exercise my ideas there, I experiment with stuff I would not talk about anywhere else.

I can understand that I'm not alone. It's reasonable to think so.

I cannot find support anywhere, though. Which makes me feel isolated. I have nobody to share my struggles with. No place to vent. No space to process it.

Only thing that has helped is therapy. After so many years I'm craving a group, though.

These were the observations that made the most difference in my life too. I also only learned and internalized them after my child was born. He's 3 now and I'm happy to admit that I've grown a lot thanks to him. For the first time in my life I look forward to what's to come next and feel confident to face the challenges.

I use a similar system, but I duplicate and rename the file at the start of each day. Then I remove stuff that got done the previous day. Or stuff that is old and not relevant anymore.

The system has evolved over the years. The greatest thing about it is how flexible it is. When faced with new requirements (new projects, job change, etc) I can just start taking notes in a different way and see if it sticks.

I also commit it to git every 30 minutes using a cron script. Its awesome.

Anyone who's experienced it will understand.

I've described it as feeling like you're thin, stretched, like butter spread over too much bread. And people promptly reply "like a robot, am I right". It's definitely a thing.

If I may ask: do you have kids?

I used to have a lot of trouble when trying to not care about stuff. I didn't care about most stuff, but it used to be impossible to not care about stuff I was naturally interested in.

Now after almost three years raising a toddler I can see clearly when people are behaving like babies. And I'm used to handle a stressed baby who is not cooperating for God knows why. It happens quite frequently and I just play along. I got used to being there, offering support without any expectations (because he usually doesn't want any at that point), trying things out just to give him a chance to take the bait, etc. Now it just feels like life is finally making sense to me. I catch myself applying this to my relationship with my wife, to my work, etc. I feel like I would probably not make these realizations nor develop this mindset if it wasn't for my kid.

You're literally "made to feel" certain ways. During your formative years someone was shouting you suck and generally acting as you're a burden and unwanted? You'll feel that shit for the rest of your life no matter what you "decide to think". It becomes ingrained in you. It becomes who you are. You can work on it like GP said and improve the situation but don't act like it's trivial or just a change of perspective. It isn't. It's like your body needs healing after a fractured bone. Your mind also needs that time and setting.

Same thing happened to me the first time I tried using molly. I am convinced it was actually a fake of some amphetamines and caffeine or something. But it still had an effect on me: for the first time in my life I was able to have fun while being surrounded by a crowd of people (it was a music festival). It didn't make me feel dumbed down like alcohol used to. I just felt happy, just wanted to have fun and enjoy the moment. After that I realized I had the sparkle in me. I even knew I could do it without drugs. That was the beginning of my healing process. I've remembered that experience many times later and still come back to it sometimes.

It's basically impossible to convince someone to do all those things when they're fighting to stay alive, working terrible conditions and generally being fucked by society as a whole. Fixing economic inequalities and improving overall quality of life for everyone in the planet should be top of that list. Telling rich people to grow their own food won't make any difference.

That's interesting. Applying that model to my interactions with my wife I think I could add that the same person could be details oriented in some situations/subjects/contexts while at the same time being intuitive in others. Which only adds to the frustration people feel while seeking for a common ground.

Lie still in bed 3 years ago

My mom worked night shifts as a nurse most of her life. It gave her the opportunity to be with us during the day but also took a toll on her sleep habits and health. She had a lot of trouble sleeping so she said she would just lie still in bed and that would get her _some_ rest. At least most rest than she would get by actively trying to sleep.

This trend is indeed weird. It reminds me of my journey with Vim. In the beginning it was life changing. Like I felt like it really gave me an edge. I had all kinds of customizations on top of it. After a while I changed to Vim plugins inside full IDEs. No customization, just my plain comfortable text editor of choice. I feel nice while using it. Feels at home. I can't use mouse based text editors and feel happy anymore. Or at least I don't bother trying. Also I see no point in comparing this with anyone else using their tools. It's their tools and they could have more than a decade of experience in it.

I have been programming for more than 15 years. I've used vim since the very beginning and it always puzzled me as something so genuinely clever. Using vim is a joy. I feel good while doing it. Bram has been this strong influence in my life all due to his software.

That's a great technique I would say!

I stumbled on it by chance when I failed to make it to a client meeting with one junior dev I was leading. He was counting on my presence to support him, we had already discussed it before. But I got caught up last minute and he decided to go alone. And I know it was hard for him, but everything went fine. And from then on he was a lot more confident in his day to day.

I had the opposite experience with junior devs on my team. The ones that knew how to communicate and ask for help thrived. It was easy to negotiate some head banging on the wall time while also pairing from time to time to discuss where they're going. I've seem them flourish in less than a year's time and be able to perform just like experienced devs.

Same. My brother doesn't have aphantasia, but he has some kind of "spatial dyslexia" as we call it. Not diagnosed, he just has really hard time thinking about spatial stuff, drawing and writing (related to the form of his "typeface", not to spelling).