confusedpuppy

Financial advice from old men who should spend more time minding their own business and less time giving advice when it was never asked.

If I listened to them, I'd end up a miserable old man giving advice that no one asked to hear.

They are definitely dead. On the inside.

It took me a long time to be comfortable with the fact that people hated me. I eventually learned that I had the courage to do things they wish they could have done with their time. Instead they worked themselves into a life of constant pain and misery.

Not understanding why I received so much hate was a mindfuck itself. At least now I know I can be proud of my past actions. They were able to target their insecurities. In my opinion, words alone could never reach that deep.

If I spent all my time reaching my potential, I would have never had time to experience life. I know I made the right choices when I look into those dead, judgemental eyes. All the bullshit words in world could never bring a light back into those eyes.

I spent a year living in Berlin. I was staying in a hostel in Kreuzberg and had made friends with a receptionist there.

One day she adds me on Facebook and a few days later she tells me how she was creeping my page. I happened to mention in a post one of the hostels I was living at in Sydney, Australia a couple years before going to Germany.

We get to talking and it turned out her and I were in the same hostel, at the same time in Sydney. We could have made eye contact in Australia and would have never even processed it.

I knew the timing was right because she arrived in Sydney during a really cold and rainy month. She was complaining because she left Berlin to see the sun and ended up with more rain. She left Sydney shortly after arriving.

Absolutely wild to me that we would meet up again on the other side of the planet. We ended up hitching to Warsaw and back after our discovery.

Sometimes I'll casually say something from my past and the other person will look at me like they want to shout "what the fuck???" while trying to act calm.

Every time I see that reaction from my therapist, I suddenly realize that I've been internalizing some wild shit. Life's a trip.

I get the impression that men in particular love Rome for the image of historical, European masculinity. Well, all the parts that reinforce modern views of masculinity while ignoring all the really gay aspects of that historic period.

I personally think these guys will go through the most extreme mental gymnastics to continue hating women in place of any deeper, more meaningful connection with other men that doesn't include violence in one form or another.

Which all seems to happily align with the building of a fascist ideology...

It's more in my fingers, but I also have a habit pushing myself too far every time I do something. It's taken me over a year to stop pushing myself too hard when I ride a bike.

Everything in moderation and I'm pretty bad at moderation.

Working in the trades for a short 6 years has fucked my hand grip strength. In the past couple years since leaving the trades, I've noticed how painful it is to work with tools for a long period of time.

I wanted to take up widdling as a creative hobby but after 30 minutes, my hands are aching and stiff for a couple days afterwards.

A lot of the stuff I worked on was metal related and that's not kind to anyones body. I knew a sheet metal worker who would have retired with really bad carpal tunnel and that should have been a huge red flag early on in my working life. I'm glad I got out before any major long lasting pain set in.

There really isn't much available for people who don't want a chair/desk combination in North America. Feels a bit oppressive but maybe that's my perspective since school was nothing but attention based torture for me.

I was born in Canada and was essentially raised Canadian. Both my bio parents were born in Guyana. Go back in history and their relatives were from India. My stepdad is from a Scottish background.

In Canada I lived in a city with a noticeable Indian and Pakistani population. People there assume I am Indian.

When I travelled Europe, everyone assumed I was African, French or French Canadian. I can't speak French. In Germany, people assumed I was German or Muslim. I know being Muslim isn't a nationality but the Turkish people in Berlin would greet me all the time. While I was in Australia, I was just treated like I was exotic... Yeah... And in Cuba, people thought I was Cuban. Luckily I had a pasty white, Spanish speaking Californian guy with me for a short time to speak to the locals.

It's such a trip what people assume about me. Even more trippy with the amount of people who thought I was a local when I was abroad in Europe, especially in Germany where I only had a year with a work/travel visa.

Even though I have no pride in being Canadian, that's what I am. That's the culture I was born in and raised up as. The people who ask "Where are you from? No, where are you really from?" Tend to be closed minded people who I actively avoid.

I spent so much of my life breaking cycles before I ever knew I was breaking cycles. Before I had the understanding and the words to describe my reactions to this world, the only thing I really knew was that other people made me feel bad and I didn't want to make other people feel the same way I did.

So much of my behaviour came out of defiance. However my acts of defiance are subtle. When someone maee me feel bad or told me I can't do something, I'll spend my time trying to figure out why I felt so bad or why they didn't want me to do something by doing it anyways (within reason). I never came back to fight them or prove a point. I used that knowledge or experience to quietly defy them more in the future. I used that knowledge or experience to be kinder to other people that came into my life.

When my family chose to ignore me, I defied that behaviour by acticely listening to everyone else. When my family chose to make me feel judged and guilty, I defied that behaviour by allowing people to be themselves without explanantion. When my family chose to only view me as a stereotype, I defied that behaviour by allowing people the time to show me who they were without labels. When my family chose not to take the time to understand me, I defied that behaviour to make sure other people felt understood.

For all the pain from all the trauma I experienced, I know I've been able to turn that into something that made other people feel accepted and whole. It was always unexpected when those people showed appreciation for me. Even some of the people that showed appreciation for me were completely unexpected.

When it's my turn to die, I will at least be able to die at peace with myself knowing that others felt safe to be themselves around me and that they deeply appreciated that. Being kind when so many people around me are so unkind takes too much energy. But I won't stop, that defiant part of my brain won't let me.

The automation industry is too dependant on so many other industries. I learned this real quick after the COVID lockdowns of 2020.

The shipping delays, as well as the overall lack of devices and materials caused huge waves but management made it seem like manageable ripples in a pond.

I made an educated gamble and got out of that industry in 2021. I couldn't predict Trump's tariff wars but I felt a disturbance early on.

I'm speaking from a North American perspective but the automation industry is global. This doesn't surprise me but even the headline alone brings a sense of disappointment.

The first picture was from the end of last year and the second was from last night after a fresh shed and looking to warm up on my arm.