What POSITIVE CHANGES are you making in your life?

I adopt special needs cats. Sometimes a new cat is warmly welcomed, sometimes there is a period of adjustment (of varying levels of stress), and sometimes there isn’t really any chance of getting along (we have a cat that lives in her own bedroom here due to that). It mostly has worked out for us that they become friends or tolerant of each other, but not always. And since, for us, our cats are our family who need equal consideration, we adjust to deal with any issues that arise. Kittens do tend to get greeted better.

I just put in an application for a female kitten who has already been spayed and knows how to use the litterbox. She is the same breed as my old male cat, so maybe that will help them get along. They also are both fond of the hard rubber bouncy ball sort of toy. It will take 3 to 5 days for my application to get processed, including them calling my veterinarian to find out if I have been a good pet owner.

Adopting a cat is a challenge these days. Used to be that you could just walk into a pet store and buy one, or even see signs posted in your area from someone who was giving away kittens. The pet store near me was so notorious for inhumane housing practices that the city finally outlawed sales of cats and dogs by pet stores. Most local animal shelters require completion of a lengthy application and ask for references. Some even want to inspect my home, to make sure that I am not a crazy cat lady or living in my own filth. Some will even refuse to let me adopt a kitten unless I already have a kitten or young cat for it to play with.

So I have initiated talks with a friendly acquaintance who is a crazy cat lady. She lives out in the sticks and hosts a menagerie of several dogs and maybe two dozen cats, ranging from civilized indoor cats to semi-feral barn cats. She has a two-year old female shorthair who is spayed and trained to use the litterbox. So maybe? She lives an hour away, and my weekend is booked solid, but maybe next weekend I can meet the cat.

Come to the south or southwest. They will shove a cat or dog into your hands faster than you can open your mouth.

I taught myself how to solve a Rubik’s Cube.

I’ve made halfhearted attempts before, but then I saw a Netflix documentary on an autistic kid who got really into speedcubing and made friends and learned how to deal with loss and relationships, and it got to me. So I got a cube and watched a YouTube video on the overall strategy, breaking it down into individual steps, and providing the algorithms for each step.

It is not very hard, but it looks impressive to people who don’t know anything about it. Don’t tell.

My daughter and I did the same last year when she was in fifth grade - no movie for us, I think someone she knew could do it and she wanted to try. We tried a few different YouTube tutorials but only one done by a female made sense to us. It was nice seeing her fight to master each step, and there were several times over the course of several weeks where she declared it impossible. Once she got it down, then she started timing herself and I think she got to where she could do it in 45 seconds. My best time is maybe 1 minute 30 seconds and I try to make sure and pick up the cube from time to time to maintain it. We made a few purchases from speedcubeshop and I have a Gan I really prefer. Just learned about mirror cubes so that will probably show up under the tree along with a pyramid in a few months. I’m glad she did it because I think it was one of the first things she took on that helped her realize the power of persistence.

Twisty puzzles like these are my other nerd hobby. I've got a stupidly large collection of them, enough that I forget how to do some of them and have to relearn them once in a while.

Definitely get a good cube, it makes tons of difference whether you're trying to solve faster or even just for fun. I like the shape mods and cuboids a lot, mostly because they're all just about the same stuff but with little quirks to each one.

The megaminx (12-sided) is one of the best things to take on next, because it's very similar to standard cube, but in slightly different ways.

It's a long rabbit hole, though. Have fun.

Heard back today from both the cat lady and the animal shelter where I adopted my elderly cat. But I am crazy busy this week and both locations are 30 miles away from me, but in different directions (northeast and south). So I committed to meeting with the cat lady on Saturday, but I might try to got to the shelter first thing that morning. Might need to skip the alcohol at the Friday night Halloween party.

So, I’ve been lifting for a while now and got complacent. Im laying on my back doing 15 pound dumbbell flies and I feel my right arm “snap”. Immediate pain.

Im like “what the fuck” and for a week I’m certain I broke my damned arm. Hurts like hell but I have shit to do, so I do a plumbing side job, fix my eldest’s closet by installing some overhead shelving. I have the ex over every Wednesday for dinner so she’s not eating sandwiches and cereal for dinner every night, and so I clean the house.

Arm is not getting better, and sleeping is becoming even more of a pain in the ass.

So, I grab my shop vac loaded with maybe 20 pounds of tools, arm outstretched in front of me at 90°, from my car. I lift the shop vac and feel my arm snap again. I curse and switch hands.

I wake up the next day (yesterday) pain free. And it was at this point I realized I had gone a week doing chores, doing light workouts, and doing construction work…with a dislocated shoulder.

SuperflyPete wrote: I wake up the next day (yesterday) pain free. And it was at this point I realized I had gone a week doing chores, doing light workouts, and doing construction work…with a dislocated shoulder.

A friend of mine had something wrong with his ankle - he slipped and tweaked it, and it hurt continuously, for months. I was getting reports every so often, "Went to the doctor today, x-rayed my ankle, saw nothing, still hurts." Then he tweaked it again and the pain went away. He finally found a doctor who had stayed awake in class who told him, "Ligaments and tendons ride on top of each other in channels, and it's easy to 'dislocate' one. You just popped it back in place by accident."

10 years ago, I painted the exterior of my house. My gf was worried about me falling while painting the second story, so we compromised and I painted the first floor and hired pros to paint the second floor. Their part took a half day, and my part was spread out over a few weekends. Even just painting the first floor involved a fair amount of ladder work, and at some point, I dislocated a knee. I donned a knee compression pad and limped for a few days until it abruptly popped back into place and the pain vanished. Over the course of the next year, one or the other knee dislocated on various occasions and then popped back.

A year later, I lost my job. I worked the job search hard, but I also happened to have a dozen personal trainer appointments that I paid for a couple of years earlier but never got around to using. The trainer helped me understand that my knee kept dislocating because I was spending too much time sitting at a computer (from the job, and then the job search). He showed me how to do proper squats, and also showed me several other leg exercises. I haven't had any problems with my knees since 2013.

Painted my house again this year. I'm a decade older now, so this time I paid pros to do the whole job, except that I took down the shutters and painted those myself. Somehow the whole paint job was less expensive than the partial paint job last time around. This was a better crew of painters, too. They did a flawless job, though they did ruthlessly trample my flower gardens. Good thing I waited until autumn.

It's been about 4 months since I moved out of my house. My divorce is not FINAL final yet (November) but things are done. I have nothing but the most cursory dealings with my ex-wife.

It's been a time, lots of ups and downs. Not having someone shooting bullets into your head regularly is nice and gives you a sense of relief, but you still have all those bullet wounds to deal with.

For a long time I spent my evenings just sitting on the sofa playing videogames. Just to kill time and my brain. I finally continued the "fake it till you make it" plan and that has changed. In the past couple weeks I:

* returned to programming, something I rediscovered last year that I really enjoy. I am learning Wolfram Language and working on a bunch of things to gather data from BGG and use it to answer questions about a specific group of users.

* read a book! A slim book of poetry, but a book nonetheless. This is something I haven't done and was not really able to do for some time.

* got back to my chronological Hellboy project! Earlier this year I started to read through all the Hellboy-and-adjacent comics in chronological order. I stopped at 2003. Last night I picked it back up again. I love this series.

* started exercising. I bought an elliptical and have been doing 15 mins of walking in the evenings while watching Green Acres. I'll eventually increase that time. In addition I've been enjoying getting out into the woods and walking around for additional mental exercise.

* seeing a lady friend. I was briefly on dating apps with not much success (I wasn't really trying very hard tbh) but I met someone who I became good friends with and we've been spending a lot of time together. I don't know what I want or am even capable of doing at this point, but it's been very nice. The other nice thing is, she's not into board games or video games. So we do other things that are taking me out of my ruts and bringing something different in.

* quit BGG forums. Seems like a dumb thing, but the dumb thing was regularly getting hot about a bunch of clowns I don't actually care about who don't otherwise impact my life.

* prepping to restart my video game project. I had started to learn Game Maker Studio in order to create my own old-school Ultima style RPG. I still want to do that. I recovered the files I had lost in a crash (was thankfully also learning how to use github) and am trying to figure out how I want to approach. I've got a few different ideas on how I want to start back up and just need to weigh them.

* I've been trying to watch more movies, TV, do crosswords, make music mixes, and in general do the things I enjoyed doing and stopped when the divorce and move interrupted me. And yeah, also playing video games, but actually to enjoy them, not just burn hours.

I've been thinking of the Churchill quote: it's not the end, it's not the beginning of the end, but it may be the end of the beginning. That's how I feel. I feel like I can finally see the path out of this. It's a long, rough road, and I won't always move forward, but I can at least see it and I think I can do it.

I've always tried to stay in shape, usually that's through running, but I haven't found any one thing that I stick with and always wind up getting bored eventually. Plus, even though I've been running for years, I never felt like I was learning a new skill or getting any better, just keeping the pounds off and my blood pressure in great condition.

During the pandemic, I looked for something else, and landed on a skateboard. I picked up an old school cruiser from Landyacthz and use it to bomb hills and carve alleys in my neighborhood. From time to time, I go out to the skatepark where I'm easily the oldest (47 now) and also the only one fully padded and helmeted. I have too many responsibilities at this age to take a brain injury, so don't care what anyone thinks. Anyway, I stick to transitional skating and the bowls. I don't do ollies or anything where me or the board are leaving the ground. I'm not out here trying to showboat and break anything.

Anyway, it's been a lot of fun and has really helped re-energize me to get out and sweat. I'm not gonna lie that it also feels a little mid-life crisis-ish... trying to shred bowls while listening to punk rock in airpods while I near 50. I'm not great at it, nor trying to impress anyone, but it's my life. F it.

I wouldn’t say it’s midlife crisis. There’s no age limit to trying new things and exploring what the world offers.

I think you have to be dead inside to decide to stop learning and checking out new interests, or rediscovering old ones that you thought you left behind.

I'm a month into working with a therapist on grieving my Dad - His cognitive decline is aggressive, and the circumstances are problematic. Next up we get to tackle some of the coping mechanisms that got me through 2 years of untreated depression and anxiety.

More importantly, I'm plugging back in. I'm doing a home fellowship with a some friends. I'm doing some music 2 or 3 times a month. I'm doing useful things, that are meaningful to me, that are others centered activities. It's hard to feel bad, when you are doing good for someone. Most of my late depression was centered around being depressed about being depressed - Not being my "best"self, and that eventually just overlayed everything with imposter syndrome, feeling I was a hindrance to others.