OSUViking

Also, I'm not sure why but a story about a Trump administration official admitting to the administration withholding $4 million from the 9/11 medical fund just totally fell under the radar. That's awful, more than likely entirely politically motivated, and would be a huge egg on his face. Not sure why they didn't pick that up.

I'm paranoid that the only way Trump leaves office is military coup. They've said they won't get involved to settle disputes. However, if the courts decide in favor of Biden, and Trump refuses to leave, I think it could come to that. My concern is what would happen to Trump after something like that. I hate the man but if they punished him, I could see mass violence from his QAnon cult following breaking out.

Is anyone else worried about a civil war this fall, or am I just being paranoid? I hope I'm just paranoid.

First time back here in a while as well. Graduated from OSU last May, and will be starting a job with Epic Systems in Wisconsin in a few weeks.

Stranger Things Season 3. I thought it was a good recovery from the (IMO) dumpster fire that was Season 2, but thought that it followed the same trend as the first two seasons where it got weaker as the season went on. I loved Billy's arc.

Not sure where else to post this. It is related to the sobriety post in the good news thread but this in and of itself is not good news. More so observations. Being sober has exposed me to so much shit in my head that I've ignored since I was young. My relationship is terrifying and I love my girlfriend but quite frankly I get paranoid and it's hard without weed being there to mask it. I've no intention of harming myself but the image of ending my own life plays on repeat in my head basically every day. Around coworkers, when I'm alone, when I'm with my girlfriend, even around my doctors. No intention of following through. It's just an obsessive thought that pops up a lot and it's unpleasant at best. Paranoid thoughts are also nearly constant but not necessarily prominent. It's more so like they are always there, but I see them for what they are. The temptation to go down the paranoid rabbit hole is constant and somehow paranoia feels safer than trying to ground myself in reality. I've also taken some time to appreciate it takes some grit to make it through some of these things. I usually shy away from complimenting myself because I don't like coming off as egotistical. But most people would not be able to handle the types of thoughts I put up with on a daily basis, on top of recovering from substance abuse (I still have physical cravings for weed) and studying for a competitive degree. Life has been difficult but it's also made me resilient. I had someone on campus not so subtly say I had an easy life because I was middle class and a white male. I don't talk with them often but I wondered how long they'd be able to last if they had to put up with some of this shit.

It's been 7+ months since I last got high. I've had periods where I almost slipped into replacing weed with alcohol but I've come a long way. I spent almost $1,500 on weed in about a year and that was only the Venmo transactions. Although it's positive progress, I still struggle reckoning with the people I pushed away while in that state. I missed a lot of growth and fucked some good situations up so I could get high. I never want to be in that state again, although life hasn't necessarily been easier without it. The actual start date of my sober streak was July 9, 2018. I sent an email to my ex apologizing for neglecting our relationship and her emotional needs for the sake of weed. I don't know if she even cared, but I was fucked up emotionally after sending it and wanted to smoke. Something in me stopped me from doing it and here I am now. Edit: I also accepted a job offer in Madison following graduation. It'll be in a technical support role for a software company. It'll be hard work but I've made it this far. Just have to make it through this semester and I'm finally done with school.

Disrespect is a bit of an issue for me, because I'm not a confrontational person. I grew up in an environment that had lots of passive aggressive interactions, and the ones that did spill over into outright confrontation (my dad being angry during a diabetic episode) were terrifying and have led to dissociation issues for me. So someone disrespecting me, I don't handle that well. I'd be just as likely to ignore it and continue on with my day than I would be to confront it. I will say, there have been a few instances at my job where a manager who was interested in my girlfriend disrespected me. I am fairly certain he wanted to assert authority over me to impress her and turn her away from me (obviously didn't work). I didn't know how to handle that and it made the whole situation uncomfortable. However, many people respect me at work. I'm hard working, I'm easy to talk to, I'm kind, and I'm willing to help people if they ask for it. People turn to me for help with stuff pretty often, especially the new people. So it's not often people will disrespect me because I don't put myself in many positions to have that happen to me. Even the person who is known by all of the managers and chefs to be insubordinate as hell, isn't like that with me. Still not a good worker, but he does what I ask of him. Respect begets respect. Those people who disrespect me though, they show their true colors. It really isn't hard to not be a piece of shit, which is why I think it reflects poorly on humanity and the society we've built that there are so many pieces of shit out there. I don't invest in them at all, and expect the bare minimum from them. I wouldn't call the aforementioned manager a piece of shit, but I was friends with him up until that point and haven't expected anything other than an entertaining conversation between the two of us since then. It's impossible to avoid disrespectful people, but I do my best to minimize the impact and presence they have in my life.

I want to get AC Odyssey and RDR2 so badly but I don't want to completely stop talking to my girlfriend. Ok maybe there is a middle ground there but think I'll wait til break.

I had a medication that had worked wonders for my psychosis supplied for free by a study that I was in. I was going to move to an injectable form in another study, but withdrew as I was having a lot of anxiety about that transition and wanted to stay on the oral. I also had some scheduling conflicts that were going to make it touchy even if I wanted to be in the study. I wanted to stay on that medication, as it had worked pretty well for almost two years at that point. I called the insurance to see whether it would be covered, and it wasn't. It was going to cost me like $300 a month just to get a 30-pill bottle. That's pathetic. I am not familiar with the healthcare or health insurance industries, but I refuse to believe there is any justification for why prices are so high or why shit is the way it is. My two hospital stays for mental health issues were 2-3 days, and each of them cost several thousand dollars. I had to go the first time no doubt; I was considering suicide to prevent the horrible thoughts I was having from becoming reality. I almost don't want to go to the hospital in the future because of the cost, not just because it's boring once I stabilize.

No idea what the standards are for that competition or what a transgender athlete would have to go through to compete with other women, but if the lady who complained really did beat the transgender athlete that many times before, kind of sounds like she's just butthurt. The last tweet from the winner annoys me. That's what transphobia looks like? That looks more like a sore loser grasping for whatever straws she can to justify why she just lost. I really don't know much about this situation, but from what I read in that article it sounds like the 3rd place finisher is a sore loser. That being, shutting down the discussion of "where do transgender athletes belong in sports" because "transphobia" seems extreme. It's a discussion to have; that doesn't mean it has to lead to them being excluded from sports, but too many people won't even discuss these things because people get so butthurt about it. I'm curious, are there any cases of transgender athletes competing with other men? Legitimate question.

I'm just gonna say it's irresponsible to throw around labels like that. People do it with Trump all the time, even professionals. The circumstances that lead to certain behaviors can stem from a lot of situations, and something like clinical narcissism is almost always a complex combination of genetics and attachment trauma. There's heightened narcissism all over the place but that's not what NPD (narcissistic personality disorder) is. I don't agree with blots' and his way of handling this situation, but I again think throwing around psychiatric labels in any situation outside of a professional diagnosing a client/patient under their care is irresponsible.

I'm generally a proponent of considering biological factors because then we can understand where these tendencies come from. However, I didn't mean to address people who are more sexually adventurous in their youth. I mean assholes who see something (not someone) they want and make them uncomfortable when they can't get it, if not worse. That is definitely more common than people tend to think, though I'm also not trying to claim every guy is like that. (Personally, I tend to hate other guys in an abstract way because of my own insecurities and past, and don't see a practical reason to let go of that unless an individual shows me I'm wrong). There's a lot of emotional dysregulation that factors into sexual harassment and assault. Those things will never go away, but I think teaching people how to process emotions effectively and in a healthy manner in their youth could cut down on that behavior. That, and kids not growing up with ideas of what it means to be a man or woman. Let kids sort their identity out for themselves. Unfortunately that last one will never happen, it's too profitable to exploit the population's insecurities to spark consumerism. I also don't necessarily advocate for legislative change. I've made my stance clear before that I think a lot of societal issues are individual behavior problems on a mass scale, and they result from poorly handled emotions and poor development in their youth. I think more education into developmental and childhood attachment trauma could go a long way in helping to shape future generations to not be pieces of shit, regardless of their socioeconomic status, sex, race, etc.

There are plenty of ways white women are advantaged; there are also plenty of ways they have a difficult time in life. Men can absolutely be raped and sexually assaulted by women, but it's not a close ratio. Men tend to be more aggressive for a variety of reasons and that plays into social/sexual encounters. I think that's more an individual, entitled asshole problem than it is some societal epidemic. There are societal messages at play but at the end of the day, I tend to think the beliefs people internalize about themselves from home plays a larger role than the messages from society. The two have a lot of overlap, but I think parents who actually encouraged a kid to reflect on their parents and think for themselves would produce a respectable guy who isn't a piece of shit. Same for girls. I'll tell you, after I started dating my girlfriend it was like I started seeing things a different way. She said that a lot of guys approach her at various points throughout the week, or on social media, and it makes her uncomfortable. I can see why. My own bias 100% seeps into this perspective, but I think there are a lot of fuck boys out there, some of which masquerade as nice guys and some who are just your stereotypical frat boy. I completely understand why a woman would feel afraid of men, and frankly I think at the very least sexual harassment is more common than many think. I am of the belief that the majority of privilege stems from socioeconomic background. Because of how different races were treated historically, the socioeconomic situation still has a lot of racial factors into it. There's still racism in today's society; probably not at the level it was 40 years ago, but it's still there. People project their fears onto other groups of people literally every day and minority demographics of all kinds are usually the ones that suffer. There are a lot of people in life who won't deal with as much as I do on a week-to-week basis because they don't have to analyze the details of an overly obsessive mind to make sure they won't have a psychotic episode during a test or during a busy shift at work. There are a lot of people who deal with shit I couldn't even fathom because of the socioeconomic background I come from. It's a complex situation. There are white people who are poor as shit and treated horribly by society, and rich black people who still face shit but by and large have an easy time in life. The fact that I'm a white dude with a middle class background is a huge advantage, as is the fact that I'm at least average or above-average intelligence.

There are unquestionably advantages to certain lots in life, but it's way more complex than stuff like white privilege or male privilege. I have faced situations in life that were easier to navigate because I was a white guy, although I think the majority of my benefits came from a middle class socioeconomic background and growing up in a household with parents who insisted on paying for my college. I'm absolutely not privileged when it comes to mental health, I think that's a given. I've seen stupid shit like skinny people are "privileged" because they have better genetics, or that people who don't have legitimate gluten intolerance or dietary restrictions are privileged. That stuff makes my eyes roll into the back of my head. If I didn't literally fit the stereotype for a school shooter, I would kindly let people know they face advantages over me in almost every aspect of life by not having to deal with psychosis. Humans are so complex and there are so many factors that go into how difficult someone's life is. But people want to fit others into neatly packed boxes for their own agendas, it's ridiculous.