DAE put off a 5-minute task for days and then feel ridiculous once it’s finally done?

The actual task takes less time than all the thinking about not doing it.

I am a cis woman but when I really think about it I don’t prefer she/her, that’s just what I’m used to getting. I don’t really like he/him for me, feels unnatural. And they/them doesn’t really feel like it’s referring to me. I definitely don’t care for it/its or any neopronouns. The only solution would be no pronouns, but the thought of people constantly referring to me as Tyler also seems unnatural. I am ultimately neutral towards being she/her’d so it’s all good. Just wondering if anyone else feels like no set of pronouns feels natural for them. (And I really don’t think I’m trans. I have no dysphoria and no problems being perceived as a woman/female)

I've cried so much today from feeling so useless. I honestly don't give a fuck that I'm not supposed to do anything, I feel useless.

My (51F) son (26M) has had treatment resistant depression since he was about 13. That’s the last time I ever saw him smile. Nothing seems to help, we’ve tried everything. He’s been so miserable for so long and it absolutely breaks my heart. I love my son more than anything else in this world, but if I could go back and do it all over knowing how his life would turn out I never would’ve had him.

I have so many clothes, but whenever I actually need to go somewhere, I somehow can't put together an outfit I like.

The funny thing is, when I'm cleaning out my closet, I'll suddenly find something I completely forgot I owned. Sometimes it's something I haven't even worn once, and by the time I rediscover it, the season for wearing it has already passed.

It's frustrating because I know I have plenty of clothes. I just keep forgetting what I own or can't figure out how to put things together when I need to.

The men get the chill version of her. The female friends get everything else.
I’ve noticed this dynamic where some women are incredibly easygoing and accommodating around their male friends or romantic partners, but noticeably more demanding, moody, or particular around their female friends.
I get that we might feel more comfortable letting our guard down around other women, but sometimes it feels like a double standard. You know they’re capable of being flexible because you’ve seen them extend that courtesy to men.

Yet somehow, their female friends are expected to accommodate their moods, preferences, and inconveniences.

I’m often the female friend on the receiving end, and it can feel like I’m being taken for granted.
Has anyone else noticed this? Am I reading too much into it, or is this a fairly common dynamic?

I’ve heard of seasonal depression, where some people become depressed during certain times of the year, having to do with fewer daylight hours in the wintertime and lower vitamin D uptake, but I’m not sure that’s exactly what I’m experiencing. For me, it’s the cold temperature itself that causes an instant feeling of sadness or grief.

It’ll hit me when I get out of the shower and step into the cool air, if I step into the freezer at a liquor store, or just if it’s a cold night and I go put the trash out. It’s a type of sadness that just feels so lonely and honestly a little scary. Once I warm back up, I feel fine.

On the other hand, heat feels like the most comforting hug ever. Like I could cry stepping into a hot shower on a cold day. Just writing that makes me feel a little emotional lol.

Can anyone relate?

I’m sitting by myself this evening, listening to music and looking out at the road from my sixth-floor balcony. It’s already dark, but the world is still busy. Cars coming and going, people getting off work, everyone heading somewhere. Sometimes I even catch myself calculating how long a car takes to reach the point where I can see it. I don’t know why. I just like watching.

I read somewhere once, do we want to be on top so we can see the world, or so the world can see us? I’ve always loved that thought. Maybe living this high up makes me think about it a little more.

At some point, I take my glasses off. My eyesight is pretty bad, so without them, the entire world turns into a blur. But I’ve always liked looking at things this way when I want to be alone. Everything loses its shape, and somehow, I find it beautiful.

Tonight, the road looks like someone has scattered glitter across it. Little specks of light in different colours, moving at different speeds. I can’t tell which ones belong to trucks or cars anymore. I can only see the colours, and for some reason, I can’t stop looking.

I wonder if I’ll ever want to get my eyesight completely fixed. Not because I don’t want to see things clearly, but because there’s a version of the world I get to see only when I take my glasses off. A version where everything familiar becomes something else entirely. And I think I’m a little attached to it.

There’s a moon rising right in front of me, and across the road, a single home in a huge building is decorated with little pink and blue Diwali lights. I keep looking at the lights, then at the moon, then back at the lights. The sky gets darker, and the moon somehow gets brighter. I don’t even realise how long I’ve been sitting here.

I think about this one evening at a fair with my love. We had just gotten off the Ferris wheel and were sitting together, watching it turn in front of us. For some reason, we both took our glasses off. His eyesight is even worse than mine, so we sat there, holding hands, looking at what was once a Ferris wheel but had now become nothing more than little specks of light circling endlessly against the night sky. We weren’t talking about anything profound. Nothing particularly extraordinary was happening. But I remember thinking how beautiful it was to finally have someone who could see the world the way I did. Someone who could look at the same blur of colours and find the same kind of beauty in it. It’s one of those moments I’ve quietly kept to myself, and I think I always will.

Lately, I’ve been so caught up in my own head, thinking about life, about what’s happening, what isn’t, and why everything feels so uncertain. But right now, I’m just sitting here, listening to a song, watching tiny lights move across a distant road, and smiling for no particular reason. I don’t have answers to the things I’ve been worrying about. Nothing has changed. I just feel nice.

Maybe that’s what makes this evening so special. There’s nothing extraordinary happening. The world is doing what it does every day. People are going home, cars are passing by, someone is putting up Diwali lights, and the moon is slowly becoming brighter. But I’m sitting here long enough to notice it all.

I keep thinking about how many little things I miss when I’m too busy thinking about everything else.

And as I’m writing this, the moon is finally at its brightest, right in front of me, and it’s so fucking beautiful. I genuinely can’t explain it. I just keep looking at it, and I don’t want to look away.

I don’t know. I just feel a lot of things tonight, and I want to remember what it feels like to sit here, doing nothing, and be this happy.

I don't even mean after a bad day. Sometimes I've had a genuinely good day, laughed with people, had nice conversations, and enjoyed myself.

But the second I get home, I just want complete silence.

No phone calls, no messages, no one asking me what I'm doing or how my day went. Even someone asking me a completely harmless question can feel like one more thing my brain has to deal with.

And the weird part is that I'm not necessarily tired. I can spend another two hours doing random stuff on my own and feel perfectly fine. It's specifically having to interact with another person that suddenly feels exhausting.

Then after a while, I'm back to normal and actually want to talk to people again.

DAE experience this even when you've genuinely enjoyed being around people?

It seems like every time I ask something or answer something it gets removed. Too recent, not specific enough, too political. And for answers even if your answer is right they take it down if it’s not formatted exactly how they want it.

Call me jealous all you want. Maybe I am slightly jealous, and I'm sure if I were in their position, I'd happily accept the freebies too.

But does anyone else find influencer culture increasingly frustrating?

I scroll through TikTok and Instagram and it's just people being gifted brand-new sofas, entire kitchens, expensive clothes, makeup, luxury holidays, you name it.

Meanwhile, I'm working full-time, paying my bills, and genuinely debating whether I can justify buying myself a new outfit for a Christmas night out.

And before anyone jumps in with financial advice, I'm not saying I'm poor, I'm not saying I'm financially irresponsible, and I'm not looking for a lecture about budgeting. That's not really the point I'm making.

I just think there's something increasingly out of touch about the whole thing. We're living in a time when so many ordinary working people are watching what they spend, yet we're constantly being shown people receiving thousands of pounds' worth of things for free, often just for posting a video about them. Encouraging us to spend money on stuff we dont even need, because its a trend. The amount of rubbish, fast fashion and trends we gather.

I understand it's advertising, and I understand why companies do it. I don't even blame the influencers for accepting it.

Am I just becoming a miserable git? 😂

Don’t get me wrong, I can show respect and do what I’m supposed to do. It just feels wildly misplaced or incorrect to me.

But if someone has given me a genuine reason to admire and respect them, oh boy. I’ll be loyal, I’ll respect them from the bottom of my heart, I’ll do what they ask (within morals and reason).

I don’t know if I know why that comes about. But there is certainly something that comes with people that are “superior” to me, respecting me. However, there is something about me finding admiration about things outside of them respecting me (or perhaps that’s not even apparent yet) that gain my respect.

But it doesn’t always mean ‘I would stand by them for as long as I live’ kind of thing. Sometimes it’s just a high level of respect and appreciation that pushes me to honor it. I do wish to respect people from the bottom of my heart. But I don’t always feel compelled to, so that makes my actions feel like a lie, therefore uncomfortable. (Little thing about me: I hate lying. I’ve only permitted myself to lie in the case that telling the truth would put others or my life in danger)

Anyone else like this?

This is a weird early childhood memory I’ve never been able to place. I was probably around 2 to 4 years old. I remember our household visiting another family, just once as far as I can remember. I don’t know who they were, their names, or why we visited.

Looking back, the strange part is how “off” they felt. The house was very clean, the grass was cut short, the kids were outside playing, and the whole family was smiling. It felt less like a real household and more like a family from a commercial. Everything too neat, too happy, too staged. Nothing obviously scary happened. It just felt subtly wrong, like I was looking at something too perfect to be real.

They smiled normally. They just smiled often, in a friendly way. But all of them had a strangely generic sense of humor, like the same safe, family friendly jokes anyone could have made. They also weren’t the kind of people my parents would normally be in contact with, which makes it stranger that we’d have visited them at all.

As a kid, I didn’t really think it was weird. It’s only now, looking back, that I realize how weirdly generic they were.

I can picture the scene clearly, but not a single person’s face or name. I know early memories are fragmentary and unreliable, and I’m not claiming anything supernatural. I’m just wondering if this is a common thing: a one time childhood visit to people you can’t identify, where everything felt weirdly perfect or uncanny.

I don’t remember ever seeing them again. The odd part is that this wasn’t totally isolated. I have vague memories of visiting other similar households too, and they also felt oddly perfect in the same way. But this one family stands out. Has anyone else had a memory like this?

As for me.......I met this girl once at a family function. We barely talked, just a few random conversations and a little teasing. Nothing special happened, but she had this calm way of talking that somehow made me feel comfortable around her.

Before leaving, she smiled and said, "Take care, maybe we'll meet again."

We never did.

It's been years, and I don't even remember her name properly anymore, but I still remember that smile and the way she said those words. It's weird how someone can be a tiny part of your life and still leave a memory that stays with you.

I feel like I never hear about Phoenix so it’s so surprising to me that it’s that populous. It just doesn’t seem to have as much of a cultural impact on the rest of the country as the other top four or even many of the cities with less populations. It’s more populous than Boston, Las Vegas, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, Atlanta, New Orleans, Miami.… all these smaller cities that I hear about so much more

Like besides knowing it’s very hot and in the desert, I feel like I have no cultural touchstones for it besides two of their sport teams. I feel like should know more about it through passive cultural osmosis for being such a large city but I just feel like I rarely ever hear about it. I figured it would have same population as like Tampa Florida. I feel like I know as much about Tampa as I do Phoenix.

I know this probably comes off as insulting but for what it’s worth I truly don’t mean it to. I was just very surprised to learn how big it is and how little i hear about it

I have friends, I do. And I can talk to them about my interests, or try to be into what they like, but I still feel no connection. When I try to ask questions about their interests, I end up feeling stupid because to them it's an obvious question or answer when all I'm trying to do is be friends with them. When I find out about an interest of a good friend, I suddenly develop it too. That has happened for liking Canada, Pokémon, occasionally Stray Kids, just so they would like me. But it feels like there's something missing. I don't know if I'm overreacting or if this is actually something. I just wish I had a best friend who I didn't feel like they drained all the energy out of me afterwards. I wish I had a good online friend. Talking online is so much easier

I know how to spell and write. I write well in school. However, whenever I'm texting friends on WhatsApp, I make a lot of mistakes. Missing words in sentences, spelling mistakes.. etc. The common is the missing words. Is like my brain is too fast than my fingers.

Does anybody else experience this, particularly people who consider themselves good writers??

My buddy thinks I say “rum,” an I got a slight Boston accent. To me I’m pronouncing the o’s how I would pronounce it in the word “book.” I definitely don’t pronounce rum the same way I do room. Also, pronouncing it with the o sounding like it would in the word tomb sounds like a British professor lol. Who’s right, and how do you guys pronounce it?

I have been afraid of cockroaches since I was a kid. I'm now an adult but still afraid of cockroaches. Whenever I smell their scent, I cannot stay there anymore.

Growing up in SEA, cockroaches are very common. They are literally everywhere. At night, cockroaches would roam around my house. So when I smell that scent, I cannot fell asleep. Some times in the bathroom, if the cockroach is on the door, I can physically not get out bc I am so scared to open the door knob. Some even fly too.