Venting thread

[Ares Land]

So dad passed away on Friday afternoon. I'm just grateful he went quickly and peacefully in his sleep. Mum was a real trooper; she'd hit the road in the early morning and was here that evening. Don't know what else to say about all that, the words may come later, but for right now I guess I'm still in a bit of shock.

I've still got lots to do winding up dad's affairs, so I haven't had much time to just stop and take things in. Again, mum's been great, but as the next of kin I've got to deal with most of this stuff myself. I'm really dreading contacting the Italian consular staff to register the death certificate, when that time comes. They are notorious for making people jump through the paperwork hoops. I've been advised to try the embassy rather than the local consulate, since apparently the embassy can be less intractable than the local consulate. I'm hoping that's the case and the embassy will be happy with a certified copy.

My condolences.

[Raphael]

So dad passed away on Friday afternoon. I'm just grateful he went quickly and peacefully in his sleep. Mum was a real trooper; she'd hit the road in the early morning and was here that evening. Don't know what else to say about all that, the words may come later, but for right now I guess I'm still in a bit of shock.

I've still got lots to do winding up dad's affairs, so I haven't had much time to just stop and take things in. Again, mum's been great, but as the next of kin I've got to deal with most of this stuff myself. I'm really dreading contacting the Italian consular staff to register the death certificate, when that time comes. They are notorious for making people jump through the paperwork hoops. I've been advised to try the embassy rather than the local consulate, since apparently the embassy can be less intractable than the local consulate. I'm hoping that's the case and the embassy will be happy with a certified copy.

My condolences.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Fairly minor, but I ended up with heat exhaustion (I think) yesterday, and feel horrible today.

[Travis B.]

So dad passed away on Friday afternoon. I'm just grateful he went quickly and peacefully in his sleep. Mum was a real trooper; she'd hit the road in the early morning and was here that evening. Don't know what else to say about all that, the words may come later, but for right now I guess I'm still in a bit of shock.

I've still got lots to do winding up dad's affairs, so I haven't had much time to just stop and take things in. Again, mum's been great, but as the next of kin I've got to deal with most of this stuff myself. I'm really dreading contacting the Italian consular staff to register the death certificate, when that time comes. They are notorious for making people jump through the paperwork hoops. I've been advised to try the embassy rather than the local consulate, since apparently the embassy can be less intractable than the local consulate. I'm hoping that's the case and the embassy will be happy with a certified copy.

My condolences as well.

[Raphael]

My habit of intentionally delaying waking up so that I can keep doing stuff in my dreams is starting to seriously annoy me.

[Raphael]

Trivial vent: My bank just sent me a helpful message informing me about various types of frauds and scams that are apparently currently used against their customers. And the first type of fraud/scam listed in the message was the "grandchild trick". How old do they think I am grumble mutter?

[Vardelm]

Trivial vent: My bank just sent me a helpful message informing me about various types of frauds and scams that are apparently currently used against their customers. And the first type of fraud/scam listed in the message was the "grandchild trick". How old do they think I am grumble mutter?

At least 38?

[Raphael]

Yes, I know, I'm old enough to have grandchildren, but I'd still maintain that I'm not old enough to be in the standard target demographic for the grandchild trick yet.

[Moose-tache]

Does anyone know why there is no such thing as a master list of sirline flights? Like, no airline will just list the flights they have. No encyclopedia tries to document it. No aviation authority will tell you. Is it, like, a security thing? You can't let the terrorists know if Delta flies to Cairo unless they type Cairo into Kayak or something. It seems like a very strange thing to systematically avoid. I mean, sure. I get they change a lot, but that shouldn't stop the airline from letting me see it. And some flights have been stable for decades. I just want the damn list, is that so much to ask?

[Raphael]

Warning: rather pointless complaint ahead.

Why does time have to keep on passing?

Ever since I first really realized the way time keeps passing, it has kept depressing me. Of course, I didn't always really understand it. Well, on an intellectual level, I've understood that time passes since my early childhood, but for a while afterwards, I didn't really get it on a gut level yet, if you know what I mean. When you're young - or at least, that's my experience; YMMV - time doesn't really move that much. The people you know who are middle-aged have been middle-aged for as long as you can remember; the people you know who are old have been old for as long as you can remember; and the people you know who are young stay young for the time being. The timescales with which you are familiar aren't long enough to really allow for changes on those matters.

I first really understood how time passes and moves on in my mid-twenties, and that basically jump-started my first serious period of depression. It dragged me down in ways in which even events like the deaths of various family members and other people close to me didn't drag me down. I never really got over it. Now, for much of the time since then, I've had my depression reasonably well under control, thanks to medication. I know that there are people in the world who would argue that you shouldn't medicate depression, that it's an "artificial" or "unnatural" way of handling a problem; that what you really should be doing is dealing with the "root cause" of the depression. But, well, for me, the root cause of my depression is my awareness of the passage of time. Unless you can invent a way of stopping time, I don't see how I could remove that root cause.

Sometimes, my depressed feeling about the passage of time manifests itself in the way that I get some sentimental old song, perhaps from the 1960s or 1970s, stuck in my head, and then I keep thinking about how much time has passed since that song came out. Songs like that are often about young couples. In that case, I keep thinking about how old the couple would be now, if they were, say, 20 when the song came out, and we assume that neither of them has died yet. I'll wonder about what they might have done with their lives in the meantime, and reflect on how they were starting out in life back then, and are near the end of their journey now.

I know how immature it is, but I keep yearning for times when I was younger. The 1990s, for instance, and even more, the early 2000s. Yes, I know, for the world in general, the early 2000s were a pretty bad time, but for me personally, they were the best time of my life. In real life, I was better adjusted than I had ever been before and would ever be again, and online, I discovered all kinds of fascinating and amazing new stuff, such as the website this forum is attached to. And I still had my life ahead of me. Unfortunately, I also made some mistakes that I never managed to correct. Oh well. But I still keep wishing I could go back.

Compared to the larger problems of the world, all this is pretty trivial, and it's also pretty trivial compared to depressions caused by proper traumatic experiences. But it is what it is.

[Ares Land]

I don't think it's trivial; it's a pretty big existential question we all have to deal with somehow.

I kind of have the opposite feeling about the late 90s - early 2000s. They were pretty bad years for me personally, but I think the world -- though with no shortage of disasters, as ever -- was in a somehow better shape.

[Travis B.]

In a way I'm lucky in that there is nothing deep, nothing to spend hours talking about with a therapist, to my depressions, just pure meaningless neurological malfunctioning that requires medication (actually, I've found that actually medicating my depressions is a bad idea because I easily become manic or mixed then, and rather what is a good idea is medicating my mania or mixed moods, which in turn prevents significant depressions from occurring in the first place).

About time, at one level I am nostalgic about parts of the past, but in many ways I did not like the past, and I prefer the present where I am pretty stable and happy, and I am quite productive in a sustained fashion, moreso than I have been before (not just temporarily, because when hypomanic I can be more productive than I am now, but it never lasts), not just at work but rather also at what I spend my free time working on (which I greatly enjoy). That said, I do have a sense that I have wasted much time, much of it due to being rather symptomatic and non-functional, which I am not getting back, and that time has simply flown by, with everyone including myself having become significantly older in what feels like a blink of an eye.

[MacAnDàil]

I don't think it's trivial; it's a pretty big existential question we all have to deal with somehow.

I kind of have the opposite feeling about the late 90s - early 2000s. They were pretty bad years for me personally, but I think the world -- though with no shortage of disasters, as ever -- was in a somehow better shape.

Yes, I long for the lesser drama of before Covid, Trump, Putin, Winnie the Pooh etc. But I prefer my behaviour, personality and knowledge now.

[Raphael]

Thank you for the perspective, everyone!

My previous vent can be combined with this one from early last year:

I need to stop worrying about what I could have done differently 21 years ago I need to stop worrying about what I could have done differently 21 years ago I need to stop worrying about what I could have done differently 21 years ago...

to make the point that I really should stop fantasizing about how I'd correct all kinds of mistakes if only I could get transported back in time to late 1999 (of course into the body I had back then, not my current one).

[MacAnDàil]

Ps I yearn for the good old days when Earth Overshoot day was just in September and not today and the National Front arriving in the second round of the French presidential election was a surprise easily beaten if it did occur.

[Halian]

Ugh I thought I would have been well into packing for Megaplex (local furcon) by now but my clothes aren't even dry

[malloc]

For some reason, reddit now has this sidebar on the left that takes up a huge chunk of the screen. Unlike such sidebars on other sites, there is nothing to close or minimize it.

[bradrn]

For some reason, reddit now has this sidebar on the left that takes up a huge chunk of the screen. Unlike such sidebars on other sites, there is nothing to close or minimize it.

Screenshot please? I can’t see any such sidebar.

[malloc]

The thing on the side that says "feeds" and "recent communities" and so forth.

[bradrn]

The thing on the side that says "feeds" and "recent communities" and so forth.

Weird… I don’t see that at all. Instead I get a dropdown: