Life changes thread: What up y'all?

[IEatCats]

I found my login info again. I haven't been here in like 8 years but I miss this place and and it's been on my mind recently, especially with discord's policy changes making me unsure of whether or not I want to stay on the platform.

I struggle to say I got my life together in that time but I've made major changes. Came out as trans, got married, divorced, and then remarried. Went to school for music and finished an associates program but didn't get the degree (I need to do 2 gen ed classes still). Trying to start making music again because I went on hiatus during school. I was making a lot of breakcore and now I'm trying to get into posthardcore again.

What's been going on with everyone? Anything big happening? Anything crazy happen? Have you been sitting in front of your Pentium 4 running windows xp in a room with no windows since 2016?

[Chankgeez]

Windows/with no Windows? I've been using the same old MacBook Pro since 2016, but I just got a new one.

[Gone Fission]

Welcome back to the fold where the only algorithms in play do weird things to our input signal!

[IEatCats]

Welcome back to the fold where the only algorithms in play do weird things to our input signal!

Yeah, I'm off social media and tiktok and all that shit. Now I just watch YouTube shorts when I'm pooping or laying in bed for an hour before getting up. Feels good.

[Blackened Soul]

Welcome back!
The last ten years… good things bad things boring things fun things.. making music is the sanity….

[Blackened Soul]

Windows/with no Windows? I've been using the same old MacBook Pro since 2016, but I just got a new one.

I’m on my 2nd since 2016 when THE LAST NEW MAC I WILL EVAR BUY died.. now I just buy cheap refurbs, have them suped and swap when OS won’t update and obsoletes it’s self..

[IEatCats]

Windows/with no Windows? I've been using the same old MacBook Pro since 2016, but I just got a new one.

I’m on my 2nd since 2016 when THE LAST NEW MAC I WILL EVAR BUY died.. now I just buy cheap refurbs, have them suped and swap when OS won’t update and obsoletes it’s self..

Im using my wife's m2 rn and I'm probably going to pick one up if and when I have the money. Definitely nice if you can find good specs but they started soldering the ram and hard drive so it's a huge bitch to try to upgrade it if you can find anyone to do it at all.

[Chankgeez]

Windows/with no Windows? I've been using the same old MacBook Pro since 2016, but I just got a new one.

I’m on my 2nd since 2016 when THE LAST NEW MAC I WILL EVAR BUY died.. now I just buy cheap refurbs, have them suped and swap when OS won’t update and obsoletes it’s self..

Im using my wife's m2 rn and I'm probably going to pick one up if and when I have the money. Definitely nice if you can find good specs but they started soldering the ram and hard drive so it's a huge bitch to try to upgrade it if you can find anyone to do it at all.

Yep, that's the reason for the new laptop. Couldn't update the OS anymore. Honestly, I was a couple years overdue for a new computer.

I'm generally OK with Macs. There're a few things I don't like about 'em, but the OK outweighs the bad. Probably more than I actually need, but I got a Pro with the M5.

[dubkitty]

oh, jeez, what have i been doing for the last decade? let's see...i'm in a relationship with a woman who's disabled which has some challenges but isn't really a problem except when she's sick. she lives 35 miles away, which means we only see each other 2 or 3 times a week, but this may keep us form getting tired of each other. we met in 2019. i had long COVID in 2020-21 and it kicked the shit out of me with special emphasis on fucking with my nervous system. i went down to 150 which is about a 30-pound loss, and my brain was so fucked that i couldn't do simple sums or fold sheets.. my physical condition settled, but continued to deteriorate internally until everything caved in last year. my back, which has been problematic for decades, required rather onerous physical therapy and meds to become bearable again. i suppose i'll have to exercise forever. i also had to go on meds for diabetes and circulatory system shit, and had cataracts removed last summer. it was the Year Of Dealing With Health Shit and my father's crap genetics. i guess it was inevitable because i haven't taken great care of myself most of my life. well, now i'm stuck with it.

i finally got a looping system together with three count 'em three boards which i'm very happy with, but haven't played much lately. i've been totally preoccupied with working on guitars, which you can follow in the "Dub's Wacky Project Guitars" thread. i now officially have Too Many Guitars, but i love most of them. this year i don't have as much project stuff going on so hopefully i can get more playing time in. now that i'm not spending on guitar parts (having gotten in the vast majority of what i need) i should dig myself out of debt, but the siren song of amps needing repair is playing in the background. i could also use speakers, specifically Fanes/Fane copies and an Alnico Blue for my AC15 which has a Greenback that's great but i like the Blue a bit more. ideally i want 2x12" cabinets with Jensens, Greenbacks, and JBL D120s/Weber California clones. i have the one Greenback that's in the AC15, and one Weber California a friend gave me that's currently in a 1x12" cube.

my cat that moved here with me had to be put down in 2020 due to inoperable cancer. i adopted a big black cross-eyed cat my gf's family was feeding with other strays. he picked me out, and campaigned for a spot before Lulu even died. once she was gone he was obviously my cat, and he's the sweetest cat i've ever known. Becky says he's the most dog-like cat she's ever seen...he follows me around the apartment and his greatest joy is laying on my shoes.

my job has been great, which is kind of surprising because i don't really have to do all that much but i guess they're happy with my copywriting skills. i worry about AI, but don't think it's capable of translating personal experience as i do when writing about guitars which we're selling now. when Lulu died they gave me bereavement time off because they knew how much she meant to me.

so it was hard, but i'm improving and getting through it. the world may have turned to hammered shit, and i have absolutely no hope of it improving in any meaningful way other than reining in the fascists, but my little world is relatively safe and i have a Gretsch White Falcon and someone who loves me. i guess that covers everything except Becky's dogs. she has an English Bulldog and a French Bulldog who love me to pieces. i tried fostering a Frenchie in 2020 but discovered that i'm not that good as a dog parent. her dogs are the first dogs i've known who really love me. they go totally goo-goo-bop when i pull up in front of the house. yes, y'all get pictures.

Otis.

Daisy and Elmo.

Gretsch 6136-1958 Stephen Stills signature model White Falcon. i'd wanted this exact guitar since i was 14.

[friendship]

I wish I knew how to communicate how badly I wish I could rewind the last 10 years and try again.

[01010111]

In the last ten years I've been married, divorced, married, moved from the US to Korea, moved from Korea to the UK, adopted a cat, and had a cat die from diabetes, I've had four different jobs in that time, and I've been in talk therapy for six of those years.

I've also deleted all my social media except Tumblr. I do use youtube, but only to follow a handful of folks.

[dubkitty]

I wish I knew how to communicate how badly I wish I could rewind the last 10 years and try again.

sincerely, i could say that about every decade i've ever lived in other than the first. every one other than the current one ended worse than it started.

[friendship]

I wish I knew how to communicate how badly I wish I could rewind the last 10 years and try again.

sincerely, i could say that about every decade i've ever lived in other than the first. every one other than the current one ended worse than it started.

I feel you. I keep going backwards in time to try to find moments when I could have chosen differently to end up with a life I belong in. It's a pointless exercise, of course. I figure my brain is unable to plan a future, so it's trying to relitigate the past. I've been leaning on zazen meditation harder to keep my focus on the present. It helps for the anxiety attacks I wake up with every morning now.

In the spirit of what this thread is about: in the past 10 years, I paid off my student debt and aggressively put some savings away--that's my one big milestone of progress. I put out some electronic music. I didn't get married or even have any major relationships, didn't make any career or education advancements, certainly didn't start a family. Most of the time I was just trying to survive to the end of the day. And then poof: 10 years went by.

Coincidentally, just the other day a dear friend sent me a picture of us at his wedding 10 years ago. Kind of corny I guess, but I was inspired to write a letter to myself of that time. I apologized to him for shutting down emotionally and isolating myself, for staying in a dead-end job because I was terrified of taking a risk after the previous decade of poverty and instability, for not fighting tooth and nail for a life I/he could be proud of, for not LIVING every god damn moment I could. I apologized to him for still being a passenger in my own life, 10 years later.

Even with my new awareness of my complicity in unhappiness, I still feel paralyzed. The world we're living in is even more dangerous and unstable than it was in 2016 by every metric I can think of, and I still don't know how to move forward in it. Every time I think I have some ground under my feet, the ground vanishes and I keep falling downward. I'm exhausted from a life lived in survival mode, a life lived out of fear. I now have awareness of how operating out of fear led to poor decisions, but I literally know no other way of operating.

There is some cold consolation in the fact that I'm not alone in this pain and uncertainty, and that the lives of my peers who appear to have it all together are just as precarious, that nobody knows what's going on or what's coming next.

Thank you for providing the space to rant, and sorry for being a bummer.

[dubkitty]

i like to quote a song by Rozi Plain:

i like to say
it had to be this way
i like to say
there was no other way


https://youtu.be/Dm4Ikon9L80?si=Qfn5YP_EaB34zXhB


when i look back, i really can't have made any decisions other than the ones i did. i wasn't capable of foresight, and didn't know how to take care of myself or others. as the delightfully-named Tammany Hall bigwig George Washington Plunkett said, i seen my opportunities and i took 'em. it's kind of painful to be almost 70 and feel like you just learned how to be a decent human in the last 5 years or so. i've had to learn how to forgive myself. not that it's simple or easy, but i had to.

[dubkitty]

i mean, i would have done better if i could.