Gisele

Bi itself and without either history or tone to lend it context, it seems unlikely. If nothing else, it is more ironic than sarcastic and irony isn’t everyone’s sweet spot. I have wondered out loud before what it would be like to walk through an automatic carwash. I don’t think anyone would need be worried for me, least of all my husband, who might be curious to see how that went 😉 Good that you can safely discuss these things with him.

Lost my youngest daughter once in a very crowded shopping precinct. For 8 minutes. Still now this is the most excruciating 8 minutes of my entire life and however many lives after this one, if the gods aren’t quite done with me. Learned much later that if the sun stopped shining, we would know exactly 8 minutes later. So I already know what that feels like. We don’t have Halloween (mostly - some people seem to want to replicate it) which is good because it always struck me as some weird paedo-parade even creepier than Olympic gymnastics so can only imagine what that might have done to you. Very happy for you your heart did not actually explode

* Pandas and Dolphins. Cute but limelight-hogging Instagram wannabes. They’ve had it too good for too long. Yay for the bilby and the echidna and the snow leopard and … try spread the love * Wedding Traditions. Queen Victoria died so let’s all move on. Except the white dress - I will always like that * Avocados. Baby-shit green hamburger fat in a vinyl cover. * American Military. For the love of god, just leave other people alone for once. And 0 for how many now!? Agree entirely with above about the Beatles. Still emotionally damaged from the Wiggles but even they were better.

Fingers crossed

I like this, partly because it reminds me of an older time. I like it more because it, like all transformative wisdom, it leans into the middle. Disease wants of at the edges and this resists that. Thanks for posting it.

M, I remember options once upon a time but if they are no more, you could make do with the ghetto version. This would be to start with making your blog private then adding members you care to name. If that is every member ... well, that would be a marathon and not a sprint 😉 Something to while away the hours. Why do you get a room where others might be getting the house is what I can't help but wonder.

I shouldn't tip into this but I will, largely because I agree. That said, it is worth remembering that I'm not really entitled to a view being not an American,. However, since that ____, ____, ____ occupies so much of our media and sets a tone we would all cheerfully ignore if we could and let that be your problem, we have no such luck. I do like Melania though.She knows how to dress and, much more interestingly again, she and the #MeToo are together a nice chiaroscuro. Everything about her says #NotMe but her eyes say something rather different. Car-crash compelling. Hope you get what you want. I'm not sure of the wisdom of barracking for Russia any longer 😉

This really is very good!

If we could trip through time, I could quite happily stumble and fall into late 18th century Paris. What would not be to like? Parasols and plumage and the golden age of millinery and the beginning of the end of the monarchy and tough men ruling the mean streets on penny farthings and the new romanticism that gave us J.M Turner and Keats and air as clean as open sewers might allow and the birth of a better social contract and more tolerance than what came later for open secrets and handwritten letters and the febrile excitement of revolution and ...probably a grim early death from tuberculosis. Oh well, can't have everything. Would also want wifi and all-day lipstick.

S, Fewer things have mattered more to my recovery than the double helix of well-being and purpose. Whether it is reasoning with it in a historical sense or being intimate with it in an evolutionary sense, those knots and entanglements are the fundament of what we are, what we might be and the shape of how we might get there. How well we understand others is how well we understand the same place in others. I think that is why I tend to gravitate toward blogs more than the forums. Blogs tend to illuminate this so much better. Can I ask, have yo ever envied those with a clear purpose if that meant a shift in your moral compass? Before an older life and this one, I wondered all the time. Would it be better to help and also risk harm, or to just give up. Sometimes it does scare me what I might have chosen to do instead. I have been struck before by your carving for a purpose. I truly hope that counts for something because I am sure you could do a good many good things

When greeting cards and fridge magnets salt fertile minds, pop psychology is what we get. Self-worth and self-love are not the same thing. Self-worth is the thing that won't let you take no for an answer and try again, tomorrow, to be a genius. All love is respiratory. Breath love into what you do and love will come back. Sometimes we have to re-learn this.

Being enormously fond of exercise and being varying degrees of mental, I have some thoughts on exercise which may or may not be useful. Work out what motivates you, make a plan, consider carefully the free time you have, rule lines in an exercise book and call it something quaint like "My Cute Little Exercise Journey", google shit ... diets, routines, perspectives and really, really immerse yourself so deeply and so thoroughly and ... you'll probably sit there and hate yourself instead. That's when you might pile all that up and make yourself a nice fire. Do it for your body and your brain will catch up. That's how it is for everybody but that doesn't sell books. So you're guy wouldn't do the cesspit? I like that you're obviously not in journalism or marketing 😉

I'm equal parts glad you wrote this and glad I read it, because I nearly didn't get past the title. Happy I did though because I have always conspicuously avoided those types of things. If the world needs pigeon-holes, then I'm coming back as termite. Or a turd in a envelope. And if it is simple as making 4-letter word to frost the lens a little, I can think of at least two 😉

Doesn't appear to be anything terribly wrong with it, though it does appear to be tripping over itself to be almost third-party neutral. You might think a little less cornflour and a lot more salt might be the flavour of these things. Or at least a bit of forked tongue. That's probably to your credit though. Wouldn't be expecting a reply though. You fought history and lost. and that is as old as time. And regardless of how it is written, you're asking for moral reflection. Yeah ... nah. If that hasn't happened, it isn't going to.

I would say openly that DF has helped, in a circular sense at the very least. There is virtue is saying and thinking and reflecting and saying again and thinking some more in whatever order that occurs and if that is only a digital wailing wall, then it helps. It helps me because it helps the things that have and do help more. I think it is less helpful in in an interactive sense but that wouldn't surprise anyone, given how we the membership wash up in places like these at the low ebb of volubility. Since I have been here either side of the Facebook phenomenon, I would say interactivity took a when the Like button emerged. I suppose if you like something, it never hurts to register that fact. Who knows, it could actually be easier than saying so. "Use your words," I used to say when my children were very small. Words matter, more than ever, here as much as anywhere. Could never donate to DF though. Not when you're only a mad moment away from getting punted. But that's just me and I wouldn't want that to obscure the gratitude I have for DF reminding me at all times that unvarnished honesty can be horribly over-rated, no matter how much the devil in me may think otherwise

I have read many, many posts like yours and I'm always struck by what they don't say more than what they do. Anxiety is a problem and one worth attention but more the more salient thing for idle minds such as mine would be what you say when you eventually say in. That's the ground under your feet.The rest is just pitiable fluff. Is the aim that special someone that seems to always be the assumption that others make (publicly at least)? Or do you want to get good and date your arse off? One isn't any less virtuous than the other, just bt the way

Where I'm from, a famous former footballer and media personality was alone in a car that left the road at high speed. It hit the only tree for miles and he lost his life. It doesn;t matter who it is because he was so famous I didn't know who he was either. The clear inference at the time and for a long later since is that he rather than happenstance chose the tree. It emerged that he undertaken therapy in whatever form that took and had ceased medication some months earlier. Everything about the media coverage hinted at mental illness being the ultimate cause of his death but no-one, not a single soul, could say so explicitly. But the inferences from his family and the media were crystal clear. You wonder many things. If he was a musician or an artist, the mental health angle would have been palpably more fascinating. That's not my opinion. That's verifiable. Certainly record sales would have spiked. You wonder why successful suicides are suddenly taboo when, and I'm sorry for saying so, there is clearly less at stake. If it is for the sake of the family, then this man's family isn't squeamish. They have given permission to air a documentary where the victim is very candid about his struggles. Shame the media more broadly lacks the same courage. You also wonder if a separate man in a similar car on a similar road did a similar thing with, say, his kids in the car because his wife left him or whatever, then we all know you would hear the word suicide a million times. Why? Nope, don't know either. The 21st century is meant to be a source of light isn't. I call BS. It's just using assumed privacy as a way of never mentioning the 's' word.

S, I happen to think there is much truth to that. Our core is mutable and fluid and dynamic. We couldn't go from Survive to Thrive with our same self and the same values, whatever they may be. I also think the values we have at least start as lights in the night sky. Some stop shining and others shine brighter and brighter. I think there must be a real truth to that because there weren't any of the lights shining on the child me that shine on my own children. Can I just say that it isn't often nihilism is as engaging as you have made it and for quite some time. If it changes ... if you find something ... I for one hope I'm still here to read all about it

If you're living vicariously through a TV character .... which is something I may have done myself before Cersei died in a freak bricklaying incident ... then get yourself a perspex screen and go hard! Like a footy fan 😉

I'n neither a physicist nor one for ten pin bowling but do like a good metaphor. If a ball was launched with sufficuent speed and found itself in the gutter, is there a chance it could fly back out? And resume course? That's probably not helpful but it appeals to me somehow 😉 Congrats on their achievement which is also your achievement. I look forward to mine doing similar one day and the good news is our surname is xloser to the start of the alphabet so we won't have to sit through the whole thing!

Safe travels! As a recent and, if how it feels means anything, nascent widow to wanderings of perhaps that kind, remember to Stay in touch Stay in touch Stay in touch Come home eventually Wouldn't be surprised if you need time off after trying to herd cats in the religion forum. I would have ... nevermind 😉

I can only say do your very best to not make comparisons with anyone that was never asked to make the same difficult decision. It's not fair on either of you, especially you.

Help when you can. You will hear those drums. I used to feel the void of being probably of zero help to anyone here. Ever. But then it dawned I just can't do it remotely so now I have work for that. No tightrope there between harm and no harm, (which itself can be harmful). See problem. Fix problem. Others are much more gifted. There's a precious handful here that have done for me what I could never manage. Which brings me back to the start. Help where you can.

The real worry, albeit from abroad, is having to wonder if the guy was carrying. That's just appalling. I dunno, if the country you live in loves its first amendment so much, are you able to think in kind and drive a tank? Wouldn't mind seeing an angry motorist side swipe that 😉

Wish I had an inner G. Much more circumspect and user-friendly than the Outer G I live with. Age is faithless. It can only be when "wish I was 20 again" and "so glad I'm not 20 anymore" happily walk arm-in-arm down the same street.