brucoe

Quite often, we're the worst assessors of our own situations and because we're all solitary individuals, we often are incapable of seeing outside of our own circumstances. Therefore, things are always going to feel like they're as bad as they can be if left to our own devices. As some people have already suggested, reaching out to people is an actual lifeline, and if you don't connect successfully on the first try, keep trying, because there are people who do care. In today's world, quite often people just want someone to talk to, someone they can confide in, someone they can share jokes with, or even someone they can find some type of inspiration from. Other times, we just need someone we care about to listen to us, and quite often that person is just a short hop, skip or jump away (and we don't even realize it). One thing I would suggest is to start focusing inwards. You mention losing the love of your life; this is a natural part of existence and quite often the solution is to realize that you will rarely ever find happiness by focusing on someone else to provide it. Instead, enrich yourself in ways that are cumulative and capable of being achieved. Take up a new hobby, something you've never done before. If it ends up working for you, continue to pursue it, or try another. Quite often, one's self-exploration is enhanced by finding something creative that you do for yourself, even if you're not very good at it. We don't all need to be experts at everything. Years ago, I did the same thing with writing, only discovering after years of doing it that it was something I realized I wanted to do with the rest of my life. But to be honest, it wasn't something I was doing for the sake of doing it; it was just something I had been doing as a filler for having nothing else. We all have those things that eventually start to bring us pleasure. And that's what's important. Relying on others for inner comfort will always act as a defeatist mechanism because you don't control the emotions of others. But you can control how you feel, and sometimes it just takes a sense of realizing that not everything has to be perfect, that not everyone is going to be what you expect them to be, and then to just take things on surface level and see what you can get out of that mix to make things better. Go to a new restaurant and start to try things on the menu you wouldn't normally eat. Go to bars, libraries or coffee shops and then nod and smile at the other people, realizing that their responses aren't that important, but what is important is that you're there and in the moment. Live every moment in the moment, where you start to appreciate the things around you. Years ago, I was in the Army, and it was in the middle of the night, and I was walking around the perimeter, noticing the various sights and sounds in the desert. I was in the desert, and I heard birds. That thought alone opened my mind to all sorts of other thoughts that weren't reliant on someone else filing in the details for me. It was an event that I had experienced myself, alone. And at the time, it made me happy. It still does. I might have been going through a bad relationship with a girlfriend at the time, but strangely enough, I don't even remember that. I just remember being happy while walking through the desert in the middle of the night, checking on my fellow soldiers. Today, I value every encounter I have with friends and colleagues. I don't have a lot of friends these days because of where I am in my career, but that's not because I'm not looking for them. I just understand that there are ebbs and flows in one's life, and I'm okay with that. Being okay with the way things happen in life is a difficult process to achieve, but it's so necessary to finding self-happiness. I remember certain moments in my life where I was depressed and thinking all sorts of dark thoughts. Today, I smile at those times because I grew past those moments to become something different. A simple solution to your complex problem may just be to find something simple that you can enjoy. Think back on the things that you DID enjoy in life What were they? If they were things that involved specific people, think deeper and imagine circumstances where you can visualize yourself in better circumstances. I don't mean to imagine yourself winning the lottery or some nonsense like that, but to imagine a nice sunny day where you're hanging out with your dog, your cat, your goat or your pet penguin (or whatever). The problem so many of us run into is that we complicate our lives with expectations that we will never achieve and then we condemn ourselves for not reaching them. Even if you do nothing else, there are people here who will converse with you, that will gladly bounce ideas back and forth at you without talking down to you. It's why I've been here for so long. You've already reached out. Just continue doing so.

Part of me is interested in seeing this only because they're doing a really good job of not focusing on Harley Quinn, unlike the previous installments involving her. Every time they focus on her as the selling point, they sort of go the completely wrong direction with their films. And this is coming from someone who actually likes the character.

I keep saying this, but they need to choose Carrottop for the position. Okay, I don't keep saying this, but any time to bring up Carrottop as a choice for anything is good enough for me.

I think what we're starting to experience is a particular period in time where accountability is completely absent from political discourse. Previously, just the hint of bad behavior was almost enough to derail a politician, but now we have politicians who have zero qualms about committing any amount of infractions, crimes, murders or rapes because they'll wait out the ramifications and have people fight their battles for them over social media. I hope I'm wrong here, but I suspect he's not going to resign, and he's going to continue acting as if this is just another hiccup in his political career. The urge to blame the era of Trump is always present, but I suspect this is a symptom of post Al Franken reactions where communication directors realized that accountability only loses the platform, and thus, the only successful strategy for bad behavior is business as usual until the farm explodes.

Guess he's shopping at Walmart now. Can't afford Nordstrom's on only half your wealth....

I was playing Neverwinter Nights Legendary Edition and then wanted something more first person, so I bought Mass Effect Legendary Edition and all weekend long I played Mass Effect 1, starting it over a couple of times as I started to remember more and more of the game. Started off as a soldier, like practically everyone, and then finally fired up a vanguard, which I've been playing ever since. Some of those missions are still pretty damn tough, like one of the first companion rescues when you end up cornered with a huge mech that is practically impossible to kill. I was about to throw my computer out the window before Kaidan pulled off a miracle and brought it down. I know a lot of people really talk bad about the UNC missions, but I'm kind of having fun with those, as they kind of remind me of Xcom missions where you basically run a tactical mission that doesn't really have a huge impact on the rest of the game. Strangely enough, I bought the trilogy mainly to play 2 and 3, which I never really gave enough attention in the past (2 very little and none to 3), but now I'm kind of bogged down in 1, slogging my way through and having a great time. I had kind of forgotten how great this game is. One thing I do remember is that I used to HATE the Mako missions, but mostly because I vaguely remember that my graphics were kind of crappy back then so that I remember once driving off the side of the road into lava or something like that because I couldn't see a damn thing. Graphics are SO MUCH better today. I still get plastered by enemies with the Mako, including one very unfortunate incident with a thresher maw, but that's just because I suck, not because of anything the game is responsible for.

I got the impression that they were arrested for truancy or turned over to a truant officer, and then they were let off with a warning because it wasn't really that great of an infraction. There was an aside that Lois says that kind of gave me that impression, which I only noticed because my dvr shut down by accident, and I had to replay that scene which caused me to notice her aside the second time through.

I kind of got frustrated looking for something new to play, so on a whim I bought and downloaded the latest version of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition with all of the DLC. It cost me a fraction of a new game. Ii remember playing this many years back and enjoying, remembering that at the time I had wished there was more content for it when I had finished it, and I didn't find very much that made the search worth it. Now, I'm really enjoying it again, and there's TONS of content for it now. It was one of the best D&D games they did back in the day, and I'm really enjoying my run through it again years later. Plus, there are about 7 huge DLC content packs that offer so much more content than I had available way back then.

It is so NOT worth it to me to have kids just to get a tax credit. Kids usually involve a bat shit crazy wife, ex-wife, or girlfriend demanding child support.

The biggest problem with that is the poor are often stuck wherever they are, or they would have moved years ago. I'm not even poor, but leaving Texas wouldn't be that easy for me, as long as there was no other job lined up for me somewhere else. I can't even fathom how bad it would be for people who are basically stuck in their specific living conditions.

This is one of those mathematical anomalies where we discover that the number 69 doesn't actually exist. Einstein talked about this at length, but he was usually drunk when doing so, so no one took him seriously.

It was actually Reality Winner working with Erik Prince and Edward Snowden in a very controversial remake of the Fast & Furious franchise to be released on HBO Max.

Abbott wants to arrest everyone. It seems pretty sad that the Democrats are so bad off in Texas that the only time they actually have any power is when they don't show up to vote. I'm against the idea of jailing them for exercising their only option to keep the Republicans from creating ridiculous laws due to their gerrymandering of Texas, but no one really cares what I think, and they'll jail them just for the sake of jailing them. I didn't see any other stories on this on the front page, so if there's one, I at least looked.

The ironic part is that because Q stuff always involves children, it has zero tendency to lure me in. .I have no interest in "saving the children" whatsoever. I honestly don't care. And strangely enough, people get really upset whenever they hear that. An example: I was trying to turn off my amber alerts on my cell phone, and some Karen at work asked me why I would do that. I said because it wakes me up in the middle of the night, and I don't give a crap about anyone else's kid. And wow, that started a whole ton of shit all on its own. She didn't seem to accept that as someone who has no children, has no intention of ever having any children and no interest in interacting with children, might just not care that much about children.

That would have been fine. It just wouldn't let me back onto my ship nor to allow me out of the station in any way.

The game is done very well, and it was definitely a serious development advancement. Unfortunately for me, it hit one of those gamer moments that caused me to stop (I'm very much not a fan of having to stealth against impossible enemies, which was forced very early in the game; I've quite a few games because of that). But overall, the interface and the story line was definitely way up there in the grand scheme of games.

I played this a few years ago, but I remember being stranded on a ship I boarded once that due to crappy mechanics at the time, had no way of letting me continue the game. I kind of gave up on it then.

Not that I disagree with you, but the anarchist in me wants to see it actually happen just to throw this country into even more of a completely fucked up state.

I'm torn. It seems that any action we take in any country that's not our own ends with proclamations that we should never have been there in the first place. It gets tiring after a while.

Wait! So it wasn't the Republicans? It was Agatha All Along????

What's really funny about this whole issue is that conservatives cry the most about being "censored" by social media, but in reality, they do pretty damn well on most social networking, and especially on stuff like Youtube and other such venues. Their problem, and this is what causes them to throw a fit every now and then, is that they don't know when to police themselves, quite often turning really ugly and violent on anyone who disagrees with them. I've seen so many right wing channels, Twitters and Facebook groups completely obliterated because they just decided that they no longer cared about decorum standards. And then AFTER they get hit, they turn around and start playing "whataboutisms" with every non-conservative channel because they perceive something negative from that end of the spectrum. The reality is that there are just WAY too many people on social networking sites that are toxic and mean (from both ends of the spectrum). Instead of policing their own stuff, each side points fingers at the other stuff and cries when they don't get the results they desire. But the rub is that in order to actually gain any traction, quite often the only way to do so is to turn toxic and mean, which means people get a little bit of notoriety, and then they get banned.

Yeah, it gets them elected, but then allows them to stagnate for years and get nothing accomplished because their only focus is on ridiculing the other side, not coming up with solutions to simple things like, oh I don't know, energy grids, weather patterns and starvation.

The problem with politics here in Texas is that so few people even know what they stand for politically, but have fallen into this weird state of pointing fingers at random people and saying "I'm not like that guy." Conservatism used to actually mean something. Now, it's "we're not liberals" without any further meaning, which ironically also means not understanding exactly what it is about liberals that somehow makes not being one of them a good thing because that designation changes almost on an hourly basis.

They should just do the Olympics in Wakanda because they have the best security, and their technology is strong enough to handle any pandemics.

Personally, I suspect he's one of those people that just loves whenever his name is being mentioned by others or plastered over a story in a newspaper or magazine. He probably doesn't even care if it's a good story, or if it's all that accurate. I got this impression of him from the 911 exposure he got after that incident. What he did during this time was admirable, but it was momentary and not something that you should be able to latch onto for a lifetime of accolades. However, he got tons of hurrahs from that incident because he was at the right place at the right time and seemed like the rational adult in the room at a time when people were running off half cocked. He has literally spent the rest of his life trying to recapture that moment, humiliating himself because he never really had the ability to do anything noble enough to regain that attention considering that 911 was an incident that just happened, and you can't recapture fire or manufacture disasters that require you to be in the right place at the right time.