I don't mean to unnecessarily gender this discussion. Gender here doesn't matter. But I'm going to use gendered words as they fit the context. I want everyone's opinion.
My dad died from bronchial cancer two days before my 12th birthday. I had to learn how to be a 'man' from my ill mother.
What I want to know is, if you had to import some wisdom to preteen me, about the fundamentals of life, what would it be?
I've barely learned to shave (and prefer a beard anyway). What can you teach me Hexbear?
I'm 32 by the way. I'm just curious.
Cartridge razors and shaving cream are a scam, a safety razor and gentle soap in the shower do just as good of a job way cheaper.
Old tools (incl kitchen equipment) are usually better than modern ones.
Never buy an HP printer, even if someone gives it to you. You will end up paying more in wasted time and expensive cartridges.
Be proactive with cancer screenings, esp if there's family history, many cancers aren't able to be reduced to non-detectable levels after the metastasize.
I havent shaved my face in ten years or so now but you’re absolutely right. A single blade, safety razor is head and shoulders above a multibladed monstrosity. Shaving cream i think depends on skin sensitivity. When i shaved i had to use stuff by aveeno because everything else made my face break out in rashes and get scabbed everywhere.
be proactive with cancer screenings.
You ain’t kidding. This year ive had 3 spots of skin cancer removed, and i have serial endoscopic procedures done 3x yearly due to my risk of esophageal cancer. Ive had some bad news this year but every single thing so far has been ‘fixable’ because it was caught early.
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@7bicycles@hexbear.net "Never touch triathlon bikes cuz they are soaked in piss"
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Don't go inside the silos
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Work hard, but make time for your family.
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"Clean your room"
Always try to maintain a clean and ordered place either workplace or living space. Wash the dishes as soon as possible, wash your clothes ASAP; if you have nothing to do, broom the floor anyways. Use an scheduler notebook or whatever of the things you gotta do. This I learned by difference from my dad, instead of by example.
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My manly advice:
Never bottle up your emotions. Men are allowed to express more emotions than just anger, horniness, and happiness. You are allowed to cry on a partner's shoulder. You are allowed to feel exhausted and overworked and get a pedi because your feet hurt and drink a glass of wine while doing so. It isn't un-manly and never let anyone tell you otherwise.
Don't let yourself get too out of shape. Good physical health is good brain health and good brain health is improved mental health. It's a lot harder to come back from extreme unhealthiness than it is to just maintain a base level of healthiness. If you are letting it get out of hand then you are depressed and possibly have some other issue going on.
Therapy is the best gift you can ever give yourself and I mean this sincerely. You don't need to wait. You can go to therapy over little things. It's no big deal. They are professionals equipped to help you acquire tools you can use to tackle a wide array of issues in your life.
Wash your ass. With soap and water. No, letting the soapy water run down your crack isn't good enough.
Get a hobby. Video games are not a hobby. That's a past-time. A hobby is something like woodworking or painting. It is a creative pursuit. Hobbies are king. Hobbies let you meet people into the same thing and make more adult friends. Hobbies let you trade the creative things you do with other people who do other creative things.
Learn how to do one romantic thing. Maybe it's poetry or flower arrangements or learning little romantic classical songs on your guitar. Gay, straight, trans, queer, whatever it doesn't matter. Learn something that helps you woo a partner and you don't stop even after you've won their heart. This is what keeps the fire burning in a relationship.
Oh, and don't worry about having your life together. That's for old people in their retirement. Everyone else is just scrambling to make ends meet and not alienate their friends because they are too busy with everything else. We are all struggling. It's okay. Whatever you might be going through, you'll get through it. You've gotten through everything else up to this point, after all.
Agreed on all points but why you gotta do video games dirty like that :c If you're just mindlessly grinding wow or playing cod (or whatever other awful slop) yeah that's definitely not a hobby, but there are many more ways to engage with and express yourself through the medium.
In my case, it's one of the primary ways I hang out with my friends when we can't meet in person, and I've many people who I've known since I was a teen through games (and related communities).
This isn't even getting into the whole thing of making games, modding them, and otherwise using the medium for actual creative fulfilment.
Sorry for the Ted talk I didn't mean to. As an indie dev I just react strongly to the notion that video games are mindless toys no functioning adult should ever take seriously.
For instance building or art games, community based games (similar to sports as a hobby)
Watch out when you zip up.
Be kind to others. Never be needlessly cruel.
Take it easy, life isnt a sprint.
Dont be afraid to stop and smell the daisies.
One spray of cologne only, please.
Learn how to change your oil. Learn how to fix a flat so you can get off the freeway offramp safely.I dont really have anything earth shattering because im mostly just a dumb guy myself.
Gonna tell you what I would tell my preteen self:
Take cast-iron stuff if you can get it shy away from Teflon
Take care of your hair so you don't bald prematurely. If you're balding face it and adjust accordingly. Also take care of your teeth dumbass you only get the one set, be fucking glad your dental substance was so strong. Imbecile.
Don't be hard on yourself for the stuff caused by your depression.
This ones about my ADD. Make morning and evening rituals that take care of your daily chores as well as carve out time for mindfulness and sports. Make a default weekly plan as a base, adjust it to the needs of the upcoming week every weekend. Oh also you have ADD get checked.
Its OK to fail. Those who matter won't mind and those who mind don't matter. This extends to social interactions and being awkward.
Don't offer unsolicited advice unless you have a clear goal in mind that you know your advice will help towards and that you know the other person might not have considered and that the other person is open for advice. Basically have a really high bar that needs to be cleared before you offer advice. This will most likely exclude any situation you personally hadn't been confronted with or have exceptional expertise in.
Solidarity is almost always welcome though. Even if its just acknowledging that what someone is going through sucks or is unfair and sometimes that's all you will be able to do. If someone shares their burden with you that's a distinguishing honour, don't make them look for ways to alleviate your feeling of helplessness.
CW for sexism
If you cant even be a friend to a girl dont expect her to become your girlfriend. Women are people too nothing any more or less mysterious or magical about them than men. From this follows that its OK to love them in a romantic and sexual way. You're not "defiling" them.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" extends to sex (in an abstract manner obviously not the specific practice you like "being done unto you")
Take cast-iron stuff if you can get it
Carbon steel is nice too. Same concept but more light weight and better heat conduction.
- wash your ass.
- wash behind your ears.
- if you're not gonna shave your face, learn to trim your beard and keep it groomed.
- get a bidet. wash your ass.
- if you rely heavily on something (car, small engines, computer, class 4 trailer hitch), learn about it and how to maintain it as best as you can or at least how to diagnose it's failure.
- never stop washing your ass.
This is the kind of advice I can endorse.
Also, wash your feet. Just standing in dirty soapy water is not the same as washing your feet.
if you rely heavily on something (car, small engines, computer, class 4 trailer hitch), learn about it and how to maintain it as best as you can or at least how to diagnose it's failure.
this is excellent advice
While being okay with failure, or a poor outcome, please attempt to do a good job, though not a perfect job (that is impossible), on everything you do. Half-assed work often needs to be redone and redoing something is often much more work than doing it right the first time.
This one is difficult to get the tone just right on. Too harsh and one is a profectionist, either spending weeks on trivial tasks or never trying. Too light and the point will be lost to a life of busy but poor quality repairs.
The short, too harsh version is: "if it is worth doing, it is worth doing right."
I endeavor to become a professional at whatever task is set before me. That takes time. But the quality shows in the process.
Learn to be ok with being physically uncomfortable, at least to the point where you can still function pretty well when you're very hot/cold/tired/sore/whatever. You'll waste a lot less time bemoaning your circumstances, and be in a much better position to help yourself (as well as be able to get through necessary but physically unpleasant tasks). Push yourself out of your comfort zone.
This is a good one. Fortunately I think I learned it early. In school I was the kid that was done with the bullshit busy work and enjoying my book or whatever while other kids were still complaining about being given busy work. It's the same sort of idea. Life is uncomfortable a lot of the time. Learning to endure it gracefully has been a huge boon to me. I feel like it contributes to a good work ethic. I work like a beast. I got that from my dad as well. If something needs done, there's nothing to do but do it.
turns out we're all just tall kids and don't know shit about fuck, it's cool to ask how to do something and it's cool to say "huh, i dunno"
This is another fantastic one. I started telling people I love bring proven wrong. It's an opportunity to learn. It was harder for me to learn to say I don't know in a context where my knowledge was, from my perspective, presumed. My professional experience has taught me to just fucking saying I do not know. It's so much safer than trying to fake it and then hey you brought down a server in production. No, this was not my mistake, but I saw it happen.
Sort of related, if possible I like to continue from "huh, I don't know" to "let's find out" with google or the library or whatever's on hand. Realizing you don't know something means a chance to learn something.
Lots of good non-gendered advice. My own is to stand up, and possibly to tidy something every time you walk between rooms. I find that when I'm sitting down I want to fuck around on the computer or keep doing what I'm doing, and if I stand up I'm already halfway to doing whatever chore or task I don't want to do.
Here's my stab at gendered advice:
- when you have power over someone, you have some kind of extra responsibility towards them. Leftist men don't want patriarchy but it's here nonetheless. We have to be considerate of women who may feel pressured to say or do certain things, who can't give us the benefit of the doubt without taking a risk, etc. This extra responsibility may be comparatively small, but it still sucks. You can exercise some of that frustration by calling out sexism in male spaces and helping friends self-crit. Until women are free we won't really be free either. Comrades of other genders, you have similar responsibilities if you find yourself a beneficiary of racism, cis/heteronormativity, etc.
- Be an active architect of your own social life. Many men sit back and wait for somebody else (often women, see 1.) to plan things. If we all do that we're going to be alone. Because there are some slackers, you should be planning more than half of the things you do.
I was complaining about stuff happening at my first job and he said "If you explain something at work, make sure it's understandable to toddlers and management". Stuck with me, because 9/10 of your chance your boss is an idiot, even if he do means well - sort of a symptom of how things are run.
I'm in management, and the best problems come with proposed solutions so I can just say yes.
I don't have a crystal ball and I can't read your mind. I'm managing managers and being managed by a manager so we're probably all idiots.
I'm in management, and the best problems come with proposed solutions so I can just say yes.
I mean even then you need your boss to understand as to why it's a problem and why it's a solution
My terrible Spanish is failing me here so I had to use Google.
... When in doubt, the biggest titties? Tf is that?
Hey, I’m an actual dad. I can help.
This falls under more “practical” advice: really and try and limit your physical possessions as much as you can. There’s obviously some good ethical reasons for this, but mean this just from a quality of life standpoint. I made the mistake of spending a lot of my teens and twenties accumulating “stuff”. And you gotta drag that stuff with you everywhere you go. Your living space gets crowded fast and you’ll find you don’t like being home even though that’s supposed to be your refuge from the world. And a related piece of advice - whether this is for your room at your parents house or when you are on your own… try to make your living space as pleasant as possible. A place where you want to be and you feel like yourself and relaxed in. That’s something we all need.
Another great point. My mom and I had a lot of financial problems growing up and got evicted or had to move quickly a couple times. We lost all our non essentials so many times I've learned not to have possessions. My prized asset is my gaming rig, and I can easily store it with a friend. My second prize is my collection of books. It's not valuable, but I have everything written by David and Leigh Eddings, I believe, and I have Ink and Vellum by Hal Duncan, and a nice riffle paged copy of Maia by Richard Adams. Along with a few Green brothers books, one of which is signed.
That's it. Everything else actually needed can be packed in a backpack. I can leave my bed and TV behind, etc.
I'm also very clean. I thought I was a slob, because I was growing up. But turned out I'd just been in serial monogamous relationships since high school and always livrd with my partners, and they were messy, and I hate cleaning up after other people. Turns out I'm pretty damn neat lol. My sink could use a scrubbing and I haven't cleaned my shower in the 4 months I've lived in this apsrtment. But my room is never messy and laundry is done promptly when needed. When I have a date over I always have to clean up after them the day after.
Thank you for your input, comrade!
poster literally says his mother taught him how to be a man
Quit whining, men are not gonna get better without trying
