This is a compartmentalization technique seen in a lot in people with ADHD. Not saying OP has ADHD, but it’s something to look into if they have other signs.

I did this for literal decades. I was excited to start my adult life after high school, but an opportunity I couldn’t pass up dropped into my lap, so I chose that route instead.

Joining the US military was that opportunity. My uncle explained how the Air Force had taken care of him for 30 years, giving him free food, free lodging, free education, free travel around the globe, free medical and dental, and a steady, decent paycheck on top of it all. It sounded too good to be true, so I signed up as well. I figured I could get back to my plans for adult life later, after I’d taken advantage of all the benefits the military could offer me.

20 years later (3 years ago), I retired from the Air Force. It was a pretty stressful career, in a positive way, so I was glad to get home, relax a bit, then finally pick up my life where I left off.

The things is, a lot happens in 2 decades. All my friends had left town and moved on to new lives, new careers, created new families, etc. my own family had mostly moved away, except for my dad who was still living in my childhood home. He offered to let my wife and I stay with him rent free as long as we wanted. He passed away last year and I inherited the house from him.

So now I’m back in my childhood home, just starting to really get settled back in and trying to figure out what to do with myself. I feel like my life has been on hold for so long, I don’t even know where to start in picking things back up again. I’m not young anymore, so a lot of the physically active jobs and hobbies I was previously interested in are either difficult or impossible for me now. I also changed a lot mentally with 20 years of military service. I’m not the same person I was at 18, so I have to readjust my interests and hobbies.

Fortunately, I have a lifelong pension from the military. I was grandfathered into the old pension program before they switched to a 401K-type plan, so I get paid half my final paycheck every month for the rest of my life. I also got the coveted “100% Permanent & Total” disability rating from the VA, so that is an additional monthly payment for life that’s about double the size of my pension. Plus free medical and dental for life. My wife didn’t retire from the military, but she also got the 100% P&T disability rating, so she gets the same medical pay and benefits as me.

So with all this passive income, we can actually be retired, as of 38 years old, and have the free time every day to focus on rediscovering our lives. I don’t feel like I need to put my life on pause while I work a job I don’t necessarily care for, or save up enough money for something I really want to do. I can live my life fully now, unpaused, for the first time in my life. It’s been very liberating, both mentally and physically.

I enjoy the Desire Paths community here on Lemmy. It’s so interesting to see what paths people take contrary to what paths are laid out for them.

I want categories like this, but I already have categories for each franchise. Anything that’s related to a franchise goes into a category named for that franchise. Even if it’s just a game and its soundtrack. That way, everything for a particular game is kept contained and I know what’s related to what. If I have a random “dev tools” installer in my library, I figure out what game it’s for (thanks to SteamDB.info and it goes into a category along with that game.

I do have a separate category for simulation games, but only because I love simulators and have tons of them. Outside of that, any attempt to make genre categories has just further confused my library. So for not, I just have hundreds of categories for specific games and their included content and/or sequels.

I thought I responded to this, but my comment isn’t here. Must’ve forgotten to hit send.

In the past, my Android phone would allow me to add or remove URLs that the YouTube app opened, but it seems I can’t edit that anymore. However, here’s an alternative:

1.) Go to Apps > Default Apps > Opening Links

2.) Scroll down to the YouTube app and click on it (remember, I can’t remove it because I have a Pixel (Google) phone).

3.) Switch the Open by Default option from “in the app” to “in your browser.” Done!

4.) If you haven’t already, go back to the Default Apps category and set your browser app to Firefox. Now all YouTube links will open in Firefox.

We set up Teams during the pandemic (because Zoom was being a bitch about the govt not paying to use their full suite). We already used a bunch of other Microsoft products, so it was easy to get a contract for Teams integration too. I don’t remember Teams giving people a notification when you joined though, just the meeting host. But I’ve also been retired for nearly 3 years now, so I have no idea how Teams has changed recently.

Your boss has no right to ask you to come earlier than your agreed time.

In the military, they have every right.

You see, when you join the military, you sign a contract for 4-6 years of service. The day that contract begins, you start your first shift and it doesn’t technically end until your contract expires, several years later. You’re on shift 24/7/365 until your contract is up. So your boss can demand you work any shift or come in at any time, day or night, and you just have to do it. Even if it’s outside of your normally scheduled work hours.

There are regulations that outline “regular passes,” which is time off granted daily because you’re human and can’t literally work 24/7. A regular pass allows you to go home, eat, sleep, and be refreshed for the next day. I don’t know if the federal regs have changed in the last handful of years, but the last time I looked them up, you couldn’t work more than 17 hours straight before you were required to take a minimum 8 hours off to rest. Most shifts are typically 8-12 hours long, so hopefully you don’t get stuck working a 17-hour shift anytime soon.

The whole point of this is that military people need to be ready to respond to war, no matter when it strikes. You don’t work a regular day shift, then argue about extra hours or overtime pay when shit hits the fan. You just grab your bugout bag and go. And yes, we don’t get overtime pay because again - we’re always on shift.

We do get lots of time off, though. From the day you join, you start earning 2.5 days off for every month you serve, which adds up to 30 days off per year. You can carry over something like 60 days off every year too. It was pretty nice. In my early service days, I would save up a whole month of time off and then take it all at once to go hang out with my friends and family back home.

When I served in the military, my first supervisor taught me a valuable lesson: “15 minutes early, or you’re late.” I actually got in trouble with her if I was less than 15 minutes early to any meeting, appointment, or event.

Or even arriving to work. We worked in an IT field, so our office had a large row of server racks along one wall. Her desk sat facing the door, but next to the GPS server that kept accurate time for all our computers on the military base. It had a giant digital clock on the front of the server. Every day when I walked into work, she would look up at me, then turn and look at that clock. If I was even 10 seconds late (to the 15-minute rule), I got in trouble with her. I was never late to work though, because she ensured I was always there earlier than my official shift start time.

Being 15 minutes early to everything has changed my life. If I’m running behind, I have a quarter hour window to get myself back on track. If I arrive 15 minutes early, I have plenty of time to get myself set up and situated. Or just time to sit and clear out some other pending tasks while I wait for a thing to start (check phone notifications, clear out emails, etc.).

When it comes to virtual meetings, I like to join 15 minutes early, then mute myself and turn off my camera. Then I can sit at my computer and knock out some other tasks while I’m waiting for the meeting to start. That buffer gives me time to mentally switch into meeting mode while also giving me time to be productive beforehand. And no one is waiting for me to show up, so if the meeting is ever running late, it’s never my fault.

Only worth it if Christopher Lee plays the werewolf.

My meds are mailed to me from the VA. I can’t just go pick them up at any ol’ pharmacy. If I’m late in requesting refills, then I’m just out of meds until they arrive in the mail, and it can take a week or more to get here. So I really need to not procrastinate.

In an emergency, I can always go to the nearest VA hospital and ask for meds, but I do enjoy the convenience of having them arrive at my doorstep. Especially since the nearest hospital is a 45+ minute drive from my home.

I’ve been shaving since I was 12 years old (I’m 40 now). For most of those shaving years, I liked to get really close to the mirror, to ensure I didn’t miss a spot, so I always leaned far over the sink to get that close shave.

Unbeknownst to me, spending decades leaning unsupported over the sink for 7-10 minutes every morning gave me very strong lower back muscles, which also helped to stabilize my core. I never had back problems, even when all my friends, family, and coworkers started to develop back pain later in life.

About 7 years ago, I discovered the wonders of shaving in the shower. I put a small mirror on my shower wall and shaved without all the additional hassle of cleaning a sink and counter. It was wonderful… except I wasn’t doing my morning lower back routine because I could stand upright, right next to the mirror. My lower back started getting weaker over time.

About 4 years ago, I slipped while going down my stairs and landed hard, injuring my back. I used to be able to bounce back from a fall like that, but I actually had to go to the ER to ensure I hadn’t broken something; I couldn’t even sit up straight without pain.

The pain lessened but never really went away and I found myself finally stuck with permanent back pain.

I’m considering getting rid of my shower mirror and shaving over the sink like I used to, to help rebuild my lower back muscles and better support my spine. My wife deals with permanent back pain thanks to degenerative disc disease, and the things that helps her the most is building a stronger core and lower back muscles, to take the support away from the areas that want to cause pain.

I’m not the guy you’re replying to, but I use Proton VPN, which seems to do a pretty good job blocking ads. I also added “dns.adguard.com” to my private DNS setting on my phone and tablet. Most ads are just gone now.

I also use uBlock Origin on my Firefox app. Then I disabled the YouTube app (I have a Google phone, so I can’t get rid of it) and redirected all YouTube links to my Firefox browser. No more ads on mobile YouTube now!

I’ve been married for about 16 years now and it took a very long time to get my wife into FPS games. Even still, she generally won’t play unless me or one of our friends is also playing with her. She mostly prefers mobile games that give her something distracting to do.

Her first FPS game was Deep Rock Galactic. She was terrible with the first person view initially, but over the last few years, she’s gotten pretty used to it and she’s pretty good now.

In the first grade, I was bullied by a popular kid in my school.

Back in those days (early '90s), the cool thing was to have pencil grips. Kids loved to show off an assortment of colors and styles of them. This bully of mine happened to have a single pencil, covered from tip to eraser with pencil grips, which was his prize possession. He was always showing it off to everyone. It was rumored he’d been stealing them off other kids, but no one could definitively prove it.

When he wasn’t looking one day, I snatched his favorite pencil with all the pencil grips. It was justice for all the times he picked on me in grade school. I enjoyed watching him frantically turn his backpack inside out, trying to find it.

I didn’t get to keep it for long, though. A week later, one of the stricter teachers found it in my backpack and told me I had too many pencil grips for a single pencil, so she confiscated it. I didn’t know any better at the time, or else I would’ve complained about her stealing my property. But it was already stolen, so I didn’t really care to fight it.

That was the first and last time I stole something. I actually agonized over it for a long time afterward. I was relieved when the teacher stole it from me because it was finally out of my hands and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. I never stole anything else again; the anxiety of holding onto stolen goods etched itself deep into my psyche.

Also calling out my sister: When I was maybe 6 or so, my mother found a stash of candy in a cabinet of our kitchen; mostly Lifesavers. She asked me where it came from and I just shrugged. She then asked my sister, who was 2 years younger than me, and my sis immediately broke down crying. Turns out, every time my mother went to the gas station, my little sis would grab a couple rolls of Lifesavers and pocket them. She thought my parents would never look in the messy cabinets of our kitchen.

I'm pretty sure she never stole again after getting caught. She was a wreck for a while afterward and almost terrified of candy when offered.

The creator of Lower Decks wrote her a letter explaining how important her character was to him and she read the script and enjoyed it. She also asked if she could just go by Jolene in this, which he was cool with.

Saved you a click.

Thank you! ❤️

Dang, I thought they killed this game years ago. I know it’s been off Steam’s store for a while, but I could still play my own copy. I just made a blog post about it in October.

I much prefer to play against bots in solo mode, so I guess I didn’t notice the community was still kind of a thing.

A coworker of mine did this. He and his new wife took parts of their last names and blended them together to create a unique new last name for both of them.

Oh wow, this was actually a thing.

We used these ToughBooks on deployments in the US military about 20 years ago. One of the guys in my unit tested it by slowly driving a Humvee over it. It still worked. Screen was a little cracked, though.

I could… But it came out in 2014. I think I’m well beyond the 2 month return window.

This happened to me with Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor the year it released. I got tired of waiting for it to go on sale, so I finally bought it at full $60 price. The very next day, it was on sale for $5.99. D’oh!