Absolutely! When a student finds the joy of music, they have become a musician.

I also look for what the student does well- what kind of musician are they? Some a great at reading sheet music, some are great at improvising, some are story tellers that see a song as a vehicle for their craft. Imo, it’s best to treat the student as a genius. As Viktor Frankl said, “If we overestimate [our student], we can promote them to who they can be […] If we take [our student] as they are, we make them worse, but if we take them as who they should be, we make them who they can be”

I believe in TRADITIONAL FAMILY VALUES like HARD WORK through HUNTING and GATHERING and COMMUNAL LIVING and DYING AT THE AGE OF 5 and BEING AFRAID OF FIRE and YEETING YOUR KIDS INTO THE FOREST WHEN THEY BECOME ADULTS.

So I dealt with this a shit ton in my 20s, and have only recently found an effective way to reframe my mindset.

First, my friend introduced me to parts theory. It’s a practice that’s underscored by “nonessentialism” for my philosophy friends here (i.e. there is no single you, you are made up of many, many identities that come together). The exercise I would recommend you do is to name the different parts of you. Hell, to make it fun, pretend they are tarot cards or something. For instance my negative feelings came from a part of me I now call “the sleezy politician” who manipulates people into doing what he wants. I also took note of the origin story of this character- I had very unstable family dynamics that had a lot of backroom conversations, and also I had a traumatic friend group explosion in highschool that taught me I need to control others through charm to survive.

I also have “the musician”, “the teacher”, “the council”, “the romantic”, “the child”… I listed 34 and I could probably keep going. Recognize each one of these people is trying to take control of the wheel of your life, and you can choose who you give it too.

I also just listened to Kevin Hines on the Man Enough Podcast . The man enough podcast is a podcast that deals with men’s issues through a feminist lense- I see it as the antidote to the manosphere. That said, I don’t think you need to be a dude to take something from this. TW: it has a lot to do with suicide, but it is very uplifting when it comes to self love. The exercise I took away from it is to note the thoughts repeating in my head of who I tell myself I am, and then say the opposite. I am responsible. I am kind. I am genuine. I am honest. I am enough.

Finally I had a thought yesterday- I need to love myself before I love others. If I’m not comfortable in my own skin, how can I be comfortable with someone else? My friend who just got married said he knew she was the one when “the relaxed feeling I have when I’m alone at home is the same when I’m with her at home. I feel at home.” That’s when I realized I need to be at home with myself.

But don’t just love yourself- have a crush on yourself. Idk about you, but when I’m absolutely crushing on someone I’m seeing, I become like a bird of paradise. I keep my place clean. I exercise. I eat right. I take them out to dance and see the world. I do everything I can to be my best self for this person. So why not do that for me?

I hope some of this can help friend. You aren’t just wanted here, you are needed here, and for a reason.

idk, I know that there are great companies to work for- my sister found a unicorn of a job. Great pay (and hourly), tons of vacation, work from home, a decent amount of travel but not too much (she’s in sales for a scientific instrument company), but I have job hopped enough to know that what she has is now becoming the exception. And of course to your point, this is all anecdotal. I’m now self employed and I’ve never been busier nor happier.

I cannot tell you how many bosses Ive had/ heard say they are going to have a moment of “radical kindness” and then proceed to just RIP into their employees until they cry.

Corporate double speak is wack.

Awwww, what a close friendship they had. Fully plutonic. Just two very straight friends. Good ol’ guy love, between two guys.

This but the exact opposite. I also have resting smile face. I’m so pissed off.

The amount of times people have called my trumpet a saxophone, or my trombone a saxophone, or my clarinet a saxophone, or my melodica a saxophone, or my saxophone a saxophone apauls me.

Never call someone a saxophone; not only is it rude, it’s a slur and against the law.

Fully agree.

My take as of late is that any 3rd party candidate who runs in our two party system can’t possibly be serious. They make a huge show, maybe get a message out, but almost always torpedo the party closest to them.

With the Stein’s and RFKs in the news, it’s all sexy flashy publicity without any serious effort to have a 3rd party win.

That said, there is another 3rd party personality that you might not have heard of in a while: Andrew Yang.

I actually believe he is serious about electoral reform, in fact that’s the one issue his Forward Party is about. He and his team have worked quietly to help get ranked choice vote in local elections. He is not running for president as a spoiler candidate. He is not running for senate as an independent. He is putting in the work along with fairvote.org to make the structural changes needed to have viable 3rd party campaigns. We saw what happened in Alaska when ranked choice vote was present- they kept Sarah Palin from holding a Senate seat and elected a Democrat instead.

If we had the NPVIC and ranked choice vote, our democracy would be much more representative, collaborative, and stable.

Oooooooh this is a joke on how I was manipulative! Ah I get it now.

A good 'ol “/s” would have helped me with the tone of your comment. I thought you were coming in hot with a personal attack.

Basically, but the next step is to forgive and love that part as well. That part of you developed for a reason. If you can name what that part of you is, you might be able to look back to a time where that part of you was what was helping you. Now that you are living a different life, the game is to tell that part to step to the side and let another part of you take the wheel.

At least that’s what a gleaned from my conversation last night.

I’m very confused by your comment. Can you give some context and why this comment is related?

If it helps anyone in a similar situation, after a shroom trip two weeks ago, I realized my issue is a deeeeeep seated shame- my “Mr. Ethics” vibe is a facade and if you cross examined me long enough you would find out I’m rotten to the core.

I know this is false, but it’s so engrained it’s hard to shake.

In relationships, I’ll feel very anxious because I feel like “the jig is gonna be up soon, they’ll see you for who you are, you will hurt them” so I’ll usually drop and run.

4 hours later

Also I started this comment a few hours ago, but since have chatted with my friend over beers and he told me about “parts therapy”. Basically acknowledge there are many parts to you, there is no single you. There is the “superhero” you, the “deviant” you, the “artist”, the “lover”, etc. So in trying to identify this core I believe is rotten, I came up with “the sleezy politician”. I feel like I can manipulate people like hell- I can put on the charm to get what I want or to avoid risk. I can think of times when this version of me was necessary as a survival mechanism. Highschool was clique-city, and the theater department was a social minefield. My family had a heavy political side. Growing up I felt like I had a superpower to lie and get away with anything, it took me a while to realize it wasn’t a superpower but would hurt me so much more later. All that I learned through that is something I now need to undo, and that is to be comfortable with myself and not care about how others see me.

Ooof sorry I kinda word vomited but thanks for being my prep for tomorrow’s therapy sesh.

As it stands now, you could give me an amazing person to be with who would check all my boxes and would be a perfect match

And I would break up with them anyway in about 6 months.

I have a VERY avoidant attachment style that I need to shake before I can get into anything.

They sure do pal.

Wait people have multiple accounts?

There is one exception to the “Trump hates negative press” that I’d like to note. When Dr. Fauci was called to meet with Trump after he corrected him on live TV about drinking bleach, he found Trump in his office saying “My god these ratings are amazing, they’re better than cable”. Oddly enough sometimes Trump sees any news is good news so long as he’s the main focus.

The times I’ve seen him really go off is when the news cycle stops paying attention to him.

Also she wasn’t even really interrupting him. If you watch the clip, she was muted and he was easily heard over her. It wasn’t as if she was really steamrolling.

You can tell it got under his skin in 2020, and this was just a pathetic way to “get back” at her for being a woman who asserted herself in a debate.

Straight to jail with you

So I had to look up the Boltzmann constant and… That’s a lot of math.

I think you have a point on the decreasing human temperature. It looks like the decrease is at 0.05°F every decade, which actually is quite a bit. If it was something like 0.005°F, I’d say that that’s a problem for the people of the year 2500 to solve.

That said, the reason it’s been decreasing seems to be due to medical advances and not some change in the Earth’s gravity or climate change. I would be surprised to see humans in the year 2500 having an average body temperature of 72.9°F, or closing in on 0°F in the year 3,984. I imagine there will be fluctuations, but there’s got to be a lower limit to what is physically possible.

I’d still defend the Celsius number, since even though there are changes due to air pressure, it’s changing over space and not time. In the year 2500, water at sea level will still freeze at 0°C.

I think my big thing is I’m less concerned about a logically consistent scale, and more towards a scale that’s geared to the emotional side of temperature.

Thinking outloud moment

If we are going for the emotional side of temperature specifically, we would also need to factor in wind, humidity, sunlight, what season it is, etc. and that’s a lot of variables, and even then that’s how you get the wind-chill factor. But even that is almost completely subjective. I feel like that scale would go from “IT’S GOTTA BE NEGATIVE A MILLION FUCKIN’ DEGREES” to “I FEEL LIKE IM ON THE SURFACE OF THE SUN, so like a bazillion degrees” and then we go to the traffic report.

Either way, it’s not a perfect scale, but I’d still take that over the other two.