Quinzel

My biggest mistake I made was accidentally getting pregnant at 20 years old, with no job, house or income. Let's just say, it sets you back quite a lot. However, I do actually love my kids a lot, so as hard as it was, there was a silver lining.

And the other silver lining is i'm not even 40 and my kids are almost grown up, I have a lot of freedom, whereas some of my friends are just starting their families, or struggling with infertility etc and I sort of see that and think what a drag at this age, having to change nappies and do night feeds etc. I'm so glad thats not my life.

I was homeless for a few months in my first year of university when I was 18 years old. It was mostly self-inflicted, though I think my life circumstances sort of led up to it.

I had been keen to leave home because I had had a few traumatic things happen in my late teenage years, but also, my mums boyfriend at the time was an islamic dude that was obsessed with virgins and always used to harass me, asking me all the time if I was still a virgin, and some other stuff happened and I just needed to be away from him. So I did my best to get into university, and I managed to get accepted to one and get accepted into a hall of residence. I came from a pretty poor background, my mum, and my grandmother scraped together the money to pay for the first half of the year for my accommodation, and then I was supposed to save my student loan payments that were intended to cover living costs in order to pay the second half of the years accommodation cost for the hall of residence which were due to be paid by August or something. However, as a person who came from a poor background, the concept of saving money was something I hadn't really learned before or ever even tried to do, and also, getting a payment into my bank account was a novelty, i'd never really had money before, so the novelty of having money, combined with my diagnosed but untreated ADHD meant that instead of saving for my accommodation fee's I spent my money on food, alcohol, clothing and other pointless shit. Roll around August, I had no money to pay my accommodation fee's and my family had no money either. So I was evicted. I wasn't really honest with my family about it either, and told them that I had chosen to move out and go flatting with friends, but I actually just had no fixed abode.

As an 18 year old, I was surprisingly unphased by my circumstances, looking back, I was pretty stoic about it, which is surprising given how melodramatic I could be about select things. From about August until December, I basically managed my situation by staying at various friends houses just for a night, sleeping on couches and floors, and also occasionally just staying up late, roaming the city streets through the night, and then sleeping in my university library during the day. Sometimes I'd use the small amount of money I had, to catch a train to the city my family lived to visit, but I didn't want to stay with my mother because I hated her boyfriend. I lost a lot of weight in those months of homelessness due to all the walking and the limited food intake.

After the university term was ended, I went back home just for 6 weeks as most of my friends who i'd try to couch surf at had left town, in that time, I managed to find a flat to actually live in, but it turned out to be a home owned by a dodgy man who was addicted to meth, who was giving quite a few girls cheap rent, for sexual favours, but we didnt all even have our own bedrooms, and I was one that didn't have a bedroom and instead lived in a weird hallway space where people would pass through. I didn't want to go down that road for sex in exchange for rent, so I ended up quickly moving into a "boarding house" which actually turned out to be full of people who had come from either the psychiatric hospital across the road, or they were on probation, having recently been released from prison and their probation office was about a 5 minute walk down the road. Most nights there were violent fights, one of the mental health patients decided to jump off the roof one night feet first, and he broke all the bones in both legs. There was a stabbing one day, and a lot of abuse of drugs, both prescription medications, and other illicit substances. My favourite tenant by far was a man who had been born with hydrocephaly. He was odd, and a bit intellectually impaired but he was endlessly positive and strangely insightful. Another memorable tenant was a man who had schizophrenia, who was non-compliant with his medication, I'd sometimes be just high, from smoking weed, and him and I would have the weirdest, most incomprehensible conversations.. For about a year, I just bounced around different accommodations like that, so not as homeless as I had been when I first got evicted from uni, but I also didn't really have a home. I also failed university, and was unemployed. By the time I was 20 I had an unplanned baby to a guy I met in the first boarding house, who had been there on probation. Eventually when my baby was 1, I was asingle mother with no money to pay rent so the government put me and my baby into social housing. It took 14 years for me to get out of social housing.

Now days, my lifes much different and I think most people would have absolutely no clue of the background I came from as I live a mostly standard life. But then sometimes, when I stop and actually think about where I actually started in life, I sometimes think I shouldn't be so hard on myself. I ended up going back to University, getting multiple degree's, and eventually getting myself onto a six figure salary. I still don't own a home yet, but I'm super close to finally making it. I think my accidental baby will actually be a grown up by the time I actually achieve that goal, but I think that's just sometimes the cards we draw in life. I didn't have a very privileged background to start life at all, and I can definitely see how it is easy for people to fall into poverty, homelessness, unemployment, addiction etc. What people don't really talk much about is how hard it is to break that cycle. It's so hard.

Wow… reading that it made me wonder if this is my older son’s problem (or gift). He was never a good sleeper as a child. He used to not fall asleep until midnight and then wake up at 4am when he was little. He got put on clonidine when he was 10 years old, which made him fall asleep earlier in the evenings, and sleep longer into the day so about 9.30 - 6am, but as he’s got older, the effects of clonidine are not as pronounced, I feel it is a win if he stays in bed past 4am… though now that he’s older, he claims that waking up at 4am to “grind” on his computer for a few hours before school is a win, and I honestly don’t care anymore so long as he isn’t waking up the rest of the family before 7am. He is never tired.

Talk quietly, and talk less often?

I pay more attention to people who speak less often.

Additionally, I think you might be making the mistake of sharing your experiences in a way that you think makes you relatable, when really unintentionally you may be coming across self-centred. It’s something I used to do all the time, and something I still unintentionally do from time to time. Instead of trying to be relatable by sharing your own experiences, perhaps try and ask people engaging questions that suggest you have had an experience, but don’t explicitly state what it was… like for example, perhaps you visited some tourist destination, that someone else also visited… instead of explaining your whole experience, maybe ask a question like “what did you think of the [insert subject matter] at [tourist destination]?” People like to talk about themselves a lot. I find people like talking to you more when you seem more interested in them, rather than more interested in talking about yourself… if that makes sense?

Great book. Highly recommend people read it.

I’m a non-software engineer, here’s what I think:

I think of bachelors degrees, or undergraduate degrees and diploma’s as being like little samplers. There is advantages to getting a degree, like showing you can finish something you started, and I definitely think you do learn some skills, but I wouldn’t expect to gain mastery of a subject from just doing a degree. A degree might provide a good foundation, but you really have to build on it, either by doing more study, or working in a relevant industry that provides opportunities for growth, rather than just sitting there with your degree that will most definitely become outdated if you fail to keep up with the pace of change. Everything changes, even stuff that was considered true facts on the nature of the universe have been revised over time. (Not sure this was a good example since we know shit all about the universe actually.)

I’m currently completing my 5th and 6th degree’s at the moment (one is my second masters degree) I don’t feel very smart, and sometimes I don’t feel like the knowledge I’ve gained is that useful, except what I’ve noticed is that I listen more carefully to what other people say now, especially when they’re spouting their opinions on hot topics and often I just find myself noticing that people don’t actually know that they’re actually quite uneducated. In fact, I’d say the danger of undergraduate degree’s is that people think they’re educated by having a degree, and it’s great that they do have a degree, but there’s a lot more knowledge they don’t have, they just don’t know that they don’t know.

After doing my numerous degree’s, what I’ve learned for certain is that I could spend my whole life studying and I’ll never know everything there is to know, I find it humbling, but equally, my attitude every day is that I’m probably going to learn something new and I’m open to that. I guess some people might call that a growth mindset or something. I think others might just think I am a weirdo.

I think the key difference between the internet now and then is that back then, the internet was novel but it was also optional, and something we chose to opt into at the end of the day, thus giving us an escape from reality in someway shape or form. However now days, the Internet is the platform by which we conduct our day to day lives, including how we communicate with even our family members in our own homes, to how we receive our mail and bills, how we do our banking, our shopping and how we consume news and other media.

It’s difficult to be Internet free. It’s difficult to escape it entirely. If someone gave me a new thing to escape the internet, that was as vast and full of potential as the internet is, I’d be probably take it, the problem is, why create something like that, when it already exists? I think the closest next thing to something as socially disruptive is literally AGI and/or quantum computing.

Dude, just learn to play piano and read sheet music for classical music.

I got through the first 5 grades of piano in a single term. Literally the easiest thing I’ve ever learned.

And once you know how to read sheet music and play something like the piano, composing music (any genre) is piss easy, especially if you’re using computer software to do so.

If you’re serious about composing music, no matter what genre I really recommend learning the piano, you’ll just learn so quickly the “rules” of music, especially if you do the theory along side your playing.

Hairdressers. Have you ever had a bad haircut due to miscommunication between yourself and your hairdresser? I think software could help with this problem.

We have AI that can now show us pictures of how our hair would look if we had it cut/coloured/styled in a certain way, but getting hair dressers to actually embrace these technologies is a different story. I think they’re just resistent because the current apps that do this stuff are currently gimmicky, but if you could design some sort of software/program that leveraged that AI and collaborated with a Haircare product brand to market it to hairdressers it could be a cool way to start introducing more digital technologies into a very analogue industry.

If salons had some digital enhancements, AI could be used to help clients communicate more effectively to their hairdresser what it is they want and the hair dresser can also communicate back to their client what is realistically achievable. I just think it might be helpful for the consultation process.

apologies if this comment is super left field, I am super high

I don’t use AI for any of my work or study requirements.

Rather, I’ve been using chatGPT as a recipe book. I generally hate cooking so decided to see if having a robot cooking companion might help make it easier. For me, it actually does. Firstly, the AI recipes are so much less wordy than human written recipes but also… chatGPT will adapt the recipe if I realise half way through cooking that I have forgotten to get an ingredient. I’m sure it’s not something good cooks would need, but I find AI most useful in my kitchen of all places.

I think this is a terrible idea.

You could have a really great candidate who for what ever reason, couldn’t afford to apply then and there, and the company would then miss out on amazing talent.

It would be a net negative for employers and prospective employees. Who would want to apply for a job at a company that charges you to submit the application? What service are applicants paying for?

Absolute nonsense.

Yeah, I don’t frequent many websites. I go on Facebook occasionally intermittently, but go through phases where I deactivate it. I also go on my university website for my online learning but I don’t go on many websites.

Safari as my default

Chrome - not by choice, but for a particular course I’m doing which insists that chrome is better. I don’t love either but I’m just habitually use to Safari.

I haven’t watched/read the news in years and I feel so liberated from it. When something worth knowing happens, I still hear about it. But not consuming news gives me the space I need to think independently about things from the influences of mass produced media. It’s beautiful

I’m in the midst of about 2 months off of work, and my morning routine is certainly different. I don’t sleep with an alarm clock which is actually amazing. My routine goes like this: - Wake up naturally when sick of sleeping. - drink large cup of coffee - eat something nutritious for breakfast - choose something to do.

I have a list of things I still wanted to do/achieve over my break, including reading a few books, finishing an online language course I’ve been doing, exercising daily, finishing a painting, etc etc… so I pick something out of those things and then that just leads into a relaxing and fulfilling day.

I don’t think I have a same level of experience you do in terms of work because I’ve only had two different careers, thought I’ve done multiple jobs within those careers. However, I’m a perpetual student, and I collect degrees. Not just for the sole purpose of collecting degree’s but I like learning, and find it rewarding, and I find that doing it in a formal setting provides me with the structure I need to learn effectively. As such, I have a long list of “qualifications” I can put on my CV and I have figured out, if I list every qualification, I almost NEVER get an interview. Whereas before, when I had just two degree’s I’d find I’d almost always get an interview. I’ve figured out, if I only list one or two qualifications relevant to the job I’m applying for, I have a better success rate.

This makes me think that in terms of job searches, too many qualifications are a disadvantage. If the initial short listing is automated, then I assume too many qualifications means that you’re not slotting into the right niche that gets through the automated process, and if it’s humans doing the shortlisting, I wonder if they assume that someone with multiple qualifications doesn’t know what they want to do, gets bored easily (which for me is true), or they’re intimidated.

So ultimately, my experience is that your CV doesn’t have to list everything you’ve studied, or every job you have done. You can tailor it and only list qualifications, skills and experiences that are relevant to the job you’re applying for. But remember, if you do that, at the interview, you need to also only draw on the experiences you’ve listed in the CV because you can’t really throw in other work experiences that are not listed in the CV or they’ll ask why you didn’t list them. Overall, it’s easier to keep things simple. I generally find most humans prefer simplicity, so perhaps just package yourself up as something simple, but be excellent in the stuff you choose to focus on. That’s my current strategy for myself anyway. Not sure if it’s that helpful, but just another perspective anyhow.

I would like to finish a painting I’ve been procrastinating from finishing for about 10 months now, and then get rid of it (give it away) and I’d also like to do more artworks, exploring new ideas and techniques I’ve learned lately.

Cool idea. I might copy you.

I just started reading Madness Made Me by Mary O’Hagen, and I’ll finish it before the end of tomorrow. It’s a good read. It offers good insight into someone’s journey through madness and dealing with the mental health system.

My personal favourite part of the book: “After a few sessions Dr L’Estrange tells me I need anti-depressants. ‘You’re very slowed down and physically depressed,’ he says. He doesn’t know I am recovering from a night of smoking Buddha sticks laced with horse tranquilliser”.

I just loved that particular part of the book because it just really highlights the absurdity that so many mental health professionals, and general doctors, think they have the authority to assign these really rather powerfully debilitating labels based on all their years of learning and knowledge, yet have so little insight into the lives of their own patients when they assign these labels, as if to say they know you and your life better than you do.

And I study psychology, but there are still aspects of the discipline, particularly when it comes to diagnosing and treating mental health problems that I think are inherently flawed and problematic. Reading of other people’s experiences offers more insight than the DSM-5. That’s for sure!

My favourite memories from Christmas were this year! I grew up as a poor kid. Christmas was kind of hard every year. I know my mum did try to make it special but more often than not, I just felt disappointed as a kid. I had no belief in things like Santa, or God, tooth fairy’s or Easter bunnies because even as a kid, I found it difficult to believe that these imaginary figures would randomly choose to favour some kids over others for what felt like no apparent reason. Then as an adult, for my own kids, I did what my mum tried to do and I did my best, but still, Christmas was often disappointing and stressful and I often had to choose between celebrating Christmas or paying my bills. So I stopped celebrating it all together, opting instead to just give my kids a bit of cash and take then shopping on Boxing Day. Then this year in general I took bigger risks, made bigger sacrifices, and I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily been easier but I actually made enough money to make ends meet and then some. We did Christmas, and I invited over my family, and the guy I’ve been dating. There was cliche Christmas games, family banter, my kids got heaps of presents from relatives and it was just the first Christmas I remember having where I didn’t feel stressed. I felt actual joy. And then for a few days after I just felt relaxed and content, enjoying my massive amount of time off work because as fate would have it, I didn’t lock in any contracts over Christmas, and I think if I had I would have worked it, but I think the universe gave me a gift this year which was just being able to spend time with my family without feeling an impending sense of doom. Magical.

I second this.

Because being a parent is hard.

I swing between hating my job and loving it. Sometimes it’s super interesting, but other times it’s either too boring or too demanding. I am an anaesthetic assistant. If I’m learning how to master a new piece of technology, or showing other people how to use new technology then I’m usually pretty engaged and find it interesting. If I’m doing stuff that requires me to be alert at all times whilst simultaneously ensuring maximum efficiency then I enjoy the challenges that come with that. If I’m seeing an unusual surgical procedure for the first time I can find that interesting. However, if I’m helping in a 12 hour craniotomy, then I’m usually bored out of my mind with very little to do. Equally, if I’m helping with an acute clot retrieval in a 94 year old with dementia who’s case bumps a healthy person waiting for a knee or hip replacement, I think it’s shit and that healthcare doesn’t spend enough time reflecting on the fact that just because you can do a procedure doesn’t mean you should. Not everyone can or should be saved, and when healthcare works hard and wastes resources on prolonging suffering so a few family members can avoid experiencing the feelings of loss and grief for a couple of extra days, I absolutely hate my job.

I have a kind of surprising experience with regard to this topic… My older son was already a teenager when LLM’s got mainstream. He has struggled with an awful combination of Tourette Disorder, ADHD and OCD which has meant he’s been pretty disconnected from school entirely since he was very young. However, when he discovered chatGPT he started using it to write formal complaints about all the teachers he didn’t like and emails those formal complaints to the school principal.

The upside is that before ChatGPT he showed no interest in written communication at all and his school was genuinely concerned. Even an educational psychologist couldn’t properly assess whether he had an actual learning disability over and above his neurological conditions because instead of taking the psychometric tests he ate the papers. Just to be clear, he’s not intellectually disabled in anyway, he’s just so defiant that he blatantly refused to engage in any psychometric tests, and he stated that his IQ was his private business. Instead of being annoyed at all his letter writing, the school have taken his letters as an indication that he has some ability to read, write and comprehend, as all the letters he has written have been adapted by him to suit certain nuanced circumstances that would either require detailed prompts, or alternatively heavy editing. I have to say the school’s response to the letters has been refreshing. They wanted to see what else he might use AI to come up with, or how else he might use AI to engage in learning. His school has been allowing him to use AI to complete non-assessed school work. Everyone is so happy because he firstly started doing school work, but then, he’s also started doing some school work, without using AI now as well. As a parent, I think if that was the aid he needed to build his self-esteem enough for him to feel able to engage in learning then I’m all for it.

I prefer any book in physical form. Holding a book in my hands is a far more tactile experience, as you get to feel the cover, and smell the pages, which I always find kind of nice in a weird way. I find it easier to stay focused on a book when I have a real physical book. Often with digital books, I close the app and then forget it exists. Especially books I would only read for leisure.

I found that Duolingo helped me to learn some German, I haven’t been practicing as much lately, but when I hear German, I can understand more than I can speak, and I find it fun to read in German. I bought a book that was in German and started reading it, my brain reads German the same way I remember learning how to read English; by seeing certain words in certain orders and then being able to fill in blanks. I actually found buying a German book helped a lot with learning because you get familiar with the patterns of the language and then you don’t have to try to translate the language into your mother tongue, you can just know what it’s meaning by inferring the meanings by the structure, pattern, frequency of words etc… The hardest part of learning German for me has been getting the nouns - and knowing why some nouns are feminine or masculine.

Perhaps the hactivist groups were too decentralised for them to be cohesive enough to stage properly coordinated attacks that could make any noticeable impact?

I’ve learned about some pretty impressive cyberattacks, that have made significant impact (ie, WannaCry), but they’re not usually executed by a decentralised unit of uncoordinated millennials that can’t decide unanimously on the right ideology to justify their behaviour.

I think this is great for those looking for who to target for financial scams… you’d know who’s got money, but also be able to judge from their comments who’s stupid enough to to fall for spear phishing attacks and while their username may seem anonymous, you’d be able to figure out a fair few people’s real identities with a little bit of tech-savviness.

That’s cool, and I fully respect anyone that still listens offline… But you realise you can listen to all those genre’s and more on Spotify right? (Also I respect that some people are not consumers of Spotify because of the way they treat smaller artists)

They supermarket doesn’t deliver the items to my doorstep.