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I'm conducting an informal survey, do you Thumbs feel close to your parents?

I was talking to my dad about my job, and it was clear he did not understand what it was at all. And I just thought about how little he does know or understand about me. Being vegan, nerdy or an art hipster are not things he could relate to and I've never made any real effort to try communicate any of this to him. I don't have a desire to, the thought actually makes me vaguely uncomfortable. I just don't feel like there's a personal relationship there.

As with all things, I'm curious how other people's experiences compare to mine.

Also yeah Fridays are pretty nice.

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I'm happy it's Friday, even if the weather is pretty deeepressing up here. I submitted a copy of my latest paper to the co-authors, and I've got evening plans, so I'm feeling ok. 

 

SuperBiasedMan, I'm close with my parents, even though I live on the other side of the country, and we only talk every few weeks. My parents are pretty awesome, and have a lot of shit going on, so I respect them, and am open with them. I think they're pretty cool, also, and so they do relate to my interests, and accommodate my quirks. I enjoy going home and staying with them, even if sometimes the things that they like (primarily media) don't quite line up with mine. 

 

Were you closer to your dad when you were younger, and things changed, or have they always been that way? 

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Were you closer to your dad when you were younger, and things changed, or have they always been that way? 

 

This just is the dynamic of our family. It's not particular to now or even my dad. My family in general is just pretty amicable but impersonal. I probably coulda said that this wasn't any revelation to me, I think about it occasionally. It just happened to come up again today and made me curious about other people.

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I'm conducting an informal survey, do you Thumbs feel close to your parents?

I was talking to my dad about my job, and it was clear he did not understand what it was at all. And I just thought about how little he does know or understand about me. Being vegan, nerdy or an art hipster are not things he could relate to and I've never made any real effort to try communicate any of this to him. I don't have a desire to, the thought actually makes me vaguely uncomfortable. I just don't feel like there's a personal relationship there.

As with all things, I'm curious how other people's experiences compare to mine.

Also yeah Fridays are pretty nice.

 

I'm super close to my parents, and most of my (rather large) family. I'm closer to my mom than my dad, just because my dad can be frustrating sometimes and my mom's personality is closer to mine. But I can't imagine how it would feel to not be close to my parents, and I always feel bad when I find out that other people aren't, which I know isn't fair because people deal with their own relationships in their own way.

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Before you roll your eyes, I've actually really enjoyed learning about how to use the I Ching in daily life. The readings of the hexagrams are so pithy and obscure that it's just been a good way to make me reflect on my hopes and anxieties over a given situation. Throwing a hexagram is basically the best way to ask myself for advice that I've yet found.

 

I had previously never heard of this, and have been off/on reading various hexagram interpretations all day, learning how the different --- vs - - combinations come together to form symbols etc.  It is swell, and as you note - all interpretations are obscure and generate thought for self reflection action.  

 

I think by just focusing on the coin tossing, drawing hexagram, and reading interpretation it focuses a person's mind to reflect on the question/problem at hand - the hex its irrelevant if you were able to think critically for a few minutes and find your own answer/guidance.

 

 

My immediate comparison is to astrology that tends to provide definitive guidance (do something now, do not do something, engage in holding pattern) from a totally obscure outside source (the stars).  I've always thought it silly and pandering to folk who need an easy answer (or whatever reassurance zodiacs provide to the users)

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I'm conducting an informal survey, do you Thumbs feel close to your parents?

I was talking to my dad about my job, and it was clear he did not understand what it was at all. And I just thought about how little he does know or understand about me. Being vegan, nerdy or an art hipster are not things he could relate to and I've never made any real effort to try communicate any of this to him. I don't have a desire to, the thought actually makes me vaguely uncomfortable. I just don't feel like there's a personal relationship there.

As with all things, I'm curious how other people's experiences compare to mine.

Also yeah Fridays are pretty nice.

 

My relationships were almost opposite when I was younger, I was very close to my mother and fairly distant from my father.  Now I feel like it's much easier to communicate with my dad, and I feel fairly distant from my mother.   Even though my dad is almost diametrically opposed to me in politics and a lot of personal philosophies, he's been much more open to just accepting me and my life the way they are. 

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I'm handing out with a friend from out of town tomorrow night and don't really know what to expect. We weren't particularly close when we lived in the same city, but she's become incredibly friendly since moving away, to the point of regularly saying that I'm the person she misses the most, and set aside an entire evening of her three-day stay to spend with me. I'm not even sure what she plans to do here! It just feels very weird to me. I asked the I Ching about it and got Hexagram VII, the Army.

 

Together you and your friend are an army. United you will crush your foes.

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I live 1000 miles from my parents. I miss my dad a lot but I contact my mom more otherwise she'd complain at me. Both my stepparents were alternately annoying and abusive so frankly, I am not close to anyone in my family and I barely even talk to my sister. 

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I was never very close to my parents emotionally, but they live nearby and I visit them at least once every two weeks or so.

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My parents live in China so most of the time they're just about as far away as its physically possible to be.  Their official US address is my house and they stay with me when they're in the country, but that's maybe one or two months out of the year.  We don't really talk a lot and most of the things we do talk about are fairly inconsequential.  I don't really open up to my parents that much, not because of any particular problem I have with them or anything, its just not our way.

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I wasn't offering a rebuke! I was just reading what you said, and what you said I Ching said. Sounds like you are set up to have a fun day with a friend. Did she suggest doing anything specific? Also according to the army, make sure to ask her what's best in life.

 

Well, it ended up that it wasn't just the two of us. I basically was there as a third party while she hung out with her ex-boyfriend and we all watched a movie together. Not particularly great, but I kept my cool and had a reasonably good time.

 

I had previously never heard of this, and have been off/on reading various hexagram interpretations all day, learning how the different --- vs - - combinations come together to form symbols etc.  It is swell, and as you note - all interpretations are obscure and generate thought for self reflection action.  

 

I think by just focusing on the coin tossing, drawing hexagram, and reading interpretation it focuses a person's mind to reflect on the question/problem at hand - the hex its irrelevant if you were able to think critically for a few minutes and find your own answer/guidance.

 

My immediate comparison is to astrology that tends to provide definitive guidance (do something now, do not do something, engage in holding pattern) from a totally obscure outside source (the stars).  I've always thought it silly and pandering to folk who need an easy answer (or whatever reassurance zodiacs provide to the users)

 

Yeah, I'm mostly embarrassed because the kinds of divination with which most people are familiar, like astrology and fortune cookies, are so patently ridiculous. The fact that hexagrams are thrown through a random system to answer a specific question, the fact that the commentaries on the hexagrams are more general wisdom that specific advice, and the fact that changing lines can turn one hexagram into another, combining their separate readings into a massive number of discrete outcomes, make me feel like the I Ching is on a different level. I got a copy because I saw that John Minford, one of the translators for Penguin's amazing version of Dream of the Red Chamber, had made his own edition, and it's as academic and introspective as I could possibly want.

 

I'm conducting an informal survey, do you Thumbs feel close to your parents?

 

I feel like I share the most in common with my dad, but since he divorced my mother and I moved away for grad school, I haven't exactly been close with him. I hear from him maybe every six or seven weeks and we talk mostly about money and my career, but it's still pleasant, so I can't complain. I'm much closer to my mother, since I talk to her every week or two, but we're also very alike in temperament and don't really get along well over the long term. Sometimes I'm caught between a desire to be closer to both of them and the fantasy of not visiting home at all this year. It's a weird thing.

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So we had an election today! It was weird because it was actually good. I voted because it's my responsibility to vote as a citizen (and if I don't I get fined), but it was a fucking hard decision.

 

The current government basically went to the electorate saying 'guys, we want to spend a ton of money, and to pay for it we want to sell off the power grid'. The election stayed on policies and issues throughout the entire campaign, to the point where it was really difficult to decide who to vote for because both candidates had positives and negatives. The Greens also made big gains, taking a new seat in Sydney as well as two rural seats, because they decided to contest them properly. It seems like coal seam gas exploration will be banned in NSW, which to me is a good thing. It's nice to see minor parties winning seats and proving they're capable of representing the people, because three parties keeps everyone on their toes; I had written the Greens off after they proved incapable of increasing their primary vote after the major left-wing party was caught in a huge corruption scandal.

 

In my electorate, the candidate for the other major party used to hold the seat before the last election, so they cheekily put 'Re-elect' on his posters as if he was the incumbent. That led to the weird situation where you had two different candidates, one saying 'Re-elect me' and the other saying 'Let's keep me'.

 

It was really nice to not vote for the Christian Democrat Party or the No Land Tax Party, as well. (Australia has preferential voting, and in the upper house, proportional representation. Unfortunately that means Fred Nile and the Shooters and Fishers Party will take seats in the upper house.)

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I get on well with my parents, but I don't know about "close". I only see or speak to them once or twice a year, mainly out of laziness. I feel like we know and understand each other pretty well, but certainly not as well as my closer friends or girlfriend. They're a different generation, plus we had a parent-child dynamic for the first two decades (at least!) of knowing each other; I think getting on and mutual support is all that can be expected, really (as opposed to, I dunno, a regular adult friendship or deep knowledge of each other's soul).

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My parents currently take care of our children one day a week, so there's quite a bit of contact. I can talk to my mom pretty well though I don't think our relationship ever completely recovered from the embarassment/distance puberty created. My stepdad is an introverted weirdo (like me) so while I can relate to him quite well we don't talk that much.

 

My dad took a hike when I was two so there's not much there.

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I'm really close and love them very much, although I only see them every couple of weeks to a month seeing as I live in a different albeit close city.

While I'm very independent and don't really need the guidance that they offer to my sister, it's always nice 'coming home' and just spending the evening there to catch up. My dad's as into technology as me so that always gives us plenty to talk about, which will at times segue into something more serious like relationships. My mum I'm often similarly open with, and I know they tell each other everything anyway. And with three siblings there's always plenty to talk about there!

I have to admit that I got pretty shit at seeing them in my early 20s, sometimes only once every several months. I let focusing on my career and relationship distract me, but after experiencing multiple friends the same age as me losing one of their parents in the last few years (e.g. dad at 50) it's made me realise that the adult years I can share with my parents are precious — so I committed myself to seeing them once every few weeks.

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I hate that the building management here won't replace the laundry equipment here. I know that washers and dryers are expensive, but they've been using the same ones at least since I moved in and they've never worked right. It's a roll of the dice every single time I do laundry, from "will the coin slot get stuck and prevent the machine from turning on" to "will both washers just do nothing when started" to yesterday's super-fun "will I have to fish my clothes out of elbow-deep black water and run them through the dryer five times before accepting that they'll never be dry again."

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I'm not close with my parents. I talk to my mom a lot, but just because she's old and feels guilty about what she's done in the past and I'm not going to tell an old woman that it's too late for her to fix it. I go see them once a year, but I really wish I didn't have to anymore. It's just a hassle.

I read trashy fantasy novels sometimes so I have something to talk to my dad about. We don't have anything in common aside from that. He was in the hospital at some point recently and no one told me until after the fact -- that's how super close we are.

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So Canadian electronics chain Future Shop closed today. They got bought up by Best Buy a few years back while Best Buy started setting up shop in Canada, and now all Future Shop locations are either being converted into Best Buys or shut down permanently (with no advance notice to the staff, of course). This is coming like two months after Target (who bought and replaced Canadian department store chain Zellers a few years ago) decided to pull out of Canada. Canadian businesses keep getting "rescued" by American chains that then turn around and leave us with nothing. It's infuriating to me.

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My parents suck ass. My mom suffered from "depression" when we were growing up and used that as an excuse to be verbally and emotionally abusive to us growing up. Even through adulthood she's been visibly jealous about any of the successes we've had and she's kind of narcissistic. About 5 or 6 times a year we get a message from her that she's in the emergency room for some stupid reason and of course the doctors never find anything wrong and just send her home. She also has a vicious addiction to valium and vicodin and is quite literally crazy. That being said, we do still include her in our lives and try our best to be around her without getting into the negative stuff. But there are frequent fights and I've more or less cut off any emotions I've had towards her as my mom for my own peace of mind and sanity.

My dad is a hollow shell of a person with absolutely no emotion. He's a pretty bad alcoholic and barely says anything to anyone anymore. My kids don't even know that he's their grandpa. He was never abusive growing up, he was just there, barely contributing and didn't really seem to give a shit about any of us. Also, because of my mom and dad, we lived in seventh day adventist towns up until I was 8 and continued to be stuck in seventh day adventist schools till I was in high school.

The good thing about all of this though is that it gave me incredible motivation to pave my own way in life and not repeat the same shit I had to deal with. Started working when I was 14, got straight A's through high school and almost straight A's through college and then landed a solid job that I've been at ever since. So in a way I guess I owe a lot to my shitty parents.

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I'm conducting an informal survey, do you Thumbs feel close to your parents?

My relationship with my parents has been up and down over the years but what probably governs it more than anything else is just how clearly I am their child. It's almost like I'm a direct result of my dads nature but my mums nurture.

I've never really connected with my dad but as I've got older it's become clearer and clear to me how much of that is a reaction against seeing some of what I percieve as my own worst natural personality qualities in him, He can be arrogant, stubborn and over cautious all of which I see in myself to varying degrees.

As much as my genetics my govern the way I understand my inner self, In terms of the way I connect with the world my mum is clearly the dominant influence.

It was her art books I ended up reading as a I grew up, her vocational path I almost eriely followed (both going to a arts uni, working in print and ending up a librarian for a while) and ultimately her views of vegetarianism and the way that I should try and treat others that formed at least part of the lense that constitutes my moral view of the world.

It think because the similarities I share with my mum are external ones they have always been easy to talk about and share that we've always been close.

Where as with my dad as similarities are things which are both psychological and (to a certain extent) negative, some which as I've got older I've begun to understand meant that whenever I encountered the negative aspects of my personality in my father it reminded me of the difficulty I have controlling them in myself and caused me to push back.

However that same self reflectiveness that led me to realise this is slowly helping me to form a better relationship with my dad.

I've been going with him to watch our local soccer team this year and its provided a nice little space that both harks back to the moments in my youth we were closest, and strangely in the time we spend walk to and from the match these moments we can talk about some of the things we are unquiely positioned to understand about each other.

As for my mum where as once she influenced me it now seems to be going the other way a bit, after getting her 1st smart phone I bought her Monument Valley, and after some intial trepidation she's now played through it and it's expansion(before starting to play through it again :D ). We've also been watching Twin Peaks together every couple of week after I mentioned I was going to be doing so. Which in turn at my prompting has led to her downloading and listening to Twin Peaks Rewatch.

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So I'm in a bad place right now.

 

I want to go to Halifax. Or somewhere. I don't usually live in one place this long and, as much as I love this apartment, I'm getting really restless here. It's a small town. The minimum wage is bad, the job market is bad, and my only close friend/mentor figure is moving to Germany in May. On top of that, lately I've had reason to fear that my estranged abusive family might be figuring out where I live.

 

But... time is of the essence here. After my friend moves, I'll have nobody to help me get my stuff to Halifax, and while I've received a potential job opportunity there, they haven't responded to my request for a phone interview instead of an-person one. And any real estate company I talk to understandably wants a co-signer or proof that I can afford a place, because my income right now is so low.

 

The smart thing would be to keep looking for a job in Moncton and spend a year saving up for a move, but I dunno if I can even do that. It's a wasteland here and it's killing me. I just wanna get out.

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Tegan, if you're in a really bad spot and need to just get to Halifax for an interview, hit me up and I'll give you what I can to get you there. If you're scared that abusive family members are finding you and you don't want them to, you need to go, and I can't offer a ton to get you gone, but you seem like you're good people so I'll give you what I can.

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My dissertation is due in a month and I haven't written any of it aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh

 

Also I slept in too late today and missed my appointment with my counsellor so YEAH life

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