A spine. Got tired of doing everything for everyone, so I started setting rules. It’s shifted the energy from physical to social/emotional, but the house is cleaner.
A collection of spines does send a message.
[email protected] is leaking.
Money, makes life easier (as in surplus to your immeadete needs)
I was always frugal and started investing small amounts in the stock market when I was 19 , started reading the financial news when i was 18 and never stopped doing both. Still invest my surplus income now (still live a frugal life) and still read.
Quit work at 35, been mortgage free for decades and am 58 now. Allows me to live where I want, which is a quiet small rural town well away from everyone.
A $1 backscratcher from a local pharmacy. Makes scratching my own back effortless. 10/10 investment. And way more affordable than the full-time backscratching assistant I was paying all those years.
Did you mean assistants? Or were you really surviving on just 40 hours of back scratches in a 168 hour week?
Solitude.
I appear to have had extraordinarily bad luck in my life, as nearly every significant friend or lover or family I’ve ever had is consistently some.combination of abusive, exploitative, duplicitous, violent, criminal, hypocrite, never willing to hear my side of any story.
Been by myself with a new phone number in a new state for some months now and I’ve never been less stressed out, never felt less burdened, never felt more free.
Took me 35 years to figure out… wait, what if I did what I wanted to do, enjoyed things because I enjoyed them instead of pretending to like some other thing because someone else does, what if I stopped bending over backwards to solve everyone else’s problems when they usually just go out of their way to cause more problems for me, and never give anything meaningful back, and in fact usually blame me for things I have no control over, and then spread unfounded rumors about me due to their own massive neuroticism and guilt complexes?
I am quite happy now. I’ve never needed much to be happy, and nearly no one who has ever claimed to care about me has ever once been able to handle my honest opinions about what they have put me through.
Its been astounding to realize that actually, I make friends quite easily and get along with most people I meet great, whilst everyone I used to know has spent decades convincing me I am an unlikeable asshole who is merely to be tolerated.
I am going through setting strict boundaries and getting those people out of my life right now, so glad you managed the same!
Well, the final straw was when a number of them made me homeless, and the rest were either too busy or too emotionally burdened to help right now.
So after losing all my possessions, losing my job, being homeless for nearly a year, getting the shit kicked out of me regularly by fentanyl addicts uh… well, I should not have survived.
But despite nearly being killed more times than I can count, being held hostage by madman (who the police held for 30 days and then let loose), and witnessing a number of people I’d met along the way die…
It was not exactly easy.
But, by basically dumb luck, I survived.
And, being alive, having not only hit rock bottom, but having been dragged and kicked along its jagged ground… well, now I am free.
It is only after you lose everything, that you are free to do anything.
And for me, that means not having to deal with anyone while I do a whole lot of PT on disability.
Also, I now have a great deal of self confidence, as I am 100% certain any of those dumbfucks would have died going through a tenth of what I went through, yet I persist.
What is pt?
Also, amazing story and glad that you’re doing better
Physical Therapy.
Whole lot of my tendons and muscles got torn, shifted into the wrong places and misused as I had to keep moving with the muscles that were not completely fucked, bones broken, etc.
I still can’t really walk for long periods of time without massive pain, but it is slowly getting better.
Thanks for the well wishes =)
A NAS. Godsent when you’re dealing with multiple machines.
Selfhosted VPN, another godsent for bypassing network restrictions or using public wifi.
Electric wire strippers (I do a lot of electronics).
And a low power large work height microscope
The Lance of Longinus has its uses.
Password Manager. I use Bitwarden, which is open source and free.
It’s probably the single most significant quality of life upgrade I’ve had since I started on ADHD meds 5 years ago. I wish I had started using one sooner.
+1 for Bitwarden. My Dad’s password manager actually made taking care of him in the last years of his life alot easier. I essentially had to “wind down” his life (pay bills/debts, close accounts, stop subscriptions, etc), and as his memory was going it would’ve been impossible to get that information from him. With myself too though I’ve got so many dumb accounts all over the place, having a password manager is the only thing keeping me sane half the time when having to log in to everything to pay bills and such.
Cargo e-bike. Errands are fun now and I get way more exercise. It’s hands-down my favorite way to get around town.
I would like one, but I have no space to store it, I live in a two room apartment and the bike storage is only really designed for a normal bike.
I used my normal bike with a bike basket on the parcel holder for shopping, it was brilliant!
No need for a bag, just pack the basket when you have paid, and hook it on the parcel holder.
Sadly I lost my bike during a year when I missed that the bike room was being cleared out and didn’t tag it, so it was thrown out as anandoned, this happened as I had messed up my knee, had double flat feet and double heel spurs.
I now drive my car to the shops bur it’s only one kilometer so it feels a bit dumb, meh I drive on electricity so it could be worse.
Once my situation with my general life stabalize a bit more I’ll looks for a bike.
IMO you only need a cargo bike (i.e. long-tail or box bike) if you’re trying to carry more than one kid. Otherwise, a regular-size bike with a heavy-duty integrated rack should be plenty. They even make some that can carry a lot of weight and fold for easy storage (e.g. this one).
If you occasionally need to carry a lot, cargo trailers are a thing.
No joke, implementing automated MMO style daily quests on my smartphone harnessed my brainrot for productive means. I struggle with depression and ADHD among other things, so before l pretty much never made my bed or worked out, etc. I do all of that consistently now, and I feel all the better for it.
I’ve been looking for a way to invert that and make a number go up instead, and maybe implement gacha, flashing lights and FOMO into my daily routine to really exploit my busted psychology to its maximum.
How do you do that, is there an app?
Plenty, IFTTT for android, Shortcuts for ios.
I’ve got a setup where all reminders with the Daily tag get set to incomplete at 1AM, and all with Weekly tagged get set up on Sunday, etc etc
A longer cable for charging my phone
A lot of things could go there i guess haha, here’s some things I’m thinking of at this moment:
- a dishwasher. I will never go back this is the best invention humans created since the wheel
- AC. Same as above it changed my life
- keybar. This is a nice tool to manage keys and some other tools in a swiss-army like format.
- a good usb-c docking station. I need to jungle between multiple laptops for work, this really helped doing that.
- Going full public transit, bike and carsharing (communauto). Less traffic, and between these options it’s rarely more difficult than a car. And muchhhh cheaper, with gas, maintenance, taxes and depreciation it’s a bit crazy how much you put towards a car. It really helps to live comfortably with my budget.
AC also changed my life. My doctor thought I was dehydrated, but I also had symptoms of over-hydration. Not only did everything about my time at home improve significantly, but I also started sleeping better than I ever had in my life.
No car/public transit was going to be my answer too. Sold my car about 9 years ago and switched to using the bus, carpool, or walking. At first it was a financial decision because I figured it would save me lots of money, and it did. I was surprised though how much more connected to the community I felt. I made friends and talked to people on my commute instead of sitting alone in the car. It also makes me feel more free to move around the city instead of just going from point A to point B and then home again.
Walking/biking is really the best for this, I feel like i live in a city with a community instead of living in disconnected “places”.
Where do you live that public transit is a viable option?
Montreal
Not OP, but in Berlin the situation is the same. Most of my daily ways are done by cargobike, as it is even faster than public transport and public transport is faster than a car.
Finally setup up my smart home. Lights coming on at dusk across my whole house with varying levels of brightness, from nightlight to lighting up the living room. Shutting down everything in my house and arming my security system all with one phrase. Temp automatically adjusting throughout the day/night for better energy savings. It really just made life a little easier in multiple ways. Especially once you realize there are smart IR blasters.
My Hue system is probably one of the best things I ever bought.
I live alone, in a suburb north of Stockholm, so during winters it get really damned depressing to leave the office after sunset, and then get home and open the front door to a dark hole.
Being able to turn some lights on before I open the door has made wonders for my mental health, it makes it feel as if there is someone at home taking care of it and waiting for you to come home.
Then in the mornings, using the lights in my bedroom as an alarmclock in combination with my phone makes me get up far quicker.
And when I have guests over I can set the mood and make my apartment look cool.
Using smart lights as an alarm clock is a game changer. Fades on 10 minutes before my alarm, and lets me wake up slowly and drift in and out of sleep during that interim period. Only occasionally do I go all the way until my audio alarm, and this way is way more pleasant to wake up to.
Got rid of (most) social media. Even only reading about its toxicity makes me uncomfortable.
Same here, only LinkedIn is left and that is pretty boring so it doesn’t cost me much time to check. Sometimes there is a hint of FOMO, but in general I’m really glad I’m not comparing myself to fake happy people or being targeted by crappy ads. Also, there’s all the time I get back. I love it.
Electric wheelchair. After my 2nd heart attack, it became harder and harder to do things in the world. Grocery stores were impossible unless they had scooters of their own, which were usually in use or out of service.
Now I just bring my own.
I use a wheelchair part time, and it’s unbelievable how much starting using one can help when you’re partially ambulatory. I find it funny how able bodied people use phrases like “wheelchair bound”, which perpetuates this idea of wheelchairs being like prisons, but at least for me and a few people I know, finally getting a wheelchair was hugely freeing.
And do you feel like a king/queen in it?
My sister made stickers for the sides so now it says “Majestic AF”
That’s the most aliexpress wheelchair I’ve ever seen
It works great! 17 mile range, automatically folds and unfolds. Has a remote control.
