My entire career has basically been an accident. I majored in history thinking I’d be a teacher because it was my favorite subject and I was 18 and didn’t know what else I could do with my life. Three years in, I realized I didn’t want to be a teacher and most history-adjacent jobs didn’t pay a living wage, so I dropped out. A bit later, I started a temp job working for the state because I needed a job and had call center experience, did a good job and managed to get hired full time. Almost 20 years later, I’m doing work I never expected to be doing but it turns out that I like paperwork and I’m pretty good at navigating bureaucracy and explaining it to laymen. Can’t imagine working in the private sector at this point. I eventually finished my degree (in human services this time) but tbh it was mostly just so I’d have one for my resume.

The biggest lesson from all of it for me has been that kids really don’t need to go to college right out of high school, or at all in some cases, and I’m glad the tide is turning on that to some extent. I’ve enjoyed pretty much everything I’ve done in my career and I’ve benefited enormously by not having a “dream job” in mind. Education is great, don’t get me wrong, but so is flexibility and a willingness to learn new things outside of school.

Guess I’m about to commit a bunch of hate crimes, then.

It’s $2350 to renounce, not $10k.

Yeah you didn’t remember correctly at all. The fee to renounce citizenship is ~$2300 for everyone. For the IRS piece, you file a final tax return the year you renounce citizenship, and they check to see if you’ve been compliant and paid everything you owe for the previous 5 years, but the exit tax only kicks in if you’re worth over $2 million, paid an average of a shitload of taxes (like more than twice the US median household income, so most people aren’t going to qualify) over the previous 5 years, or don’t certify that you’re in compliance. IF you have a lot of money, they treat it as though you’ve sold everything you own and calculate what that would be worth, deduct $821,000 (as of last year), then tax the rest of the amount they calculated. Then you’re done, unless you happen to have US income after that.

Apparently, waking up by 6 or 6:30 because my stupid body is on a schedule and we’re sticking to it every day, I guess.

Oh, and laundry. No matter what else I have going on, the laundry never stops.

Same. I stopped eating meat in the mid 90s, was pescatarian until 2019, and have been vegan since. I don’t miss meat at all. I’ll eat an impossible or a beyond burger occasionally because it’s sometimes my only option, but I could just as easily skip them.

I wouldn’t judge anyone else for eating lab meat, though. I don’t have any moral issue with it, it just isn’t something I’m personally interested in.

It’s really dependent on the field. I started a job as a temp and then proved that I was smart enough to do other things, so I got hired permanently, but it wasn’t in the field I was studying, just something I ended up enjoying. There are some jobs where that won’t cut it. Whatever your dream job is might be one of those, but I don’t really believe in dream jobs, so I was open to stuff that seemed kind of weird on the surface. I learned a lot about what mattered to me in a job doing that.

I’ll second what another commenter said about talking to a doctor, because it does sound like this might be more than just disinterest. That said, drop out. Get a job and work for a while. Try different things. The path we think we want in our late teens and early 20s is often very different from where we end up, and that can be a good thing. I finally quit trying to force myself to finish my degree when I was 22 and I wish I’d done it much sooner. I did eventually go back and get a different degree in my 30s, but in the meantime, I worked at jobs I never expected to find interesting and learned a ton while building a solid resume. College is great, but it’s not for everyone, and it’s definitely not for everyone at “college age.”

Cheese with both hot sauce and ranch, or black olive and pineapple. It’s great because no one ever wants to steal any of my pizza.

Yeah but we can do that without the distraction of a movie or show on in the background. Plus, a lot of people really, really want you to love the thing as much as they do, so if you’re not into it, they take it kind of personally, and I’m rarely into it. I don’t show people movies I really love anymore (unsolicited) after realizing that I’d spend the whole time worrying about what they think of it instead of just enjoying it.

The thing is, the reason I haven’t seen anything is because I’m not interested and don’t have enough of an attention span to sit through stuff I’m not super into, so any time someone I’ve dated has been like, “we can watch so many things together!” my response is no thank you.

I see that going so, so poorly for him. He’ll pretty much have to disable comments, but I feel like he’d hate that because he loves attention.

You know when people complain about privileged white men who always feel like they need to make every conversation about them? This is the man. He’s the one we’re talking about. If this isn’t a very late, bizarre April Fool’s joke, he really thinks he did something with this. What an absolute clown.

If it’s laparoscopic, it shouldn’t be too bad. I spent pretty much the whole first week in bed napping off and on, other than short walks every couple of hours. The second week, I worked from home (still in bed) and had to lay down for a few minutes here and there, but felt a lot better. With ice packs and rest, I only needed to take anything for pain the first 4-ish days and then occasionally when I pushed myself a little too hard, and I never needed anything stronger than advil/tylenol.

The only thing I wish I’d done was either taking higher doses of stool softeners or taking a laxative sooner - it’s unpleasant to talk about but trust me when I say your SO really doesn’t want to go several days without pooping when you can’t really push without feeling like you’re going to tear something important.

No one has ever made a grab for natural resources except for the entirety of human history! Can’t explain that.

A long weekend to rest. I had a hysterectomy on the 1st and went back to work last week and by last night I was so sore. I’m feeling a lot better overall but sitting up for 8 hours a day was a lot harder than I expected. Having 3 days where I can lay down when I need to is really nice. Plus, it’s supposed to be really nice out, so maybe I’ll do some of the resting in my hammock.

The deadbeat parent to sovcit pipeline is real.

They’re so stupid. Income Withholding Orders don’t have to come from the court - they’re largely considered the default way to collect child support, and most orders automatically say they’re going to be put in place, so the court has already ordered that the enforcement agency can and should issue them.

The only time we didn’t issue an IWO was on orders that specifically forbade it (and we would go to court to get a new order if those cases were delinquent) or if the non-custodial parent was manually paying on time.

I mean, I have way, way better things to spend $1500 on, but if this dude wants to spend it on being embarrassing, I guess that’s his choice.

Standing up for women’s rights doesn’t necessarily equal creep - that’s what men should be doing. But you’re not wrong that men who are overly vocal about saying they’re a feminist are often creeps. It’s kind of like the Nice Guy thing in my experience - if you have to tell me (ad nauseum) how nice you are, I’m definitely suspicious. Men who are actually feminists don’t usually feel the need to say it 30 times in their dating profile, they’re just out there living it and it’ll be obvious to anyone paying attention.