Quits job and retires early

“You told me to avoid stress…”

Until your meager savings runs out and now the stress level is 100x what it was before

lol y'all have savings?

I love all these YouTube videos, health gurus and influencers encouraging me to sleep a full eight hours.

Y'all motherfuckers have never had children, have you?

not for long at this rate

Definitely not enough at this rate.

Or worked hospitality. These fuckers have never done an AFD or a clopen

Just move to Stardew Valley bro.

Did that for a while, cause I had no choice. Very little stress, for a bit. Till the money starts running out.

The only way for me to avoid stress would be suicide and even then there would probably be some cunt in the afterlife like "nah, nah, nah no rest yet, because you are here early you have to work off the remaining years you should have been alive and then we'll talk about interests, oh wait that's kinda like it is now...

I dissociate via video games.
Shapez2 has gotten it's hooks in me.

Who wants to be decorative anyway?

Christ. My son has a cough, and he crawled up into our bed last night. Spent hours coughing directly into my ear, slapping me with flailing hands, and crying for milk (which he then rejected after it was offered).

I am in an absolute haze this morning.

Go to bed at 9PM, that should work out to around 8h even with kids getting up early and a few interruptions during the night. That worked for us at least when the kids were still infants/toddlers.

Quit my job and moved to the woods and a survival for dummies book.

What do you think the pennies in the jar are for?

They mean dont do high stress hobbies, like maybe don’t race cars, don’t play competitive sports, stuff like that.

But I never have done anything like that? That's like saying just quit smoking to someone who's never smoked. The stress is just from being alive.

Ah yes, keep doing the things that are causing you massive chronic stress but please stop doing that one fun activity your using to charge your batteries cause your hearthrate might go up from it and we cant have you waste your remaining health on something that is not economically useful.

You can choose an adjacent hobby without the same stress level, that’s a choice. Instead of doing basketball tournaments, plays some beer league, or just shoot some hoops. There’s always options.

How are they to know that? It’s general advice for everyone lol.

I mean i was just making a relatable joke for people who know what its like to struggle mentally, this wasn’t an issue that needs solving, but if you cant relate then honestly that is great for you.

My partner has been looking for a hobby that does not burn them out for over half their life that is not “sleeping till next shift”.

Most of these generic kind of suggestion all amount to “have you tried to just not having problems?”

I mean, with the cost of everything, all Hobbies are high stress.

The point isn't the stress level of the hobby, it's that you're expected to drop your hobbies to manage your stress, not your much more stressful job.

She could try not doomscrolling and blasting herself with horrible news and opinions from crazy people on social media for a start

Foraging is a good, low-stress hobby that costs nothing. You get to be out in nature and score free food. Bonus points if the plant you forage for is invasive - then you’re helping the environment, too!

To punish myself for swearing too much

Gollum with his bros.

Their job is to give you the answers not figure out how to integrate them into your life, know if it's possible or how much sacrifice it takes you. Or maybe that's just my experience with doctors, I am poor afterall.

Not all kids sleep a regular schedule, despite their parents’ best efforts. I work with neurodivergent kids and every day there’s inevitably some kid who woke up at 4am, or didn’t fall asleep until midnight, or both.

With a username like that, your worries are completely reasonable.

I mean that's totally on you. Like it's so obvious beforehand that u are not gonna get a lot of sleep once u have children. People nowadays really don't think things through, do they.

That’s rough, buddy.

Hey, copper prices are going up, that's an investment!

What's stopping you?

I couldn't be a juggler because, uh, well I have an impediment, but I turned that into my educational art project where I can teach behind a screen and not, uh, not have that impediment.

I hate to break it to you man, but the point of life isn't work.

Gargoyles are water features. So unless you want to be installed at the end of a gutter and vomit water, I recommend becoming a grotesque instead.

Reminder that every sizable company in the attention economy retains amongst its employees individuals who have the academic and professional background to fine tune their systems to make and keep a vice grip on the attention of it's users/victims, regardless of the negative effects it has on the micro level for an individual victim, or the macro level on society as a whole.

Patient: "Uh, there are systemic reasons I can't avoid stress, doc."

Doctor: (Dusts off hands) "Well, my job is done here!"

Ok, wow, this just made me realize that "gargle" and "gargoyle" share the same "mouth/throat water" origin. Mind blown.

One of my favorite fun facts is that the proper name for a Gothic grotesque that is purely decorative is hunky punk

No if course they don't, neither did ours (youngest still doesn't consistently at 7yo)...both our kids are ND. Key for us is division of responsibilities. One has them in the evening/night, the other takes mornings. Switch around however it fits your everyday schedule requirements. One can covee afternoons if adult naps are needed as well.

This still allows for pretty consistently getting a decent amount of sleep. If you're a single parent, then yeah it's fucked.

Grotesque

On top of that, most of us only get meaningful substantial social interaction at work, if that.

Just "quitting all social media" is tougher than it sounds because deep down humans want to interact with each other, but we often can't! And aside from algorithms, lots of stuff sucks right now, so that's what people are talking about. And that's before we bring algorithms into the equation.

The Internet used to be this wonderful place to reach out and meet other human beings from anywhere, and make friends, and share, and be connected to those other people without being stuck in 100°F heat and traffic or airlines. It was a digital "third place" for humanity to hang out.

And now the main 'net is an unholy, ravenous corporate homunculus that wears the skin of that third place.

We're still mostly physically isolated from the rest of our species unless it's an unpleasant obligation, but the "people" are harder to find amongst all the shapeshifting shills, ads, propagandists, and most of all, bots.

Lemmy has none of those algorithms, and a lot of the articles and posts bum me the heck out, badly, but I still feel the urge to visit because outside of work and my overworked family and busy friends on wacky schedules, I too, am isolated.

That always bothered the heck out of me. Healthwise, jobs are basically society-mandated cigarettes with a ton of "virtue" on the packaging.

• Toxic friends? "Leave them! They're so bad for you!"
• Addiction? "Quit that. It's so bad for you!"
• Chair all day? "Get away from that, go get some fresh air!"
• Terrible job? "Woah woah...let's not be hasty. Do you have another terrible job lined up to take its place?"

But yes, you have a hobby that makes you feel alive but doesn't pay money? Here comes the lecture about "being an adult means..." and "Sometimes you need to make room for important things."

It's no surprise of course. Human success and happiness is not something our socioeconomic systems strive for, in the eons-long game of competing empires. 🙄

Bonus points if the plant you forage for is invasive - then you’re helping the environment, too!

And you can spice things up by calling it "botanical bounty hunting." :D

Love the word "clopen". It's a terrible word and it gets the point across perfectly.

You don't even get to finish "close" before you're already opening. There's no hyphen or breath time in-between.

It's all just mashed together, rushed, and stressful, just like the shift it describes.

Same doctors also started to call teeth "cosmetic only" once they realized they could make a shitton of money from the organs people use to eat.

I would love to unsubscribe from the economy