What's a life lesson you learned the hard way that you'd want to share with others to help them avoid the same mistake?

You know something that helped me exercise regularly was.. "you're going to be scrolling through your phone. Might as well do it while on the treadmill/peloton/etc"

Don't try to have a good diet and workout routine, try to regularly improve your diet and workout routine.

The best workout routine is the one you can stick to. Plenty of people online will tell you that to lose weight you need to be doing cardio in a certain heart rate zone or to gain muscle you need to weight lift a certain way. That is technically true, but useless. A great workout routine is just walking for half an hour each day. It is a much more realistic goal for out of shape people and simply getting your heat pumping and your muscles moving regularly will get you most of the health benefits you need.

Same thing with diet. A keto or intermittent fasting diet may be the fastest way to burn fat, but they are very hard to stick to and when you break them, you will be so hungry that you will eat enough to gain back all the weight you lost. A more realistic plan is to cut out a sugary beverage from each day and to make sure that every meal includes a vegetable high in fiber. Once that is an established habit, build on it with other small changes that move you closer to a healthy lifestyle.

I heard the same advice about investing for retirement. This feels like a glitch in the matrix.

I work a very sedentary career and don't have a ton of energy after work/kids, but I've found having an under the desk pedal cycle to use during the day has done wonders for my physical and mental health.

But don't switch completely to a healthy diet all of a sudden, do it slowly. Otherwise your body may not handle the drastic change and you may get health issues (mine was a belly button infection 🙃).

This one is painfully accurate. And doubled if they cheated on their ex. It's not romantic, you're not in a movie. They're a shitty person who cheated on their partner. They will do it to you.

if they'll cheat with you, they'll cheat on you

This. This one was a rough lesson to learn.

Can't confirm. I've had lucid dreams, where I'm aware that it's a dream, but not in control.

Then I started just pissing everywhere. And I could feel my sweatpants getting soaked. And then I shit myself. And in the dream I'm panicing because I know it's happening in real life. I'm very aware that when I wake up my sweatpants will be piss soaked, and I have shat myself. I can FEEL it happening as it happens. Then I wake up. No shit. No piss. Totally dry, and I IMMEDIATELY need to get to a bathroom. Where I shit and piss in the toilet.

And then I stand up, and there's no shit or piss in the toilet. And I'm like "WTF??? Am I just groggy? What the hell is happening???"

Then the toilet starts talking. "FEED ME YOUR TASTY POOPS!!!" And I'm like what the fuck is going on? Am I on drugs???" And this toilet is getting angry that I won't shit in it's mouth. Then it starts stomping around like the piano from Super Mario 64.

Then I wake up, and IMMEDIATELY need to piss and shit. So I run to the toilet, and yell at the toilet "ARE YOU GOING TO DEMAND I SHIT IN YOUR MOUTH??? I KNOW YOUR TRICKS, TOILET!!!"

And thats when I hear my neighbors laughing, because the walls are thin, it's 3AM, and they now think I'm crazy.

This has happened several times. I hope I never meet my neighbors.

What about if there's a fire, can I use the hose to put it out?

I once avoided asking my father for money for the dentist, out of pride, as a tooth infection was developing.

By the time I finally did break down and ask him, it had advanced to the point where my nervous system got permanently altered by the pain levels I experienced.

I finally broke down and asked him when it got too much for me to handle. But by that time, it wasn’t at its peak yet. The pain peaked after I started the antibiotics.

I guess the lesson was: a problem will continue to develop after you take steps to solve it. In my case, waiting until the pain reached a level I couldn’t handle meant that the maximum pain level was well above what I could handle.

The lesson I learned is this: The problem does not go away magically the moment you decide to ask for help. So don’t wait until the last second to ask for help.

Like, call the fire department long before the fire gets out of control.

Oh my GOD yes. The pain now is a FRACTION of what it'll be the longer you put it off! And trust me, at some point you will be forced to go if you don't choose to go yourself. Just go. They won't judge you for starting now.

Currently the non-availability of dental care in the budget is the biggest visible sign of poverty.

Remember that while dentristry is an essential service, it is mercenary and thus priced out of reach of our bottom 30%.

Some things are important, but importance is only half of the prioritization.

Also, floss.

I like to measure costs in dollars per hour, similar to this. So what if that hobby item is 400 dollars. How many hundreds of hours will you get enjoying it? So like, a dollar an hour.

A movie you don't care about seeing? 20 dollars for 2 hours. Maybe hold off.

Agreed and agreed. But an addendum regarding mattresses: No matter what the salespeople tell you, most mattresses with pocketed coil springs are pretty much the same apart from hardness, especially with a compensating mattress topper. Just get one that feels right to you, definitely don't think that more expensive=better, mattress-wise.

More money advice: Most things come in two tiers worth purchasing: "nice" and "wow".

"Nice" are the things experts deem good enough, or clothes-wise ones that you can see yourself actually wearing across multiple years, both durability- and appearance-wise. Affordable, and you like them. A useable placeholder, if you will.

"Wow" are the things that you've been steadily dreaming of for years, or ones that catch your eye even if you weren't looking. "Buy it for life" stuff. Solid whole wood furniture, that teapot or coffee maker you've been dreaming of. A designer winter coat that only costs 20 times your old one. 🫣 On these you look at the price tag after; you want it, you get it, and if it breaks, you repair it. If it's affordable, or if you find more than one of these every 1-3 years, consider yourself very lucky.

Nothing below "nice" is worth getting, and very few things between "nice" and "wow" are worth getting.

I dropped 200 euros on a split ergonomic keyboard and it fixed my shoulder pain from typing excessively.

I push people in wheelchairs for a living. I roughly walk 6-10 miles a day. My shoes are 2-3 years old, and literally falling apart.

And I'll keep wearing them until a week AFTER they fall apart! I got duct tape!

I invested in an Areon chair and have zero regrets. Best decision I ever made. I work as a software engineer, and also game in my spare time. So sitting around is a lot of what I do unfortunately.

Can confirm on the shoes. Whatever else needs cut back, as long as you can afford rent and food and gas to get to work, buy good quality shoes. Not all expensive shoes are good, but good shoes are not cheap. Second hand good shoes that are your size are very very rare. Upgrading insoles can get you by for a while, but there's nothing like good quality shoes.

Also, if your parents were abusive, be deeply skeptical of “love at first sight”.

The most amazing connection I ever had with a partner led to the worst abuse I’ve ever experienced.

I've heard a 'crush' being described as an absence of knowledge about the actual person you are fixated on. It reminds me of the story Robert Pattinson told where he took his stalker out to lunch, bitched about his life for an hour, and then never saw her again!

In my case:

If you're falling in love with someone who's "perfect", you're probably falling in love with someone who has an undiagnosed mental illness and is very good at pretending to be the person she thinks you want her to be, for a while.

She will spend the next 6 years making your life very, very miserable.

Where the fuck were you 30 years ago??? I was in 8th grade, and I was OBSESSED with (girls name redacted).

14 year old me saw wedding bells, and wild sex nights, and babies, and a house.

40 year old me knows I was just horny, and she was just putting out horny flirty vibes. I don't even know her favorite food!

This doesn't apply to software engineering. No one cares that your code is shitty if you can deliver within the unrealistic deadline set by PMs. Just ship it, claim gains, get promoted, and quickly move on before the shittiness of the code catches up with you.

my wife is nodding over my shoulder

Unless production is down. Then it is often the reverse.

disagree. you can very well be rewarded for speed/reaction time in many jobs. dunno where you live but but there are piecework wages in many jobs.

OMG, so good!

tldr, track record

Also don't expect to do it well the first time. Skills take practice to develop. Practice with those tools before you apply them to expensive materials for the thing you really want to make.

This also applies to software engineering and farming, from experience.

This is true. The book "why does he do that" is a fascinating look into how abusive people (mostly but not always men) operate.

Goes to the point of WHAT?

Also, after breaking with my parents, and telling my kids I love them, I realized how very rare it was for my father to tell me he loves me. So, tell people what they mean to you and that you love them because it might not seem like much at the moment, but it means a lot in the long run.

Some people can't do that because their parents will use that against them. They love their parents but need to maintain a certain emotional distance so they don't leverage that for emotional blackmail.

Holy shit, are you me? We're going through the same thing. A not close friend of mine got evicted so his landlord could renovate his apartment and he has been living with us for six months now, for free. He stays in his room and plays video games all day, every day. He has no job. He subsists on dry cereal unless we feed him. He barely interacts with us. He doesn't do anything to help with chores, instead agreeing to assist and then just "forgetting". He sleeps from 6 am to 2 pm and is up all fucking night. We only know if he's awake because we can hear him playing games.

We told him two months ago that he needs to leave by now but he still has no job and no prospects. My wife, him, and I are in our fifties. We have a 55 year old child.

Seconded.

I had a mate who didn't speak with his parents, lost his job and left his partner.

Took him in, rent free for 6 months. Got him on his feet, he got a new job and 6 months later he left... With my 10 year relationship. And my cat (but to be fair my ex was a vet so it made sense that she took him)

I thought he was a friend.

I had a similar experience, took a friend in for about a year after he lost his job. He just spiraled deeper into depression, I burned a ton of social capital trying to get him out of the house to make friends. He spray painted things on my patio without putting down a drop cloth, broke things inside the house, constantly complained about how crappy or small my house was, while never paying a penny towards it. He was just constantly grumpy and rude, and was completely shocked when I asked him to move out. He kept saying how it was good for him to live with me and just couldn't conceive that it was awful for me.

And start it backward, slowly. You can feel the thread drop in. Then start to turn the right way.

Works with threads in plastic as well so the metal screw doesn't make new ones.

care to elaborate?

Yep. Look after your teeth folks.

I'm sick of following my dreams, man. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with em later.

Also research the downside first. Some "dream jobs" are marketed that way for a reason.

Now I wonder if I even have dreams... Damn

Was it your butthole?

Ouche...

Not really the case if you are trying to open phones nowadays...... 🙃

Does not apply to stuck jars, ofc

Although there is usually a better way then just muscling it

I'd worry more about disappointing your future self than your parents.

idk man I've seen some pretty bad tattoos

Per your advice I got a tattoo of Anna and Elsa 69ing on my cheek, thanks!

And like all skills, will develop as you do it more and more. If you’re new to cleaning and you suck at it, don’t despair. Just keep trying.

"The world is made by those who control their own destiny. It isn't made by those who don't do, it's made by those who DO do. Which is what made me the man that I am. I do do."

Same...

Not just, "change your oil at the recommended intervals", but "change your oil annually, even if you don't reach the service interval". If you car is going to be sitting for an extended period of time, drain the tank, run the car dry, put the battery on a tender, and change the oil before you start it back up. (Reason: most gas in the US has ethanol in it, and ethanol is hygroscopic. Water in your engine is bad. )

..........although not true of poop.

I feel this. I recently hit 10 years on my steam account and kinda came to the realization that "I've spent thousands of hours in some of these games and what do I have to show for it?" So I've been cutting back on my time gaming, and trying other things.

It sucks though because video games are one of the cheapest hobbies. Spend about $500-1000 on a decent gaming computer every 3-10 years then $20-40 here and there on games as they tickle your fancy

But I've developed a joy for fitness which is cool. I started biking and on March I struggled to make it around the (very hilly) 1/4 mile block but now I'm biking 8 miles a day.

Anyways I'm looking at the finances and barring some unscheduled catastrophe, I should be good to start a more expensive hobby actually making stuff next year...I hope

also if you're married and spouse goes back to work, make sure you get the withholdings correct. otherwise it's a hefty chunk you'll owe April 15th

I've had the opposite - they marked me down as having 2 jobs (originally started as a part timer) so I was paying way more than I needed to. Only noticed when my refund went over a grand.

You could also be autistic and have the same experience like me or even both

Important note: just because at some point you felt attraction to people of opposite sex, doesn't automatically disqualify you from LGBTQ

I'm not feeling that I have failed but that the whole model of gender and sexually are flawed. So, in my opinion, society has failed me.

Citation on that? I'm sure it's possible, but weirdly-specific percentages with no citation make me suspicious.

In in my, it was just a lot of factors of upbringing and had really weird ideals and probably a dash of neurodivergence that combined to give me this feeling. Getting out of the environment I was in, getting some mental help, etc. solved that for me.

It feels more like a deployment. There are mission objectives and your team is okay most of the time, but your time is never your own.