askchapo

Feeling daily like I could come down sick, must be the weather. Got dinner yesterday, felt good to eat a hearty meal after surviving on pizza for a while.

Had a real sudden blizzard in my city, which is way scarier when you work with houseless people. The emergency winter shelters are open but we're struggling to get enough people to run them, and I've been doing a lot of street outreach in the snow.

But in a way I'm happier to be worrying about my local community than about global politics or personal problems. I can cry about that stuff later.

For someone with covid, holding up surprisingly well. Still got a few more days of this shit, unfortunately. Started a "book club" with exactly one friend where we're reading through (all? maybe? hopefully?) of the Chunka Luta Network's "required reading" list, but this covid brain fog is making reading anything really hard. Hopefully I can get my brain to internalize words before thursday

Caffeine is a lot better and useful than alcohol, though it comes with its own problems (still, not as bad as alcohol, I would argue, but definitely something to manage).

As for me, I was just at a pro-Palestine protest all the way in D.C. yesterday. I felt great being there. Met many other CPUSA comrades as well. Joe Sims was there too. He recognized me too from the Peace Conference. God, that was nice. But damn, was it cold! I may have come under-dressed; should've brought my coat rather than a sweater. And it was taking a long time to march as well. We should've gotten going earlier, imho.

Otherwise, I'm trying to get my brother a good chair, like this:

https://www.amazon.com/GTPLAYER-Computer-Footrest-Adjustable-360%C2%B0-Swivel/dp/B0BBPRZHRX/

(Sorry for the Amazon link; I'll try to get it directly from whatever store it comes from.)

Does anyone have any suggestions at all? Any great chairs you can think of?

I need the best of the best because the current chair my bro uses is from the kitchen and he's getting damn tired of it (he's got back issues too).

Thanks in advance!

I nearly sliced my thumb off today with a razor sharp santoku knife. That was fun. Never try to stop a knife from sliding off the counter onto the floor. Just get the fuck out of its way.

It's actually been a pretty shitty and frustrating week. Me and my sister (only family member I'm really close to) have both been dealing with our parents acting fucking toxic as hell. She's unemployed, despite having an engineering degree from a pretty good school. I'm underemployed, trying to go back to school but I'm worried now the thing I'm trying to study isn't going to be as safe as a bet as I thought and I'm debating if I want to waste another 2-3 years on another dud degree. We're both in our early 30s and struggling to have stable lives, which sucks cuz she really wants to start a family with her BF and I really want more freedom and autonomy to travel. Both of us currently kinda live with our parents, well more specifically we both rent properties our parents own that they only live in occasionally but we usually have to ourselves. They're renting to us at a slight lose, but they act like this is a massive act of charity despite the fact they could never get a regular tenant who'd be chill with them crashing in the guest room every other weekend. Both of us are greeting pretty doomer about our job prospects, I'm fed up with the service industry and think I'd legit rather go crust punk than keep doing this, but I'm a little old for train hopping now. My sister is a bit bougier than me so she's struggling with the prospect of going back to being a barista after a decade of (barely) middle class income.

I'm very tired and fed up and honestly it's been making me cranky and I've been lashing out at people which I don't like.

There's a political crisis in my country and I'm still in my department (state) because our leftist presence is really only effective here. Hoping the comrades out there can bring about a change but not expecting much with how liberal most of it is.

In the meantime, I've found a love of making sandwiches.

Idk i really wanna kill myself still and always have, even as a little kid.

Year has started with a flu followed by a gout attack and my throat hasn't really healed and I ran out of vyvanse and it's been really fucking hot (which probably triggered the gout attack), but other than that it's actually been pretty good overall.

Talked with my partner last night and we've decided to start a podcast. I'm an Extremely Online theory-brain and she's a burnt-out former activist, and we both know lots of people in media and activism/organization.

Fien...

Treatment resistant depression. I've been seeing a therapist and shrink for years while being on a rotation of psychiatric drug cocktails and still feel very anhedonic and listless. Thinking of dropping the current therapist and finding another.

On the bright side, apparently some work on a PR I made for an open source project turned out to be useful to the project's maintainers.

In a queer space, I met a lesbian lady who lives in Pakistan and works for the Department of School Education.

For like two seconds I thought this was cool, but she started talking about how "the tribals" in Punjab are all "dangerous" and "keep their girls from going to school", and how the Department delivers USAID textbooks, uniforms, so on. Smelt really bad to me, like this is an imperialist thing right? USAID textbooks were also what the Taliban used in Afghanistan for radicalisation, right?

Worthy to note, I just asked her about what she does and how it gets done, I did not unhinge my jaw and spew forth a DOG OF THE USAMERICAN EMPIRE rant, because you know what they say about No Investigation. I do have something like a filter. It was kind of surreal to be sniffing out western propaganda in realtime while talking with this queer woman from Pakistan though. Plus, it was kind of irritating to have libs chime in all UR DOING A SERVICE FOR UR COUNTRY on something that fucking reeks of pinkwashing & homonationalism.

Your thoughts please, thread.

Twiddling my thumbs waiting for feedback on my big book draft. I sent out the final section to a few people I know and their responses have all been really positive but they are not strangers and so I worry they won't be able to read it objectively, even if they try.

Still in a weird purgatory of having done a lot of work on it but having very little "proof" that it's good enough for publishing. The idea of my book being on a shelf still feels like a fantasy, but my good feedback so far has at least been from pretty serious readers.

Got myself some of that 2024 vintage COVID

I've been having panic attacks all weekend and I'm really over it.