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"Actually, I'm better. Goodbye!"

PETER SAM

“I'm Peter Sam, I'm running this line! I'm Peter Sam, I'm running this line!”

And aside from some potentially troubling baggage, I don’t even think that’s what’s going on in the first place! I think the more precise (but admittedly less catchy) term for “poor reading comprehension” is something along the lines of chronic incuriosity, or a rigid adherence to normative thinking. if you see a post saying, for example, women shouldn’t have to wear makeup to be viewed as human beings, and the comments are filled with “actually you can just wear some winged eyeliner and foundation it’s not that hard to wear makeup and also women love makeup stop gatekeeping,” what is happening is not a failure to comprehend the text in front of them. these responses are not made in ignorance, as in, they are not the result of a failure to understand the sentence they just read. these responses stem from a refusal to challenge base assumptions, and reacting emotionally to the mental dissonance this causes (probably something along the lines of “I think of myself as progressive but this person is challenging something I like doing and this threatens my weak political instincts”). These people are rejecting the opportunity to analyse the habits and behaviours they previously assumed to be non-political (eg, wearing makeup), and then externalising that rejection as a defence mechanism. That is not a failure to read a sentence, that is a demand to be intellectually coddled, which is very different.

Shout out to people who’s doctors told them they should just “deal with it” and instead they went out and bought mobility aids.

You deserve to live a full life, regardless of pain or fatigue or balance or heart rate or anything else holding you back.

You deserve to be able to leave the house, not just to buy groceries but also to go shopping and to buy stuffed animals and to go to the park.

Some desperate remnant of his soul knows what he needs. As soon as his debt is cleared, he goes on to live what many would call an utterly charmed life: working no more than 20 hours a week, travelling and spending time with friends (which he, at $150,000 a year and no mortgage, has ample money to do). He has a loving relationship also.

But his brain is so rotten that he cannot understand happiness anymore. He is incapable of conceptualising it other than in money.

A man who has everything except the ability to feel it.

How poetic.

Which means that when he says he regrets the months he didn’t pick up more hours to earn more money, what he’s describing here is boredom. He’s doing it in the crassest, shallowest, most income-obsessed and unattainable for most of us way possible, yes. But this man is expressing that once he achieved a certain financial goal he relaxed, enjoyed himself, got bored, realized on some level he was understimulated, and then started working more hours to meet whatever stimulated activity threshold he personally needs. 

This is infuriating because this man experienced the counter-argument to that nonsensical talking point that if we meet people’s financial needs with a universal basic income they’ll grow lazy and won't do anything. 

Anyone trying to develop $200,000 in passive annual income is not working three minimum-wage jobs to live paycheck-to-paycheck. This man’s basic financial needs were met. Working more hours to make more money is just his own personal code for ‘I still needed to use my mind to do things’ (using what might be the only metric of personal achievement he might actually have). This man lived the argument for universal basic income and I genuinely don’t think he realizes that. Once his basic income needs were met he still needed to do things to keep himself stimulated and engaged with his own life.

Actually, the claim that HRT doesn’t do much after puberty is a myth.  I started when I was 31 years old and now I’m 35. =)  

It’s never too late.

The top two pictures are from 2011, age 32. The bottom three are from this yeah, 2016, age 37, and (almost) 2 years on hrt. Hrt is magic.

Never.

bread.