balancing seriousness and playfulness, exploration and diligence, being an individual and a network node
I don’t have it in me to be grateful for positive things, I can only praise the absence of problems.
I am always teetering on the edge of doing this, not because I think it’s a good idea, but just because I really, truly love fruit…
If you desire romantic companionship, start by making non-romantic friends?
I tend to agree. For me, an otherwise unfulfilled person looking for a fulfilling successful romantic relationship is kind of like a poor person trying to become a millionaire. You should take care of your basic needs before aiming for something that, probably, few people ever realistically get to have.
That said, overwhelmingly, what I want is friendship (love and understanding) but it’s much, much harder to find ways to meet people for friendship than a romantic relationship. There is no friendship app on the same level as the dating apps. People who want to get in my pants text back much more reliably than potential friends I meet even irl. I shouldn’t complain because having a lot of suitors is a pleasant problem to have but I work unsociable hours and on more days than I care to admit, the only human contact I get outside of work is on dating apps, which is not a happy situation for me.
Had to scroll down so far to find ESL. This is a truly excellent tool for a language learner if working as intended. If it were available to create graded reading materials in many different target languages it would be worth its weight in gold.
Can I ask how you ended up there in the first place? I can scarcely think of a more interesting place on earth.
How integrated are you into the local community? How well do you speak the local language? I’m a foreigner living abroad and I would never trust either my own perception of this place nor 99% of other foreigners’ perceptions.
Surprised by how hiɡh up Mexico is!
Hey, the link expired, can you make another?
Personally I’m fundamentally disconnected from any meaningful relationships with living things (people, animals, plants, the landscape) and addicted to the internet as a replacement. The only times I haven’t felt the way you described is when I had social scaffolding around me. (And the wherewithal in terms of time and energy to pursue “self-actualisation.”)
I don’t know, I always think about an extremely competent woman living a self-sufficient traditional lifestyle with all the skills to survive who just stopped eating after her grandchildren had to run away abroad. A life is a complex thing and it takes a lot of things to be tuned just right for a person to be functional. It’s even too simple to say “we find meaning in social relationships” or whatever, we just need the right system of incentives and comforts and pleasure and pain and there’s no single formula.
I was self-actualising when I had love, understanding, time, and money. Now I’m missing some parts of that package, and none of them are things you can just will into existence, especially not at the cost of other things.