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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Depending on what you’re looking for “girly” could fit.

    Ex. If a macho man is a “manly man” (which I don’t think is entirely accurate because I think the concept of machismo is much more complex than that), then a “girly girl” would kind of be the equivalent?

    Alternately, “femme” can be used to mean kind of the same thing but more respectfully since “girly” has a rather childish connotation. “Ultra femme” or “High femme” can be used to describe someone that strives for or is the peak of feminity but then… defining what that means is a whole other thing that’s probably just as complex as defining Macho/ Machismo.

    Not sure if this helps but I wish you luck in your search for the word.







  • I’ve written a poem, and a couple stories/ novel length things and I’d say I’m happy with all of them.

    The poem I look back on and think it’s a bit pretentious but it’s a poem and I think all poetry suffers from a bit of “I have the best words” type pretentiousness. It’s deeply meaningful to me and perfectly captures the snapshot of the moment I wrote it so overall I’m happy it exists even if only me and one other person have ever really experienced it.

    Story wise, I have a couple of fanfics I’m varying levels of proud of. There are two unfinished ones for which I’m reserving judgement, two I’m exceedingly happy with and then there’s six or seven more that I’m like “yeah, those may not have been great but they were definitely good”

    The one unfinished project is a trilogy I’m two books into and I think this project will either be my Magnum Opus or a gargantuan effort for little pay off but I won’t know the answer for another year or two.

    Luckily, I enjoy the actual writing part so whether I’m happy with it as a whole doesn’t really matter right now but I hope it turns out to be something I’m proud of. If anything, I’ll have to admire the effort I’ve put in but I hope I can also admire the finished product at the end.


  • I mean, you really are in a tough spot because all these emotions around this desire for connection: the want, pain, grief, anger, sadness are all the ways in which your body/ brain are screaming “I need this” so I can see how the obvious solution would be “I just have to stop wanting it” so that I can make the screaming stop

    but I think what the original comment (and potentially some other comments) are saying is that you maybe have to turn toward the, listen to it, honor it (in a practical sense maybe get therapy or find other social services to try and meet the need in the interim) and then tell yourself that you are going to get your body/ brain what it needs, you’re just going to do in a different way. You’re going to work on things that matter to you, and move forward down that path, instead of the one you are currently on.

    It’s not easy to listen though. Listening means facing a lot of the places that fear comes from. It’s all just very hard and I sincerely hope you find what you’re looking for.


  • I love this response.

    I think a lot of people view the search for a soul mate as a quest to find the person that’s going to love them as deeply and unequivocally as they love themselves but neither of those goals are really… the thing you should be striving for.

    I’m married and I don’t think my husband loves me as much as he loves himself (which might sound sad) but I don’t want him to love me the same way he loves himself. I want him to love me as his partner, as someone who is working alongside him to achieve what we mutually hope to achieve and the things we individually want to achieve.

    There’s a reason that bonds develop during shared experiences. Love comes from doing something with someone, a partnership comes about when you want to do a lot of things with someone. You can have so many meaningful connections working with other humans on things that mean something to you.

    I hope OP can find a path forward where they pursue the things that matter to them and can find connection (romantic or otherwise) in the shared experience that comes from their pursuit.



  • Someone will likely chime in with a more complete answer but the short answer is large therapods had big heads because they needed big strong heads for killing big strong prey.

    If a stronger bite results in more successful kills, that creates a selective pressure towards the individuals with stronger bites. Weak bite dinosaurs die. Strong bite dinosaurs live.

    To get a stronger bite, you need a lot of features. (Ex. more muscles, different structural elements) and this generally leads to heads getting bigger because big heads have more places for muscles and will then bite harder. Plus, bigger heads can bite bigger things (like, bigger necks).

    The opposite is true for the tiny arms. The arms are not tiny because it’s beneficial for them to be that small. They’re tiny because there’s no reason for them to be big.

    If you have two individuals. They both have big powerful legs, and big powerful heads but one also has thick ole arms. If those arms don’t provide any advantage to the individual, then they just cost energy, and put that individual at a disadvantage because they spent energy on arms while the other guy did just as well without them.

    There is a much better, much more science-y answer to this too but I hope this helps in a more basic sense.

    And I bet there are some cool YouTube videos and such on this exact thing if you want to do further research.



  • I use “tired” for any physical stuff that affects my mood, so if I didn’t sleep, or I’m sick, or on my period, those are the days I’m most likely to mark as “tired”

    I can’t remember why I started tracking (I think I was just curious) but I’m going on four years now and it helps a ton with trends and feeling like I’m not just lying to myself when I want to say something like “I’ve been feeling tired a lot lately”

    Like, before tracking, I don’t think I was even comfortable saying I experience depressive episodes because I just straight up didn’t believe it was that bad, but with real data I’m able to see my “happy” levels declining month to month.

    And “tired” is a useful metric in this context because it denotes days that “tiredness” was interceding on my happiness.

    For example, let’s say I didn’t get a lot of sleep. I struggled through the work day. But I went to see a movie with friends in the evening. If I spent a solid portion of my day not aware or caring that I had been tired, I would mark that day as “happy”

    But if I was tired in the morning, went to work, came home, lumped around for a few hours and went straight to bed, I’d mark that as “tired” and if over 50% of my month is days like that, I would want to take action.

    Because I’ve had months with 80%+ happy days, so if I’m noticing my happy levels falling (Ie. 60%, 50%, 40%) I want to do something about it. I want to be doing counselling again, or I want to be going to the gym more, or seeing my friends more often.

    So I guess for me, tracking helps make mood signals more obvious?

    And on a daily level, I think it’s also useful to do that little bit of self-reflection. Like, "yeah, there were some sucky things that happened today, but was it day “bad”? Or was it a good day with bad parts?

    I’d advocate for anyone to try it, with whatever words/ moods make sense to you.

    Thanks for asking too! It’s fun to get to talk about it with someone.


  • I track my mood in a journal and each day and I’ve given myself four options for my overall mood was for the day. The options are:

    Happy Okay Tired Bad

    Perhaps counterintuitively, I mark the majority of my days as “happy” for the very reason you’ve described.

    The vast majority of days, I’m not “happy” by most people’s standards. I am content. But I think it’s actually quite useful to call contentedness happiness.

    For me, marking a day as anything other than “happy” requires some negativity to enter and for it to persist long enough that it spoils the overall contentedness.

    For example, even if I wake up exhausted, depressed and otherwise miserable, if I take a nice long shower, have a cuddle with my husband and watch a show I love, I might still be able to salvage that day from “bad” to “okay”

    I think it’s important that people don’t treat mood as a fixed immovable state. It’s almost always a signal that should be acted upon.