Dear Jeedz,

We don't know anything about the future, and we cannot act there. We're powerless in the future, and we're powerless in the past. Our entire window of agency is now. And then now. And then right about now.

The sheer duhness of this is actually your best defense. You can remember it very quickly.

So when your brain says:
"I'm going to die friendless and alone."
"I'm going to end up hating this woman I love and wishing I'd never told her that I love her."
"I'm gonna **** up this job and get fired and never earn enough to escape the malthusian clusterhug of scarcity, toil, and violence that seems to be just punishment for being born when the ice all melted and the grass all burned."

You can say, "Maybe. Can't do anything about it. What do I want to do right now?"

For yourself, for your happy life now.

Also, Jin was pretty cool.

Dear DemonDeac,

This time, it went something like: haven't been to OOT in a while since I tried to login during the server hack thingy, wonder how people are, been a while since I did a dear bison, wonder if I could ever get poker players to be therapy clients of mine, man I got some free time this week, two weeks pass, man I got some free time this week, five days pass, I should read OOT and start responding to threads to have it be less weird to just start a threat, oh **** that.

Dear silvio,

Two days of work / week sounds good if you can swing it. What else you gonna do with your time?

Hanster,

Game Of Thrones spoiler talk:

On names: if your name is funny to Americans, or you live in the sticks, there's gonna be a big social incentive to switch. But it's your name. People worth knowing will learn it. You can call yourself Opium Chocolateface or Learned Hand or whatever you want, and give your kids terrible names they'll have to spell aloud one thousand times a day.

Prob sleep, I've been super depressed lately.

Dear Alobar,

This sounds like a case for systematic desensitization, which is gonna work for most phobias. You approach the feared object/experience in a deliberate, gradual manner, gently increasing exposure until the experience is not overwhelming.

A standard example would be fear of dogs. The client/patient would meet with their shrink for an hour each week, and spend some time on something dog related, paying careful attention to their physical and emotional cues for fear/anxiety/embarrassment/whatever. A schedule might be:

Week 1: Think about dogs
Week 2: Read about dogs
Week 3: Talk about dogs
Week 4: Look at a drawing of a dog
Week 5: Look at a photo of a dog
Week 6: Watch a video
Week 7: See a puppy through a doorway
Week 8: Spend time with a puppy in the room, under the control of the shrink

And so on and so forth. The nice thing is, you don't have to talk about why, you just have to take it slow and move towards the next step.

So... what's ok?

Home alone, pooping with the door open?
Peeing at home with someone else home?
Pooping in a single-fixture public bathroom with a lock?
Peeing in a public bathroom with someone else around?

Dear Kioshk,

1. I've heard terrible things about Newsroom but haven't seen a minute of it.

2. Prolly.

3. I haven't read either. At all. Because I am uncultured that's why.

re: poop phobia. put some paper in the toilet before going and you don't get the splash noise. it helped me!

Dear Bison,

I was going to make a thread about my depression so Im glad I saw this thread first.

1. Should I make a thread about my depression? I did a search and there was some good threads about depression, so I suppose I shouldnt be making a new thread about it, I dont want to bore everyone.

2. What would you tell a person who wants nothing from life?

Dear bison,

I interviewed for a job as a software engineer at a large company a few weeks ago. Everything seems to be going well and while I don't have a formal offer yet, it seems I have the job pending final approval from a committee. The recruiter emailed me today to ask what starting dates I would consider. I'm travelling currently and would like to continue travelling for as long as I can, do I have anything to lose by telling them a date slightly far in the future, e.g. November? Will they think that I am not serious about working and possibly reconsider the offer, or just say "sorry that doesn't work for us, the latest date we could consider is x"?

Thanks,

ragip

I think "flooding" might work better. Decide you're going to make the maximum noise possible while taking a dump. Full on screaming, groaning, "who's your daddy" etc. Any subsequent dump will be lot less embarrassing.

It's not every day you see a Learned Hand shoutout.

Dear Bison,
How are things in your world right now? You mentioned wondering if poker players might be your clients; does that mean you are taking clients now? What title do you hold (or will you hold if not yet)?

And most importantly, was my usage of the semicolon correct above?

Dear 27o,

In the last thread you said your frequent frustration (usually with people you found thoughtless/selfish) preoccupied you. You felt like you were wasting your time in anger. I said, in my experience the best way to diffuse anger is to practice gratitude.

Prayer helps me with that, but it's just one practice (mine) for a general human condition of resentment, ingratitude and tomfoolery. If you can get to gratitude via another method, have at it. But who else is gonna let your anger go for you?

Dear Bison,

I used to be a reasonably happy and social person but my life turned to **** in my mid 20's and I became an incredibly negative and sarcastic person. I worked hard and improved my life but I cannot shake my negativity and I can tell it is affecting my relationships with others especially when they first meet me. When I am conscious of this I can put on a happy face but most of the time I look miserable.

How do I fix me?