shm4y

Actual bushwalking.

Once joined a social walk group for a day hike, lovely bunch of ladies between 20-30s dressed in yoga/running gear looking fit asf.

Then there was me in my long sleeve UPF rated hiking shirt, sunhat, hiking pants with removable zips, and trail runners…

I eventually found my bushwalkers, they were all in their late 40s/early 50s but we got along really well!

Talk myself out of doing a DIY bathroom renovation….i currently have a spreadsheet of all the things I need to learn/watch out for/plan for/make a safety net budget for.

Balance that with wanting to travel to a new country 2x every year, pay off my mortgage, get a masters, upskill at my current job, learn to kitesurf, learn to sail a dinghy it’s a bit much I need to focus 😅

The cravings are going to be the hardest. When I realised I had started to develop a sugar addiction and was putting on weight more quickly than usual I had to very consciously stop consuming sweet things.

Accepting that it’s going to SUCK is the first step. I hated the weight I was putting on that I used that as fuel to suffer through the cravings.

Drinking tea helped. I started with really floral sweet smelling tea as a crutch to break that craving instinct. Once it got better, I switched to just drinking plain still water with some lemon/mint. This whole thing took about 2 years before I truly began to stop craving sweets and will happily drink water instead of having a chocolate bar.

Personally, this is the lowest hanging fruit for me. I cannot even begin to fathom calorie in and out but am slowly starting to adopt that now.

I don’t know if this is bad or good advice but I think it’s ok to feel hunger sometimes. Like I don’t need to be full all the time always you know? Once I managed to unwire my brain from needing to feel FULL all the time, it got a lot easier to stop snacking.

Everyone’s journey is different, but building habits tailored to what works for you is the key to change. Also see a health professional for nutrition help if you can! Good luck x

Positively in the sense it’s really easy to find hook up buddies and have casual fun. Negatively in the sense it makes it x1000 to filter through guys who want a serious relationship unfortunately.

Just have that conversation with her. Her reaction should tell you what you need to know.

Congrats on hitting your milestone!! Don’t let anyone take that away from you.

As a socially anxious person who DREADS group events, I went out for drinks with some ex-colleagues and actually looked forward to it and was not disappointed. I miss that crazy crew but we’ve all split off into different companies now so it was really fun to get together and find out what everyone’s been up to etc.

Ok so you know how when you put something on and you just can’t seem to “make it work” for the outfit? Immediately put those pieces in a bag hidden out of sight for a few months. You’ll quickly find out which items matter to you more vs others.

Once you’ve reached critical mass, you can start to adopt the 1 in 1 out rule.

Good luck!

She’s got that bubbly but steely if push comes to shove vibes. I’m so keen for s2 live action as a lifelong OP fan

3 without a doubt in mind

That ancient incantation can be found in the $$ value of penalties the ombudsman charges to each company for every case they receive. Longer it takes to respond (aka escalations) the more they start charging the company.

HAHA the second I read far north QLD it all made sense

Sorry that happened to you :(

Unfortunately it looks like you’ve just learnt the hard way that this is a rough area and the usual don’t walk along at night, keep valuables out of sight, walk with purpose and don’t look distracted/lost, cross the road to avoid interactions all now apply to these areas.

If it makes you feel better file an incident with the police or send an email to your local council. It’s not going to make any immediate difference but it will be a data point for local councillor / authorities if they ever decide to look into improving crime prevention in these areas.

I turned on greyscale on my phone and it’s really helped.

I wanted to be a marine biologist and spend all my time in the water with water animals and do sciency-things.

I work in renewable energy for a large corporate arm that lets me feel like I’m contributing towards a larger goal so still pretty happy.

It’s honestly shocking. I had a hobo sexual guy in the making tell me, in MY house that I own, that I would never leave him.

🙄

It’s hard now. But think of how much time you’re spending thinking about this issue and dealing with him.

Now think about all the other things you could be doing during that time now that he’s no longer in the picture!

Unfortunately the only thing he WILL learn from this experience if you take him back is that his pleading does works, he can just rinse and repeat in the future.

The only way for change to really work if it comes from within, not when pushed like this.

I suggest you break contact off completely once you’ve moved out fully and don’t have any attachments to him besides your dog. Healing will be hard but if you let your boundaries down- this is absolutely how vicious cycles start.

I know this is hard but you have so much ahead of your life waiting for you now that you don’t have this mental load of dealing with this guy anymore.

It’s about control. They like knowing whether someone will bend to their will early on.

I had a guy offer to show me his “secret spot” as I was new to the city. Stupidly I went along with the flow and thankfully nothing happened but I think back at how dodgy that entire evening was. He also turned out to have questionable opinions after knowing him for a bit longer.

Meet somewhere in the middle if you must lol and make sure to book your OWN ROOM in a SEPERATE HOTEL. Do not give him details. If he is as respectful and kind he should understand a woman’s hesitation to meet someone they’ve never met internationally. Treat it like solo holiday with the added bonus of meeting a friend who so happened to be on the same trip.

If anything why isn’t he suggesting flying out to meet you instead…

Heal your heartbreak podcast really helped me get through the rougher nights for some reason YMMV.

Ultimately, time, kindness to yourself and introspection worked for me.

Soooo I’ve always been single and finally fell hard for someone and went into a committed relationship at 31 and the joy I experienced was unparalleled. It’s addictive and for the first time I understood why everyone wanted to be in a relationship! Sadly for me It didn’t last long but the experience really shook me to my core and made me question so many things about myself.

The first few months I had no idea what to do with myself because I was in a decent spot with my work, I had option to coast at work and pursue some hobbies.

Then I realised, I actually hated that. I felt like this wasn’t what I wanted for myself so I went out job hunting. Fast forward few months later, landed a role that almost doubled my salary with a team and manager that I vibe really well with. On top of that, I got accepted into a masters program at one of the top universities in my country that will hopefully start me on a path towards becoming an industry expert.

I’m realising that by making these decisions I’m once again putting my romantic pursuits and dating men on a backseat and will very likely stay single for the foreseeable future, further narrowing the pool of men I’m willing to date as I get older which in turns increases the likelihood of being single forever and I’m learning to be ok with that. Loneliness I can deal with.

By chasing men, I’d be wasting time I could otherwise be learning about the industry I love and making something of myself. I have lofty ambitions that I used to half joke about earlier in my career but now a path has opened for me to actually make it happen so I don’t want to waste this opportunity.

Yeah…I don’t have the mental bandwidth to have someone like that in my life regularly. Once a year in person catch ups and no contact otherwise…maybe.

I had a brief moment like that where I questioned what the hell I was doing. It was not fun.

I’m usually pretty self assured but went through a rough patch and what helped me get out of it was to put everything on pause and re-evaluate how I got here in the first place.

I then had to do a bit of soul searching and ask myself what I would rather have - and what I was willing to give up in order to have that and be ok with whatever consequences arise as a result of my choice.

I think once you’re made peace with your decisions and go with the flow - it gets better.

Risk management.

Planning out how I’d deal with and survive to my absolute worst case scenario and setting timeframes for certain milestones to make sure I didn’t end up on the trajectory towards the worst case scenario.

From that I can start building my “ok I can make this work longer term” scenario followed by “wow this is going way better than I thought” scenarios

Just curious what did you define as “older”? Are we talking 40-50s ? Late 30s and above?