Super General Advice (the thread for advice without making a thread)

yeah, and those ones I understand! the ones I don't get are the ones who do a lot of exchanges and are still like "what"

eheheh I personally set myself like........kind of dumb and v early deadlines
as in
"get this in the day assignments open"
but to be fair I also end up having to do a TON of pinch hitting soooooo

 

if i could set myself earlier deadlines than the Real deadline, and then actually stick to those deadlines.... then i would see massive improvements to my academics and life :P

but my previous strategy, “be motivated enough by the approaching deadline to write 1-2k words in the last day/few hrs before deadline,” failed me several times this summer and i ended up defaulting. so that bums me out a little, because the deadline is what motivated me to do my assignments, and if it can’t motivate me anymore, idk if i can sign up for exchanges anymore, or at least for a while :/

so i’m sticking to writing treats for now and not actually signing up.

 

that really sucks dude I'm sorry

I don't know if this helps, but for me, my imaginary deadlines have to have some kind of real weight and/or significance to them—like day assignments open, or deadline for defaults—or they don't work

take care of yourself first!! people always love treats though 100%

 

that makes sense. for me it’s just like... my brain goes “not official, no consequences, not real, ignore whenever u want” to deadlines i try to set.

unfortunately this applies to more of my life than just writing. and i don’t even know how to begin fixing it. but i suppose i have bigger problems anyways. like “how do i make myself do things (like writing) on a regular basis that i want to do in a general sense, but that on any given day i usually just ignore and read fanfiction or play videogames instead.”

but treats are always good! i wrote a danganronpa treat for the Trick Or Treat exchange and it went well :3

 

witnessed/winner for that
but treats are good! working without set deadlines, or picking something small and doing it in pieces
we might end up having word wars for the big bang to encourage writing ^ ^

 

oh yeah, word wars are nice! i love how there’s almost always someone up to word war in the yuletide/exchanges discord.

 

i had a checkup at the doctor's office the other day and she requested that i get labs done to test for, among other things, anemia. i was going to go tomorrow but i started my period today. should i wait until it's ended to get the labs done? i'm concerned that my iron levels on day 2 of shark week wouldn't be representative of my normal iron levels.

 

No, doesn't matter whether you're on your period or not. If on day two of your period you're bleeding heavily enough that you dip below the bottom threshold for iron you have one of two problems anyway:
Either you're levels were low enough that they would have pinged as borderline or too low anyway, or you're bleeding so heavily that the bleeding on its own is a problem.

I'd say go get your bloodwork done.

 

Oh, and also @hyrax , it would take more time after your period to get your iron levels up anyway. It's not like they automatically return to what they were before your period. Your body needs time to absorb the iron back from your food.

 

thank you! that's very helpful.

 

I have sensory issues with wearing glasses, they make the bridge of my nose hurt, but my distance vision has deteriorated to the point that I can't read bus timetable signs and cinema screens are blurry, so I really need to wear them. Anyone have any tips?

 

Are contacts feasible?

 

there are also different types of nose pads that you could try, one of them might be less aaaaaa

 

This is highly dependent on your local eye glasses salesperson, but schedule an appointment and just. Try on as many glasses as possible, hopefully with/without nose pads to see if it makes a difference. YMMV because it depends on the salespeople; my family has gone to target optical for as long as I can remember (and we've lived in the same place for ~12 years), so the salespeople there know me pretty well and at this point are able to give me good recommendations (since I've been going there once a year for like. a decade, i think). I used to get a headache from the pressure of the frame in high school, and they were really helpful in picking out a new frame without those problems - in particular, I got to test out frames because if one frame I tried wasn't working well, the saleslady let me come in and switch it out for a different one (I don't remember what she did, but my insurance at the time only covered purchasing one frame for me per calendar year, and then if you needed another frame, there was no insurance to cover it. Whatever she did made it so that the insurance only applied to last pair I went home with, like I'd never purchased the first two I tried out. I don't know if that's a common thing they can do, or just something she did because, again, I've been seeing this woman since I was like 8.)

Anyway, I know nothing about glasses, but the salesperson was actually really helpful for this. I know that she said my issue was needing light frames, but I don't know what you'd need.

 

I really don't want to poke myself in the eye, so I'd rather avoid contacts. Not sure about the nose pads; the glasses feel heavy, is the problem.

 

If your problem is the same as I used to have, it may be that lighter frames would help.

 

There are very thin frames you could try if your lenses don't need to be too thick. They're very light but not very resistant ime but if you are a complete novice they could help. Do you wear sunglasses? They can help getting used to the weight

 

Glasses Direct do a good line in plastic lightweight frames without nose pads, and their lenses are affordable and lightweight even at the lower end - you can get a free trial of frames from their website to see if they suit.

I agree that wearing sunglasses can help get used to the pressure.

 

Ooh, I'll check those out!

Different problem. My mother owns two dogs, and does not have the time to train them. They've been pests for years, stealing stuff and jumping up, but they've started nipping. I am not really comfortable being around them because I'm worried it's going to get worse. Is there a way I can bring this up? I only have to put up with them for one afternoon a week, should I just suck it up for now?

 

I don't have any advice on the social script front, but I can at least say from experience that it's sometimes possible to convince someone else's badly-behaved dog to adjust their behavior at least toward you. While the effectiveness of this will depend on the personality of the dog in question, I've had decent luck stopping the various horrible behaviors Dad teaches or doesn't discourage in the dogs (thanks, Dad) by saying "No" and immediately, firmly removing the dogs from my space. That's how I got the puppy to stop trying to bite my hands when I was gardening because Dad had taught him to bite gloves (thanks, Dad); every time he tried it, I picked him up and set him several feet away from me. Similarly, Mom has stopped all canine wrestling matches from happening in her lap by kicking them off any time they start bickering with each other.

The trick is to make sure you don't do anything that would make their bugging you more fun for them: don't, e.g., flail your hands trying to keep them out of bite-range (exciting moving target! Play time!). Just every time they do something over the line, put space between you. Dogs are social animals; they're pretty likely to figure out eventually that you're signalling that they can't be near you if they do the thing.

This is obviously easier with smaller dogs, but if they're bigger, you've got a lot more rhetorical ammunition that they need to be trained more. A big dog that jumped on, say, an older person could easily knock them down and break bones.