Sisyphean is the word I’ve come back to a lot myself since my wife took her life on November 6, 2024. Feeling like I’m now trying to live for both of us, grasping at ways of honouring her memory despite the incredible love we had being unable to “save” her, and somehow not at all myself anymore, but having to keep moving forward feels hopeless beyond belief.
I lost my dad suddenly just two months prior, and my grandma shortly before that, but the loss of your partner (and in this manner after she refused help and I watched helplessly as she spiralled in her last year) eclipses any grief or pain I had experienced before or could have even imagined.
But I wanted to show a little appreciation for the OP and others on here sharing their devastating losses. Knowing love inevitably turns into grief but that that is a more universal experience makes me feel a little less alone. Small blessings but at points like these, we take whatever morsels we can get.
I sympathize. I won't offer platitudes. I find those don't lessen grief.
My son took his own life on February 1st, 2023. I feel like someone took a huge melon baller and scooped out the middle of my chest. My wife and I had been trying to get him back on his feet for two years at that point. He died quietly about 10 feet from me. The family cat kept trying to get me to open his bedroom door. I kept trying to respect his privacy. I finally took her hint.
He was the best person I knew. I imagined vicariously living a much better life through him. I still feel like a fragment of my former self. He was a sometime contributor here, by the way, under jwmhjwmh.
Anyway, I give my love to everyone here sharing stories of their losses. I find sharing memories of these loved ones is more comforting than platitudes, and certainly more healing than pretending nothing happened.
I can only imagine such a loss based on my own, and from the many conversations I’ve had with my wife’s mum as well, trying to be the best supports we can for each other.
I would describe my wife similarly, it sounds like. Kind, value-driven, cared too much, was the biggest personality in the room but somehow always made people feel seen and heard. But also deeply troubled and hid a lot of it, even from me I’m discovering.
Sending love your way as well. I agree, platitudes or things like “they’re in a better place now” or “looking down on us” make me only feel worse, but genuine compassion does help feel like the weight isn’t on our shoulders alone, even for a little rest.
Brother, I can't say anything that will make it better, but all I can offer is what gets me through grief that I've been living with for 20 years: They wouldn't want me to carry it like this. They always wanted the best for me, and walking around like a husk, missing them isn't it.
Thank you. It’s definitely the living definition of hell, a constant panic attack for a past you can’t change, but it’s also only been 3 months and I’m discovering resilience and supports I’m so thankful for.
I also decided to go visit one of our favourite places (Thailand) to get away for a bit, meet up with a friend, do some writing, and make some new memories here. It’s been really hard at points but definitely healing too.
Ah I'm crying. Thank you both, for your honesty. These little bits of stories feel like reserves I hope I never need so badly, but I likely will, and so I'm grateful.
I was 14 when, within months: my mom's dad died, my dad died, my mom was diagnosed with the melanoma that took her 7 years later, a fire took the longtime family home. And she developed trigeminal neuralgia - a 9-10 for pain and she had it on both sides of her face. All of this impacted her. And us. For her part, she carried on with work and managing a family.
Fast forward. Well into my own marriage, my wife spiraled into mental health issues that subjected the kids and I to decades of sabotage, abuse and ceaseless, exhausting catastrophes.
I too learned that when I am hallowed out, I can continue on. When I am beyond my own help, someone else might not be and there might be something I can do. At this point, helping others is pure self preservation.
John, I'm a perfect stranger but I send you a big hug and lot of love.
I can only thinly scratch the surface of what you went through with my mind, and it's already the scariest thought I could possibly have in my life.
You're still in the valley. It does seem Sisyphean and it will for ahwile. I went through this in 2021 and it took a few years to get to the point where it doesn't feel hopeless.
You won't be the same person after, but in some ways that's good. Highly recommend grief counseling. Feel free to reach out if you need help from someone who has been through it.
Thank you. I’m definitely still very “in the valley” since it’s only been a few months, but I am in counselling which helps. And I’ve lost close friends to suicide and addiction in the past, so going through those before has helped me not feel quite so lost, at least knowing how to be gentler with myself this time.
There's an unavoidable amount of guilt. I should be remembering them more, I should be honouring them by keeping them in my thoughts, but I can't think about them 24/7 and now I feel guilty that I'm doing them a disservice. The callous answer is life goes on and you need to go on with it. The friendlier answer is you have to give yourself permission to live for yourself, thinking about them only some of the time is still keeping their memory alive. It can help to have a representation, be it a specific day like their birthday you assign to their memory or a physical item. I lost a parent when I was a teenager, it turned my world upside down, I found what helped was having a thing as dedication to them. It let me compartmentalise the emotion to that object and gave me permission to not think about them all the time because they're being remembered by that item existing. It's not easy but does get easier, ultimately just be kind to yourself. It's not a quick process.
Snarky comments I’m seeing here aside, this merits serious discussion. Does this affect software sales, in-app purchases, services? A lot of us with a lot hanging on the line right now.
Thank you, that's exactly why I raised the question. What does it mean for our global partners who are providing their expertise? Would we need to pay 25% surplus for consultancy services and imported software? Would be great if someone here could share their expertise.
The hard part is that except for the insiders using the drama to enrich themselves, nobody really knows.
My guess is that POTUS, who fancies himself a master negotiator, will try to leverage this to get some concession to declare victory and grift some money - the markets are going to crash and I’m sure the whole Trump, Elon, and the billionaire family and their orbit has pits and short sales in for next week.
The question is what will other countries do? Targeting software is an obvious way to inflict pain on the US government.
You and I are pawns. For you, the smart move is to be prepared to slash your costs quickly. That means figure out what costs you can slash. Have an idea of who to lay off, what contracts to terminate, and what services to drop. If you depend on foreign partners, how do you afford a higher rate or replace them with someone in your jurisdiction? The goal is survive to fight another day if you depend on foreign trade or on US business of you are outside the US.
All of this sucks and will hurt a lot of people. But it’s outside of your control, accept that and don’t blame yourself.
I’ve been slashing costs since 2020. More so because I thought the bottom was going to fall out of tech salaries and I didn’t want to have to chase BigTech comp.
I spent a year paying off debt after working for BigTech remotely (no longer there), moved to a condo 1/3 the size of our house in tax free Florida after our youngest graduated.
Our budget now as far as fixed expenses is only 3.5% more now than it was after we first paid off all of our debt at the end of 2020 even though inflation is up 21% since that time.
This creates the impression that we can provide for everything ourselves. The reality is that we need global service and consultancy partners for the kind of work we are doing.
I don't disagree with a lot of what he says here, but I feel like too many people in Silicon Valley are hyper-fixated on the conformity and enforcement coming from the left, while ignoring and even stoking the flames of anger and conformity on the right. Particularly his points on news, because much of the news is now heavily skewed to the right.
PG would do well to reflect similarly on the rise of the right wing equivalents and recognize that they're the ones actively stymying progress on many of the critical issues of our time.
Indeed. Search was working reliably for me for a while using gpt-4o via the API then yesterday suddenly stopped altogether right when I needed it. Hoping this fixes it soon.
I gained about 50 lbs in my 20's by getting a sedentary job and eating poorly after moving out on my own. I spent a solid 2 years trying to lose weight by working out actively and lost nothing. When I changed my diet, I dropped it all over time and kept it off for the last 15+ years.
I tell people I know trying to lose weight to separate the ideas of exercise and diet, but few listen and most are quite resistant to the idea. To me, I think of exercise as maintaining a healthy heart, posture, etc. but keep it completely out of the picture for weight management.
The other side of this is motivation. If you don't see yourself losing weight from exercise, it demotivates you and that demotivation then carries into other areas like diet. So if you keep those separate, you won't make poor choices in your overall health as a result of feeling demotivated by the lack of results from exercise and you won't fall off the bandwagon so easily.
As a fairly muscular guy who has dealt with overweight for more than two decades, I wholeheartedly agree. Half an hour of weightlifting burns like 120 calories, about two corn tortillas. It's stupid how efficient the body is at extracting energy from food.
I've also accepted that changes in activity strongly influence your health, and changes in eating strongly influence your weight.
The crazy thing to me is that since losing that weight people don't believe me and think I must be lying that I ever weighed more. I've even whipped out a photo once to prove it.
It seems like it's a MOF amine approach which does have some benefits against the MEA used in submarines, such as lower corrosive properties potentially, lower heating requirements as you don't have to heat an aqueous solution, and it can be easier to discard the remnants once its co2 absorbing properties are diminished.
I make music and would be the main contact for several artists, but I'm not a label per se. Would I join separately for each, or will there be a way for each artist to be added under my account or on separate accounts? Thanks!
Oh nice! I gave a PechaKucha talk with the same title back in 2019[0]. Love the illustrated examples here.
One thing I touched on in my talk was the idea that code is an art form that expresses the values of the artist by making something new possible in the world. The artist is saying "this should be possible for people to do" and then makes it so. I think that's really cool.
When I was a kid we used to spend summers with my grandmother. It was an idyllica pastoral setting and we used to chase the goats around and catch butterflys.
[snip 3000 words]
...when I asked her for her recipe, it turns out she made cinnamon rolls by buying pillsbury ones at the grocery store! So if you don't want to be like grandmother, use 2 cups of flour...
I lost my dad suddenly just two months prior, and my grandma shortly before that, but the loss of your partner (and in this manner after she refused help and I watched helplessly as she spiralled in her last year) eclipses any grief or pain I had experienced before or could have even imagined.
But I wanted to show a little appreciation for the OP and others on here sharing their devastating losses. Knowing love inevitably turns into grief but that that is a more universal experience makes me feel a little less alone. Small blessings but at points like these, we take whatever morsels we can get.