Copa
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Hope you made it to your destination, @ktfran! I’ve heard a couple horror stories about Amtrak trains not being able to handle the cold. (The route I ride to see my family sometimes has an 18(!!!) hour delay earlier this year.)
I always hope for a Robert update.
@Mike – FWIW, while I do think some comments made a leap from what you wrote to worst case scenario, I don’t think anyone was attacking you or saying anything hurtful. Regardless, I’m glad you’ve met with your doctor and hope medication and talk therapy help you move forward with clarity. And if you do divorce, everyone will recover.
Agreed that therapy and managing your depression should be the first step. It’s not uncommon for the happiness of folks around middle age who are dealing with multiple big life stressors at once (like raising families and career demands) to take a hit, but you can get help for it.
I don’t know if divorce is the right option for you, however, I have parents who stayed together for a short list of very bad reasons and I promise it’s worse than having divorced parents. (I also changed schools on average every year and a half for unrelated reasons. They will be fine on that front, too.)
Ended up opting out of the spa idea when I saw the prices. My gift card would’ve covered maybe half and it didn’t feel worth it since I know they’re cheaper at other places closer to home. Currently stuck at our office for our final day of meetings and cannot wait to go home. This isn’t reaalllly part of my job, we’re just understaffed in the department that normally handles these things. These events are exhausting.
I followed this turkey recipe: https://downshiftology.com/recipes/thanksgiving-turkey-recipe/
Prague and Dubrovnik sound like a wonderful honeymoon destination. How is married life/cohabitation treating you?
Still TBD on the spa night. My company is the one putting on the conference. We do them twice/year, once in June and once in December. This one has a different format from pre-COVID and has so far been a bit more all-hands-on-deck. Even though a couple of my coworkers who are here from our main office brought their families and have some of their own personal plans sprinkled in throughout the weekend, including this evening, I still worry about the optics of disappearing to the spa when at an event where I’m technically at work, not a guest.
We hosted Thanksgiving this year. It was very small, but I made my first turkey and it turned out perfectly.
I used to visit friends in other cities a bit, but COVID and life circumstance changes (marriages and babies) happened, so it’s been a few years since I’ve done that!
This is totally different but we have a work conference next week/weekend and I’ll be staying at a hotel downtown in my own city for a few days. In past years, the conference has included a formal sit down dinner but the format has changed this year, the dinner is now a formal reception instead, so I’m waiting to hear if I am supposed to attend. If not, I am thoroughly looking forward to a solo evening in a hotel room. The hotel we’re staying at has a spa that accepts a gift card I was gifted for my birthday and I might spend that evening treating myself instead!
My company closes every year between Christmas and the new year, so I have my annual staycation coming up! Last year, I forced myself to plan one activity every day because in past years the week always felt like it passed me by. So I did things I don’t normally do, like visit the Art Institute and the Garfield Park Conservatory. It was nice, but I do tend to hang on to PTO days for travel because I tend to waste my life on the couch during staycations. I’ve never traveled alone and am not sure if I’d even enjoy it, but even in a live-in relationship still enjoy feeling independent and think solo travel would scratch that itch.
We have generous PTO where I work (we start at five weeks, I’m currently sitting at six, and I think I’ll get another bump at my next work anniversary in March but I’ve honestly lost track and I don’t know where it caps). I’ve never taken all of it in a year, but have never lost any PTO when we roll over. I have way more PTO than the boyfriend and a generally more flexible work environment. I’ve thought about solo traveling to be better about using my time off.
That’s exciting about your husband’s new job, @ktfran!
ETA: If/when I move on from this job, which I sometimes think about these days, I do look forward to the payout.
I don’t have unlimited PTO, however, I have some friends who do and this actually came up at a happy hour in the past couple months. I asked if they take a lot of PTO and they said no, not really, which is consistent with the research that has shown that employees with unlimited PTO actually take less time off than those who accrue a set number of PTO days.
I’d I think company culture would make a difference in the reality of unlimited PTO. Like at my current company, if we implemented a change from our current PTO policy to unlimited PTO, I’d not be happy about it, but I’d also not necessarily worry too much about feeling pressure to take fewer days off. If my last company had adopted an unlimited PTO policy, I’d not have been happy about it and the change would’ve felt very discouraging.
The update nobody asked for: I had my consult with a dermatologist this morning. We went over my day-to-day skincare routine and she was pleased with what I was doing but made product recommendations. For vitamin C, she recommended Skin Ceuticals, which she said is the only one on the market that has undergone decades of research. I just looked up and it’s $$$$, but she said one drop is all I need to use for my entire face/neck. Also recommended some products by La Roche Posay (which I already know and have liked what I’ve used) as well as Alastin (specifically, a sunscreen) and Avene (a night retrinal), which are two new-to-me brands.
We also talked about some cosmetic procedures (chemical peels, Botox, and fillers) to think about in the longer term. I have not decided if that’s for me yet, but if anyone is in Chicago and looking for a derm, I can name drop because I did like her and her less-is-more take on cosmetic procedures.
Also, I think it’s fine/normal/good if your beliefs evolve as you get older. Mine have. I definitely internalized some of society’s bullshit messages when I was younger, particularly as a teenager. I’d say by my mid-20s, I was unlearning/challenging them. I’d be wary of anyone pushing 30 who still holds your friend’s absurd beliefs/leans into that many of the awful ~isms. I’d say I was around 30 when I decided I didn’t want to seek out the college friend I mentioned anymore. The final straw was when he told me I should lose 10 lbs because I was single and “competing” against younger women for dates. No amount of challenging his beliefs over the years changed how he thought because he’s a deeply misogynistic dick — like, I’d literally point out how sexist he was and he’d basically be like, “but men are men and btw biology!” — which is why I said I’d not even bother with devil’s advocate. People can change, but you cannot change people.
“I won a travel grant to attend an international conference during my PhD and I was super happy and proud (I was given 4000 CND, it was a big deal to me), this friend told me that yeah you got it because you are from a third world country and a girl so they have diversity to show among winners.”
Ew! I’d be dropping this friend. He seems incredibly ignorant. I used to get comments like this when I was in school. I got full tuition scholarships in undergrad and law school and the number of people who felt compelled to tell me that I only received generous financial aid was because the universities needed someone like me to bolster their diversity stats. When I’d get these comments, they were also “jokes” and I’d laugh with the “friends” who made them when I was younger because they’d make me feel insecure. I’m in my 30s and if that happened to me now, the reaction would be so different and I’d not be friends with anyone who said/believed stuff like this.
