Beautiful layering. So floofy.

Sounds like you’ve got good self-awareness, and that’s a great step.

If you dig deeper to find out why you feel that way you can work on healing what hurt you, letting go of the grudges (they only hurt yourself!), and learn to say no in a nice way that respects your own boundaries while not hurting others too much.

Best of luck on your journey. It isn’t easy, but it can be really freeing.

That sounds like a really good place to start.

My brother used to act like that too. It was the armour he wore to hide how extremely sensitive he was inside. I think he’d numbed his feelings with alcohol for so long that he started believing his armour. It made him quite hard to be around sometimes.

This could be a start of a whole inner journey for you that you’ll come out the other side of much stronger and more authentic.

I have been doing this lately. Found myself feeling quite excited to get into my favourite pyjama pants after some exercise & a shower last night, and about the prospect of buying lunch at a yummy Thai food place near work today.

Allowing yourself to feel excited or happy about the small things makes each day a whole lot better.

Genuinely interesting info! Thanks for commenting.

Huh, that’s higher than I would have thought.

I bet someone (company, lobbyist etc) raised the spectre of potential future lawsuits if there was an injury. There are so many downsides to such a litigious society.

It’s pretty much why I stick around when times get tough: I want to see what happens in the future (in a global sense, not for me personally).

Agatha Christie is a very good recommendation for me. My favourite genre of TV is “British cop drama”, so Christie will be a good place to start. I have 3 weeks off coming up over summer, so I’ll add “figure out how to use Libby and get some books out” to my list :)

I like your distinction of “easy art” vs “harder art”.

I am well over 40 but I pretty much only consume “easy art”. My job is mentally and emotionally demanding, I read (economics & business stuff) all day, and at the end of the day I like to be able to switch my brain into neutral and just consume entertainment.

Perhaps I’m missing out though? Perhaps what you describe is what the people who say “I love reading!” actually love about reading?

Hmmm, food for thought. Thank you.

Is that why Moby Dick looks like it’s filled with fear? I haven’t read it myself, but I didn’t think it was a fearful/scary book.

Why not?

This would help you decide which books to read, based on how you want to feel.

Judging by the camera shaking the person recording the CCTV footage with their phone was laughing pretty hard too.