I’m 22. I live with a friend who is willing to cover our joint grocery bill and not charge me rent in exchange for my charming company and a handful of domestic tasks (I cook, pick up around the place a bit, make some of our grocery trips on my own, do the dishes, stuff like that). Before I lived here I lived with different friends; there was a similar deal in place but there were some unresolved issues about how big a handful of domestic tasks I needed to be doing, so I left. Before I lived with those friends, I lived in Benton House working for SIAI, and got my nibbles out of their budget. Before that I was in grad school, lived off campus with a roommate, and did pay for groceries (splitting the bill for both the apartment and the food with my roommate-at-the-time).
I should note that if my current roommate says “begone”, I don’t have any clever ideas lined up for carrying on this enviable situation—I might be able to move in with my best friend, depending on the timing, but I suspect she would charge me rent and that I’d wind up buying my own food. (I have lived with my best friend before, during two summers before my first and second years of grad school; first time around I had a job and paid rent but not for food, second time around I did not pay her anything; but now her living situation is different and I would be less enthusiastically welcomed and would probably have to make up the difference with money.)
You have awesome friends! I live in a shared house with a bunch of girls, but I didn’t originally know them (I found the room through an ad on the Internet) and we don’t share anything except for toilet paper and dishsoap. I’m not sure if my company is “charming” enough to wangle a deal like yours: I can play extroverted and funny at school or at work, but home is my place and I tend to spend a lot of time in my room with the door wedged shut. Anyway, I’m not sure I would like a situation like that: my instincts for living cheaply are strong, but my instincts for living independently are even stronger, which is why I moved out at 17 even though it wasn’t really necessary. I’m glad because it’s forced me to mature pretty quickly in a lot of ways, which might not have happened otherwise.
I should note that if my current roommate says “begone”, I don’t have any clever ideas lined up for carrying on this enviable situation.
If that happens, you’ll still have saved a year or more of rent and food, and you’ll have whatever extra amount in the bank. Always a huge bonus.
I consider my life adequately independent in the sense that I do not depend on my family. (I haven’t lived with them full-time since I was fifteen, or at all since I was nineteen.) There’s an important limit to how independent I can be when I don’t drive, though, so I find it valuable to be among people; I may as well enjoy the largesse available under that circumstance. (Current roommate doesn’t drive either but has a close friend who does and helps out.)
I don’t know if I’m actually in a better financial situation than I would have been without this string of fortuitous circumstances. My income is vastly greater than my expenses, but my expenses are almost nil, so said income… is tiny. I’d need to get a job-job and keep it if I were paying for rent and food on my own, and might have more leftover cash that way than I do now. However, I have lots and lots of low-stress free time, which is very valuable to me.
If I valued my spare time more, I might have more of it… Instead, my life consists of running from one part time job to the other to school to choir practice, and basically collapsing in bed at the end of the day. Once in a while I wonder if it’s possible to permanently damage your creativity with enough sleep deprivation, but then I stay up half the night writing, which answers that question. I would probably enjoy all the things I do more (and do them better) if I did less of them...but choosing school over work isn’t an option, and I have a “loyalty problem”: once I join something, it becomes really hard for me to leave. (Which is why I’m still in a girls’ church choir, 5 years later.)
Once in a while I wonder if it’s possible to permanently damage your creativity with enough sleep deprivation, but then I stay up half the night writing, which answers that question.
Ack, that might be a case of the candle burning twice as bright but less than half as long, resulting in a loss in net light emitted.
In other words, forcing yourself to do creative work while also sleep deprived might be burning yourself out faster than if you got more sleep.
If only it were a matter of forcing myself...then I could decide not to, and get sleep! Usually if I stay up all night, it’s because I’ve been itching to work on a particular story all week and haven’t had time and am going insane from pent-up ideas.
I do sometimes. But when my brain looks at the week ahead and sees a solidly filled schedule, it oftens decides “screw it, if I don’t do this now I’ll never have the opportunity.” Also, I have creative and non-creative moods, and if I don’t write while in a creative mood, I often lose out on the chance.
I tried to do way to much throughout high school; studying cello, working with my dad and at a part time job, and then spending most of the night programming, and once I graduated and finished the projects I was working on I lost the enthusiasm to start anything else for almost a year.
Sometimes forcing yourself to just do less things and get at least eight hours a day of sleep is the best decision, even if you hate it and lie awake thinking of everything else you could be doing for the entire time. Its better than turning into a world weary introverted otaku. :p
This is in fact part of my ideal life trajectory, but I’m not presently engaged or even seeing anyone, so there’s no timetable in place that I can accelerate on demand.
I’m not even sure if it’s a good idea to date people with the thought of accelerating your marriage trajectory. It seems to me like a) a lot of pressure, and b) a recipe for ignoring your own uncertainty because you want to get married fast. Of course, I’m biased because my parents waited from 1983 until 1995 to get married, a solid 12 years of courtship, and because my mother’s brother, who did marry young and impulsively, had a very negative experience of it.
I have no intention of rushing things, I assure you. (Although if we’re going by anecdotal evidence, I have a friend who got married when she was nineteen very shortly after meeting her husband, and they are among the most happily married couples I have met.)
Which I know. But emotionally, I think my parents’ anecdotes weigh the most heavily on me. (This is something I’ve noticed: I pick out particular attitudes I have that are a result of my specific upbringing, and then go on holding those same attitudes anyway.)
It’s not necessarily a mistake to do this, because attitudes are not truly independent of one another. Given your specific genes/environment/attitudes, one particular attitude may work well for you even if it would work poorly for another person. It’s difficult to examine beliefs in any manner other than “one at a time”, but a belief which is wrong independently may be useful given your overall set of circumstances/beliefs.
example: one may be able to get away with substandard food cleanliness if one is vegetarian.
one may be able to get away with substandard food cleanliness if one is vegetarian.
I’m not really sure what that means. A lot, maybe most, of the restaurant contaminated food outbreaks that I read about involve vegetables. For example these involving tomatoes.
Presumably the reason for this is not that meats are inherently cleaner than veggies, but that meats are pretty universally cooked and veggies are often served uncooked.
Vegetables and meats can both be contaminated by pathogens, but differently.
Vegetables are grown in dirt and handled by many people. It is therefore common for small amounts of viruses or bacteria to be present on their skin. And a small amount of (for instance) salmonella can cause disease. To avoid this, one should wash vegetables. Neutropenic individuals may need to cook them, but typically they may be eaten raw.
Meats (and beans, and cooked rice) are a different story. They can not only harbor bacteria and parasites, but may also provide an excellent growth medium. Therefore, meat doesn’t just have to be washed, it also has to be cooked (unless rigorous precautions are adhered to). It also has to be kept cold because airborne bacteria may begin to grow on the meat and reproduce to dangerous levels. Even small amounts of residue may cause this problem.
So when do you wash your cutting board? If you are a meat eater, the answer should be “every time you cook.” If you are a vegetarian, the answer can be “when it starts to look dirty”. A bit of old carrot juice on the board just doesn’t constitute the same health hazard that a bit of old steak juice would.
I’m sorry if this is a personal question, but how did you manage that? I’m under the impression that you’re fairly close to my age (which is 19).
I’m 22. I live with a friend who is willing to cover our joint grocery bill and not charge me rent in exchange for my charming company and a handful of domestic tasks (I cook, pick up around the place a bit, make some of our grocery trips on my own, do the dishes, stuff like that). Before I lived here I lived with different friends; there was a similar deal in place but there were some unresolved issues about how big a handful of domestic tasks I needed to be doing, so I left. Before I lived with those friends, I lived in Benton House working for SIAI, and got my nibbles out of their budget. Before that I was in grad school, lived off campus with a roommate, and did pay for groceries (splitting the bill for both the apartment and the food with my roommate-at-the-time).
I should note that if my current roommate says “begone”, I don’t have any clever ideas lined up for carrying on this enviable situation—I might be able to move in with my best friend, depending on the timing, but I suspect she would charge me rent and that I’d wind up buying my own food. (I have lived with my best friend before, during two summers before my first and second years of grad school; first time around I had a job and paid rent but not for food, second time around I did not pay her anything; but now her living situation is different and I would be less enthusiastically welcomed and would probably have to make up the difference with money.)
You have awesome friends! I live in a shared house with a bunch of girls, but I didn’t originally know them (I found the room through an ad on the Internet) and we don’t share anything except for toilet paper and dishsoap. I’m not sure if my company is “charming” enough to wangle a deal like yours: I can play extroverted and funny at school or at work, but home is my place and I tend to spend a lot of time in my room with the door wedged shut. Anyway, I’m not sure I would like a situation like that: my instincts for living cheaply are strong, but my instincts for living independently are even stronger, which is why I moved out at 17 even though it wasn’t really necessary. I’m glad because it’s forced me to mature pretty quickly in a lot of ways, which might not have happened otherwise.
If that happens, you’ll still have saved a year or more of rent and food, and you’ll have whatever extra amount in the bank. Always a huge bonus.
I do have awesome friends :)
I consider my life adequately independent in the sense that I do not depend on my family. (I haven’t lived with them full-time since I was fifteen, or at all since I was nineteen.) There’s an important limit to how independent I can be when I don’t drive, though, so I find it valuable to be among people; I may as well enjoy the largesse available under that circumstance. (Current roommate doesn’t drive either but has a close friend who does and helps out.)
I don’t know if I’m actually in a better financial situation than I would have been without this string of fortuitous circumstances. My income is vastly greater than my expenses, but my expenses are almost nil, so said income… is tiny. I’d need to get a job-job and keep it if I were paying for rent and food on my own, and might have more leftover cash that way than I do now. However, I have lots and lots of low-stress free time, which is very valuable to me.
If I valued my spare time more, I might have more of it… Instead, my life consists of running from one part time job to the other to school to choir practice, and basically collapsing in bed at the end of the day. Once in a while I wonder if it’s possible to permanently damage your creativity with enough sleep deprivation, but then I stay up half the night writing, which answers that question. I would probably enjoy all the things I do more (and do them better) if I did less of them...but choosing school over work isn’t an option, and I have a “loyalty problem”: once I join something, it becomes really hard for me to leave. (Which is why I’m still in a girls’ church choir, 5 years later.)
Ack, that might be a case of the candle burning twice as bright but less than half as long, resulting in a loss in net light emitted.
In other words, forcing yourself to do creative work while also sleep deprived might be burning yourself out faster than if you got more sleep.
If only it were a matter of forcing myself...then I could decide not to, and get sleep! Usually if I stay up all night, it’s because I’ve been itching to work on a particular story all week and haven’t had time and am going insane from pent-up ideas.
Maybe if you just noted down the ideas so you could go back to them later?
I do sometimes. But when my brain looks at the week ahead and sees a solidly filled schedule, it oftens decides “screw it, if I don’t do this now I’ll never have the opportunity.” Also, I have creative and non-creative moods, and if I don’t write while in a creative mood, I often lose out on the chance.
I tried to do way to much throughout high school; studying cello, working with my dad and at a part time job, and then spending most of the night programming, and once I graduated and finished the projects I was working on I lost the enthusiasm to start anything else for almost a year.
Sometimes forcing yourself to just do less things and get at least eight hours a day of sleep is the best decision, even if you hate it and lie awake thinking of everything else you could be doing for the entire time. Its better than turning into a world weary introverted otaku. :p
the glib response for this is, of course “get married” ;)
This is in fact part of my ideal life trajectory, but I’m not presently engaged or even seeing anyone, so there’s no timetable in place that I can accelerate on demand.
I’m not even sure if it’s a good idea to date people with the thought of accelerating your marriage trajectory. It seems to me like a) a lot of pressure, and b) a recipe for ignoring your own uncertainty because you want to get married fast. Of course, I’m biased because my parents waited from 1983 until 1995 to get married, a solid 12 years of courtship, and because my mother’s brother, who did marry young and impulsively, had a very negative experience of it.
I have no intention of rushing things, I assure you. (Although if we’re going by anecdotal evidence, I have a friend who got married when she was nineteen very shortly after meeting her husband, and they are among the most happily married couples I have met.)
Which I know. But emotionally, I think my parents’ anecdotes weigh the most heavily on me. (This is something I’ve noticed: I pick out particular attitudes I have that are a result of my specific upbringing, and then go on holding those same attitudes anyway.)
It’s not necessarily a mistake to do this, because attitudes are not truly independent of one another. Given your specific genes/environment/attitudes, one particular attitude may work well for you even if it would work poorly for another person. It’s difficult to examine beliefs in any manner other than “one at a time”, but a belief which is wrong independently may be useful given your overall set of circumstances/beliefs.
example: one may be able to get away with substandard food cleanliness if one is vegetarian.
I’m not really sure what that means. A lot, maybe most, of the restaurant contaminated food outbreaks that I read about involve vegetables. For example these involving tomatoes.
Presumably the reason for this is not that meats are inherently cleaner than veggies, but that meats are pretty universally cooked and veggies are often served uncooked.
Vegetables and meats can both be contaminated by pathogens, but differently. Vegetables are grown in dirt and handled by many people. It is therefore common for small amounts of viruses or bacteria to be present on their skin. And a small amount of (for instance) salmonella can cause disease. To avoid this, one should wash vegetables. Neutropenic individuals may need to cook them, but typically they may be eaten raw.
Meats (and beans, and cooked rice) are a different story. They can not only harbor bacteria and parasites, but may also provide an excellent growth medium. Therefore, meat doesn’t just have to be washed, it also has to be cooked (unless rigorous precautions are adhered to). It also has to be kept cold because airborne bacteria may begin to grow on the meat and reproduce to dangerous levels. Even small amounts of residue may cause this problem.
So when do you wash your cutting board? If you are a meat eater, the answer should be “every time you cook.” If you are a vegetarian, the answer can be “when it starts to look dirty”. A bit of old carrot juice on the board just doesn’t constitute the same health hazard that a bit of old steak juice would.
Definitely something I do.