[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation
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Answering the phone. Listening to voicemails.
There's no reason I should fear these now, but I was hit by a car back when I was in college (nearly 20 years ago now), and I had no health insurance and couldn't pay any bills. I was already barely affording to eat.
So, almost every single call I got was related to a bill that I knew I couldn't pay. The trauma of that has stayed with me to this day and I will often leave voicemails which are perfectly innocuous unlistened to for days, weeks, eternity....
That kind of stress just stays with you.
Answering the phone. Listening to voicemails.
There's no reason I should fear these now, but I was hit by a car back when I was in college (nearly 20 years ago now), and I had no health insurance and couldn't pay any bills. I was already barely affording to eat.
So, almost every single call I got was related to a bill that I knew I couldn't pay. And they were relentless. The trauma of that has stayed with me to this day and I will often leave voicemails which are perfectly innocuous unlistened to for days, weeks, eternity....
That kind of stress just stays with you.
This also extends to opening the mail.
Setting up doctor's appointments.
Also having to deal with people making conversation of my sexual interests with that intruding in what would otherwise be perfectly good conversation.
Being a mom. I'm afraid of becoming one and then having to do a balancing act of loving them the right way for eighteen years.
That is a completely reasonable fear.
That my country does not have proper social safety nets and is setup so all but the richest will fall in abject poverty.
I think that's too realistic to fit the question.
Welcome, fellow American!
Being trapped in a social situation where the group has implicitly agreed to sit down and watch broadcast TV and talk about all the commercials like they were relevant topics to us.
Oh my god, is that a thing that happens? That sounds horrible.
For a long time I had a fear of plumbing. It mostly stemmed from growing up in a house severely falling apart, and I had incompetent guardians, so I felt stressd that if invisible pipes in the wall broke, it would cause cataclysmic water damage, and sane adults in other households always sort of nodded knowingly that water damage was Very Bad, so clearly if something broke in our house it would be on me to fix it, but I was only 8 and didn't know what to do and my guardians were mentally ill and useless to go to for help because they'd start screaming about the 90s equivalent of maga shit. Like, I never knew what topic might set my mom off, it could be the most innocent thing.
So yeah. Thr shower making funny whines when you run it? Scares the crap out of me because I don't know how to fix it and everything you would touch to fix is behind drywall and Water Damage is Bad according to saner adults outside my family circle.
Going to the dentist. Someone in my mouth like that bothers me to no end for some reason. The last time I had a toothache I yanked it out myself at home with a pair of pliers.
Unfortunately, I'm actually going to the dentist in about 4 hours from now because of two impacted wisdom teeth. I should have done this a long time ago but I guess I'm a sucker for punishment.
Still not looking forward to it, but I'll be happy when it's over.
I have a crown that fell off on Halloween last year, and I haven't done anything yet
Have you still got the crown? You can stick it back in with dental cement. Give it all a good scrub first of course.
Phone calls. Knowing I have to make a phone call wrecks my entire week.
For most of my life it was money. I'm fine with large numbers but put a "$" in front of it and I'd head for the door.
I’m so afraid of losing my job and having no money that I can’t bring myself to spend any money.
With AI this concern has greatly accelerated, so now I’ve taken a Faustian bargain with a very high paying job that makes me hate life so that I can be free in a few years.
When I was a kid I was absolutely certain that at some point in my life I was going to have a close call with quick-sand.
It did for me. That and water. The "don't worry" tip when it happened never helped, someone did though.
You can still make that happen!
Admitting mistakes
Answering work emails from last September, currently at it now. So late that I'm afraid to even reply now.
If it was important enough, someone would have chased you about it
Oh man, I'm getting nervous just thinking about it. I've got a similar situation at work, 2 jobs, too much work, not enough staff, and people asking for me to fix a million things. I hate reply to things from a few weeks ago and telling them I haven't had time to get to it yet.
It's the worst.
Sometimes I think I should just become a goatherd, but at least this way no animals are harmed by my fecklessness.
On the bright side, if the emails are from September then they can’t have been terribly important. There’s probably nothing to actually worry about.
Time will tell.
Any reason it’s taking so long? I know jobs are different so just curious.
I'm fully remote and somewhat undertrained on one of the two jobs I have to do at the same time. I'm also paid purely on my billable work. Excuses aside, I failed to make it a priority in my daily rush to do 'enough'.
Is there anyway the issue was resolved already and you can just move on to the next task?
Sorry you are stuck doing two jobs at the same time. I’ve been there and it’s not right / too stressful.
There are like 70 late emails I've pinned for reply. Just going to bite the bullet and take the day to chew through as many as I can. It makes me sick. Hoping if I do it all at once it will hurt less. Wish me luck
Doing that sucks, but it's so much better when it's done. I did that this morning for my task list, and I feel much better now.
I am being brave - made it up to the end of October.
Handling bills and other paperwork.