Emrie

Well I was born with it so it not hard for me at all. But it is among the harder ones to get, from what I've read. You have to stay within the same city for like 7 years. Moving cities will mess you up so you absolutely cannot move. Living here and not being a citizen isn't hard though, as long as you have an unlimited contract job, you're pretty much set. Also worth pointing out that this is my opinion. Like I said, as long as someone takes care of themselves and isn't an asshole, that's good enough for me.

That is a very small workplace, like damn. I'm okay dating within my company but I would make sure that our jobs are not related to each other. This is a simple protection mechanism, if things go sour, your work isn't affected.

Hehe okay yeah I was answering the original question at the very beginning of the thread but yeah I'm happy it doubles as the answer to the last question too !

90%. Too many to count. Essentially if the girl's not an asshole, and takes care of herself, she's high value to me. And that's most of them.

That's awesome! I'll be really curious to hear about your experiences there. As a French native speaker, I can confirm that French is kinda weird (and gendered, because ... of course it is). Though it's great that you're actually willing to learn it. I can't tell you the number of people around me who don't care to learn the language of the area (I live in Switzerland, so area is more appropriate than country here) they live in full time and over the long term, it's baffling to me, and honestly straight up disrespectful.

@Razard86 Thanks, man. Needed this. Sometimes I have these realizations that I'm actually pretty well off and very lucky, but not often enough and I put myself down way too much. Plus this is much better than the "you are loved" pictures you would find on Reddit or Twitter that are completely meaningless and do nothing. This comes from a much higher place than that. So thanks again! Love ya.

I might be quite biased here but I would rule out the US and Canada. The main reason for this is that they're terribly less walkable than European cities (even the worst European cities are better than most North American cities, and this is not just a US problem, Canada too). And I think that's a factor not many consider but is actually super critical. I couldn't imagine living my life needing a car but that is simply a reality for almost all North Americans. And spending so much time stuck in traffic is soul-crushing. Scandinavia is interesting, yes. It is a tradeoff though, the climate is generally worse, you will lose sunlight earlier, it'll be colder and more rainy, and there's also actually not that many people living there, the cities aren't particularly big, and I think that will somewhat worsen your nightlife. Now like I said, if you go to a big enough city, and there is *a* night life, that'll be fine for socializing and dating, but I'd have to assume that if that's important to you, you'll probably prefer going somewhere else, Paris, London, or Berlin might be worth a look. On the other hand, you get a great political climate, great job opportunities, and a lot of really good things. Like those things you listed above. Paris, London, Berlin, Madrid, Barcelona, or Rome would be the tradeoff in the other way, I would say. You get somewhat worse political climate, generally more right-leaning, neoliberal ideology, and policies that show it, but probably a better social life because there are many many more people, I mean Paris has almost 15 million people in its metropolitan area of 15'000 sq km (according to Wikipedia). Of course I'm saying all of these things without having lived in any of these cities so no real experience living in them. But that is my general impression from stories I've heard, the news, and just how I look at the world.

Did a thing. It's a long read. Overall I think something I'm starting to really realize is that there are something that are becoming more and more non-negotiable. Leo talked about this in his video about decisions and things being non-negotiable. And watching that video I realized drinking alcohol was non-negotiable, I was never ever going to do it, EVER, it was non-negotiable. But I was struggling make more non-negotiable decisions in my life. Like I know I need to keep myself and my apartment clean, but I couldn't make it non-negotiable. I know I need to eat absolutely impeccably, but I couldn't make it non-negotiable. I know I need to go out and socialize to improve my social skills because I'm really that bad, but I couldn't make it non-negotiable. I know I shouldn't be wasting so much of my time with cheap entertainment and doing nothing productive and instead making me feel bad about how I spend my days, but I couldn't make it non-negotiable. Now, none of these things are non-negotiable yet, but I can feel they're becoming more and more and it doesn't feel like I can't make them that way. Like, it's happening. I'm already taking action and moving forward with these things. And I think, soon enough, they'll become completely non-negotiable like not drinking alcohol is.

Saturday, Sunday, on Monday: The Aftermath of the Party So Saturday, I wanna talk about Saturday. I went to sleep Friday night (or you could say Saturday morning) at 6am, and then I woke up at 2pm. I slept badly, I kept getting woken up by things throughout the day. Also fun fact, I wake up at 6am when I work the early shift at work. So that's a fun kind of mind-fuck. On Saturday is when I contemplated the night before and I realized these things I wrote about just above. And I honestly, really fucking wanted to go out on Saturday night and go to a night club, even without anyone to go with. Like I just didn't care. I didn't, in fact, I spent all of Saturday night on TikTok, it was a gigantic waste of my time and I even felt bad because I went to sleep at FOUR A.M! And like my reasoning throughout it was such bullshit, it's insane! I told myself at first "I can't go out because I'm too tired, I went out yesterday", but then I stayed up because "well I went to sleep at 6am last night, I can't just go to sleep early tonight". And like I was saying to myself "If I can't go to sleep earlier tonight", I'm just going to have a terrible sleep Sunday night because I'll have to wake up early Monday morning regardless!" And like at some point just fucking go to the damn night club, at like 1, 2, or 3am when you tell yourself you can't sleep, just fucking go to the damn night club, for fuck's sake! But I didn't... and this journal is partly to push myself. Sunday was slightly better. I woke up at 9:30, which was good because going from 14 to 9:30 showed me I could get back to the normal sleep schedule for this week, in fact I went to sleep at 23:30 that night, and slept like a BAAAABY. I was pretty energetic throughout the whole weekend. Like Saturday afternoon (as in, just after I woke up, for a few hours) was a little rough but I wasn't locked to my bed, and then I had plenty of energy through Saturday night, and then plenty throughout all of a Sunday. Today I was also perfect. On Sunday I actually did two things I'm genuinely proud of. I actually cleaned up part of my apartment. I spent like two hours in total and I barely cleaned the kitchen. The stove was like super dirty because I was never, ever cleaning it after cooking. Now I wasn't cooking all that much but that shit accumulates over months and months. I spent two hours trying to clean it completely and honestly some of this stuff is hard to get off. I'm actually afraid some of it is just kinda stuck there forever. I think, once I've gotten my apartment in a somewhat acceptable state, I'll get a proper deep cleaning company to really finish it all off because it is really THAT BAD. And then I also did laundry. Now, cleaning my clothes is something I was already doing because, when I go to work, I have to be completely clean myself. Clean teeth, clean body, clean clothes. This is absolutely necessary. But I did something that I honestly almost never do, which is cleaning my bed sheets. I'm pretty sure I hadn't cleaned these sheets since I had come in to this apartment, eight months ago. It's insane. I think they'll need a few more cleanings because again, it is that bad. And this ties back in with my previous point of it all being so foreign to me. I am SOOO FAR DEEP INTO THE RABBIT HOLE, I can't even clean after myself. And now here we are today, I've spent pretty much the entire evening writing this. This has been really good. I've enjoyed it very much, I definitely won't be writing this much every day. I might do something like "okay here are all the things I did today" type of stuff but I also really like this format that I had today. Giving myself time to do meaningful things and looking back over a few days and saying to myself "okay, here is all the stuff that's actually important that's been happening and my feelings about them".

I had a somewhat similar realization when I first started self-help. Some things just became easy, natural, and what I wanted to do instead of hard work. Like now I go to the gym four times a week and don't even think twice about it, I even want to go because it makes me feel good. Even looking at different sports I want to do. Whereas there was a time that even exercising for 10 minutes twice a week was a hard thing to do.

Maybe hit 'em with a cheeky exit message like "Alright, on to the next girl. Not like I'm not getting 20 numbers a week".

I'm probably not going to come off well here but honestly it's hard to answer a question like this. To really be able to give a proper answer to your question, one really must have lived in several cities and for several years (I'd say at least five, so they're well established, maybe three). Otherwise someone could say "well my city is the best!" but they have no or only little basis for comparison. Not to mention different people look for different things and have different vibes so you might like one city but someone else will dislike it for the exact same reasons you like it. Advice I could give you (and myself, really) is just go out and try cities yourself. Take a vacation, maybe two weeks, maybe three, or even a month, and pretend to live in that city for a little bit. See if you like it. Also FWIW my experience has been that even the most "unoptimized" cities are perfectly fine. I live in a city of 500'000 people that's actually a big student town because there are many universities and even one of the only two very-very-high-education establishments of the country. It's not a gigantic city but there's a pretty good nightlife with a remarkably large choice of bars and clubs for its size (IMO) and it works perfectly fine to make friends and do pickup. I like living here because I like the aesthetic of the city, I love the country and the politics of the country, and I like my job and the economic opportunities here. There are absolutely much larger cities with much bigger parties and events and much crazier things like what Leo and Lion are describing here but IMO it's not necessary. Having a decent nightlife is more important than having the best possible nightlife, the 80/20 rule applies very well here I feel.

While I'm here I can talk about all the cool things I did recently. Went to see my parents out of my own volition. They've been wanting to spend time with me and I've just not been doing that outside of more formal family gatherings. This here was a spontaneous "I want to spend time with you". They liked it a lot and we had a nice time. We ended up talking about politics, because of course we did. I don't think I talked about my new exercise routine that I've been using for 4 weeks now. Basically now I go four times a week, upper-lower-upper-lower. And I just do a bunch of exercises that are more focused on specific muscles instead of the big free-weight compound movements I was doing at first. There's some criticism of this but the reason I went for it is that I felt I didn't really have to right form or just the exercises didn't really seem to work my muscles very well. With the more specific exercises, I can feel I have the right form and it's really working my muscles quite well so I'm happy to stick to them for the time being. If I'm not happy with the results in a few months, then I'll happily change. Overall I feel it's been working quite well and I'm happy with my routine.

Still doing them myself, yeah. Love 'em to bits.

Actually glad you mention Germany because they're who I was thinking about. Yes they're opening up coal right now but they're also taking huge steps to transition away: They've moved up their goal of 100% renewables to 2035: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/germany-aims-get-100-energy-renewable-sources-by-2035-2022-02-28/ They've pledged 200 billion euros to transform their industry by 2026: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/germany-has-earmarked-220-billion-industrial-transformation-by-2026-2022-03-06/ Also this nice article sums up a decent bit of what they're doing: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/how-the-ukraine-war-is-accelerating-germanys-renewable-energy-transition And this is Germany but this kind of thing is happening in a lot of places. The US has signed the Inflation Reduction Act which invests like 350 billion dollars into all sorts of things including wind, solar, storage, nuclear, and manufacturing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw5zzrOpo2s

Great vid. I watched a few more and found this one: Great channel honestly, especially for beginners like me.

The great thing that we're already seeing is an acceleration away from fossil fuels. Like fossil fuels are too expensive and renewables are too cheap now. Not to mention the war getting European countries to move away from Russian energy.

For real, man. I've been going to the gym 3 to 4, sometimes 5 times a week and now all I care about is just going to the gym and exercising. I don't even care what I do anymore I just like going.

Obviously the language of the forum is English and all discussion should stay in English on the whole platform. However, sometimes I find amazing material that I really wish I could share here because there's just so much value and I think there are some people who speak the language in question and who would get a lot of value from it. Perhaps we could make like a single mega-thread specifically for the purpose of sharing resources in non-English and not have it anywhere else, that way people who might be looking for resources in non-English know where to find them and we're not polluting the forum everywhere with non-English. And while that thread might be for sharing these resources, doesn't mean you'd be allowed to speak in non-English even in the thread. And people would have to explain what the resource is, not just link to it with no context. Of course I will follow the rules and keep to English and would be happy to even take this thread down if asked.

Dude! Come over here! I live in Lausanne as well! I love it here, I hope you'll enjoy it too. You absolutely don't need to learn French. I know a lot of people who don't know any French and have no issues living here. You can go to any local cafe, restaurant, and just anywhere without speaking French. German would be a gigantic waste of time as we do not speak German here. I have absolutely nothing to back up this claim but I think we're generally friendly to English because we kinda have to use it to speak to people from our own country. Very little people learn proper fluent German, French, and/or Italian. So we just know our native language and English. HOWEVER, if you're going to stay here over the long term, say more than 5 years, you should probably learn French. This is because that's just the language here and if you're staying long term, you should learn the language, it will make things easier. While French is not necessary, it's still a big help so you should probably learn it if you're staying. Also I think there will be some amount of people who will automatically dislike you for not speaking French. The French speakers really hate English. Their level of English is also not great. You can understand what they're saying but it's just generally not correct English. Personally, if I were to move anywhere with a different language, I would start learning that language from the start because it can take a long time to learn a language and I'll want to get up to speed ASAP.

It's done. Thanks everyone. And yeah, in hindsight, I definitely should have said that from the start.

I just got back from a "date" (purposefully put in quotes here for reasons that'll follow) and uhhh ... I have to let the guy off, it's just not going to work. I'm a man myself and I thought I was straight my whole life, until January of this year, at age 26. I can be attracted to really anyone regardless of gender, and it's been great even just feeling the attraction. HOWEVER, with it come a whole slew of challenges that I don't really have anyone to help me with. So last week, I met this man through a meetup group for queer people and he showed very strong signs of attraction towards me that I didn't feel I reciprocated. To be very clear, I am not attracted to him in any way. That's how I feel but perhaps I was showing him some kind of interest because I don't really understand why he would ask me out. Earlier this week (I think Wednesday), he sent me a message like "hey it was nice to see you" and I didn't answer at first, but I didn't want to ghost him so I eventually answered (like 24 hours later) "yeah it was nice meeting you, we can see each other again the next time the group meets", which is a month from now. I thought I was clear that I didn't want to see him before then. And then Friday afternoon, he asked me if I had anything planned for the weekend, I told him no and we made plans to go out tonight. I thought it would be two friends going to a bar and hitting on other people, NOT a date. And literally one of the first phrases he said were "I'm happy to be on a date tonight, it's been a while". Which ... kind of blows, because that's not at all what I was thinking it would be. Guess I should know better. He had a few beers and I had water, we made very basic conversation, he complimented me a lot, like a LOT, I didn't show any interest and even looked at some girls that were there. Problem is that now I actually have to reject him and tell him I'm not interested in him. I've never had to do that, like ever. It's always been me asking people out and making moves and getting rejected. Ironically it's much easier for me to get rejected than to actually reject someone. I don't want to hurt his feelings, and I don't want it to be like I won't be able to go to the meeting because he might be there and it would be awkward. So yeah I have to reject him but I really don't know how.

Didn't skip leg day! I woke up this morning feeling quite tired and generally unmotivated to do anything. But I pushed myself and went anyway and I'm super glad. I'm feeling much happier because of it. The exercises that I did were just different machines that work specific muscles. But I did start with Squats.

Ooh very nice, just looked it up. I can definitely see how it helps a lot.

I've been exclusively taking cold showers not just after the gym but every day as well and it's been amazing. Every time I complain about how cold it is at first but then I get comfortable with it and it makes me feel good, I've been making them longer now as well.