Emrie

In his latest blog post, https://www.actualized.org/insights/reverse-osmosis-water-system, Leo talks about how we shouldn't drink and cook with tap water. Why not? Also is it an American thing only? Or is it really applicable to Europe too?

When the Happiness video came out, I started visioning a happy life for myself. And one evening coming home, I saw a group of girls having a blast on a girls' night out. And it kinda looked like one of them was a trans woman (I'm making an assumption here of course, but it was harmless as I didn't interact with them, would have changed instantly if they corrected me, and also it was really helpful to me). I ... literally cried, on the street. It was an incredibly powerful and meaningful moment because it made me realize that I wanted to be that trans woman in that group, to have a group of girl friends, and that this was an absolutely critical, probably the most important, component of my happy life. I had to change my body to be that of a woman's body, I had to make relationships and be treated as a woman by other people, I just had to accept and actualize who I deeply am on the inside. And I knew it's right because I knew I would face discrimination, I knew I could potentially be disowned by my parents, I knew it would be a long and difficult process, and maybe, after a few or a lot of sessions of therapy, I would realize I'm not trans. But regardless, it was all worth it, it was just an absolutely critical important step for me to go through. So I could finally have a definitive answer on what my gender actually is and start to integrate it and let it shine fully in the world. Since that night, I've been extremely emotional, sometimes even crying at work (like in the building, I would be on my break, reading a trans story or even just listening to a song). It's been absolutely amazing and powerful and just incredibly meaningful to me, to be able to fully explore my gender and who I deeply am on the inside. And difficult, too. Doubting my transness, being fearful of fully labeling myself as a woman, because ... would other women really accept me as one of their own? (caring about other people's feelings - very manly). And tonight I watched the "Masculinity vs Femininity" video, from 7 years ago. It helped solidify even more that I'm a woman, who was born in the wrong body. I am all about soaking in life, surrendering, going with the flow, feeling emotions, and breaking logic to save feelings - I mean, not completely, it's a spectrum, but I lean way more for feelings than for logic. So thank you Leo, I want you to know you've been a guiding light in my life, you've brought me from a completely hellish life deep inside of a hole at the bottom of a dark cave, and I think I'm starting to see the outside world. It's beautiful, scary, and just absolutely amazing in every way.

I literally cannot transition without talking to a gender therapist. The gender therapist MUST officially diagnose me with gender dysphoria in order for me to transition. So yes I'm going to talk to a therapist. Which is what happens. Not necessarily a whole year, and it depends on the country you live in. I know the US has "Informed Consent" clinics where they let you take HRT without therapy but you'll need a therapist anyways for surgeries, and only if you're an adult. Countries with universal healthcare require the diagnosis to cover the HRT, so if you wanted to do it without it, you're now paying out of pocket. And you can always stop HRT if it doesn't feel right. You feel the effects of it very quickly so you can quickly tell if it's not right. If you've only been on HRT for a few months, you won't really even have any (or maybe just a few) consequences on your long-term health. I think the biggest one is you can become sterile after like a year. Beyond that, your body will just go right back to producing your hormones normally like before. I think a lot of conservatives really don't understand the actual reality of transgenderism and transitioning. People don't just wake up one day and decide they want to change their gender. It's a lot harder and there's much more due process than they think. Not saying you're a conservative, Leo, but it's just a feeling I've got from the arguments I hear conservatives talk about. As to your point on whether I'm kidding myself, we'll see what the therapist says, but, I don't think so. I've been improving my life for more than 8 years now and there's always been something missing. At the very least you can be happy I'm actually getting myself exposed to this new experience and seeing how I feel. Which was exactly what you said to do to build a happy life.

And that's what I did, actually. That's what I've been doing, for years. That's what I'll continue to keep doing forever. I can absolutely tell you that transitioning is the deepest thing I want right now. I want to have a woman's body, to have a woman's name, to dress in women's clothes, to be seen and treated as a woman by everyone. More than anything else in the world. Maybe it's not *the* deepest thing I'll ever want in my life, but I don't care. It's the deepest so far, and by miles. Like MILES. -- Also just to clarify, someone trans doesn't just wake up one day and makes the decision to transition, it's a lifelong thing. I have always been a girl, since birth. There's a distinction between being trans and transitioning. Being trans isn't a decision, you just are, from birth. Transitioning, changing your body to match your gender, that's a decision. And transitioning is done with the assistance of many different medical professionals from many different fields. To your point, we have gender therapists. The therapists are essentially gatekeepers, preventing people from hormone treatments and surgeries unless it's right. But they're helpful, and they're here to help those who seek to transition. Maybe indeed I want something else, or my lifelong poor mental health comes from other trauma or something else, and that's what I'll be clarifying with my gender therapist. I have ... strong doubts it's anything else, but maybe it is, and I'm not closed off from it. Or maybe I am trans but maybe I need to heal from some other stuff before really being able to transition safely.

I already have that. I mean you really just said "maybe you just want friends" to someone who's telling you they've been living as the wrong gender their whole life? Really? Hell yeah. I mean I would've let them smash before, but they're not into guys.

Oh no, anyway. Clearly you've never experienced gender dysphoria, yeah. Clearly. You have no idea how bad it gets. I mean, okay, your profile says you're a man. Try and imagine what it'd be like to live your entire life in the body of a woman. To look in the mirror and see a woman's body ALL THE TIME, to have every single person on the planet always think you're a woman, to treat you like a woman, to sound like a woman, to literally just be a woman at all times for the rest of your life. You really think you could just "accept" it? I don't believe that for one second. For me, I can't wait to be a woman for the rest of my life, literally the dream, and I wish I had known sooner, in fact I just wish I was born in a female body in the first place. My life would have been a lot better. I mean you might as well ask me "Have you tried not being trans?" And to that I would say "I don't know, HAVE I? What have I been doing for 27 years!" Yeah, for like 3.5 years now I've lived away from my parents, with my own job. I'd even argue it's finally the independence from my parents that allowed me to explore myself more deeply, realizing I'm bisexual first, transgender now. Thanks for your whole message, I didn't quote it here but the whole message was awesome. To answer this specific phrase, yeah no lol I could not care less for them. If my identity was so fragile that a couple random messages on a forum could threaten, then yeah maybe I wouldn't be trans. But that's certainly not the case here.

Here's mine: Monday: Ab Machine 3x12 Squats 5x5 Deadilft 1x5 Tuesday: Bench Press 5x5 Barbell Row 5x5 Wednesday: Squats 3x12 Deadlift 1x12 Calves Machine 3x12 Thursday: Bench Press 3x12 Barbell Row 3x12 Triceps Machine 3x12 Friday: Sprinting Saturdays and Sundays are rest days but I'm still typically very active. I go hiking, skiing, swimming, or any other activity, it's typically very low effort though. I like this workout routine because I have big compound movements as well as isolated exercises and I think as a whole I train the entire body that way. Also switching between 5x5 and 3x12 allows me to work both for raw strength in the 5x5 as well as more volume in 3x12. And I also still have a sprint workout so it's not all about just big muscles, I do cardio to keep myself healthy. What are y'all's workouts?

@Jannes I want to thank you, deeply, for this, actually. The decision to go through a full medical transition is not a small one. And, if I'm honest, I haven't made it yet. It's a very long process that involves many medical professionals, a gender therapist, a separate psychiatrist, an endocrinologist, of course also the surgeons who will perform the operations, if it even comes to that. All of these people have to agree that, yes, I have gender dysphoria, and yes hormonal therapy and potentially surgeries are needed to heal it. And we're looking at years here, like at least five. I can see that like I've made a single forum post and it can seem that I almost just woke up one day and decided I'm a girl now, time to make radical life changes to my body. But that's not at all what's happening here. I've been questioning my gender ever since I learned I could have a gender different than the one I was assigned at birth. Even before that, when I was a kid, I fantasized about having been born a girl. Those feelings got repressed, of course, but they were there. I've actually somewhat tried what you mentioned up there, I identified as non-binary, presented masc, but still allowed myself to act as feminine as I wanted, and do all the girly stuff I wanted. But, ehh, didn't really work, still felt like something was missing, or I was just felt too masc still. Maybe my therapist will tell me to go do that some more, and better, and maybe it'll be enough, or maybe it won't, we'll see. Regardless, I'm going through a really powerful experience, and I'm solidifying my gender identity and expression, and I can only come out better from this.

That was an amazing video, thank you Emerald for sharing it. Instantly subscribed to the guy, looks like he makes a lot of great content. I am really glad to hear him talk about this stuff and I agree on all fronts. Once again, the patriarchy harms us all, and I really loved that he talked about the societal changes that do affect even what makes someone attractive to others. And I think it ties back to what Leo said in his How to Get Laid series, ultimately it's about being yourself, but you have to learn to be yourself, and that can be hard especially since we're groomed to be lonely and emotionally maladjusted men.

Sounds good, I'll try these. And on these days I can do supersets where I'm doing two exercises at once back to back. What do you think of this? Monday: Ab Machine 4x12 Squats 5x5 Deadilft 1x5 Tuesday: Bench Press 5x5 Barbell Row 5x5 Wednesday: Leg Press & Calves Superset, 4x12 for each exercise Hamstring Curl 4x12 Deadlift 1x12 Thursday: Bench Press 3x12 Lat Pulldown & Bicep Curl Superset, 4x12 Triceps Machine & Lateral Raises Superset, 4x12

Actually this has been my main concern for the past few months, I'm definitely thinking I'm not hitting enough muscles. I've had very good progress in the beginning but not as much any more. It'll definitely take me two or three times at a given weight before I can increase it. I would argue that biceps are hit pretty well with the bench press and the barbell row, and hamstrings by the squats and deadlifts (I do two sets btw). But it might be worth adding some exercises specialized in them. Thing is I can really only do ten total sets per workout otherwise it starts to get too long. This is the video I saw regarding minimalistic training I guess that's been my approach yeah, even if unintentional. And yeah I'd say it doesn't work well for advanced trainees. But it's decent for newbies and intermediates. I'd say I'm still a newbie.

Oh btw yeah I didn't mention at all. There's a lot of really interesting science on minimalistic training. You can get a lot out of very little and it's a super valid way of exercising for people who only want or can work out once every four or five days.

Found this video on overtraining. Very informative. I've never heard anyone recommend more than 48h of recovery. Do you have any studies that could prove me wrong? It's worth pointing I started with twice a week, then increased to three times a week, now four. Then I added the cardio. Over a course of two years. It felt right every step of the way. I give myself three minutes of break between sets if I complete them, five if not, and I get pretty close to failure, I'd say typically 1-3 reps left in the tank. But thanks for your input, if I feel unhappy with my gains in the future, I'll look into potentially lowering how much I work out.

Do you have any data to back that up? I hit every body part between 3 and 10 sets a week, I have only one cardio workout, and I never hit the same body part two days in a row. These are very standard numbers. Personally I don't feel any pain, tiredness, or anything negative from this. And I see strength, muscle mass, and cardio improvements.

How do I squat 100kg in nature? Gyms provide all the equipment for all the exercises that I simply don't have in nature.

Yeah I did. For, I would say almost a year, I would tell myself to stop drinking, every single day, while I was still drinking. Then one day, Leo made his series of videos on how to get laid, I loved it and was like "it's time to make some changes". I decided to move to a different city and stop alcohol. And I did both of these things. Was kinda easy I just said "no" every time I wanted to drink alcohol. What was worse was dealing with everyone asking me why I don't drink. This is always how things happen in my life, something external happens, and I make sweeping changes. Up until a few months ago, I was eating a lot of unhealthy food and never cleaning my home. Then I sprained my ankle, my grandmother came over, cleaned the apartment and cooked me healthy food, and ever since, both my diet and my home are very clean. This was, again, after like a year of telling myself I shouldn't eat so much unhealthy food and I should clean my apartment.

This is where Life Purpose comes in. Give your life meaning. Decide, for yourself, that everything you do in your life serves one purpose, and accomplishing that purpose will be your reward. Literally life purpose is the answer to the question "Why are you alive? What is the point? What are you doing here, now? What is the reward for my life?" It's made up, of course. You make it up, you decide. And the worst part is, you have to get deep into it before really being able to feel like you've found it. And it takes years. But it's worth. Ask Leo.

Lot to unpack here. Let me just start by saying I blame capitalism. But anyways. That's a great start actually! I accepted myself as an alcoholic first, before quitting alcohol for the rest of my life. Literally the reason why I can't drink is because I'm an alcoholic. Same for you, you are a smoker, therefore you can't touch tobacco for the rest of your life. You should see an addiction therapist. Turning to substances to make yourself feel different is not a coping mechanism, it's an addiction. And it speaks to poor mental health. See a therapist that specifically specialized in addiction to help you. Actually, no, not just dying. And don't forget lung cancer. But an addiction ruins your life every day. Any addiction will only hamper any effort you make to make your life better and yourself better, it'll be a thorn in your side. This one in particular has the added affect of worsening your breathing, your cardiovascular health, and I'm sure many others I don't know about (I guess maybe sleep too?`And therefore your daily energy levels due to the poor sleep?). Wanting your life to end prematurely because you don't like your life is a huge red flag. You are most likely depressed. At the very least, see a therapist, so they can assess your situation.

No amount of alcohol consumption is safe: https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-alcohol-consumption-is-safe-for-our-health

Found a new use case for ChatGPT, changing Leo's teaching style to make his words sound better to me. That does not mean twisting his words to fit my worldview, it just means the tone, changing his tone. For example, I really didn't like the latest blog post, not because I disagree with the underlying core message, but I just really didn't like the delivery of it. The man literally calls us an embarrassment to the human race, which, thanks for the personal attack, Master Leo, I shall bow down to your will. You're asking us to be nicer to conservatives while not being very nice to us yourself. So I pulled up ChatGPT and asked it to rewrite the blog post in a more compassionate tone, this is what came out, after some adjustments: This, I can read and agree with. Again, I agreed with the message since the beginning but the delivery put a sour taste in my mouth. Ultimately, I think everybody has a certain style of teaching that they prefer, some people prefer Leo's more "tough love" approach, I clearly do not. So I'm happy to use this AI tool to change the form without changing the core message.

Hi SWE friends, I'm going to start my first job as SWE later this year, I'll be focused more on backend stuff, and I was wondering about something. The company uses Java exclusively for its backend. I was wondering if this is widely used within the industry or if I should still learn and keep up-to-date with other languages as well if I ever want or need to change jobs. So what do you folks think?

In my search for a therapist, I've noticed many of them offering EMDR therapy, so I wonder if anyone here has experience with it? Was it good or bad for you? I'm doing my own research, of course, and nothing will beat obviously me trying it out for myself, but I wanted to offer anyone here the chance to talk about it if they feel so inclined.

Thanks yeah that's what I was starting to conclude. So it's not really going to be super useful for me.

Had a dream I was a girl last night. Like the dream wasn't even about being a girl at all. At the start of the dream I was thrown into the action and there were a bunch of crazy things happening. Then, once the action settled, I dreamed what lead to the start of the dream, and that was a bit more lowkey. After that I woke up and I thought "wow that was a crazy dream" and I recounted it to myself. And after I was done recounting it, I realized "hey I was a girl in this dream". Kinda crazy.

Introduction I'm gonna start by exploring that title. I literally just came up with it on the spot but I think it captures the essence of this journal. In a way I've given my life away, and now it's high time I take it back. I look at all the failures of my life and think that, yeah, I gave my life away to these things. I gave my life away to video games, to unhealthy food, to movies, TV shows, internet browsing, alcohol, coffee. Trying to make myself liked by people who will never like me and who I don't even like, hiding my emotions from others and even myself. Getting angry at others and arguing with them but only in my head, never for real, that would be insane. Never, ever, cleaning my room and then my own apartment. Not pursuing anything creative in my life and trying to improve the world in some meaningful way, in fact now I don't even know what I should be doing that would have any kind of meaning! At some point I was just straight up depressed, and attempted suicide. So I very much almost gave my life away completely. And ... I have not healed any of the trauma I've gone through my entire life. So it's over. It's time. I need to take back my life. Some of these things I've already fixed. I've not drunk alcohol for almost a year, I've had a total of maybe five espressos that I didn't finish since early 2020, I haven't played a video game in weeks, and more broadly, when I do play, it's only for maybe a couple hours on like a Sunday afternoon. And also I haven't been depressed for like eight years. I had one experience of very deep sadness that I did consider it depression recently, whereby I was introduced to a group a friends by someone else and they barely even acknowledged me, they just said hello and turned away and talked among themselves. It broke my heart, I'm crying again writing this. I've been exercising pretty heavily for the past few months and I've been going four times a week and for a long time (typically the total workout time actually exercising, including breaks between sets and exercises ofc, is 60 minutes), so I can absolutely say the habit is implanted. Buuuut that's about it. There are a lot of things I really want to improve in my life now that I just haven't been doing. Friday: The Party So alright let's get started, let's talk about some of the recent events of my life. Let's take this weekend as an example. Friday night, there was a big work party, loads of people came. I spent some time with people of my team, with people not of my team. Some people came from another office of the company, I spent some time with them and it was great to see them and hang out with them, they're awesome people. We danced, they drank (I didn't, though they're all hella annoying about this), had an awesome time overall. Took the train home at 5am, literally did the closing. In fact I wanted to go to a night club when I arrived in my home city, but they close at 5. I think I can confidently say I have fun at parties now. Like it's not that parties were never fun to me, but that, since I wasn't fun at parties, that would both ruin other people's experience at the party, and it would make ME not have fun because I was such an unfun person. That's not really the case any more, I don't think. There are still a lot of things to improve, I didn't approach a single person there even though I definitely really could or even should have, I didn't really have a lot of conversations with people and I struggled to come up with things to say. And that's typical for me at parties but, despite all that, I had fun! And that was a huge improvement. Someone from my team this morning annoyed me though, and I need to go on a rant. He told me "You really hyped yourself up even though you didn't drink alcohol". There are SEVERAL THINGS that really piss me off about this. Number 1) He said "hyped yourself up", this is translated from French, but I think, if he meant that I was fun to be around at the party, he wouldn't have used that exact phrasing. Of course, I have very little social skills and experience, so maybe that's what he meant but I don't know. Someone else used the exact same phrase WHILE AT THE PARTY and it didn't feel like they were complimenting me, it felt more condescending to me. And honestly they can fuck right off because THEY'RE not fun at parties either, but I don't go around telling them and other people they're not fun. And, honestly, they're the people I was talking about at the beginning of this post, people who will never like me and who I don't even like. Number 2) He said "without alcohol". BITCH! I have MORE FUN without alcohol! Alcohol makes my head spin, it makes me less socially calibrated, it makes me get drunk VERY VERY VEEERY quickly, it drains my energy, it makes me hungry as hell and then I feel sick with all the alcohol and unhealthy food in my system. This substance is just HOOOORRIBLE to me on SO MANY LEVELS! And I swear the number of people who shit on me so hard for not drinking really pisses me off. These people actually believe that everyone needs to drink alcohol to have fun and even to BE FUN TO BE AROUND. They keep asking me "why don't your drink?", they tell me "life is short and you should have fun while you still can, the clock is ticking", they tell other people "you can't just let me go to a night club with Emrie alone, he doesn't drink!". It is SOOOO ANNOYING to me! Like yeah maybe I'm not too fun to be around right now but I just need to practice it, work on it, have fun with it, and alcohol has absolutely nothing to do with it. Not to mention many of these people knew me when I was drinking and have spent time with me when I was drinking and absolutely know I'm not really fun even when I do drink There are a few more points I want to talk about in regards to the party. I realize I'm spending a lot of time on the party but actually my social life is my overarching, long term, and very difficult project of my life right now. I am literally talking about turning myself into the most sociable, most fun, just generally super-social person that I can be, so that the people who knew me when I was shit (my family, as an example) can look at me and say "wow you've really changed and you have much better social skills now". The first is that I completely busted the limiting belief I have that I need friends to go out. In January of this year I moved to a big city. I got a very sweet place that's deep into the city center. I mean literally the closest night club is a 5-minute walk from my place, then there are 5 more within 5 minutes. There's an area that's all commercial (read bars, clubs, and shops) that's just right there and it's just perfect. But, I haven't been going out and socializing because ... "I don't have any friends". I was telling myself "join a club, join a sports league, go take some X and Y classes, do things that interest you and meet people similar to you, and you'll make friends that way". And of course I was not doing that either because ... well you see McDonald's and reddit are more important. This is all bullshit, the bottom line is I need to bite the bullet and talk to strangers. Risk not being fun, risk running out of things to say, risk being kind of annoying to other people, risk being rejected or not even being acknowledged by other people (see the comment above about the group of friends that made me almost depressed). This will suck, but this is necessary. And I will feel sad on some days, I will likely cry. But I need to do it, it's worth it. And in fact it's becoming more and more non-negotiable that I do it because I can't keep putting it off and making excuses, it's leaving me in quagmire, doing nothing, and realistically making me regress. The second is that this is all so fucking foreign to me. I am SO SCARED. I've never kissed anyone. The most intimate touch I've had with another human being has been a hug, and it's, you know, familial love kind of hug, not romantic love kind of hug. I'm so touch-starved that when someone puts their arm around my neck and shoulders at a party, it just feels so freaking amazing to me, it is truly some of the best moments of my life. So the thought of even just someone else's lips touching mine is freaking me out so much, I am so incredibly scared of it, I don't know how my body will react to it. Is it going to feel amazing, am I going to have a panic attack because I'll just be so fucking nervous from it, am I just going to have a huge boner from it? Like this shit is so foreign to me, it's insane! And I know that I'm not just going to kiss the first person I approach, it'll take a lot of buildup to get to that and by that time I'll probably be much more comfortable with it all but... I'm almost 27 years old and the fact that all of this is something that I have NEVER EXPERIENCED IN ANY WAY is really fucking saddening to me. In fact, even disregarding the whole touch thing, the concept of me approaching a stranger and making conversation with them scares the shit out of me. Like I just have absolutely ZERO experience, I have no clue whatsoever how it's supposed to work, what I'm supposed to say, how I'm supposed to handle myself. Obviously I know this is generally pretty common sense stuff, you know, just talk to each other in some sort of coherent fashion, riff off of each other, try and make them laugh, tell them stories and shit, just very basic typical stuff, you know. But I have no experience so I have nothing in memory to draw from, and it fucking sucks.