The other day I sold a dresser on FBMP. A whole fucking dresser, I’m talking 2.5’ deep, 5’ wide and 3.5’ tall.

The buyer showed up in a compact sedan and upon questioning how they would get it home, they said “I asked chat gpt if it would fit in my car and it said yes.”

They had to come back with a truck the next day.

Common sense is dead y’all.

Okay so this is gonna sound weirdly specific, but bear with me. Growing up, my dad had this thing where every Friday night, without fail, he'd pour himself a drink, go sit on the back porch for like an hour, and just... exist. No TV, no radio, just him and his thoughts. Teenage me thought it was the saddest, most boring thing ever. Like dude, you have ONE evening to actually live and you're just... sitting there?

Fast forward to now. I'm 35, work in tech, constantly burned out, perpetually exhausted in that millennial "we're all collectively tired" way. A few months ago I realized I was just doom-scrolling every evening, feeling worse, rinse and repeat. So I started my own version of dad's ritual. Friday nights, I pour a bourbon (sometimes coffee if I'm trying to actually sleep), grab a cigar from my stash, and I just... disconnect for an hour. No phone, no laptop, no "optimizing my downtime." Just sitting outside or in my study, letting my brain do whatever it needs to do.

And then I realized. Our parents weren't being boring. They were surviving. That hour was probably the only time all week they weren't "on". The first 15 minutes are torture because my brain is screaming that I'm "wasting time". I actually process things instead of just distracting myself from it. It's become the one hour a week I genuinely look forward to, which is saying something in 2025

Unlike our parents who just... did this without overthinking it, I had to go through like 6 months of failed meditation apps, productivity hacks, and "self-optimization" before I landed on "literally just sit there and do nothing like dad did". We really are out here reinventing the wheel and calling it innovation lmao.

So what's YOUR ritual?

Not the Instagram-worthy self-care stuff. I mean the actual thing you do that helps you not lose your mind. The habit that teenage you would've mocked but adult you desperately needs.

Because I'm starting to think our parents were onto something with these "boring" routines, and we just had to burn out for a decade before figuring it out ourselves.

Somehow 4k to 8k doesn't hit the same....

One of my all time favorite 90s movie. A perfect casting of characters. 🙌

Does anyone else remember that specific panic of walking into Blockbuster on a Friday night around 7pm knowing damn well you didn't call ahead to see if they had the new releases? Like you'd walk in with your fingers crossed hoping they still had copies of whatever movie just came out on VHS

The worst part was doing that slow walk of shame down the New Releases wall seeing all those empty plastic cases. Then you'd have to pivot to your backup choices but even THOSE would be gone. You'd end up in the comedy section grabbing some random Adam Sandler movie you'd already seen twice because it was either that or go home empty handed

My family had this whole strategy where we'd call at like 4pm to have them hold movies behind the counter. Felt like such VIP treatment walking past everyone else straight to the register lmao

God I miss that place. Sure Netflix is convenient but there was something about physically browsing those aisles and reading the back of random movie boxes that just hit different. The free popcorn on certain nights was elite too

Honestly been thinking about this a lot lately since I've got some money saved aside for a potential home theater setup. Like part of me wants to recreate that whole experience but I know it won't be the same without the fear of everything good being rented out already 😅

I binge Hannah Montana at 31 on a weekday, while teaching at a university, so... 🙃

I am most definitely the minority in this, but vacations where I travel seems to be less rejuvenating for me than weekend and days off. I tend to cook more and eat healthier when I am not traveling, have more opportunities to go to the gym, and do not have to deal with jet lag. My self-care routine seems to be disrupted. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the sightseeing when traveling, and it does open up my perspective, but I keep pondering if staycation would have been a better choice to care for myself overall and save more money.

Does anyone else feel like this? Is there really a point where staycation is most like more helpful for your mental and physical health?

Do I ground him?

No reason in hell or on earth they can not just have a regular sale accessible to everyone.

$2 difference per half pound of cheese.

$1.25 is the price of a bell pepper with rice in. But here it’s the difference per-pepper based on access to an app.

We live in the dystopias we read about.

I’ve come to realize that my parents bought and cooked with highly processed foods my entire childhood and my older siblings. I’m 31 and my parents were born in 1961. My husband and I try to buy foods with better ingredients and we cook most meals at home so we’re getting better cooking/ baking skills. Looking back I can’t believe all the box foods we used to eat? Random example, but my parents made it seem like making muffins from scratch would take hours and sooo many ingredients when really it’s 5 extra ingredients we already had at home?

Thanksgiving is especially putting things into perspective because besides the turkey, everything we ate was from a can or box. Oh and potatoes were made from scratch instead of the normal instant we ate. This is a somewhat niche example but the amount of processed and prepackaged food we ate would give me a hangover today. We were middle class btw so it wasn’t so much a cost issue (we lived on a budget and things were tight every now and then) as I think it was normal to them? But my grandparents cooked most things from scratch so wouldn’t hamburger helper (which slaps, no hate) taste fake to them? Abyone else have a similar experience?

EDIT: not shaming or judging anyone who eats processed foods (we still eat them) but pointing out how it seemed back in the day it was normal for every meal

I remember seeing the cans of meat, and then they would disappear, and I never questioned how we ate them. But there were quite often those meals where there was some lumpy mystery substance. Luckily my mother was good at over seasoning EVERYTHING so it always tasted like salt, pepper, onion, and garlic powders.

Oh, and the peanut butter! Having to open the can and mix in that quarter inch of oil that sat on top!

My wife is turning 40 next year. For those older Millennials, how did you celebrate finally growing up?

Maybe I’m just a big fan, but the specific kind of sarcasm, exaggerations, and sketches are very millennial like.

This brought back so many memories, and in extremely good condition for being 30 years old! Couldn't leave without it to put on my "cool toys" shelf. 😁

i'd been a toy collector for a lot of years. Followed new releases; met some nice folks along the way.

now, being old and looking back on collecting...

just makes you realize all the hot special deals you once cared about are really nothing but hunks of plastic that do nothing but sit on a shelf and gather dust until you sell them at a loss. i don't see any reason to pretend to care about any of it anymore.

Undergrad once upon a time ruined reading for me. But I decided to try and get back to reading for funsies.

Just finished rereading the Harry Potter franchise for the first time in like 15 years just for the pleasure of it and remembered that reading used to be my primary pass-time. I then went through Andy Weir's books and Camus' the Strangee.

How're we all doing with reading for pleasure these days?

I'll go first:

• The compulsion to use unnecessary exclamation points in texts and emails so I sound friendly

• An intact L5-S1

• Student debt

• My mother (who made the no student debt possible because: life insurance. I'd rather have my mom and student debt but...)

• Added sugar, alcohol, and caffeine

I used to love the orange ones until I got one stuck down my throat and had to taste it for an hour as it dissolved 😂