(Part 3) Best products from r/OkCupid

Depends on how old you are.

• Middle school: I really enjoyed this, this, and this, but I don't think I can read those books now (29) without cringing a little bit. Especially, Getting Things Done because I already know how to make to do list, but I still flip through all 3 books occastionally.
  
  
• High school: I really enjoyed this, this, and this, but if you're a well adjusted human and responsible adult, then I don't think you'll find a lot of helpful advice from these 6 books so far because it'll be pretty basic information.
  
  
• College: I really enjoyed this, this, and started doing Malcolm Gladwell books. The checklist book helped me get more organized and So Good They Can't Ignore You was helpful starting my career path.
  
• Graduate School: I really enjoyed this, this, and this. I already stopped with most "self help" books and reading more about how to manage my money or books that looked interesting like Stiff.
  
  
• Currently: I'm working on this, this, and this. Now I'm reading mostly for fun, but all three of these books are way out of my league and I have no idea what their talking about, but they're areas of my interest. History and AI.

Oh man, GREAT question.

My answer: more than I would care to admit, although I'm doing major work on it. I come from a privileged background (my preferred way of expressing it is that I had a Whole Foods Childhood.) I grew up in an academic pressure cooker where my parents put a high priority on achievement, though not exactly on income.

All of my parents' friends growing up were upper-middle class (and some actually extremely wealthy) intellectuals who had big-time careers and nice suburban houses. I don't think I had a single friend before college whose family I could legitimately describe as "poor." Looking back on it now, this fact makes me incredibly queasy, but back then it was just the way it was.

In my early twenties, I was obsessed with the question of whether I would be able to create the same lifestyle for myself and my family in the future as I enjoyed growing up. The thought of potentially falling back into the peloton of the middle class caused me an unbelievable amount of anxiety. I'd been conditioned to prize societally acceptable notions of what it means to be "successful," and to an extent even today I'm still not able to break away from them.

That said, in the past couple of years I've made some headway trying to combat this prejudice. My socioeconomic anxieties are, without a doubt, my worst flaw, and thus I actively try to fight against them. I think it's unlikely that I would enter a serious relationship with someone without a college degree, but I'm far more open now to people who opt to pursue careers that are more socially than financially remunerative.

I do care absolutely nothing about the more frivolous markers of status -- I don't care what car someone drives or where they buy their clothes, for instance. I do like eating out occasionally/regularly and I would want to live in a decent house in a good school district, but I think these are manageable luxuries.

What's important to me now is finding someone who is brilliant, willing to work hard, responsible, compassionate, creative, and captivating. Whether she decides to work as an artist, a minister, an economist, or what have you doesn't matter. How much money her family has or doesn't have doesn't matter (at one point, I even sort of considered this, disgustingly.)

Hopefully I continue to grow, but I hope this begins to answer the question.

I don't really read music either. One of my goals but it hasn't been very important, I pick up things by ear fairly well.

First and foremost, get the best used guitar you can afford, preferably from a music store that knows what they're doing. Do not get a new cheap guitar. This is because cheap guitars have crappy action. The "action" is the space between the strings and fretboard. Quality instruments can be made to have very low action, which is easier on the fingers, while cheap instruments tend to warp and thus make it harder to press down on the strings. Also cheap instruments tend to go out of tune easier.

Next learn to play your favorite yet easy to play songs. You're more likely to keep up with it if you love the music you're playing. Get the chord books or tablature books for your favorite bands. There are a lot of "how to play this song" videos on YouTube.

Prepare for your fingers to hurt and bleed. This is normal. You'll build callouses eventually. Do warmups. Get a finger gripper like this to help strengthen your fingers.

If you get an electric guitar, don't worry about the whammy bar/tremolo/etc. Though a lot of electric guitars have them by default, the cheaper ones will knock your guitar out of tune if you don't know how it all works. Floyd Rose tremolos work fairly well but are a bitch to change strings. Beginners don't need them anyway.

Regardless of type, pick it up and play it with a strap or sit down with it. If it hits your arm in a funny spot, choose a different one.

Be careful of having your belt buckle exposed when you try guitars. They'll scratch the back of the guitar.

5/5 all excellent SNES games. The gf recently finished Link to the Past for the first time with me as her guide, it was really fun, although she had this obsession about slashing every single bush and grass patch in the entire game. I really want to play Secret of Mana with her sometime, but I don't have it.

Earthbound is pretty expensive and I've never played it myself. Chrono Trigger is a classic. If you have access to a playstation, you could play it this way. And Final Fantasy VI is also pretty essential. Again, with access to a Playstation: pretty damn cheap used

You could get both those games (and FF IV and FF V, also good games) used for less than $25 including shipping.

If you don't have access to a PS or PS2 via a friend, you could actually purchase a used PS1 for pretty cheap as well. If that's really too much effort (understandable) or you really prefer the SNES controller feel, see if you have any nearby (or even online) friends who could lend it to you. Hell, if we were already friends and you paid the shipping and promised to send it back, I'd send Chrono Trigger to you. Unfortunately we do not know each other and you might nab it! ;-)

• Shorten sentences to make them easier to read. Add playful positive description. You're trying to hook a girl with charm, not tell your life story.
  
• Mention social particulars that may set you apart from the crowd in a positive way: Brewing, marijuana, and tattoos (in your pic) are great examples.
  
• Give direct examples of awesomeness like what "interesting things" you've created to eat and drink, or that one "live music" show you really really liked.
  
• Do NOT mention negative things like "creepy winks" or "awkward guys". Although you don't mean to, you'll subconsciously be associated with them. Be associated with positive things and awesome guys instead.
  
• Read blogs.okcupid.com. They have some extremely helpful information.
  
  As a reference, I read half of How to Succeed with Women and, though I almost upchucked halfway through it, I learned a lot about how to be attractive at the conversational level.

I was in the same boat when I started, struggling to put away 2000 a day, so I have like, powerful skinny person empathy.

A part of eating more is going to come down to just doing it consistently for long enough that your stomach expands, but we can focus on the finer details in the interim.

So for your breakfast, you should try replacing cream cheese with peanutbutter or some pb alternative, since 2 tablespoons of that are going to be like ~200cal. You could probly replace the muscle milk with some sort of seeds and have the same outcome for protein, with better results for calories.

Not eating meat is a little tougher but definitely doable. This Black Bean Spaghetti isn't crazy calorie dense, but it's got 25g protein per 2oz's, which is about the best it'll get outside of protein bars/ shakes.

I have no idea how your schedule looks in a day, but you could consider restructuring as best you can to better suit a big eats kinda rhythm. Waking up earlier so you can eat breakfast earlier is super obvious but some people just don't feel up to it. Something I'm a big fan of is putting whatever my cardio training is (running/ HIIT/ etc) first thing in the morning, cause it gets it out of the way for the rest of the day, and it helps kick start your appetite for breakfast.

When it comes down to it, all this extra stuff I'm talking about is just kind of tertiary, and you'll more than likely just get a bigger appetite as time goes on, cause your stomach will expand naturally, so don't stress if you don't want to try any/ all of these.

In two years, I'll also be a professional making 6 figures so I understand where you're coming from. It's not necessarily about the money but about the motivation to do something more with his life. Also, if you want to settle down, you want someone with more stability and potential to help support the family. It's okay, you'll be okay. Cry if you need to because you guys had some good times together. You made the right decision, for you and for him. I wish I could give you a big hug.

Maybe with your next awesome paycheck, you can buy this little baby and you can cum lots and lots all on your own. :) Feel better, lady! It'll get better with time. Just go at your own pace and don't look back.

I'm used to and enjoy long term relationships.

I try to love myself, so I don't have to rely on someone else for love.

I'm trying to become more fit, though... the strength is increasing, but I still eat my body weight in ice cream.


There are two books I've read, for personal pleasure, not to 'snag' a guy, but I think they're helpful in all relationships, not just romantic ones.

The 5 Love Languages. This book I recommend to EVERYONE that ever has family, friends, or romantic relationships.

and

Things I Wish I'd Known Before We Got Married

I have designed some of my own! To give a sampling, in increasing order of complexity (with diagrams!),

• here's a truncated tetrahedron,
  
• here's a double equilateral unit which can make things like an octahedron, icosahedron, "spiky ball," and many other deltahedra,
  
• here's a rhombic dodecahedron, and
  
• here's a compound of the cube and octahedron.
  
  My favorite origami book is John Montroll's Animal Origami for the Enthusiast, which starts out with simple, charming models and builds up to complex masterpieces like this lobster. It's one you can go back to for years. (I still have my childhood copy, inscribed "Merry Christmas 1988, Love Mom and Dad.")
  
  Another lovely volume, though not an ideal first book, is one called Origami for the Connoisseur. One of its highlights is an exquisitely beautiful seashell model. Here's someone folding it on YouTube.
  
  If you're curious about modular origami, Tomoko Fuse is a master of the field. This book ("Unit Origami: Multidimensional Transformations") is a hefty omnibus with plenty of lovely designs. Fuse tends toward a bit more surface elaboration and fussy preciseness than I go for these days, but her work is absolutely worth recreating with your own fingertips.
  
  Most of all, I'd encourage you to just try things out and have fun. There's action origami that does stuff (fancier versions of jumping frogs and fortunetellers), there's a big "tessellation" scene, where people fold intricate, two-dimensional patterns, there are flowers and franchises and figures. Any decent bookstore will have a papercraft section with an origami book or two. Libraries should have plenty of volumes available.
  
  Enjoy!

Aneros is one of the better brands you could go with but if you want to spend less on an anal probe, I'm really happy with this Doc Johnson one. I have the large and it feels amazing but you might want to start out with the small or medium. You could also look into vibrating ones. I'm kind of bored with mine and looking to find one of those next.

I don't use enemas for solo play and haven't had a catastrophic mess situation yet. If your diet's decent you should be fine. More lube is fine but keep in mind what goes up in there is going to come out, and lube really does go a long way, so you might want to err on the side of caution unless you're comfortable dealing with a leaky butt for a short while. 🙊

There are a ton of good lubes out there but if you want a recommendation, my favorite is Sliquid. It's vagina safe for most women so you can use it for regular sex, too.

I wouldn't start out with an Njoy, but if you do definitely go with the smallest. You might find the steel base to be cold and unpleasant against your taint and balls.

I love books I love books I love books.

My all time favorite book is The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. I first read it in high school for my AP Lit class and I've probably read it a dozen more times since then. My copy is worn and dog eared and full of little notes in the margins and underlined phrases. It's gorgeous writing and the protagonist makes my chest ache and the story-telling is magical. It is the best book I've ever read and the best book I will ever read.

Another one of Barbara Kingsolver's books is also my favorite. It's her first one--called The Bean Trees.

A recent author I've found that I'm completely infatuated with is Alice Hoffman. My favorites of hers are The Museum of Extraordinary Things, Faithful, The Marriage of Opposites, and The Story Sisters. Her story telling is luminous, exquisite. She has a profound grasp on both understanding words and understanding people, and the two gifts together make magic.

The Extraordinary Journey of the Fakir Who Got Trapped In An Ikea Wardrobe is probably the smartest, funniest, charming, insightful, and heartwarming/terribly saddening novel I've ever, ever read. It's spectacular.

I'm also a huge fan of Liane Moriarty's work. Her books are so real and they're so funny, so beautiful, so good.

Also the Harry Potter series. At the beginning of the summer, right after I graduated college, I seriously sat down and reread all seven books in a week. It was great. I did nothing but read all day for seven days and it was perfect.

edit: forgot Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel! This book combines my favorite literary genre, magical realism, with apocalyptic fiction and OH MY GOD it's fantastic.