I’m a woman in her forties and maybe my perspective helps. What I’ve noticed about myself as I am approaching menopause is this: I won’t tolerate stuff that I don’t want. No compromise anymore. My body just won’t allow that I be in a place I don’t want to be in, with people I don’t want to be with, in conditions I don’t control … so I’m probably not a very nice person anymore in the way I used to be - but at same time feeling powerfully aligned with what I really want for myself, and walking out of situations that don’t serve me.

As women are still raised to please and support others many of us tend to wear ourselves out in caring for other people and their opinion, and when that falls away with menopause the results can be very painful for the person themselves and their families. This change in me killed my relationship, and I do feel very sorry how it all went down, but I was literally physically unable to stay and remain in this ‘wife’ situation that I tend to almost automatically create for myself when with a partner.

And for your situation as a partner: No, you never have to put up with your partner criticizing you all day and dumping their rotten mood onto you. That’s not acceptable for any reason.

Wall-E, is that you?

Go solarpunk!

Why should the homeless have no right to organize? It’s funny that the only places with (rough but efficient) functioning self-organization I could find so far were among the homeless and the small folk. Those with stuff left to protect are too much up their own arse to want to play well with others.

Also, the plans to get off the street are real, most of the time. Every kindness you show is a seed that one day will point towards the right direction.

I’ve been hanging out with the homeless as a kid, and lived on the streets for a few months as a young adult, travelling and panhandling. I met many very kind, and often very damaged people. They are on the streets because it’s for a variety of reasons the only option they can manage, not because they enjoy scamming you out of a few coins and do nothing all day.

If you are concerned about your money look at the suit wearing people, most of it ends up with them.

Improve your local community in other ways. Or give in other ways. Not sure what would apply in your local community - I live in rural Western Europe and that’s very different from what you describe. People here set up donation boxes, swap shops, create food banks, organize markets, create safe spaces for minority groups, community gardens … mostly volunteering time. Not sure you are in the position to do this? Sorry things are so heartbreaking. I hope we all figure this out soon.

How did you like Georgia? I keep beong obsessed by it (because music).

How did you address your trauma? What methods did you find worked?

Thispunk.

trying to catch trains, trying to find the correct room at university …

Naughty mushrooms doing theirs again, they are so good. I got remembered I never was the uninspired believer in a mechanical world I had become, and turned back to animist knower - a lot of what you write resonates very much with me! Congrats to getting out of the rat race, faraway friend. Cautious as well with the little prankstershrooms. Remember grounding inbetween flights. So many people are getting out - once we get together we will be unstoppable!

Yours is just one of many versions of ‘why I personally don’t do anything’: I’m all for change, but the others don’t want!

Society will never be fully aligned on the solutions and you cannot expect everyone to agree with you, but you still can work for your preferred solutions in smaller groups?

Society is collapsing as we speak and my best case scenario is this one because I do whatever i can to create a soft landing spot for me and my local community.

Yes, and also closeness changes with time. It has been like this in my family. I’ve felt more close to one or the other of my parents over the years depending on what I was doing but I don’t remember having a problem with it. That said, my parents made sure to treat us both equally as kids, and if they felt closer to one of us they didn’t let it show.

Do your friends have a website? I’m always curious to find good ideas to steal for other communities!

Haha insane, I swear this popped into my head out of nowhere yesterday.

Well not entirely nowhere, but I work with plant dyes. So far I’ve only dyed wool, but I suddenly had the idea to create some T-shirt printing process with what grows around here. A dye bath and ink are rather different things though, so I’d be curious for ideas how to turn plant pigment into ink, or where to look?

I’ve never even seen normal silkscreen printing done, but vaguely understand the idea. I’d try different fabrics stapled to a wooden frame as sieve, and maybe use wax to cover the non-print areas?

For a non natural method - could 3D printing be interesting for making sieves?

And what is an emulsion?

It’s a technological and a physical issue. We just can’t store every bit of information plus a picture of everyone’s cat. We can’t guarantee that no information ever gets lost. We’ve also not really stored and archived every shopping list, advertising, pamphlet, silly poem, ugly drawing etc. since the time of the printing press and that’s okay.

It might be a good idea to store and archive some written material as time passes but we want to be a bit picky about what we store. That said, I wouldn’t mind to find more shopping lists and less posh documents in museums.

Yeah, just like most material that was ever printed or carved into a clay tablet. It’s the way of things.

Listening to whatever you like is punk as fuck

Not if you want to make cheese with it

First of all, a hug from far, and may the alienation go away soon.

Second, I’ve found there’s no point in discussing politics with people. Not with friends, not with strangers. There’s no point in trying to find people ‘aligned enough’ with my political ideas. Since I’ve accepted that I feel that my attempts at spreading anarchism lead so much further! As long as I never mention the word (or any other political jargon), and always, always approach my fellow humans as humans and try to inquire about what moves them, not tell them what I think they should do.

What do you think is missing in your neighbourhood? If you think it’s human contact, try to start there and invent ways to encourage friendly contact. Maybe create a point for food sharing or book sharing. If people are too shy to speak to each other in person at this point, give them other options, so they can lose their shyness gradually.