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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 17th, 2023

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  • Drawing clear boundaries for yourself is a good thing and has nothing to do with narcissism. They are about what is important to you. Disagreement over such boundaries can mean the end of the relationship, for the better.

    Though it sounds like you are somewhat overcompensating in some areas due to your family experiences (I might be wrong in that). A serious relationship also means meeting the partners needs. If you draw the boundaries so hard to rule out any compromise, then dating will be very difficult, maybe impossible. So you need to be clear with yourself of what is really important and where you can compromise.

    Your examples are very different. First its about “doing something” for her, which is too vague to answer. Might be anything. Just using the phrase “Do it for me” is not manipulative in my view. It might be something that is important for her. If you can compromise on that, why not meeting her need? If not, then communicate it and the reasons clearly. If thats a problem for her, the relationship can still just end.

    Then its about keeping contact with your family or potentially nursing your parents. That seems to be a hard (and probably healthy) boundary for you. She should accept that. Though talking about it in a non-pressuring way is ok.

    And the last two examples are these low stakes situations, where probably the communication is going wrong. These are easily solvable without much drama, by compromising (and yes, ording from different restaurants or having one person cook while the other orders is also a compromise). Do you know the 4 sides of a message? I think it is a quite important concept about communication, since sometimes the anger or sadness, that you her from your partner are not really about what they are saying. Human communcation can be quite complex.



  • In germany - I think - blood and plasma donations are most commonly done with the DRK (German Red Cross). I might be wrong, but DRK is not a for profit organization, but “gemeinnützig”. Organizations with that status get controlled by the government for it, so they are non-profit. I think the 25€ are an incentive to come and donate, just as the chocolate and drinks and the small goodies, that you get there. And you only can get the money, if you go to one of the fixed DRK locations. If the DRK comes to somewhere near you (as they often do with churches, town halls, schools and universities) you don’t get any money. I can at least believe, that these two are monetarily similar for the DRK. If you come to them, they don’t need to pay for getting the equipment and people to you. And providing incentives for donating blood is in effect a good thing, as they are working, thus we have more blood to save lifes.

    Ofcourse actors later in the chain are probably profit oriented. Though there I would see the discussion disconnected from the donation. It is more about if we want profit oriented actors in healthcare.

    And - as always - the US healthcare system seems to do the worst thing possible every time. Sorry, americans, don’t want to bash you, but capitalism…


  • An interesting customer base might be small communal organisations. At our local scouts troop I had a discussion with a friend, who is also in IT. His idea (not fleshed out) was to provide small local organizations with a stack of already configured open source software to support the typical needs of such organizations (like a wordpress website, a nextcloud for file storage and common calender, limesurvey for surveys and event registration, mailman3 for mailing lists,…). Depending on the needs you could sell the initial setup process (your personal work in setting up and skill transfer) or ongoing support. Though such organizations normally don’t have much money to give away. So probably its not really worth your time financially (though probably really appreciated in the community).






  • What people want in life often comes from what they experienced themselves previously. You mentioned charity. I’ve put 13 years of my life into being a scouts group leader, organizimg weekly meetups, many events and multiple scout camps a year. I’m very passionate about this, since I’ve got so much out of being a scout since I was 7, growing up with a community, that was meaningful and not harsh and punishing as school. I wanted tp give these experience back to the next scout generation. And during my time as scout group leader I could grew even more, making my own life better through helping others. Soon I will shift my focus away from the scouts (currently its too much together with work; also I want kids soon).

    I’m not saying, that you need to do this. I just wanted to explain where my motivation comes from. I get a sense of fulfilment and I’m proud of what I’ve done and I’m proud of the kids, that I saw growing up and now being group leaders themselves.

    Finding something, that you are passionate about is very important. It doesn’t need to include external responsibilities. Taking responsibility for your own self, like putting in hard work to learn a new skill, can be as fulfilling as the above.