Tyler Durden

First, this is my source: ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/A0701E00.pdf Second, you're either not very good at math or you haven't looked at the numbers at all. We currently grow crops on 30% of the land, 19% for direct consumption, 11% to feed animals. That 19% supplies us with 83% of our energy. Which means that if we want to get 100% of our energy from crops we would need to change the 19% into 23%. That's no problem, because we're already using 30% of the land to grow crops. We just need to use more of it for ourselves instead of using it to feed animals. We don't even need to touch the 70% pasture land, you can forget what I said about it, I was trying to make a point but apparently it didn't come across and it's not relevant enough to keep talking about it. Third, I don't really enjoy this discussion. So if you're interested you can check out the report that I just gave you the link to and make up your own mind. But let's just end our discussion here. Just to be clear, I didn't say it was immoral to kill anything that's alive and healthy, I was specifically talking about animals. By necessity I mean either self-defense or survival. We don't need to kill these animals out of self-defense and we have more than enough plant food so we don't need to kill them for survival either. I understand your reasoning with regards to morality. But I don't think it matters whether these animals can reason or not, what matters is that they're sentient (unlike plants and bacteria) and that we don't need to kill them. In my view, being moral simply means that you don't cause unnecessary suffering and death to sentient beings. You may not agree with my use of the word moral, but I don't want to get into a discussion about that because I think it distracts from the main point, so feel free to call it empathy or kindness or whatever word you think applies best. I think your last point is interesting and I would like to ask a question about it. Since animal abuse is directly linked to child abuse I think it's reasonable to assume that the jobs provided by the meat industry attract people who have been abused as children. Do you not think that buying that meat and thereby paying these people to kill animals is encouraging unhealthy behavior in them?

Right now we use 19% of the land to grow crops directly for us and that provides us with 83% of our energy. Are you saying that neither the other 11% agricultural land nor the 70% pasture land is suitable to grow quality crops for the remaining 17% of our energy? The only killing that I consider humane is when an animal is sick or injured and about to die anyway and you take them out of their misery. Not when an animal is completely healthy and full of life. The immoral part is taking away a life when there is no necessity to do so.

It's the other way around, we would need less land, a lot less. The reason for that is that animals need a lot of food in order to produce relatively little meat. The meat industry is actually food production in reverse. 10 pounds of plant food get turned into 4 pounds of chicken meat, or 2 pounds of pork, or 1 pound of beef. Worldwide about a third of all the land is used for food "production". Of that land 19% is used as agricultural land to produce plant food for us, 11% is used as agricultural land to produce plant food for animals, and 70% is pasture land for animals. The 19% that is used to produce plant food for us provides us with 83% of our energy and 67% of our protein. The 81% that is used to produce meat, eggs and dairy products provides us with only 17% of our energy and 33% of our protein. So if everyone in the world stopped eating meat overnight we wouldn't need any more agricultural land than we already have. We would have more food and more available land.

Without going into the specifics of what this guy said, I have a question about the last sentence in your post. Don't you think that when over a billion animals are killed in slaughterhouses each week that actually is structural violence? When somebody slits the throat of another human being and lets him or her bleed to death we call it murder, but when someone does the exact same thing to an animal we don't use that word. I get it. But why is it that when someone uses that word with regards to animals, instead of kill, you immediately stop listening? I'm not trying to provoke you btw, it's a genuine question. The amount of animals killed by lions doesn't even come close to the amount of animals killed by humans. This post would have been so much better if you had left out the second paragraph. But you raise some good questions in the first, so let me answer those. Eggs: When the chicks come out of the eggs the males are separated from the females and the male chicks are killed immediately. The female chickens have been bred to lay over 300 eggs a year (instead of 10-15 a year) and after a year of laying eggs they are so exhausted that they're no longer useful to the industry, so they're killed at about a fifth of their natural lifespan. Dairy: Cows in the dairy industry are kept perpetually pregnant, they give birth once a year and all of their young are taken from them at birth. The males are transferred to the veil industry, the females are either selected to take their mom's place or they're transferred to the veil industry as well. After cows have given milk for 4 years they become less productive, so they're killed at about a quarter of their natural lifespan. There's a lot more to say about it, but these are the main reasons why I don't eat eggs or dairy products.

You sound like you're on the verge of making a dumb decision. How old are your children? And is your wife a virtuous person? If you take the sexual attraction out of the equation, what problems are left?

That's quite a story. I'm sorry to hear that you've had so much shit in your life. As for the apology. The guy sounds like an asshole but I do understand that you want to apologize for what you did. If I were you I would write him a short letter or email in which I specifically apologized for the assault, but I would leave everything else out of it. Something like this: Dear N, You probably didn't expect a letter from me, but I wanted to send you one because I feel like I owe you an apology. Regardless of the problematic history that you and I have, I want you to know that I truly regret assaulting you with a knife. I know there's nothing I can say that can undo the damage that I did, but you should at least know that I'm sorry. I don't think it would be a good idea for either of us to get back in touch, but I wish you well. Ella

So you want advice on how to deal with someone who doesn't want to hang out with you, hasn't been interested in that for over a decade, and has nothing interesting to say?

Okay, the first thing you need to do is separate that which matters from that which truly doesn't. If they're keeping you awake in the middle of the night on a weekday, that matters. But if they hang out in their front yard, keep trash and clothes there, work on a car there, that's their business. The second thing you do is repair your image. Right now they view you as their annoying neighbor who complains about everything and calls the cops on them. That image will get you nowhere. In fact, it will get you the opposite of what you want, as you've already experienced with the car incident. They're not going to take you seriously unless they respect you, and they're not going to respect you unless they feel respected by you. The easiest way to do that is to walk up to their house on a quiet day, ask for the dad or whoever is most respected, and say something like this: "I came here because, as neighbors, we've kind of gotten off to a bad start and I want to try and repair the relationship. You already now that I've had some trouble sleeping at night because of the noise, but I also realize that I've been kind of a dick to you guys calling the cops on you and complaining about all sorts of unrelated stuff. So I want to apologize for that. I want us to get along better in the future so I hope that we can make a new start. And in that light I would like to invite you all to dinner at my house. What do you say?" During that dinner just be nice to them, show interest in them, show them that you are more than just some guy who likes to complain. Build some credit. And from that point on make sure to greet them when you see them and make some smalltalk when you have time. The car in the front yard was actually a great opportunity for smalltalk or for offering your help. Once you've improved the relationship and changed your image to that of the friendly and respectable neighbor you'll actually have some credit with them. And asking them to keep the noise down won't be nearly as hard as it is now.

I don't think getting into a marriage with stepchildren is a mistake in itself, but it's definitely more challenging. Your story is definitely interesting enough to talk to Stef about and I recommend you do that. That said, let me add some of my own thoughts: First of all, your main responsibility is to your own child. His/her needs are more important than your own, because he/she is not there by choice. So if you bring other people into his/her life the least you can do is pick someone who likes him/her. If your wife doesn't like your child that's completely unacceptable, she should either really work on that or you should get a divorce. That's your responsibility as a father. Second of all, you owe her children the same respect. They didn't choose their mom, they didn't choose whatever happened to their dad, they didn't choose you, and they can't leave. You chose to get involved with their mom and that makes you their stand-in dad, so you better act like one. Not liking them is simply not an option, just like not liking your own kids is not an option, they're work in progress and your job is to be the best role model you can possibly be and raise them like they were your own. If you don't want to do that then you should call it quits. Third of all, the suggestion from therapist b sucks for three reasons. One, 10 years is not a short period, it's half a childhood. Two, both of you didn't decide to have children to suck it up and wait it out, you had them to have a good time with them. And three, children grow up and leave the house but they will always be your children, it will suck if they come visit and you still can't get along, and it will suck even more if they don't even want to visit. So if you still think this can work my advice would be to talk to your wife about this and start working on the stepparent-child relationships. And schedule a call with Stef.

It's immoral. You're right that there is consent between the two parties at the beginning, but it only becomes fraud when one of the parties deviates from the agreement. The pawn broker example is not an example of fraud. It's just an example of someone who sold a bracelet for less than he could have. An example of fraud would be when I come to your house as a representative for UNICEF and ask for a donation. You, being the kind and generous person that you are, decide to give me 50 bucks. I thank you on behalf of underprivileged children around the world and leave. But I don't bring the money to UNICEF, I just keep it for myself. You voluntarily gave me the money, because we had an agreement, and the agreement was that I would bring your money to UNICEF. You and I both consented to that. And if I had actually done that everything would be fine. But because I didn't keep my end of the deal, I am now a fraudster and you've lost 50 bucks. So basically fraud is just a breach of contract without notifying the other party and without restitution.

I'm not a fan of schools either, in my experience they do nothing but turn people into boring mediocre individuals, so I wouldn't send my kids there. But apart from the whole school issue, here's how you deal with a situation like that: The first thing you do, which should be your default position at all times, is realize that everyone makes mistakes and that making mistakes is the only way to ever become better at anything. You can do a million dumb things, but if you learn from all of them you're not a dumb person. So your feeling of self worth should not be in any way connected to the amount of mistakes you make, only to the way you deal with those mistakes. Which brings us to the second thing you need to do, which is to find out why people laugh. Did you make a mistake? Did you actually say or do something that was incorrect? If you didn't make a mistake you can say: "Yeah, I know it sounds funny. But I'm actually right." If you're not sure if you made a mistake, or if you feel like challenging the others, you can say: "Why is that funny?" "No seriously, why is that funny?" And if you realize that you did in fact make a mistake, and you see what you did wrong, you can say: "Yeah, okay. I know. Laugh it up guys." That's basically it. If you handle it like this, none of these scenarios should be a big deal.

Great! Me neither. Go right ahead. I'd like to hear it, and I don't think I'm the only one.

Your childhood sounds truly disturbing, congratulations to you for surviving that. As for the issue at hand. I think the problem arises from a slight misunderstanding of what it means to heal yourself. You talk about going to a light-bondage club and a church in the bad part of town and you call it "novelty nights". So you basically go and watch traumatized people act out their dysfunction and you label it as entertainment. You also say "I hate it that some douchebag preacher can have this sort of effect upon me. I wish I was a normal person..." which to me signals that you think being fully healed means that you can expose yourself to all kinds of crazy and just be like "oh this person is crazy, it doesn't faze me". But that's not the case. In fact, your reaction to that douchebag preacher was pretty damn normal. What was not normal was the decision to go there and the ignoring of all the red flags, from the "bad part of town" red flag to the "this is a church" red flag to the "yelling out random things" red flag. You probably ignored several red flags every minute since the "service" began. Until finally the guy just rolled out the biggest red flag he could find and everyone pulled their own red flags out from under their seats and started waving them at you. And only then did you wake up. So instead of trying to find a way to calm yourself down, be thankful to your unconscious for its healthy, though somewhat late, response. And change your "novelty nights" to something healthy. Go play squash or something.

I understand how you feel. And unfortunately I can't absolve you of your guilt, it was your own decision to do that to the cat. But the story about what your father did to you explains a lot. The simple fact that he demanded to be addressed as sir indicates how much distance there was between the two of you. And the violence is absolutely brutal. There's no denying that the abuse he inflicted on you influenced your behavior. I also don't think it's very productive to continue feeling hatred and contempt for yourself and calling yourself a disgusting worthless piece of shit. So I would start looking for a way to make up for what you did. Obviously you can't make it up to that particular cat. But there are many things you can do to improve the lives of other animals. I'd say that if you go vegetarian for a year you'll be pretty much back on track with the rest of the people. If you keep it up longer you can even become more considerate of animals than the average person. Apart from that, therapy is probably a good idea, to process the abuse your father inflicted on you.

I understand that it's hard, and she probably did have a shit hand dealt to her. I also agree with you that once you've developed unhealthy behavior it can be very hard to pull out of that. You can relate to that. But what you can't relate to is being as messed up as she was, barely able to take care of herself, in a relationship with an abusive man, and deciding to bring not one, not two, not three, but four innocent children into that situation. That's what makes her unsympathetic. If you've been dealt a shit hand you can choose between two paths. You can either take the path of alcohol, messed up relationships, and other unhealthy behavior. Or you can take the harder, but rewarding, path to work on your issues until you've resolved them and are in a position to have children. But you can't do both at the same time, that's when you lose every right to play the victim card. Imagine your sister did that. Imagine she got addicted to alcohol and got in a relationship with an asshole. It would be understandable since she too was dealt a shit hand. But imagine she would then tell you that she had decided to get a baby with this man. Wouldn't you be like "What the fuck?! How irresponsible are you? You know how much shit we had to go through as children and now you're repeating the same damn cycle?" Because that's what your mom did. It's not a kind and loving decision, it's very self-centered actually. Yeah, it's freaking crazy. I've known people like that too. They just go into crazy mode and when they come out of it they don't even understand their own actions. But they don't want to understand it either. They don't want to be held responsible for what they did. They're just like "I'm sorry alright! How many times do I have to say it for you to stop bringing it up again, leave it in the past already" and if you don't confront them they're happy to not say anything about it at all and pretend it didn't happen. And on the one hand that makes it harder to see their actions as coming from the same person. But on the other hand it makes it easier, because the very fact that they're so unwilling to reflect shows how aware they are of what they did. If it was genuinely out of their control they would respond with curiosity, they would be like "yeah, I don't know why I did that, but I can imagine it was scary for you, I really need to figure out what triggered this and I understand that you don't trust me anymore". But they react completely different, because they know they had control over their actions and they just don't want to be reminded of that and they don't want to accept responsibility for it. I guess that's good. I think this paragraph right here holds the key to your healing process. When you were a child you couldn't get angry at your mom because she was so incredible unstable that you had to treasure those moments when you felt safe. You had to hang on to them as much as possible, and getting angry at her would put you at serious risk of losing those moments of safety. You even say "it'd kill me to lose that". Which is quite accurate actually. What if you got angry at her and she actually decided to kill herself and you and your siblings would be left with just your dad. That was a seriously frightening scenario. So you avoided that, and kept focusing on the happy moments. But that's not your situation anymore. Now you're an adult, you live somewhere else, and your mother is no longer alive. It would not kill you to get mad at her. In fact, you would be just as safe as you are now, and you also wouldn't forget the good memories you have of her. You would just be putting them in perspective. The feelings of depression are only there because you're keeping yourself trapped in this position. You want to get mad at your mom, but this fear is holding you back. And you shouldn't let it. It's no longer necessary. Once you can get past this fear you'll feel a lot better. And you deserve to feel a lot better. All in all I think you're heading in the right direction. But I really hope that you'll allow yourself to get angry sometime soon, it would be very healthy.

Interesting answers. Since you found my first post useful, I'll share some more of my views with you. It's based on limited information of course, so I may not be right about everything, but it should at least give you something to think about. Here it goes: Your actual childhood situation You grew up with two parents that you couldn't rely on. Your dad wasn't there most of the time, and when he was you couldn't even count on him letting you inside the house. Apart from that he was also actively making the situation worse by hitting your mom, you, and your sister. Your mom was there, but she was even more unreliable than your dad. She could be kind, loving and happy, sober at one moment. And she could be unhappy, mean, abusive and drunk the next moment. Besides that you also had younger siblings (or sibling at the time?) which meant that there was always someone more vulnerable than you in the house. So simply put, you lived in an often abusive, dangerous, unpredictable, uncontrollable situation and you weren't allowed to express your needs. The story you told yourself So in order to survive you needed a story to manage your emotions. The first thing you did was normalize your environment as much as possible. That's why you can say things like "I never knew that my childhood was any different from anyone else's until I'd already left home". Which is only possible by being extremely selective in who you talk to, what you talk about, and what you block out. Because pretty much everyone can tell you that having to call an ambulance for your mother and perform CPR on her because she tried to kill herself is far from normal. Pretty much as far from normal as you can go. The second thing you did was turn your mother into a patient and a victim. You basically split her in two. On the one hand you have the happy, sober, loving and kind person that you call your mom. But unfortunately, and through no fault of her own, your kind and loving mom suffered from manic depression, alcoholism, and she also suffered abuse at the hands of your dad. So whenever she did something bad, that's not really her. You can see that very clearly in your opening post actually. When you talk about your dad you say "our father was physically abusive". But when you talk about your mom you say "she suffered from manic depression" while you "had things thrown at you", "was yelled at", "was locked outside at night" and your sister "also experienced these things" but "it happened less frequently for her". There's not a single sentence where you actually say "our mother threw things at me" or "our mother yelled at me". It all just sort of happened. The best example is when you talk about your dad and your mom in one sentence: "our father never really did anything to prevent this from happening". And then you continue with your dad and everything becomes explicit again. The third thing you did was blame yourself for everything you couldn't explain away with the other methods. So you were "a naughty child" who was simply "too annoying" at times, unlike your sister who was "better behaved" than you. And the fourth thing you did was focus on other people's emotions to distract you from your own. That's why you say things like "I need to stop blaming myself for things that aren't my fault if I'm ever to be there for my younger siblings and any future children of my own" instead of "I need to stop blaming myself for things that aren't my fault so that I can be happy". Obviously you didn't create this story entirely on your own, you had a lot of "help" with that. But this was the story you lived in in order to survive your childhood. Your current situation But the problem with these kind of childhood stories is that they only work in a situation where you're basically a prisoner. They don't work when you're an adult, in fact, they work in the opposite direction. Because everything you do to minimize, ignore and excuse people's bad behavior makes it harder to recognize the people and situations that you want to keep out of your life. That's why it's so vital to become aware of the stories you tell yourself and start living in reality. But it's also difficult, because you used those stories to keep certain emotions at bay. And getting rid of the stories means allowing yourself to experience all those emotions that you have suppressed up to this point. You still use all four tactics that you used in your childhood, although I can clearly see that you worked on number one. I think you normalize a lot less than you used to. But seeing your mom as a patient/victim is still very much there. Blaming yourself is obviously still there as well. And you also still place more focus on your siblings' feelings than on your own. Your mom I think the best topic for you to focus on right now is your mom. Firstly because she is at the center of all the dysfunction and getting a clear view on her will help you with everything else. And secondly because she's no longer alive, which allows you to process all your history with her without having your actual mom interfere with the process. For example, you could get extremely angry at her without having to worry about what she would do to herself or anyone else if she heard that. Obviously this is quite a big topic and it will take some time to process it all. But the main thing is that you just start questioning the story you have for her. What does your mom look like if you drop the labels "manic depressive" and "alcoholic" and you consider all of her actions as individual choices? Why do you call your mom's boyfriend an asshole, but think it's too harsh too call someone who chooses an asshole as a boyfriend and keeps exposing him to her children an asshole? Why does she get off the hook for all the mistakes that she made when you don't even let yourself off the hook for far smaller mistakes? These and many other questions like it are the questions you should be asking yourself. And they're not rhetorical questions either. You really believe in the story that you've told yourself about your mom and right now that's an unfounded belief. If you want to know the truth you need to submit that story to rigorous questioning. It's a lot easier to do when you have a skeptic listener to help you. But since you will have to wait a while before you can talk to Stef or to a therapist my advice would be to start working on this on your own. I think you can make a lot of progress if you use a journal and all your critical thinking skills.

You're very welcome. I'm glad you're on the waiting list. While you're waiting, I think a good place to start is by getting back to the thoughts and feelings you had when you decided to cut off contact with your mom. It strikes me as a very strong decision and you must have felt some anger at the time. Can you tell me what led up to that decision and what your thoughts and feelings were when you made it?

I would strongly, strongly, recommend you make an appointment to talk to Stef. How about this question: My parents were extremely dysfunctional. My dad hit my mom, and he hit me and my siblings with implements. My mom was an abusive suicidal alcoholic who allowed me to witness two of her suicide attempts. I've attempted suicide myself as well, I've also had an eating disorder, and I've been verbally and physically abused in a past relationship. Last year when I cut off contact with my mom for three months, she hung herself. I feel a lot of guilt and self attack, how do I get in touch with my anger?

My parents were not abusive, but my childhood wasn't perfect either, and I have confronted my parents with everything that was still bothering me. It was a very good experience. Apart from that I pretty much always speak my mind and confront people when necessary. I'm very positive about confrontations for two reasons. The first is that it simply feels good to express yourself and speak the truth. The second is that I see confrontations as a way to strengthen the bond with people, to get clarity, or to make a clean break. Because I don't avoid confrontations I know exactly where I stand with the people in my life. My experience with people who avoid confrontations with their parents is that it always shows up in other parts of their lives. Because the part of you that's scared of the confrontation is still a child, that's the part that protected you when you were physically smaller than your parents and in many ways dependent on them. But now you're an independent adult and if you still give in to that fear you're not allowing that part of yourself to grow up. Which means that whenever you make a mistake and there is someone else who is more confrontational than you, you feel threatened and this avoidance mechanism kicks in. Even though the other person doesn't have any power over you, certainly not the power that your parents had, and may not even care about your perceived mistake. I've actually been on the receiving end of this quite a number of times, when people do something wrong and then they just start avoiding me because they'll know I'll bring it up when they speak to me again. In my opinion the best way to avoid those sort of problems in your life is to confront your parents. Because once you've reached the point where you have no problem being completely honest with your parents, regardless of how they respond, you can handle pretty much anything. So my advice is, follow your desire and write the letter. Don't hold back when you write it, write it as if you're the only one who is ever going to read it. Once you wrote it you'll probably feel a burst of anxiety right before you actually send it. But the more anxiety you feel, the more you'll grow by actually sending it.

It's good that you asked for our input, because I don't think you understood the emails very well. The title of this thread is simply incorrect. When people who have seen your product send you a genuine email where they tell you how they think you can improve it, you can be sure that they don't hate your product. Also, I wouldn't assume they are Jewish unless they specifically told you so. Your inclination to laugh it off and ignore them is pretty much the opposite of what you should do. People who are critical, but take you seriously enough to send you an email and explain their criticism, are the most useful customers you can have. Regardless of whether you agree with what they say or not, you should at least thank them for their input. That said, here's what I think about the name: Your app has a broad target audience, it can be used and enjoyed by all sorts of people between the ages of 10 to 100. But the phrase "grammar nazi" is only popular with a select segment of the population, everyone else either doesn't know it or doesn't like it. So by using that phrase in the name of your app you're alienating a substantial part of your target audience. Many of whom simply scroll right past it and click on another app instead. But every once in a while a kind stranger will send you an email to tell you why they didn't click on it, and when they do, you should listen and make use of the opportunity for improvement.

Cool that you've started doing it already! I understand your frustration, I've experienced it too. But hang in there, it will pass. Let me explain the phases: At first it is kind of an unconscious thing. Like you say, it's hard to even lock onto individual words and it barely makes a difference whether you listen actively or passively. This is by far the hardest phase because it feels like you're not making any progress and you'll stay there forever. You'll get frustrated with it, and that's okay, as long as you don't turn it off. Then comes the phase where they still speak way too fast, but you'll pick up reaaaaally simple stuff. Like when the host says "welcome" to a new radio guest or when someone says "thank you", stuff like that. Words that are simple, are said in isolation, and come back at very predictable times. The next phase is basically more of that. You'll start to pick up the stuff that gets repeated all the time, like certain commercials and sound bites. You may not understand it all but you'll be like "oh there's that commercial again" it sounds familiar. After that you'll start to pick up chunks of words that are repeated a lot but are completely ordinary. Stuff like "and last but not least", "back to the studio" and "give it up for". In that phase you can listen to an interview and hear something like: "************************** what is your opinion on that?" "well, I think **************************** and last but not least **************************" "thank you, back to the studio!" It's an interesting phase because that's the first time that you know for sure that you're picking up things that you didn't pick up before, even though you still don't really have a clue of what they're actually saying to each other. You know that you're making progress. Also, after you've figured out a phrase like "last but not least" you start hearing it all the fucking time and it will really be a mystery to you why you didn't hear it before. From that point on the process starts to become more enjoyable. You'll be like "I don't know what they're saying but I know they're talking about that plane crash again" and you'll feel connected to the language enough that it just feels familiar, you don't even care how much you understand and how much you don't understand, you just want to keep listening because listening to Spanish feels good. You'll stay in that phase for quite some time. But then, all of a sudden (that's one of those chunks too btw, "all of a sudden" is in the same category as "last but not least", and "by the way" is too) you're watching a soap and you're like "what the hell, I know exactly what's going on! is this soap for retards or did I just get really good?!" Usually it is kind of a soap for retards and you only understood like 60% of a certain section of that soap. But it feels like an amazing accomplishment. And it is, because you came all the way from 0%. When you switch the channel you realize that nothing magical happened, you're still at 30% when you watch the news. But things just got a lot more interesting now that you've seen what the future has in store for you. After that it just gets easier and easier. And more enjoyable. So how long does this all take, you ask. I'd say a few hundred hours before you start picking up simple "last but not least" chunks. If you listen non-stop every week is 112 waking hours, so you should be able to get there in 1-2 months. If you do it like that you'll probably reach the "wow did i just get really good?!" point in under 6 months. But that also depends on how much you read. I remember when I switched from listening a couple of hours a day to non-stop Mandarin. It seemed insane at first, and it felt insane too, for maybe about 3 days, then it just became the new normal. From that point on it just felt good, because I knew I needed a couple of thousand hours at least to reach a decent level, and I knew I was going at maximum speed. You're in a different situation with different goals, so maybe that's not an option for you. But I hope that you'll at least listen yourself out of your current phase so that you'll hear the sound of progress with your own ears. Also, you should check out this article.

As someone who successfully learned two completely different foreign languages, English and Mandarin, I have to say that I disagree with most of the advice given so far. Let me start off by answering your initial question: One year can be a very long time in language learning land, but you should really count in hours, not years. Your plan equals an average of 1 hour a day, which equals 365 hours a year. Someone who completely immerses himself spends 16 waking hours a day on it, which equals 5840 hours a year. You don't have to choose between 1 and 16 of course, it's a sliding scale, but it's important to look at it this way, because native speakers are immersed in their language all the time. So your plan for a year only equals about 3 weeks of regular living for them. Definitely enough to learn some words and phrases, but Spanish toddlers will still pwn the shit out of you. Now let's get to the actual language learning: My problem with most of the advice above is that it's focused way too much on output and way too little on input. My advice to you is to forget about output completely. It will come later, not now, not even close to now. Later. For now you can just leave all the speaking and writing to the Mexicans, the Spaniards, the Puerto Ricans and whoever else you decide to listen to. I really want to emphasize this because this is such a big misconception among adult learners of foreign languages. Children listen to thousands of hours of their native language before they even attempt to speak a complete sentence, but adults somehow think they should start right away. They mistake incompetence for shyness, so they think it's something they just need to get over and they force themselves to speak. And it does work, partly, but they usually just get stuck in a very confined section of the chitchat zone, feeling lost whenever they try to step out of it. So my advice to you is to start listening to actual Spanish, no learning materials, only the real deal. Just find a Spanish channel on your TV and leave it on, if you don't have Spanish channels find an online TV or radio channel, Spanish music channels are fine too. In the beginning you won't understand any of it, that's normal, don't worry about it. You just need to make hours, so the more hours a day you can leave it on the better. Even if you don't listen to it actively. As for reading I recommend you get yourself a pile of children's books. These can be translated books that you know are good, like those of Roald Dahl or whatever you were into as a child, or completely new books. Obviously it helps when you already know the story, but even if it's harder, reading a book that was written specifically for kids in Guatemala can be a lot more fun. My first Chinese book looked like this: http://www.96192.com/uploadfile/bigpic2731/9193752.jpg and it was AWESOME. When you start reading a children's book you'll quickly realize two things. One, that children's books are freaking hard and contain words like "invisible", "garlic" and "minivan". Two, that it was a wise decision to start with children's books because they're fun and give you a great foundation. Obviously you'll need to translate stuff and you want to remember what you learned. That's where Spaced Repetition Software comes into play, more commonly known as SRS. An SRS is a program that allows you to create and review digital flash cards. It's extremely effective because it knows when you need to review what you learned. So if you learn something today, it will show it to you again tomorrow, if you get it right it will show it again 3 days later, if you get it right again it will wait a week, then a month, then 3 months, etc. I recommend the free SRS called Anki (http://www.ankisrs.net) and I recommend you only add sentences. So if you read a sentence in your children's book that you like and contains a word that you want to remember you create a flashcard with that sentence. Add it so that it shows you the Spanish sentence first, when you review you just read the sentence and see if you understand, you don't have to translate it but you use English on the other side of the card to see if you understood it correctly. Eventually you may even switch to a monolingual dictionary and do away with English completely. There are also ready-made decks that you can download, but I would advise against them. If you add your own sentences you can pick sentences that you like and are at the right level, besides that it is also much easier to remember them because you'll remember the parts of the stories where you got them from. You don't need to worry about grammar, because you'll pick it up as you go, it's just a matter of exposure. If you find regular children's books too daunting I recommend comic books, anything is good basically as long as it was made for native speakers. Adding sentences to your SRS is easiest when you read stuff online, but I personally like real books better, so I rarely did that. It's also possible to learn without an SRS of course, but I've found it to be insanely efficient and I would definitely give it a shot if I were you. That's all you need to know basically. Listen and read yourself to fluency. After a couple of children's books you can move on to the grown up stuff, make sure you don't forget to have fun though, reading the Spanish Da Vinci Code is a lot more enjoyable than the Spanish Financial Times. Once you notice yourself becoming a decent reader and listener you can find yourself some Spanish speaking amigos and practice speaking with them, it's still something you'll need to practice but it will be so much easier because you already understand them and you know all the words. Best of luck senor. If you found this post helpful and want to get inspired some more I also recommend you check out this website run by a multilingual Kenyan guy who goes by the name of Khatzumoto: http://www.ajatt.com. The website is focused on learning Japanese but most of the articles can be applied to any language, and the guy knows what he's talking about.

Yes, a negotiation can be offensive. Because there are two elements to a negotation, one is the offer and the other is how you present it. If they had presented the exact same offer in a different way like "This is a message to all graphic designers! We are holding a contest with a chance to win exposure on Showtime and a trip to Las Vegas! Scroll down for the details!" then the guy would have immediately recognized it as spam and ignored it and wouldn't have been offended. But instead they were all like "Hi Dan. We are representing Showtime! And not just Showtime, but a major event on Showtime! Like MAJOR! And we are approaching YOU because we are a fan of your work! We just think it's the greatest thing ever, we absolutely love it and we think you are an invaluable individual! So what we want to do is hook you and Showtime up! And Showtime will make a ton of money of course, we will also make quite some money because we found you, and you will, well, you know, you'll get a free flight alright." It's actually very comparable to the people who send Stef a message where they tell him that he's the greatest guy ever, who changed their life in ways that they could never even have imagined, whose podcasts just give them eargasms and fill them with joy, and then they donate half a buck. If you make someone a really great offer, you can tell them that they're great. But if you tell someone that they're great and then make them a lousy offer, then you're being offensive.

We should all stop voting.

Okay, based on my 2 year experience in market research where my job was basically to walk up to people and ask them personal questions, I'm going to give you my advice. First of all you need to be very aware of your actual job, you're paid to give people what they want and get their money. What people say or do besides that is not all that relevant, sentences like "Good afternoon, could I have some fries please?" and "Give me some fucking fries goddamnit!" should mean exactly the same to you, because they both require the exact same response. It's like those story math problems that you got in primary school: You could give two shits about what his name is, whether he collects baseball cards or something else, who he got them from, on which birthday, and whether he won them or bought them. You just strip it down to the essentials, 38+14+14, the rest is irrelevant. It may take some practice to look at people in that way, but that's what they're paying you for. Secondly, if you still find yourself bothered by what someone says you need to check if what they say is directed at you or not. For example, when someone says "Jesus! Why does it always take so fucking long in this place?!" he's not really insulting you or asking you anything, so you can classify that as background noise. The same goes for sentences like "Don't you know anything?!" it's not a real insult, it's not a real question, it's just noise that doesn't require a response. If you've gone through all the aforementioned steps and you realize that someone is actually insulting you, like "Give me some fries dumbass." then getting him the fries is equal to accepting the insult and that's very unhealthy and not something you should do under any circumstances. You should realize that people only do that because they think that they're in a position of power and that you're not allowed to defend yourself. But they're wrong, and you should remind them of that. Usually it's sufficient to look someone like that straight in the eyes and say "excuse me?" which gives them the chance to rephrase their sentence without the insult or just shut up. Of course there's always the possibility that someone just repeats the insult, like "I said get me my fries, dumbass." In that case you should just say something like "Fuck you. Ask nicely." By saying that, you make it clear that you value your integrity more than your salary. At that point even the most disrespectful person will realize that they have to give you respect if they actually want to eat. I doubt it will come to that anytime soon, especially because people see it in you when you've decided to not take any crap from anyone and they don't even try. But it's important to be clear about it in your head that you're there by choice and that sacrificing your self respect is simple not an option. Having that mental clarity also allows you to be more open and friendly to people, because you know you can defend yourself if you have to. I've literally spoken to thousands of people in 2 years time and I've only gotten angry once, the vast majority of those conversations were actually very pleasant.