I’m a bi woman and have always preferred women. But I ended up falling in love with a wonderful man who is now my husband. I’m currently really grateful for that. Loving a woman in this climate would be so stressful. I’m very scared for my trans best friend though.

There’s a mobile phone repair shop next to where we live. Everything in the window is faded from the sun. In 6 years of living here I have not seen it open or someone inside even once.

I was a project manager for a pretty large project last year at my job. I really tried my best to shield the developers from all the bullshit. We had a very difficult customer who changed their mind almost twice a week about things, demanded meetings about the progress 2-3 times a week, didn’t understand that the requested changes won’t be in the testsystem within a day of mentioning them (not even sending us a proper change request in writing, just mentioning them in a meeting) and so on. Not to mention talking with the higher-ups who got nervous when the customer kept complaining and explaining to them that we/the devs are working as fast as possible and that the customer is being unreasonable.

The worst part about that role was not the utterly irrational customer but our own colleagues in development. They unloaded all their frustration about the project on me. I tried to handle it, in a way it’s part of the job. I got shit on by the customer for not meeting their unreasonable demands and ridiculous timelines, got shit on by upper management because this project with this very important customer is having trouble, had to defend myself AND the rest of the team by showing that the customer doesn’t know what they want. Just to then turn around and get screamed at by a dev because he’s sick of having to go to our 1/2-hour-a-week meeting and also how come there’s been four change requests already. He told me I wasn’t doing my job, because all he wants is to implement the requirements as planned half a year ago but I kept sending change requests instead of doing my job as a project manager and shielding him from this shit. Wouldn’t believe me that if the customer had his way, he’d be getting four change requests per week.

Yeah, I’m pissed and also currently looking for a new job. And no way am I ever doing this shit job again, where you’re just everybody’s doormat and get yelled at by customers, bosses and your own team alike.

The straight-A student who could have gotten into any course at any university with her grades ended up getting a degree in art history and works at a museum now. She was never much into art in school, mostly focussed on chemistry actually and thought about studying medicine or biochemistry when we graduated.

Another straight-A student never left our 900-inhabitants village. Everybody thought he’d surely make it big, study medicine or engineering or something like that and work for a big company. He’s working at the small local bank.

On the other hand, one of the girls who was always very anti-school and didn’t care much for grades (I don’t actually know how good her grades were, but definitely not among the top students) is a lawyer at a large law firm now.

Yeah, that’s the other thing. I was a teenager in the 90s and just walking up to someone in public to hit on them or flirting with people who are working was seen as weird back then too. You met people through hobbies, school, parties or clubs.

“Approaching in public” can mean so many different things. What most women have a problem with is being approached in a situation where the man has some form of power over her. For example a cashier or server has to be friendly and smile or she will risk her job. Being approached is uncomfortable, because too many men don’t understand it when the no comes with a smile. They are also in a position of power, because they can complain about her or make a scene and get her in trouble.

In this case the TSA agent has some form of power over her and could give her trouble if she refuses. She has no way of knowing if a “no” will be met with understanding or with him holding her up, being insistent, keeping her from passing. That’s what makes it especially uncomfortable.

1. Breaking Bad. I liked it at the beginning, but it had too much violence for me. Or more specifically, violence being done as a crutch. Yeah, I get it, the character is ruthless and brutal yadayada. Lots of fake blood. Can we get back to the story?

2. A lot of the most popular Anime. I found One Piece pretty boring after the first few episodes. Same goes for Naruto. I do like Anime, but I mostly stick with shorter series that conclude the story in 20-30 episodes.

3. Black Mirror. The first couple of episodes were great, the rest was mostly the same with slight variations.