• 5 Posts
  • 147 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 28th, 2023
  • Pandantic@midwest.socialtoPolitics@beehaw.org•See Biden's fiery speech after shaky debate performanceEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    Thanks, you were the only one to tell me! 07 fellow leftist.

    And If you don’t mind, I’d like to take a moment to try to start a new tradition:

    Each year on your Fediverse cake day, in response to the first person who wishes you happy cake day, you must tell the story of how you came to be here in the Fediverse. Here is mine:

    This is my first Cake Day as I started a year ago when I joined Lemmy.world and Kbin and Mastodon all at the same time. I left from Reddit after the AMA with u/spez. I knew at that point he wasn’t relenting on the third-party apps and the loss of access for me personally, but mostly for the deaf and blind community, showed me that the CEO had no intention of putting accessibility over profit. I was an Apollo user and I was looking for an alternative while also browsing Reddit - using them as a resource, as I always had - and I was seeing censorship abound. Reddit was blocking mentions of alternative sites, blocking discussion about Spez, and the subs were rising up. I used those last few months of Apollo to help with the protests (John Oliver in /pics) and watched the proletariat attack the bourgeoisie for the rights of the people.

    Then I started going full fediverse, posting Pokémon Cards on Kbin in a lovely group with three people in which I hope to return to some day when life settles. But Lemmy had the quantity and quality I was looking for. I joined .world at first because I didn’t know what was best, but switched to Midwest.social when .world blocked Hexbear. Went from pc to phone when the apps came out. Went from Memmy to Thunder because Thunder supported Hexbears stickers! And here I am, one year later!

  • Pandantic@midwest.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Have you ever, given someone a major step up in life, been a mentor, and measurably altered the trajectory of their life for the better?English
    13·
    12 days ago

    When I first started my career, I was in a new town and looking for friends. I met this guy, and we started hanging out. It was cool, we had a lot in common and spent many days playing video games together and hanging out at the local stores. He told me his anxiety was so bad that he dropped out of high school, didn’t have any other friends, was still living with his parents, and couldn’t really hold down a job. We had some deep conversations about these things, trying to work through the whys and things he could do to get over them. One day, he told me that he really appreciated our friendship, and that it helped him get over some of his anxiety and basically feel worthy as a person. He eventually started hanging out with other people too, and even got a girlfriend. Eventually, he went on to get his GED (turns out it was easy, he just didn’t have the confidence to try), is going to community college, moved out of his parents, and has a job he enjoys in his field of study already. I moved away, and we don’t talk as much as we used to, but last I heard he was doing great. I don’t feel like I did much, just hanging out with a friend, but I’m glad I was a part of getting his life moving in the right direction.

  • Pandantic@midwest.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•Has there been a person you have only known for a short time that ended up having a big impact on your life?English
    571·
    22 days ago

    When I was in 8th grade, I ended up separated from most of my elementary friends. I had one friend that I knew, and she had the same problem the previous year, and introduced me to some of her new friends. One was this boy who had a deformed arm. He opened my eyes to a whole new world of interests, musical tastes, style, anime, books (including one of my favorite authors to this day), and just generally made me look at life differently. We talked on the phone every night, to the point where my parents got me a second phone line because I was on the phone so much. He introduced me to his friends, one of which became my first boyfriend. And he was one of the first people I’d met that was as smart as me and I could have real conversations about the world with. He pretty much changed my outlook on life, and I would say the trajectory too. And he was my best friend.

    The next part gets sad, though. I met him the first day of 8th grade. Fast forward to summer break, we’re about to go into high school, and I went on a vacation with my family. My mom gets a call a day before we go back, she is visibly distressed but says it’s nothing. When I get home, three of my friends and my grandma are waiting for us. My grandma breaks the news: my best friend died. He had a heart defect - his heart gave out. I knew him for a year, and I still think about him all the time. It’s surreal sometimes. I have like two photos of him. I don’t talk to anyone who knew him anymore. It was so long ago and I know I’ve forgotten so much about him, it’s hard to think about sometimes. But none of that takes away the changes he made in my life. Also, ironically, he brought me to Christianity, but I could never forgive god for taking him away.