Sims 4 high school years cc

Ok, very long backstory but I'll keep it to the basics. I (37yo US male) am ending a 13 yr marriage w/ a 35yo German female (raise in the US since she was 5yo). It's mutual and we're both already feeling better than when we were together. We have one 7yo daughter. Marriage has always been rocky but we've managed through counseling, determination, and chemistry (when it was good it was good). Now we both see it was always toxic. We moved to Germany from the US 11 months ago, after deciding to pursue a European lifestyle and enrolling our daughter in a Waldorf Kindergarten (very cheap here). 7 months in and we've decided marriage is definitely over. I've moved out and been living in a separate apartment. We share 50/50 custody of daughter. Overall good transition, lots of pain but it's working and I'm healing.
So the issue is, I feel we should move back to the US. ALL of our family lives there in a 3 hour radius of North Carolina. Our daughter was born and raised seeing her grandparents weekly until 11months ago. Our daughter has only one cousin who she adores and talks about all the time who lives in NC. We own a home there. I am the primary earner and could be earning over 100K per year by next year ( I was up until we moved). I have no job in Germany yet since my career field required a high level of German and I would need to spend years learning while working low wage jobs. Our daughter does not like Waldorf style and wants more STEM education. My ex works for 15 Euros/ hour and has no prospects of earning more than 20/hr within the next 3-5 years. I desperately want to get back to my career (my passion) but I believe my German ex wants to stay here despite numerous reasons to go back. She began sleeping with/dating someone on Tinder 45 days after we decided to end our relationship- 18 days after I moved out. They are still dating. I believe she is moving quickly to establish her new life here w/o me. Which she has every right, but still, It's concerning.
Nevertheless, I am starting to think I need to move back, w/ or w/o them. This is not my country, my language, and I do not picture myself here, especially with all the healing I need to do after divorce. Family, career, healing are the things I need now or else I feel I will lose myself in this German town, my ex's mother's hometown, (voted ugliest town in Germany) while watching my wife flourish in her native country (again, she grew up in the US). I have a history of depression. I don't want to meet another international partner. My daughter talks about her old school, her grandparents, her old best friends, wanting "English things" ---ALL THE TIME. I will likely live very near my extended family and daughter would be able to see them all the time if we went back. Even my ex's parents (retired and live on lakes/beaches) want to see us back in the US ( I still care about them very much). My daughter would have a blast visiting them. But my wife won't see it. She believes the lifestyle in Germany is better, safer, less traumatic, less violent, less capitalistic (I agree, somewhat) and that that is more important than money, family, stability (completely disagree).
So... If I move back, Is it manipulative to tell my daughter that "I wish I could stay but I have to go work in the USA to make money to support her and her mother. AND that I wish she could come but her mother wants her to stay and go to school here in Germany"....? I don't want to lie and say I wish I could stay or that I also think she should stay. And I don't want to be too vague like "It's hard but it's what's best for everyone" even though that sounds the most neutral. What does a 7yo need to hear in such a complex situation? Should she even know if I end up moving to the same town as her friends/cousin? It all just seems to have the potential to be so traumatic for her. Everything she ever knew changed one year ago with our move, then 8 months later we tell her we are divorcing, now I will probably tell her I have to move back. What the hell do I do?

Hello everyone,
My father passed away in March. I'm the only child, and received the house, as my mom had previously passed away. The house was fully paid off, and we received all of the proceeds. My wife and I used this opportunity to get ourselves out of most of our debt, but we will have about $60K left over when we're done. We want to keep $10-20K liquid just in case, but otherwise, this is money we want to pretend we don't have.
My question is, what's the best opportunity for this money to grow at this point? I know rates are high at the moment, but it is likely they will start falling in the next ~6-9 months, and certainly next year (looking at the CME FedWatch projections on the Fed rates, which will impact everything else).
My bank is offering a money market special of 4.00% right now (with a new account and minimum of $25K). I've got the Apple Cash Savings account with a 4.15% yield right now (with no minimum balance). We have a small amount of stock (~$2500).
I've considered doing one high-yield CD (I've found a rate of 5.20% for a 12 month CD through Forbright). I've considered doing a CD ladder. The longer-term rates are lower, but this would be a good chance to lock in 3.5-4% rates for several years. I'm really torn on the best path to maximze our returns.
My primary thought right now is to take $10-20K and put it into the Apple Cash Savings account at 4.15%. The interest is compounded daily and paid out monthly, and I feel like Apple (being Apple) will keep those rates higher for a little longer than other, more traditional banks. After that, though, I really don't know.
What suggestions do you have on how to allocate the $60K?
I appreciate any help!

Personal: Asian male, high income
Intended Major: physics
SAT: 1570 (770 R, 800 M)
Courseload: Highest possible courseload for my school: 10 APs, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, college physics APS: 5 on these: Calc BC, Bio, Physics (1 and mechanics), Wrld history, CSA. Took micro, macro, psych, Chem and lang this year. i think i got 5 on them all except maybe lang
GPA; (3.55 UW, 4.44 W D:)
Awards:
- NMSQT Semifinalist
- Qualified for AIME
- USACO gold
- AP Scholar w distinction
- qualified for debate nationals
ECs
- research with ivy league professor for physics stuff
- physics internship at a lab
- job (food industry)
- debate
- tutoring
- varsity track 4 years and captain
- cofounder of a nonprofit (~$20K)
everything else is just filler clubs and such
Essays: i think they will be around 8/10
LORs: physics teacher (10/10), and econ teacher (8/10)
i know my gpa is bad but i just want to know if i still ahve a chance at T20s and such. i odnt want to waste time applying to top schools if my application is just going to be automatically rejected because of my GPA. if any of u know anything about that can you let me know how it works pls

Hi all.
I'm a research assistant at my University in Pennsylvania. This is my first year working for the school, and when I did my taxes, I noticed that my return was exceptionally low- lower than it ever has been. Granted I don't get paid all that much because as a graduate assistant, I receive a full tuition stipend, so the trade-off I guess is a low pay (around $8/hour I think). I'm looking at my W-4, and it looks correct- I was always taught to "file single, and put a 0 for everything", and it looks like that's correct on my W-4. But when I calculate my tax rate, it looks like 4.8%. One paystub (for a 2-week pay period) shows a net salary of $375, $18.01 in taxes.
My question is, is that normal? On my last paystub I can see that the state took out taxes, so did the city I live in, and then the city that my university is located, but I do not see anything about federal withholding. If I'm not required to pay federal tax, I'll be okay with that and of course happily accept more money in my paycheck. But I want to be sure, because the last thing I want to do is find out come February of 2024 that I owe hundreds.
This is the only information I could find: https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/student-exception-to-fica-tax#:~:text=More%20In%20File&text=FICA%20
I plan on talking to HR about this, but I thought maybe someone here might know before I go there.

M(23) I wrote for an hour on an insane parents post and my phone deleted it so I'm worn out from details. Long story short I grew up with 8 siblings. My Catholic parents convinced us we were cursed by the demonic so there was no order or discipline. Everynight until 3am I'd stay away hearing family members scream at, and attack each other or break stuff and no one ever stopped it because it "wasn't their fault, it was the demonic". Fast forward as a teenager I wanted to go to school (I was homeschooled until this point) in order to do so I had to keep a job to pay for taxis and Ubers 17 miles away to go to high school and back. My dad made me sign a contract to pay him 75% of my earnings if I were to still live there (I was 16 or 17 at the time) and I told my parents that standing up at work made my muscles weak and hurt so bad I wanted to cry. To a ridiculous extent. After a very short period of standing up. They convinced me I was a hypochondriac so I never seemed medical attention for it. Fast forward 5 years later I live with the my fiance who has as many messed up issues functioning as I do. I've lost over 19 jobs in 2019 because of my muscle weakness. Ive moved to 4 different states and moved over 10 times in the last 5 years. I'm trying so hard to function. I'm still legally homeless but I work from home at a desk as a case manager for a car company and I can afford my $1,700/m hotel barely right now. I have so much PTSD from the disputes growing up that if someone even knocks on my door I cry and hyperventilate. I never go outside. And I feel so broken like my chance at a successful life was stolen from me. Raped from me to use a really strong term to reflect how I feel about it. Is this abuse? Or am I being ungrateful and making a big deal out of it? I'd like anyone's thoughts in this. Thank you...

Hi everyone
I'm in physics and astrophysics, but I was literally almost bullied and harassed to death. My school wanted me to enroll in a course with my bully, too. No one listened to my pleas nor to my constant cries for help. Ultimately, I became fed up, and decided to cold turkey quit physics, my one-time true love and passion. Interestingly though, I began to lose passion (and the quit was never intended). This was simply the nail in the coffin. Physics is truly a bit about academic slavery, and I was sick and tired of the constant hw sets, labs, class attendance required, yady yada. The physics labs are bs too, esp at the undergrad level - they just feel like a high school rehash and we don't learn a lot of valuable stuff in those labs.
Anyhow, again, it was the bullying that did me in. You'd all be shocked if you heard how bad it got, but I did threaten legal action against my school and hire a lawyer in order to report things. I'm not suing at this time, as I wish to move on. So, hello pure math and econ! Obviously, pure math doesn't really lead to too many jobs, as I know an extraordinary mathematician who holds a job that doesn't even require a degree in the first place. Accordingly, economics will be my long-term focus. The thing is, I do struggle with a prejudice against economics, as I see it a little as a pseudoscience. I'm requesting help on how to remove these views, because the world needs economists to function. Furthermore, I'm looking for advice, please, on how to go about planning a future in economics? I've got 1 year to go to complete the econ courses, as I've already done the majority of them, and then I have another year to go to do the pmat. So, altogether, 2 more years. My cousin is an economist who makes a solid salary. She's helping me out somewhat with her advice, but I was looking for other advice too on how to go about paving myself a future caree path in econ. Thanks everyone.

Backstory: I (M18) have a childhood best friend, Kevin (M18). We were really close, up until junior high when we started to drift apart.
What happened was one day I had a coupon for a curry restaurant that expired that day. Kevin asked me if we were going to hang out like we always do, but I said I had other plans. He doesn’t like spicy food, and especially hates curry.
Anyway, I was running to the restaurant and tripped, but our classmate caught me and asked where I was going. As it turned out, he had the same coupon and also enjoyed spicy curry.
The next day, Kevin was distant, and would ignore me when I tried to talk to him. I decided to give him time to cool down.
Flash forward, I’m now best friends with the classmate, Eric (M18). Event though Kevin and I don’t really talk anymore, I haven’t stopped thinking of him as a friend.
There was this school event to feature all the clubs’ activities, and my club decided to make curry. I was in our clubroom making it, while the rest of the club was outside with our advisor, serving our classmates.
I dropped the ladle and went to pick it up, when all of the sudden, Kevin opened the door and saw me. As it turns out, our clubroom shares a door with Kevin’s clubroom, and he had been smelling the curry the entire time I was making it.
Kevin ended up freaking out and knocked over the curry pot before running outside, and I followed him. He was telling me how I broke our “oath”—when we were little, he wished on a star that we’d be friends forever, and I said we’d always be friends no matter what.
Our club members came to back us both up, and then Kevin saw someone on the school paper was recording him, and he shut down.
We talked things out later, and we’re back to being best friends. (Kevin doesn’t really get along with Eric, Eric is neutral about Kevin, but they put up with each other cause I'm a mutual friend.) Now, even though we’re all good now, I’m still wondering if I’m TA for not sharing my plans with him years ago, since it led to all of this happening?

About 1 month ago I was diagnosed with PTSD with delayed expression.
The past month has been very intents. Many behaviors I now have more insight into as I find some kind of acceptance.
As a child I suffered a lot of stress and anxiety. The cause is unknown. Because of the stress and fears I often ran away from situations that evoked too many emotions (flight response).
Parents, teachers, doctors structurally reacted incorrectly to my stress/anxieties. They pulled me back into the situations I was running away from. This usually resulted in a fight I will and had to get out of that situation.
I was 4 years old when they started calling me unmanageable. How could I as a child react to this normally.... I was placed out of home where I was interned at a mental hospital.
My freedom was taken away here. Everything was decided for me. I have many re-experiences and flashbacks to this period.
When I was 8 years old I was abused several times, by doctors, and saw several abuses.
At elementary school the same thing happened structurally under the guise of intervening because you have behavioral problems.
The problem stress/anxiety was always ignored. To this day it is present....
I hope it stays with PTSD. But they expect that the long (20 years) presence of PTSD has caused a personality disorder.
Deep down I know they are on the right track now. It scares me.... The feeling of avoidance, wanting to run away, clusterfucks evokes this....
Enough typing for now.
Sorry for typos or illogical sentences.... English is not my first language.... And can't quite think clearly....

TLDR; skip to the end for the actual questions. Some of them don’t need context.
I’ll save all the details of how I got myself into this mess in the first place and cut straight to what’s going on now. In short, I was unable to make even the minimum payment on all of my credit card bills. This has resulted in all of those companies closing my account and sending the balance off to collections, in which I have been contacted countless of times about. Now, I do want to preface this with I’m not one of those people who ask questions without trying to find the answer myself first. I have Google’d my questions a million different ways and I either can’t find answers that relate or I straight up do not understand what they’re talking about. Now, I don’t expect a stranger to take time out of their day and write up a personalized credit consolidation plan for another random stranger, but some specific advice is needed here.
I was an Amex customer ever since I got approved for my first CC with them in 2017, I didn’t have much of a credit history so I was approved for $1,000 at the time. I used my card often and I won’t lie, occasionally carried a balance over from month to month but nontheless still made more than the minimum payment every month before the due date. My account was in good standing with no remarks for 4 consistent years until suddenly I was 30, 60, then 90 days late on my balance and it was closed.
I have three total CC accounts in collections and as soon as I was notified by the other two that my account was closed and headed to collections, I received calls from debt collection agencies. For my Amex however, it has never been anyone on the other end of the phone other than Amex themselves. I stopped receiving emails from them about my credit card bill but instead I would occasionally receive an email with an offer to settle my balance and to call or contact them if I have any questions. Can anyone explain this to me? Why am I not getting calls from random debt collectors for my Amex account?
The balance I currently owe to Amex is $1,413. I received an email from them with an offer to settle my debt for less and they gave me a couple of options, one was to settle for $500 and something, the other for $713 and the last option was to pay off my balance in full. Of course, the last option was most recommended.
When it comes to settling a CC collection debt for less vs paying it in full, does it make a huge difference in the increase of my credit score? In the offer letter, it states that once Amex has received all the funds for my remaining balance, they agree to report my balance as $0 and paid in full to the credit bureau. Would I still need to write a letter afterwards asking them to remove the collection off of my report, or is that the same thing in different words? I do understand that it is very easy to settle a debt for less, but I am wondering if that jeopardizes any future relationship I want to have with that CC company in the future? I called Amex to discuss the plan for my payments, and when I asked if paying in full would help my chances of being approved for another card in the future this is what the agent told me; It would be amazing to pay off the full balance and you will then be eligible for the Amex Optima Card (and from my research that seems like Amex’s “second chance” card). Once my debt has been cleared, I am pre approved for an application for the Optima and upon approval, if I make consistent payments I will have the chance to apply for an unsecured Amex card again. When she explained this to me, I was so happy to hear that I wasn’t going to be on that dreaded blacklist for life. I am wondering if anyone has any personal experience with this or even any knowledge at all. If I contact them and tell them I am willing to pay X amount to settle my debt with them rather than paying in full, will my chance at another Amex card be gone?
The same kind of question goes for the other CC companies (CapOne & Chase) but the only difference is that I am no longer communicating with them anymore. I would be communicating with whatever debt collector spent 4 cents on it.
My main questions that I would love any insight at all on are as follows:
Does paying a credit card collection debt in full versus settling the debt for less make a big difference towards a credit score increase? $700 is a lot more doable than $1400, so if it doesn’t change much, I’d rather settle.
Does settling your debt for less completely destroy your relationship with a bank forever?
When I am having these conversations about my debt with the collectors, do I need to ask if they will remove the debt off of my report?
Last question, on a scale of 1-10, how fucked is my credit after all of this? I have around 10k of CC collections under my name. I have a couple of things that are helping, like a car loan and being an authorized user on some other accounts. Right now my scores are at 601, 591 and 579. (Experian)
Even after they are all paid off and potentially removed, will my credit score even be that much higher? Before all of this all happened, I was almost to the 800 club. Feeling very hopeless here!

Throwaway account for insurance purposes.
Recently my school had an adult student (21M) message an underage student (13F) attempting to get her to “hang out” with him. When she turned him down, he called her several slurs. There has also been a report that he’s messaged another underage student (15-16M) porn and called him slurs though no evidence of this interaction has been seen.
Details: the adult student is high functioning on the spectrum.
A master instructor told the adult student to cease messaging the teenagers but he ignored that demand until he was blocked.
I’m an experienced non-master instructor at the school. I’ve been teaching for years and often lead classes alone. I was not told by any higher authorities about the incident. I was instead told by other students who trust me. I then brought it up to the owner who said he knew about the incident already. I believe there is one other non-master instructor who has not been told about the situation, as all the non-master instructors I know have only been told by students, not by any of the master instructors.
The adult student who sent these messages took class this week, well after the reports about his conduct were made.
The Question: I want to know if it’s appropriate/necessary for me to demand the removal of this student. I view him as a risk to the safety of other students and I think the proven actions of what he’s done have already warranted his removal. Unfortunately however, the only leverage I have in forcing this student’s removal is using my position as an important instructor to the school. Basically, I’m saying that I may have to threaten to leave the school for this student to be expelled, and I may loose. This is something I’m willing/want to do, but ultimately my question is should I? I’m also considering calling the police on this adult student but I’m unsure if it’d go anywhere.

If you're reading this, perhaps you're like me. You have most things you want in GTA Online. You've "done it all". And now you're bored.
But... have you *really* done it all? Turns out, most of us haven't. There's so much to do in this game, and it's easy to get stuck in old habits that prevent us from discovering everything there is to do in Los Santos!
So I began writing down all my ideas for having fun in the game, and basically use these suggestions as guidelines to always find something new to do. It has completely reinvigorated my joy for the game, and I hope it can help you do the same!
If you're having trouble with motivation or inspiration, then I suggest picking something at random from the list and just doing it! You might disccover that you love it, just like I did!
And if you have anything more to add, please share your comments so that we can all help build this list together. :)
​
Let's go!
​

• Break Your Habits: Most people have a routine that they repeat over and over again until they get burned out and bored with the game! Your number one goal for having fun must be to break your old habits!
• Grind Less: If you've played for a long time, there's absolutely zero reason to grind big piles of useless money. People often develop bad habits where they finally grind so much that they forget to have fun. The "wonder" of the world completely vanishes when everything becomes about optimal times and optimal routes and optimal mission rotations. Relax! Start exploring everything that the game has to offer instead! Dare to do the "less optimal" routes, and have the courage to stop stressing about the "time efficiency" when you do the game's content. Sure, perhaps you can do a mission in 2 minutes with an Oppressor Mk2, but why not relax, put on a podcast, and do a relaxing 5 minute drive instead? Relax and have fun!
• Switch Off the Business Mindset: Why grind at all? Why do businesses at all? What do you really need the money for, whatsoever? If it feels like grinding, do something else that's more fun for you! Stop thinking about the money and start thinking about the real-world fun you're having! Start actually enjoying all the things you've previously grinded for! Perhaps you might enjoy treating GTA as a racing simulator where you mostly do challenges/race maps instead? There's so much more to do that isn't purely related to earning money!
• Accept All Invites: When you see invites to races, challenges, missions, etc, accept them! You will broaden your horizons about what you can do in the game, and you will often make the newbies very happy! Of course, if it turns out they're a hopelessly stupid newbie who keeps dying and never improves, then sure, I'd suggest leaving the heist to save your time and sanity. But most of the time, the other players will be smart enough to learn quickly. You can easily make great, new friends this way!
• Protect the Newbies: If you see someone doing a sales mission in a public lobby, why not fly over there in a powerful airborne vehicle (or heck, a missile-equipped Toreador car), and then follow them as their bodyguard against any griefers that may appear!
• Join People's CEO/MC: You can list yourself as "looking for work" via the interaction menu, which will alert other people that there's someone looking for work in the session. You can then join them and help people out with their missions, which is often a fun and relaxing activity for a while!
• Get a Crew: Look around for a crew of like-minded people. They exist. There are crews that specialize in heisting with competent players. There are crews that focus on racing. There are crews for Arena War. There are crews that only do LS Car Meet challenges/races. There's even crews specialized in doing sales missions together, by helping each other with business sales, if that's your thing! Finding a group of people with a compatible mindset and interests really pays off in the end!
• Switch Sessions: You can jump between multiple public sessions until you find one that matches your mood. Perhaps a nice, quiet sessions without griefers, perfect for doing sales missions? Or maybe one where there's a group of people that are actively doing something fun, which you can join in on? Don't just settle for your session. Explore what's out there!
• Do the Stupid Things: Grab your friends or some randoms, and challenge each other to do the most stupid and random things you can think of. The game is a sandbox. So start acting like it! For example, why not challenge each other with things like "everyone starts at the beach without any vehicles, your goal is to get to the Senora Desert convenience store, and you're only allowed to use stolen vehicles, the first person to reach the desert wins", or how about "everyone jumps from the Maze Bank Tower and your goal is to ride your parachute all the way to the ferris wheel". Is that even possible? Who knows! Let's find out!
• Become a Map Creator: If you've had fun making random challenges in freeroam, why not make them into more formal challenges, by creating actual maps? The map creator is very advanced. You can modify the world, add checkpoints anywhere you want, you could make a bicycle race, add pedestrians, enable weapon wheel usage, add parachute jumps, stunt jumps, survival modes, etc. Go wild!
• River Racing: The game has two epic rivers that start at the "Alamo Sea" (desert lake) and head west out to the ocean. Why not do a race with some friends? Get the Blazer Aqua amphibious quad bike and start at the desert, then race through one of the rivers, which is full of fun jumps. Next, decide on a destination (such as the Del Perro Pier) and do the rest of the drive on roads to see who gets there first.
• Stop Flying: Whenever a game lets you fly, you end up skipping huge amounts of content and world design and just flying directly above it all. That's nice if you want to get somewhere efficiently, but it really breaks the game's immersion. Try driving everywhere instead!
• Learn to Fly: Many players are awful at flying (especially the helicopters). Why not practice your flying skills? Perhaps try landing your helicopter at very tight spots, on rooftops, and other fun locations!
• Use Motorcycles: They're more thrilling than cars, because crashing actually has consequences. They're also very fast and agile, which feels awesome while driving through the city!
• Oppressor MK1: Fly around the map, trying to create your own challenges such as flying over the water or climbing Mount Chiliad.
• Climb the Mountain: Find various fun vehicles and attempt to climb Mount Chiliad in them. There's lots of fun to be had with motorcycles at the mountain!
• BMX Tricks: There are so many skate parks and BMX bicycle stunt locations in the city. Why not look at some BMX stunt videos for inspiration?
• Throw Away the GPS: Stop staring at the minimap while driving! This is super fun. Let's say that you need to get to Simeon's shop. Instead of opening up the world map and setting a map marker and following the GPS line like a lemming, try to train yourself to navigate the city! Drive the streets, look at the surroundings and actually navigate! It's so much fun and you'll feel way more relaxed. The city will also feel way more immersive. You can even modify the minimap via "Settings: Display: Radar = Blips", which hides the map so that you can't see the shape of the streets by glancing at the minimap anymore. You can even disable it completely, but unfortunately it also hides the healthbar if you do that.
• Use First Person: You can change the game's camera mode to first person, which is a really unique and immersive way to play the game. Steal some cars and go cruising! It will feel like an entirely different game when you get used to it!
• Take Selfies: Find beautiful locations and attempt to take great screenshots, with perfect framing and composition! You can use the game's built-in snapmatic camera, or you can use your regular screenshot key instead! Collecting photos of your adventures is a nice way to remember where you've been!
• Businesses: There are so many businesses in the game, and it's easy to forget about them after a while. Look at your businesses and begin doing their sourcing and sales missons again! Most of us quit them because they're very grindy, but after a long time away from them, they'll feel fresh again. And they'll feel much more relaxing if you vary between your different businesses and you only do one or two missions at a time, to never get bored.
• Nightclub: Do the promotion/popularity missions, which involve going around town and promoting the nightclub, or helping to remove unwanted or drunk guests from the club. All of that improves your popularity, which improves the passive income you're earning from the club!
• Get the DJs: The nightclub has multiple DJs. Why not unlock them all? Their missions are very fun, and you'll earn new music for your club.
• Bunker: Why not do some manual supply missions, just to relax and have fun? Sure, the optimal way to make money with the bunker is to buy the supplies and do "better" things with your time instead of sourcing supplies, but why does everything have to be about ultimate efficiency all the time? If you're a long-time player, you already have lots of money and you need new things to do!
• Contact Missions: So many people don't even know that you can get missions by calling NPCs on the phone. It's named "contact missions" and they can be very fun. I recommend calling Dax and doing "Request Work" from him, because his missions are very varied and after you've done enough you get various important rewards, such as upgrades for your Acid Lab business.
• CEO/VIP Work: When you're a CEO, you can start SecuroServ missions via the interaction menu. There's lots of fun ones! For example, why not get your favorite car, relax and do the Sightseer mission, seeing where the map markers will take you while you enjoy the relaxing drive? The mission gives you 15 minutes, which is plenty of time to take the scenic route.
• Terrorbyte Missions: Another forgotten relic! The terrorbyte has lots of fun missions which are very good for variation. They used to be the best "active" way to earn money in GTA. Most players who grinded those missions have only done the "optimal rotation", but how about actually doing all of the available missions for fun?
• Rockstar Jobs: There are so many high-quality maps, races and challenge modes in the game. Explore the official list of RockstaCurated jobs in the game's pause menu. There's a ton of them!
• Community Jobs: There's a ton of cool community maps in the game. Remember to favorite the ones you liked so that you can easily start the same again!
• Auto Shop: Do the customer car customization and delivery jobs, and do the heists! They can be done solo.
• MC Club: Do the customer motorcycle customization and delivery jobs.
• Vehicle Warehouse: Do the Import/Export car theft and sales missions. Be sure to use the trick that ensures you only get high-end cars (permanently fill the warehouse with every worthless sourced car in the game, then you will only get high-end cars after that).
• Acid Lab: The best passive income business in the game. Spend some time doing Dax's contact missions to fully upgrade your lab's efficiency and it will become very profitable. Then mix up your gameplay between both sourcing Acid supplies or buying them. And do the sales missions.
• Franklin's Agency: Do the Dr. Dre story missions, then do 201x Security Contract missions until you've unlocked the highest amount of passive daily income (it goes up by $100 every time you do a mission, capped at $20,000 after having done 201 contracts).
• Payphone Hits: They're unlocked after doing at least 3 Security Contract missions. Then you can pick up assassination contracts from ringing payphones. They're very profitable.
• Weekly Time Trials: Do the camotorcycle time trial and the RC car time trial every week, they're a good way to learn how to drive and they give a nice bit of money! Remember that you can hold a key to respawn at the start of the race before the time has ended, if you're sure that you won't make it in time.
• Daily Objectives: In your interaction menu, look at the Objectives and complete them. They're a good way to be inspired to do things you might not do otherwise.
• Daily Collectible Hunts: G's Cache (hunt for the hidden street cache), Kosatka submarine treasure hunt, Street dealer (find it and sell to it every day), etc.
• Get a Fresh Look: Create a new character outfit (clothes, hairstyle, tattoos, mask).
• Use Different Weapons: Challenge yourself to use different weapons than the same old, boring weapon you always use. For example, how about only using the Heavy Revolver? Make those shots count!
• Modify Your Weapons: Change their styles and attachments.
• Tune Your Precious Car: You might have a "perfectly tuned" car that you've been driving for years and that you're always using. Why not modify it a bit? Put a different livery on it, and some different colors at least? What felt "fresh" two years ago would just be contributing to a feeling of "staleness" today. Freshen things up!
• Ride of the Day: Most long-time players have around a hundred vehicles, but most of them collect dust. Why not set fun "challenge" rules for yourself, such as randomly selecting a vehicle and using only that vehicle on that real-life day?
• Outfit of the Day: Why not make it your goal to create a new character "outfit of the day" (or week) whenever you log in? It's a great way to get a fresh feeling every time you play!
• Minigames: How about some Golf, Tennis, Darts or Arm Wrestling?
• Gang Attacks: Find a gang and eliminate them!
• Stash Houses: Find the stash houses and raid them for resources for your businesses.
• Parachute: Go somewhere high up and do a parachute dive! Better yet, look for the Junk Energy Skydives challenges on the map, or do Dom's parachute challenge (which is a special skydive at a random location).
• San Andreas Flight School: Do the flight school challenges! They're at the Los Santos Airport, at the airplane icon!
• Gun Range Challenges: Complete the Bunker's and Ammo-Nation Gun Range shooting challenges!
• Gun Range with Friends: Challenge a friend to the gun range mini-games, where you compete to see who is the most accurate!
• MC Club Missions: Form a MC club with at least one friend, then ride in formation and start MC missions via the interaction menu.
• MC Businesses: Yes, they're the most hated businesses in the game, but why not do them a little bit? You could do a little bit of supplying and a few small sales missions, to ensure that you have small sales. Or, team up with friends and take turns helping each other do larger sales.
• Racing: Do Open Wheel, Stunt Races, Transform Races, and Regular Races. There are so many different kinds of races in the game! The transform races are the newest feature, and are very cool, since you might drive a supercar down the street to the airport, then transform into a plane and fly through the sky, and other epic things, all in the same race map!
• LS Car Meet: Do the challenges, races and rank up your LS Car Meet rank. Try to win the Prize Ride!
• Lobby Car Meets: You can try arranging car meets with other people in the lobby, to check out each other's cars! Just beware of griefers. You may want to do it in the LS Car Meet building to avoid the griefer explosions, or just switch to a lobby with cooler people.
• Arcade: Play the arcade games and try to beat them! Some of them have hidden rewards for completing the game or completing certain challenges.
• Achievements: Look at the pause menu's Stats - Awards section, and pick some award that you'll try to complete! There are so many fun challenges in there, such as attempting to parachute for more than 3 minutes, or robbing every store on the map (you can see the checkmarks on the map to know if you've robbed those stores).
• Stunt Jumps: There are 50 stunt jump locations on the map, which unlock a few rewards and are also really fun to complete!
• Unlock Vehicle Colors: You may have noticed that certain colors are locked behind challenges, such as winning a certain amount of races. Why not finally unlock those colors you've always wanted but were always "too lazy" to unlock? You'll get to enjoy some flashy, new vehicle colors!
• Arena War: Very fun, but unfortunately hard to get a group going for it. But if you can get a group, Arena War is super fun.
• Freemode Battles: Join a large lobby and just do whatever you want while you're waiting for freemode battles, which start every 20 minutes and will alternate between Business Battles and Freemode Challenges. Then attempt to win those battles! Events will only trigger when there are at least 4 players outdoors, and they cannot be in the same CEO/MC.
• Ride with Strangers: Pick your nicest car and then drive around and invite strangers to either ride with you or do impromptu street race 1v1 challenges.
• Freemode Map Markers: Look at the map. There are icons and glowing markers everywhere on the map/streets. Visit whichever icon is nearest your current location and see what's there! Remember that you can go "On Call" (queue) for public races/missions while you're waiting for them to fill up, which lets you stay in Freemode while you're waiting.
• Weekly Bonuses: Look at the Rockstar Newswire to see what the weekly bonus money is, and focus on doing that business/event for a while, to earn some money!
• Max Your Stats: Get all your stats to maximum! Most people haven't finished Strength, which can be gradually maxed for fun by simply punching every civilian you see.
• Invade the Military: Invade the military base at Fort Zancudo with some friends, and make it your mission to steal a Lazer jet plane.
• Heists: Do some heist preps or full heists for fun! Many of them can be casually setup while solo, which is very relaxing! Most of the newer heists can even be completed while solo!
• Change Your Heist Routes: You don't have to always do the same approach over and over again. Most heists have a lot of different approaches. For example, have you ever successfully completed the "Silent and Sneaky" approach at the Casino? Start exploring the different possibilities out there!
• Yellow Mission Markers: The yellow letters/markers on the map show the location of significant storyline missions (such as ULP, Agency, Acid Lab, etc). Visit those locations and start completing the stories that GTA Online has to offer!
• Do the Jobs: Go to "Online - Jobs" in the pause menu, and explore the available options!
• Answer the Calls: There are so many fun missions for English Dave, the various DJs at the Music Locker, the Casino staff, etc. In most cases, you'll also get some kind of reward if you finish them all! You might even get them to stop calling you when you've finished everything, which is a nice reward in itself!
• Check Your Texts/Emails: There's a lot of "mini missions" that arrive via emails/text messages. For example, Simeon asks you to steal certain cars every day. There's also an early game treasure hunt which starts through an email.
• Use Quick Join: There's an app on your phone named "Quick Join". It queues you for a rapid, random job. It's a great way to explore new content, meet new people and to help them with the queues for their own missions.
• Browse the Internet: There are a ton of funny parody websites in GTA Online's internet browser. Explore what's out there!
• Watch TV/Movies: Have you seen all the TV shows and cinema movies yet? If not, relax and have some fun! :)
• Customize Your Phone: You can change the theme, background, ringtone and other settings for your in-game phone. Why not change things a bit?
• Don't Be Annoyed: The phone calls and missions may seem annoying, but try actually relaxing and doing them. Listen to the phone calls. Call the NPCs. Do their missions! They are pretty nice and chill activities which gives you something to do in the game and some challenges.
• Use a Gamepad: If you're a PC player, you'll know that most of the game is too easy, since the aiming and enemy difficulty was balanced for console (gamepad) players. Try using a gamepad on PC! Not only will your driving and flying be massively improved, you'll also have a much more fun fun time when fighting enemies, since you can't just "360 No Scope" everything with your superior pointing device anymore. You'll even get immersive rumble that lets you feel the engine of your cars! How cool is that?! The game's options lets you finetune the sensitivity and aiming mode, and true professionals will use "Free Aim" which completely disables the auto-aiming.
• Meet Different People: If you're mostly a heist person, look for someone who loves cars and start hanging out with them to absorb some of their passion for another aspect of the game. You might learn to love car tuning too!
• Trade Prices: Many vehicles in the game have trade prices which give you a massive discount on the vehicle if you complete the challenge first. So set your eyes on a nice vehicle and do its challenges for fun! The discount you're earning will be like earning a huge sum of money that you put towards that specific vehicle. For example, a 2 million dollar discount on a vehicle you wanted is the same as if you had just earned 2 million dollars that you decided to spend on that vehicle! So don't sleep on the trade price discounts! They're a fun challenge with a very high monetary value!
• Bunker Research: If you have a bunker, try doing the research! You can unlock a ton of cool and super useful vehicle and weapon modifications! The explosive and incendiary ammo are must-haves.
• Mobile Operations Missions: The Mobile Operations Center is a forgotten business. It exists in your bunker, but you can request it via your Interaction Menu. Enter the truck's trailer, and then start missions from the computer in the command room!
• Avenger: Take your Avenger out for a drive! It's an extremely powerful, heavily armored aircraft and can be customized with various fun additions.
• Relaxing Yacht: Why not purchase or upgrade your yacht, and chill on it for a while with some friends? It even has lots of fun water vehicles parked in the water at the yacht, and helicopter pads for easy travel.
• Yacht Missions: You can start the fun "A Superyacht Life" mission series from the captain on your yacht. You'll even get a fun Yacht Captain outfit if you complete them all as host.
• Special Vehicle Work: The Vehicle Warehouse provides various epic missions whose "main" purpose is to unlock trade prices on various weaponized vehicles, but the missions themselves are fun too. Most players only do the specific missions for the vehicles they wanted to buy. Why not complete them all at least once, or play them again for fun?
• Collectibles: The map is full of collectible items, such as USB music sticks, playing cards, action figures, signal jammers (to unlock the best hacker for the Casino heist), etc. Why not relax and do them all for fun? They all unlock something fun or useful!
• Dream Vehicle: Relax, do some research about vehicles are available in the game, and set your eyes on a new "dream vehicle". Then work towards earning it and pimping it just the way you want it! Having a goal is fun!
• Test Drives: Check out the weekly test drives at the "Luxury Autos" shop, at Simeon's "Premium Deluxe Motorsport", and at the "LS Car Meet". You might find your new dream vehicle!
• Collect Vehicle Sets: You might have fun building specific collections, such as all Benny's vehicles in the game, etc. Setting goals for yourself about specific vehicle collections gives you something to strive for, and means that there's a lot of new things you'll need to buy and tune, which will keep you busy for a while!
• Sell Vehicles: Let's be honest, there are a lot of stinkers in your collection. Why not sell them? Just beware of the game's daily sell limit. The limit will be hit somewhere around 30-40 cars sold in 24 real-life hours. I'd suggest only selling 1-5 cars per real life day, which ensures that you'll never face the anger of Rockstar, and you'll have more time to make deliberate choices about which vehicles to get rid of. You'll also be getting roughly 50% of your previously spent money back for each sold vehicle! I'd recommend forcing yourself to drive a vehicle for a while before selling it, and looking at its customizations to see if you'd like it if you changed its style a bit, so that you're absolutely sure that you don't want it.
• Organize Your Vehicles: A lot of people have a complete mess in their garages. Why not begin sorting your cars, such as placing all your best cars at the premium display spots in your office garage? Perhaps organizing the floors by vehicle type? You can have lots of fun and you'll get a much better overview of your available vehicles.
• Relocate Yourself: If you've been staring at the same, old, boring spot for years, it could be fun to move! Most players choose the ugly, industrial, "optimal" locations. Why not relax and move to the beautiful beach instead? The Lombank office, the Insert Coin arcade, the Vespucci Beach MC clubhouse, the Del Perro Nightclub, the Strawberry auto shop, and the Vespucci Canals agency are all very beautiful locations with amazing interior and exterior design and great views! They're also very well placed for all of their business purposes!
• Browse in Person: When you're looking at real estate on the internet, things look very boring and impersonal. Why not take a drive around the city and look at the "real estate for sale" map markers in person? Perhaps you'll find a great new location for your home! However, if it's a multi-apartment house, I recommend checking YouTube for the various room views, to find the room with the best view before you buy it.
• Upgrade Your Properties/Businesses: If you haven't yet upgraded all of the equipment for a business, it's a great idea to upgrade it to improve its efficiency and safety. Or how about changing the interior design for fun, to replace the "same old daily view" with a fresh new look?
• Buy Every Arcade Machine: There are so many fun minigame machines for your arcade. Why not buy them all and pimp that place out? It's a nice place to relax, and even get some rewards for completing the games.
• Get All Passive Businesses: Why not work towards getting and fully upgrading all of the passive incomes in the game? Such as the Nightclub (which automatically generates money in the safe based on popularity, and generates MC business products to sell from its basement), the Acid Lab (which can be restocked with a simple phone call to Mutt, and has easy sales missions), the Arcade (which generates $5000 per in-game day when you've filled all of its interior slots with arcade machines, which can all be the same machine if you want), the Agency (which generates up to $20000 per in-game day based on how many Security Contracts you've completed), Street Dealers (finding the daily street dealer is much faster than regular sales missions, and they pay more than regular missions), Bunker (you can resupply it via one click with the Master Control Terminal in your Arcade, and then simply sell the product when it's still less than 25% full, thus guaranteeing a single sales vehicle every time). An added bonus of having passive businesses is the fact that they let you do other things in the game, such as doing racing and other fun challenges, while your businesses passively produce for you!
• Start Fresh: Did you know that your online account has two character slots? You can actually start fresh by simply withdrawing all of you banked money to your primary character, so that there's $0 in the bank. Then create a new character, which will begin at $0. Then relax and enjoy the ride of building a new empire. I suggest doing things differently this time. For example, if your primary character owns every business, why not just focus on a specific business this time, such as the CEO businesses (cargo crates), or just the vehicle warehouse, etc? Take this opportunity to simplify and avoid grinding, while still building a new playstyle to keep things fresh! Why not skip the Kosatka, so that you don't have the "easy Cayo Perico money" either? This slower, more deliberate, old-school way of making money will ensure that you have lots of fun, and you can set your own goals for what vehicles you want to save up money for on your new character! If you get tired of the grind, just switch back to your primary character again and enjoy the wealth. You can even delete your secondary character again to start fresh as many times as you want to.
• Spend Your Money: Having $100 million unused in the bank is just a completely pointless number, and is basically worth the same as having $0 in the bank if you aren't even using it. Unless your goal is to collect a specific amount of money for fun, I'd instead suggest that you actually start spending absolutely all of your money! Because if you can succeed in being perpetually slightly low on cash, you'll have much more reason to care about doing your businesses when you do want to buy something, which in turn drives your motivation to play again! Having a huge stash of money is bad for your motivation to play! Having a huge sash of money is like having an endless "Rich Daddy's Credit Card" in your wallet. Get rid of that credit card, buy a bunch of fun stuff, and enjoy the game more as a result!
• Play the Story: The vast majority of GTA Online players have barely touched the offline story. Why not relax with the story from time to time, gradually making your way through the epic offline story that started it all?
• Take a Break: If you're truly not finding any fun anymore, then take a break, perhaps a few weeks or a month is all you need to enjoy the game again! They also release content updates roughly twice per year, so you'll always have something new to return to in the future! :)

Hi all, long time lurker here but I wanted to get some unbiased opinions on this. This story is long. Sorry in advance.
Six months ago, I (27M) ended a friendship with a my long-time best friend (28M) and of 7 years after a fairly explosive fight about the woman he is dating (33/34F). The whole thing took me by surprise. We currently have a large tight knit friend group of people across a variety of major cities and we all try to hang out when we can. However, some of my friends in this group have been unhappy with me for cutting of ties with this person.For context, This friend was my college roommate, fraternity brother, and the most consistent source of emotional support and guidance throughout my early-twenties. Throughout college, I felt that we had a unique and supportive friendship. He taught me how to be believe in myself, stand-up for myself, take care of myself better, and brought a lot of light into my life as a friend. We were both full-scholarship students at a fancy-pants highly ranked college that is know for being elitist and stuck-up. Looking back, I think one of the things that made us such tight friends is that we didn't fit in all too well at that school. Both of us had pretty difficult lives before college and neither of us had any money. He was essentially an orphan and I was/am from a low-income single parent household. However, despite these circumstances, I felt like we both inspired each other to become more well-rounded and well-adjusted people. A central theme of our friendship was trying to figure out how to live a good life, solve interesting problems, make the world a better place, and to go on adventures with good friends.
I also feel like I did everything I could to be the best friend possible. Since he didn't have a stable father figure, I tried my best to be a loving brother. I was there to support him for every major test or every time a girl broke his heart in college. I knew that finding a group of friends and a community was important for him, so I advocated for him to join my fraternity. While my fraternity was voting on final round of rush, I was working on a major project with some classmates and someone texted me that my friend didn't get enough votes to be offered a bid to join. Immediately, I told my partners that I had to go for an emergency and ran to where the voting was taking place. I basically made a 2-3 minute long speech about how my friend was one of the best people I've ever know and convinced everyone to revote him into the group. Additionally, when he had to take a year off from college because a close member of his family passed a way, I spent almost every weekend with him for emotional support, helped him navigate the dark and uncomfortable family drama around the situation, and was the only friend who went to this family member's funeral with him for support. I even helped him with the little things, like teaching him how to tie a tie and find his own sense of style.
However, towards the end of college and after graduating, my life got difficult and dark. At the end of my senior year, two close relatives of mine passed away within two weeks of each other and I became extremely depressed. After graduation, I left my home state for a job that offered me a significant amount of money. Though my plan was to go to grad school, I wanted to take some time to make money and help my younger sister afford college - she didn't get any significant scholarships. However, the job I worked at was terrible. I was being abused almost every since day by my boss and the company I worked for was extremely unethical. After starting this job, I learned that the average hire only lasts about 6-8 months and that having a breakdown from working there was extremely common. Working here took a huge toll on my mental health and after 9 months, I quit to return home before I broke down like many of my co-workers. I thought things would be better when I went back home but some of my family members were going through it at the time and became abusive as well. Though my family was never abusive towards me growing up, for some reason they chose to be abusive when I came back. Chairs were thrown at me and I never had a moment of rest. I also had a grandmother who was living off food stamps and nobody was taking good care of her. So I had to continuously try and get her groceries while working 60-70 hrs/wk on a construction job. It was a bad time.
During all of this, I felt that my friend was being extremely immature and selfish. He kept yelling at me and criticizing me for not hanging out enough with him and not partying with him enough. Even after explaining my situation, he didn't offer too much support and expressed frustration that I wouldn't help him meet girls at clubs or get laid. He's always had a deep desire to find love but has traditionally had issues with female rejection. One night, I agreed to go out clubbing with him, but I remember explicitly stating that I was not in the mental space to hit on girls, wingman, or to hook-up. I was just down to drink, dance, and have a good time. Despite this, at the club he got extremely frustrated with me when I wouldn't start any conversations with groups of girls. When we got home he literally starting screaming in his bed about how he wished someone "would show him the steps" on how to meet women. Though this was clearly not a high point in our relationship together, I felt that he was probably just going through something and let it go. After a few months, even more negative things happened in my life and eventually had a mental breakdown. I definitely was not acting normally or myself for 3-4 months afterwards either. Despite this, my friend insisted that I party with him and a group of other people one night. However, when we were ready to go out, I overheard him loudly making laughing at me and making fun of my behind my back about how "I had serious mental problems, totally lost it. etc." I was shocked because he definitely knew about all that I was going through. After this, I stopped reaching out to him and to distance myself. Part of me didn't trust him anymore but also I wanted to see if he'd put in effort to keep our relationship strong.
Fast forward a few years, and we were still friends but not as close as before. I partially attributed this to me moving around different states for work and also for finally getting into a grad school far away from everyone. During this time we both ended up dating women which we both considered to be long-term partners. Initially he starting dating this girl for a couple of months, and then something terrible happened in his life - his last surviving family member died. After telling her he needed to put their relationship on pause and leave town to wrap up family affairs. She blew up at him while he was out of town, about how he "led her on" and wasted her time. For context, she made it clear that she wanted to get married and have kids after 2-3 years of dating.For some reason, he got back together with her and stayed with her for a few years, but he expressed some concerns about her to me. He told me that she didn't really seem interested in engaging with him on an intellectual level (e.g., reading books with each other, talking about work) and also expected him to pay for all of their dates and meals (which were pretty expensive) because he has a well-paying job. He also expressed worry that she'd wouldn't be interested in respecting or having a relationship with any of our other friends because of her age. Because she was 31 at the start of their relationship she felt that a lot people in our friend group of mid-twenty somethings "wouldn't be mature enough" for her.
Despite telling him that these were all big red flags, he continued dating her. Because I was busy working and trying to make money for my family I never got a chance to hang out with her. But as predicted, as all of our close friends eventually met her over the years - has has been pretty disrespectful. Though she never fought or argued with anyone she'd either ignore people or be passive aggressive. She also started to negatively influence him. After a member of our friend group (who previously has always been kind and caring) had a public freakout and yelled at his girlfriend because he was in a bad mental state, I called him to talk about how we could support our friend and expressed concerns that a marijuana addiction might be contributing to his issues. Instead of talking about the issue he said that our friend was "spoiled", "immature", and said that his girlfriend "weak woman".
Eventually, my partner and I met this girl during my college reunion and we felt that she was pretty awful. My friend allowed my girlfriend and I to stay at his appartment to save money for the trip. Before the actual reunion we all agreed to hang out. My girlfriend arrived in town a day before me and spent time with both of them before I did. Though I wasn't there, my girlfriend told me that this woman threw a napkin at a waiter during dinner. Apparently, she also got sleepy at around 9pm while my friend was showing my partner around the apt. Instead of waiting respectfully or finding a place to rest, she passive aggressively pretended to fall asleep in the common room of the apt and pretended to snore. Then after a few minutes she started yelling that she called an Uber for herself to go back to her place, slammed a door in my friend's face, and left the building - leaving him to chase after her.
I met her the next day during a double date, and I didn't get the best impression. I tried to be nonjudgemental but it was pretty hard to hold a conversation with her. When I asked about her interests, she could only really talk about how she like to drink/party a lot, spend a lot of money, and travel. Though this really wasn't that bad (who doesn't love these things), I initially thought she was just shallow because thats really all she could talk about. However, as we spent more time together bragged to me about her older brother threw a glass ashtray at an elderly neighbor. Additionally, at a one point in the double date, she made fun of a man going for a run outside. He was actually in pretty decent shape and even had visible abs, but she kept saying how he was "too overweight" to be running without a shirt, and bragged about how she was in great shape and runs marathons. Despite this, she has a pretty significant muffin top and if my understanding is correct she hasn't run a marathon in many years. When we actually went to our reunion, she kept complaining to me that all of my college classmates kept staring at her and that they were all clearly "obsessed with her" because of how attractive she is - even at times when there would be almost nobody around. At the end of our time together, he told me he want to elevate their relationship and was thinking about moving in with her. He also suggested to other people he was interested in getting married and having kids soon.
I called my friend few weeks after all of this and expressed concerns about his relationship. Trying to be as respectful as possible while being truthful, I told him that I was concerned about him furthering his relationship with this woman. First expressed that she was hard to talk to and that she displayed some concerning behaviors. Then I highlighted that he should consider that she might not be the best long term partner. I felt that since she made the death of his family member "all about her", she probably wont be good teammate or a supportive partner when they both go through difficult times together. In all, I probably spoke for about a minute and a half before he started getting defensive and hung up on me to "take a brake from the conversation".Afterwards he stopped talking to consistently me for about six months. He mentioned to other friends that he and I would have a formal discussion about how I crossed a line soon, but he kept putting it off and never reached out. Even after I sent an apology text, he kept ignoring me.
Finally, six months ago visited the city that I'm currently living in to visit some people in our friend group and didn't tell me. I was invited by people in our group to spend time with them, but I immediately noticed that something was off. When I would speak about my interests or things that were going on in my life, my former friend would roll his eyes or look at me with disgust. Later in the night, I asked him if he wanted to finally have the discussion her wanted to have and he explosively blew up at me. Immediately, he started intensely screaming at me asking me about why I didn't like his partner. This took me by surprise, so I started getting heated and I pointed out that she seemed pretty superficial, hard to talk to, and that she was really disrespectful to all of our friends. Quickly, he got even more angry and said that all of our friends were "career obsessed people" and that I was the worst one of them all because I'm obsessed with grad school. He said that I was "an egotistical person", with "poor social skills", and that I only care about making friends with people "who kiss my ass and and feed my enormous ego".
Additionally, stated that I was an extremely "selfish person" and he purposely grew apart from me because I was such a broken person with so many problems. He also said that if I couldn't see or agree with him I "needed to look deep within myself". After this, I went home, slept off the fight, and texted him to cut off the friendship the next day.Not only did I found all of this hurtful, but I found this to be extremely hypocritical. Despite all that I did for him, he wasn't really there for me during the worst years of my life. Also, I recognize that I do work abnormally hard and dont spend time as much time with my friends as I used to. However, I feel that I mainly do this to so I can be successful in support my family and because grad school is a deep passion of mine.
I get the sense that now, some of my other friends are a bit upset with me because I ended this friendship. Is this my fault? I did press him. He initially said that he wanted to wait on our discussion, but I pointed out that we live in different states and don't see each other that much anymore. Did I pressure him too much? Maybe I'm being too sentimental, but I used to think that this was the person in my life who knew me the best. I used to always think of myself as the kind of person who will stand up for what is right. So hearing this from him, made me question my own self-perception a bit.Sorry for the long, great-american-novel, of a post.

I've taken vyvanse for 2 years and i'm wondering if anyone here has any similar stories. I started to realise that the meds made my life harder instead of easier because I was on a higher dosage and often abused them, (still do sometimes but more under control). I decided that this winter break I wanted to quit cold turkey and I did, it was actually life changing. I felt depressed for like a week and then it was over, I felt my "spark" was back but ofc also had ADHD problems by being unfocused or just not caring about stuff. Recently it's been a stressful period as i'm ending school forever and had to get all work done to get my examina and I've also had to work my part time job to not get fired, I now had to start taking it again and abused it as usual after not using it for long which is bad. I've taken more than I should because I feel very exhausted and just want a break from everything but I can't. The last vyvanse I took was 80 mg (2x40) about 2 days ago and I still haven't slept a minute and I've had to be with my relatives now because they've come to visit from England but I've been acting weird because my brain chemistry has been f:ed up from taking vyvanse so many days in a row on a high dosage and I'm now done with everything, I'm quitting my part time job and I don't ever have to go to school again. Now I just have to ride this out but I'm just venting about how horrible vyvanse can be sometimes when you take too much and too late in the day, I'm now laying here after almost three days without sleep losing my mind with thin hair and muscles that hurt, no sense of smell or taste and I just want to know how you guys manage these stressful periods without it, I usually just use high dose vyvanse as a quick fix but now I feel like shit and I haven't felt like this since I quit cold turkey last time. It's truly a shit feeling to be so exhausted in you're body and mind while you can just hear you're heart pounding and pounding while rotting away in a dark room. I know that I won't do this shit again but how can I just get to sleep? I don't want to compensate with other drugs, I just want some damn real rest because I can't take this exhaustion anymore, it feels insane what vyvanse does to you, after not sleeping for three days it's now Saturday night and i'm afraid I won't be able to sleep until my big graduation day on Monday and if that's the case all my friends and family will see me in ugly crackhead state and that I'd rather die than go through, if I can't sleep i'm buying weed tomorrow because I don't care anymore I just want to sleep man.

My 7yo asked to go to the softplay space he really loves, I said it will probably be crowded now and wished he asked earlier but then we went, I bought him a full day pass because he was so excited! His friend will be throwing an end of school year party there in two weeks and he was talking about it while we were on our way.
Once we got there he got nervous, he gets nervous a lot and needs a little time to get comfortable. But today, he immediately said he wanted to go home, immediately after we got inside and he tried one slide then said he wanted to go home. I tried talking to him and asked him to at least try the maze (his favorite) but he said “I can’t”. It broke me to pieces and the look on his face told me that he was really devastated, I tried talking him into playing but he really wanted to go home. So out we went.
I feel like I ruined it for him because I said it’s gonna be crowded now. Idk. Then I took him to a pet store because he was really really sad, we went there then immediately asked to go home. Honestly if he asked for a puppy I’d have gotten him, I’ve never seen him this sad his whole life!!!! We got McDonald’s and went home.
I asked him what was wrong he said he doesn’t like the place anymore and he won’t be going to that party either. Which I know is not true, he really likes this place and we always go and spend more than 4 hours there. I was there with him all the time and nothing happened at all, I feel maybe he wasn’t in the mood for playing?
Things I did: I told him that it’s ok to not feel in the mood for playing and that’s ok but it would be better if he has told me before buying the tickets. I told him maybe he thought he wanted to play buy then changed his mind or didn’t feel like it anymore. I told him that I’d never let him do anything he says he doesn’t want but he have to be really sure that he doesn’t want this thing.
His words was that he doesn’t like the place anymore and it’s all boring and stupid and I’m in his team (idk what team) and if I gave him the moon he’d still be mad (idk why the moon came into the problem)
How can I talk to him to know what really bothered him? And what should I do to make it up for him? I feel like he got overwhelmed with all the music and kids and smells.

If you're reading this, perhaps you're like me. You have most things you want in GTA Online. You've "done it all". And now you're bored.
But... have you *really* done it all? Turns out, most of us haven't. There's so much to do in this game, and it's easy to get stuck in old habits that prevent us from discovering everything there is to do in Los Santos!
So I began writing down all my ideas for having fun in the game, and basically use these suggestions as guidelines to always find something new to do. It has completely reinvigorated my joy for the game, and I hope it can help you do the same!
If you're having trouble with motivation or inspiration, then I suggest picking something at random from the list and just doing it! You might disccover that you love it, just like I did!
And if you have anything more to add, please share your comments so that we can all help build this list together. :)
​
Let's go!
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• Break Your Habits: Most people have a routine that they repeat over and over again until they get burned out and bored with the game! Your number one goal for having fun must be to break your old habits!
• Grind Less: If you've played for a long time, there's absolutely zero reason to grind big piles of useless money. People often develop bad habits where they finally grind so much that they forget to have fun. The "wonder" of the world completely vanishes when everything becomes about optimal times and optimal routes and optimal mission rotations. Relax! Start exploring everything that the game has to offer instead! Dare to do the "less optimal" routes, and have the courage to stop stressing about the "time efficiency" when you do the game's content. Sure, perhaps you can do a mission in 2 minutes with an Oppressor Mk2, but why not relax, put on a podcast, and do a relaxing 5 minute drive instead? Relax and have fun!
• Switch Off the Business Mindset: Why grind at all? Why do businesses at all? What do you really need the money for, whatsoever? If it feels like grinding, do something else that's more fun for you! Stop thinking about the money and start thinking about the real-world fun you're having! Start actually enjoying all the things you've previously grinded for! Perhaps you might enjoy treating GTA as a racing simulator where you mostly do challenges/race maps instead? There's so much more to do that isn't purely related to earning money!
• Accept All Invites: When you see invites to races, challenges, missions, etc, accept them! You will broaden your horizons about what you can do in the game, and you will often make the newbies very happy! Of course, if it turns out they're a hopelessly stupid newbie who keeps dying and never improves, then sure, I'd suggest leaving the heist to save your time and sanity. But most of the time, the other players will be smart enough to learn quickly. You can easily make great, new friends this way!
• Protect the Newbies: If you see someone doing a sales mission in a public lobby, why not fly over there in a powerful airborne vehicle (or heck, a missile-equipped Toreador car), and then follow them as their bodyguard against any griefers that may appear!
• Join People's CEO/MC: You can list yourself as "looking for work" via the interaction menu, which will alert other people that there's someone looking for work in the session. You can then join them and help people out with their missions, which is often a fun and relaxing activity for a while!
• Get a Crew: Look around for a crew of like-minded people. They exist. There are crews that specialize in heisting with competent players. There are crews that focus on racing. There are crews for Arena War. There are crews that only do LS Car Meet challenges/races. There's even crews specialized in doing sales missions together, by helping each other with business sales, if that's your thing! Finding a group of people with a compatible mindset and interests really pays off in the end!
• Switch Sessions: You can jump between multiple public sessions until you find one that matches your mood. Perhaps a nice, quiet sessions without griefers, perfect for doing sales missions? Or maybe one where there's a group of people that are actively doing something fun, which you can join in on? Don't just settle for your session. Explore what's out there!
• Do the Stupid Things: Grab your friends or some randoms, and challenge each other to do the most stupid and random things you can think of. The game is a sandbox. So start acting like it! For example, why not challenge each other with things like "everyone starts at the beach without any vehicles, your goal is to get to the Senora Desert convenience store, and you're only allowed to use stolen vehicles, the first person to reach the desert wins", or how about "everyone jumps from the Maze Bank Tower and your goal is to ride your parachute all the way to the ferris wheel". Is that even possible? Who knows! Let's find out!
• Become a Map Creator: If you've had fun making random challenges in freeroam, why not make them into more formal challenges, by creating actual maps? The map creator is very advanced. You can modify the world, add checkpoints anywhere you want, you could make a bicycle race, add pedestrians, enable weapon wheel usage, add parachute jumps, stunt jumps, survival modes, etc. Go wild!
• River Racing: The game has two epic rivers that start at the "Alamo Sea" (desert lake) and head west out to the ocean. Why not do a race with some friends? Get the Blazer Aqua amphibious quad bike and start at the desert, then race through one of the rivers, which is full of fun jumps. Next, decide on a destination (such as the Del Perro Pier) and do the rest of the drive on roads to see who gets there first.
• Stop Flying: Whenever a game lets you fly, you end up skipping huge amounts of content and world design and just flying directly above it all. That's nice if you want to get somewhere efficiently, but it really breaks the game's immersion. Try driving everywhere instead!
• Learn to Fly: Many players are awful at flying (especially the helicopters). Why not practice your flying skills? Perhaps try landing your helicopter at very tight spots, on rooftops, and other fun locations!
• Use Motorcycles: They're more thrilling than cars, because crashing actually has consequences. They're also very fast and agile, which feels awesome while driving through the city!
• Oppressor MK1: Fly around the map, trying to create your own challenges such as flying over the water or climbing Mount Chiliad.
• Climb the Mountain: Find various fun vehicles and attempt to climb Mount Chiliad in them. There's lots of fun to be had with motorcycles at the mountain!
• BMX Tricks: There are so many skate parks and BMX bicycle stunt locations in the city. Why not look at some BMX stunt videos for inspiration?
• Throw Away the GPS: Stop staring at the minimap while driving! This is super fun. Let's say that you need to get to Simeon's shop. Instead of opening up the world map and setting a map marker and following the GPS line like a lemming, try to train yourself to navigate the city! Drive the streets, look at the surroundings and actually navigate! It's so much fun and you'll feel way more relaxed. The city will also feel way more immersive. You can even modify the minimap via "Settings: Display: Radar = Blips", which hides the map so that you can't see the shape of the streets by glancing at the minimap anymore. You can even disable it completely, but unfortunately it also hides the healthbar if you do that.
• Use First Person: You can change the game's camera mode to first person, which is a really unique and immersive way to play the game. Steal some cars and go cruising! It will feel like an entirely different game when you get used to it!
• Take Selfies: Find beautiful locations and attempt to take great screenshots, with perfect framing and composition! You can use the game's built-in snapmatic camera, or you can use your regular screenshot key instead! Collecting photos of your adventures is a nice way to remember where you've been!
• Businesses: There are so many businesses in the game, and it's easy to forget about them after a while. Look at your businesses and begin doing their sourcing and sales missons again! Most of us quit them because they're very grindy, but after a long time away from them, they'll feel fresh again. And they'll feel much more relaxing if you vary between your different businesses and you only do one or two missions at a time, to never get bored.
• Nightclub: Do the promotion/popularity missions, which involve going around town and promoting the nightclub, or helping to remove unwanted or drunk guests from the club. All of that improves your popularity, which improves the passive income you're earning from the club!
• Get the DJs: The nightclub has multiple DJs. Why not unlock them all? Their missions are very fun, and you'll earn new music for your club.
• Bunker: Why not do some manual supply missions, just to relax and have fun? Sure, the optimal way to make money with the bunker is to buy the supplies and do "better" things with your time instead of sourcing supplies, but why does everything have to be about ultimate efficiency all the time? If you're a long-time player, you already have lots of money and you need new things to do!
• Contact Missions: So many people don't even know that you can get missions by calling NPCs on the phone. It's named "contact missions" and they can be very fun. I recommend calling Dax and doing "Request Work" from him, because his missions are very varied and after you've done enough you get various important rewards, such as upgrades for your Acid Lab business.
• CEO/VIP Work: When you're a CEO, you can start SecuroServ missions via the interaction menu. There's lots of fun ones! For example, why not get your favorite car, relax and do the Sightseer mission, seeing where the map markers will take you while you enjoy the relaxing drive? The mission gives you 15 minutes, which is plenty of time to take the scenic route.
• Terrorbyte Missions: Another forgotten relic! The terrorbyte has lots of fun missions which are very good for variation. They used to be the best "active" way to earn money in GTA. Most players who grinded those missions have only done the "optimal rotation", but how about actually doing all of the available missions for fun?
• Rockstar Jobs: There are so many high-quality maps, races and challenge modes in the game. Explore the official list of RockstaCurated jobs in the game's pause menu. There's a ton of them!
• Community Jobs: There's a ton of cool community maps in the game. Remember to favorite the ones you liked so that you can easily start the same again!
• Auto Shop: Do the customer car customization and delivery jobs, and do the heists! They can be done solo.
• MC Club: Do the customer motorcycle customization and delivery jobs.
• Vehicle Warehouse: Do the Import/Export car theft and sales missions. Be sure to use the trick that ensures you only get high-end cars (permanently fill the warehouse with every worthless sourced car in the game, then you will only get high-end cars after that).
• Acid Lab: The best passive income business in the game. Spend some time doing Dax's contact missions to fully upgrade your lab's efficiency and it will become very profitable. Then mix up your gameplay between both sourcing Acid supplies or buying them. And do the sales missions.
• Franklin's Agency: Do the Dr. Dre story missions, then do 201x Security Contract missions until you've unlocked the highest amount of passive daily income (it goes up by $100 every time you do a mission, capped at $20,000 after having done 201 contracts).
• Payphone Hits: They're unlocked after doing at least 3 Security Contract missions. Then you can pick up assassination contracts from ringing payphones. They're very profitable.
• Weekly Time Trials: Do the camotorcycle time trial and the RC car time trial every week, they're a good way to learn how to drive and they give a nice bit of money! Remember that you can hold a key to respawn at the start of the race before the time has ended, if you're sure that you won't make it in time.
• Daily Objectives: In your interaction menu, look at the Objectives and complete them. They're a good way to be inspired to do things you might not do otherwise.
• Daily Collectible Hunts: G's Cache (hunt for the hidden street cache), Kosatka submarine treasure hunt, Street dealer (find it and sell to it every day), etc.
• Get a Fresh Look: Create a new character outfit (clothes, hairstyle, tattoos, mask).
• Use Different Weapons: Challenge yourself to use different weapons than the same old, boring weapon you always use. For example, how about only using the Heavy Revolver? Make those shots count!
• Modify Your Weapons: Change their styles and attachments.
• Tune Your Precious Car: You might have a "perfectly tuned" car that you've been driving for years and that you're always using. Why not modify it a bit? Put a different livery on it, and some different colors at least? What felt "fresh" two years ago would just be contributing to a feeling of "staleness" today. Freshen things up!
• Ride of the Day: Most long-time players have around a hundred vehicles, but most of them collect dust. Why not set fun "challenge" rules for yourself, such as randomly selecting a vehicle and using only that vehicle on that real-life day?
• Outfit of the Day: Why not make it your goal to create a new character "outfit of the day" (or week) whenever you log in? It's a great way to get a fresh feeling every time you play!
• Minigames: How about some Golf, Tennis, Darts or Arm Wrestling?
• Gang Attacks: Find a gang and eliminate them!
• Stash Houses: Find the stash houses and raid them for resources for your businesses.
• Parachute: Go somewhere high up and do a parachute dive! Better yet, look for the Junk Energy Skydives challenges on the map, or do Dom's parachute challenge (which is a special skydive at a random location).
• San Andreas Flight School: Do the flight school challenges! They're at the Los Santos Airport, at the airplane icon!
• Gun Range Challenges: Complete the Bunker's and Ammo-Nation Gun Range shooting challenges!
• Gun Range with Friends: Challenge a friend to the gun range mini-games, where you compete to see who is the most accurate!
• MC Club Missions: Form a MC club with at least one friend, then ride in formation and start MC missions via the interaction menu.
• MC Businesses: Yes, they're the most hated businesses in the game, but why not do them a little bit? You could do a little bit of supplying and a few small sales missions, to ensure that you have small sales. Or, team up with friends and take turns helping each other do larger sales.
• Racing: Do Open Wheel, Stunt Races, Transform Races, and Regular Races. There are so many different kinds of races in the game! The transform races are the newest feature, and are very cool, since you might drive a supercar down the street to the airport, then transform into a plane and fly through the sky, and other epic things, all in the same race map!
• LS Car Meet: Do the challenges, races and rank up your LS Car Meet rank. Try to win the Prize Ride!
• Lobby Car Meets: You can try arranging car meets with other people in the lobby, to check out each other's cars! Just beware of griefers. You may want to do it in the LS Car Meet building to avoid the griefer explosions, or just switch to a lobby with cooler people.
• Arcade: Play the arcade games and try to beat them! Some of them have hidden rewards for completing the game or completing certain challenges.
• Achievements: Look at the pause menu's Stats - Awards section, and pick some award that you'll try to complete! There are so many fun challenges in there, such as attempting to parachute for more than 3 minutes, or robbing every store on the map (you can see the checkmarks on the map to know if you've robbed those stores).
• Stunt Jumps: There are 50 stunt jump locations on the map, which unlock a few rewards and are also really fun to complete!
• Unlock Vehicle Colors: You may have noticed that certain colors are locked behind challenges, such as winning a certain amount of races. Why not finally unlock those colors you've always wanted but were always "too lazy" to unlock? You'll get to enjoy some flashy, new vehicle colors!
• Arena War: Very fun, but unfortunately hard to get a group going for it. But if you can get a group, Arena War is super fun.
• Freemode Battles: Join a large lobby and just do whatever you want while you're waiting for freemode battles, which start every 20 minutes and will alternate between Business Battles and Freemode Challenges. Then attempt to win those battles! Events will only trigger when there are at least 4 players outdoors, and they cannot be in the same CEO/MC.
• Ride with Strangers: Pick your nicest car and then drive around and invite strangers to either ride with you or do impromptu street race 1v1 challenges.
• Freemode Map Markers: Look at the map. There are icons and glowing markers everywhere on the map/streets. Visit whichever icon is nearest your current location and see what's there! Remember that you can go "On Call" (queue) for public races/missions while you're waiting for them to fill up, which lets you stay in Freemode while you're waiting.
• Weekly Bonuses: Look at the Rockstar Newswire to see what the weekly bonus money is, and focus on doing that business/event for a while, to earn some money!
• Max Your Stats: Get all your stats to maximum! Most people haven't finished Strength, which can be gradually maxed for fun by simply punching every civilian you see.
• Invade the Military: Invade the military base at Fort Zancudo with some friends, and make it your mission to steal a Lazer jet plane.
• Heists: Do some heist preps or full heists for fun! Many of them can be casually setup while solo, which is very relaxing! Most of the newer heists can even be completed while solo!
• Change Your Heist Routes: You don't have to always do the same approach over and over again. Most heists have a lot of different approaches. For example, have you ever successfully completed the "Silent and Sneaky" approach at the Casino? Start exploring the different possibilities out there!
• Yellow Mission Markers: The yellow letters/markers on the map show the location of significant storyline missions (such as ULP, Agency, Acid Lab, etc). Visit those locations and start completing the stories that GTA Online has to offer!
• Do the Jobs: Go to "Online - Jobs" in the pause menu, and explore the available options!
• Answer the Calls: There are so many fun missions for English Dave, the various DJs at the Music Locker, the Casino staff, etc. In most cases, you'll also get some kind of reward if you finish them all! You might even get them to stop calling you when you've finished everything, which is a nice reward in itself!
• Check Your Texts/Emails: There's a lot of "mini missions" that arrive via emails/text messages. For example, Simeon asks you to steal certain cars every day. There's also an early game treasure hunt which starts through an email.
• Use Quick Join: There's an app on your phone named "Quick Join". It queues you for a rapid, random job. It's a great way to explore new content, meet new people and to help them with the queues for their own missions.
• Browse the Internet: There are a ton of funny parody websites in GTA Online's internet browser. Explore what's out there!
• Watch TV/Movies: Have you seen all the TV shows and cinema movies yet? If not, relax and have some fun! :)
• Customize Your Phone: You can change the theme, background, ringtone and other settings for your in-game phone. Why not change things a bit?
• Don't Be Annoyed: The phone calls and missions may seem annoying, but try actually relaxing and doing them. Listen to the phone calls. Call the NPCs. Do their missions! They are pretty nice and chill activities which gives you something to do in the game and some challenges.
• Use a Gamepad: If you're a PC player, you'll know that most of the game is too easy, since the aiming and enemy difficulty was balanced for console (gamepad) players. Try using a gamepad on PC! Not only will your driving and flying be massively improved, you'll also have a much more fun fun time when fighting enemies, since you can't just "360 No Scope" everything with your superior pointing device anymore. You'll even get immersive rumble that lets you feel the engine of your cars! How cool is that?! The game's options lets you finetune the sensitivity and aiming mode, and true professionals will use "Free Aim" which completely disables the auto-aiming.
• Meet Different People: If you're mostly a heist person, look for someone who loves cars and start hanging out with them to absorb some of their passion for another aspect of the game. You might learn to love car tuning too!
• Trade Prices: Many vehicles in the game have trade prices which give you a massive discount on the vehicle if you complete the challenge first. So set your eyes on a nice vehicle and do its challenges for fun! The discount you're earning will be like earning a huge sum of money that you put towards that specific vehicle. For example, a 2 million dollar discount on a vehicle you wanted is the same as if you had just earned 2 million dollars that you decided to spend on that vehicle! So don't sleep on the trade price discounts! They're a fun challenge with a very high monetary value!
• Bunker Research: If you have a bunker, try doing the research! You can unlock a ton of cool and super useful vehicle and weapon modifications! The explosive and incendiary ammo are must-haves.
• Mobile Operations Missions: The Mobile Operations Center is a forgotten business. It exists in your bunker, but you can request it via your Interaction Menu. Enter the truck's trailer, and then start missions from the computer in the command room!
• Avenger: Take your Avenger out for a drive! It's an extremely powerful, heavily armored aircraft and can be customized with various fun additions.
• Relaxing Yacht: Why not purchase or upgrade your yacht, and chill on it for a while with some friends? It even has lots of fun water vehicles parked in the water at the yacht, and helicopter pads for easy travel.
• Yacht Missions: You can start the fun "A Superyacht Life" mission series from the captain on your yacht. You'll even get a fun Yacht Captain outfit if you complete them all as host.
• Special Vehicle Work: The Vehicle Warehouse provides various epic missions whose "main" purpose is to unlock trade prices on various weaponized vehicles, but the missions themselves are fun too. Most players only do the specific missions for the vehicles they wanted to buy. Why not complete them all at least once, or play them again for fun?
• Collectibles: The map is full of collectible items, such as USB music sticks, playing cards, action figures, signal jammers (to unlock the best hacker for the Casino heist), etc. Why not relax and do them all for fun? They all unlock something fun or useful!
• Dream Vehicle: Relax, do some research about vehicles are available in the game, and set your eyes on a new "dream vehicle". Then work towards earning it and pimping it just the way you want it! Having a goal is fun!
• Test Drives: Check out the weekly test drives at the "Luxury Autos" shop, at Simeon's "Premium Deluxe Motorsport", and at the "LS Car Meet". You might find your new dream vehicle!
• Collect Vehicle Sets: You might have fun building specific collections, such as all Benny's vehicles in the game, etc. Setting goals for yourself about specific vehicle collections gives you something to strive for, and means that there's a lot of new things you'll need to buy and tune, which will keep you busy for a while!
• Sell Vehicles: Let's be honest, there are a lot of stinkers in your collection. Why not sell them? Just beware of the game's daily sell limit. The limit will be hit somewhere around 30-40 cars sold in 24 real-life hours. I'd suggest only selling 1-5 cars per real life day, which ensures that you'll never face the anger of Rockstar, and you'll have more time to make deliberate choices about which vehicles to get rid of. You'll also be getting roughly 50% of your previously spent money back for each sold vehicle! I'd recommend forcing yourself to drive a vehicle for a while before selling it, and looking at its customizations to see if you'd like it if you changed its style a bit, so that you're absolutely sure that you don't want it.
• Organize Your Vehicles: A lot of people have a complete mess in their garages. Why not begin sorting your cars, such as placing all your best cars at the premium display spots in your office garage? Perhaps organizing the floors by vehicle type? You can have lots of fun and you'll get a much better overview of your available vehicles.
• Relocate Yourself: If you've been staring at the same, old, boring spot for years, it could be fun to move! Most players choose the ugly, industrial, "optimal" locations. Why not relax and move to the beautiful beach instead? The Lombank office, the Insert Coin arcade, the Vespucci Beach MC clubhouse, the Del Perro Nightclub, the Strawberry auto shop, and the Vespucci Canals agency are all very beautiful locations with amazing interior and exterior design and great views! They're also very well placed for all of their business purposes!
• Browse in Person: When you're looking at real estate on the internet, things look very boring and impersonal. Why not take a drive around the city and look at the "real estate for sale" map markers in person? Perhaps you'll find a great new location for your home! However, if it's a multi-apartment house, I recommend checking YouTube for the various room views, to find the room with the best view before you buy it.
• Upgrade Your Properties/Businesses: If you haven't yet upgraded all of the equipment for a business, it's a great idea to upgrade it to improve its efficiency and safety. Or how about changing the interior design for fun, to replace the "same old daily view" with a fresh new look?
• Buy Every Arcade Machine: There are so many fun minigame machines for your arcade. Why not buy them all and pimp that place out? It's a nice place to relax, and even get some rewards for completing the games.
• Get All Passive Businesses: Why not work towards getting and fully upgrading all of the passive incomes in the game? Such as the Nightclub (which automatically generates money in the safe based on popularity, and generates MC business products to sell from its basement), the Acid Lab (which can be restocked with a simple phone call to Mutt, and has easy sales missions), the Arcade (which generates $5000 per in-game day when you've filled all of its interior slots with arcade machines, which can all be the same machine if you want), the Agency (which generates up to $20000 per in-game day based on how many Security Contracts you've completed), Street Dealers (finding the daily street dealer is much faster than regular sales missions, and they pay more than regular missions), Bunker (you can resupply it via one click with the Master Control Terminal in your Arcade, and then simply sell the product when it's still less than 25% full, thus guaranteeing a single sales vehicle every time). An added bonus of having passive businesses is the fact that they let you do other things in the game, such as doing racing and other fun challenges, while your businesses passively produce for you!
• Start Fresh: Did you know that your online account has two character slots? You can actually start fresh by simply withdrawing all of you banked money to your primary character, so that there's $0 in the bank. Then create a new character, which will begin at $0. Then relax and enjoy the ride of building a new empire. I suggest doing things differently this time. For example, if your primary character owns every business, why not just focus on a specific business this time, such as the CEO businesses (cargo crates), or just the vehicle warehouse, etc? Take this opportunity to simplify and avoid grinding, while still building a new playstyle to keep things fresh! Why not skip the Kosatka, so that you don't have the "easy Cayo Perico money" either? This slower, more deliberate, old-school way of making money will ensure that you have lots of fun, and you can set your own goals for what vehicles you want to save up money for on your new character! If you get tired of the grind, just switch back to your primary character again and enjoy the wealth. You can even delete your secondary character again to start fresh as many times as you want to.
• Spend Your Money: Having $100 million unused in the bank is just a completely pointless number, and is basically worth the same as having $0 in the bank if you aren't even using it. Unless your goal is to collect a specific amount of money for fun, I'd instead suggest that you actually start spending absolutely all of your money! Because if you can succeed in being perpetually slightly low on cash, you'll have much more reason to care about doing your businesses when you do want to buy something, which in turn drives your motivation to play again! Having a huge stash of money is bad for your motivation to play! Having a huge sash of money is like having an endless "Rich Daddy's Credit Card" in your wallet. Get rid of that credit card, buy a bunch of fun stuff, and enjoy the game more as a result!
• Play the Story: The vast majority of GTA Online players have barely touched the offline story. Why not relax with the story from time to time, gradually making your way through the epic offline story that started it all?
• Take a Break: If you're truly not finding any fun anymore, then take a break, perhaps a few weeks or a month is all you need to enjoy the game again! They also release content updates roughly twice per year, so you'll always have something new to return to in the future! :)

Hi. Im a 16 yo male whos been lifting for 4 yrs. 8 month ago ive noticed sudden libido issues when before i was a beast. Ive also felt depressed and i felt literally became a bitch overnight. Ive not taken any hormones etc..besides melatonin for my poor sleep.
This was like 6+ months ago I think i did supress my natural production of melatonin abit but ive felt ive sinced fully recovered from my melatonin used.
Basically all this shit happened overnight and i tried natural herbs and lifestyle changes cus i thought i had low testostrone. This paired wif my fk up mind and stress made the 8 months even worse..
I took my blood test 6 months ago, due too difficulties in the hospital system 😒 i oni found out my exact numbers a week ago. i had 715ng/dl of testostrone when i had terminal insomnia and slept 2-4 hrs a night. I estimate my natural testosterone level now is 800-1k+ as ive recovered from my sleep issues.
My estrodiol was 88, ive had gigantic gyno sincei was 10 years old til now, literally israel adesanya level, maybe bigger. however the doctors told me i was Fineee, normall..everything in range....bruh 😒. Aside from gyno ive not experienced the other symptoms of high estrogen til 8 months ago.
After this 8 months i was tired of all this so i brought Arimidex 1mg after all my lifestyle and diet changes did nth much.
I heard ppl saying the optimal dosage is 0.125-0.5mg 2x a week but thats on cycle. Im not on cycle. However the arimidex i brought was powder in capsule so it was difficult to divide the dosage. I oni managed to somewat accurately divide it to 0.5mgs and i take it every 3 days.
Ive oni taken 1 dose 4 days ago and my libito went crazy, i didnt feel depress anymore. No side effects besides slight red flushes on my skin felt normal and in my prime again. I plan to take my next dosage ltr in a few hrs.
I jst wanna know if my dosage is alright? If too much?, im worried i might shut down my estrogen completly. and if possible yall know any place/anyone i can get Arimidex in pill form to southeast asia. Thanks...
For me its either i risk it or i suffer from the effects of my poor aromatisation. Id much rather risk it but at the same time, info and much needed help wont hurt :)

Link: https://imgur.com/a/CtV3Wkl
I tried to cover everything but please let me know what you think and feel free to ask questions!
Background: My father owns a small flooring company and I would help him with jobs when I was a kid. I have some basic knowledge on flooring due to my past experiences but not enough to be considered above average. My partner was recently in the market looking for a house and stumbled upon a 98 year old house in a “up and coming” neighborhood. When we attended the open house the first thing I noticed was how beat up and faded the floors were. Of course, given my upbringing, I’m more sensitive to conditions of flooring. The finish was well beyond its life, you could see the high traffic routes due to the wear and tear, previous botched attempts to spot stain and fix little areas were obvious, some rooms were sun stained and different tents due to having carpet cover them for years, and various deep scratches. Yes it was rough but I knew there was potential. We didn’t have the budget to completely strip, stain, and seal the whole house so we decided to go a simpler and much cheaper route that still made a drastic difference.
Project: I borrowed a Square Buff Floor Sander from father but you can rent one from Home Depot ($75 a day). I purchased a box of 120 grit screen sheets ($40). Started with slowly hitting every square inch I could in each room to break down the old sealer and buff out stains and scratches. Swept up after every round. I did three rounds of all the rooms then a fourth round of high traffic areas and other spots I thought was needed. Next I used a 1.2 Amp CorneDetail Sander ($25) with 100 grit sandpaper ($14 pack) (note: I used 100 instead of 120 because edges and next to walls were a bit rough). I did several rounds on all the edges and other spots the big sander couldn’t hit till it blended with the rest of the floor. Once the sanding was done I swept and vacuumed everything up. Next, I grabbed wide broom and soaked a towel in water and hit the whole floor. Typically would have to rinse the towel after each room. Did three rounds and the floor was prepped for the sealer. It took two gallons of Minwax Clear Semi-Gloss Oil-Based Polyurethane ($50 ea). Went with the water based because it’s easiest to apply and self leveling. Applied just one coat but some floors need two coats. Once applied we waited 24 hours and the pics were taken about 30 hours after completion showing the end result. The working area was about 700~ sq ft. Project took 4 days to complete but could be done in 2 if free all day and night.

tldr; what is a good prompt to classify given text. None of my attempts give a classification within my categories (even a wrong classification).
I'm aware that this has been asked a few times here, but there is no conclusive answer, and I want to get your feedback on how to proceed with my approach.
​
First of all, this is purely for academic curiosity, and there is no actual NLP problem here. I have used chatgpt to generate 10 news categories with their descriptions. then I have asked it to generate 2 examples for each category. Finally i asked local LLM to classify some samples. Here is an example prompt I have.
​

Below is an instruction that describes a task. Write a response that appropriately completes the request.
### Instruction:
The news items can be categories like below.
Politics: This category involves coverage of political processes, policies, parties, elections, and politicians both at the domestic and international level. It can also include analysis of political trends and discussions on political theory.
Business: Business news relates to economic events, corporate developments, market trends, and financial analyses. Topics could range from individual company reports to global economic trends, financial markets, investment opportunities, and more.
Technology: This is focused on developments in the tech industry. Topics include product releases, software updates, breakthroughs in tech research, cybersecurity issues, discussions around data privacy, and impacts of technology on society and other industries.
Health: Health news involves developments in the field of health and medicine. It could include updates on medical research, disease outbreaks, healthcare policy, mental health awareness, fitness trends, and other health-related topics.
Environment: This category focuses on environmental issues and developments. This includes climate change news, coverage of natural disasters, reports on renewable energy, conservation efforts, biodiversity, and sustainability initiatives.
Sports: Sports news covers various sports events, players, teams, scores, match results, upcoming events, analyses, and sports politics. It can span from local community sports to global events like the Olympics.
Entertainment: Entertainment news involves coverage of movies, music, TV shows, celebrities, awards, festivals, and the arts. It could also include reviews and critiques of various forms of media, as well as news about the entertainment industry itself. Science: Science news focuses on new discoveries, developments, and breakthroughs in various fields of science, including physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and more. It also covers controversial scientific debates and the societal impacts of scientific advancements.
Education: This category covers news related to schools, universities, education policy, educational technology, student and teacher issues, and new trends or methods in education.
Travel: Travel news involves information about different locations, travel advisories, trends in the tourism industry, travel tips, features on culture and lifestyle in different regions, and impacts of events (like a global pandemic) on the travel industry.
Based on these categories, classify below news items:

1. The upcoming federal election is seeing a shift in voter sentiment as recent polls suggest that the incumbent party might lose majority in the parliament. The opposition party, bolstered by this change, has started aggressive campaigning focusing on issues such as healthcare reform and climate change.
   
2. MegaTech Corporation announced a surprising decrease in its quarterly profits, citing supply chain disruptions due to recent global events. The news has resulted in a significant dip in the company's stock prices, and investors are worried about the impact on their portfolios.
   
3. A recent report by the World Environmental Agency indicates a significant increase in global carbon emissions, despite various international climate agreements. Experts warn that if this trend continues, the world could face catastrophic climate changes in the future.
   
4. Researchers at the Space Institute have detected a new exoplanet which could potentially support life. This discovery has ignited new excitement in the scientific community about the possibility of extraterrestrial life.
   
5. The beautiful coastal city of Azure Bay has been named the top travel destination for this year by TravelWorld magazine. The city is known for its pristine beaches, vibrant culture, and delicious cuisine
   

### Response:
sure here is the stories you have provided classified below:

1. The upcoming federal election is seeing a shift in voter sentiment as recent polls suggest that the incumbent party might lose majority in the parliament. The opposition party, bolstered by this change, has started aggressive campaigning focusing on issues such as healthcare reform and climate change. Classification: Politics
   
2. MegaTech Corporation announced a surprising decrease in its quarterly profits, citing supply chain disruptions due to recent global events. The news has resulted in a significant dip in the company's stock prices, and investors are worried about the impact on their portfolios. Classification: Business
   
3. A recent report by the World Environmental Agency indicates a significant increase in global carbon emissions, despite various international climate agreements. Experts warn that if this trend continues, the world could face catastrophic climate changes in the future. Classification:
   

OpenAI playground classifies items 3-5 correctly. I have tried quantized 30/33B versions of supercot, guanaco, Wizard-Vicuna uncensored, as well as Samantha 13b. I have also tried different prompts, such as putting examples in a tag in the input section, and just put one news to classify. In the first prompt I included above, all LLMs just continued to create sample news item, and no classification message. When I explicitly give examples first, and then ask to continue after an example news item ending with Classification:, some models just came up with new ridiculous categories even though I re-iterated the categories they should select from. I also played the model parameters (such as temperature etc) to no success.
​
Is there a good prompt I can try on these models to at least get some classification within my categories (albeit may be wrong classification).
ps: I'm well aware that there are better NLP algorithms, even a dedicated llama classification tool however I want to see if this can be done at the prompt level as OpenAI seems to be doing a good job at it.
ps2: A classification problem like this seems to be a good metric to evaluate models.

My father didn’t want children, anecdotes from both sides of the family along with things he has said confirm this.
He explicitly told me that part of why he “wanted” (I use this word very loosely) a child, was because his older sister kept having complications that led to miscarriages, and he, as the only male, felt he had a lesser relationship with his mother, and that his having a child might somehow fix that.
I figured he didn’t want children when I was about 10 or so, and when I learned about my aunt’s history, I thought that his and her heavy handed attempts at having a relationship with me were subconscious, not intentional.
We never had a good/stable relationship. When my parents were separated (from when I was 3-7) he would randomly show up in the late evening to “hang out”, which was really him taking me for idk how long, leaving me in his old ford pickup with a broken ignition that meant it could start without a key, and work in his garage while I stayed in the truck for what could’ve been an hour or two next to active train tracks in the dark.
At the time I thought this was cool, because I was a small child who had no real concept of anything.
My parents finally divorced when I was seven and he was court mandated to see me MWF with alternating weekends and holidays, I began to hate him, because I actually had to spend regular time with him and he had the emotional intelligence and tact of a dead turnip.
He would regularly leave me alone in his apartment, or the apartment of whatever woman he convicted he was worth her time, sometimes with her there, most of the time not, with no vetting or warning to my mother. On several separate occasions he gave me an extreme laxative for the intention of me losing weight, when I got in a fight with his then girlfriend’s daughter he told me to punch first and harder next time, my nose was tender for the following week. When I was still in elementary he said that the only reason he didn’t hit me was because he’s dark skinned,(my mother is white) and I look, most people guess Cuban or Chinese depending on how much sun I’ve been getting. Idk if he knows I heard this or not, or if he even remembers tbh.
I didn’t tell my mother most of this until recently, I know it was in part compartmentalization. And because she didn’t know, she constantly tried to get me to have a relationship with him, due to her own issues with her own father
I knew he had to see me MWF but only recently learned about the alternating weekends and holidays, as I have absolutely no recollection of him keeping me for the weekend.
In middle and high school (12-16) I started experimenting with my gender presentation (this was limited as I went to catholic school my whole life) but with a triple check of the handbook and a visit to my aunt who ran a salon, I got my first short haircut. It wasn’t even all that masc looking, just looked like baby’s first attempt at something different.
My dad saw it and in more words than necessary he said I looked like a lesbian, and his tone told me enough to know he wouldn’t be supportive at least and actively a danger at most
He doesn’t know I legally changed my name to something definitely masc + my mother’s maiden name, he doesn’t know I spent a year on T(estosterone) he still thinks of me as his daughter who didn’t graduate high school. (I did, but I didn’t walk and didn’t have a party so he took that to mean I didn’t)
He didn’t get my birthday right for at least 18yrs, and idk if he checked because I would legally be an adult that year or it was happenstance.
We didn’t speak for months before that, he texted a few times, I didn’t respond. Not until he showed up at the house after leaving a voicemail that he claimed me a missing person.
He has told me point blank that now that I’m an adult he wants to have a relationship with me, and can’t seem to grasp why I don’t want one with him.
TL;DR my father who I have gone Low Contact with wants a relationship now that I’m an adult and he is no longer required to “be a parent” I don’t want him in my life because he abused me mentally and emotionally (I even called him a glorified sperm donor to his face) how do I get him to take the hint?

I browse the CS and SE subreddits a lot and I comment on a lot of the threads which talk about hiring, interviews, and recruiting. Since I end up repeating similar information across these threads, I figured I should compile all that information into one post.
Some background about me: I've been building software professionally for around 8+ years, and am currently a Senior Software Engineer at a company that has absolutely nothing to do with delivering food to people who don't want to cook. I have done a lot of interviews, been the interviewer for many candidates, and been HM a few times.
I have only worked within the "big tech" scene, so I have no idea how things work at startups, local, small/medium sized, or non-tech companies, so the information in this post is relevant just for tech companies. I will also mostly focus on the entry-level interviews in this post.

What are the goals of the technical interview?

These are some of the high-level goals for the interview:

1. Be cost effective
2. Do not use too much engineer time
3. Do not make a bad hire
4. Be able to recruit from the largest pool of candidates available
5. Do not make a bad hire
6. Evaluate culture fit (mostly through communication skills)
7. Make a good hire

When you are getting thousands of applicants and conducting hundreds of interviews, you need to be very efficient throughout the hiring pipeline. The interview process has to scale with load.

Why do they always ask for a Bachelors degree when you can learn programming from online for free?

Companies want to be cost effective and avoid making bad hires. Bad hires are expensive.
A Bachelors degree in Computer Science means that various third parties (professors) have already validated a candidate's skills (through tests, projects, exams, etc.) over a 4 year period. This is work the company does not have to do, money saved!
It also standardizes all the applicants. Everyone with a Bachelors degree in CS (or CE, SE) has had the opportunity to learn the same concepts, so we can use a similar interview process to evaluate every candidate.
If I have two self-taught candidates, I have no idea what they have in common. One might have only done React tutorials on YouTube and not know about DSA, and the other might have done the MIT open courseware courses and know about DSA: so they can't get the same questions. Companies don't want to come up with bespoke questions for each candidate, it's too expensive!
A "Bachelors degree in computer science or similar discipline" has been required for all the job postings at all the places I have worked. 3-4 years of work experience as a SE can often offset this requirement.

How many applicants do big tech companies even get?

At most of the places I have worked, most entry level job postings get around 2000+ applications for the duration they are up. This gets cut down by the ATS and the recruiter, but even afterwards we are left with hundreds of applicants. The goal of the interview process is to cut this down aggressively until we get to the 1 person we want to hire.
At Senior+ levels, the number of applicants go down drastically.

Why do they always use DSA/Leetcode questions?

1. It is fairly easy, quick, and cheap to come up with new questions. Algorithms is a very wide topic, with many possible problems.
2. When problems are inevitably leaked, we can quickly deprecate and replace them.
3. They can be asked to every applicant because due to their shared background as BS in CS graduates.
4. It is language and tech-stack agnostic. We can use the same interview questions for someone who knows Ruby, Java, C, Rust, etc. We don't have to come up with unique bespoke problems for each language or tech stack.
5. Since DSA is very general, interviewers don't need to be an expert in the interviewee's language choice, since the concepts are agnostic.

Why do you want to recruit from the largest pool of candidates? Why don't you focus on one language and stack?

Big tech companies always want strong generalist engineers because we use a lot of different technologies. My team could be using Go for our services today, but we could transition to Rust or C if need be. We also want candidates to be able to fit into any team if required, and not every team uses the same language or stack.

But Leetcode is not what software engineers do day to day, why don't you interview them on REAL SKILLS?

It is not feasible to interview each candidate on "real skills" because of the volume of candidates we interview. Lets consider some other interview options:
Take home projects:

1. These questions take a long time to come up with, which means an engineer has to take a lot more of their time away from actually doing engineering work to come up with questions.
2. When the question gets leaked, it takes a lot of time to replace them because of (1). Leaving leaked questions up for too long can lead to bad hires.
3. We need to make a version of the question per language per stack for us to be able to recruit from the largest pool of candidates. This is very time consuming.

Building an application/API during the interview:

1. These questions take a long time to come up with... same as above.
2. When the question gets leaked... same as above.
3. We need to match the stack that the interviewee chose, with an engineer who also knows that stack. This is not always feasible due to scheduling.
4. We do use these kinds of interviews for Senior+ interviews, which are much lower volume.

Debugging a snippet of code:

1. These questions take a long time to come up with... same as above.
2. When the question gets leaked... same as above.
3. We might need to match what the interviewer's stack to the interviewee's stack depending on the complexity.

So that's why we don't use these kinds of other kinds of interviews for entry level interviews.

Can't people just memorize answers and pass the DSA/Leetcode interviews?

Memorizing only gets you so far, and interviewers can usually detect it. It's not like a school exam where you write the correct answer and that's it.
We ask lots of questions about the thought process behind the candidates solution. Someone who simply memorized answers will not be able to able to answer all the deep dive questions. Why did you use a Min Heap and not a Max Heap? Why did you use BFS and not DFS? Can you solve this without sorting?
There's also multiple layers of difficulty to the same problem. If someone solved the problem in 5 mins, I can bump them up to the next level.

Can you even solve the questions you are asking yourself?

It is customary to solve the question you are going to be asking before the interview. So yes, I absolutely can solve all levels of the problem I will be asking. SEs who regularly conduct interviews are generally not too rusty when it comes to solving DSA problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb0p1-TGjmc is great watch, which touches on this a bit.

How do you decide which questions to ask?

We have an internal interview problem database. We can only pick problems that exist within these database. Periodically engineers will get assigned to remove leaked questions and add new questions to this pool of questions, to keep it fresh.

Isn't there luck involved?

Yeah, luck is always involved. You could practice Tree problems all month and get hit with a Heap problem, while someone else who practiced Heap problems will make it through.
Luck is involved in most things in life, even in non-DSA interviews.

I'm not good at Leetcode and I don't want to practice, what should I do?

There are still many companies which don't use DSA problems in their screening. When I was a new grad I interviewed at a consulting company and their interview consisted of them asking me some OOP concepts, some Java concepts, and a simple problem like FizzBuzz.
https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards has a list of companies which do not use DSA/Leetcode interviews.

I think these interviews are unfair!

That's valid. But like most things in life, the more popular a thing is, the more competition there is for it. It is more difficult and requires more studying and effort to get into MIT than University of Phoenix, the same applies for tech companies.

Are you even making good hires if you are not testing their REAL SKILLS during the interview?

According to our analytics, we are making good enough hires. We have found that people who have good generalist and foundational knowledge are able to learn whatever REAL SKILLS are required quickly, and end up becoming very productive members of our teams.
At one of my previous companies, we did an AB test where one cohort got the regular DSA/Leetcode interview and another cohort got a take home assignment. After 3 years the data showed that the hires from the DSA/Leetcode cohort got promoted to SE2 slightly faster than the hires from the take home assignment set. The increase was not too significant, but it proved that it was not worth spending the extra resources on coming up with take home assignment questions.
Of course we do make bad hires every now and then, but they are rare, and PIPs exist for this reason.

What about all the good engineers you are missing out on because they don't like DSA/Leetcode interviews or are bad at them?

We might miss out on some good engineers, but it does not end up mattering because of sheer volume. For example, if only 5% of 2000 applicants pass the interview, that is still 100 people.
There is probably at least 5 good engineers within that 100. So even if 500 good engineers got filtered out, we can still hire the 1 good engineer we need for that specific open role.
I'm sure MIT misses out on many exemplary students every year as well!

How many candidates actually pass these interviews?

I would say anywhere from 5-10% of the total interviews we do at the entry level turn into offers.

Summary

I hope that explains the reasoning behind why these interviews are the way they are.
I personally think the perfect system would be similar to how it works for med students with medical school. You get your BS in CS and then go to a 4 year "software engineering school" and a government body (similar to the LCME) will hand out out licenses upon completion. Then you do 3-7 years of residency in various domains. The top of the class get placed into the company and domain of their choosing, and the bottom get placed into whatever is available.
Feel free to ask questions, I will try to answer them. I will not argue with you though since that's pointless.

Personal: Indian male, high income, extremely small town in Texas Intended Major: Biomedical Engineering SAT: 1560 (770 R, 790 M) Courseload: Highest possible IB courseload: 5 HLs, Linear Algebra and Multivariable Calculus + Higher Level Biology. GPA; (3.92 UW, 101/100 W) goofy ahh grading system, so idk. Awards: - NMSQT Semifinalist (Expected cutoff exceeded by 3) - State Level Acad Comp: 1st place in Math, Spelling, and Science - PVSA - TCAF (football) Championship finalist (MIP) - Schoolwide Biology related award ECs - Research with Professor to examine effects of visual/auditory stimuli on the human brain - Research at university under professor to look at machine learning and computational biology - Independent Research Project to help my dad (developing mathematical model) - - Worked with my Gurdwara to code a hub for members to volunteer - Made a website to teach little kids guitar - Self taught guitar since the age of 8, played at multiple concerts and shows - Taught kids math online - Worked at Kumon, assisted manager with tutoring and grading - Worked at family friends business for 2 years, managed incoming orders/pallets and sorted inventory Essays: are prolly gonna be good, but you never know ig. LORs: Hella good recs from my Bio and History teacher, idk about physics tho. OK bet bet bet, now im tryna apply to the top schools, but I know every t20 is a reach for me. So idk guys, what do i got?

I am working with a small team of other adults and college students at a rapid-paced "play" startup business event and we are developing a proposal for an app / service to help divorced men like myself match with women, after coaching, so they present themselves in a positive, authentic way.
Would you please consider answering any or all of these market research questions, however briefly as you would like? We are going to have a hard time finding divorced individuals given the limited time we have and would welcome any help you have in finding the folks we want to help! Feel free to private message me if you like. Thank you for your consideration!
*********
What is your age range? (Options: Under 25, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65+)
For Confirmation: What is your current relationship status? (Options: Single, Dating, Engaged, Married, Divorced, Widowed, Prefer not to say)
What is your gender? (Options: Male, Female, Prefer to self-describe, Prefer not to say)
What is your current employment status? (Options: Employed full-time, Employed part-time, Self-employed, Unemployed, Retired, Student, Prefer not to say)
What is your highest level of education? (Options: High school or equivalent, Some college, Associate degree, Bachelor's degree, Master's degree, Professional degree, Doctorate, Prefer not to say)
What is your parental status? (Options: No children, Children under 18, Children over 18, Prefer not to say)
How long ago did your divorce finalize? (For divorced men only. Options: Less than a year ago, 1-3 years ago, 3-5 years ago, Over 5 years ago, Prefer not to say)
How long was it before you dated again? (For divorced men only. Options: Less than a year ago, 1-3 years ago, 3-5 years ago, Over 5 years ago, Prefer not to say, Not dating again)
*********
What were the biggest challenges you faced when you started dating again after your divorce?
What resources have you used or do you wish existed to support your journey post-divorce?
How open are you to using an AI-powered platform for coaching and advice?
What topics would you like to see covered in a coaching session (e.g., rebuilding confidence, improving communication, managing finances)?
What features would make an online dating platform more appealing to you?
How interested are you in connecting with other divorced men who are navigating similar experiences?
What aspects of your life would you like to improve post-divorce (e.g., health, lifestyle, relationships, mental wellbeing)?
Would you be comfortable sharing your experiences and learning from others in a community-focused platform?