BougieBirdie

Showing her you’re interested isn’t about making you more attractive to her. It’s more about signalling that you’re receptive if she’s also attracted to you.

If she’s attracted and knows you’re attracted, the relationship can proceed.

If she’s attracted and doesn’t know you’re attracted, she’ll either be in the same position you’re in now, conclude that you only want to be friends, or move on to someone who’s attracted to her.

If she’s unattracted and knows you’re attracted, everyone can get in front of their feelings before you feel like you’re wasting your time or she feels like she’d be losing a friendship by not being romantically interested in you. The longer you withhold your feelings from her, the more difficult you can be making things for both of you.

All that said, I think it’s totally reasonable to hang out with her a few times to see if you like hanging out with each other first.

If writing is an option, then keeping pen and paper handy can facilitate communication.

An abundance of patience is useful. You can never really be sure what’s going on in someone else’s head, and that’s doubly true for someone who can’t tell you if they wanted to. People tend to mirror other people’s energies though, so if you remain calm and relaxed that can keep things smooth.

Something to consider: if you can’t speak, then body language becomes your primary method of communication. I wouldn’t be surprised if expressions and emotions become exaggerated because it helps get your point across. Mild annoyance could be perceived as anger if you’re sensitive to it.

Something else to consider: being able to lower the price is one of the easiest tools for pleasing a customer, but if you start at the lowest possible price then you’ve got nowhere to go lower if your customer already had reason to be irate. Plus if haggling is expected then your customer might not really know that you’ve started at the lowest price and might think that you’re refusing to haggle with them. It can be a tough nut to crack - I’d also want to give them the best price. If you have additional discounts, coupons, or gifts you can add to the transaction then that might be an option.

To be honest, muteness is a pretty rare condition here. I’ve worked retail for many years and can probably count on one hand how many mute customers I’ve had. But I have had a couple of regulars and we seem to get along. Treating other human beings how you’d like to be treated is usually the best way forward.

I’ve seen enough Christmas specials to know that richness from spending times with your loved ones, cultivating relationships with your community, and enjoying what you have.

If you somehow don’t feel rich with your fabulously wealthy lifestyle, then I’m afraid you never will. In fact, you probably have too much stuff to feel rich, because richness doesn’t come from the pursuit of things.

Don’t despair friend, I have a solution. Send me the deeds to your houses and factory and I’ll make sure someone who can appreciate them will enjoy them. Working through an agent like me will be far less scary than being visited by three ghosts tonight.

I’m having a hard time finding a job that aligns with my ethics. I was a software developer, and it seems that everything that’s hiring right now is stuff that would make me feel like garbage.

I considered taking a job as a help desk for an advertising library. I figure I could do a really bad job of it, and take a big chunk of my salary to donate to adblockers.

I earn about 30% of what I did five years ago, and prices have only gone up. I’ll probably become homeless if things continue, that’s pretty darn inconvenient.

I just want to make dumb little video games to feed my family, but I’m too burnt out from my soul crushing minimum wage job to make dinner.

I’m of the opinion that anyone who supports the police probably hasn’t had an interaction with the police.

Like seriously, any time I’ve been the victim of a crime, the police have been the worst part of it. I guess I’m probably biased, maybe there’s some place where cops don’t suck, but I don’t live there

I think people probably like the idea of the police: someone you can call in an emergency when you’re in danger. But their response does not reflect their branding

I pay over a thousand dollars per year for water in canada.

The water in town would not be safe to consume without treatment (lots of heavy industry here) and it’s nice to know that my toilet flows somewhere else

I got back together with an old tabletop group recently.

Five or six years ago we wrapped up the campaign we were running to take a little break. Scheduling became tricky, a couple of people were expecting their first child and some others were starting new jobs. Without a common meeting, the group just kind of faded out.

Anyway, a couple months back I bump into one of the players and we start talking. Shortly after that, he starts up a new group chat trying to get the band back together.

My mental health has been an absolute shitshow the last several years, so I really agonized over whether I wanted to try to get back together or embrace the solitude that I desperately crave for my free time. Well, I went against my initial judgment and it’s been awesome playing with likeminded people again.

A couple of friends still can’t really make it, the schedule is too difficult with young kids. But we brought in a couple new players too and the funny thing is that even with new people it still feels like old times.

I think in Cube it was razor wire, but they may have upgraded to lasers for Cube 2

I’d be scared too if I had to come back to work after being a victim in a hit-and-run