On the point of driving whilst stoned. Confidence comes with experience
I can definitely understand what you mean by this, but I think a certain level of confidence also comes from tolerance.
I don’t drive at all, so can’t weigh in on that, but I cycle everywhere, and in my youth I would have never considered cycling while stoned, too risky, too dangerous, not fair or safe to others using the paths.
When I started smoking, I stuck by that statement, I’d give it a full 12+ hours between my last smoke and getting on the bike.
But just like your example, 12 hours became 8 hours, became 4 hours, and so on, where now I might have an smoke and 40 minutes later get on my bike to go somewhere.
But then I take a T break, and I pick up a new bag, and I have my first hit in a month or two, and I sit with that high for a while and think to myself “fuck no, I absolutely will not be getting on the bike any time soon, this tiny toke is too much to cycle on”
Then I’ll smoke heavily for the next month, and by the end of the month, my tolerance has increased, and I’m back to riding my bike while stoned (or rather, buzzed, because I’m just not capable of getting as high)
Do I feel guilty for these decisions because I know it’s a big risk? Yes. Do I keep doing it? Also yes.
But now that I’m in discussions with my doctor about medical dosing, it has raised a very important question - if I use medical marijuana to manage my chronic illness (the one that renders me medically unfit to drive) is the ethical and legal obligation of that treatment plan that I can never ride my bike again? I must always walk or take the bus? The same does not apply for people who use opiate based pain relief or therapeutic ketamine. They are warned not to drive if the meds make them impaired, but ultimately it’s their judgement to decide what is “impaired”. It will only be externally questioned if there is an accident or a near miss. If I am assessing my level of impairment before I ride stoned, how can I best ensure my capacity to ride in those moments?
Also answering OPs question, I think this applies to a lot of hobbies, but I notice it a lot as someone who likes to sew my own clothes - the pressure from others to constantly get better, try harder, and keep building those skills.
I do my hobby because it’s fun, sometimes it’s fun to learn new things about it, but sometimes I just want to stick with what I know and play in my comfort zone.
My dad will often look at things I’ve made this year and say “you made something almost identical 5 years ago, and your stitches are still skew wiff, haven’t you learned to blah blah yet?” because his expectation is that I will get better and better with every passing moment as I practice my hobby.
Similarly, people will tell me that I have “clearly got the skills to make xyz” and I should “challenge” myself. And sometimes I will, but most of the time I retreat to my hobbies because I don’t have to challenge myself if I don’t want to. I like my hobbies to be no pressure (I go to the gym to push myself, I go to my craft corner to relax)
You are allowed to dabble, fool around, play, and have fun with a hobby. You are allowed to decide that “getting better” isn’t the goal.
But it seems others will always question this, or suggest you somehow aren’t doing the hobby right, or enthusiastic enough about it if you’re only ever doing it on a surface level.
Just today, I managed to get hold of a second hand overlocker, I’m really excited to make things with it, and my co-worker who also sews said “oh that’s awesome, the quality of clothes you’re going to pull off now that you can surge! I can’t wait for the fashion show”. She meant that in the most positive way, and I know what she was trying to say so I thanked her and promised her to show her what I was making, but part of me definitely heard “if the quality of your final product doesn’t improve as a result of this, you’re bad at this hobby, now you have no excuse not to be better than you were before” even though she meant nothing of the sort, and a lot of that was internalised shame because of previous discussions with people who were genuinely questioning my lack of improvement.
I understand where he’s coming from, but he’s also explaining it poorly and using it to be a defensive dick.
I have the same issue when writing “could’ve”, I default to “could of” because of some silly childhood habit, and despite knowing better I still write “could of” out of habit all the time, and I don’t pick up on it when proof reading because they are spoken the same way.
He’s talking about the accent of his internal monologue/ sub vocalisations when reading.
In my accent, “than” and “then” sound completely different, but in some accents they’re practically homophones.
When you cross that with someone who is a phonetic writer, or has language disabilities like dyslexia, you end up writing the more commonly used word. When proof reading you don’t realise your mistake because the voice in your head reads those two words the exact same way, and if you’re dyslexic you’re not going to know it’s wrong from looking at it.
I’ve read it 6 times and it all makes perfect sense, reading it again is only going to help me find the remaining mistakes because of a luck based numbers game.
it takes me 40 minutes to proof read a 25 word email if it’s important enough, because I know myself, I have found errors after that long.
That’s why I do sometimes get frustrated when kind well meaning people correct my grammar and spelling. It’s helpful and I do appreciate it, but it’s not that I don’t “know” the correct grammar, or why my grammar was wrong, it’s that no one game through with a neon sign to highlight where the error was and I genuinely can’t see it until it’s pointed out to me, or even if I know there’s an error, I really, genuinely, do not care anymore. That’s not because I take no pride in my literacy, it’s the opposite…
There’s nothing worse than spending 8 times longer proof reading a comment than you spent drafting it. And your pour over it and really apply yourself to finding the errors. You find 40 mistakes the first time you read it, another 10 the next time, 3 the next. You find no mistakes the next 2 times you re-read it, you ask a friend to read it, so they skim it quickly say “it’s fine”. Then you hit “post” and you immediately spot another mistake so you quickly edit it, silly me, how did I not see that before posting!? Then someone replies to it and you go back to refresh yourself on what it was you wrote so you can better have a discussion and you spot another error in your original comment! How did that error slip through so many checks! Better re-re-re-re-re-re-read it again now while I’m already editing it.
Then a well meaning person says “by the way, it’s “than” not “then”.” which is a completely neutral and polite post, but considering I’ve spent hours thinking about all the mistakes in the comment, I’ve spent longer than most people spend on proof reading, I hear you trying to help, but all I’m feeling is the world calling me an illiterate idiot after I’ve finished exhausting myself doing practical things to improve my literacy.
These spell check comments make me angry, not at the person trying to help me learn. But angry at myself for being a fucking moron, for wasting years of my life working twice as hard to achieve half as much, with my best being better than my best ever was and still in some instances being seen as having not tried at all.
What’s worse is then I’m reading my comment for the 700th time trying to find where I’ve used “then” where I should have used “than” and even though I know now what mistake I’m looking for, I can’t see it!
I’ve gone so far as to ctrl+F “of” in a 6 page report from work because a co-worker was running out the door to grab something for an event, made a comment about me needing to change “of to have” in the report but couldn’t remember what page just that she noticed it, and off she went.
I’d already read this thing well over 50 times. I went through one by fucking one to try and find where I had written “could of”, but I could not find it.
Whatever, it was no longer worth it. I printed them off, and I’ve grabbed a random bunch of pages to start folding the booklets and as I’ve grabbed it, directly above my thumb, clear as day, bright as sun, fucking “could of”.
Did I go back and print off another batch of copies now that I’d found it? Yes (felt guilty the whole time, what a waste of paper)
The worse part, my co-worker comes back, we finish setting up, we’re putting booklets on guests chairs and my cooworker flicks through one and says “aw, you didn’t get a chance to fix the “could’ of” mistake.” because it turns out there were 2 instances that I’d missed while going through it word by word. Of course as soon as she said it, I could see it. In my defence she’d only spotted the one, not the original 2 in the copy I gave her for proofing…or the original 20 in the copy I proofed myself.
So after all that, when someone who doesn’t know me corrects my spelling, I’m grateful, but I don’t care, I’m burnt out on fixing it, I cared too hard too much in the hours I was proof reading it before you got here, and I know it’s incorrect, and I know self improvement is important, but come back in a week when I’m not angry and frustrated at myself and this text.