“Just do it” is helpful in some cases, but mostly not. E.g. you think that a hobby is cool but you don’t feel like you could start it? Just do it, take a course, try it out. It becomes unhelpful quickly when the realities of your life are just different. Telling in unemployed person with debt who is fascinated with flying to “just get a pilot license” ignores their reality. But telling a business analyst who’s interested in manga but feels like this hobby would destroy his image, to “just do it and buy some mangas” is totally valid.

I have been struggling financially for most of my life and have received way too often the unhelpful advice to “just do it. Live a little.” Just book that 100€ flight to Italy and see Rome. Just get a smartphone, everyone has one now! (That was when smartphoneplans were very expensive here and I couldn’t justify such a high monthly cost. Yes I’m older.)

There is way too much “just do it” advise by people that live in their nice little bubble of a well-off, supportive family system and never realize that the only reason they can “just do it” is because they never had to eat rice with tomato sauce for 3 days in a row because there were only 10€ on the bank account by the 26th.

On a similar note, “just get a job, just learn something more profitable/in an industry with high wages” is also an often unhelpful advice. Not everyone can be good at everything. And not everyone can just uproot their lives and go back to school for a few years. Yes, some people can do amazing things like get a masters degree while working full-time and having kids. But this advise, too, ignores the reality of many people. If you have no support system or if you simply aren’t cut out for the currently profitable jobs, you can’t just magically switch careers. And even if you do: things change so quickly and there is no guarantee, that the currently well-paid job will still be like that in 5-10 years.

That sounds to me like she doesn’t even know you are infatuated with her, correct? You mention that you never told her you’re in love. What you are doing is unfair both to yourself and to her: If she thinks you are friends, she has no reason to treat you any differently than her other friends. So it’s understandable she might take some time to answer if she’s busy. How would she know you are expecting more of her?

It is unfair to yourself, because you’re keeping yourself in that limbo by obsessing over it. You are expecting her to magically behave in exactly the way you want - without ever having communicated your feelings and expectations. And then you get stressed because another person didn’t behave the way you wanted them to. That’s like getting depressed because the sky is blue and you got it into your head that it ought to be yellow. The only reasonable thing you can do is work on your own expectations and reactions to other people. You have no influence over other people’s feelings, how they behave or whether they like you or not. If you allow things you have no influence over to take control of you so much, you will never be happy in life.

Even if she told you today “I love you” and you get together - how would a relationship work if you can’t even communicate a simple need such as “I noticed you take a long time to answer - is something up? I’d appreciate if you could at least write a short ‘I’m busy, let’s text later’.”

And yes, the people who tell you to work on yourself DO get it. One person not reciprocating your feelings should not throw you into such a deep depression and if it does, you need to work on yourself and not date.

You had to choose between a small set of approved groups you could belong to. It was especially bad in my small village in western Germany: you could be either a fashion victim (all with the same hair, clothing style, one year they ALL dyed their hair red), a computer nerd, a sporty person, a hip-hop or a techno fan. If you didn’t belong to any of the approved groups, you were an outsider and bullied.

Obviously I’m writing this because my best friend and I were among the outcast. We bought our stuff at thrift shops and didn’t care much for fashion, neither what was ‘in style’ nor the geek/techno/hip-hop fashion. One year I cut my hair really short and got so much shit for it, because apparently you could only do that if you 100% subscribed to a matching Goth aesthetic. (Still have short hair, so take that stupid mean girls!)

It was probably partially a small-town-thing, but if you look at the media from the 90s you’ll rarely see characters that don’t neatly fit a certain type.

I live close to the border so we go to the Netherlands about every other month. I have tried learning some common dutch tourist phrases like ordering food or asking for the toilets. Unfortunately, so far most shops or waiters have just insisted on using English or German and I’ve been told numerous times something along the lines of “Why would you try to learn Dutch? We can all speak English.”

The front desk lady at one of the hotels we stayed at in Noord-Holland even told me “Oh, don’t learn Dutch, that’s such a waste of time.” I don’t know, I love learning at least a few sentences of the local language when I go somewhere on vacation. But I’ve never met so much resistance to it as in the Netherlands.

That’s a cool concept, hadn’t heard of it. Nanotech might also be an option for this. You have a bunch of nanobots in your brain and when you encounter a new language, some AI will decipher it and rewire your brain to understand it.

The Webshifter Series might be a good start (Book 1 is Beholder’s eye). The main character is a shape shifter, so we get to see the world from the point of view of someone who can change her form between different alien races. The book has a lot of interesting descriptions about her changing senses, e.g. suddenly being able to perceive different colors or having an organ to feel the magnetic field etc.

Star Trek has a common language in the federation or not? It would be cool if they encountered a new species and get out their communicators, record for a bit and have an AI figure out the new language. Wouldn’t take up a lot of screen time and explain the communication.

That’s a good point. Or even poorer parts of the population not being able to afford the newest tech.

I like that. They had a ton of cameras on all Star Trek ships - but then a scandal involving sex tapes and an illegal porn trade between Star Fleet officers happened and cameras in Star Fleet ships were completely outlawed.

Exploding anything I would say, though this seems to be a general TV problem. Your device got shaken up a tiny bit? EXPLOSION!

I get what you mean, but on the other hand I want to be able to out myself into the story and relate to the characters. If the characters are behaving in a dumb way or the problems they face are too unrealistic, that takes away from the enjoyment. Let me put it like that: I can suspend my disbelieve to accept that an allien artifact can create a wormhole to another planet or that intelligent parasitic life forms exist. I find it hard to believe the US military would send poeple to alien planets without cautioning them about eating the local food. Because to me it is inconsistent with the premise: A military operation would at least address this problem in some form. As I said, it’s just a minor annoyance to me, not a big plot hole or anything. But I find it hard to enjoy media where part of the storytelling is based on the premise “let’s just assume this advanced human/alien civilisation hasn’t thought about an easy solution that we have been using for decades”.

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Dirk Van den Boem “Sternkreuzer Proxima” (“Starcruiser Proxima”, couldn’t find the actual English titel on a quick search). He has some very good descriptions of the gruelingly long times any maneuver in space takes. Also being cramped in a small space ship with no fresh air, tasteless food rations and not knowing what is going to happen, while your ship and the enemy ship spend the next 50 hours getting in position for their attack.

That’s true. I already mentioned Julie E. Czerneda, her books have female main characters that are pretty well written. I’d recommend looking into her books.