Any changes/modifications/transformations happening?

[Res Ipsa]

Have you changed/modified/transitioned any of your previously held stances?

Craisins in salads no longer seem as bad a mix as I used to think.

So trivial. What about the big issues like pineapple on pizza?

[Some Schmo]

I visited Montana recently and it seems like every public place you enter plays country music for ambience. There was a time when I thought there was no place anywhere for country music, but in Montana, it's hard to imagine anything else.

So, I guess I've softened on country music.

[Some Schmo]

Oh yeah, and I seem to really like Howard Stern these days. I couldn't stand that guy 20 years ago.

[canpakes]

Craisins in salads no longer seem as bad a mix as I used to think.

So trivial. What about the big issues like pineapple on pizza?

Nope.

No change there. : D

[ajax18]

I'm an active tithe paying TBM again. I'm at peace with the church and actually love the other members of my ward. It was very important for me that my kids have the strength that the eternal perspective of the gospel gives as they grow up.

[ceeboo]

Hi Ceebs, good to hear from you. I hope you and your family are doing well.

Hey RI, so very nice to see a post from you! We members of Ceeboo-Land are all better than we deserve to be (Thanks for asking) I hope all is well with you and yours.

You ask a great question, but I’m not sure I can answer. My changes in position/stance tend to be gradual and I’m not sure I always notice them happening. I don’t have a belief system with lots of specifics, like your hell example. My stances on big picture issues are pretty general. So there’s lots of room for me to drift around without experiencing that drift as change.

Understood.
for what it's worth - I find your "drifting without experiencing that drift as change" to be very insightful and in my opinion most worthy of every key stroke you made to write it. Made me think and/or rethink any drifting I may have been doing on my end.

I am, however, as dug in as ever on the raccoon/whale issue.

Ohhhhhhhhhh the wonderful memories!!!!

Seeing a post from you made my morning.

Thank you my friend - Seeing a reply from you had a similar effect.

[ceeboo]

Hi Cultellus

But good luck in this group if you wish to share. I mean that sincerely and seriously. If you changed to be more like these folks you will do well.

Forgive me but I don't understand what you are trying to tell me?

If you changed your mind on vaccines, violence or vaginas you are about to get hurt. I mean that sincerely and seriously.

Huh??????

[Res Ipsa]

Ceebs, Cultellus is a new participant who is here to call us sinners to secular repentance by trolling us. He’s taken some of the worst types of exchanges people have here and declared that, unless we follow each other around board nannying each and every objectionable post, we are somehow responsible for all the bad stuff that is posted here. He demonstrates this to us by aping bad behavior he sees, but objecting to his behavior also proves that we are bad people.

He’s very confused, But not irredeemable.

The Ipsa household has had the same good fortune. Thanks for asking.

[Res Ipsa]

Ceebs, Cultellus is a new participant who is here to call us sinners to secular repentance by trolling us. He’s taken some of the worst types of exchanges people have here and declared that, unless we follow each other around board nannying each and every objectionable post, we are somehow responsible for all the bad stuff that is posted here. He demonstrates this to us by aping bad behavior he sees, but objecting to his behavior also proves that we are bad people.

He’s very confused, But not irredeemable.

The Ipsa household has had the same good fortune. Thanks for asking.

So close. On the right track and we are definitely intersecting more now than ever. We still have work to do here. Some of that was spot-on. Some of it was fantastical and entertaining.

I’m glad I could brighten your day.

[Jersey Girl]

So I started reading the first replies here and it's all religious looks like? I don't have a spiritual share but I do have something that might have to do with transformations/changes. Let's see if I can articulate those.

Where to start and how to describe it? You guys know I'm an introvert. I reckon that quite a lot of message board posters are. Why? Because we can stop and start interaction at will. We discussed personality types in the long ago past. Also including the fact that having been tested over a period of decades (that was an eye opener for me) I have the rarest personality type on the planet. An estimated 1-3% of the worlds population has my personality type. That doesn't make me special. It makes me a loner.

What does that mean? It means I don't know anyone else who is like me. I don't know anyone else who relates to people the way I do. I don't have anybody like me...FOR me. I know that doesn't make sense to others but it's true. It means people "get" parts of me, but they don't get the whole of me. That probably doesn't make sense either. Anyway, it means I don't fit in. I can make myself fit in in differing situations, but I don't really fit in.

So when the lock downs started I made sure we were prepared in practical ways. After about a month (and I think I wrote about this on the broken board) I had probably 6 weepy nights wondering how long all of this would last and when I was going to see my people again---without talking on the phone, through windows and keeping long distances from each other.

Well something changed over the past 1.5 years. Introverts live in their heads. I think that during this period of time it gave me the opportunity to go so far into my head that I'm probably never coming out again because I'm happy there. Being raised an only child as well as being an introvert, means I can keep myself going for extended periods of time with no one around. Like I could never say a word for weeks on end to anyone else and be perfectly content. I've always been this way.

I'm content. I don't know how to explain it. I've worked on a TON of things over this period of time. Creative projects, taking classes, stuff inside and outside around the house, drinking in sensory input, self care...it's all really been a type of self care. Doing Bible studies, reading, listening to audio books, setting up a little indoor garden in the loft with grow lights, just I dunno...one thing after the other as I feel moved to. And all of this has continued far beyond the lock downs. In some weird way, my spirit feels fully free for the first time in literal decades.

I'm vaccinated. We're both vaccinated. I go places, but I don't stay there as long as I once did. Because I want to go home to my sanctuary of one other adult, one cat, the woods, the wildlife. And if the one adult happens to leave and takes their human voice with them, I'm golden. I think in the past, I had busied myself with shopping for stuff. I don't do that any more. Quite the contrary, I've hurled more stuff out of here in the past year that it's crazy, simplifying my sanctuary. Taking away even more evidence of society's dependency on material stuff.

The only trips I make out have been to pick up food, collect up more art supplies, plants, and I did go out to get my hair cut a couple of times. Oh, and whatever doctor/dentist appointments, that sort of thing. Going to hospitals with two family members for surgeries and providing after care for them.

I'm all the way IN. Thoreau got a hold of me when I was a teenager. I think he's got me hook, line, and sinker now. I didn't mean to go there, I think I just naturally did because at first I was forced into it--then I adapted and found a space in my head to the point where I never want to come out of it again. I like it. I put more into my head now than I do into my environment. I've simplified and gotten rid of the trappings of materialism and in doing so, have been able to fully immerse myself in things that fill me up.

I didn't make the connection to Thoreau's influence until just now writing this post.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms...” ~Thoreau

Yeah, I'm in my head. I'm literally and figuratively in the woods. I'm not coming out again.

(Oh, I am adding this anecdote. I have a niece in Florida who lives with my sister--the people I'm hoping to visit, having put off the trip due to pandemic. My niece has been calling me for reasons. She is an introvert and an only child, so she gets me probably more than most. And I get her. That's why she's been calling me. She shared a conversation she had with my sister. My sister was talking about taking me to the beach and staying there all day. Whereupon my niece said, no. I'll take her to the beach and drop her off and come back and get her later in the day. Sister says that's crazy. Niece says, no. That's what she wants. )