Libb

Oh yeah, of course. Silly me. We have multiple of those too in various spots in the city, there are a couple really close from our place. I sometimes leave books there but seldom find any I feel like reading ;)

That's a good habit ;)

King has written many great books, 'It' is not one of my favorite of King, but it was good nonetheless! Maybe I should re-read it nowadays to see if I would have a different opinion (I read it many, many years ago).

I recently started reading more books and really enjoy it. My only problem is, there is so much choice, I feel overwhelmed. At the moment I just read some random books that I got for free from someone.

It's normal to feel overwhelmed as there is an almost limitless amount of books to chose from. The best advice I may give you is to talk to your local library. Most librarians are more than happy to help a new reader find their bearings (based on what you think you might enjoy, say scifi, or fantasy, or romance, or biographies, or whatever), no matter your previous (lack of) experience :)

In the city there is also a public bookshelf. Does your city have this as well?

Library? We do (multiple ones), but I do live in a rather large city.

I also tried chess, but could never really get into it. I can never remember which moves I'm allowed to make with the pieces.

You will learn the rules by playing, there are not that many they're just... arbitrary (like any rule). To learn the basics you can create a free account on chess.com and follow their beginner tutorial (there is no need to subscribe to one of their paid plan), or you can use lichess.org (100% free, this time): https://lichess.org/learn and then you can start playing against players or bots (at least on chess. com there are bots for absolute beginners to play against).

The one tip as a beginner that is just starting is to be ok with losing a lot of games. That's to be expected, don't take it personally. That's how most of us learn... anything, by failing and by being bad at it to begin with ;)

Any Friday/weekend plans?

Read & write. Spend time with my spouse. Hopefully, being done with some that has been preventing me to walk as much I would have liked for the last week.

if you're looking for something to do this WE, have you considered reading? I mean, I'm well into my 50s and I can't remember that many times in my life I felt bored (or lonely), thanks to books. It doesn't matter the type of book or their genre, they're great companions ;)

If you're more into games and want to chat with people: chess maybe an option: play a few games (for free on lichess.org, or even on chess.com but this one comes with ads) and with any luck a conversation might start with another player. You can also check in your area oif there is no club/public place where people can play IRL

I'm specifically asking if the person that expects someone else to apologize is driven by their own narcissism.

Two things come to my mind:

• It all depends the context.
  Context will tell if there is or there isn't narcissism involved, which is more frequent than one would like to think imho. I would say it's narcissistic when it's used against someone else, to give oneself an edge against that person, to make them feel bad, or when it's expected because one thinks they deserve apologies, something like that (it's just raw thoughts). It's not when apologies are expected not because one deserves them but because, the roles were switched, apologizing is what one would do if they had done something similar to someone else .
• Apologies are never a single person action, a single direction act.
  I mean, apologies are always at the same time received and given, given and received. It's an interaction between at least two persons (or one person and the entire civil society, in the case of most criminal affairs: they're public for a reason). It's never a monologue... or it should not be, if it is to mean something. Whereas narcissism is all about the self: it's Narcissus admiring its own image in the water, considering nothing but himself.

So, a sincere apology is always something bidirectional, and not about oneself. It's a tool used to create/reinforce/fix a weakened or a broken bound between two or more people.

Yes, I think you're right.

I did that in the journaling community I mod. During 6 months or so I posted almost daily, then weekly content. I had to put it on hold for the last few months. But I had very little feedback all that time. After I put in on hold, at first there was no activity going on at all. Then, a few posts were created, and other members commented. There is still not much going on but it was nice to see nonetheless. Hope to see more :)

The real odd thing for me is that we gained a lot of new members (when I relaunched the community, there was probably less than 200 members, we're more than 900 today), and still almost no one is posting. Not sure why.

I will only say that you should probably not date an age, just a person. It' snot their date of birth we may spend time (maybe eve our live) with , it's who they are.

Since we're on the Internet, I should probably make it clear that I mean dating a person of legal age.

edit: typos

Besides bars and clubs, how does a guy put himself around more women?

Hobbies should be a good starting point. With a caveat.

I'm into sketching/watercolors and I can tell you I constantly meet people (women and men) that are into the same hobby.

We can meet by accident at the art store, or at gatherings, expo (or class), or by just being on the same spot at the same time painting the same thing (I live in Paris, we have many nice spots for painters). More often than not, these women are quite happy to spend some time sharing a genuine common interest without constantly having to worry about anything happening.

Because, as far as I'm concerned, and that's the caveat I mentioned, I don't expect anything else to happen when I meet someone who is into the some hobby as I am. I don't do that to meet women (or men). I do that because I enjoy sketching and watercolors (like I enjoy playing chess) and I don't give a fuck about women being there or not. But I'm also always happy to meet someone interesting. I don't know if this makes sense? It kinda makes sense to me ;)

And btw, through that common hobby, I meet women (and men) from all age and from all conditions. Not just 50+ old farts (like I'm) but also quite many that are barely in their 20s, or even less. And barely any of them were drunk... so far :p

edit: typos

What do you think about that?

I think that what I believe in is what I believe in, not what I expect other people should also believe in. I'm a not a priest or some cult leader expecting blind devotion and submission from others. People are more than welcome to (dis)agree with me and my values.

I also think I should be free to believe in whatever I want, without anyone else feeling entitled to decide for me what I can & cannot believe. I'm fine with them trying to demonstrate I'm wrong, as long as their demonstration is not about publicly shaming or forcing me in any manner.

BTW, this tendency you mention (to require others to act like we do), is the main reason I tend to steer away from any gathering/collective/org. Too many people can't resist whatever tiny little bit of power they get their hands on and they will abuse it.

It feels pretty weird to me that people are almost programmed to recommend Therapy or Gym as the ultimate solutions.

Depression is too vague to recommend anything. And then, a lot of people will call depression them just feeling depressed... it's complicated.

I'm not much into therapist myself, but physical activity is the one thing that allowed me to get over a decade+ long depression that almost got me killed. More specifically, daily walks.

So, yeah, if I'm discussing potential solutions with someone and I see they are not much into gym already, I will suggest they give it a shot.

Despite the fact that not all people are capable of doing both.

Sure but also don't forget 'physical activity' doesn't mean running a marathon or lifting weight. It means using one's body as much as this body allows.

When I started walking, I was barely able to walk at all. Not exaggerating, It would take me hours if not days to rest from the effort (and the pain) of getting the mail at our door. It was even worse to go buy a fresh baguette (yep, I'm French ;) at the bakery at the corner of our street. For that I would spend a lot of time preparing for this huge effort and then would I would spend the rest of the day lying down, resting, exhausted. There are worse situations than mine, obviously, but you get the idea: I was in a real bad shape. Nowadays, a few years later? I walk miles every single day. And those days when I can't walk? I feel like an absolute shit.

And it all started by deciding to walk a few more steps. Not much, really.

I'm still not an athlete and I'm still chronically ill (no cure available) but I'm also in such a better physical condition it's night and day. Even the specialists that are taking care my medical issues where floored to see the change, back then. Two of them even asked me to start talking to some patients so I could encourage them to endure the least... pleasant parts of our condition, by doing some physical activities.

Almost. Instead of a big tower they have a big atom, instead of cheese and wine I would imagine they're more into fries and beer (of which they have some truly wonderful ones) ;)