bolido_sentimental
No bio...
User ID: 205
bolido_sentimental
1d ago
My actual escape plan if I can't take it anymore, is to run away to Wilmington, Ohio; which is a completely unremarkable town except that it does have a (tiny) Lutheran church of my type. It is interesting how that is a real consideration I never thought of as a youth.
bolido_sentimental
1d ago
Mingo Junction is where my mind goes. It's not scary or anything, but it's so empty it's like the Cairo (IL) of the valley.
bolido_sentimental
1d ago
I actually love the Wheeling/Weirton/Steubenville area. I go up there at least once a year, and I always have a great time. It's pretty bombed out but there are actually fascinating, intelligent people trying to build in the ruins; you can spend your whole day just striking up conversations with people, and it feels like everyone is happy to tell you about the history, or some new thing that's being tried. I think something beautiful is going to come from there sooner or later.
For those that have been - Raven, the huge bookstore cat at BookMarx apparently passed last year; but they have at least one and possibly two new ones.
bolido_sentimental
5d ago
It is the day after Thanksgiving; and so I will oblige my Christmas-obsessed wife by bringing up the Christmas decorations from the basement. As I walk through the basement, I see the detritus of many things I tried and abandoned. Mottizens: what hobbies or activities have you given a good honest try, and concluded: "this isn't for me?"
For me we have, for example:
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Golf: Tennis is the only sport to which I have ever devoted myself. However, a few years ago, I spent a large chunk of time thinking about golf, taking lessons, hitting balls at the driving range etc. Then I picked up a very aggravating hip injury that healed slowly. By the time I was back to normal, my desire to do anything relating to golf had dissipated to zero. I think with this one, I realized that starting at a later age, I would never realistically be able to put in the hours to hit an acceptable skill floor. Worth noting - in contrast to some other ball sports, I seem to have no natural aptitude for this one.
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Photography & drawing: I took classes in each of these within the last five years. I do take my DSLR along if I go somewhere interesting, and I actually think I can take some good pictures; but that's all. I never come up on a random day off and think, "I'll get the camera out and go take pictures of things." Drawing is similar except I never did acquire facility at it. In general, I don't think I'm a very visual person; none of the hobbies that I have kept involve creating anything with visually pleasing outputs.
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Scuba diving: I did all the classroom and pool portions of the PADI cert, and then got bored with it and stopped. I think this is just because I live in the Midwest; if I lived by a large body of water maybe I'd carry on, but as it stands, it's too inconvenient to pursue this. But I also don't think I was as into it as my peers in the class. As is, I suppose, typical for a hobby you try and drop, I only thought, "This is kind of neat," not, "I love this!"
bolido_sentimental
12d ago
That's Mike Matthews, right?
I also found his blogs and articles really helpful years ago, when I was first getting into weightlifting. Just a good honest dude from what I can tell.
bolido_sentimental
17d ago
For myself - I've been thinking about this question fairly often lately. I moved away from my home state in 2016, at age 27, and have never really achieved the same levels of friendship as what I had there. Moreover, this has increased the older I've gotten. I do have some close friends here in Ohio, but the total number of hangouts I've engaged in 2025 is probably around 5.
Certainly getting married is a major factor; I got married in January and so I hang out with my wife every day. Accordingly I have plenty of human contact. I also find that I have little desire to take steps to make more friends. I actually would say I've given up on meeting kindred spirits of that kind. I don't mean that in a depressing way, but rather - I'm close to halfway through my life, and I've met so few people that I share interests and worldview with that it doesn't feel worth expending energy on.
I had a "best friend" that I met in childhood. He was my best man in my wedding and we still talk quite often, but we live thousands of miles apart now.
This fellow, C, is a math-and-science nerd. Huge reader. Very interested in machines and physical systems; currently works for a municipality maintaining light rail vehicles. He came from a very broken, impoverished home; neither parent was a high school graduate. We went to uni together, and neither of us knew what to do there, as neither of us had parents or knew anyone else that had. He majored in history, for no real reason, and then upon graduating joined the Army. While stationed in Alaska, he met his now-wife, and they now have three kids and a nice stable life. We hung out constantly between 2005 and 2012 when he joined up; together we discovered the joys of alcohol and exploring abandoned buildings. We also spent that period of our lives together where you could just amble around WalMart together at 11:00 PM and call that "hanging out." Since he joined the Army in 2012, I've seen him about once every two years.
We diverged politically in the 2010s: from generic John Kerry-supporting centrists, we lurched in different directions. He became one of the people who celebrated Charlie Kirk's killing on social media; I bought Steve Sailer's book and talk to him on Substack every now and then. Our friendship has persisted because we never confront each other about these things, but this is also only possible because of the time and distance. It feels more like an artifact of history than anything else. I am genuinely repulsed by some of the things he believes, but as long as we have the detente in place where we simply don't discuss any of it, we can continue talking about the things we have in common.
Other people succeeded C as my "active" best friend - someone I actually saw regularly and hung out with often - but since I turned 30 this role is vacant. Now most social activities feel like interruptions of time I could be spending in my Strandmon chair reading.
bolido_sentimental
17d ago
What are your friendships like these days?
Do you have a "best friend?" What is he or she like?
Do you spend much time with your friends? Are you trying to make more?
bolido_sentimental
23d ago
I still see all the other phrases a lot, especially "unc," but we seem to have passed peak "gyatt." I feel this is a positive development.
bolido_sentimental
24d ago
I enjoyed your comment and generally agree. However, just regarding African languages - it feels to me like the wider world has never been less interested in African cultures than it is now. At least for a while Kwanzaa had some cultural significance. But consider: when was the last time a cultural trend happening in Africa was discussed on this forum? Has it ever happened? Especially apart from white South Africa.
For having such a bulk of population, Africa has nearly literally zero cultural force. I do often wonder what kind of stuff they're getting up to down there.
bolido_sentimental
1mo ago
Aside: Barbara Pym wrote whole novels about characters like this in the mid-20th century. In Jane and Prudence she actually names one of the protagonists Prudence Bates, who very early on notes that she has spent her life fearing that people will think of Austen's Miss Bates when they meet her.
This has nothing to do with the main post, except to say that Pym's oeuvre consisted in large part of skewering the behavior OP observes. It's great entertainment, and often contains a wistful note of more perceptive characters lamenting that they are stuck in these situations.
bolido_sentimental
1mo ago
I enjoy the way in which you divided up the different aspects of your life in this recap. Seems like a useful way to evaluate. Sometimes when I'm trying to get a handle on things, I refer back to this Medium article from years ago, in which the author made a radar graph you could fill in to see where you should try to make improvements.
It's not really scientific or anything, just a quick and dirty visualization tool.
You have accomplished a lot of great things already for your age, so I hope you feel good about that. I have known people that you remind me of, and here in middle age they are pretty much all living fantastic lives. This isn't meant to apply pressure at all - just that from the outside I feel like you have a great approach, and things are likely to work out for you.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
Are there any among you who try to limit your screen time, or especially phone time? I've started using a timed blocker app to ensure that I spend my early mornings doing something other than scrolling X. I have been surprised at the extent to which I had acquired some kind of muscle memory that makes me pick my phone up every few minutes to check notifications; but I may have broken that now. Wondering if anyone else has similar or related experiences.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
I would by no means tell you to go to church again if that's not something you're interested in; but I would note that at least according to my understanding, there's no expectation of perfection. I've had my own challenges with masturbation and many other things. We confess that we're sinners in every Sunday service, and we do mean it. All of which is to say, I doubt that you're actually too fucked up to succeed in a relationship. Those of us that are in them are very flawed, come from many weird and conflicting backgrounds, and make various compromises. Even the most perfect-seeming trads deal with all kinds of doubts, inner demons, and guilt about things they can't go back and change.
Anyway, you can continue changing and growing. I didn't marry until I was 35, and if I look back on it, I think that's the way that it had to be for it to work out for me. I had to find my own resolutions to some things which felt irreconciliable.
Hope you do post in Wellness Wednesday, will be looking forward to it.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
I didn't meet my wife at church, but I've visited both a PCA Presbyterian church and a Southern Baptist church that had really substantial cohorts of 20somethings. For a while I attended an EFCA church (kind of a small, rather interesting denomination) that had only a handful of young women, but they were, for some reason, all staggeringly beautiful. I did successfully ask one of them out, but the date was kind of lame; but we parted as friends.
A related phenomenon: now that we're married, my wife and I don't have to try to find a church with young people, so we just go to the local church I like best. We are one of four couples below the age of 40; I can think of two eligible single girls there and one young man. It's a bit grim but we're trying to do outreach and things to make young people think it's worth a visit.
N = 1 but I just got married, and we waited until marriage. It definitely happens even now. I am personally acquainted with at least three other couples that were the same.
Caveat: we are all religious though. I don't know if there are non-religious people who would be interested in waiting, but I would think it's very rare at this point.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
I've gone on drives recently where I counted the number of other drivers I could see on the road who had their smartphone in their hand. It usually only takes me a couple of miles or so to get into the double-digits. I understand that defensive driving has always been necessary, but when I first started driving it didn't feel as much like every journey was a potential accident.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
Lutheran (LCMS) out in the suburbs of a large Midwestern city. We have a large and lovely church building next to one of the area's most popular parks. However, the historical path of our congregation is that it boomed as the suburbs around it sprung up in the 1960s, and was very full for decades; but as that generation died off, the Gen X and Millennials that replaced them did not then start attending in their place.
It is a struggle to be in an area, as we are, with stable, not growing, population. And we're not near a big shopping center, apartment block or anything. I think all the time about how we could do more effective outreach. But our pastor is about to retire, and - as many on X have complained about in their own churches - didn't give a sermon on Sunday that would fire anyone up. Didn't mention Charlie at all. So I wonder if visitors will just turn around and think, "Nothing special here."
(I love Pastor, he's just winding down. He is very effective in many areas of his work. I just wish he would take on what's going in the world more often.)
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
Glaziers?
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
Depressing individual anecdote: I did not see even one new visitor at my church. We definitely need to figure out how to get our name out there more.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
I appreciate the detailed answer. I live in Ohio, where there haven't really been any since the time of Anthony Wayne. I have a sense that, as with things like the Celtic Revival, Chinoiserie, etc., there was a period in the 20th century where there was, for a time, a broader cultural interest in "Indian" things; but this has waned, and now they don't seem to have any particular presence in the wider cultural arena. I don't think I can name any living Native Americans. Perhaps the absolute number simply isn't high enough. So I just find myself curious about - what are their politics? What are their unique subcultural practices in 2025? How did the Internet change their lives? In America you see things like Chinese laundries, Hispanic roofing crews, Vietnamese nail salons; apart from casinos, do the Native Americans have some thing like that? Perhaps I'd just have to go and see.
But as you note, the experiences of Native Americans in Florida vs. Oklahoma vs. Alaska are so different that it may not even be worthwhile to think of them as a single bloc.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
Do any of you spend any time with or around Native Americans? What are they up to these days?
I've been reading the 1970s novels of James Welch, which describe the modern lives of Native Americans living in Montana and other places; and that's the most up to date information I have. I guess I wonder if they've been absorbed into atomized individualism, if they still have a big alcohol problem, if there are any interesting cultural developments in general.
(In Welch's novels, I would say they've already been partially consumed by the main stream of American life, suffering from a wistfulness and purposelessness that may only partly stem from the loss of tribal structure and power over the land, and which may just as much originate in the inherent pointlessness of American working-class life as some then saw it.)
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
I think Remains of the Day is even better. One of my top 3 or 4 novels.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
Mottizens: do you have a good relationship with your parents? More specifically: do you try to make them proud and live up to values they inculcated in you? Or do you think about failings they had, and try to orient your life toward avoiding those?
Found myself wondering about this yesterday, how in some cases you have children who strive to continue the sort of life their parents led (e.g., multigenerational families I see at church), and in other cases you get total rebellion, children who want to be as little like their parents as possible and adopt opposite positions to what they were raised with.
Thinking about my own case, it's a little bit strange in that it never felt like my parents steered me towards any particular mode of living. I try to be like my dad in certain respects: taking responsibility for things, trying to solve one's own problems with one's own resources, managing money carefully and thoughtfully. My mom is just sort of a pleasant, rather daffy woman who lives a very simple life and isn't trying to impact the world in any way. I observe that neither of them are especially opinionated, and neither am I; they are casual, moderate, Clinton-type liberals and I've gone more conservative, but it's not something we ever fight about - they don't go into arguments about "issues" and don't mind people disagreeing with them. In general it's like they're just sort in the middle of most types of bell curves; even if I were of some rebellious nature, they aren't polar enough about anything for me to take up the opposite pole.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
How do you feel about your personality, currently? Do you make friends easily, or have many satisfying relationships with other people?
I'm not implying that you lack those things, I'm just curious about your self-perception of them.
Worth noting that after 2020 redistricting, TN-7 now contains a big chunk of Nashville; a city which itself has seen significant in-migration from more liberal areas in recent years.
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