@a_aphelion I recently went out to a queer dance thing, which I wasn't really feeling but unfortunately I know it is good to go out and be social (also I had already spent a whole seventeen dollars on a ticket! Can't waste that).

But turns out when I am not interested in flirting is the time people most think I am flirting! Because when I am just interested in chilling and keeping a conversation going for the sake of it I ask people a lot of questions! Have you been here before, what do you do, do you live nearby etc.

Whereas actual flirting: hello did you know the Sargasso sea is approximately two metres higher that the surrounding ocean and it's where most of the world's eels travel to reproduce but we have never seen their eggs or even young hatchlings there

@ambly @a_aphelion so there is a psychological phenomenon of "sense of a foreshortened future" which I definitely had. Without any specific plans or reason just expecting that I would not make it long into adulthood because ?? that's just the way things are?

But also I did not have any roadmaps around me. The most successful adults I knew personally were sporadically employed tradies, a bank teller, a friend's mum who got enough of a workers comp payout from working the Coles checkouts that they could put down a deposit on a small town house. Noone in my family had a full time job until I was in highschool. None of them had finished highschool.