• Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    Where I started

    Where I started

    Where I ended up

    Where I ended up

    Image descriptions

    1st image: - A heavy set person who appears to be a man, in baggy jeans and a t-shirt, leaning against a wooden handrail, holding a laser skirmish gun

    2nd image: A curly haired woman in makeup, wearing a teal coloured dress

    • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      I feel like I need to do more than just post a picture. In this case, the picture really does tell the story in a lot of ways, but still, there was a lot of pain and trauma that led me to this point.

      I started off depressed and angry, lost in life, knowing what I needed to do, but feeling like it wasn’t something I could do. And when I finally accepted that I could do it, years went in to it. A quick photo makes it look like a magical transformation, but there was close to 10 years between those photos, and a lot of self discovery, self exploration and pain. As well as joy, and surprises.

      • AzuleBlade@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Hey, I just want to say thanks for posting this. I’m just a random internet stranger, but I’m happy for you. I think Fred Rogers sums it up best, he is the epitome of kindness to me.

        It’s you I like,

        It’s not the things you wear,

        It’s not the way you do your hair

        But it’s you I like

        The way you are right now,

        The way down deep inside you

        Not the things that hide you,

        Not your toys

        They’re just beside you.

        But it’s you I like

        Every part of you.

        Your skin, your eyes, your feelings

        Whether old or new.

        I hope that you’ll remember

        Even when you’re feeling blue

        That it’s you I like,

        It’s you yourself

        It’s you.

        It’s you I like.

  • Gameboy Homeboy @lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I started drinking at 13. Blacking out weekly by 15. Full blown alcoholic in 20s. The problem was, I was fairly successful so it was hard for me to admit I was truly fucked up. I managed a good career, family, friends, house, etc. I drank until blackout daily. In late 30s is when the true around the clock drinking started. Morning, noon, night and throughout the night. DT’s. Started taking Xanax to fight off the anxiety caused by around the clock drinking. That was it. That’s when I lost control. I had a moment of clarity after days of straight blackout during the first month of Covid quarantine. I asked a friend who had been sober for 15 years for help. Went to rehab. Took it seriously. Spend 2.5 months away from my family. Came back determined to live a life of sobriety and focus on family and career. I’ve got numerous promotions, my family is great and I’m 3.5 years sober and work daily to stay that way.

    Tldr; lifelong drunk. Got sober at 40. Best decision I’ve ever made.

  • girltwink@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was born into an impoverished extremist right wing family. I enlisted in the military back when DADT was a thing. I was disowned as an LGBT teenager, and medboarded out of the military after being committed to inpatient facilities multiple times. After that, i was homeless for a couple years, living out of a car and then a backpack.

    I finally ended up in this little town in Georgia, got a job at a little retail store, and moved into a trailer with one of my coworkers. Her friends kind of adopted me and i felt accepted for the first time in my life. We were all broke kids, but i told them i was going to be a millionaire by age 30. I was still pretty emotionally unstable and eventually moved on from that friend group, but it gave me the hope i needed to rebuild my life.

    I slowly built a career for myself after that, working 70-80 hours a week for a couple years, until i had my foot in the door. It got a lot easier after that. I didn’t quite hit my goal by age 30, but I’m close. I founded my first company at age 28, and raised a 10 million series A. My company is now worth 60 million on paper, but of course that’s meaningless until we IPO. But it’s profitable, and in the meantime, I’ve adopted a little family of people like me, and built a comfortable life for us. Life is good, and I’m content.

      • girltwink@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        No, they refuse to speak to me to this day. My gf’s family called her to wish her a happy birthday last week, and i cried quietly wishing mine did that too.

        • JSeldon@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          (Very?) Belated happy birthday! Your family are the people you’ve chosen to accompany you at this stage in your life, the other one, the one you simply happened to be born into, don’t deserve you. Lots of hugs!

        • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Happy belated birthday girltwink! 🎊 🎉

          The older I get and the more people I meet and lives I understand, the more I understand that true family are the ones you choose. You can’t help who you are born to. It’s nice to get their love and approval, but in the end, if they don’t accept your choices or even you, that’s not on you. That’s on them. If you’ve done your best to be a good person, then they should have no reason to turn you out but for their own selfish reasons. It may never stop hurting, but over time, I hope you can find that comfort from your chosen family that chose you back. I won’t soapbox too much about it though. I hope you had a great birthday. :) Big hugs from an internet stranger!

          As a side note, talking to a therapist can really help you accept things if you ever want to give it a try.

          • girltwink@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Aww, thank you for your kind words JighlySackles 😝 I’m doing ok, all things considered. It still hurts a little, but yes therapy has helped.

            • JigglySackles@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I’m glad you’re feeling mostly alright. That’s a good place to be. Sometimes that’s the best we get to be for a very long time too.

              I think some things will always hurt. But it gets less. And it’s not so crushing. It just takes time.

              A great analogy I heard once is to imagine you have a box which represents a past source of grief, and in that box is a button and a ball. As we go about life, the box gets jostled and bumped by things that remind us of our grief. This moves the ball around and every time the ball hits the button it brings on the feelings of grief and sadness. The size of the ball shrinks with time though. When we first go through something traumatic our ball is very large, taking up most of the space in the box, so very small events bump the button, and it’s going to hit that grief button a lot at first. But over time as the ball shrinks. As it gets smaller, the jostling and bumping doesn’t make the ball hit the grief button so much. It might even graze it without pushing it. We may always have that box, and that’s ok. And that button may get to the point it gets hit once after 20 years. But that’s OK too. The grief gets less with time. 🙂

  • Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Accidental reinvention story.

    I was an independent IT Management Consultant and in my free time I started a side project making a dark ride in virtual reality for the Meta Quest headset. Then Covid happened and my career paused suddenly giving my lots of free time so I focused on the title. It ended up being the 5th highest rated app on the Meta Quest App Lab store out of many thousands for the past year and a bit. I have not gone back to my old career, as well, this is my new career now. The insane part is that I always wanted to be an Imagineer since I was 6 years old, but my life really did not provide those sorts of opportunities. Then one day, when my title was released and the reviews started to come in, I realized suddenlythat I am now an Imagineer. Been 3 years and I still cannot believe it. Love what I do way more than my old career and with AI assistants, I am imagineering faster and faster which is nice as the only complaint I get is where is the rest of the theme park. Currently I am just about to update the single dark ride and add to it an open world theme park around (small today), the first bit of the second dark ride, and the ability to ride with loved ones and friends which is surprisingly magical. Like looking over at someone you know sitting with you on the omnimover and going through a highly detailed dark ride together is so much fun, especially for non gamers who want to try VR.

    I am 50 years young.

  • bouh@lemmy.world
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    36yo, I’m in the middle of tunnel currently.

    I’m a spoiled, privileged shit. I have a very nice family, good friends, money to live comfortably in a big city. But my life is miserable still: after a succession of failures, I hate my job and suffer painful lonelyness, and I’m too shy to do what most normal human beings do.

    I’m almost out of depression but I’ve yet to go through the reinvent yourself part. I feel like I’m going backwards.

    I feel like that’s the opposite of what the question asks. Ask me to delete if needed.

    • Magzmak@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Try to go on walks in nature, maybe get out of the city sometimes. You don’t want to go with anyone but maybe have some music to listen to. Hugs and good luck, you’re doing your best.

    • paddirn@lemmy.world
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      Sometimes it helps to just get out of your comfort zone, it’s hard, it’s painful, and sometimes you end up just looking like an ass. You just grab a crazy thought and run with it. You don’t necessarily have to fly off to Uruguay and drop off the face of the Earth, but just go out to a part of town you haven’t been to, connect with an old friend, or go to some event you’ve never been to before. Take a pottery class, act in a play, go get food from a questionable, broken-down food truck in a shady part of town, write a shitty novel during NaNoWriMo, whatever. I find myself getting into ruts on occasion, where I’m almost too comfortable with life and it gets depressing somehow, it’s hard getting out of it sometimes, but just getting into a novel situation can jumpstart something inside sometimes, just don’t always go with the expectation of “finding someone”. Loneliness is tough, but in a way it’s freedom from constraints and responsibility.

    • ohlaph@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      What does bring you joy?

      Often times we focus on what doesn’t bring us happiness instead of what does.

  • jerry@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I became physically disabled at 42, I’m 49 now. I was the main / usually sole provider for my family. I was pretty suicidal for a while and had a really really tough time adjusting. Midway through I was diagnosed with bipolar and medicated appropriately. I’m doing fairly well now and actually looking forward to the rest of my life.

  • Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz
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    1 year ago

    I was born into an abusive “family”. Fled into my head. Became the quiet brainy kid. Underfed and sleep deprived but did well in school and most people ignored the abuse.

    Eventually studied at university, very high achieving, still hiding in my head. Super awkward with people. Autism didn’t help. The awareness that I was autistic made several light bulbs go on in my head.

    I stopped contact with all of the exfamily and after uni wanted to focus on healing the trauma. Picked up several chronic diseases, realized I was non binary, got adopted by a cat.

    Currently fighting to be able to work, if I manage I’ll not go for academics as I always thought I would but for helping animals. Trying to get out of head. Have emotions, talk to people.

  • FrickAndMortar@lemmy.ml
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    I started off in the late 1980’s in a mid-sized midwestern city… I was smoking cigarettes, a lot of pot, drinking and carousing with the same friends that I’d had since high school, but I was in my second year of college. I was getting decent grades, but I was really distracted and having some drama with bad girlfriends.

    Two weeks after my 21st birthday, I left for Southern California - I had a parent out there, and I ended up staying for 16 years. I stopped smoking basically the minute I got there, spent a lot of time driving around a new city and thinking… and basically came to the realization that since nobody there knew who I had been before, I could approach social situations without the baggage of all those previous decisions that I’d made with my old circle of friends. I was less of a “pleaser”, less of a doormat, and less afraid to speak my mind - and my new friends responded positively to it, so I was encouraged to cultivate that. It helped me be more decisive and independent, and gave me a foundation for everything that followed.

    I finished an associate’s degree, got a black belt in a martial art and taught for about six years, and met the woman who is now my wife. We got married, traveled to other countries together in Europe and Central America, quit our jobs to live on a horse ranch, and eventually moved BACK to that same midwestern city to start a family.

    I wish I could say that since we moved back, I’ve never felt like the person I was before - but I have to confess that I feel like being back here HAS eroded some of that confidence, like I couldn’t hack it out West and ended up back here after all.

    I know it’s not true, but San Diego is where I became the person I wanted to be. Back here is where I had been the person before that. They say “you can’t go home again” - I submit that you CAN, but that maybe you shouldn’t.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.

      • Terry Pratchett
      • FrickAndMortar@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Yoooo, you’re singing my song - GNU Terry Pratchett, love his writing so much.

        And thank you; that’s very true, and it’s good to be reminded from time to time.

    • IonAddis@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I found I had some backsliding when I went back to my original hometown too.

      I expect it’s the same mechanism where even if you know you’re adult and might even have grown beyond where your parents were, you still feel like a little kid around them sometimes? Even if they don’t DESERVE to have that sort of power over you these days?

      I wouldn’t consider it proof of anything bad beyond our little monkey brains sometimes doing the things monkey brains do, like hold onto bad stuff and bad memories.

      • FrickAndMortar@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        You’re right, and I generally remember that I have many blessings to count… but like you said, primate brains doing primate brain things.

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    I had the most abstract corporate software job you can imagine and had to dress up every day for it. One day coming back from lunch I saw my entire future laid out in front of me. Fat piece of corporate garbage without talent and around people I hated.

    I applied for a job with an industrial machine designer. Never looked back.

  • Abel@lemmy.nerdcore.social
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    Start: Woman

    End: Man (WIP)

    Can’t reinvent myself more than that.

    @edit: Sincerely, accepting myself as transgender was the best thing that happened to me. I went from depressed nerd who sees his body solely as a puppet for his mind to someone who actively cherishes their body. Now I’m reading fitness books and fashion guides because I like my physical existence on earth and want to perfect and protect it. I have a goal on which kind of life I want to have and how I want to look instead of aimlessly asking myself why nothing ever works for me. Being trans is pretty fucking awesome for me.

    It wasn’t always like this, so to my transmasc friends depressed about their appearance, here is what I needed to read.

  • Ramaniscence@lemmy.world
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    I didn’t reinvent myself so much as I started being honest about my identity.

    When I was younger, I was very talkative and social, and I was punished for it in elementary school because it was disruptive. This is probably because I was surrounded by family and felt comfortable talking to anyone about anything. Over time, I started to become reclusive and have a severe fear of authority. Eventually, my friend group started shrinking in high school until I had what felt like nothing. I stopped attending school and slept for six months during my senior year. Eventually, I started returning from my shell and interacting with people online.

    Since I was still in my depressive state, I thought it was all too good to be true, and I faked my death online because I thought no one would care and it would be an easy transition into something else. I was very, very wrong. People I had met online started creating memorials and trying to contact people I knew IRL to give them condolences. It was the first time that I realized people liked the person I was unfiltered.

    After that, I got my GED and moved to a new town where no one knew me to go to college. While there, I decided to be the person I was and not the person I had been trying to be because I thought that was what people wanted. Even then, I was introverted until COVID happened, and I fell back into depression due to a lack of human connections.

    I’m glad to have learned this all now, but I wish I had known it 20 years ago.

  • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
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    I grew up in a religious home and was always pretty religious myself. In college i ended up leaving the church and religon entirely. I think the last straw was that there are so many mutually exclusive religions, but only one or none can be right, so how did all the “wrong” ones form? Turns out humans are very good at creating religions and cults, and it’s way more likely that my religion is no different.

    Leaving the church set me on a path of having to actually think about ethics rather than just going by “whatever the bible says”, but besides not going to church on sundays my life didn’t change a whole lot. But in thinking about ethics the only thing that seemed to be able to solidly root ethics was pleasure/pain, or more broadly wellbeing/needless suffering, not an in-the-moment stereotypical hedonistic view of it but broader, factoring in long term results and the impact on others.

    That was fine for a while, until an argument with my dad where he pointed out “if that’s what you base ethics on, why don’t you include animals in it” and at first i was like yeah obviously kicking a puppy is wrong and that’s captured by my view, but it got me to think deeper about it and my actions and i realized that all sentient beings are morally relevant, and i could no longer eat them for my own pleasure. After that i also learned fish are sentient and that the dairy and egg industry are very cruel too, and i couldn’t support them either, and i went vegan.

    Now my perspective is more refined, i would describe my ethical views most succinctly as sentientism, an antispeciesist extension/improvement on humanism

      • oshitwaddup@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyz
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        1 year ago

        One thing i find particularly fascinating, that could be confirmation bias but i don’t think it is, is that value/purpose/meaning is inherently and only generated by sentient beings. Even from a theistic point of view where god is all knowing and defines morality, it can only matter if that god is sentient in some way or another. Probably not explaining that super well but it’s a train of thought that i find extremely interesting

  • unwinagainstable@lemmy.world
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    Nothing too extreme, but I’m in my mid-30s and this year has been one of the most productive of my life. I started a new job in late December. The pay is similar to the job I left. The stress is much lower. Immediately I felt like I had a better work life balance. I have so much extra energy every day.

    I started dieting and taking long walks. I lost 35 pounds in 6 months. I listened to a bunch of audiobooks while walking and I’ve also read some ebooks. Together I’ve read 25 books and counting this year whereas most years I’ll read 2 or 3. Once I was nearing my goal weight I increased my calories and started exercising more intensely, with a goal of gaining muscle and losing fat while maintaining weight. I picked up indoor rowing. I’m on week 11 of a 24 week training program. I row hard (working up an intense sweat) 5 days a week Monday- Friday in the mornings. In addition to this I’ve started weightlifting 2 days a week and will gradually increase to 4 days a week while keeping up my rowing routine.

    Financially, I started budgeting with YNAB and it has transformed my personal finances. My savings rate has increased significantly and wasteful spending decreased. I moved my savings into a HYSA. I left a financial advisor who was charging excessive fees and moved my investment and retirement accounts to Fidelity where I now manage my portfolio myself. Some of my reading was investing books which gave me confidence I could do this. I’ve tripled the amount I’m contributing to my 401k.

    Although I’m new to my job I’ve received constant praise from multiple people in the time I’ve been there. I feel like I have room for growth to move up positions. At the rate I’m going I think I could realistically expect to move up in another 6 months or so.

  • CADmonkey@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was a factory worker, warehouse worker, and machinist for most of my adult life. I learned a lot of really cool things in those industries, but I never made much money.

    So I took some classes, taught myself Autocad, and somehow talked myself into a CAD position at a precast concrete company. And the difference between then and now is amazing from both a financial standpoint and a quality of life standpoint. Of course there are valid arguments that having enough money is a quality of life issue.

    Even when things went wrong and the precast company started to spiral the drain, I went to find another job… and in two days I had to turn down four job offers.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    Around 23 I was jobless, I had no HS diploma, depressed, had recently gone through a bad breakup, and if I wasn’t able to move back in with my dad, I would have been homeless.

    In the span of about four months, I got my HS equivalency diploma, applied to college, got a job, then quit that job to start college. ~5 years later, and significantly in debt, I had two additional pieces of paper that said I knew things, and I went on to struggle to find work in my local area.

    I work in IT, there’s a ton of jobs, none of the good ones are local to me; so I’m now slowly working off my debts, at menial jobs that don’t challenge me, for menial pay that doesn’t nearly reflect the amount of skill and knowledge I have.

    Don’t go to school kids. You’ll accrue debt and nobody cares.

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      I had the opposite experience with going back to college. Went back to college for an IT degree at the local community college that carries about two dozen different agriculture degrees and a single IT degree program with another kid on the way, graduated with a 3.5 GPA. Despite living in a rural area surrounded by farm communities I landed a very cushy job 2 weeks before graduation literally making over double what either my wife or I ever made pre-college, and was clearly about to get an offer on another position I was interviewing for that paid slightly less than this one

      • paddirn@lemmy.world
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        Same. I went back to school pretty late in the game and had just been dicking around at community college for years. I got serious about it in my late 20’s, graduated when I was 30, got a job within a month out of college, had my loans paid off within like 2-4 years. I’m making more money than I’ve ever made in my life and probably earning more than my parents ever did. It was quite possibly the best decision I’ve ever made in my life. A lot of it was probably just pure luck, but it worked out well for me.

        • Trainguyrom@reddthat.com
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          Oh absolutely good luck brought the opportunities that have been presented to me but good decision making and a good attitude allowed me to seize the opportunities I’ve seized and bad attitude plus bad decision making caused me to squander the opportunities that were presented to me but ultimately shook their heads at me and left. I get the feeling that commenter above me may be doing the latter right now.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        Unfortunately, my college didn’t hand it degrees. So I have certificates from the institution I attended. I feel like I need to go back for a full degree. My country (Canada) doesn’t really hand out degrees at colleges. That’s reserved for universities. This has recently been changing and an IT degree program now exists (most universities focused on science, maths, engineering, medical, etc, for their degree programs… Most didn’t have an IT focused degree when I attended college).

        I have two diplomas, one in business, one in networking, both from the same local college, neither has landed me a coushy job, and I’ve never been approached about any well paying remote work. I’m still struggling to even come close to six figures (CAD) which is around $75k USD. I graduated and made less than $40k/yr USD, and I’ve worked my way up to ~55k/yr USD over ~10 years doing IT. (Full time working minimum wage here is around ~35k/yr CAD or ~27k/yr USD).

        In this way, I see my diplomas as little more than wall decoration. Finding IT positions locally in Canada, the past range is typically well below 75k/yr USD, and to get any higher than that, the positions are generally managerial, which I don’t want to do. I spent enough time in my business courses that I know I’ll ill suited for such work.

        Most job postings I’ve seen either require me to be on site (especially impossible for me, especially for US based businesses, because I have obligations here at home that I cannot abandon), or if they’re hiring remote, they’re only hiring US citizens for remote work, which I am not (no visa work available, and most postings I’ve seen are for companies with no presence in Canada)… So I think it’s a combination of me being Canadian, and my college only handing out diplomas, that I’ve gotten so screwed by my experience. Either I commute for hours a day to the nearest large city, something that is extremely unappealing to me, or I work something more local with significant compromise (mainly to wages), or I have to change my vocation.

        Remote work is basically a myth for me at this point; same with getting paid fairly for what I know, and since I’ve worked for MSPs, generally as the expert in everything, I know a lot; from Windows, to Linux, networking (which is my focus), and beyond… I could spend all day listing the skills I have. My LinkedIn profile won’t actually allow me to put more skills on my profile because I have too many.

        I have been chronically underpaid, and it bothers me.