Orbiting the Son

Christian Life and Relationship Advice for the 23rd Century (brought to the 21st by tedious empire)

[orbitingtheson]

22 July 2249

Taking part in a town hall for the station's elections. Back next week.

[orbitingtheson]

15 July 2249

I have a family problem. My parents are ex-elves. They left different stations, wandered for a while, and then met up at Ceres and they've stuck together ever since. As for me, I have the ears and the rest of the stable mods from thirty years ago, but don't know anything more about being elvish than anyone else you might meet. Maybe less, considering how my parents felt about their hometowns. I never got any of the scarring or implants or other things a lot of ex-elves go for, but I never had the facial sculpting or other custom cosmetic mods the actual elves go for either. None of it ever really mattered to me. Well my parents are breaking up. And that's it's own source of stress. But on top of it, my mom is getting her wounds closed and scars smoothed and starting to talk about moving back home. And she wants me to join her, at least for a while. I haven't lived with my parents for years. I wouldn't mind visiting her, but without getting my entire body reworked, I could only go to her hometown by proxy. And if I did get all the surgeries and mods I need, it would break my father's heart. What am I supposed to do to keep close to both of them? Spend a month regrowing my face every time I want to give one of them a kiss on the cheek? -broken nest

I think you should probably wait to see if your mother really is moving back to the elflands before stressing about it too much. Beyond that, I suspect that you'll find that if you don't want to permanently change your look you'll either get used to using proxies to visit or you won't visit your mother very often at all.

And I'm sure both of your parents know that risk as well.

You might also want to ask your mother a bit more about her hometown. Most of the elven retreats do have tourist and commerce areas. And there's also the option of her visiting you. Your lives and relationships are bound to change, but I don't know that your mom reconnecting with her heritage is something you need to look at as a problem.

[orbitingtheson]

8 July 2249

Hungover from Irony Day. More letters next week.

[orbitingtheson]

1 July 2249

Why does everyone in space have to live in such small towns? I've been a spacer my whole life. Born in the belt, and bounced around everywhere from Jupiter to Mercury over the years. And outside of a handful of places over the years, it's all been tiny little towns and cities barely worth the name. I finally found a place that has a big enough farming sector to actually make a proper bacon cheeseburger with a decent selection of toppings without having to grow or culture any of it myself. And it still seems like every few months another friend decides to move out to some little five thousand person leftover mining shack in our constellation. Why do these places even exist when the city's right here, and why do people keep moving there? Is there even a point to keeping in contact with them once they go? ~ small town trap

Most people don't. Depending on what you mean by small town, anyway.

I mean, sure, there's a lot more 5000 person habitats than 500,000 person habitats. But there aren't a hundred times as many. But if your 5000 person town drags itself and its asteroid into a constellation with a city of a quarter million, there's bound to be a few people who want to get away from the city so the towns almost never get scrapped.

For your real question, sure it hurts when friends leave but it's a part of life wherever you live. Even within a city people change jobs and neighborhoods. Whether or not it's worth staying in contact always depends on you, them, and the relationship you want to have.

[orbitingtheson]

24 June 2249

My coworkers have been getting cattier about a new hire than I like to hear. Should I get involved, or just stay out of it? Our new hire is pretty open about their marriage to a licensed VI doll based on a popular singer. To put it gently, my friends don't approve. There's a lot of comments, about the whole idea being creepy. Lurid speculation about the singer. And as time goes on, they're starting to nitpick everything else about this coworker. From their grooming to their speech patterns and everything in between. I'm not really sold on the marriage, but it's also not my business and the singer was pretty open about the licensing deal a few years back so… I don't know. It's just that I don't like my friends being so cruel over things that aren't really any of their business. I don't know that the new hire knows anything about it, but still. Should I try to get my friends to back off? -tired of hearing it

Do you honestly think that'll work? Or will it just encourage them to double down because of the extra entertainment of getting under your skin at the same time?

Your friends are playing a game. It's not a nice one, but if they actually keep it to themselves and don't start harassing or sabotaging this other worker it's not one that your company likely has much ground to step in and stop. Your best bet to get them to stop probably isn't to complain, but instead to just take some of the fun out of it by refusing to play along at all.

[orbitingtheson]

17 June 2249

My friend keeps trying to give me advice, for his problem. A few years ago a friend and I were both going through breakups at about the same time. They hit us both pretty hard, and really that's about the only similarity between our situations. Since then, I've moved on with my life but haven't really been dating. But then I never did much dating in the first place. My friend has been dating, but hasn't moved on. He never deleted his ex's proxy, and he's had more than one partner dump him when they caught him talking to it. As far as I know, his ex is aware, but just doesn't care. Now my ex is going to be physically in town, and I might or might not see them since we work in the same field. I don't even know if I actually care whether or not I do, but my friend is making it into a great big deal and seems to think I should basically go into hiding until my ex leaves. I'm starting to want to ask my ex out for coffee just out of spite. What should I do? -redisunited

Not that.

[orbitingtheson]

3 June 2249

Hosting a few friends for a couple weeks until the window opens for their next transfer. Izzy's test farm had a spare lagonom, so we planned a proper feast and the whole thing seems to be turning into a week and a half of events.

Good problems to have though. Maybe back with letters next week. If not, should be the following week.

[orbitingtheson]

27 May 2249

What am I supposed to do with my money? I've been around for a while. Medicine's pretty good these days, so I'll probably be around for a good long while to come too. I haven't really been pushing myself to earn money, but when I get it I've been dumping it into city shares for my habitat. And then when I maxed out on those, I started dumping it into Concord shares. And now I'm maxed out on those too. My city shares get me anything I want and need and then some, the Concord shares just seem to be dumping a bunch of extra money on me, and if I start investing that money pretty soon they're going to stop just taxing the money I get and start taxing the money I have too. What am I doing wrong, and why am I being punished? -taxed enough

You're supposed to spend and enjoy it, use it to promote causes you support, use it to help people who need the help, and just generally not sit on it like a lazy dragon.

Most cities don't cap you until your shares are providing you with 5-10 people's worth of local goods and resources. So feed, clothe, and host a few deadbeat artists in your spare rooms.

The concord doesn't cap you until you can constantly keep 3-4 people constantly and comfortably traveling around between the mass driver stations. So that's another couple personal writers or sculptors you could be a patron to.

And I wouldn't consider a wealth tax a punishment when it only hits on wealth above and beyond enough to indefinitely support a dozen people.

Seriously, what exactly is it you want the money for? Are you going to build your own habitat? Maybe a seed ship to some moon of Saturn? Nobody else is going to want to be a peon on a single owner colony start, and you could have gotten in on a real project before you even maxed out your city shares.

What you're doing wrong is that you're doing nothing. And the vague threat of future taxation isn't a punishment, because obviously you weren't going to be doing anything with that money anyway.

And if you say you were saving up to build a private station with a genuine castle and a basement pipe organ, I have to tell you that there are like 150 of those out there and abandoned already that can be claimed by anyone silly enough to make the trip.

There's no intact death rays though. The actual governments out there frown on poorly controlled weapons of mass destruction.

[orbitingtheson]

20 May 2249

We've got an intern at the paper. Which somehow means that I'm elbow deep in ink trying to figure out the hand press we had printed out by the shop earlier this week.

Anyway, letters will be back sometime when I don't hate ink again.

[orbitingtheson]

13 May 2249

Politics is ruining my life. Did you ever wonder how politicians could afford to have so many proxy bots all over the place canvassing for votes door to door and visiting cafes and bars and wherever else it is you don't want to talk to a politician? I used to. Then my roommate volunteered our housekeeping bot's body to get reskinned, paired to a different server, and go campaigning all over our neighborhood for the next two months. So now I'm scrubbing my own floors and stuck using an AR interface when I want to actually use our bot for the competitive ballroom dance practice I chipped in three months savings for so we could get the premium model. I shouldn't have to explain it, but an image laser projected onto my retinas is not in any way a substitute for an actual dance partner. My roommate says I'm being selfish, and the contract does let them do this. It's just… I really wish they'd asked first. How do I keep this from blowing up our friendship? -stolen partner

Renegotiate the contract?

Although, if the contract included multi-month loans outside the household, did they really not tell you ahead of time that they wanted to have the bot do long-term volunteering? Because that seems like the sort of option that isn't included by default for anything other than family medical care.

If you're unhappy with the situation, either act to change the situation or find another way to resolve your unhappiness. But as far as your friendship goes, it's not really a healthy dynamic for you to express your unhappiness and then for both of you to just try to ignore it. One or both of you ought to at least try to do something so that both of you can be satisfied with how things end up.

[orbitingtheson]

6 May 2249

Is it wrong that I use a friend's opinion to judge other people's characters? Does it change anything if I assume that the truth is the opposite of what my friend tells me? I've got an old friend who moved off to another station, but we keep in contact with our VI proxies and I log in once a week to talk to them. She complains constantly. If I'm being honest though, that's what I like about her. It's really entertaining, and it's fun to do some venting myself and she's always happy to hear me really tear into someone that got under my skin. It's just that lately, the things she complains about are so petty that it honestly makes me think better of the people she's complaining about. That wouldn't be an issue, since our social circles don't really overlap, except one of her exes is moving to my station and might need a job. She strenuously advises against hiring them. But I kind of want to. Would I be a bad friend if I hired her ex? -negative example

No, no, and maybe just a little.

Look, if you want to give this person a chance then put them through whatever vetting system you'd usually use. You shouldn't be hiring people entirely based on other people's views in the first place, but recommendations do matter.

The real question is whether you actually think of your 'friend' as a friend. And that's something you might want to think about.

[orbitingtheson]

29 April 2249

Started a new medicine for my romantic imprinting therapy. It's having a couple unpleasant side effects.

Nothing too serious, but I'm unfortunately not in the mood for other people's problems for the moment.

Just, you know, be kind to yourselves and to the people in your lives.

[orbitingtheson]

22 April 2249

I'm having trouble with my neighbors. My station is set up with most people living in detached houses with yards, so everyone provides their own landscaping. In my neighborhood there's a program that got started a few years back where we were all supposed to plant almond trees in our front yards, but the planting was supposed to be spaced out over eight years so they wouldn't all need to be replaced at the same time. We were going to have a committee to handle the pruning and check on the health of the trees and just basically take care of everything and divide up the harvest. The idea was to make the neighborhood stand out, be unique. And also to give us something to do together. It seemed like a great idea. And it kind of still does. Except that I'm not going to be staying around long enough to actually see the first harvest. I got a job offer that's going to take me halfway back to Earth. It just doesn't make sense for me to be planting a tree now that I'm not going to be able to watch it grow. My neighbors keep pressuring me to do it anyway. How do I get them to back off? I'm still here for another few months, so I still want to get along with them. -uprooting

There's a supposedly ancient saying that goes something like: A society grows great when old men plant trees who's shade they will never enjoy.

Now I'm not saying you're an old man, but the basic sentiment is true for everyone. What makes a community and a society prosper is people doing things that benefit more than just themselves.

So plant the tree. And leave it behind. Or maybe take a sprig along to graft when you find a new place to grow roots. If nothing else, you'll leave your neighbors something to remember you by.

[orbitingtheson]

15 April 2249

Guess who gets to help wrangle a bunch of teenagers on a weeklong basic spacer's qualification class?

Well you're wrong.

It's one of my husbands. But I am helping cover some of his day job stuff while he's out. Back with letters next week.

[orbitingtheson]

8 April 2249

Some friends and I are thinking of getting a place together. I was all for it, until they settled on a neighborhood I don't like. Our station's one of the ones that keeps its farms in the public open spaces, and most of the houses and businesses in the structure. Just about anywhere you want to live, the nicer places open on one side to rice paddies, parks, and waterfalls and on the other to restaurants, stores, bars, transit stops, and offices. The one exception is the warehouse loop in the center near the elevators to the hub and the mass driver. There you can have a place with dim lighting, industrial noise, and absolutely nothing living on all sides. But it is where the clubs are. Guess where my friends want to move. I don't want to live there. I can't afford to live in a nice enough place where I do want to live by myself. And I get the feeling that if I don't move with them wherever they go, we'll start drifting apart. What am I supposed to do? -just want a garden

If you can't maintain a friendship without sharing a roof, the roof isn't the problem.

Your friends are looking for a specific lifestyle, one that you don't want. Or at least one that you don't want 24/7. I'd say don't move in. Unless you genuinely think you'd be happier compromising on your living situation for the sake of spending more time around them.

Of course, there's only a handful of stations out there large enough that it would be more than a few minutes walk or ride to get to those parks and farms no matter where your bed is. Maybe a daily jog is the sort of compromise you'd enjoy making.

[orbitingtheson]

1 April 2249

So I'm dating an orc. They're third generation, full gene rework, everything. And usually it doesn't matter. Until it does. We've been thinking about moving outward from Mercury, and that's where the problems start. There's nowhere in the Concord that doesn't recognize the personhood of human-descendant species like Orcs, but there are a lot of human purity movements out there, and there are places where if the two of us wanted to have children, we couldn't legally have our genes blended. My partner doesn't seem to worry or care about it at all, and says if we ever want to we could always take a year or two vacation to incubate some kids somewhere a little less bigoted and then come back if we feel like it. But I'm not sure how much I would want to live in a place where they aren't truly welcome. Should we just stay here? -Plenty of Sunshine

Stay there? For how long? Your entire lives? Until human bigotry and prejudice disappear forever? So until the last human dies?

If you don't want to go, then that's fine. But if your partner does, they may well eventually choose to go without you. And given that what your worried about is something that impacts them more directly than you, I'd be inclined to trust their judgement.

[orbitingtheson]

25 March 2249

Why is it that every time I switch careers I feel like a worthless excuse for a human being? For about ten years now, I've been helping run and maintain the swarm of tug drones that we keep on hand in case any of the incoming traffic for our station's mass driver is off target. It was fun at first, and I still don't hate it, but I'm not really learning anything any more. And the only step up I can take would take me clear out of the department and into city planning. So I'm going back to school. I want to get involved with the design of the laser array they're talking about for pushing the next set of interstellar probes. It's just… This is a pattern for me now. I spend a few years in school. I spend a few years working. I take a year or two off here or there. I go back to school for a few years. Each time, I think that my new career is going to be my true passion and that I'll stick with it for the rest of my life and make my mark on history. And then in a few years, the excitement fades. And that feeling just gives me so much doubt about what I'm about to do. Am I making a mistake by leaving? Am I just not giving myself a chance to truly succeed by not committing? -Another new leaf

A decade is enough time to figure out if you want to keep doing something.

And doing many different things over the course of your life doesn't make you worthless. If anything it makes your life richer. And you can never know ahead of time when the things you learn in one place may be useful in another.

With all that said, it's you who gets to decide what success and failure look like in your own life. If your goal, if the only thing you'll accept as success, is becoming one of the big names in a given field then ten years might not be enough time to see it through. But most people won't ever succeed at that kind of goal. And yet, most people aren't failures.

So what is your goal? And what do you consider success and failure?