Mega Lucario would be my pick, followed by Xerneas.

Wow, you’ve really given this a lot of thought.

I’ll throw a couple that haven’t been mentioned

Arcane

Sonic The Hedgehog

If you have a stationary job, then just plop a big ass water bottle with a straw on the desk between you and the keyboard for easy access. Water is the only thing I drink after only drinking iced tea every day until I was 18. Remove everything that isn’t water from your home. Turn your bottle into your fidget toy if you have to, having a straw helps even if you use it to open and close it. Hopefully before you know it you won’t even realize you’re drinking water. You don’t need to enjoy it. Same way people don’t enjoy medicine, you put up with because you’re an adult. If that seems too daunting, then you have some other demons you may need to tackle first before being able to get onto water.

This one right here is one of the best advices. Remove all other options. You’ll either drink the water or die from dehydration.

Aside from all the current advice here. The golden rule is usually find friends in the field. Research where IT people go in your area and start to make friends. The job market is vicious right now, the more people you know, the better.

It was in California, which gets very little rain, so the drain was clean. Thankfully it wasn’t that deep either, about 6 feet down. If it had been in a city with active waste going down the drain, I would have left it down there. I got into the bad habit of leaving my phone on my lap in the car. When I got out of the passenger seat, it fell on the grate and slowly slid through the cracks, I just missed catching it before it fell in.

I am very careful about always knowing where my phone is placed now.

I do, because I had my phone fall down the street drain. Thankfully it hadn’t rained in a while. I was able to open the manhole cover, drop down and grab it.

I will give you my experience since it reminds of yours.

When I was about 4yrs old I was at the park with my father and sister. Someone let their pit-bull off their leash and it ran through the park. It found me. My dad had my sister on his shoulders at the time, playing, so he didn’t have much leeway during the event. The dog chased me in circles multiple times around my dad until the owners finally came. The dog never bit me, but the trauma was set. I could not be on the same sidewalk as any dog. I would force my parents to cross the street. I lived in a city, so you can imagine how annoying that was.

Fast forward a few years. My aunt was visiting in town and dropped off a surprise. A brand new puppy (in hindsight them accepting this dog was probably a gamble, but maybe they were banking on me not being afraid of a puppy). It was some kind of labrador mix that stayed really small. The dog terrified me at first, but it was a puppy and it needing us really helped me with my trauma and anxiety. I had two more dogs later in life, a shih tsu and a beagle mix. All three were great dogs. The last one came from a shelter. One thing to keep in mind is that dogs have personalities. If you are getting a dog from a shelter you’ll need to feel out who matches you.

I still have massive anxiety around large dogs, especially pit bulls or any of the Police favorite breeds. Only you will really know if you are ready, but this is just me telling you it is possible to not be afraid of smaller dogs and own one, while still being afraid of larger ones. In terms of being a dog magnet, just cross the street if you can while walking the dog.

As someone who was in the childcare field for 6yrs, I was around many people who did not want to be around children and probably should not be employed there. This sounds like one of those people.

Mine are from movies which you wouldn’t expect to get sage advice

Shanghai Noon “That which you promised, you must perform”. Jackie Chan’s character says this at one point and it really stuck with me since I was a child. It’s a broken English version of “your word is your bond”. I never promise something to someone that I can’t accomplish. It does drive some people I know a little crazy.

Just Married https://clip.cafe/just-married-2003/you-never-see-the-hard-days-in-a-photo-album/?srsltid=AfmBOop0kV1cEVjME4ebWIeDGUdeiUOrEsMFPHz04anjAXGn4SF7GbJd

“You never see the hard days in a photo album, but those are the ones that get you from one happy snapshot to the next”. This radically changed the way I perceived the world. It helped me accept that it’s really hard to grow as an individual in life without strife.

These are what I came to post. This has always stayed on my mind. Given what is going on in the world, the fact that the short story takes place in 2026 is very timely…

On the voyager app there is a feature that shows the upvotes you’ve given someone (as a green number next to their name). Unless they are a troll, in which case it would probably be a negative number and red.

I have you at +10, so you’re at least posting things I find meaningful. That being said, you post a lot of political things, so expect to bring many sides of the conversation to light. The fediverse has more types than Reddit.

My wife has a brother black/white laser printer. I got it about 5yrs ago and still going with no issues. She does sell things and makes labels and also uses a small thermal printer that pumps out label packages. Not sure if that can double for stickers for you, but could be an option.

I think I had read somewhere that they would eventually have ads, but that may have just been member speculation.

Maybe if they go down the Apollo route they could have some sub tiers, but we’ll see.

I don’t think many of the niche communities really had time to thrive, since people were trying to build up a lot of the main ones. I think some were starting to just get traction, which could be a reason why they chose now, stopping before it really got away from them.

There were entire communities popping up dedicated to SEO and advertising. A lot of the spam would happen during the US night time, so they’d have to wake up every morning to sweeping away all the crap. Really curious on how they intend to handle the bots.

The clashing ideologies makes it hard to gain traction for the fediverse. Since no one ever agrees on things, it ironically turns into the politics people complain about with the republicans vs democrats always being at a stalemate.

This can be my “If I am stuck in the desert” option.