As a Vermonter, I also get offended when people think I'm from America.
They are correct and I'm not happy about that fact.
Sombyr
The day I added a GameCube to my retro setup was the day I accepted everyone gets old eventually.
I do a similar thing to help myself get started, and the secret is it doesn't have to be chores. Step one can be literally anything that's easy to do that you're not currently doing. For instance, my step one is often something as simple as talking to somebody. Then step 2 is something closer to what you need to do. Like if I'm gonna need to do something that requires more energy, my step 2 could be taking a walk, or if I can't get myself to do that, pacing around a bit.
You just work up until doing the task you need to do becomes the natural conclusion. If my task was cleaning the bathroom, the next step after walking might be brushing my teeth, then I say "Well I'm already up and doing stuff, and I'm already in the bathroom. Might as well clean it."
And it's not always gonna work, which I think is okay, as long as it works often enough that my space remains livable.
That's what I do. If somebody's gonna be pissed no matter how you pronounce it, might as well piss them all off equally.
It's partially that, but I more use obscure definitions for words rather than their intuitive ones. The issue is I don't know what the average person will understand.
The bigger problem is probably that I'm super autistic and expect people to know what I'm thinking just because I know it. I write a thousand paragraphs clarifying useless details to try to be clear, and then somebody will be like "Okay, but you never even once mentioned what it is you're talking about," and I'll be like "Oh, I assumed by the fact that I said I was excited and mentioned several things that don't happen in real life that it was clear I was talking about a new game I was enjoying."
I never know what details are actually useful to clarify until somebody's getting confused about one of them (or usually more like 50 of them.)
I text multiple paragraph texts back to back over and over again. I'm told even being that verbose I'm still completely incomprehensible most of the time.
Depends. Nicer to men? Probably. Nicer to women? Hell. No.
Can't count how many times I've seen people call out things like body shaming of men, but do the same thing to women and suddenly it's a "natural expression of human sexuality."
I suppose it's just the end result of any community dominated by an extreme majority of men, but it sure as hell doesn't feel good and has made me heavily consider deleting my account and just finally giving up on social media entirely.
Most of the time, it feels to me just like a logical conclusion. Like "hmm, yes, this person has traits I generally find attractive. I am thus attracted to them."
There's of course a physical attribute to it too, where I feel strongly drawn to the person, but it feels more like the result of the previous logical conclusion rather than the source of the attraction itself.
The one and only exception to this that I've experienced thus far was my attraction to my wife. It was an instant click. My first thought after meeting her was that I needed to get closer with her. It's worth noting I didn't actually know what she looked like yet (we met online) and barely knew anything about her personality besides she was funny and apparently had similar hobbies to me (though I didn't know which hobbies, I'd just been told that.)
I didn't connect it as attraction at first though, because I'd never experienced attraction like that before. I just wanted to be really good friends with her. I was really happy whenever she showed up. I enjoyed every conversation I had with her way more than it felt like I should.
Then slowly those feelings grew, never changing, only getting stronger. At a certain point, when I started to realize every second I was away from her, I was wishing she was there, and every time I was sad or upset about something, she was the one I wanted to go to for comfort, it finally clicked that I was attracted to her, at least in some way.
It wasn't until we were already dating that it finally fully clicked that I'd been in love with her the whole time.
Physically I'd say my attraction to her felt... I guess like heart burn? That's the closest physical sensation I can think of. Like that, but not painful. Like a fullness in my chest every time I thought about her.
Also as far as chemistry and attraction goes, definitely different things. There are people I've been attracted to that I meshed horrifically with. Just because I like certain traits in theory doesn't mean I could actually stand those traits in practice.
Bear in mind what you're about to read is the ramblings of an autistic women. I may be a woman, but the world still looks a lot different through my eyes than it does to other women, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Anyway, definitely not too late to date. That part's simple to answer.
As far as losing weight, depends really on how much you weigh as for how it'll effect your dating options. For men, I think gaining a little muscle is more important than losing fat. Even if you weigh quite a lot, if you've got a bit of muscle showing through there will be women who find you attractive. I can't speak for all women, but to me, it's more attractive when a guy's body shows that they're thinking about their health than it is when a guy has a traditionally attractive physique. In other words, a little muscle shows you're putting work in regardless of if you're successfully losing much fat. You'll probably inevitably lose some fat anyway if you gain some muscle, because it speeds up your metabolism.
In the end though, physical appearance isn't as often important to women as it is to men. If you've got a personality that meshes well with somebody, they'll probably like you anyway.
What you're doing to meet people is good, but another good way to find people Imo, is through your hobbies. Although that can be tougher if all your hobbies are male dominated. Even if you do meet women into it in that case, I speak from experience when I say we're expecting to be approached and tend to already have our rejection locked and loaded. If that's the case, I'd say the best option is to wait and see if they show interest in you first.
Making more friends is also good. Besides the fact that it's good for your mental health, they can also introduce you to people, and somebody who knows you well is gonna be way better at finding people who will match well with you than anything like dating apps or searching aimlessly. I was introduced to my wife by a friend. They didn't even intend it as a romantic setup, they just thought we had a lot in common and would make good friends. The romance happened to blossom from that.
I'd end this off by telling you it's good to learn to be happy being single, but I know that's harder than it sounds, and sometimes you can't manage it until you've already been in and out of a serious relationship or two. Do take care of your mental health though. A happy man is an attractive man.
I get what you're saying, but like OP I'm the kind of person who can call myself beautiful but also have self esteem issues. In my case, it's because I know it's objective fact that people keep telling me I'm attractive, but I can't see myself that way. Like, maybe I'm just surrounded by really supportive people who can ignore my shortcomings easier, and one day I'm going to be exposed to the fact that it turns out the majority of the world thinks I'm ugly.
It'd feel like dismissing everyone who's ever been attracted to me to not admit that on some level I must be attractive, which would be rude, but at the same time I need people to know I can't see what they see.
Meanwhile I'm too autistic to tell when they AREN'T happening, and just keep talking until somebody respectfully tells me to shut up an take my turn.
Omnipotence means you can do literally anything, and anything includes having perfect control of your powers without knowing how to use them. It also includes the ability to continue to interact and exist as an omnipotent being even if you were completely, utterly, 100% destroyed.
If you were omnipotent, you could just decide that every action you take will benefit you in some way and then, it doesn't matter what you do, you're doing the right thing. You could even just choose not to lose yourself in your newfound power.
You don't have to know how to do something to do it when you're omnipotent. You don't even have to know the option to do it exists to choose that option. Because omnipotence means the ability to do literally anything, even when it makes no logical sense.
Of course, none of this makes logical sense. It doesn't have to, because omnipotence isn't a scientific concept or anything. It's a word we chose to define in a contradictory way. It's like if we made a new word that means "somebody who can do things they're completely incapable of doing." Not even really a paradox so much as a word whose definition makes no sense.
The weirdest part to me is that an omnipotent being must, by necessity, have the ability to create a being with powers exceeding omnipotence. Something more powerful than them. But they must also have the ability to overpower their creation, otherwise there'd be something they can't do, and they would therefore not be omnipotent. That's just a mindboggling thing to think about.