petrichornetrainfall

The best way for me when i was learning the basics was to have a separate device to experiment and test things on, and not worry about having to wipe and lose anything, and any time I got something working right I would make the changes to my “main”. But that’s was a while ago and things improved since then, and also everyone learns different.

So I would recommend trying to follow any linux communities on lemmy or reddit to absorb new info (a lot might be wrong or outdated), maybe follow some youtubers ( a few popular tech ones are making the shift to linux and learning from scratch too), and honestly even just memes will help. Just keep in mind that a lot of people state outdated opinions as facts, or repeat wrong info they heard from someone else.

For more accurate but less hand-holding info, start trying to find good actual forums for Linux, like a disto’s (spin or flavor of linux) forum or “discourse”. As long as you read or search for things before posting, people will generally be nice and willing to help out. Just try to provide any info you can when you post, and don’t have any attitude.

Advanced and more technical info can be found on an apps or distros website or github.

If you have specific questions about the Bluetooth keyboard, let me know in the reply and I’ll try to help!

P.S ignore all distro recommendations till you get more experience, in the beginning the biggest hurdles will be switching from windows to Linux, difference between distros do matter but are much smaller than people sometimes make them out to be. You should stick with one, preferably whatever a buddy or favorite YouTube is using, and save distro hopping till later.

Feeling bad about how you’ve acted in the past is a good thing, it means you’ve grown since then. So even if you don’t recognize it, it means you’ve changed and improved as a person since then. This idea might be what your friend intended to expressive when they said to not focus on the past as much.

People can only change if they want to, and it sounds like you want to, so you shouldn’t give up hope on becoming the kind of person you feel you’d have to be to get marriage and have a family. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is today. You seem to be taking those steps to improve yourself, and in a few years you’ll reflect back on how you are now and see how much you changed. Growth is hard to measure on a day to day basis. Keep up the good work you’ve obviously (to an outsider) been doing to improve.

You’re not clear on why you’re posting this, or what you want out of people’s responses.

You’re not clear on why you think you’re a bad friend, or why you’d be a burden to others just by interacting with them.

You’re not clear on what you know you have to do, but just aren’t doing.

Just saying/writing/admitting to something is helpful, because it forces you to confront it (and will be brought up in therapy anyway, so might as well do the prep work now). Just saying outloud the answers might make you realized how silly they are, or how they’re all connected, or what your priorities really are.

I apologize if this goes against your request, but as I mentioned, you were clear with your expectations.

I can related to your gas station metaphor, I feel that constantly due to gestures broadly at the world.

You’re too young to give up on marriage and parenthood, raw data shows that’s not true, you’re not even running behind yet.

And making one last assumption, but being distant or isolating yourself doesn’t make you a bad friend, and asking for help doesn’t either, only always asking for help and never asking about them does.