I had actually considered doing Chinese as my required world language for college. My trade school mentor, who was very well traveled, talked me out of it after telling me how insanely difficult Chinese can be to learn. I'm glad that you're feeling productive with Japanese.
Ah, the age-old tale of insurance trying to skimp on covering medications. My doctor once tried to give me Modafinil (a very gentle stimulant) for mild narcolepsy. Insurance said no, and that they wanted her to try two lesser acting medications first (there aren't any). So, she prescribed Adderall, and they insta-accepted it. Flawless logic!
As for a pep-talk: I have no wisdom, but I believe in you.
I've been wondering this as well. I've been wanting some of the 0.19 features, particularly the instance blocking, but with the bugs that have been cropping up I kind of just figured that the mods are waiting and seeing.
Honestly, if Mint has been working fine then I see no reason that you'd need to switch. If you're curious about trying out other distros, it could be worth using a program like Boxes to try out some VM's. Otherwise, I say you keep doing whatever works well for you.
Keep at it! It took me being ghosted a trillion times and having my heart broken after a second interview to finally find my current position. I believe in you. :)
As other have mentioned, setting up Timeshift + a firewall is a good start. I'm 99% sure that LM guides you through both of these processes on first boot, but it's a good thing to check on anyways. LM is pretty sanely put together out of the box, so I'd honestly just recommend you use it as-is and tweak things when/if you run into something that isn't doing it for you.
A lot. Also, thanks for the heads-up on Kagi. Anybody have recommendations for a privacy-respecting search engine that isn't run by chuds? Paid is fine as long as it doesn't suck.
Anxiety has been through the roof this past week. My weekend hasn't been too great either on account of a hole in my insulation causing my water to freeze on Friday. Hoping that it comes back tomorrow once temperatures start staying above freezing.
I had actually considered doing Chinese as my required world language for college. My trade school mentor, who was very well traveled, talked me out of it after telling me how insanely difficult Chinese can be to learn. I'm glad that you're feeling productive with Japanese.