thejdizzler
2d ago
November Goals
- Want to try the “Getting Things Done” productivity system, which basically involves writing out all my to-dos in a notebook, and either doing them immediately or schedule them for a future time.
- I want to work on becoming less anxious. GTD should help with this, but quitting porn, limiting internet time, and discursive meditation should all help with this.
- Second half of November and first part of December will be time off from serious exercise. I’d like to use this time to rebuild metabolically, but also to do some of my other hobbies that I have neglected (guitar, dancing, reading) for a little bit. Will probably still aim for about 30 minutes a day of exercise, but no serious training. Before this I'll be running my age in miles on my birthday (28 on 11/19) and racing an 8k XC at Franklin Park.
- Ask out this girl that I've been hanging out with from swim. Lots of mixed signals if she's interested or not, but only one way to know for sure....
thejdizzler
2d ago
I stopped doing it a while ago. Seemed to be overkill with the amount of endurance exercise I'm doing. Although this might just be post-hoc justification for the fact that I took it right before my oral board exam+ drank coffee and nearly had a panic attack and have had a negative association since.
thejdizzler
8d ago
Luckily do not have designs on this particular woman, so in this case it is merely frustration that my friend is causing herself so much inner turmoil. Yet, as you state, she may not see it that way in a few years.
It has been an epiphany that I’ve played this role far too often in other relationships and in other contexts (not romantic).
thejdizzler
8d ago
Thanks for the advice. I have basically done what you suggest in the first part. We’ve had a long conversation over text, and I told her that I’ll talk to her on the phone if she wants, but she’s basically heard everything I have to say so she shouldn’t bring it up again.
Second section is also good advice. I generally need to stand up for my interests (all my interests, not just this) in life more. I can do this without violating any kind of moral code.
thejdizzler
8d ago
I’m not interested in this particular women. She is a long term friend from undergrad.
thejdizzler
8d ago
I (M27) have been giving one my friend from college (F27) dating advice via text for the past week. It's been frustrating on multiple levels. First, the situation. This girl is a grad student in ecology (American) at a university in Canada. She recently started hooking up with a French postdoc who is cheating on his long-term girlfriend with her. I don't see how this is going to end well. If this guy was going to leave his girlfriend (who he has been dating for a long time apparently) he would have done so already. Even if this somehow does happen, they're both academics not in their home countries, meaning a likelihood of ending up in the same place is very low. Finally, a relationship that begins with extended cheating is never going to end well because that reflects pretty badly on the impulse control of both parties. I told this girl this and that she needed to distance herself from this man, but she responded by saying that she "had to" pursue this relationship because she didn't know when she would "feel this way" again and that he was a "special guy". I'm frankly just baffled by this level of irrationality and naivety. Maybe from a 18-21 year-old women this would be understandable, but come on use your fucking brain. She is the sidehoe (at best) in this situation and the whole thing is causing such an unnecessarily large amount of stress while she's trying to finish her PhD that it doesn't take a genius to see that the juice isn't worth the squeeze in this situation. I'm continually surprised by the inability of smart people to make sensible and morally sound decisions when it comes to romance.
The second part of my frustration is more personal. I only have platonic feelings for this particular friend, but there have been many other examples with women in the past 5-10 years where my feelings have not been platonic and I have been asked to play the role of a gay best friend to give advice that will not be headed in an absolutely fucked romantic situation. This is almost entirely a me problem of setting boundaries. This most recent situation has made me realize that it's not good for me to be intimate friends with women who don't reciprocate my romantic interest, or with past girlfriends in general. The comparison game usually makes me feel really really bad about myself: why would women choose a shitty cheater over me? The solution is to not allow that comparison to be made by being more honest with those women about what my feelings are (I want a romantic partner, not another friend), and more honest with myself (it's not evil or mean to distance myself from a romantic situation that didn't work out).
thejdizzler
9d ago
Impressive ramp rate. I think you could still do the 100k this fall. For context I did a century ride after thanksgiving in northern MD/south-central PA and had daylight on both ends. Was going about 14 miles an hour.
thejdizzler
12d ago
Thanks man! I hope so too!
thejdizzler
15d ago
No reading group is easy to run. People continually flake, don't do the reading, or try and take over the group to the kind of reading they want to do (despite a terrible track record of attendance). That said, it's been easier since I established a solid core group of 2-3 other people. I know they will do the readings and participate, so the other crap is just noise.
I was swing dancing in 2024 a lot! It's time to go back I think. Nice Lindy pun also!
Thanks for the other recommendations. I really wish I could bring myself to go back to church.
thejdizzler
16d ago
Fair enough! In that case I would just be worried about the acidity which you can combat with a straw or eating while you drink the beverage.
thejdizzler
16d ago
What's your opinion on NA beer? Might be a good sub for Pepsi or coke with less sugar.
thejdizzler
16d ago
I mean I would just suggest giving up sugary beverages forever.
thejdizzler
16d ago
Thanks dude!
thejdizzler
16d ago
I may take you up on this (and grab my friend from Reston to join)!
thejdizzler
16d ago
Thanks! I'm really happy with it!
thejdizzler
16d ago
General life update
Fall is really finally here in Baltimore and it’s put me in a reflective mood. As I posted about a few weeks ago, I’m feeling generally behind in life, but some things are starting to turn around while other things remain frustrating.
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Work. I’m currently a senior PhD student at Hopkins in Biology. On paper I have enough to graduate (first author publications, enough data to make a sufficient dissertation), but my committee and PIs won’t let me graduate for a variety of reasons. These all make sense: hostile administration means academic jobs are pretty hard to get right now, I have a federal fellowship so my funding is secured until Aug 2027, and a stronger publication record won’t hurt me at all. However, I’m getting pretty sick of my project, and of science in general. I don’t like how this job makes me feel on a day to day basis, or feel that the experiments I’m doing are really helping the world. I have two options going forward: coast until my funding runs out and spend my time and energy on other parts of my life + job searching, or buckle down and produce something I’m proud of in the next year. In either case, I need to start looking for industry jobs.
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Fitness. I just ran the Baltimore marathon this past Saturday in a 2:44. This beats my Boston time from earlier this year by about ~5:00, which I’m really happy with, considering the course is much harder. I closed in a 5:14 mile, meaning I had a lot left in the tank. This whole year has been a struggle with constant left foot injuries because of my increased weight: I’ve put on 15 pounds, mainly of muscle, in the past year from swimming, biking, and lifting, so I was really happy with this effort, even though it’s far off my PR. In 2026 I’m planning on focusing on almost solely strength and aerobic development (I.e. trying to get my volume to a consistent 15 hours a week, 3 of which will be in the gym) which I hope will lead to smashing my PRs later in that year and in 2027.
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Intellectual stuff. I passed my Spanish B2 fluency exam earlier this year, and am starting to work more seriously on Italian. Both languages are going well, especially Italian, in which I feel like I’m making rapid progress. The philosophy book club I run has got a couple of new, very enthusiastic and knowledgeable members, and we are currently doing a deep dive on Kant. I’ve also hit my reading goal of 52 books this year, and will probably end up reading around 60-70, which is pretty solid work. Substack blogging is going really well too, over 100 subs, and I’m putting out at least 2-3 pieces a month. This category is going really well
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Finances. Recently read Your Money or Your Life and have been trying to figure out how to save more money and become more financially independent. I make about $52k a year, and was able to save even when I made $35k/year, so I should theoretically be able to have a near 30% savings rate. Unfortunately inflation (real and lifestyle) has increased my CoTL quite a bit, and now at my best all I can seem to manage is around a 15% savings rate. Part of the solution to this is just to earn more (i.e. get my PhD) but there’s also significant expenses that I can cut involving travel and running related expenses (mainly PT). I’m also trying to be wiser with investment decisions, splitting 0.33/0.33/0.33 between individual stocks, index funds and bonds. Long term my parents have told me they will help me buy a house (they contributed a lot to my sister’s apartment in London), so that’s a big relief in some ways.
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Dating. I’ve kind of given up on this right now. I’m luckily out of my bad living situation with the Don Juan roommate, so I’m not having my lack of dating success rubbed in my face at all times anymore which is huge. Thought there might be something with a med student who I did swim club with, but when I cooked lunch for her one on one, it quickly became pretty clear she wasn’t interested in me. Dating apps don’t do anything other than lower my self esteem, although I did recently change my location to Santiago, Chile and have been absolutely inundated with matches. A lot of them are quite attractive, but they’re all like 5’ 0” which is a little too short for me. This is probably something that will go better when I am more financially successful, but continues to be frustrating.
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Spirituality. I still haven’t been to mass since February (other than for a wedding), and have almost certainly decided that Christianity isn’t for me. Part of this is emotional: I don’t feel anything anymore when I go to church or receive the Eucharist, and prayer and other Catholic teachings have had very little effect on curing me of my vices (pornography, masturbation, jealously, anger, etc.). Part of it is social: aside from godfather, his marxist catholic friend from Chicago, and my former roommate, I’ve found that most of the people I met at church to be not the kind of people that I enjoyed spending time with. However, I think by far the biggest issue is philosophical: I think the antropocentrism of Christianity is deeply poisonous to our interactions with the natural world, the required submission to church dogma to be grating, and the ideas of heaven and hell to cheapen the existence we have here on earth right now. There are parts of Christianity I really like, but I just can’t get over these disagreements. It’s just really not for me. I would like to find another organized religion that works better for me, but I don’t think this is likely, as most Neo-pagans are a bunch of larpers, Buddhism and Hinduism are too foreign, and Islam is not appealing at all to me.
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Health. I am sleeping through the night again, my sugar cravings are gone, and I’m feeling much more energetic overall. My weight is stable at 165 pounds, and I’m starting to see more visible muscle in my abs and arms. Two key changes were better sleep hygiene (no electronics between 9 and 7 am except for social reasons, no working in my bed, consistent wind-down routine), and rebalancing my macros away from carbs and towards fats on days without intense exercise. Keto is a pretty stupid diet, but that doesn’t mean eating only carbs is good either. Because I was working out so much I thought I would be fine mainly living off starches, vegetables and fruits, but because of this carb dependency my blood sugar would crash in the middle of the night and I would always wake up starving. I’ve added much more fat to my diet, replacing oatmeal with avocado toast for breakfast, and all carb snacks with nuts on days that I don’t exercise hard. I’m still eating carbs, especially on days where I do a couple hours of training, but it’s more balanced than before. This has fixed pretty much all my sleeping problems and made me much more energetic throughout the day.
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Emotions. This year marks ten years since my last high school cross country season. That was a fantastic season for me: I dropped 70 seconds in the 3 mile and managed to be All-State in Illinois despite being at the back of the varsity pack the year before, and the camaraderie we had as a team was something I’ve never experienced otherwise, before or since. I’m feeling a lot of nostalgia for that time, and regret that I didn’t work to keep up those friendships in college and beyond. However, beyond a certain point, these things aren’t really helpful to feel anymore, and I’m wondering how I should act on them. Reach out to these old friends and try and organize a reunion? Try harder to find an adult cross-country team?
Long post, but just want to get all this out there in a place where people usually have something valuable to say. Thanks for coming to my TED talk
thejdizzler
21d ago
I have a notebook, but need to get better at using it. Maybe something smaller that I can literally fit in my pocket would help me.
thejdizzler
23d ago
I have! The problem is calibrating what is an appropriate time box for a task, especially in lab where I'm not sure how long for example, dissections might take.
thejdizzler
23d ago
I really would like to become less high-strung. Talking to my roommate this morning it seems like we have opposite problems. I have no problem using willpower to actively engage in my desires, but I just can't seem to relax, ever. He can sleep for almost all day and is very chill, but can't seem to motivate himself to do anything that requires effort. Some things I'm thinking about trying.
1). A lot of my anxiety seems to come from open loops (i.e. procrastination). Maybe if I actually finish things I'll manage to decrease how stressed I feel.
2). The amount of open loops seem to come from an inability to say no to others or to my own marginal desires. Need to learn to focus on what counts.
3). Of course technology use doesn't help either. Aiming for less than an hour a day on my phone and seeing if that helps.
thejdizzler
30d ago
Wow what a surprising turn of events. I wish the best of luck! I converted to catholicism almost three years ago now, and I have let my theological doubts get the better of me, and haven't been to church since February. My godfather did call me last night out of the blue to let me know that he and my godmother are having a second child, which did briefly remind me why I joined the church in the first place (same with a wedding I attended a few weeks ago). Unfortunately, mass seems to continue to be very spiritually empty for me, and a lot of the apparent benefits of the church (spouse, community) haven't been very prominent in my parish recently.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
Interesting take on time blocking, think you are right. I have pretty strict blocks on my computer (internet will block itself after 9pm for example). But the blocks don’t really deal with the fundamental problem, which means I’m always looking for ways around them.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
Thank you for the words of encouragement.
thejdizzler
1mo ago
Thank you for this! It’s what I’ve been thinking as well. I really need to earn more money so I can provide for a family (which would also help me escape from the college student lifestyle).
I think I agree with you. I have no problem getting myself to run/bike/swim 8-12 hours a week, but I can't for the life of me get myself to go to the gym and lift. I had no problem doing core and calisthenics in high-school and college with the team, so it's totally and enjoyment thing.
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