One of my problems in general, but certainly when it comes to self improvement/wellness is trying to do too much at once. For example, here is my list of goals for this month:
• Chores spreadsheet
• 400k words read Spanish
• 2 substack posts
• Read 3000 pages total (~100/day, roughly 8-10 books).
• 4 Spanish gramar exercises
• Up 3k spanish Anki cards, 500 italian Anki cards
• 300 minutes of meditation total (average 10 min/day)
• 20 days fap free
• Swim 4 days a week
• Build to 50 miles a week running
• Savings rate of at least 20%
This + goals at work seems to overwhelm me. Are there specific goals in this list that you think I should focus on? Things that I should cut? Is there a better way to approach goal setting in general?
I think dating is a big part of it. There is no motivation for me to grind or hustle or finish my PhD fast because I don't see girlfriend/wife opportunities coming very easily.
Yea I'm gonna be careful. Unfortunately extra weight makes me significantly slower. I gained 20 pounds between spring 2023 and this spring and my times have suffered a lot. I'm trying to lose 3/4 of that weight (I was 155 in 2023, 175 earlier this spring, aiming for somewhere in the range of 160-162, which would put me at a BMI of 21.5 or so). I could lose more but then my swimming/body image will start to suffer.
Seems like we are in the same boat, although I'm not sure how interested in dating I am over the next few months, mainly focusing on trying to finish the PhD and healthmax.
I think you should get Lasik or something similar if you can, but glasses can also be attractive to a certain demographic.
Noted. Tan and carrot juice are both in the cards because it's summer baby!
What do you mean by dark eyes lol? My eyes are extremely pale blue. Will think about the carrot juice intake though: sounds tasty.
Thanks for all the advice. I think I need to get back to meditation, which should help with all of this. Also yes eating less beans/greasy food would be good too!
Not limited to vegans or environmentalists, but both of those things are important values of mine that might drive people away who don't agree, which is fine. I don't think I'm too thin. My BMI is ~22.5 (trying to lower my weight slightly to get faster again, but won't go much below a BMI of 21.5-22). Don't think I have veganface, but you can decide for yourself.
I thought the relationship would be quickly sexual. To be clear, we did make out, but every time I tried to escalate towards sex (i.e. fingering, taking off clothes), I was shut down. The discussion that prompted the break-up was me saying that I wasn't cool with this.
Yea honestly wasn't super attracted to her either, but I hadn't been having much luck dating so thought I would try it out. Should have listened to my gut.
You're 100% correct, I'm not super torn up about not being with this girl, certainly compared to the last one who took me 6 months to get over. It's more of a self-esteem/pride issue at this point, which will heal quickly. And a learning opportunity. If there isn't attraction don't force it. Part of me is a little sad to be losing this friendship, but after the things that this relationship taught me I don't think I want to be friends with her anyway.
Nope. Not at all. Which would normally be not that big of a deal for me, but was not cool knowing her history.
Thanks man. This is what I'm thinking too. I'm offering the goods for too cheap.
This is helpful, thanks! Going to get a haircut this weekend and start doing this.
Prompted by the discussion in the main thread about dating, I just broke up with the girl I'd been seeing for a few months, and am simultaneously relieved and feeling quite bad about myself. We had been friends for about 18 months, and I'd thought she'd liked me for a while but I wasn't particularly interested because she had done polyamory in the past. A few months ago she asked me out, and I initially said no, but changed my mind and said yes with the condition that there would be absolutely no polyamory. We got along really well, so things were good in some sense, but she didn't want to actually be intimate at all (despite complaining to me when we were friends about a previous boyfriend who didn't want to have sex), and told me yesterday when we broke up that she was feeling trapped.
I should never have said yes to this girl in the first place (polyamory is huge red flag), but this whole experience has been kind of a blackpill. She asked me out, so she clearly was attracted to me in some way, but there must have been something I did earlier in the relationship that really turned her off enough not to want to have sex. I don't want to have to be overanalyzing my every move trying to decide if it's given a girl the ick or not. It also didn't seem to matter at all how compatible we were platonically (both vegan, runners, huge readers): she still ended up feeling trapped because she wasn't romantically attracted and I wasn't cool with polyamory.
Some ideas I have for improving things in the future. Firstly, not saying yes to someone just because they asked and it looks good on paper. I knew in my gut that this wasn't going to work. Secondly, I think there are some small things that I can do with my appearance that could prevent the ick in the future: getting different conditioner so my swimmer hair isn't so straw-like, stopping eating beyond meat so I don't fart so badly, and getting rid of some old clothes. Thirdly, I think I need to get a car, or at least move somewhere where most other people don't drive frequently. Unfortunately driving everywhere is seen as a sign of "being a real adult" by a lot of Americans, and I think me biking everywhere might have been a factor in the lack of attraction (although she knew this when she asked me out). Finally, I think I need to get better at scaling my commitment appropriately relative to how much time we've been together, and how much the other person is willing to put into the relationship. This is something I have trouble with in all areas of my life (I'm 0 % or 100%, never in-between).
The dating scene is pretty bleak out there (which is why I said yes to this girl in the first place), and I honestly think this might be a sign to focus on getting my PhD done and making myself more attractive (getting in better shape, earning more money) rather than wasting time dating people in this shitty city.
I'm doing my PhD at Hopkins. I'll be done by May 2026 probably.
Reading some Anne Tyler (who is famous for setting her books in Baltimore), a collection of Argentinian horror stories (las cosas que perdimos en el Fuego) and Il deserto dei Tartari (The Tartar Steppe). The last of these I am reading in English alongside the Italian.
I just had my bike kicked out from under me by a pedestrian while I was stopped in a cross walk. I shouldn't have been in the cross walk (and I won't in the future, at least for the next week), but I also would have happily moved if he asked, or he could have, you know, walked one foot to the right and went around me. My bike weighs about 10 pounds so I was fine, but because he was black (and I'm white) I was seething with racial animosity on the rest of my ride home. On one level I recognize that this is obviously irrational (and racist), but at the same time I have had so many negative interactions with black people in this city (Baltimore) that I'm starting to wonder if there maybe is some truth in the HBD/race realist positions.
I don't know man I think @MaiqTheTrue gets it right. We know what the best diet is (Mediterranean/Japanese diet). Mostly vegetables, some starches, fish, and a little bit of meat. It's just that no one wants to hear this. It's bad for food manufacturers because it obviates the need for their existence and most of the public wants to eat junk food or is ideologically opposed to certain elements of this diet.
Just wanted to say this is fantastically put!
I'm of two minds with regards to this. On one hand I wish that my parents would have been stricter about video games. I sunk so many hours into CK2, Civ, Dark Souls,etc. that could have been spent hanging out with friends in real life (perhaps one of the reasons I don't have any friendships remaining really from this period), learning a language, or just chilling out/running slightly more. On the other hand, these games got me interested in history and geography (CK2, Civ), and philosophy (Dark Souls). Also my ex-girlfriend and her siblings were raised with no video games/social media. It didn't really help at all: she still got addicted to instagram/tiktok, her brother still got addicted to video games in adulthood.
To synthesize, I think some kind of exposure is good to be able to handle the super stimuli in adulthood, but I would recommend some kind of limits to be put in place. My parents let me play video games for 2 hrs Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Sometimes I would go over a little, but these limits were pretty well enforced. Maybe you could do something like this?
I think the difference with poly is scale. Maybe you do this with serial monogamy once every few months to a year (although hopefully eventually you stop serially dating and get married). With polyamory it's a problem (everything) everywhere all at once. You are always looking for new relationships and defining boundaries with new partners. It sounds like it fucking sucks, and I'm not sure why anyone would voluntarily participate unless they were a sociopath.
Polyamory might be able to work for some people, but I think it's gotta be a net negative for society. I think it's simply a question of time. Every additional partner that you have creates a time commitment that you could have spent a). strengthening your relationship with your main partner, b). spending time with friends/building community, c). self-improvement/hobbies. A potential counterargument is that polyamory is just a different form of leisure, and so fucking around on the side is just like watching Netflix. I would respond to this in two ways. Firstly, maybe watching Netflix for 5 hours a day isn't great for society either. Secondly, I'm not sure that polyamory comes from the same pool of time as relaxing and watching Netflix. It's an inherently much more effortful activity, and is probably going to replace much more meaningful activities. Anecdotally, one of my roommates, who never practiced polyamory per see, but always had a "rotation" of girls going (maybe this is the cool chad version of poly, idk), never had time for any other hobbies or interests besides chasing tail, which I think has made him pretty boring and socially isolated.
I think for me when I level the accusations of LARPing, it's a synonym for accusing people of being unserious about the thing they are trying to practice/accomplish. It's not enough to pretend, you have to pretend effectively. You see this equally with rad-trad catholics or fundamentalists who conveniently forget that Jesus said that it's easier for a camel to thread the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven (how convenient that my new religion that is supposed to save me from the problems of modernity doesn't require me to give up the material trappings of that same system), and with leftists in favor of degrowth that don't seem to see that actually being serious about that ideology requires you to stop buying everything on amazon and doing gross things like composting your own poop. I would never accuse the Dominicans at my parish of larping, nor would I accuse the hippies who live off grid of doing so. It's the people that stridently profess a certain ideology without taking its tenets seriously that makes me think "LARP".
I walk to the grocery store and go about once a week. It's about 0.5 miles each way, so it's a bit of a workout on the way back.
If I really need to transport something heavy I'll Zipcar or mooch off of a friend. This kind of stuff is made much more practical by a car. I'm not a car abolitionist, they have their place and their uses and are obviously essential in rural areas. What I'm frustrated by is the desire for many to make the car into the one size fits all transportation model. The actual costs of car use should be internalized by the user: things like congestion pricing seem like a great way to do that. Congestion pricing is not going to affect the ease of me bringing my grill to a friends house, but it might make me change my commuting behavior.
Let me be clear re:crime. We need to crack down on anti-social behavior here in America. If new green spaces are immediately colonized by junkies and other bums then that indicates a problem with society that runs much deeper than public transit. Cars don't really solve this problem, they just confine it to the walkable areas of the city, which are usually also historically the most pleasant.
My vision is for protected bike lanes of 1/4 lane width on the side of most streets. There are still issues with this: mainly it presents a hazard when cars are turning right and cutting off bikes, but it seems better than the alternatives (median bike lane has the problem with both turns, single use trails don't make use of existing infrastructure).
Chores spreadsheet basically just means doing my chores on time. I've got stuff like changing kombucha and yoghurt cultures and dusting/vacuuming that have longish time horizons that would be better if I spread them out, hence the spreadsheet.
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