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Wellness Wednesday for October 12, 2022

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Is it a terrible idea for me to move to Seattle?

This isn't an optimize-my-career question. I have ADD and trouble keeping my opinions to myself. I'm early 30's with an undergrad zoology degree, but I've wound up mostly selling phones and doing nightclub security on the side occasionally. I was living in Milwaukee when my heart got badly mutilated in october of 2019, and riiiight when I was starting to recover from that, COVID happened.

During COVID I fell in with an old friend who had been somewhat-similarly dispossessed, but it turned out later it was for a reason (they were both terrible). He and I wound up in a new social circle and his behavior became increasingly manic, unaccountable, and manipulative, and eventually, violent. It was probably classic Borderline Personality Disorder dirty-bomb self-destruction, but he did it all while being woke and black-ish, so he got away with way too much. I eventually won, but it was a pyrrhic victory.

I was so disgusted with the situation, and lockdowns still weren't over in chicago itself, I took an office job in the north woods. That turned out to not go great; I got downsized in september and the town I'm in is uniquely meth-y. Most of the people I see around me look diseased, physically or mentally or both. The dating pool is so garbage there should be warning signs posted.

But my younger brother lives in Seattle, Redmond, specifically. 4 years younger, we get along very well, he's a bit anxious and un-motivated. We play video games a lot together lately, I've talked to him about the idea, he likes it but acknowledges there's lots of logistical challenges.

Pros:

This way I don't have to start over in a new city from scratch. He and his wife have friends there, friends I got along with well enough at their wedding.

He's trying to lose weight, I've lost a lot of weight in the past and kept it off and could stand to lose more, I think us paling around would further that goal.

I enjoy outdoors stuff and nature stuff. The area has that. I'm actually something of a sentimental tree-hugger at heart; it's part of why I hate faddish climate activism so much.

Since the broken heart thing, I've stared dabbling in being a shadowrunner as part of my early-midlife-crisis. One thing that enchanted me about chicago was that it was possible to have a fun side-hustle playing at being a freelance professional henchman; I really did get "I'm putting some people together for a job" calls, I really did flip hot merchandise, I really did occasionally dress like I'd gotten lost on my way to a midnight showing of Blade 2. One problem (among many) with where I live right now is everyone is either an upstanding member of society, or a meth-head; there's no cool dirtbags.

Shrooms are decriminalized. I grow shrooms now recreationally (see above) and know how to build a customer base, in theory. If I want to get my shroom-dealing side hustle going on, seattle is technically the safest place to do it.

I'll have someone there that I love and trust.

Cons:

I don't think there's much wokeness in my brother's circles, but if my goal is to stay away from wokeness, why am I moving to the west coast?

I don't want to put an unfair emotional or logistical burden on my brother (and his wife).

I don't have a career, I'd be living in an expensive city with no guarantee'd "significant" income, making me kinda out-of-place among a bunch of microsoft employees.

(I don't know enough about the area to come up with more-specific Cons. Thus the posting in the thread)

IF you plan to stay long-term and can afford to buy a home, I would move to an expensive area due to the home appreciation, walkability, and other benefits.

...Why would I buy a home at the height of a real-estate bubble? Especially when I mention that I mostly sold phones up until COVID?