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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Hello everyone who reads these after Wednesday. April was the first month when I could not hit my daily pull-up rep goal a single time.
Rules are: do some number of pull-ups every day. On the first of each month, increase the number by one.
“Just do one more” until now has been a spell I could cast once a month to magically make me stronger. I’ve increased my daily goal again for May, but in practice what it looks like every day at this point is I do as many pull-ups in a row as I can physically manage, rest for a minute or two, and then do the rest.
I’m also coming up on my first anniversary of doing this.
Sounds great, what are the results like, any plans on using weights after a certain rep count?
I think I will prefer to stay with my bodyweight. I want a habit that I can do mostly anywhere, and, crucially, something I can do every day without injury.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Inspired by some user whose post I saw the other day, I'm attempting a digital detox for the month of May. No Facebook, YouTube, or logging in to my personal Instagram. Because of my new year's resolution (to read at least 26 books this year), I'm reading a great deal of books, which is having the entirely desired result that my appetite for short-form video content, clickbait political hot takes, brainrot, algorithmic slop and even using this forum has decreased considerably. I don't expect I'll find this purge terribly difficult. I also want to exercise at least three times a week, which I expect will present the greater challenge.
Good luck! My next digital fast (St. Peter's) begins on the 16th of June.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Update on my last post.
It, uh...looks like I got that job as a logistics coordinator for the trucking company (Note, the trucking company is just a subsidiary of what is in fact a fairly large company.). I would give my interview performance a B (reasonably well prepared and did a good spin job about my time as the owner's crony at University 2 Go without exaggerating my experiences, but was overly nervous), but apparently it was good. It was with a panel of three (local guy, his immediate boss, and the boss above that, with most of the back and forth being with the latter) over lunch (The office had a burst pipe so we relocated to a quiet spot for lunch. I did crack a joke that Mexican food was a risky choice for the pastel shirt I was wearing.). They were pleased that I'd done some research on the company (I have very little job interviewing experience, but taking a look at the company's "about us" page and/or checking out their Youtube channel to internalize some key facts seems like an obvious thing to do. If it's a family owned company it helps to at least know the name of the founder and being able to recite some key facts of "Why do I want to work here?" seems like a no-brainer.) and apparently impressed that I'd cooked up my own excel spreadsheet to log mileage and earnings as an independently contracted delivery driver (There are apps that do this, but I didn't like any of them so I just went the old fashioned way and opted for a manually-entered mileage log. Add in tips, delivery fee earnings, and number of deliveries and you're a formula away from things you want to know like tip average, average miles driven per delivery, total miles driven in a year, and so on. I'm far from an excel guru, but this wasn't hard and generated a log that required 30 seconds at the beginning and end of a shift of punching in a few numbers on Google Sheets.). He asked if I liked puzzles, and I likened dispatching to playing Tetris (An RTS is also an apt comparison, especially in a food delivery context where it's all about fast, fast, fast, but I didn't want to explain to someone nearing retirement age what an RTS game is.).
Whatever the quality of my interview performance, the big boss stated that he was impressed with me and confident that I can do well at the job, that I reminded him of a guy that he hired back in Houston, and that while he rarely offers a job outright during the interview this was one of those times. Apparently their short to medium term goal is to have me take over the guy who referred me's position so that they can promote him. He stated that I should have a written offer by Thursday or Friday and that he could probably do a bit better than my asking salary. My contact within the company told me today that he's been instructed to decline other resumes and cease the recruiting process, that it's a done deal.
It's taking a bit to sink in (The interview was on Tuesday on one day's notice.), and I won't totally believe it until I sign that offer letter in put in my notice at draft beer corp, but holy fuck I might be out of that shitshow (The latest drama is that they were 15 days late paying the line cleaners their vehicle reimbursement, I'm still averaging less than one revenue-generating call a day, and my supervisor is so overwhelmed or disengaged that I feel like I barely have a boss and barely do anything other than clean beer lines in a terribly inefficient manner and ride the clock. I will not miss having to text my boss at 6:30 AM and ask her what I'm supposed to be doing for the day, nor will I miss driving 1500 miles a week.) and out of working two jobs and still being broke, taking on debt, and wondering at what point to I have to stop the bleeding by calling for retreat and picking a parent to move in with and start over. I still plan on doing some shifts on the side at University 2 Go (It's not a reliable full-time gig, but on the once or twice a week that they're short on a dinner shift or whatever it's easy beer money and I'd like to get out of debt.).
Unfortunately, a cursory search for "truck 'dispatch' game" does not return any useful results.
That's because dispatching (at least for the food delivery company) is like playing an RTS that isn't fun. On that note I do find it amusing and maybe a little bit disturbing that there are food delivery simulation games.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Congratulations! I hope the salary at that new place is superior to your previous one, and my understanding is that logistics is a field with plenty of demand, so it'll probably open up career options down the line to boot.
Roughly speaking, it'll get me back to grossing what I was working full-time at University 2 Go in 2023 (so, around a 30% raise depending on where the final offer lands at), except with a W2 and nice benefits package instead of a 1099 and buying my own Obamacare, and without having to run my car into the ground driving ~30K city miles a year for work (I'm a decent shadetree mechanic, so I was able to save on expenses there, but post-covid price increases in used cars, insurance, auto parts, and shop labor have made being any variety of self-employed driver harder than it used to be.).
So, in short, I'm not going to be impressing anybody but it's an honestly life-changing difference while hopefully starting an actual career instead of a comfortable and easy but dead-end job at a tiny business (that I stayed at way too long; there was nothing comfortable about working for draft beer corp). I can go back to not worrying much about money, should be able to retire my debt fairly quickly, and so on.
Edit: I just got the offer letter and it was more than I was hoping for. Over a 50% raise. I'm honestly kind of floored/in shock right now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I yoinked something in my back out of alignment rolling in BJJ last Friday. I'm not really sure what I did, but we were drilling live from De La Riva, so i think I was either trying to hang on to De La Riva or reestablish it. I barely noticed it at the time, didn't affect my game strength, but when I got home I was stiff and by lunch my back was screaming. Saturday I was in a lot of pain and spent all day medicating and sitting. Sunday, I was a little stiff, but felt good after Mass, and decided to try running a full Murph unweighted for the first time. Monday, I was back to normal, but avoided BJJ in favor of climbing Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday is here, and I went to the 6am class and went light, but was basically fine. I remain cautious in my movements, but I don't actually feel any pain or stiffness.
What's most upsetting to me is that I have no idea what exactly I did. I'm not sure exactly what motion caused the injury, what to avoid, what I did wrong. The warmup was the standard guided stretching and calisthenics by the coach. I've rolled a lot more and more intensely than that. I just don't have a good answer. Which makes it scary. I can't be in a position where I'm just randomly crippled a few weekends. When I've injured my back weightlifting, I nearly always knew I shouldn't have done that: I should have warmed up more, I shouldn't have gone for that rep or that weight, I let my form get sloppy, etc. I know what to avoid, even if I don't always manage to stick to good procedure anyway. With this, I feel a little spooky about movement. Hopefully it doesn't recur.
The Murph attempt went surprisingly well given that my lower back screamed every step of the first mile. 52 minutes. I'd like to pretend I'd do better if my back had been healthier, but that's probably bullshit, the mile time wasn't really that bad. I've got about three weeks to Memorial Day, so hopefully I can pick up a little more fitness before that. With the back injury I'm debating whether I want to mess with the vest, or just stick to unweighted. Regardless, it's amazing how I normally think of air squats as "free" but with enough reps they add up and my legs hurt for days.
Were you just doing the running part? I can't imagine pull-ups help a crocked back. Sorry about the back, btw, I'm just obsessed with this idea of so many pull-ups.
Some modestly weighted chins and dips (via a dip belt worn low on the hips) were pretty much an overnight fix for some back pain I was having around January/February.
More options
Context Copy link
Dead hangs are actually one of my favorite things to decompress a strained lower back. Pull ups didn't really hit them, if anything I felt a slight twinge during the air squats for the first three sets; after that I didn't feel anything in my back presumably from being sufficiently warm.
The push ups were actually the worst part for me, though none of the exercises were my best reps of all time.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Two days ago, my 4 year old shouted "belly flop" and then jumped face first from our porch step onto the sidewalk below. The results were predictably gruesome. The main injury was three large gashes in his lips where he bit through the lip, but blood also gushed out of his nose and (more lightly) from his forehead, knees, and elbows.
This is one of my favorite events to happen so far as a father. (And I actually mean that literally.) It perfectly captures for me the idea of just how stupid/innocent kids are (and presumably I once was). I'm also really proud of the little guy for taking his injury in stride. There was lots of crying for 30 minutes or so, but once we got him cleaned up and bandaged, he was back outside playing with his brothers again. He's been showing off his injuries to all his little kid friends and making sure they know not to belly flop in the sidewalk too.
This is one of my earliest memories. I think I was two or three when we were walking home from a grocery store and my parents asked me to show how I jump off a curb. Not on a skateboard, of course, just trying to engage with the little human walking next to them, throwing him a bone to praise him afterwards. I confidently walked to the edge of the sidewalk and then something went wrong.
I locked up. In the inevitable biopic this episode will have to use dolly zoom to show how impossible the jump suddenly looked to me. I stood on the curbstone silently watching the yawning six-inch-deep chasm in front of me, unable to hop down. I thought about sliding down, but doing this standing up sounded risky. I went into a deep squat and started carefully edging my feet forward. My parents watched all this in total bafflement and mild amusement until my shuffling brought my center of gravity too far forward and I suddenly careened off the edge of the curb and landed face first onto the parking lane in front of me.
I can't tell if I was smarter or stupider than your kid. My precautions allowed me to suffer only minor abrasions, but they were also why I faceplanted in the first place.
More options
Context Copy link
Oh man that gave me a good genuine laugh. Definitely hope that was immortalized somehow. Perfect to bring out at a major life event later!
I already have the wedding toast all planned out :)
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I hope this is not some asinine tik tok thing. He must have recently been around a pool or watched someone around a pool? A cannonball might have been less painful. But possibly more damaging. The good thing is kids have less distance to fall. My youngest son, at very young age, after repeated warnings not to run on the slippery tiles surrounding the hotel pool, proceeded to do just that, fairly quickly losing his footing and falling backwards onto his back and head. But he was small and was right back up fairly quickly.
Yeah, there's a scene in The Jungle Book 2 where Balu does a belly flop. They've been obsessed with that movie for the last month or so... acting out all of the other scenes... and they finally learned that cartoons aren't real life...
I cannot believe what kids take away from movies.
I was really sensitive to letting my kids see anything at age 4.. Then a friend invited us over to watch My Neighbor Totoro and I thought surely this completely harmless Studio Ghibli movie with no bad guys, no violence, no anything but cuteness would be fine. Surely.
Then the next day my wife went for a walk on her own and left him with his older brother. About ten minutes later the to 4yo slipped out the door without older brother noticing. Mom was on her way back from her walk and found him, three blocks away(!)
4yo was re-nacting the scene in Totoro where the older sister runs around the countryside at length looking for her lost younger sister. Except looking for mom.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I jumped off the deck using a helium balloon to slow my descent. The really painful part was finding out that cartoons had lied to me.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
4chan is back up! I'm so happy!
I... feel like that says something bad about me, that 4chan is basically the only place left on the internet where I feel at home. (this place is also good, but I do feel a bit out of place here). So many places these days are either enforced, toxic positivity (reddit) or worshipping a single influencer (most other social media). 4chan lets me speak my mind, and I feel like the people there actually get me. I'm a depressed, aging, alcoholic weeb so 4chan is very much "my people." But I can't help but feel like the people there are, weirdly, smarter than a lot of internet sites these days.
A lolcow on Twitter the other day said there's two kinds of trans people. There's Reddit trans and there's 4chan trans. And then I was enlightened.
I think on redit and similar sites, people look to ttans as a gender and political identity. On 4chan, people are just into it as a weird sex fetish. And 4channers are very tolerant of weird sex fetishes. (Arguably too tolerant)
IMO the 4chan transes are older and a little more doomed about it. But also possibly were into trans before it was cool. In the old days it took actual work and guts to research and source and take gray market hormones. You're probably cool AF to do that with no social support at all.
Nowadays, any retard can get hormones if they say "trans" and they are also more likely to hang out on Reddit.
Probably think of it like an alternate universe where, after years of being in the shadows, bodybuilders were validated for wanting to be swole and doctors would write RXes for as much steroids as you can handle, covered by insurance. That generation of broscientists would be SO annoying. And they would be all over Reddit while the OG bodybuilders stuck to 4chan.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Nah it doesn't say anything bad about you. 4chan is great. An anon put it exactly right the day the site came back: "I feel like you guys are more spiritually pure than normies."
I love TheMotte, but it theoretically could be replaced. There are lots of smart people in the world who you can have smart people discussions with. But there's only one 4chan.
Wow, that is a fascinating take. Say more? How could I find worthwhile engagement with 4chan? I haven't tried almost at all in over a decade, but my experience with it was "garbage shit posts," whereas I find TheMotte to be a singular place on the internet. (Even the UI is very nearly ideal!)
It depends on what you're looking for and what your interests are.
I've been part of a lot of tight-knit communities in /vg/ over the years, where we play games together, watch streams together, etc. I've made actual friends based on our shared interests in certain games. Lots of very memorable anime watch-alongs on /a/.
/pol/ was a magical place during the 2016 election, and also during early 2020 at the start of covid, although it's declined a lot since then. But even then I still check the Ukraine threads there sometimes.
I agree that TheMotte is a very valuable and unique forum. Certainly the highest IQ general-purpose forum I've ever encountered on the internet. There's no other place where so many people are willing and able to speak eloquently and at length about politics/philosophy from an anti-woke perspective (you can discuss similar topics on 4chan's /lit/ and /his/ boards, but the level of discussion doesn't match what you get here). But I still feel that ultimately, TheMotte would be easier to replace and there are more alternative venues that serve similar functions for me. 4chan occupies a very unique place in internet culture that nothing else could ever fully replace. A lot of small indie projects that eventually got big, started out with just word of mouth on 4chan. It's the central communication network of the counter-culture; it's the last major online forum that isn't fully controlled by the mainstream narrative.
Basically, TheMotte is like a beloved local pub, whereas 4chan is Renaissance Florence. If I had to choose, I'd rather sacrifice the pub than the whole city.
More options
Context Copy link
You have to pick a board and immerse yourself in its subculture. 4chan isn’t exactly monolithic. Engagement is more nebulous, you could try to tripfag but anons generally hate that and a small minority have scripts to block/mute trips.
/lit/erature was good, but I haven’t bothered reengaging with them in years. There is news, /int/ernational, and some more like /his/tory and humanities in which you might find something worthwhile.
Yeah, I'd agree with all of this. In general the larger boards are faster and more meme-ey, while the smaller boards are slower and more thoughtful. Don't expect long essays, but you can still get some thoughtful responses. Find a subject you like, find a thread you like (popular subjects have a regular thread that gets re-created over and over, with the same people and culture). Find one person you like and just talk to them. It's like a big, crazy party where everyone is talking at once, but that doesn't mean all the people there are the same.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The grilling went great. The brats especially benefited a lot from the smoky flavor imparted by the charcoal. Maybe it's just because I didn't cook them as hard as I usually do, but they seemed a lot juicier as well. I had recently cooked the same kind of brats in the oven, using the broiler to char at the end, and it really was a world of difference. Chicken thighs also turned out really well. Pork loin was good, but I don't know if it was better than in the air fryer.
The grill itself is kind of horrible. There are no bottom vents, so if you want to put the lid on, you start smothering the fire (I did it anyway to get some indirect heat after searing). Some ways through the cooking, one of two points the handle was attached by detached. And of course, the darn thing is horribly small, meaning you can only cook a few things at a time, meaning the cook took kind of a long time. Two-zone charcoal seemed to work, despite its size, and despite my not really being able to get an even amount of charcoal on an entire side. Maybe should have left it in the chimney for a little while longer, because some of the charcoal wasn't really lit if it was away from the hot corner.
I like that I can throw random sticks I find in my yard into the fire. I don't know the consequences of this behavior, other than making it get a lot hotter for a minute or so. If I had a larger grill, I'd definitely be doing fajitas on it. Or longer cooking time things like potatoes or chicken leg quarters.
Also I swear that that tiny grill is still way better than the propane three-burner Expert Grill from Walmart we've got. Burners so far apart, I doubt the thing keeps heat very well, and I feel like I can barely sear on it at all. Maybe I should give it another try sometime, maybe I'm wrong. It certainly can keep a lot more food on it.
I have genuinely never seen a grill in any price class (except one time use ones) without bottom vents. Its Not like this is some expensive innovation requiring precision engineering. You just need holes in the bottom.
Even my mini portable grill bought from the supermarket for like 20$ has bottom vents.
I don't know what to tell you, man. My mini portable grill that I dug out of the garage of a relative that they let me have for free doesn't have bottom vents. It's Char-Broil and it looks like this, though it doesn't have any ash tray or anything on the bottom, just solid on the bottom. Your comment makes me paranoid enough to check extra carefully that it's entirely closed on the bottom once I get home.
Just because i haven't seen it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Maybe it's a American thing related to regulations or something.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Congrats! Glad you had success with it. Grilling is a fantastic way to cook, hopefully you had fun as well as cooking good food!
More options
Context Copy link
Did you parboil? The one thing I find a little tough about brats is that if you are grilling from cold, it can be a challenging to make sure they are fully cooked before the outside over-chars. I usually parboil the brats prior to grilling, in a bath of light lager and sliced onions. That way, they're fully cooked when you put them on the grill, and the only thing you have to worry about is imparting the grill flavor and getting the perfect char on the outside for your tastes. As a bonus, you can drop them right back in the beer bath to keep warm, and they stay nice and juicy for hours. And, the onions go great on top.
Agree that a gas grill is really just a gas range that happens to be outside instead of in your kitchen. No comparison.
I did not parboil, in fact, the brats were from frozen. I will have to try the par boil. The onions part of that sounds good, and it makes me wonder if the Oktoberfest brats that I love so much were created with a method similar to this, as some of them had great onions.
There's clearly a lot of benefits to charcoal. I like that they're generally more portable with less moving parts and are significantly cheaper. Generally, I want to emulate the American Dream by grilling away from my wooden porch on some grass. Also charcoal can get a lot hotter. Apparently that's the best way to do wok cooking if you don't have a proper wok burner like a restaurant would. Maybe the best way to do pizza if your oven doesn't like to get up past 500 degrees. Also you get to play with fire, which does a lot for morale.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link