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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   1839 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 30, 2025

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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What are your go-to strategies for making small talk with "normies"? I was working alone with someone high-ranking for a couple hours with lots of downtime and she asked me about my hobbies. Without thinking too much I answered truthfully (foreign languages, science/math/history). I might be overthinking it, but I think most of my hobbies being essentially studying left a weird impression.

  • Football and other spectator sports
  • Running/lifting/biking and other participatory sports
  • Beer/whiskey/cigars
  • Grilling/meats/cooking
  • Travel

Perhaps I am simply a normie.

Talk with them how the world is going to hell and agree with them. This is what everyone is thinking, they just differ about the reasons.

It's because we live in a broken and fallen world corrupted by sin.

See - it is already working

😊

Talk about kids. I assume you don't have kids, but you can talk/ask about theirs. If you can mention being an aunt/uncle in relevant ways, then you've made a good conversation.

If they don't have kids, then they probably have a pet that they treat like a kid and you can talk about dogs/cats.

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