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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Bonfire of the Insecurities
Next week is the traditional moment for new starts, new resolutions, improving ourselves. Let’s take this moment going in to talk about all the weird little things we worry about in life. The nagging mosquitoes that prick at us when we aren’t aware. Admit, and exorcise.
— My wife is extremely successful, and I do all I can to support her, but I worry sometimes I’ll end up like a penny-ante version of one of those 19th century art adjacent women who get biographies in the NYT Book Review as the muse and aide to a famous artist but her own works are all lost. I love her for who she is and I’m proud of her and I want her to be great at what she does, but in some circles I’m already more Mrs. FiveHour’s husband, even if I’m equally professionally successful in my own circles. I worry how I will succeed as a husband without compromising my self-respect in the long term.
— I’m a jack of all trades and a master of none, and I worry that I’m wasting my potential at anything through a desire to be well rounded. In general my aspiration is to be Heinlein’s Competent Man, but what if I’m just making myself universally INcompetent? I can’t stand the idea of being bad at anything, and that might keep me from ever being great at anything.
— I want to spend more time with my parents, more time with close friends, more time by myself, more time with my wife, more time with my dog, more time traveling, more time at home. Somehow there’s never enough.
— What opportunities have I missed? What will I miss if I don’t wake up and smell the coffee?
These are all absurd and minor in the grand scheme of things, but it’s what I need to be honest and acknowledge before moving forward.
This is primarily why I long so much for immortality and am so confused by those who don't or even actively shun it. I want nothing as much as time, to use wisely, to waste, to share and I want it all at a leisurely pace with plenty of time to recount stories with good friends and family. What better dream is there?
Exactly!!! You speak the truth right here. Plenty of this longing is probably due to insane hustlegrind culture in myself. I’m still bitter that women started working 40 hrs a week and yet we got almost no increase in leisure time. Fucking appalling.
My personal theory is that most people deep down just don’t enjoy life that much. They disconnect from it, cut themselves off from the routine pain of their lives and exist for ephemeral pleasures. They’ve given up and just hope to sort of middle along with small bright spots here and there until they die. They can’t imagine living forever because they can’t imagine their lives getting better, or becoming truly happy.
Can’t say I blame them exactly, but I do think it’s short sighted. Most people have the capacity to be far happier than they are now.
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