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Wellness Wednesday for December 28, 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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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.

  1. Physical appearance. I started balding at 15 and was completely bald at 19. I cannot look myself at the mirror anymore. It doesn't help that I started having chronic pain on the right half of my body for no apparent reason. I used to bench up to 120kg, now I find difficult to keep a bottle of water in my hand. My weight went from 80kg to 120kg beacuse food was the only thing that consoles me.

  2. Intelligence, or better, academic performace. I was always on top on my game until my obsessive suicidal thoughts started popping out 8 years ago. Sometimes my mind calm down, I go take my exams, generally passing with 95+, and, for a brief time, I can see how I used to be and then it starts again.

  3. Social relationships. I think I have more enamored with the idea of having "friends" than actually hanging out with people. I recognize the benefits of being social but I cannot bear interruption to my solitude.

  4. Virginity at 28. That it's easy to explain between ugliness and asociality. And I'm gay - that was supposed to be easier, wasn't it?

  5. Reconciling me being gay with my enormous paternal instinct. I remember since grade school I used to imagine me as a single father raising my children in the best way possible and give them the best life possible. But even if 1 and 4 weren't problems I don't think it will ever happen.

  6. Hopelessness and helplessness. I have high hopes for the future but at the same time I do not believe in those hopes: I know I will never a good job, I will never recover my "smartness", I will never be in shape again. I want to strive for those things but at the same time I'm so tired and just want to disappear.

  7. I've never had a true job but some Math tutoring to pay for expenses. I am very frugal so that's not a problem but I feel such an enormous failure. I used to dream big, and believe in those dreams but the Universe in Its Indifference had other plans. Now I feel that I will not be able to explain myself in a job interview. Joking, I don't think I will ever get one.

remarkable how easy weight comes on .fortunately i got it under control.