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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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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Notes -
Mottizens: do you have a good relationship with your parents? More specifically: do you try to make them proud and live up to values they inculcated in you? Or do you think about failings they had, and try to orient your life toward avoiding those?
Found myself wondering about this yesterday, how in some cases you have children who strive to continue the sort of life their parents led (e.g., multigenerational families I see at church), and in other cases you get total rebellion, children who want to be as little like their parents as possible and adopt opposite positions to what they were raised with.
Thinking about my own case, it's a little bit strange in that it never felt like my parents steered me towards any particular mode of living. I try to be like my dad in certain respects: taking responsibility for things, trying to solve one's own problems with one's own resources, managing money carefully and thoughtfully. My mom is just sort of a pleasant, rather daffy woman who lives a very simple life and isn't trying to impact the world in any way. I observe that neither of them are especially opinionated, and neither am I; they are casual, moderate, Clinton-type liberals and I've gone more conservative, but it's not something we ever fight about - they don't go into arguments about "issues" and don't mind people disagreeing with them. In general it's like they're just sort in the middle of most types of bell curves; even if I were of some rebellious nature, they aren't polar enough about anything for me to take up the opposite pole.
That's... a complicated question that requires a bit of a backstory. In the 90's when the USSR went tits up everyone had to find a new job. My mom managed to make a switch and made a successful career in accounting; she retired this year. My dad did not. He could probably have been a good physicist (he's a MIPT graduate), but long story short, this didn't work out and he started working for various federal agencies, first in IT and then in legal. I don't know why he kept working there.
Anyway, this affected me in two ways. First is my attitude towards money. My mom, being the breadwinner, was in charge of the family budget and she's... very careful with spending. The word "discretionary" didn't exist in our lexicon. This attitude has rubbed off on me. I've gotten better (mostly due to having to compromise with my wife, who's a complete opposite, despite growing up in a much more restrictive financial situation), but I still enjoy bargain hunting too much and obsessively compare prices even of things that should be below my level of attention, like food and random shit from AliExpress. Buying something substantial for myself still feels like some kind of kinky pleasure to me.
The other aspect is masculinity. My dad was the voice of random knowledge (stereotypes about men are true), but not the voice of authority. He was quite capable, as a former amateur boxer and a man with a badge, of defending us in a pinch, but I never considered this as something worthy of emulating. Once again, I don't know why he chose the life of a zoo tiger for himself. Perhaps I should ask him. I guess living in a zoo can sound better than living in the wild: you get free meat, free healthcare, the only thing you surrender is your freedom of movement. Cats love it! I never even realized he himself found it stifling, until I learned some things a few years ago at a family gathering. My parents patched it up, but I think my dad has been completely housebroken by the experience.
The session of impromptu psychotherapy over, where does this leave me? Well, thank God for small mercies, I am in a situation where my own masculinity isn't often called into question. My wife's father died before we met, my only son has developmental issues, I don't have to deal with his neurotypical friends and his fathers. I have a career where my leadership is backed by my experience. My wife is a homemaker. I just need to find the nerve to kick the next tradie that gives me lip out of the house. I fucking sound like Bob Slocum.
Oh, and speaking of values, not driving anyone too hard. My parents didn't try to exploit my precociousness by sending me to a magnet school, enrolling me into seven different after-school classes, or forcing me to get into the MSU or the MIPT. I went to a regular school and delighted every teacher, went to a regular university and delighted every professor, got a regular job and delighted every boss. Maybe I сould've become a greater version of myself via something like 57th-MSU-Yandex, but do you really have to go all-in if you've been dealt a good hand?
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I have a wonderful relationship with both my parents. I strive to live with the values they instilled growing up. My parents raised me Catholic, and I strive to be an active member of my parish. My parents provided all star educational opportunities to my siblings and I that I fear aren't available to truly middle class earners. For failings there are some health and lifestyle choices I know should correct, but fall into the trap of a busy working professional. The love and support from my parents I try to cultivate and grow with my siblings as they a lead their families.
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My father was a workhorse. I have some very good memories of spending time with him as a young boy in his workshop or getting picked up from school but he was often absent, working weekends or double shifts for the extra money and also, I suspect, as a coping mechanism for my mother's infidelity. When we moved to a small town, he was much more physically present but still preoccupied with work. In adulthood, however, he opened up and started talking, and he and I had what I considered to be an excellent relationship before he passed away. My mother, as you may have guessed, not so much. Like problem_redditor*, I also experienced my mother as being controlling, self-centered, manipulative, frequently dismissive, and derogatory towards my father in particular. She and I saw things quite differently, and as a teenager I wasn't concerned with school, college, or career. My only goal was to become independent ASAP. That earned me a measure of respect from her, and once out of the family household I drank the Kool-Aid and spent decades playing the relatively happy and successful child. A little over a decade ago, Dad started developing Alzheimer's, and my wife and I tried to help. As is common in these sorts of situations, all of my family's unhealthiness came out to play during this time period, primarily, my mother's unhealthiness. That almost undid my marriage and I've kept her at arm's distance ever since. She has also developed Alzheimer's and between that and the damage that was done to my life and my marriage, I don't really speak to her anymore.
In navigating life, I've pretty much learned by doing and did not receive much guidance from either of my parents, which is in part a generational thing. That said, I think in a lot of ways my father set a wonderful example for me to follow and I try to do that. He was the kind of guy that spent several years building his own garage/workshop and I'd like to think I have some of that focus and persistence in myself when it comes to the important things in my life, and that his example helps me to believe that I can do just about anything I set my mind to. He also had a pure and loving heart, and I try to live up to the love and acceptance that he was able to show people as well.
*In linking that Wikipedia page, please note that I am referring only to my own mother.
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I am one of the lucky ones. No risk of growing up with anything but a secure attachment style. I have never had a moment when I wondered whether my parents loved me or would pick me first.
Then I went to medical school and discovered that lots of people did not have such good fortune, for all that I took it for granted. Classmates from broken homes. Friends who talk about their parents like cautious diplomats. I remember feeling almost offended on their behalf. If you cannot trust your parents to have your back, who exactly is left?
Scotland has not helped my selection bias. The proportion of intact, ordinary, quietly wholesome families in my immediate orbit feels surprisingly small. I keep wanting to file a quality improvement report for society.
As for the usual question, do I try to live up to the values my parents gave me, or do I optimize against their failings? Yes, although the first part dominates. They taught me the obvious trilogy that turns out not to be obvious in practice: work hard, be honest, treat people with respect. That is not a complicated moral philosophy, but it is a rather reliable recipe to becoming content. My parents are, like every human I've ever known, flawed people. That is not incompatible with them being good people, which they very much are. I'm lucky to have them as my parents.
Culturally I am not particularly Indian. They never treated that as a crime. They are mildly religious. I am aggressively antitheist. Everybody made peace. We have literally never argued about politics. I do not want to. If there is a place I refuse to import culture war into, it is the family group chat.
My father is the canonical example of work as a form of love. The night before a colleague in India asked him to see his granddaughter with an ovarian tumor that needed immediate surgery, so he stayed. Later last night, he did an emergency C section for his nephew’s wife. At the end of all that he still called me before sleeping. It is hard to nurse any pride in my own work ethic after that sort of data point.
Have I been a decent son? Mostly, with detours. The plan is to pay compound interest. Give them grandchildren to cuddle. Raise my kids the same way, with the understanding that the money I make and the effort I spend are more for them than for me. I will consider it a success if my children are half as fond of me as I am of my parents. If love compounds at that rate, the long run will take care of itself.
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Both. My parents are flawed people with some good in them. I have a good relationship with my father, and try to retain a good relationship with my mother, despite having a lot of memories of what I would describe as serious narcissism and controlling behaviour from her directed towards many members of the family (particularly towards my dad, who is probably the most loyal person I know of). At one point it was very difficult for me to talk to her without experiencing a visceral disgust reaction, and I often consciously try to avoid acting like how she did when I was growing up. My politics are also probably the opposite to what hers was then.
Probably the biggest failing they had was anything even remotely relating to academic achievement. They had such a focus on academics that I failed to learn other essential life skills because of just how much stress was placed on it. I was expected to study an undergraduate degree in a subject I really had no interest in at the ripe old age of 12, and getting anything below the very highest grades was treated as failure (upon which point my mother would lose her shit and scream her head off for three hours). The thought of this induced nothing short of primal fear in me, and eventually during a particularly stressful period I ended up developing a chronic inflammatory disorder that resulted in constant, unremitting pain and discomfort.
Even long after I have gotten that degree, after I have recovered from my health issue, after I have progressed on to bigger things, I still think about that whole period of life and shudder. It's all too easy for an attempt to foster an environment that creates excellence to slowly slip into an attempt at forcing one's wishes through, and while I think the former is beneficial, the latter certainly isn't. If I ever found myself taking care of a small human, I would definitely try to do the opposite of all that.
But they had a lot of good values I still try to hold onto. Taught me to avoid substances as much as possible (something I notice a lot of western people are fairly laissez-faire about and which has always weirded me out), taught me how to save and invest, taught me the value of delayed gratification, taught me the value of self-reliance, and so on. My dad is probably also partially responsible for fostering a love of travel and photography that has persisted until the modern day, either that or I'm inherently more similar to him in more ways than I would care to admit. I wouldn't say I try to make them proud anymore and if anything have tried not to care about that, but I do try to live up to certain values they instilled in me.
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I have a good relationship with my parents, but I wouldn't say I particularly care about living up to their values. Maybe it's because their values were generic suburban apolitical secular centrism. They had no clear values to live up to. I had a good childhood and they've been generous now I'm an adult, but growing up there wasn't really a strong culture for us to preserve.
I think I do want to give my kids the same kind of childhood I had, so if that counts then I definitely want to preserve that. But I'd say it's more that I had a good childhood (quite a lot of freedom, being outside a lot, no digital panopticon yet) and I think that would make my kids happy.
I definitely want to have lots of children, which I know will make them happy.
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I have what I think is a very good relationship with my parents. They currently live with my wife and I through the working week, and help care for and teach our children. We attend church together. My father and I take walks in the evening where either he listens to me lecture about the news, or I listen to him lecture about theology and church history. It's a really good way to live.
My parents both certainly have their flaws, but I still consider them a model for myself and for my children. They did their best to filter out their own trauma when raising me and my siblings, and our childhoods were, I think, much better than theirs. I aim to do the same for my children, and try to help where I can with my numerous nieces and nephews.
You are truly blessed to have them in your lives like this.
I'm aware, believe me. We're trying to make the best of the time we have. And at the same time, our family situation would be much worse-off without them helping with the kids during the workweek. It's been really, really good for all of us.
This is lovely. Really beautiful to hear it's working out for you all. It gives me hope for my own kids, if the Lord blesses me.
Thank you for sharing.
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I resent my parents' making me join a zillion stupid extracurricular activities, and don't trust them too much. I had to pester my mother for months before she finally retired on the basis of my calculations showing that she had more than enough money to do so, and even now she whines about wanting to go back to work. I like to refer to my father as "Mr. Untrustworthy" (despite my mother's admonishments), after various escapades over the years:
Using superglue on a model rocket when the instructions told us to use rubber cement
Buying a telescope and using it approximately once
Buying a motorcycle and selling it within a few months
Failing to properly execute a quitclaim deed to a house for multiple years after divorcing my mother, to the point that she had to hire a lawyer
Claiming that the word "blackmail" is racist
Texting to me links with no explanation of why I should click on them
Allegedly converting to Islam
But I can't say that my relationships with them are bad. Call them lukewarm instead.
They told me to wear polo shirts rather than T-shirts, and I have maintained that fashion. While I was homeschooled (through seventh grade), they encouraged me when I developed cool hobbies (reading voraciously, translating English to Latin, folding origami, etc.), and I have continued to develop such hobbies. They speak good English, and I certainly am thankful for that. My father is (or at least was; I don't know his current status) a six-figure bigwig, and I also managed to attain similar exaltation.
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End of Summer BJJ Journey Thoughts
-- Belts are dumb. I've reached the point where I can go with a lot of the blue belts in the gym... by the convenient expedient that the gym recently promoted a whole bunch of guys to blue belt. I'm still barely touching the guys who were blue belts last year, but a lot of the new ones I can roll even with, and some of them I've been catching pretty well lately. I'll say this here on the anonymous internet: there's a couple guys I really don't think should have gotten promoted at all, they're just not that good, I beat up on them consistently. I don't feel like I'm anywhere near knowing enough to get any kind of promotion, and I kind of hope I never do, or at least not for a long time. The belt system invented in Judo has been brilliant marketing, it's been adapted all over the place from the Six Sigma to Krav Maga, even a pretty simple sport like Muay Thai has some kind of fakakta armband system, because it works, it sells, people put in effort to get the belt as a certification of their skill level. The attraction of concrete standards of advancement is irresistible, but on the margins like any classification it is pretty meaningless.
-- More and more I'm trying to find the moves that work for me and hunt them. At first I overindexed advice not to force stuff, and wound up trying to hit the absolute optimal move my opponent was giving me, and constantly trying stuff I only half knew how to do. Now I'm taking more of a flow chart approach, where in every spot I have one or two moves I'm comfortable with that I aim for. And that's lead to way more success, not just with the moves I'm aiming for, but seeing openings appear for moves that I couldn't hit before. For the longest time I basically never hit armbars, I'd try to drop one in and lose it, to the point where I got gunshy trying them because I didn't want to lose postion. Instead now I'm hunting americanas from the moment I get into side control, and in the process I chase them into a position where the armbar is right there on a platter for me. This is probably wildly obvious stuff, but I had to learn it the hard way, because I'm stupid.
-- I've realized that every matchup is decided in half guard for me. I'm actually pretty decent at stealing back half guard from side control or mount, or pulling half guard on the way down when I've lost the takedown battle. And all my passing game is station-to-station, passing to half guard then passing from there. The game gets decided in half guard, if I can escape from half guard to a better position I win, if I get stuck in half guard I eventually lose. So I've been trying to study more half guard techniques and try them out. Part of the problem is again passivity. Just making a point of fighting as soon as I get to half guard to get to a knee shield is a huge improvement, where before I tended to settle in and let myself get flattened. I feel like with a good half guard game, I'll be much closer to my goal of being able to give a good roll to everyone in the gym.
-- My standup game is embarrassing to me. I'm getting good enough to stall for a while, but I'm having very little success getting people down in tough rounds. When I do get anyone down, it's more that they pull guard because I've achieved a dominant position and they want to get it to the ground. I've been doing well with arm drags, and pinch headlocks, but I need to finish. And I've still yet to hit a shot successfully. Another area I need to improve and be less passive.
-- On the bright side, I've come home grinning ear to ear after a few just soul stealing wins over guys who thought they were better than me. On the one hand I'll do anything I can to help this guy out, I give guys rides home, help them move, give stuff away in the gym group chat, I love these guys. On the other hand, there is no better feeling than watching the disappointment and anger fill his eyes after I snatch the ankle lock when he didn't see it coming. Watching someone pack up and leave after falling into the kimura, because they're just so disgusted.
Nice. Stealing those perfect wins is just so satisfying. I'm still riding the high of one particular sacrifice elevator I hit on a dude half a decade ago. I don't even know what I was thinking, I never practice that, but it just happened and all of a sudden I was in mount. I'm about to check out a new gym for my first class in years. Time to get pretzeled :)
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New thread for a different topic unrelated to chairs. I just got a new apartment and the ventilation in here really sucks. Like it is super stuffy.
I've already bought an air purifier, and my air c02 monitor is on the way.
I've already asked the apartment landlords to come in to clean out the vents, because i think that's a big part of the problem. But I would love to get some thoughts here from people who faced this problem in the past.
This is my throwaway comment that isn't an answer to your question, sorry.
I bought an air purifier and an air quality monitor for my house. So much insight! It makes me constantly worry about the air quality in rooms that aren't in my house now.
In the future we'll look back on this time in history and think it's insane that people used to walk into rooms and breathe even though they had no idea what was in the air.
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Need a lot more information
What specifically do you mean by "stuffy" ? hot ? humid? smelly?
When you say vents, what type of vents? Heating ? cooling ? both ? Where do the vents go? Do they connect to an air handler inside your apartment? Or into some shared system? Do the vents have dampers? Are they open?
Have you checked filters on said air handler? Filter could also be on the return (which is a larger vent)
So by stuffy, its a combination of hot and just dusty. But the main thing is it just doesn't feel like there is a large amount of airflow coming from outside, as it just always feels a little hard to breathe and my nose always feel dry. I never had this problem in my old apartment.
As further evidence of air not coming from outside, I'm in San Francisco, and when I walk outside, it be chilly out. And the moment I walk into my apartment I get a blast of warm air, which strikes me as like I'm not getting enough outside air inside. And this was not the case in my old apartment whose temperature mapped pretty closely to the outside temperature.
As for vents in the new apartment, I see a few vents in my apartment, and I asked a maintenance guy if those were vents that came from the outside but due to new management in my building, the maintenance guy had only been working here for 3 days and had no idea what kind of air vents were in my apartment. So it is unclear if these are for heating, cooling, both, or to just have more airflow.
The only thing were fairly certain is there a large Amana AC/Heating unit next to the wall near the outside. Kind of looks like this one on Amazon, we think this air comes directly outside, but we can't confirm it.
As for dampers, I have no idea where to check for that, would that be at the opening of the vent? Or would it be somewhere in the ductwork?
And for filters, we did find some filters on the AC Unit, which we did clean out cause it was pretty nasty, and just generally cleaned out the AC unit writ large. And the air does feel cleaner, but I still don't feel like I'm getting enough airflow if that makes sense.
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I am trying to convince myself that I can recover from a hysterectomy in a week. Two if I am a complete wuss. I need to start doing planks like a crazy person I think. And make sure my surgeon does the surgery in a surgical center because I will lose my mind if I have to spend any time in a hospital. I hate being "sick."
Wishing you the best.
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I'm currently looking into investing into a nice office chair for my work from set up. I'd like to spend at most 500 dollars. Does anyone know what the best chair is for that price range? And I know body type matters, so I'm tall and on the skinny side, if that helps.
Thanks in advance!
I don't know if they ship internationally, but I got a swivel chair from JYSK for 60 bucks and it's served me well for the last year and a half. (Annoyingly it seems like they no longer sell the specific model I bought.)
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Check out Crandall Office Furniture https://crandalloffice.com/
They have refurbished high end chairs in your price range. I have two of the Steelcase refurbs in my home office, both about 5 years old now and going strong.
I've had my butt in Herman Miller chairs most of my pampered techbro office career and can't really tell the difference.
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I would not recommend buying new if possible. Go on Craigslist etc. and find a warehouse with lightly-used office furniture and you can get a high-end Herman Miller or whatever you want well within that budget. Offices offload barely-used expensive chairs all the time, particularly in volatile economic times.
Oh nice, it looks like the key search time is "office liquidation", and one came right up.
I'm going to see if this one can get me a nice chair, if not i'll see if there are others near by. Thanks for the recommendation. I'm going to try this!
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Second this - I bought a new Herman Miller Embody which cost a pretty penny but was absolutely worth it (and has a killer warranty).
You can find them from an office supply store, corporate office selling or tossing its stuff, etc and get most of the benefits for a fraction of the price.
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I don't know about "best", but I can say that I (not tall and skinny, but medium-height and fat) have felt very comfortable in the WorkPro 12000 that I bought for 415 $ four years ago. That specific product is no longer sold, but the WorkPro Momentum appears to offer basically the same features for 470 $, except that its seat is cloth rather than mesh. The FlexiSpot C7 (380 $), the RealSpace Radano (300 $), and an Alpha Home chair (normally 330 $, currently on sale for 187 $) also seem similar to the WorkPro 12000.
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Random question, apropos of being dragged into karaoke night by an overly enthusiastic Scottish lady (the mother of the bartender):
Has anyone tried singing with a bone conducting microphone? A nigh universal experience is that our voices sound so much better in our heads, courtesy of the conduction of deeper frequencies and harmonics right through bone better than air. It's the reason behind "telephone voice" (other than shitty codecs and low bandwidth). I wish others could hear how silky smooth my voice sounds like in here, as opposed to the congested version everyone else is used to.
I wonder what that would sound like, in practise, but I suspect that they're not optimized for music.
I too wish to speak with the same voice I hear in my head. I wonder if impersonators have any special techniques that help them sound like person X to people around them.
Try Charlie Hopkins:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyJrI7fwl_bP2ZUBhVxJpQJgKHf8RX4Or&feature=shared
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Just a lot of recording, playback, and tweaks until you get it right.
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The traditional thing is singing in the bath(room). The tiles resonate nicely for everyone else in the building :)
A family friend was once met in the hotel corridor by a Frenchman who complimented him on his rendition of The Marseillaise; the walls had carried the notes from his ensuite perfectly but thankfully not my friend's words which were his own private tune and began:
"A French-man saaat on the laaaaavatory...!"
This sounds like a tale that ended happily for all involved.
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Should I watch Fallout, the TV show? Did they do justice to the games, including 1 and 2? Is it palatable to woke-allergics?
If I remember correctly it's never explicitly woke, but it fucking sucks. It actually made me yell at the screen multiple times because of how bad the plotting was. Almost all of the characters are utter morons, and the structure of the narrative is awful.
The arcs of the two main characters (Lucy and Maximus) are structured almost like a game, in that the main characters get involved in a whole lot of irrelevant and often stupid sidequests that contribute nothing to the ending - which doesn't work nearly as well when you're operating in a film medium. In addition the characters are hilariously unagentic. They often don't have any control over where they end up, so it feels like they are all just endlessly reacting to what the wasteland throws at them, instead of forging their own path. As a result there's a real lack of direction within the show, and I would say maybe more than half the episodes are unnecessary filler that doesn't directly affect the ending. A huge amount of your time is also spent going over narrative-interrupting flashbacks into the life of a mysterious character called the Ghoul before the bombs dropped. The big reveal that both plotlines build up to is downright nonsensical.
The only plot thread that actually worked for me was Norm's arc, which on paper sounds the least exciting since it all takes place within the confines of the vault. But that subplot actually had a central mystery which was presented in a gripping way, a story which didn't waste much time on random bullshit, and a PoV character who was by far the most agentic, intelligent and likeable character in the show. It was much less bombastic than the main plot following Lucy and Maximus, but it was far more interesting and felt like a completely different person wrote it.
Hmm. Alright. Thanks for replying.
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The ending makes the beginning of the show make no sense, almost like they wrote it as they went along and then never bothered to go back and make sure that it added up.
Also they do the whole capitalism bad thing, while leaving out that the Communists in fallout are also cartoonishly evil and stupid.
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I got about halfway thru S1 before getting bored. There's some girl power/male cuck wokeness in there, but from what I saw, there was nothing too egregious. What really got me, which is wokeness-adjacent or -like but not quite on the bullseye, was a scene showing a couple of apparent-stoners whose apparent job is to hold zombies in cages, who had the protagonist captured IIRC, but then through a set of boneheaded decisions, lets everyone loose in a way that causes the freed zombies to come at them and murder them. They were depicted as having been doing this sort of guard duty for some time, yet they had the attitude and competence of a couple of potheads that were hired on as line cooks because no one else was available that day, so either they should've gotten got a long time before the protagonist encountered them, or they should've been competent enough not to make those obvious errors. The whole thing just reeked of "the universe bends around the (female, headstrong, whose primary flaw is being too stubborn in her ambition and sense of justice) protagonist" to me, which, hey, this is a video game adaptation after all, but it's a video game adaptation.
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You accidentally posted this in the Wellness Wednesday thread rather than in the Small Questions Sunday thread.
Why would it go in SSQS? It's mainly a q about entertainment, not politics.
I chose this thread on purpose because I'm an evil deviant.
Or just because the previous Friday Fun thread felt far away and these non-CW threads don't have strict rules in any case.
Also I could at a stretch try to defend its relation to wellness, because of the concept of going more directly to (small) joys to increase actual perceived life quality a bit; spending more time on quality(?) entertainment and less time on just browsing the internet aimlessly.
The SSQS thread isn't about politics, so that wouldn't really matter.
Friday Fun is more suited for TV questions.
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Is patience the ultimate virtue to try and cultivate? I've been listening to a lot of the endurance guru Gordo Byrn while doing trainer rides lately. His big shtick is the 1000-day, or roughly three year, plan that encourages you to focus on longer time horizons for improvement. The focus of this mainly seems to be with building fitness for endurance sports, but can be applied to a lot of other things like finance, education, and personal relationships (indeed Gordo seems to take this approach with his family too, with seemingly pretty good results). This has got me thinking about my own life and how a more patient longer term view could have served me much better in many areas of my life. I can think of three big examples off of the top of my head.
First with endurance sports. I ran 14:41 for 3 miles at the Illinois state cross country meet my senior year of high-school, which was roughly ten years ago. I got marginally faster in college, up to about that speed for 5k, but haven't gotten any better, and have in fact probably regressed quite a bit since then (can maaaaaybe run a 16:00 5k right now). Part of this is just aging and reprioritizing things in my life, but there's a very real sense in which large periods of injury/illness/burnout has derailed my training because I was too aggressive and impatient and had to completely shut it down because I put myself in a huge hole. Of course it's far from too late, I'm only 27 and have at least another good 8-15 years to continue to improve with a less-aggressive, more balanced and kinder training plan focused on maximizing recovery.
Secondly with my scientific career, my publication record would be much improved and my doctorate would be complete if I had been more patient. I put a lot of pressure on myself to get results NOW, leading to overly complicated failed experiments that didn't produce any data that I could use in my thesis. If I had focused on this long term view (producing things that are real and useful and gradually building that number up over time), instead of trying to impress my bosses at our weekly meetings, I might have enough material to graduate. This is still something I need to work on, and is perhaps not helped by the weekly meeting structure in my lab. Also want to note that my publication record isn't particularly bad: I have one first author paper and multiple 2-3 author papers, and will have two more by the end of my PhD, I just think I could have accomplished this all faster and with less stress if I was more patient and systematic.
Finally, with romantic relationships, as many of you on this forum have probably observed, have suffered greatly from a lack of patience. In high school and college it was an impatience to be "in a relationship" which led me to be with people who were much more interested in me than I was in them. This is still part of the problem, but now there is an additional layer of impatience about wanting to get married and have children, which exacerbates the former problem. I'm both desperate for a partner and unwilling to actual discriminate between those who come my way because I'm impatient to get married and have children.
Contrast this to things in which I feel like I have applied patience. The foremost thing that comes to mind in my life is learning Spanish, which I've been doing consistently for the past 5 years. This past year I passed the DELE and consider myself functionally fluent, although there is still a ways to go in terms of what I would like to accomplish. This success came from the consistent 1-2 hour a day practice in the language. Another example is my blog, where I've slowly built up a following into the low hundreds, just by consistently publishing an article or two a month.
Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk. What has your experience with patience been? Are there error states I should watch out for (i.e. being too patient?).
30ish Gordo more fun than 50ish Gordo: https://gordobyrn.substack.com/p/you-wont-remember
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I'm tired so this post will not be eloquent, but IME it's not just patience but a combination of mental attitudes. Patience is important but it's not everything.
"Commit to Sucking." Life is marathon, not a race. You aren't good at $THING today. You will not be good at $THING today. Or tomorrow. Or next week or month. For some things, like instruments, probably not even next year. Commit to capital-S Sucking at $THING. Realize you will Suck for a while, and just make peace with that. Your run times will be shit. Your violin playing will be shit. Your dance moves will be shit. Get used to Sucking because right now, You Suck. But that's okay because there's good news -- by Sucking every day, you will eventually begin to Suck Less. The only way to fail is to stop trying. If you stop trying you will Suck Forever, a fate worse than death. Few people hate the fat guy in the gym doing his damnedest to bench 1plate. Everyone hates the fat guy on the couch who thinks he's too good to Suck and so makes excuses or does some newfangled get-fit-quick fad diet or workout routine instead of putting in the hard work and humbly submitting to the Suck.
Figure out how to enjoy the process. I hate running, so I listen to audiobooks, buy cool running gear, and run many different routes to not get bored. I hate lifting after a long break from the gym so for the first two weeks I let myself have snacks or little cheat meals after a good workout. I didn't like sucking at my musical instruments, so I learned some fun little songs to mess around with and played them for my kids in between boring exercises. Do whatever you have to do cajole your stupid animal brain into doing $THING instead of scrolling Twitter.
Consistency is key/You're stronger than you think. "Consistency is key" when you are practicing $THING and you're ready to go hard. I usually squat 110kg but today I'm ragin' and I feel like I can squat 130kg CMON LETS GO BABY!! I'm fucking on fire today shredding out this song, I've practiced for an hour but I'm gonna keep going for another hour!! No. Stop. It's a marathon, not a race. Pace yourself. Save that energy for tomorrow's session. On the other hand, "you're stronger than you think" when you're tired. I'm in a bad mood, I don't want to practice my scales or latest song. I only got 4 hours of sleep, there's no way I can go lift today. It's raining outside, I might get a cold. Etc etc etc. You're stronger than you think, just grit your teeth and do it. You can give the Voice of Weakness in your head permission to mentally bitch and moan and whine throughout the whole thing. Just listen to it and nod sympathetically as you go ahead and do $THING anyway while it whines and complains. Just get your daily session in. It's not going to kill you, just do it.
This all sounds like trite self-help nonsense but it legit works for me. I was not consistent or conscientious until my late 20s when I internalized these things. I used to injure myself frequently at the gym and had a billion started-and-abandoned hobbies. Now I focus on a few things and try to take a long view, and I've made good progress over the last few years. Now excuse me I need to get off the couch and go for a run.
I feel like this is some real guidance counselor morality for the motte.
Most people will laugh at people who suck in the gym. It's normal, it's natural. Hierarchy is the basic element of human activity, and that extends to exercise. They might know it's wrong, and might be polite, but pretending people aren't looking down on you when you suck is ridiculous.
In my couple decades of going to the gym regularly, I've yet to see any evidence of this happening. I'm sure it does, because the idea that people who go to the gym are uniquely virtuous and kind doesn't seem likely to be true. But my perception of the culture around people who tend to go to the gym is that they are overwhelmingly positive and supportive, especially to people who look unfit and appear to be inexperienced/incompetent in their exercises. That's been my experience as someone on both sides of that relationship at different points in my life. It's impossible to know for sure, but if someone put a gun to my head, I'd easily guess that less than 50% of people at any given gym would laugh at a typical out-of-shape fat slob who clearly hasn't been to the gym in years but who's genuinely trying his best. Well, except January maybe, when gym rats do get annoyed by the extra crowding that often happens due to new year's resolutions. But that's usually condescension for being less disciplined, rather than mocking for lacking skills/strength.
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I'd be interested to hear other's opinions, because that just hasn't been my experience. When I was a scrawny dweeb wearing an ill fitting t-shirt and cargo shorts at the gym doing all my lifts wrong and at pathetic weights, nobody gave me a hard time. I think I've met a jerk at the gym maybe twice in my life, and both times the interactions were brief and the guy clearly had a screw loose. I've had far more interactions where someone gave me a thumbs up or some lifting advice.
If you're talking about people silently laughing at you in their minds, well, if you're that wrapped up about what people might be saying about you in their minds then maybe you're too neurotic to excel at anything.
If I had to update my OP, I'd add something I often tell my sibling: "You're Not As Interesting As You Think/You're Not the Center of Everyone Else's Universe." The fact of the matter is that most people are the center of their own universe. They are thinking about what they are doing, what they plan to do, the music they're listening to right now, which plates they need for the next set. They're not interested in you, and if they see you they spend near zero seconds thinking about you (exceptions for attractive young women). This is easy to verify. How much time do YOU spend thinking about the completely unremarkable randos you pass by in the street? Probably close to zero seconds. About other people in the gym? In the age of phones I mostly see people listening to music or scrolling, other gym goers might as well be invisible.
So I disagree that it's "guidance counselor" advice. It's a mostly accurate depiction of others' behavior. The only exceptions I can think of might be high school or college gyms, but that's just because mamy people are insecure bullies at that stage of life regardless of whether you suck or not.
You know, funny story
Many years ago now, when I was a skinny lightweight rower in baggy basketball shorts and an honor's college t shirt, at my college gym. I was working on some internet 5x5 system, and these monster powerlifter bros come in and start squatting MASSIVE weights. At least they seemed massive to me at the time, it was probably nothing all that impressive. And in between sets I'm just kind of absent mindedly watching the show, because I'm genuinely impressed by it. And all of a sudden one of these guys turns to me and says loudly to his spotter "THIS WOULD BE EASIER IF THAT SKINNY FAGGOT WOULD STOP STARING AT MY ASS."
Which, to be fair to him, I guess I technically was; but to be fair to me, you're backsquatting three or four plates banging the rack in a public gym, you're sticking your ass out there.
Before I can even get my mind together to say anything, another of the gym regulars I recognized, a big jacked puerto rican guy, decides to stick up for me: "HEY MAN, THAT'S HOMOPHOBIC, MY BROTHER IS GAY, FUCK YOU MAN"
And I'm MORTIFIED now because I'm not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that!, and I'm just trying to get a work out in and fuck I've just been getting more comfortable coming to the gym and now this shit and these two giant jacked dudes are pushing and shoving and I'm just trying to get them to stop it but I don't know how. Eventually they cooled down and I slinked out in shame.
I guess that's the closest I've ever come to being actually actively mocked or shamed in a gym.
I think I phrased my original comment poorly, given the response to it. What I was trying to get at wasn't so much that people will come up and laugh in your face and call you a faggot, I agree you're right that doesn't really happen. This is mostly something that goes on subtly, in people's expressions, or in conversations they have with other people at the same gym. When my wife goes to a yoga class, I know she's looking around the room, she has her competitors she's trying to match, she has the women she CANNOT let beat her, and if she sees one of her colleagues it is ON she is going to hit every bind and balance to show them up. At Crossfit, I know the guys I never get close to, and I know the guys it would be embarrassing to let pass me. When I spend a lot of time in climbing gyms, the regulars know who they climb with, and there's a hierarchy to who is liked and who is ignored. And in BJJ, it's rigidly hierarchical, and we're all super nice and polite to each other, but we all know where we stand. There's the guys everyone fawns over, and the guys everyone tells "hey man you're doing great" after they tap four times in five minutes. I know who the guys are who I target to practice a new sub at an open mat, and I know who the guys are who I need to be soft on and maybe coach a little through the roll.
I don't think it's helpful on the motte, where we're all about ugly politically incorrect truths, to tell people that no one is judging them. But maybe I'm just used to more communal workouts, as those are the only ones I ever do in public gyms.
Hey, fair enough. If you (the general "you") are so fragile that your will is crushed by the thought of some people thinking you suck, then I guess you should probably just crawl under a rock and die because this fallen world is simply too cruel for you to survive. I don't really have advice for those sorts of people, they have set the victory conditions unrealistically high and made impossible for themselves to win. Personally, I think it's a pathetic cope, a way to rationalize and justify wallowing in your comfortable sty of self-indulgence instead of putting yourself out there and enduring some embarrassment ("those meathead powerlifter bros are just a bunch of assholes anyway! going to the gym is for jerks and I don't want to be jerk!").
Some people really do just want to curl up into a ball of self-pity and wither away into nothing. They , like everyone else, have been given free will, and so ultimately the choice is theirs.
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Most people will probably be indifferent towards most strangers they see at the gym, unless they're hogging the weights they were planning to use or otherwise causing issues.
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Yea this is great! Especially connected with the third paragraph! It's important to say no to that little voice that says to go harder and also to that voice that tells you to be more lazy.
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