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).
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So, my birthday is tomorrow. Any advice for fighting the "birthday blues"? Particularly around feelings of having wasted one's life, being an utter failure as a human being, and yet likely still having so many more (pointless, futile) years ahead to suffer through?
Then continue to be a Useless Tree. Basically, Chuang-tzu's Useless tree is chinese taoist parable about a huge, knotty, gnarled tree which no carpenter wanted to cut since its timber was spectacularly useless. Neither it was useful to make boats or furniture, nor for its fruits or leaves. Etc. While the useful trees were pruned, chopped, or harvested early, that tree's inability to be used for conventional purposes freed it from harm and enabled it to grow large and give shade to people and animals.
The main idea is to demonstrate perspective-driven relativism in values, in which what seems useless by one standard can be extremely useful from another perspective. IOW, the useful value in being "useless." If you feel (or the society makes you feel) useless from the (destructive) POV of usefulness to society, then this story should give you a different perspective. There is absolutely no need to conform to externally imposed standards of utility or productivity (which you may have internalized). On this birthday, it would be good thing to ponder about.
Regarding the future years, float with the current. You are not going to reach anywhere in the end. So, why to struggle? Don't suffer seriously. Have fun. Enjoy.
There is no fun. I enjoy nothing. My existence is suffering, whether I struggle or I "float with the current." My suffering will only end with my death. The only reason to keep living and not kill myself is if there's some purpose to be achieved in doing so.
So be it. Everybody's suffering (or whatever equivalent) is going to end by their respective deaths. Nothing new in that. But you can meanwhile change the way of suffering.
Since you are in for winters in a temperate/snowy place, why not suffer for 1 month (or 1 week minimum) in some sunny tropical place, just taking in the sun. No other goal, no need for tourism, no need to do something or achieve something. Complete free, unorganized, wandering. Pick a simple (cheap) B&B kind of place and go out all day - come back in night - sleep - repeat (go in to the markets, beach, anything).
I get that most people on the motte are upper-class enough not to really understand what "poor" means, but what part of "I'm dirt poor" is not getting through?
I can't afford any of this. After rent, utilities, and food, I have maybe $100 left for everything else. Soap and hygiene. Cleaning products. Foil/plastic wrap/etc. Toilet paper. Facial tissue. Laundry. Clothing. Transportation.
(And it looks like I'll be screwed by 2026, if not earlier, because when the rent subsidy goes? I'm homeless.)
because I didn't get that in the original post. I apologise if you feel hurt by the suggestion, but it was not my intention. My intention was just that you get sunlight and not stay in a snowy area.
maybe you need to look at MMM or ERE to get help in how to navigate with poor income.
What is your actual income level?
Sure; I suppose it's just that I've posted here often enough about my situation — disabled, unemployable, living entirely off government handouts — that I took a certain familiarity with it for granted.
Not doable with Social Security's restrictions on savings: I'm not allowed to have total financial assets exceeding $2000.
Not counting the rent subsidy or what Medicaid pays for my prescriptions, and just the money I (or rather, my representative payee) receive from the Federal and Alaskan governments? Approximately $1300/mo.
JLF does it at much lesser amount. You need to go through the ERE forums. $15k a year excluding rent and medicaid is not dirt poor, imo.
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