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PaperclipPerfector  12hr ago (text post)   166 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 31, 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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New Year's goals/resolutions.

  1. Work: I had a huge surge of success right before I left for break, so I'm feeling optimistic about finishing my PhD this year. I probably won't graduate until May 2027 still, but I hope to have all the experiments done by the end of this year.
  2. Fitness: Every year I keep saying I'm going to try high volume training and never actually do. I plan to build up to 15-20 hours a week of training, 1-2 of those being mobility work, 2-4 being in the gym and the rest some form of aerobic exercise (swim, bike, run, row).
  3. Intellectual stuff: I want to focus on improving my Italian this year, and having a more professional approach to writing on substack (drafting and proofreading posts before I publish them).
  4. Finances: I have a system I'm happy with set up for investing (1/3 bonds, 1/3 index funds, 1/3 speculation, in retirement account it's more like 1/6 bonds, 2/3 index funds, 1/6 speculation), but need to work on budgeting this year. My sister (who lives in the UK) earns about the same as me, but is able to travel almost every month because she budgets better than me (she spends the money I would invest on travel). For me this means probably reducing sport related expenses (less races, not getting injured and having to go to PT), reducing travel, and limiting eating out to once a week.
  5. Dating: I think I'm going to be celibate for 2026 and put my energy into other areas of life.
  6. Spirituality: Will continue to practice tarot with my ex-roommate over zoom, and want to get into a breath work practice.
  7. Health: After reading This is Natto, I'm way less concerned with trying to optimize my health, which I think paradoxically will make my health much better. I will continue to track HRV and RHR for training purposes, but otherwise just listen to my body.
  8. Community: My tarot draw for 2026 was the three of cups, which is the card of fellowship/community. I want to cook for a friend at least twice a month this year, and hold a social gathering and my house or a third space at least once a month.
  9. Via negativa: All of these goals are going to require time to complete. Some of this is going to come from not tossing and turning in my bed trying to get extra sleep. The rest is probably going to have to come from reducing digital distractions. I'd like to reduce my phone screen time to less than an hour a day by the end of the year. I'm going to do this by adding micro anti-habits every month. The first of these is to batch respond to texts only twice a day in the morning and the evening and otherwise not respond.

In no particular order:

  1. At least one blog post a fortnight. As soon as I post something on my blog, the clock starts ticking for the next one, which must go up no later than two weeks thereafter.
  2. Gym at least 3x per week. With a view to being able to bench-press my bodyweight, deadlift 2x my bodyweight and squat 1.5x my bodyweight by the end of the year. As the new year begins on a Thursday, if I go to the gym twice between now and January 5th I will count that as a success.
  3. Dry January. May extend. The clock starts ticking from when I wake up on January 1st i.e. I can have a few drinks after midnight tonight.
  4. No fast food in January. Eating home-cooked meals wherever possible, may permit myself one date night in a restaurant. May extend this one past January.
  5. No snacking between meals in January. May extend.
  6. No porn. For the entire year. And as little masturbation as possible.
  7. Get SQL certificate. I found a free online SQL course which, upon completion, you get a certificate. I've been putting off doing it for well over a year at this point.
  8. Write, record and release album #2. The debut came out in January of this year and I'm pretty proud of it, though there's definitely room for improvement and I have lots of ideas for the follow-up. My plan is to spend January practising guitar for an hour every evening, and listening to heavy music for inspiration, then take a week off work in February to write the album, and record it in the following months.
  9. Increase earnings. Either get a new job with a 17% (or more) bump in salary; or failing that, stay in my current job but request a raise. By the end of the year, if I'm in the same job but making 10% more than I currently am, I will mark this one as a success.

Would you mind linking to your blog? (EDIT: nvm found it in your bio)

Let's keep each other accountable on porn/masturbation!

Good idea. When you say "celibate", are you including masturbation?

By celibate I mean no masturbation, porn, or sex with women (or with men I guess too, but I'm not into that). I think this will also probably be easier with no dating as well, but I'm not sure if I want to commit to that.

Wow, I assumed you just meant no sex. Doing nofap on top of that sounds challenging, I commend your ambition.

Out of curiosity, supposing you meet the woman of your dreams next year. Would you ask her out, or wait until 2027?

I think doing the whole kitten-caboodle will be easier for me, as fapping tends to make me quite lustful.

I would ask her out probably and stop being celibate after a few months if we get along really well. I think it's a bad idea for me to have sex with a woman too quickly in a relationship. I've gotten trapped in relationships before because I'm too addicted to the sex and feel like I owe it to the woman because I've already slept with her.

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