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Wellness Wednesday for January 28, 2026

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).

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

New Year's resolution check-ins

  1. Work: Have my committee meeting at the end of February, and realizing I haven't done that much on my primary project in the last six months so am panicking a bit. This has the positive side effect of making me work more, which I need to do.
  2. Fitness: hit 11 hours this week past week (10- dancing), which felt great, although I need to do a bit better job of eating slightly more food. Down week this coming week (~8-9 hours, including dancing). Need to make sure I start getting in strength training again. If all goes well I'll be able to XC ski this weekend for a few hours, which will be awesome!
  3. Intellectual stuff: feeling very overwhelmed on this angle: I've committed to do my clubs/projects. Going to turn my Italian class into an audit which should help, and finishing up Marx in a few weeks. Look out for an Outlive effort post today or next week!
  4. Finances: On track for this month financially! Did most of my taxes, although am waiting for the 1099 from my investments to finish up. I owe much less than I thought (only about 2.5k), which is big because I can put a bit more into my IRA!
  5. Dating: Locked down my devices pretty hard: I can't get to porn sites, only fans, or even stare at instagram or photos for more than five minutes. It has, perhaps unsurprisingly worked, and I've been porn and masturbation free since last week. The hot Argentinian women just wouldn't even engage with me over text (like was just giving complete non-answers to my questions, and we were talking in Spanish!) so I lost interest. If she reaches out to tell me she wants to go on a date I'll give her a shot, but I'm not interested in putting in effort.
  6. Tarot continues to go well. Ex-roommate quit his job (terrible financial decision, but great for his mental health), so we had a pretty great conversation this week.
  7. Screen time. Due to the adult content and other restrictions, my screen time on my phone plunged to 90 minutes. This week I expect it to be around an hour. It is still quite high on my computer, but that is because of the large amount of computer work I am doing at work!

How goes it @FtttG and @oats_son

  • Posted my third blog post of the year on Monday, listing all the books I read last year and which of those I most enjoyed (expanded from a comment I posted here).
  • Went to the gym three times last week, then again on Monday evening. Planning to go at lunchtime today. Can deadlift 1.75x my bodyweight for 5 reps, squat .88x for 12 reps and bench press .72x for 9 reps.
  • Have not consumed any alcohol, fast food, fizzy drinks or pornography since waking up on January 1st. When it comes to snacking between meals, I have failed absolutely.
  • Have completed 7/11 modules in the SQL course.
  • Have practised guitar for roughly one hour every day since January 1st.

The hot Argentinian women just wouldn't even engage with me over text (like was just giving complete non-answers to my questions, and we were talking in Spanish!) so I lost interest.

No point pursuing it if she's not putting in the effort. It's funny though: some people are very good at expressing themselves, but hopeless when it comes to texting. The fact that she's responding in monosyllables doesn't necessarily mean she's not interested. But yeah, don't waste your time.

Also – is it "Argentinian", or "Argentine"?