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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1759 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 11, 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:

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New Year's resolution check in

  1. Work: Terrible week at work. Boss forgot to plug in the water supply to the fly incubator, so humidifier ended up cooking all our flies, including some stocks that it took me years to make! This sets me back a month or two which is really annoying.
  2. Fitness: 11 hours last week! Started track night Tuesday's again and had a surprisingly low heart rate for what I hope will be my marathon pace in October (workout was 8x 3 min at tempo, I averaged 5:50 pace and my heart rate was around 170, which is right at the edge of Z2/Z3 for me). I woke up a little wrecked this morning and skipped this morning's session: hoping this doesn't compromise volume for the week.
  3. Intellectual Stuff: Finished my first Spanish book this year and HP7 in Italian! Got my blog posts for this month planned, and got another paid subscriber on substack (it's my friend emory so it feels like it doesn't count.
  4. Finances: Going well this month. Earned $400 extra from opening a new checking account at Wells Fargo (guess they want my mortgage) and will be earning extra on cat sitting throughout the month.
  5. Dating: Had a pretty disregulated Sunday as I got super drunk at tavern run (~13 mile run+bar crawl) and ended up bypassing all my controls and masturbating to porn. Decided to pause all my dating apps and focus on building real life connections that may or may not turn into anything.
  6. Screen time on my phone is at an hour/day, despite my binge on Sunday. Need to update my controls to better prevent binging in the future.
  7. No tarot this week. Giving the ex-roomate some space.
  8. Socializing: Tavern run was awesome, always great to hang out with the whole running community here. Otherwise have had a good balance of social activity and rest this week. Would like to host a dinner party this month or next.

How goes it @FtttG and @oats_son? I enjoyed your blog post on rejection quite a bit last week FttG!

Earned $400 extra from opening a new checking account at Wells Fargo

I get these offers all the time and wonder why people aren't taking advantage of them more. I'm getting some for up to $850 at this point (from crappy banks but still).

These take an hour of effort, you can do them once every 2-3 months roughly, and even at this stage in my career I'm not making $400/hour. After taxes it's a bit less but still.

I think there are a few reasons.

  1. A lot of people don't have liquid cash. If you're living paycheck to paycheck you can't do this.

  2. This checking account isn't earning any MM interest. I either need to keep 1500 in there for perpetuity or go through the hassle of closing the account (which also would only take an hour or so). At less than 4% money market it's still worth it to keep the money there after the $400, especially as I can use it to just pay off my credit card every month.

Most of the ones around me require that you set up direct deposit, and avoiding an interaction with my HR department is easily worth $400.

Yeah, changing a DD target is just filling out a form in a web application for me, so if it's lamer than that I get it.

Piggy backing on this post to keep myself honest as well.

My only resolution this year was to be better about my finances. I do better than a lot of people, but I have some trauma and emotional baggage that frequently keep me from doing the optimal thing, even if I know it's the optimal thing.

Current status:

  • Spending YoY so far is about $850 less than last year. I have some big dental expenses coming up, so that's nice to see.
  • Moved 2/3rds of the cash that was sitting fallow in checking in to something that is interest bearing. Some went to my HYSA, and some went to my brokerage account. The brokerage account money is roughly split between SGOV for something I know I'll need in a year and SNSXX for money that is technically part of my emergency fund.
  • I'm taking some of my monthly savings and investing it rather than just shoving it in cash or cash equivalents. This has been brutally difficult to do, but I think I have a strategy that keeps me from freaking out too much. I'm using a core position of VT, with satellite positions in SCHD, VIG, and XLV to keep the volatility under control. I'm sure some of you are absolutely chomping at the bit to tell me why this isn't optimal, but before you do so, please remember that the alternative for me isn't doing the optimal thing - it's not doing it all. If you have ideas for comparable returns with less volatility though, I'm all ears.
  • I increased my HSA contribution and turned on auto investing in a basic VT/BND mix. I probably have too much cash here, but it's what I can do while still being comfortable with it.
  • I published my fourth blog post on Tuesday, a review of Tony Tulathimutte's sophomore novel Rejection (glad you enjoyed!). I was so busy on Monday that I fell a day behind my self-imposed deadline, but as we're in week 7 of 2025 and I've published four posts, I'm technically within the letter of my target of "at least one post every two weeks". I'll aim to publish the next post a day early to compensate. (Incidentally I meant to offer: if you'd like to send me a private link to your posts before they go live just to give them a spot-check, I'd be happy to.)
  • Went to the gym three times last week. Haven't yet gone this week as I was moving house, but planning to go this evening. Can deadlift 1.78x my bodyweight for 5 reps, squat .93x for 10 reps and bench press .75x for 9 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
  • Have completed 7/11 modules in the SQL course.

Once I get settled into our new flat I want to finish the SQL course and start writing the next album, although I think I may need to get my guitar set up as I think there's a bad connection.

Good review! I also recently read Rejection and, incidentally, it came up in my most recent writers' group, with opinions similar to yours. We all loved "Pics", and opinion on "The Feminist" and the closing stories were a little divided. Not that it's a bad story, but that it has to compete with writers like ARX-Han who are both more extremely online and willing to be actually edgy. I think Tulathiamutte is masterful in going right up to the limit of "safe edgy" that the uniformly-leftist literary scene will accept, and so he's able to scandalize without any unacceptable transgressions. He's also just not as convincing in his portrayal of the online world, partly because of that (he can't make the actual incel arguments, hence the need for the "narrow shoulders" thing) and partly because, I assume, he's a bit older, has a social life, and all the other things that stop people from being in weird corners of the internet 24/7.

it has to compete with writers like ARX-Han who are both more extremely online and willing to be actually edgy. I think Tulathiamutte is masterful in going right up to the limit of "safe edgy" that the uniformly-leftist literary scene will accept, and so he's able to scandalize without any unacceptable transgressions.

ARX-Han actually criticised him for exactly this.

Thanks, hadn't caught that post of his.

I will usually post them here first! Thanks for the offer though!

Between that whiskey tasting last week and planning lots of gun stuff, I seem to have not done much in the last week...

  • I was running outside for a couple blocks and slipped and fell on some ice last Thursday and hurt my elbow and my knee. Due to this, I haven't been running. I tried going to the gym yesterday, but I was too tired or something. I walked/tried cardio machines absentmindedly for 15 minutes and then left.
  • I had a very rocky week last week for the diet, with 3 days that I didn't track calories and likely became satiated, but somehow, that hasn't really had much effect on the diet. I weighed 179.9 lbs this morning. I made turkey hamburgers on Saturday that were pretty damn good and somehow stayed within my diet for the day. Rye bread that I toasted on the frying pan and added cheese to and melted on top and added salt. Yesterday I went to Sam's Club and picked up a couple rotisserie chickens; I took off all the dark meat off the bone and froze it. Maybe I'll do the same to the breast meat. I wonder if you can boil rotisserie chicken bone to get more flavor out of it...
  • Anki backlog is DONE. Unfortunately, I haven't really done much Japanese besides it. Learning new words with a clean backlog is good, but I've been kinda tired and too addicted to Tarkov to read much. I kinda dreaded this Wellness Wednesday because I have done a terrible job reading an article every day in the last week...
  • Incredibly, I haven't played Dark Souls III, either. I think reading for half an hour before bed would be good for me and for progress on the book.
  • No tennis, but I did take my Ruger 10/22 to a gunsmith to get a screw out that I had stripped, and he was some old guy who invited me to go shoot trap at the nearby trap shooting club on Sunday. Apparently my apartment lets me keep a shotgun, who knew?

It's Wednesday, but to keep it a Wednesday of Wellness, I shall not attend "Whiskey and Wings Wednesday" today! Too much! I thought there was a trivia night this week, but it's next week. There's a "Primary Candidate Forum for Republicans" tomorrow. That probably wouldn't be very interesting and it probably wouldn't further my social life desires.

Also it's @FtttG. You didn't actually ping him.

I do make stock with rotisserie bones but the stock isn’t as tasty as spatchcocked and baked bones.

It's better than fried chicken stock, at least.

Thanks, man. I'll try giving it a shot. Though I might try freezing it first. The only things I can think to do with chicken stock right now is to either make rice with it or to try a spinach egg drop soup or something.

I was running outside for a couple blocks and slipped and fell on some ice last Thursday and hurt my elbow and my knee.

Oof. Last year I tripped and sprained my ankle, whole thing turned purple and swelled up such that the only pair of shoes that fit me were my Timberlands. Best off just resting and keeping your leg elevated, if you try to exercise on it you'll only make it worse.

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