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PaperclipPerfector  14hr ago (text post)   231 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!

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.

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