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PaperclipPerfector  19hr ago (text post)   463 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 18, 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).

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New year's resolutions check-in:

  • Was moving last week, and so didn't manage to get to the gym until Thursday. I went again on Friday, and during my second deadlift set I managed to throw my back out. I'd mostly recovered by Sunday morning, and decided not to push myself too hard and just did some cardio instead. Went again last night and was sure to do some stretching before deadlifting: the first three sets were absolutely fine, but after the fourth set I started to feel a little twinge in my lower back, so decided to stop there. Can deadlift 1.8x my bodyweight for 4 reps, squat .98x for 8 reps and bench press .77x for 7 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
  • Have completed 7/11 modules in the SQL course.

@thejdizzler, @birb_cromble and @oats_son: you're up.

Oh man! Deadlifts are a little scary. Glad to hear you're mostly fine.

  • Diet is still going okay, though I did order a bunch of takeout yesterday to celebrate Chinese New Year. I asked if they knew how to make mapo tofu while I was at it; they did. I weighed 177.6 lbs yesterday, 179.0 lbs today. I would do some cardio or go to the tennis club now that I've got a racket, but now I have a cold. Lame.
  • I have not been very consistent at keeping the Anki reviews down, and I still am pretty bad at doing an article a day. I think an article a day might be a little ambitious... My level is low enough that native news articles' grammar is really confusing without looking anything up, and I have to use my popup dictionary several times every sentence. Part of me wants to go back to Comprehensible Input. There are a lot less words I don't know, and 4 hours a week is usually pretty achievable, and if I do a lot in one day, my brain makes random Japanese sounds, which is kind of cool. Another thing that could help me with the actual stated goal of a news article a day is perhaps some time tracking. I don't have the patience to track sentence comprehensibility, but time tracking could be easier.
  • It's been a week since last time, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. This weekend was a blast for the gun stuff I was doing, but otherwise, I've had a bad habit of making food and then taking a 3 hour nap, and then inevitably having to get up to do stuff like brush my teeth or do Anki and then playing Tarkov while I'm at it. On the other hand, sometimes I'll get in 3-hour calls with Discord friends and not really have any time to do anything else.

There was a trivia night this week, but I should probably skip it. I have a headache and I keep coughing and sneezing.

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