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Wellness Wednesday for March 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:

  • 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 resolutions check-in:

  • Posted my sixth blog post of the year on Monday, about how it absolutely is a lie for journalists to describe the perpetrator of the Tumbler Ridge shooting as a "woman" without any qualification. Expanded from several comments I posted here arguing that exact point.
  • Went to the gym three times last week and again last night, planning to go again this evening. After three sets of deadlifts at 1.8x my bodyweight, my lower back was very stiff for the rest of the week. This has been a recurrent issue and there's obviously something fundamentally wrong with my deadlift form, so my plan now is to go down to a much lower weight so I can correct it, then steadily work my way back up. Can deadlift 1.8x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1x for 8 reps and bench press .85x for 6 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.
  • Have completed 9/11 modules in the SQL course. Planning to do the tenth this evening.

How goes it, @thejdizzler and @birb_cromble? (Incidentally if any of you no longer want to be pinged every week, just say so.)

My resolutions were to quit nicotine, alcohol and video games.

I haven't succeeded at any of them, but I'm a bit bored of videogames right now, nicotine pouches are being banned in France next month so that'll force the issue, and I'm drinking more often but less heavily so the hangovers have stopped being an issue.

I think I've already got some good positive habits that I do automatically if I have the time but they're all downstream of not having a messed up sleep schedule, and the above 3 things are the main contributers to that.

You want to go completely teetotal, for good?