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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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Notes -
New year's resolutions check-in:
How goes it, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @falling-star and @Tollund_Man4?
No progress between the last post and this Wednesday (St. Patrick's Day), doing well since.
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Spending is $1,743.64 less than this time last year. The terrible weather has been helping with that.
Monday is the big dental appointment, which is probably going to cost about $4,000. That's going to wreck my progress for a while. I'm trying to decide if any insurance reimbursement that I get next month should be subtracted from spending or considered income.
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Good blog post dude.
Work: Started writing my thesis last week. A bit overwhelmed with experiments/planning. Need to do less each day.
Fitness: 11 hours last week, had a great workout this morning. HRV is still a little depressed so gotta make sure I take my recovery days easy.
Intellectual Stuff: Limiting myself to one YouTube video and one blog post a day. Focusing on US history in English, and reading fiction in the Spanish and Italian. In the spirit of Cal Newport trying to only do one of these each day (Spanish, Italian, history reading) and give my full attention to it.
Finances: Expenses are really low this month. As detailed in the main thread, sold quite a bit of my index funds and stocks and put the money into a combination of American oil stocks and CDs. I exaggerated a little the scale of the sale: I still kept most of my shipping and rail stocks, as well as Ebay, Takeda, and ADM, the later of which are a Pharma and farming company respectively. Parent's still haven't figured out how to transfer me shares, but they are going to the brokerage next Tuesday. Once they do and there is more clarity on the Iran situation I'm going to buy my friend's 2005 Toyota Camry for $1,000 or so.
Dating: Met a girl at my friend's thesis defense party and we got coffee on Sunday. First time I've had fun on a first date for a while. She's moving to the UK for a PhD in the fall, but we'll see where it goes in the next few weeks.
Tarot: Didn't do this week.
Socializing: Saw Hoppers last night, Workout Wednesday, and my friend Simon is coming to stay this week Screen time: 1.4 hours.
Mental health: have been very anxious for some reason (probably overwhelmed with different goals), so want to work on this. Taking Ashwaganda helps, but also think I need to stay away from arguing with people on the internet.
How are the shipping stocks doing so far? I've been curious about that
I'm up 200% on $ZIM, which I bought for the Dividends back in 2023. They are supposed to be sold at $35/share at the end of the year to a German shipping company so will make even more money if I don't chicken out and sell before then. My other large position is $SB which mainly runs a Panama Canal route. They're doing pretty well too. I also have $KEK which makes river barges for oil transport and $TNK, both of which have been getting bodied by the war.
Based.
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Oh, hell, new year's resolutions? Mine's always the same - compete in as many HEMA tournaments as I can afford.
I'm currently scheduled to participate in two longsword competitions in May. There would've been another in April, but it's tied into a larger multi-day event that ends up costing far more than my budget allows. A friend suggested the London open longsword tournament, but that's completely out of scope. There should be more later this year, and I really have to go and do my due dilligence in checking up on which ones, where, for how much, and when the applications open.
As far as preparations go, meh.
I still don't have any formal training I can go to with any regularity (driving 3-4h at hours I would normally sleep at, just for 2-3h of technical training, no way.), I missed the full-day open fencing day last month because I was still recovering from surgery, which is a shame, because it was me who instigated that particular event in the first place, but that's what I get for handing it off to others. I could go to sparring meetups on weekends, but that's still 3-4h of driving and would ultimately take up most of a weekend day, and the family does not look kindly upon me being gone all week for work and then also absent on weekends.
I'm working a little more on general fitness. I have been climbing stairs very aggressively. I considered swimming again, but decided against it because the local pool is cold as hell and swimming is boring. I took to doing some very aggressive 20-minute bike rides, set the goal of climbing the hill I live on via bike in one go, and made it. Since then I've somewhat slackened on biking due to worse weather, but it's improving and I should pick it back up again. I started doing regular kettlebell curls, but my strategy of "just do one set until failure whenever it occurs to me", which ends up being 2-4 times a day, is probably not ideal. Kettlebell swings similarly, but I put those on hold due to knee issues. Calisthenics, with squats, burpees, lunges, pushups, legraisers etc. I also do on a "whenever I feel like it" basis, picking exercises based on whichever parts of me currently hurt the least. All of this is admittedly very haphazard, but I'm seeing some improvements, though surely not what they could be, so I'll claim a solid better-than-nothing. The wife and I are also planning to sign up to a gym, but I wouldn't bet on that materializing.
For the technical side of things, since I'm not getting anywhere for actual HEMA practice, I signed up for a trial run at a local jujutsu club. I intend to go there tomorrow evening. Curious to see what it's like. If it ends up being a dud, I'll probably take another stab at the nearby BJJ/Kickboxing/MMA. I'd prefer the club in principle, because it's a lot cheaper, but I'll see. I'm plannning some longsword drills for this afternoon, but I need an actual place to do them in! Right now I'm looking at a stretch of dirt road in the woods in between the shooting club and the garbage dump (sorry, the "valuable materials yard"), but not sure if it's ideal. I'm halfway inclined to just do it in the local park and maybe even attract potential sparring partners that way, but that's a very long shot since I have negative charisma and no second set of protective gear, and with a little bad luck I'll just get picked up by the police.
Six weeks until the first tournament. It's in high hayfever season, but I picked up new antiallergens that are supposed to not cause fatigue. A fellow fencer also recommended those, so I have high hopes. Last year in the same tournament, I ate antihistamines like candy and ended up so drowsy I got myself beaten by a little girl. Would prefer to avoid that outcome this time.
Doing competitive niche martial arts in the countryside with no budget, no fitness, no idea of what I'm doing, and getting too old for it. Yes, this is the life.
I'm not quite sure of the maximally aggressive way to climb stairs. I have this image of a Teutonic figure ein-drei-zwei-ing his way up and down 10 flights for half an hour, moustache bristling, possibly with a longsword slung over his shoulders.
Two steps at a time, pushing off with the back foot in imitation of a lunge, and starting the next one as soon as the lead foot lands. Moustache bristling indeed, but no longswords at work (no stairs at home, but plenty in the office). And it's eins-zwei-drei.
Duly noted. It's one of those terrible language things where the correct answer appears in your mind and then you think, 'hang on, I remember getting this wrong before,' and then you swap it round and you get it wrong and the whole ghastly cycle repeats.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Honestly, this shouldn't be so difficult. One-Two-Three and Eins-Zwei-Drei are clearly related, after all. Can't you heard the similarity?
Yeah, I see it. Will do better next time :)
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Congrats, it sounds like you’re doing well.
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