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Wellness Wednesday for April 29, 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 tenth blog post of the year last Thursday, an analysis of Chinatown and Spec Ops: The Line I originally wrote for Scott's everything-except-book review contest.
  • Went to the gym three times last week. Have yet to go this week, as yesterday morning I suddenly got a horrible pain between my shoulder blades which has yet to dissipate. Can deadlift 1.84x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.15x for 7 reps and bench press .87x for 6 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.

How goes it, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @falling-star, @Tollund_Man4 and @self_made_human?

  1. Work. Finishing up my second first author paper!
  2. Fitness: Still recovering from the marathon/think I got sick so mainly walking and trying to run a few times a week right now.
  3. Intellectual Stuff: Plugging away at After Virtue. Beginning to meditate once a day for 15 minutes (only did this once this week, but want to make it into a daily habit.
  4. Finances: Third roommate is still not locked down, but we have multiple seeing the house today. Spending is still very low this month.
  5. Dating. Facetimed with this girl I met in Spain last Saturday.
  6. Tarot. No session this week
  7. Socializing: Spanish happy hour and potluck
  8. Screen time: 2.1 hours phone (train)
  9. Mental health: anxiety is back baby!

Finishing up my second first author paper!

Congrats, always a huge accomplishment.

Still recovering from the marathon/think I got sick so mainly walking and trying to run a few times a week right now.

Just reading up and seeing that we were both at Boston! Congrats, even though it wasn't the day you wanted, that's still a solid bit of late race management. I was ~10 minutes slower, a shade over 2 minutes positive split, and my quads have never felt so awful during a race that actually went pretty well. They weren't kidding about those downhills eventually adding up to quite the tax.

Congrats! That's a real solid time, hope you auto qualified for next year!

I'm looking forward to Chicago in the fall where it'll be completely flat. Hoping to feel a lot better in miles 20-24 (miles 24-26 are always terrible).

Yep! I am sufficiently old that it's an easy and clean qualifier. I'm not sure if I want to go back straightaway or head somewhere a little smoother next spring. I'm coming off three marathons in 11 months and my current inclination is absolutely to shift gears for a bit and hit the track over summer. Part of me wants to go back to Boston immediately because it really is an incredible course, but the other part of me just wants something straightforward and fast like Glass City. Luckily, we don't have to make that decision till September.

Chicago's great! Have you run it before? The logistics are so much simpler than Boston if you stay downtown. Easy walk to the start line instead of a bus ride and meandering around for an hour.

I have not, but the parents still live there so logistics should be much easier.

Boston is my default every year now because all my MIT alumni track friends do it so it's a good way to stay in touch. It is unfortunately at an annoying time of year (I wish it was a bit later or a bit earlier) which makes it hard to do other fast marathons.

Yeah, I think the Boston decision next year is going to come down to how many club friends I have going. If we have a solid group, I'd love to go again. If it's going to be largely a solo activity for me, I'd just as soon time trial something simpler and faster in the Midwest.