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Wellness Wednesday for May 6, 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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No email address required.

  1. Work. Job interview went well, although I'm not sure the start date is going to line up how I hope. Otherwise, wrapping up the resubmission for second first author paper (some drama there), and plugging away on my final paper.
  2. Fitness: Started running again, and going to start Norwegian singles/doubles next week.
  3. Intellectual Stuff: Plugging away at After Virtue. Discussed the Pacific War trilogy with my friend Dylan last night which was also very fruitful. Meditating consistently at least once a day now.
  4. Finances: Third roommate is still not locked down. Spending last month was only 2.6k, which led me to have an almost 30% savings rate!
  5. Dating. Nothing to report.
  6. Tarot. No session this week
  7. Socializing: Spanish happy hour and watching the Kinetic Sculpture race
  8. Screen time: 1 hour phone! Now do my PC haha.
  9. Mental health: feeling excited

How goes it @FtttG, @self_made_human @bird_crombie @falling-star @Tollund_Man4 ?

Spending is $990.72 higher than it was at the same time last year. Almost all of this difference is due to the dental bills and home repair/maintenance bills that I've racked up this year.

I do have some additional non-standard spending on top of that:

  • I prepaid for my annual pest control bill that keeps my house from getting destroyed by carpenter bees, since the company offers a discount.
  • I took my brother and his girlfriend out for a belated birthday lunch.
  • I went out with my partner and got us some Mexican.

On the bright side, I negotiated a $10/month discount with my ISP. It's not much, but it's not nothing.

It's frustrating that I can't really get ahead compared to last year, but I'm also glad that I've been making the effort. I'd probably be cashflow negative for a few months already if I hadn't made this resolution.