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.
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Notes -
I've got the email that I've been expecting/dreading to show up in my inbox for a while. It showed up 5 weeks in, which is a reasonable duration to wait for antidepressants to kick in.
Well, I'm pleased to say I've passed my MRCPsych Paper B. Only one more exam to go before I'm halfway to being a senior shrink. It's more impressive than it sounds, I hope, because training takes a ridiculous amount of time in this country.
I got the ward sweets. And my colleague the Percy Pigtails I couldn't find last time, when she was having her own mental breakdown with her wedding coming up (or hypoglycemia). I flummoxed her when she asked me if I had ever tried one by asking if it was halal. She actually checked and said it was vegan friendly. I said that I'm fine with that, given that I'm not a Muslim. Poor thing, she's genuinely sweet and sincere and vulnerable to my brand of humor.
Swung by the consultants room before that, and told my CS I'd made it, despite giving the exam in the state he'd seen me in when I was a few weeks into the placement. And offered more chocolate to a cute baby someone brought along, but she was on a liquid diet. Her mother accepted it and promised to hold onto it in her stead, but I have a sneaking suspicion she ate it. Oh well, I can always get more chocolate. And more reasons to get others chocolate.
And of course, I video called my family first. They were happy. They knew their little boy - he's never failed an exam in his life that wasn't at an optometrist.
I had to stay back late at work, because of course I did. But nothing can get me down today.
Your prose has dramatically changed in tone recently (in the last couple months or so). If you’re aware of it, do you know why?
I am aware. If I wanted people to have a front-row seat to my life, as I have in the past, I would have written about it. At most, I let you guys look through the cracks when I open up the blinds.
I will be brief, and vague, because the details are for those who actually know me. Oh dear, on an edit pass, it seems we must settle for merely vague.
Just over 2 months ago, I was a wreck. A high-functioning, white knuckling wreck. But very close to falling apart. Many reasons, all of them valid ones. I do not make it a habit of worrying about what's not worth worrying about. I had my exam, brutal work, a seemingly terminal case of impostor syndrome because I have been treated very badly at an earlier placement.
I would say that I am a reasonably competent psychiatry trainee. I am also unreasonably against seeing a doctor if I can help it. If I was begging for an urgent psychiatric review, you can imagine it was bad. Bad enough to cut through the depression and exhaustion and akrasia and despair and beg for help. I got... not fuck all, something more than nil. Approximately about as much as I could expect from the NHS, which is why I got a lot of blood tests and investigations done on my own dime, on vacation time, before returning to work like a man walking to the noose. And that's why I'm going to be spending a small fraction of my psychiatry trainee wages on appointments with more senior psychiatrists, at some point. That's a circular economy for you.
I realized, to my despair, that I would have to work on fixing my own issues in my own way. It worked, or at least I have avoided ending up on the other side of the couch. And it had a strong helping hand from actual people, IRL, telling me, with actual sincerity and gratitude, that they appreciate me for who I am and what I can do. I won a decent amount of money through a rather challenging contest with big-name panelists you've heard of. Might talk about that one at some point. I am, of course, a finalist in the ACX book review contest. I had/have excellent, talented and supportive colleagues who went out of their way to make my life easier - while showing me they care. I have a good boss, an experience I didn't expect given that the last couple have been useless as an asshole after a colostomy. A rather thankless job, where I end up getting thanked by my patients on a regular basis anyway. I am not lying about the compliments, I have better things to do than make up things on the internet for clout. I have been doing exactly those things.
And, of course, my dreams/hopes/nightmares are coming true. AGI is right around the corner. Am I allowed a "I told you fuckers half a decade in advance?". Is it here? No. But it's gone from knocking on the door to shimmying the locks or preparing to kick down the door. I am not sure I can achieve everything I've wanted to achieve before it kicks it down and makes itself at home on my couch.
So I'm having fun, and making hay while the sun shines. I've been present in reality. The parasocial engagement of arguing with idiots on an Underwater Basket Weaving forum has lost much of its charm. Not all of it, clearly, since I was here yesterday, and show up every week when @FtttG pings me in this thread. As the Scots would say, I cannae be arsed to deal with some of you. Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what makes you cheer.*
I have a job, a social life, responsibility, and a beautiful summer to enjoy and photograph. I was incredibly stressed, running on fumes and quiet desperation till I ran out of the fumes. I'm now only moderately stressed, and grimly determined to have a good time anyway. Life's actually good. Very far from perfect, but I'll take the scenic route. You have seen me severely distressed, close to breaking point, solving my own problems instead of bitching about it, and now doing what I like, when I like it. How queer.
*This is not a personal attack on you, most of the people here are fine. I'd call a handful actual friends. I was just never kidding about feeling sympathetic towards @DaseindustriesLtd when he picked up his ball and went home (or was shown the door for a while, wonder if the ban has expired) . I have no interest in flaming out, I'm not saying I'm going anywhere, but I genuinely do not care about this place as much as I used to. I lack the spare time, or the spare energy, and my Ritalin is well-employed getting me through my job with little spare to write essays on the shitter. My priorities are finally about as straight as I am. Good luck to the rest of you.
I was shown the door, after repeatedly petitioning for fair and non-preferential treatment* and with the clear and not unreasonable suggestion that I'm expected to self-immolate upon coming back. The 90 day ban had expired like 2-3 days ago. I might write another update on the AI competition (like my long-running series on Ascend hardware, given that they're rolling out SuperPODs in July-August, and DeepSeek given that they're finally raised $7.4B…) when there's some alpha. Oh, Cheng Li-Wun's visit to Beijing (and next to Washington) also should have gotten some coverage. And https://europe2031.ai/ in light of the Fable pullback. I think @Stefferi and other resident Europeans might care. Advanced drone warfare reaching Moscow and starting to make inroads in Lebanon… Lots of stuff to talk about. Maybe one day.
Thanks for remembering me, I guess.
Sorry for hijacking, @self_made_human.
If you're interested in what I'm going to write (assuming I won't get banned again right now), maybe you'll see reason to check in from time to time.
*If @Amadan wants to knock me right out again, he's within his rights to do so. I legit was fed up with the mods for this year-long public game of "Oh no Dase, you're such an asshole of course, what a shame, but you're too precious to get banned… or at least you were, long ago… what do, hm? Hmm?!" which invited resentment from the Oppressed User Underclass conjured into existence by the very act of this public distinction. My requests weren't an attempt to suicide-by-cop, I just wanted them to stop it.
Shrug We don't care that you're "fed up" that we mod the way we always have (the principal has been clearly explained, many times- good posters are allowed to have the occasional bad day), but if you really want to insist we treat you the way we'd treat a new user, fine, next time you go off, maybe I will.
Thanks
The ritual with public chiding and howling of Les Miserables is insufferable.
The only one singing "I Dreamed a Dream" is you.
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