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PaperclipPerfector  16hr ago (text post)   256 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 8, 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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New Year's resolution check-in:

  • Still on holiday and so haven't been to the gym. Can deadlift 1.84x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.28x for 6 reps and bench press .87x for 6 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st. Nearly at the halfway mark.

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

Spending is $2,916.38 lower than this day last year. Once the home repair bill goes through this month, I'll probably be even. I hate that I keep losing progress, but at the same time, I've dealt with some very expensive medical bills, home repair costs, and travel due to illnesses in the family without having to cut my savings. I guess I can fall that a win.

It might help to think of the net spending tally not as "progress", but as "a (rough) estimate of progress". There are enough significant one-off events that the error bars are likely larger than the expected savings on timescales shorter than multiple years. As I see it, you're likely to be in one of two scenarios (which one is TBD):

  1. This year's expenses are anomalously high -> Spending carefully will reveal its fruits in future years, and it's just by chance that they're not visible yet.
  2. This year's expenses will be typical going forward -> Spending carefully allowed you to weather them without tapping savings, which under this scenario would be ruinous in the long term.

Either way, you're better-positioned than you would've been in the counterfactual world where you hadn't adjusted behavior, and I would concur with your gut that it is quite the win.

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