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Wellness Wednesday for July 15, 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:

  • Published my sixteenth blog post of the year on Monday, a review of ARX-Han's Incel, lightly edited from a comment I posted here.
  • Returned from my holiday on Saturday evening and went to the gym on Monday evening. Can deadlift 1.89x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.32x for 6 reps and bench press .89x 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?

  1. Work. Still in this UK class, having a great time. Becoming Europilled.
  2. Fitness: Mileage suffered a little with travel last week but still did 40 miles and 1x tempo session! Back to normal this week I think. Saw the lowest heart rate I've ever record this week (39).
  3. Intellectual stuff: finished Blood Meridian finally. Terrible book, I think both Game of Thrones and The Dark Tower books do the theme much better. Learning loads of language/other stuff from my European colleagues.
  4. Finances: Not even thinking about this until the end of the month.
  5. Dating. I've very quickly redeleted my dating apps again. Not helpful
  6. Tarot. No session.
  7. Socializing: Been very social in bath
  8. Screen time: 2.5 hours, but makes sense given travel!
  9. Mental health: Pretty good, although lots of anxiety on this travel trip

Forgive me for this:

A Game of Thrones is the novel, first book of the series A Song of Ice and Fire. Game of Thrones is a TV show.

I'm surprised you compare The Dark Tower favorably to Blood Meridian. I haven't read the latter, just The Road, so I'm no McCarthy truther, but The Dark Tower was incredibly underwhelming when I read it, and I was baffled it had the following it does. From my recollection, and this was fifteen years or so ago, The Dark Tower had only two good characters (Gunslinger and Man in Black) across two and half good books in it before it just falls apart at the seams and descends into nonsense. Yes, this includes the author insert and the demon-baby. I liked Roland's backstory, but it really didn't do much for the later books, and the suspension of disbelief eventually failed me.

It's the only King story I've ever read, and it didn't leave me wanting to read more. Maybe I need the Stand, or It, or something else, but it just didn't stand on its own very well, and ultimately didn't live up to its promise. Maybe if I had read it when I was a teenager, I'd feel fondly about it the way I do about The Wheel of Time.

I will give King credit where due, there aren't many better lines in fiction than, "Go then, there are other worlds than these."

The Dark Tower had only two good characters (Gunslinger and Man in Black) across two and half good books in it before it just falls apart at the seams and descends into nonsense.

100% accurate. The first 3 books are King at his drunk, coked-out, manic energy finest (I think the 3rd one was the last book he wrote before going to rehab). They are insane in many fun ways. Nothing after that lives up to the first three.