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).
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I've been attempting to cut back on algorithm driven internet content for a while now. I go on big "quit reddit" streaks every few years but lately I feel that youtube and twitter have become just as bad of default behaviors. And its genuinely possible i'm defaulting to scrolling over living my life.
I am one week into my digital fast. Its easier to call it that rather than say "I'm giving up twitter/youtube/reddit" forever. I've had 24 logged slips, none longer than 15 minutes and most of which were 1-2 minute headline cruises of google news. the technique I'm trying is to have a project in codex where I log slips. Interestingly, although youtube is the thing that takes the most time, it is has been the easiest to resist, only one slip. Twitter is the one I really crave. Feelings: Bored, irritated, lonely. Strategy: logging to codex/chatgpt when slips happen, usually after I close them but once when I couldn't close twitter. It suggested standing up and then I was able to close it, for some reason. I've attended two ITAA meetings*. Locking my phone in the food safe a couple of times. Outcomes: I've been to 2 meetups with strangers (HARD!), to the gym twice (great!) and watched two movies. I've also finished two or three novels but that is normal.
Goals: to reestablish the quality of social life I had pre-pandemic in terms of local friends. Right now I have 7 people I do activities with. Only one of them is a friend acquired post-pandemic. That may sound like enough but three of them are married with kids so they are more "once a month" friends rather than "twice a week" or impulsive "lets go to X tomorrow" friends. I really feel it if one or more of them is out of town. I sat down and wrote it out and this list used to have an additional 13 names on it.
I also would like my life to have dating in it again. I'm having some trouble getting that restarted. Obviously age changes things. My preferred platform has been multilated (Okcupid) and I struggle to feel interested in people from the simpler platforms. Apparently Hinge is where I need to be, numbers wise. Maybe I'd be more comfortable with match?
*I have very mixed feelings about ITAA. It has a lot of restrictive rules that limit the specificity of story telling and honestly the sharing aspect is very boring compared to (I imagine) NA or AA. I often feel a basic dislike of the people so it is a pain to attend. I think it works for me, to the extent that it works, by showing my nucleus accumbens that this is a priority because I took the time to do it.
I don't know most of the acronyms you're mentioning, but I applaud, at least, your quit reddit strategy. If you must go there, go to a sub that never has anything political or culture war (think /r/watchescirclejerk ) in it and only visit that. I quit reddit years ago and my life has only improved. Also log out from this site immediately if you're on a digital fast, because just by reading this you're breaking the fucking fast.
Nah, Reddit is toast man. No where is safe, even your old safe havens.
I clicked on that link and the top post was a rage-bait photo "Mark Zuckerburg wore a very expensive watch while firing a bunch of people"; the comments were, predictably, full of marxist teeth-sucking.
George wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of a dubious, sometimes unsavory sub called /r/watchescirckejerk.
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