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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2038 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 12, 2023

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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I've booked a week off work starting on Saturday (well, Sunday technically because I'm doing a night shift on Friday night). However, as it approaches, I don't really know why I bothered. I don't really have anything I want to do, and if anything, I'm worried I'm going to spend the whole week sitting around feeling depressed.

Other than work and the gym (which makes me hate myself as often as not), I find it very hard to actually care about anything or feel motivated. I feel basically no desire to talk to my friends, or to meet new people either. I don't really have any desire for sex and I don't have any hopes of having a relationship either.

Why not go on a solo camping trip or do something to shake yourself up a bit? Meditate or do some psychedelics?

I think that if anything, introspection is a danger. It's too easy for me to get sucked into negative thought patterns when idle. Psychedelics seem more promising but I don't know the first thing about them or sourcing them.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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