site banner

Wellness Wednesday for May 10, 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).

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Hello! First post here, lurker on and off for some time. Not sure how to phrase my question so I'll give a bit of info about myself first.

I'm a woman in my early 30s, college graduate with a worse-than-useless (i.e. expensive!) degree, working in a field that I don't find particularly challenging or motivating. This is fine with me, it pays the bills and then some and I have plenty of leisure time. I always was good enough at school to be placed in "gifted" classes but looking back, "smart" meant good at school and not much more. Concepts like "critical thinking" only began to resonate woefully late, after I'd already received my bachelor's degree (how??). For the past few years I've been very narrowly focused on studying psychology, PTSD, other self-helpy topics. Other hobbies include studying languages, fitness, painting, cooking, spending too much time on Reddit, etc.

I don't have many friends and struggle to make and maintain relationships. I tend to not like people very much and get fixated on my one person (usually a romantic partner) and am chronically disappointed by aspects of these relationships. Recently, I've been experimenting with cannabis and feel as though my mind has fundamentally changed in some way (even when I'm not "under the influence"). I've become extremely fascinated by history and, for lack of a better way of putting it, how and why things are the way they are. Suddenly the realm of knowledge one can acquire seems immensely vast and I am hungry to learn as much as I possibly can. Beyond that, I want to meet and know smart people who I can learn from! I'm overwhelmed and don't know where to start. After more than 30 years of never trying to discuss anything remotely intellectual, I feel stunted and useless. I feel like I've missed out on my best years specializing in psudoscience and "the arts."

I guess I'm grappling with both the burgeoning understanding of my own ignorance, as well as a lack of direction and community. I don't know anyone who wants to talk about anything other than the shallowest pop culture. I'm beginning to resent my relationship with my boyfriend who doesn't seem to have the skills or desire (not clear which) to converse about anything intellectual or controversial. I also don't feel like I'm smart enough to contribute meaningfully in spaces such as this one. Aaaand I continually feel discouraged when the means I try to use to increase my knowledge feel above my level. Like, maybe I'm just limited by lower intelligence? Wondering where others began and if anyone has any advice, thanks!

I love the arts (why the scare quotes?) I also typically find reading or online discussions on what you're referring to as intellectual topics much more bearable than sitting and listening to people in realtime drone on about their idiosyncratic worldviews. Lots of signaling and posturing in those settings.

While your boyfriend may not be your go-to for discussions on geopolitics or phenomenology, that's not perhaps what boyfriends are best suited for (any more than girlfriends, or husbands, or wives). (Note I am not suggesting anything lascivious, just that the emotional comforts of an SO do not always correlate with their readiness for or prowess at intellectual debate.)

I don't mean to sound too bearish on your post here, I just think it might be idealizing a certain smartperson (TM) reality that doesn't exist, or doesn't exist the way I am perceiving you are framing it.

Reading wide and various is my advice, such as it is. But it sounds as if you're already doing that.

Edit for poor thumbtyping.

Thanks for the insightful reply. I think you're correct to point out the way my present mindset is coloring the things that I think are valuable and those that seem not to be. No shade to the arts ("the arts") intended, I suppose I might be a bit disappointed in the extent to which I specialized. I've been actively spending time improving my painting skills, and that is something important I don't plan to discard.

As for the rest, I think you're right re: my idealization and I appreciate hearing it. I think I might be clinging to this as "the answer" to other areas of dissatisfaction in my life. I have a tendency to fixate/obsess on one thing or another and this is probably the latest manifestation of that (and it happens to be much broader in nature, I think, than my usual obsessions (e.g. houseplants or fashion). Ultimately, I'm feeling a lack of social connection and a frustration with what feels like hollow interactions with people who don't seem to understand me (and vice versa). Years of self-help psychology, therapy, and other forms of "healing from trauma" haven't been terribly effective. But now I'm rambling so I'll leave it there. Thanks again!

Your self-awareness, lack of defensiveness, and clarity of prose all suggest to me that should you find a group of likeminds--as long as they don't happen to also be assholes--you will thrive exactly as you imagine. Maybe you're already there.

It was once put to me that no one person has to be my everything. The same is of course true of social circles.

Again, thank you! I'm working on it. Never managed to maintain a friendship for more than a couple years (even in school) but I've learned a lot about how to keep showing up and be intentional, so hopefully this time I'll do better.