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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2196 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 19, 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 decided to move to the other side of the planet. Specifically, I'm applying for a two year working holiday visa in New Zealand, and hoping to leave at the end of this year.

For some time, I've been pretty depressed. Depressed with myself, my life, and lacking any kind of real drive, even finding it difficult to generate desires. It's been particularly bad over the past month and I've struggled even to go to the gym, which is unusual for me. I don't know if moving to another country is going to fix me, but it might change me. I find myself wanting this, actually excited or hopeful about the future. It's a little bit scary, though. I've never travelled alone, far out of Europe, or for a significant period of time before, and this is all three.

New shit is always good if you need a shakeup.

Well, I definitely feel like I need a shakeup. But also I want to do it, too.

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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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