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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
In the spirit of honesty, I owe @guesswho an apology.
In the comment I made, mod hat on, to his questioning of whether he would receive the same degree of careful consideration and explanation I extended to Astragant when I (lightly) modded him, I was referring to a comment I believed he had made, which I had ignored after it was reported in the mod queue, and then found it gone when I went back to check.
Turns out, it was one made by @Goodguy
https://www.themotte.org/post/812/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/175876?context=8#context
(As @netstack managed to hunt down later.)
That is an example of what I think counts as a comment that is mildly uncharitable or inflammatory, but charity is not an infinite resource, and sometimes an accurate description of reality can be less than so, so I, and the other mods who opted to discuss it, didn't find it worth modding.
I do stand by the rest of my statement, but I am informed that Zorba decided that the transition off-site should constitute a clean slate for everyone, be they popular or unpopular on the subreddit, and I will adjust accordingly. I don't think that particularly changes anything, given how long it's been, anyone hanged has had plenty of opportunity to lay the rope anew, but I do feel like you've been unfairly maligned and reflexively downvoted. Sadly, this is not a crime or easily fixable by the mods, though I disapprove of anyone who acts that way. It might be some consolation that I noticed I upvote maybe like 25% of your posts (the ones I see), and can't spot any downvotes.
So consider yourself to be in not quite as precarious a position as I implied, and my bad. The veil of ignorance is a nuisance to drape over my eyes, but the thing about social fiction is that they can become social fact if you try hard enough.
(Maybe make an alt and don't announce yourself next time, I think you'll find a more receptive audience, I think you've accumulated more haters than you're really due.)
Cool, thanks, I feel better knowing that.
I do feel like it would violate some standard I hold myself to to go completely anonymous and deny my identity if asked in the future. The name here was supposed to be a mild ironic game (same as when I made my flair a Hamilton reference back on the subreddit after coming back from my long ban), I frankly expected people to notice my writing style and positions and ask me the question withing the first week or two. /shrug.
What was your Hamilton reference?
'Ah, so you've discussed me'
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Happy new year! My resolution this year is to get more done and to be more effective. I'm sad to admit that I'm dreadfully passive in general, I only ever do the absolute minimum to get by and spend the rest of time consuming content such as games, reading trivia online, etc. I'm still reasonably successful - a postdoc in a topic I care about - but my PhD was a letdown as judged by me, and I do have the impression that at least part of my success so far is due to being sociable. I end up on papers I contributed little to because I get along well with almost everyone, I'm always in the good graces of my superiors often to the degree of being personal friends so that they judge me less harshly and tolerate my excuses, etc. That makes me, in a certain sense, exactly the kind of person I loathe the most - A leech that contributes little but still falls upward through social manipulation. I'm not actually quite that bad, but I'm not the person I want to be.
As a result, I've decided on a number of specific measures: 1) I'll not read the CW Roundup or scroll through any other longer thread on any forum or play mobile games until the evening of every day, after I've gotten my day's work done 2) I'll concentrate on starting discussions on purposeful topics I care about intrinsically (such as this post), and avoid reactively ranting because "somebody is wrong on the internet" 3) Generally be less tolerant of my procrastinating habits - no I don't need to read something every time I I go on the toilet, no I don't need to play a "short round" of a mobile game because I got something trivial done, no I don't need to start the day by reading the news ... 4) Every day in the evening, I'll review my day to see whether I've done what I planned to do and make a list of the things I want to do the next day. In particular, I'll judge myself more harshly than normal and if I didn't manage, I'll have to do it in the evening instead of more pleasant activities.
I'll probably fall short of my expectations again, but I'm happy about any improvement, it doesn't need to be a total change of life in the end.
So, mottizens, I have two questions for you:
I'm working on native habitat preservation/restoration on our property. It's a twenty year project, and it's going to be something special when I'm done (and it kind of already is). Bought a rifle recently--too many deer, and the meat would be nice. Controlled burns are fun.
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There are a variety I'm working on. A lot of them are less "major life changes" as "do [thing] at some point this year." So a 2024 goal might be something I only actually do in September, or for a weekend in June, or on one morning in February. So among others:
-- Go to our local hot yoga studio for 30 consecutive days
-- Reach a 1000 point Kettlebell Pentathlon with my 36kg Kettlebell
-- Complete 5 sets of 5 Turkish Get Ups with the 36kg Kettlebell
-- Go swimming in the Long Island Sound in February
-- Re-Read War and Peace, Herodotus' Histories, the Iliad (though it will be my first time on the War Nerd translation, I think) and Ulysses. Aim to complete at least 24 books total this year. Write in at least 12 of them.
-- Collect at least 100 signatures for candidates I support to get on primary ballots
-- Complete at least three full lecture courses on interesting topics
-- Successfully nail down at least five good recipes for soup, ideally in the vitamix
-- Throw five cocktail and seven dinner parties
-- Play five rounds of golf
-- Weigh in below 195 (without preceding illness)
-- Row over 100k meters on the erg
I find that the type of goal is what makes a difference for me. On things where I have a pretty good grasp on the mechanics (kettlebell pentathlon) I can set achievement goals, but for anything else it is all about process goals. "Be more social" is a shitty goal, it's not measurable and if I were good at the mechanics of it I wouldn't have it as a goal, so it becomes "throw parties." I have tried for years to not suck at Golf and failed, so instead I'm just going to try to fucking play enough that my skills don't atrophy further into social uselessness.
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