site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2095 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for March 20, 2024

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
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

What would you do with a free 2 months?

At 41, probably as some kind of mid-life crisis, I've decided to go back to graduate school. I start in June.

I have a bullshit email job, and I'll give notice soon (tomorrow, perhaps). That leaves me 2 months free. I have no partner and no kids.

So, what are some ideas for things I should do with this free time? Money is no object. I'm open to pretty much anything. The last time I had a few months free I wasted it sleeping to noon everyday and playing online chess compulsively.

Money is no object.

Don't listen to the haters saying to travel the world. Go to the moon, my man.

I teach, so I always have two months off, and we generally go on road trips, I paint, and I'm trying to make something of the yard.

If money and children weren't considerations, I, like several others, would travel, and did in my 20s. I especially enjoyed the Republic of Georgia, which has a very friendly guest culture. There are also some pretty interesting educational opportunities, such as the Saint John's College summer program, which is kind of a 2.5 month intensive book club (though that doesn't line up with your timeline, but I'm sure there are other things like that). An acquaintance did a month long plein air painting tour in France, which seemed neat.

I'd write a novel. A.J. Cronin wrote his first novel while he was recovering from an ulcer and couldn't work. I think John Braine wrote his in a hospital bed. You may never have a better opportunity to single-mindedly focus on a big personal project of that kind.

Hey I'll pay you a percentage if you want to keep that job and outsource it to me.

Get in as much good sleep and exercise as the body allows. Have no 0 days, even a single day at home playing video games is wasted, do as much outside real world for the next year, you don't have to wake up for work anyways.

I would play a lot of video games.

But in your case, I'd suggest a vacation. Thailand is lovely and cheap (and this is coming from a broke-ass person in a Third World country), so you can probably afford to lounge about on the beach for a few weeks. Other potential activities are left to the imagination.

Anakin: Other potential activities are left to the imagination.

Padme: Like surfing and sightseeing, right?

Anakin: …

Padme: Like surfing and sightseeing… right?

I could certainly see some sights from my fancy hotel's balcony. Apparently being next to the red light district doesn't depress property values.

Any places in the world you want to see? If you don't mind traveling alone, or maybe you even have someone to travel with in the upcoming months, now's the time to do it. I'd combine some luxury with challenging, rewarding experiences. Learn to scuba dive, and go skydiving. Push your boundaries and you'll grow from it.

Lots of things.

Audition for a play/musical.

Pick up golf and play 3x a week.

Take classes (cooking, mechanics, woodworking, etc.)

Go get SCUBA certified and visit the Great Barrier Reef.

Hike the Inca Trail.

Visit the best National Parks.

Out of curiosity, how much were you getting paid at your email job?

Thanks. The Inca Trail seems interesting - I'll look into that tomorrow. I make $240K/yr. leading a team of ~15 engineers.

Damn, that's a nice chunk of money.

The Inca Trail is super cool. It might be difficult to get a ticket in the next few months, but it's worth looking into. If you can't get a ticket for the "traditional" Inca Trail, you can also look at the Salkentay Trail, of which I've heard good things. I used Action Trek Peru for my hike and they were terrific.

When I was in a fairly similar situation, I picked up some contract wildland fire work. I didn't have any experience, but I was willing to travel and work, and they needed bodies. I enjoyed it overall, pretty slow at times but the money was decent. Seven years later, I'm a permanent employee on a hotshot crew, with a consolation master's. Unintended consequences (or were they?)

Thanks. If I were interested, how would I pursue something like that?

Call Grayback Forestry or Franco Reforestation or Pacific Oasis and tell them you're interested, they'll walk you through it. A lot of the entry-level workforce consists of dumbass 18yo kids so they're used to answering questions. With your availability window you may not get out on actual fires much but Grayback will for sure have fuels work and I'm pretty sure the others will as well.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats