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).
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Notes -
I will leave Chiang Mai this or next week and I am a little bittersweet about it. I have been sorta working in startups for close to a year without any progress and will go back home and work on a prototype for a tool for developers. This will be the first time in my life that I will be working without direct supervision and get an apartment in a different, smaller town, away from my parents if I can. My role in my previous startups was non-technical and that was not as helpful. My responsibilities were not fixed plus I did not develop any skills as a programmer at all. My depressive episodes and malaise stem from a lack of skills, routine and clear path towards something meaningful. There is not much point staying in Chiang Mai on my roommate's dime since I do not have a job, I came to assist him on his startup but we both fell out. I will help out my friends with their e-commerce venture (they have this alongside startup stuff) part-time to get a regular income and then work on my own on my startup.
In hindsight, I should have just started working on my own thing a year ago. Being a janitor in a startup where the speed of shipping is not very fast is not ideal and I am a little scared about posting this stuff online but I just want to let this stuff out for once. But that is what I was, a janitor.
Chiang Mai was good. My first time ever out of the nation. I met some really cool people. This jacked middle-aged Russian dude named D who worked as a programmer and read a whole bunch of classic literature. He clicked very well with me and in broken English would tell me a whole lot about life. His analysis of me being someone who needs a strict routine and some meaning in my life to work on more, and how I try to "sell" myself to others in attempts to get them to like me instead of being who I am more freely. I met guys like this dutch ex party head who now runs e-commerce in Africa, a Russian girl who works for a gambling organisation, and a rich Thai guy who abused every drug known to mankind and now has black feet from it.
Pieter Levels, the most popular digital nomad often recalls his early days nomading, stating that he'd meet super interesting people, like this one Aussie guy who would travel to Thailand with just his laptop and charger, buy clothes when he would touch down and donate them all before he left. D of all people left a big impact on me, making me start working out again and how daily callisthenics is enough, and more importantly, how daily physical exercise is more important for the mind more than anything else. I saw this movie named The Island, a Russian movie about regret and of all I would miss him the most.
I have not had irl friends since 2016 in a sense. I would have close friends on the internet and meet them occasionally but never irl friends who I meet daily without scheduling meetups, organically and learn a lot from. I dont want to leave chiang mai but I am at this point a burden on my roommate, and even if I were not, I would have had to return anyway to get a hang of the e-commerce stuff and learn some cs topics to help with my startup. Leaving is bittersweet. I actually had fun. I actually liked hanging out with people after a while. Learning about literature, music, movies and just life in Eastern Bloc and so much more. Back home, people would find my tendency to say hi to everyone and try to talk to them a weird low status thing whereas the expats here are happy to talk. They all have a story to tell. Sure they are not world beaters but neither is anyone I know of, more importantly, there is more to life than just what you do. People around me have this faux superiority complex where everyone is looked down upon unless they are like fucking silicon valley billionaires or conquerors like Alexander but if you are someone who is that good, you probably would be fine talking to most people since everyone is below you in the hierarchy anyway.
Truth is, I liked meeting good people irl. People who like me for being who I am. I was a hermit for a decade, yeah I would visit uni and stuff but I never could connect with anyone since people in uni hated me for a lot of petty reasons. Most nomads are not perfect and I don't want to be one long term but I wish I met more of them. I finally felt feelings for a girl, tried a bunch of narcotics, finally partied like a normal person and got to experience life beyond what a guy my age experiences in a small town. I hated Chiang Mai when I landed and my roommate would get angry whenever I would say hi to random people but since I stopped working with him on his startup, I have been able to take time off, make friends who I connect with and finally take an adult vacation for the first time in my life, ever. Up until this point, I had never explicitly taken any days off. They would mostly be me having some anxiety in the back of my mind whilst not getting any work done but for the first time in years, I finally took a week off completely and loved every single second of it. I kept posting about wanting to meet girls and got to cold approach nearly a hundred girls, all attractive tourists from various nations. My oneitis which I could not get over for years became an afterthought a few days into a normal vacation spot. Most of what I knew about girls came from the internet or from stuff others told me but I had never experienced what talking to them was like beyond my small town and it was amazing. Rajasthan or any city in India does not display what life holds, it is all little leagues and scarcity. Despite being somewhat better looking than the average guy from where I am from, I had loads of girls tell me that they found me attractive and wished to spend more time with me. I had guys come up to me and tell me that they liked hanging out with me a lot in a non homo way lol.
I look forward to the next few months. Finally on my own and doing something really hard, I will resume weekly updates so that I can have accountability. My skills as a programmer are at best noob tier and the idea I am working on is itself based on a strong hunch a good wise friend of mine had who himself wished to work on it before, 2 years ago but could not due to tech not being good enough which it is now. I am sorry for writing these long winding posts but I have no one else to talk to about this stuff. My friends will judge me for writing about them online and I cannot be weak in front of my parents who already have gone through a lot.
Things I experienced are not unique or special. By my own faults and laziness, I fucked my life up where I got to be this manchild by age 24
There’s a book in this, dude!
D, the Russian guy, sounds like a very good person to have met. I wish someone had analysed my like that when I was younger (feels spot on for me too…)
I guess I’m looking forward to your weekly updates.
Do tell me about the book, what it's called and what it talks about.
I as a person try to avoid anyone who says anything nice about me and actively try to not listen since I can only see the bad in me. More than that I don't want to be like one of those ig models who think they're the prettiest things ever only to have their world break the moment someone better looking enters their life.
Even with girls, whenever I talk to them, I try to avoid paying attention to the good they say as I'm afraid I'll be a guy who gets hooked onto positive interactions on the surface level and never grow beneath that.
I look forward to posting weekly updates too :)
I believe he means the book is there to be written, like David chiseled from the granite.
Ahh, yeah lol, my bad. I'm glad to have had these experiences, share them and get feedback. I'm very lucky.
Exactly as George said 👍
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Dude, 24 is a fine age to start over. Have you tried being an impractical romantic? If you see every relationship as transactional people can sense that and you'll never have a good time. Life isn't about what you can get from people, it is about what you can give. If what you're doing isn't working, try doing the opposite.
Yeah. I don't see them as transactional things. You meet people, you try helping them, they try helping you and in the process life becomes better.
I spend my free time just hanging out with people here and it's really fun. My hatred for screens and internet is more active because I know what's out there, even the little things in life are great luxuries compared to being online.
The Russian guy was having some issues recently and was extremely appreciative of me and sometimes my roommates staying over and talking to him and just hanging out. It felt amazing, to simply be and experience life this way. Even in the tiny things where just me being here is helping out someone who I am good friends and respect. I will not be able to do this again with him since I'll leave though life's long, doing well would mean me having good relations with others like him who I'll meet soon.
You hate screens and the internet but isn't this your bread and butter in terms of your desired career? I may be misunderstanding.
I despise them as primary sources of entertainment. Ofc it's my career but I'm agaisnt people spending their lives using these devices to surf mindlessly
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