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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1452 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 25, 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.

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I turned 25 the other day. I was never a big fan of birthdays, but this milestone feels disturbing in a new way.
I’m not sure why I’m writing this. Probably not for advice, since it feels like I started to run in circles when it comes to that a while ago. Much of what I hear and think are just permutations of the same things, thoughts traveling along the same grooves. Can’t be helped, some problems don't really have solutions and the best you can do is shrug and keep moving forward.
As you get older, you get more familiar with the workings of your mind. I always had a contemplative bent, my day to day thoughts directed to something abstract or otherwise decidedly detached from my physical and social realities. It’s hard to see this part of me as either a virtue or a flaw, if anything it’s baffling that it’s not a universal human trait.
This bafflement is blunted into nearly nothing through sheer habituation. Again – I’m getting used to who I am. That is not to say that I have any profound insight to justify all of this activity, I merely describe the way I function. And it was inevitable that I found my way to the rock bottom. In the last couple of years I’m increasingly absorbed, then obsessed with the basics: the ultimate nature and destiny of myself and reality overall. The world, what can I see of it through senses and reason, feels terribly cramped and my heart demands something more in the strongest possible terms. I’m stepping carefully here because the last thing I’m interested in now is an argument about this kind of thing (if someone does start it I’m not going to engage) but basically I often find myself equally baffled both by religious and the autistic-secularist approaches you’re all very familiar with. Apparently some people just...don't care about what to me seems like the most important problems, or talk about them in ways that makes me suspect humans have truly vast variations in their cognitive architecture that is yet to be even slightly charted.
Based on posts similar to this one I made across the years, I notice some changes. I’m less of a drama-queen, I think. I found the intensity of negative feelings decreasing and I can make some decent guesses as to why: my self esteem growing through more grounded estimation of my faults and strengths, my naturally laid-back, nearly apathetic personality snuffing out teenage drama. Come to think of it, I was only alive for roughly 10 years total - the 15 years before that as barely conscious brat I can scarcely remember let alone relate must only be included as a technicality.
Put this way, putting myself together, on my own, to this extent, in this time, is pretty good.
I find it easier to chart and execute increasingly longer plans. I see that I can control a lot about how the next 5 years between 25 and thirty year old me unfold. But then again, "five years" ... "thirty", this fills me with disquiet. Five years is just…not a lot. And neither is 20, or 50 years. My flaws might not be all that severe, and I can do a lot to mend them, but time doesn’t stop. I already missed many milestones that are for good reason considered normal. In between the times I manage to psy-op/whip myself into some kind of useful activity (I'm getting better at this, thankfully) I'm stuck with a slight sense of unreality, of something being both subtly and severely "off". If I had to choose my favorite branch of Christianity I'd have to go with the Gnostics for suggesting there's an "outside" to this world that can eventually be accessed. So far I only see hints of it from time to time, in the corner of my eye, and I don't even have confidence that it's much more than wishful thinking.

I turned 25 the other day

Happy Birthday!

Probably not for advice, since it feels like I started to run in circles when it comes to that a while ago. Much of what I hear and think are just permutations of the same things, thoughts traveling along the same grooves. Can’t be helped, some problems don't really have solutions and the best you can do is shrug and keep moving forward.

Untrue, I have had simialr issues since I was a child with following a routine and being a disciplined person. I have only ever failed but I am getting better and with enough time I will be fine. Psychological hangups that are environemnt dependent can be fixed. I was a complete dud with girls until I came here and did in fact change completely whilst no one I knew ever did.

As you get older, you get more familiar with the workings of your mind. I always had a contemplative bent, my day to day thoughts directed to something abstract or otherwise decidedly detached from my physical and social realities. It’s hard to see this part of me as either a virtue or a flaw, if anything it’s baffling that it’s not a universal human trait.

Sun and Steel by Yukio Mishima has contemplations of his own spiraling.

Apparently some people just...don't care about what to me seems like the most important problems, or talk about them in ways that makes me suspect humans have truly vast variations in their cognitive architecture that is yet to be even slightly charted.

I just got off a call with another ratioanlist adjacent motte guy who did in fact have simialr questions and found solace in dharmashastras and dharmasutras. Dharma is not religious, you can and should come up with your own model of this and act accordingly, that is what I am doing. These texts were prescriptions in the form of a live debate, not texts that are right due to a mandate of heaven.

I have had a similar path, just today I started spiralling where I ended up questioning the nature of reality after having thought about Lands work in my limited understanding, I ended up realising that I was mindfucking myself. You are correct to feel this way, I do too at times, my comment history is public here, I have written under 4 different accounts including this one.

I ended up getting a fake Rolex as a gift. Person giving it to me said they inherited it and honestly didn't know if it was real or not. I can't find anything that looks the same on the Rolex website, and other parts of it feel off. Still considering getting it fixed up and wearing it in public. What's The Motte's advice on the fake Rolex? Wear it anyway and tell anyone who asks it's a fake? Spend $700 and get a legitimate watch?

Obviously throw it into the pot of an all night poker game when you run out of chips.

The gifter seems to know it might not be real. Tell them it's not (in private of course). Then wear it or not at your leisure depending on how likely it is that others can spot the fake or how much you care.

Regardless of real or fake... what's the point in wearing status symbols that say you have more money than sense? Do you get any real social gain from it? Emotional benefit? What do you imagine a Rolex says about you to yourself and to others?

"I have enough money that I don't have to care about making sense" is useful to express in some social situations. Even wearing the fake one that sharp people notice is fake can be a tool if you do it very carefully, in a group that will go "aha, not a bad fake rolex, this guy isn't an idiot with more money than sense, but understands the importance of appearing to be."

If it doesn't look like an existing model, it's probably very easy to spot. I like watches and I have seen some heinous crimes against horology with fake Rolex logos.

I don't really judge too hard over people wearing fakes but I do think it's tacky if one could have spent the same money on a nicer but more humble watch.

Mechanical watches are a marvel in themselves. Outdates as fuck, but still a mechanical marvel. I wouldn't think ill of a person that is using them. Same as a person that slices hamon with yanagiba instead of deli slicer. Or one that likes to shoot with Luger P08 instead of glock 19.

Luger? Very cool, but from what I’ve seen gun mechanic enjoyers go for revolvers, with an appreciation of different “lockwork”. S&W, for example, even has a specialist gunsmith machining team named the Performance Center and markets firearms touched by their skill explicitly.

Have you finished your retirement calculation spreadsheet yet? If you're in the US, don't forget to take into account the fact that Social Security is expected to run out of moneyreduce benefits by one-fifth in 2033. (Unfortunately, a cursory search indicates that nobody has set up a betting market for precisely when, or whether, this will happen.)

Many years ago, I visited the town of Smithland, Kentucky; I was there to possibly buy a Lincoln Continental. I ended up not buying it - I have slight regrets about that - but while there I thought, "This would be a nice place to retire to." Just a little tiny town in the total end of nowhere, with houses still being sold for less than 100k in 2024. I wonder if that will still be a viable option when I go to retire in 2058 or so. All I'm really hoping to do in retirement is run a stall in a flea market, play chess, and maybe dig into some really hefty books like City of God.

You could buy the retirement house now and rent it out?

Unfortunately, I have always known I should plan to get exactly $0 out of Social Security. I hate that I'm being basically robbed of money I'll never see a dime from, but there isn't much I can do about it. Except plan to fend for myself, of course.

Social Security is expected to run out of money reduce benefits by one-fifth jack up taxes in 2033

That's another possibility. But, as the saying goes: "Hope for the best, but plan for the worst." Especially in the absence of any information regarding which possibility is more likely.

General updates

Merry Christmas to the motte, I had a terrible week productivity-wise since I had friends around, sept super late and that fucked my productivity. I also injured my back doing some light rdls, and will resume working out soon, I will avoid rdls but I will still workout, despite shoulder and now lower back issues lol. I try do to 2 sits of meditation now, 24 minutes each instead of having small sits and just one long one.

I have been feeling a little sad for the past few days. I know I will feel better once I am more productive, but there is a sense of doom that I cannot quite articulate. I cannot feel happy about myself until I am better at what I do, but being sad about it just makes the process much worse. My work is now 7 hours a day, and I don't find any solace in other activities, though.

Book review of sorts - The Great Divorce by CS Lewis

I first heard Luke Smith bring up the voluntary nature of misery, how most people actively choose it willingly, the great divorce, the book I keep talking about was really impactful because it shed light on this. I have no memories from my life from when I was 16 to when I was 19 because I had been kicked out of school and was stuck in cram schools. Lewis described hell as an extremely small place, my own experience confirms this. My time spent in situations where I fucked myself over feels tiny and that is a kind of punishment I never would want to wish on anyone. Our ability to forget plays a big role in allowing us to attempt to change our lives or situations but it comes at a cost. Whenever I chose to do something where I acted, my perception of time expanded by large amounts.

My final 4 weeks in Thailand seemed to have lasted longer than the entirety of my university than my university or the year I spent LARPing as a founder because I actively went out and did things I would not have otherwise. The days I work most on seem to stretch out a lot, physically they don't seem to end, days when I slack off seem long at first but my total experience of the world is tiny and I can spend weeks in such a limbo and come out feeling like it all lasted just a few minutes.

We all have these rationalisations as to why we choose to do bad things, the book is full of interactions where you see them play out including a mother who clings to the death of her own child instead of letting go and reuniting with him in heaven. religious parents hammer home the concept of sins, of how sins in this life will affect the future ones and how the past ones already have had an effect on this one. Lewis presents the argument that the punishment begins now and like my own problem of losing sight of time or being numb is in fact me choosing hell actively, the rationalisations are just being cover-ups that I won't let go. All of the past sufferings can be neutralised, all it takes to do so is to simply choose to enter heaven and you don't need to die or convert to the Anglican church. It's as simple as it can be and we mostly choose otherwise and find ways to justify it.

Still, we all can choose to be redeemed at any moment, once we stop deifying our own thoughts, no matter how important we think they might be. There is a lot of what we call virtue that is universal, there are differences in morality for the ancient Greeks vs broader Indo-European religions and Christianity but a lot of it is the same that we all do wrong wilfully. I saw the recommendation of the book on the blogspot Real Social Dynamics ran, it's not a profound work on theology or a part of the Western canon that you cannot do without. It is very simple, accessible to all and one of the most relatable things I have ever read.

Book reviews are the laziest form of writing, I do wish to write more however and would appreciate if people can tell me what the correct way to go about it would be, I do not want to pollute the threads with large in-depth reviews and want to know what the recommendations for longer form material crossposted here from a substack are.

Having a kettlebell at home is great for a lazy mf who doesn't like going to the gym. One of the best small purchases I've made in recent years.

Just ordered a new one that's 50% heavier. :)

I have two kettlebells, one 12kg and one 16kg. I agree they're an excellent purchase, I've been using them pretty consistently almost two years later, though I feel like I haven't been taking full advantage of them. I've been doing swings, clean & presses, squat & presses. The drawback in only having two kettlebells is that some of the movements feel like they aren't challenging enough, but others feel like they'll mess you up very quickly. Any particular movements that you particularly enjoy?

I mainly do deadlifts, overhead presses and squats. I like deadlifts the most because I can do a ton of them and they improve my posture noticeably. :)

Feliz navidad!

A song that's been utterly spoiled for me by this parody.

lmao this is killing me. incredible art

My family is opening a fertility/IVF clinic. Of all the logistical headaches you can run into in India, the question of whether to get a VPN so the gentlemen in the "Collection Room" can avail of some Pornhub™ (necessary because most porn sites are blocked in the country) or leave them to their own devices wasn't one I expected.

The alternative, getting some paper porno mags, is one where I wouldn't even know where to begin acquiring one these days. Not a conversation I have everyday, I tell ya.

Surely you can order skin mags from Amazon or somewhere.

There would seem to be clear synergies between your fertility clinic and a strip club. How about opening up one of those inside your clinic?

I'm afraid not many people are going to be willing to pay to watch me pole dance. Though they'd probably pay to get me to stop!

A VPN will be $20/mo. Looping potentially mid DVDs, making people download porn to their phones (?) or having to rotate paper sounds miserable. With respect to my fellow commenters, those are bad solutions to the problem.

Rest assured we're not that cheap lol, it's just a rather unforseen and ridiculous problem to have to tackle when I just happened to be back home for Christmas. Arranging for jerk-off material isn't what I saw myself doing!

(I'm sure just about every Indian male has figured out how to get around the bans by now, but whatever happened to the power of imagination?)

I was actually going to make a joke about imagination. I distinctly remember the ability to easily handle things without a visual aid. I suspect your clinic would have a little less business if more men did too.

Imagination is dead, for men anyway. I don't really know if imagination was ever a consistent way for men to get off, or if people kept records on that, but it probably is less used today than ever before.

Also https://youtube.com/watch?v=fQTOAWCpe44?si=eDG7ebQXX_kDQunV

For women, I think imagination is still alive and well. It's all about thinking up scenarios for them. Although I could imagine it's possible to get hooked on erotica to stimulate your mind's eye, I've never heard of any cases.

I don't really know if imagination was ever a consistent way for men to get off, or if people kept records on that, but it probably is less used today than ever before.

I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I managed easily enough that time I got chucked in the looney bin without porn access. Honestly, the bigger problem was the checks.

Can't you ask people to bring their own entertainment? Everyone has a smartphone these days.

This isn't likely to be an actual problem in practise. "Don't you guys have phones?" I'm sure they'll manage, even if porn is technically banned, people have some idea about how to get around it, and if you've seen Indians being horny on the internet, it doesn't have to be visible nudity for someone to jerk it.

Worst case scenario, they can have their wife come in and lend an, uh, hand. No mouths, saliva isn't ideal for semen, but I'm not going to be standing and watching.

Another alternative is to have a screen playing pornographic videos on loop. Japan sells lots of "gravure" DVDs on Amazon (though some of them aren't shipped to foreigners).

It would be an entertaining idea to have to argue with customs here about that kind of shipment at the very least.

I wish them luck, there is a lot of pcos on the rise here lately, ivf clinics would be very helpful for many.

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