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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1749 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 26, 2025

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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Hello, I am searching for a good couples therapist who is willing to work online (couple is from different countries). If you know anyone who fits the bill, please share your suggestions. Thank you!

I can be your couples therapist. What’s wrong?

Long time lurker, first time poster.

For background I'm 24 and live in NYC.

I think my biggest goal in life right now is to meet my wife. I want to have a family, ideally soon, so I figure I should start looking seriously now. The second biggest is to win a lot of money playing poker, but I don't need advice on that because there's already a well defined path. Everything else is pretty much taken care of, I have a good job, I'm fit, etc. I'm not even sure if I need advice on the first either. I'm already relatively romantically successful. So successful in fact that I just finished my chlamydia meds today and am battling what I think is molluscum contagiosum. Since I broke up with my first real girlfriend (she went to med school a few hours away and I didn't want to do distance for another 3 years) in mid-2023 I've been on first dates with 61 girls. I was going on 3-4 dates a week in the immediate aftermath, but it's slowed down now to around 1 a week. My standards rose and casual sex has gotten a little tiring. Of the 61 there was mutual attraction with around 20, of the 20 there were around 5 that I considered for something serious. 3 of the 5 I ended things with for various reasons that basically boil down to not seeing a future with them. 1 ended things with me after 4 dates, I still think about her and what I could have done differently. I think I overplayed my hand because I was very excited about her and assumed she felt the same way. 1 I'm currently seeing, but feeling pessimistic about, she's 19 and just moved to the city a month ago. Our second date was nice, but I felt like the conversation was losing steam at times. We are both quiet people and don't have much in common. Normally I would have invited her over after and I think she would have said yes, but because of the aforementioned chlamydia that wasn't an option. Hopefully it doesn't matter. Either way these next few days are pretty much make or break. I think the common thread between these girls is that our personalities clicked and I really enjoyed just talking with them.

Of the remaining 40 girls with which there was no mutual attraction it's a pretty even split of I didn't like them/they didn't like me. The "I didn't like them" category is annoying because it feels like a total waste of time. I should be firmer and end these early. I should also be pickier with who I invite out. The "they didn't like me" category is more interesting. Generally these girls are more attractive. It's hard to figure out exactly why they didn't like me. Obviously some were largely outside of my control, but some definitely weren't. I think generally I could work on my personality but self reflection is hard, especially for something like this. I'm pretty socially aware and can hold a conversation fine but I'm also definitely an introvert and sometimes a little awkward. I think that I can be kind of a pussy sometimes and need to just be more confident in general. There have also been a few dates, typically with girls who are stunning, where I amp certain aspects of my personality to 11 and just see what happens, which basically means for me creating and embracing awkward pauses, asking left-field questions, and just being kind of a weird contrarian in general. Think Nathan Fielder. These actually aren't as much of a trainwreck as you might think, most of them I could tell that the girl was having fun, but they also don't lead to 2nd dates, which makes sense. I think this is a defense mechanism for when I subconsciously think the girl is out of my league and would never end up with me. I overcompensate for the fact that she's really hot by trying too hard to show her that I don't care what she thinks about me. This is better than being boring and probably directionally correct as a strategy, but needs some work. I am slowly becoming more socially confident so I think there is progress there. Playing poker helps, most of the time you're folding, so all there is to do is shoot the shit with total strangers.

The vast majority of these girls I have met from Hinge. It is very easy for me to get online dates which has become somewhat of a crutch. Honestly I think trying to meet more girls in real life is probably the low hanging fruit here, but I find it hard. None of the girls in my social circle (mostly college friends/friends of friends) really appeal to me, and I don't want to bother trying to start a relationship that I know probably won't work. Street approach/"daygame" is an interesting option, but seems like a ton of work. Really I should probably commit and at least try it. I have the time and it would be good for me. Bars/nightlife are a crapshoot. I normally just get pretty drunk and talk to my friends and play pool. If I do talk to a girl it's one that doesn't intimidate me or one that approaches me. The beautiful ones are surrounded by friends and other guys. Logically I know that doesn't matter, but in the moment I normally pick comfort. I pick comfort in a lot of areas of my life which is bad and I should stop doing, but it's hard because it's been working for so long. In that same vein, and tangentially related, I should stop smoking weed.

Anyways it was nice to write down some thoughts that I had been thinking a while. Thanks for reading, I welcome any advice or general thoughts.

Huh. You sure do get dates easily.

Are you like, attractive? Or do you say in your profile you're looking to get married and have kids soon?

Yeah I'm attractive. And no I don't have that in my profile, maybe I should but it feels weird to set that expectation so early.

61 dates since mid 2023 is ~3/month. So "attractive" is a reasonable theory, but that's not that crazy. I read the 3-4/week part and didn't realize that was a brief peak, not an average. Now that's a big number.

I went on two dozen first dates last year, all from apps (mostly Hinge), and if you subtract out three months of various compelling reasons to not go on first dates, that's a similar rate. (OP is probably also doing that, so I'm cheating with that math, but still.)

And I am...optimistically middle of the bell curve attractive. My job and such I'm sure offset that some, but you really shouldn't underestimate how effective it is to follow a strategy of "don't be super fat, and do send a lot of messages to women who are not wildly out of your league."

I also think NYC is a culturally distinct place for dating. Lots of dating, not a lot of commitment. Too expensive to live in a nice home, too crowded to hike, so just date and fuck and go to restaurants I guess. I haven't lived there, but I have heard from people who have. It sounds interesting, but terrible.

NYC was well known in the PUA community as one of the best dating scenes for single men in America.

I am going through a bit of a crisis and I don’t have anyone to talk to about it. I originally met a girl in the summer of 2021 who was visiting my city for two months. The first date was inexplicably good, and the next two built on top of it. We had such an extraordinary connection, not just in the content of what we talked about, but the ease we had in sharing with each other. We talked about worldly things with great passion and very personal things with great tenderness. We both seemed to have a bottomless desire simply to know the other person as well and truly as possible. I had been in love before and I was familiar with the feelings of infatuation and euphoria that come with it, but this time there seemed to be, objectively, such strong substance supporting the feelings that it would be simply bullheaded to not let myself enjoy the experience of finding someone that I was waiting for my whole life.

The first time I had feelings that I called “love” for a girl, I was five. I was in kindergarten. At the end of the school day, having put our backpacks on, we waited for the final bell to sound. I imagined going up to her and professing that I loved her, knowing that I would then have to kill myself to avoid the deluge of vulnerability and shame that would overwhelm me after doing so. For the next two decades of my life, I would daydream about meeting someone who I not only felt such strong feelings for, but who I would feel safe enough with conveying them to and even owning them to myself. For every girl in school who I had a crush on, despite there being a good chance that they reciprocated my feelings, I was too uncomfortable admitting my feelings to myself to act. It just felt impossibly sensitive to admit to feeling this way about someone, even to a friend or family member.

In 2018, for the first time, I had had enough. I developed an infatuation with a coworker. We became incredibly intimate friends, but she was much older, and considered our age difference a nonstarter. I was twenty-three, and she was looking for a husband. I hadn’t even had my wild twenties yet, or knew who I was, she said. I was hurt, and I thought she was wrong, that we were right for each other and that our feelings could overcome these circumstances. But, after a few months of her not budging, I accepted reality and moved on. I had to reluctantly end our friendship so that I could move on romantically. At this point, this was the deepest love I had ever felt. This relationship had a level of intimacy that I had never experienced before in my life. I opened up with her about things I’ve never opened up with anyone before or since. Still, I was able to march forward. She had chosen to not pursue me and that, to me, was proof enough that we truly weren’t meant to be together. The person for me would recognize that I was the person for them. I felt this deeply and sincerely, which allowed me to move on decisively.

Over the next three years’ time, I thought long and hard about this experience and my previous experiences of what I called love. Although I had always felt that I was never wrongly turning love into a panacea, waiting around for a girl to “fix everything”, like a common stereotype of some young people, I decided that I had leaned more into that direction than I should have. I generally moved away from thinking that love could be felt or intuited and that it had to be approached much more pragmatically. I moved away from thinking that there was a “the one” or that love would have a radical effect on my life. I decided that it would be an incremental improvement, like a really good friend, that it was someone who I was attracted to and could spend time with without much trouble. I stopped looking for love as something that would bring out sides of me that normally lie dormant, or something that would make the world a bit brighter and more expansive. I made up my mind that these sorts of things were things that I had to solely influence myself. My expectations for love should shrink.

For the first time in my life, I lived as if there was no great romantic revelation waiting for me. I got a girlfriend, which was a first. It wasn’t great fun, but she was beautiful and we were “working on things”. That was how it worked, after all. People aren’t perfect and you can’t expect the world, I told myself. After a few months, it ended. I was devastated, but relieved. I did not love her and I was not in love with her. During our time together, I had constantly debated with myself if she was right for me. I was putting my new approach into practice, but it wasn’t feeling right.

The next year and a few months go by, with nothing changing in my beliefs about romance. They remained pragmatic and deflated. Then, the summer of 2021 happened. Upon seeing her in person, I’m immediately struck by something. Not love, not at all yet, just that she is beautiful and has an intriguing energy. About fifteen minutes in, and I realize that she is funny. I can’t stop giggling and neither can she. A little after that, I realize she is smart. We have incredible overlapping interests and compatibilities. We both feel at home with every topic that we bring up. Over the course of the date, she checks every box, resurrected boxes that I had given up on and checks them as well. I leave the date floating a tad.

For the first time in my life ever, after my first date, I called a friend. As I was still intensely shy about sharing my romantic feelings with other people, I didn’t intend to explicitly talk about my date. However, after a few minutes of smalltalk, he called me out – “so what’s up? First of all, you never call and second of all, you sound different.” “I just went out with a girl”. I had no shame of my feelings. I was confident that they were real, genuine, that I would feel safe from whatever dangers I had previously associated with acknowledging romantic feelings. It wasn’t just my connection with the girl that felt right, I was embracing that it felt right in a way that I had previously never embraced. Even with my old coworker who I fell for, I had kept my feelings for her private from everyone. I pursued her and dealt with my feelings for her totally privately. Owning up to the fact that I had a really sparkly, bubbly first date with someone was something new. Feeling confident in it only gave me more confidence in their nature and authenticity.

Our second date would have to wait. She was visiting her grandfather, who she barely knew, for two weeks because he lived in a nearby state. When she got back, we didn’t skip a beat. Our second date was spectacular, dizzying fun even though we just went out and had dinner and talked together. For our third date, I had plans. We were going to walk here and there, get food here, go there. As soon as we got to our first stop, which was a local beach, we decided to watch the sunset, only for a few moments. That turned into talking for five hours straight. We were simply too rooted to our conversation and each other to move. Then, around midnight, with the rest of the beach empty for the past few hours, we had our first kiss. I drove her home and then drove back to my house in solemn joy.

My experience with this girl, Natalie, was delivering me from a lifetime of unmet longings for romance. It made me feel like, sparing any sense of exaggeration, that my life had been spent on a deserted island and that I had now seen a ship dock on the beach. The sensation was thrilling particularly because of how high the stakes became. It wasn’t the amazing time spent with Natalie. It was the new way that it felt to be me as I went through my daily activities. I felt like all the sharp edges inside of me had been made to lie flush. I was feeling more equanimous and placid, than the high and exuberant feelings you might be imagining from someone talking about falling in love. The pieces of my life had finally fallen into places and made sense. I walked around knowing that I could, for the rest of my life, look back on my journey until this point and experience an appreciation and awe whenever I wanted. I felt proud of myself and positive. I felt that what I experienced, from the mundane to the painful, had been made meaningful. All of these feelings came with the realization that, despite my best efforts, I did not feel this way before Natalie. That, though I tried to do my best, I was not happy. That I did not feel like my life was meaningful. That I didn’t look at what I had done or experienced and ascribed much worth to it at all. Now, from the safety of having what I had always wanted, I could see how badly I was lying to myself that I didn’t want it or need it. I could see how poor of a shape I had been in, and how I could never be able to go back. This relationship gave my past suffering and loneliness some meaning. It was the happy ending to the life that I mostly considered a great struggle and looked at with sadness. It was getting to live out the only wish that I’ve ever had for my life on earth, experiencing being loved by a woman.

I felt all of this, but I tried to tone it down. It had only been three dates. My friend from the phone call texted me, checking in about “that girl”. I told him “that girl is probably going to be my wife one day”. I was being tongue-in-cheek, mocking the intensity of my feelings given how early it was, but I was also acknowledging, without any shame or undue sense of vulnerability, that they existed. For the first time ever, I was falling in love in a way that I thought made sense and wasn’t embarrassed of, where I could see a future. Then, we go out for a fourth time. It’s a Friday. We meet for dinner. After twenty or thirty minutes of genuinely belly aching laughter, she calms down and gives me the news. She isn’t staying in town for as long as she thought, she’s actually leaving earlier. When are you leaving, I ask. On Wednesday, she says. I can still feel the reflex from my stomach and shoulder when I heard that. I didn’t understand. I knew she was leaving eventually, but at this point it seemed like before she left we’d be able to build up to something we could take long distance, then plan to join our lives together. She had other ideas. She didn’t even have to go back. She just said she’s been gone a while and she should get back to work and she misses her friends and family. I couldn’t understand it. I thought I had met the perfect person and that she felt the same way.

Over the next few days, I was inconsolable. When we hung out on Saturday, I tried to be alright, but I couldn’t. I broke down. I communicated my heartbreak. She was supportive and nurturing and assured me she was very sad as well. I told her I don’t understand how she can do this and that it seems like she doesn’t really care about me. This hurt her, and I showed great remorse, although I did not fully understand why she was so hurt by it. We hung out again on Sunday. We said goodbye on Tuesday evening, on the beach. I had got her a present from one of our previous dates. The day before, I returned to where we sat talking on the beach and had our first kiss. I filled two small bottles with sand from the exact spot. I gave her one as a parting gift. I made her a card featuring photos of her from our time together and wrote her something very touching and poetic. I had always wanted to be able to express deep and powerful affection and now I had the opportunity to do so. I made sure to avoid it being pleading or sad, to not spoil it. I hope that it meant something to her.

In the Fall of 2022, I moved to the city where she lived. It wasn’t to chase her - I didn’t know if she still lived there – but if she was an option, all the better. I messaged her. We met and talked in the park and ended up getting dinner. We made plans to see each other again, but she had a work trip get extended and then she ghosted our text conversation. I didn’t want to seem pestering, and felt very self-conscious about the fact that I moved to her city, so I left it, decided that she didn’t want to date me but wanted to avoid the discomfort of telling me so. A few weeks went by, and I couldn’t leave it alone anymore. I couldn’t go the rest of my life without understanding if maybe there was a miscommunication, or if she was waiting for me to pursue her more, so I messaged her, asking to see her again. She let me know that she recently began seeing someone exclusively, so it’d have to be platonic. At that time, I felt like I needed the space to move on, so I told her I needed some time and space if we were going to be platonic friends.

Yesterday, I messaged her and asked how she was. She said good and how was I. I said good and said I’d love to see her. She told me she’s engaged and busy with wedding planning, but that she would like to see me too if I’m okay with it being platonic. I assume her fiance is the same person she began seeing exclusively a little more than two years ago. We saw each other a half dozen times three and a half years ago, one time almost two and a half years ago, and yet here I am. I don’t really even know this person. That is one of the painful things about it. It seemed like getting to know this person was going to be one of my favorite things I had ever done in my life, and then that didn’t happen. I never got to know her, much less have a relationship together.

I don’t think I had ever felt so sure of anything in my entire life as I was that this was going to turn into a relationship and that this relationship was going to work out. I certainly have never wanted anything so much.

The only thing that makes me feel better is writing about it.

I have no words.

Your earnestness is a credit and you will recover and learn from this.

I'm sorry to hear that bro. The only advice I can give is that there is absolutely zero point trying to have a platonic relationship with her. All you'll be doing is torturing yourself by wondering what might have been. Best thing for everyone is to make a clean break of it, never interact with her again and try to forget about her as quickly as possible. If you can move to another city so you won't run the risk of bumping into her and her husband, even better.

Agreed. I also suspect she can tell he still has feelings for her, and that is why she was kind of distant with him. That is going to cause problems for a friendship too, so I think it's better to just make a clean break here.

Agreed. There was once someone I loved, who didn't love me back, and while it's been half a decade or more, meeting her and rekindling our friendship would be more pain than it's worth. It's not like it's impossible, but I think it takes being settled and happy already to be worth considering

I'm really sorry to hear that, man. It sounds really heartbreaking. I do think that you had the right of it with regards to the woman when you were younger, that if she didn't want to pursue you then she wasn't for you. As much as it hurts, the same is true of Natalie. She chose to move in a different direction, so she really wasn't for you in the end.

For what it's worth, based on your description of the night she told you was leaving, I do think you made a big mistake there. It seems like she really was hurt by you saying she didn't care about you. Would things have worked out if you hadn't said that? Maybe, maybe not. But I suspect that if there was a chance, saying that hurt your chances significantly. I think she did care about you, and when you said she didn't it drove a wedge that wouldn't have otherwise been there. Just sometime to think about for next time (though obviously hopefully it won't come to that next time).

My condolences. As cases of heartbreak go, I struggle to think of more awful.

All I can say is that the pain will fade, eventually. And you've already met multiple people you've found attractive enough to love, the odds are in your favor that it will happen again, and this time I hope it sticks.

Dextroamphetamine report:

I finally got my first supply of dextroamphetamine, the cool enantiomer. This wasn't as simple as I'd like, I've previously kvertched about my psychiatrist making a minor prescription error that delayed things by a week, but I finally picked up the amended prescription, looked and it sideways and upside down, and then took the long bus ride back home and my local pharmacy.

I submitted my new prescription, and then found myself waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting some more. I could hear the rattle of lock boxes, and harried pharmacy technicians muttering under their breath as they figured things out. One of them scooched past me, carrying a box of what I hoped were my tablets, as well as what was clearly my prescription, before disappearing into an ominous 'Consultation Room'.

He proceeded to come and go several times, and for the short snatches of time the door was ajar, I managed to catch several glimpses of a senior-looking pharmacist doing inscrutable pharmacist things (I just write prescriptions, whatever happens afterwards isn't my forte).

Eventually, after a good twenty minutes of waiting, this senior pharmacist comes out. He asks me to confirm my name. I do. Then my date of birth. Which I do too.

Then he asks me if I've written this prescription myself.

Huh. No, I say, I mean, I very much wish I could have, it would have saved me a great deal of bother.

He puts on his reading glasses and peers at the label, then looks back at me. You sure you didn't write this?

Pretty sure. Though I did explain I'm a psychiatry resident myself.

Then he goes ahh, realizing the error. The Nigerian psychiatrist I saw, through some trick of the phonetic gods, happened to have a name that resembles mine. I mean, it's a very, very distant resemblance, you'd have to be half deaf to confuse the two of us.

You could also be half-blind, as they're spelled nowhere near alike. The GP practice that I signed up for was kind enough to append the actual "Dr." prefix before my name, and for a good 20 minutes, I presume the pharmacists had been arguing amongst themselves about whether I was writing myself a prescription for controlled substances, and whether they ought to do anything about it.

I mean, it is technically legal (with the possible exception of stimulants unless you're a licensed psychiatrist) for doctors to write themselves a prescription for anything. The GMC are just prudish assholes who frown heavily upon it, and hence everyone who values their license avoids it unless it's clearly unimpeachable. I doubt they'd fire me if I'd written myself up for paracetamol.

Anyway, I cleared up that mixup, but was informed that unfortunately, they didn't have enough tablets for an entire month's supply. Fortunately, they did provide me enough for three weeks, and more should come in soon. Half the reason I opted for dexedrine/dextroamphetamine is because it's rarely prescribed, and wouldn't be as likely to be in critical shortage.

I've taken a single 5mg tablet so far, and I can tell you it feels way superior to methylphenidate/Ritalin. 5mg of dexedrine is roughly 10mg of the latter, but even that low dose of Ritalin makes me feel sick, jittery and anxious, and yes, even using the sustained release formulation. This feels almost mellow, just the focus without the palpitations and headaches. Me likey.

It's too early to make a conclusive judgement, but so far I'm glad I didn't just stick to the drug I was familiar with.

Edit:

I took a total of 10mg, and while it did make me hyper-focus, I'm afraid that it doesn't entirely solve distractability. I ended up procrastinating quite a bit, and only read a few pages of my textbook. To be fair, I was interrupted, and just wasn't feeling like studying after a hectic morning.

At that dose, it became very slightly less pleasant, but still nowhere near as bad as the lowest dose of Ritalin. I think it's been long enough for it to start wearing off, and to my great relief, it's nowhere near as harsh when it comes to comedowns. Ritalin would leave me feeling absolutely burnt out and irritated.

Dopamine-release 1, dopamine-reuptake-inhibition 0 (this is grossly simplified pharmacology)

My wife was worried about my high cholesterol, so I finally made a doctor's appointment. I told her "the doctor is just going to plug my numbers into this calculator I found online and say I don't need statins". And that's exactly what happened, in a 15 minute encounter for which my insurance company paid $410.

Nevertheless, in my 40's, I am not entirely comfortable with a 2% risk of a coronary event in the next 10 years, so I asked about a coronary calcium scan. My doctor seemed surprised by this (being entirely reliant on the calculator), but agreed it might be a good idea.

Unsurprisingly, my insurance provider rejected the scan as medically unnecessary. But I went to a site called Instalab and was able to book one the next week for $200 + $50 to Instalab. This might have been less than my co-pay anyway.

The scan took about 2 minutes and I received the results the same day. Zero calcium build up so far!

This brings my 10 year risk down close to zero. I'll still monitor my cholesterol to make sure it doesn't spike to extreme levels, but I feel pretty comfortable not taking statins for now.

I know people who take statins preventively without having high cholesterol as some sort of life-extension hack, but they haven't convinced me yet that the benefits outweigh the side effects.

At 40 I would look at your 30 year risk. It takes decades for heart disease to develop and by the time it shows up in a calcium score, statins can only do so much to help.

Calcium scores also have a fairly difficult to disregard high false negative rate IMO.

If I were you I would push my doctor to prescribe me statins. They're low risk and practically free.

High cholesterol is very easily treated and could be hidden bad news.

(I'm not a real doctor btw)

I do find it odd that they use a 10 year calculator not a 30 year one.

Any more idea why they do that? Lack of data?

According to ChatGPT about 20-30% of people will have a non zero score by my age. Assuming that’s accurate (will need to verify) it does seem to indicate I am not at high risk. Why not just wait and monitor?

Excellent. I am not entirely happy with just taking statins, and will probably ask for either a calcium scan or stress test (which takes longer) at my next visit. We'll see what happens. The statins I'm on (rosuvastatin) are typically prescribed at 10mg - 20mg. My dose is...2.5 mg. But my LDL has gone down considerably. I don't know if my dose is low because Japan, or because my age/numbers/something else.

They start you at the lowest dose and see how your LDL responds. Mine dropped considerably as well as 2.5mg and we haven't adjusted it. I'm also not in Japan but the US.

Thanks for the info!

I'm sorry I was hallucinating. I just checked my bottle and it's actually 10mg. I've been at that the whole time.

Ramping up the training

So for the past month I have been at 4-5hrs of cardio. I do 1hr long run and a 5k interval session, going hard, per week. Then, most of the time is spent going up a 20 floor building with 12kg pack and taking the elevator down followed by some cycling. This needs to build to around 7hrs a week by May. Yesterday I did around 700m vert in an hour, today I am aiming for at least 400m. Though during the night I had very bad cramps. Every time I get them, I am scared for the kidney. Because leading up to my kidney failure cramps were a painful constant.

I am also climbing more and more outdoors now. There I really want to be able to onsight (sport) a couple of 6bs before May 15th. I also want to comfortably trad 5a/5b on limestone. Limestone is a traitorous mistress, gear that you would be bomber on any other rock can and will pull. My friends partner took a ground fall when two of his cams popped. You need deep placements and ideally nuts work best. Overall, I think this would put me in a good place to start the Climb Against Time.

Finding time for everything is a huge issue. So during the days there is obviously the daily lab stuff. On the weekends and nights there is the promotional stuff, improvements to the website, as well as attracting participants for their own challenge. I have to do these otherwise you are just 'Another fucker climbing' as per a mountain guide I met last September. Then there is finding the partners for the climbs I will be doing, which given the volume, is a bit of an ordeal of its own. All of this does strain my relationship with my wife, the time we can spend together is reduced by quiet a bit. Feeling a bit drawn.

Speaking of promotion the social media business is weird. I have now had some experience with Instagram and YouTube. I hugely favor Youtube. You need to spend a lot more effort, your reach is smaller, but you can actually post long-form content, saying somewhat meaningful things or actually being able to tell a story. And I also feel like with investment in to quality you can really take off. There are a crap tonne of accounts on instagram and the competition is fierce because the effort is less. On Instagram 3 second retention is like 30%. You can't really tell a story there, its more like, hey look at this thing real quick! Then bam on to the next thing. If I look at my own viewing habbits this all makes quiet a lot of sense. I think taking this brief foray in to the content creation world has made me a tiny bit more conscious of how I engage with it also.

Though during the night I had very bad cramps. Every time I get them, I am scared for the kidney.

What do you view the upside to training this way as? I used to have cramping problems, no longer do (outside of marathons), and almost all of it is just because I don't put myself in that position during training. Cranking out hard reps builds fitness, but there just isn't a need or benefit to doing it to the point of true muscle failure. Supercompensation in most relevant systems (lactic threshold, aerobic fitness, muscular endurance, neuromuscular power) occurs and results in adaptation at levels well below a constant risk of injury.

I am not at the point of muscular failure. The cramps happen nocturnally after the training, honestly in this case I think I sweated a bit too much and not enough electrolyte to counter balance. But this tight rope between injury and gain is a fine one to balance. I find that given the nature of the challenge 72,000m cumulative vertical, long days etc I need to push now, but not too much.

What are you training for, the Hock?

Training for a charity event I am organising, basically the prime aim is to help change the culture around dialysis. I think there are a lot of misconceptions that have made us converge on solution that is by far sub-optimal.

I will do 41 Alpine peaks above 4000m through hard routes. So it requires a whole season of just climbing and not dying (o1 calculated about 20 millimorts!, will have to check but sounds reasonable given my near misses).

20 millimorts

Not bad if true! I know plenty of people who would cringe and utterly refuse to engage with those odds.

To add reference, my life expectancy on dialysis would be like 15 years. So the expected life-years for me doing this now (were I 100% healthy) is still fair bit longer than were I to go back to dialysis. I'll take the odds.

I'm not really up to date on your life story. I vaguely recall a mottizen telling of his dialysis struggles a few years ago, was that you? Or are you doing this out of altruism?

Pure self interest, yes that was me

Not sure if joking. Please clarify.

The guy on dialysis was me, so I am doing this of course out of self-interest but also because I think this is a fairly atypical disease that doesn't get the spotlight much.

This job fuckin’ sucks, man!

I’ve been meaning to write this update for 4-6 weeks, but here we are. The last week of training wasn’t any more illuminative than the three before it (for the same reason; low call volume; my trainer apologized to me several times for the “bullshit training” that I was receiving), and apparently the folks up north had intended to keep me for more time to make up for the slow pace, but due to communications SNAFUs they called it at that and sent me on my own.

The first week on my own nearly broke me. Lots of calls, almost all far away, and I barely/didn’t know what I was doing. Too slow/disorganized and not good at diagnosing, and there was one particular call where I had what I thought was the gas leak isolated to a bank of four lines and just couldn’t find it. I found and fixed a leak, but it wasn’t the leak. Not being able to fix a problem bothers me in a way that I can best describe as ego-killing, and adding salt to the wound my supervisor got bitched at for me getting too many hours when four out of five days involved 5-hour round trips between the calls and home (Uh, I was under the impression that overtime was expected with this position. I drive more than any service tech in the company due to the low-density market I work in.), which in turn meant that I got bitched at/nagged to take lunch breaks. Apparently the company is in the middle of an overtime crackdown. I asked to be demoted to line cleaning and was denied.

Since then, things have been weird and, well, slow. I have good calls and bad calls, and have gotten better at not letting the bad calls make me want to end it all (I’m not being serious, wasn’t in any danger then and am far from it now, but good God those first few weeks were rough.) while allowing myself to feel good about the good calls. We’ve been so dead in service that I’ve been repeatedly sent to cover line cleaning routes for lack of service calls.

The problem is twofold: The first one is the most clinical. I don’t make enough money at this job to afford doing it long term. Adjusted for inflation, I make about what I did delivering pizza for Papa John’s 10 years ago and could probably match or beat it if I went back to the Papa. I could almost certainly make more money delivering pizza for Domino’s. Overtime hasn’t happened, so I’m stuck in the worst-case situation where I drive 10 hours a week for free (first and last hours of one’s daily driving are unpaid) and simultaneously struggle to get close to 40 hours a week. It’s a nonexistent to negligible gross raise and a significant hourly pay cut.

The second problem is that I mostly hate this job. I’m better at not taking it personally, but I’m not good at correcting foaming beer problems. I’ve gotten better at finding gas leaks but am far from a maestro. I’m not as fast as I would like to be but I’m getting better at putting kegboxes together (I didn’t know how much that aspect of the job would resemble working in construction.) I can change parts and within the parameters I’m trained on (aka. Not involving the HVAC side of things) I like working on glycol chillers, if only because the problem is usually obvious (My most common calls there are either a broken/ pump/motor, failed temperature controller, or total loss of coolant due to a coolant leak.).

My supervisor is blowing nothing but sunshine up my ass about how great of a job I’m doing and judging by the shoddy previous work we’ve done I’ve had to correct on some calls I’m at least partially inclined to believe her, even adjusting for the fact that we’re longtime friends, but I don’t feel like I do a good job. I’ve done some good jobs and gotten lucky draws here and there, but that doesn’t mean that I’m good at my job. Good would mean fixing the hard calls. As of last Friday I was allegedly the top-grossing service tech in the company for the month of February (This probably means that I was the only one to install a glycol chiller, our biggest ticket item.), something that “never happens” coming from my market. If true (and I don’t think she’s lying), my response is less self-congratulation and more “Holy fuck, I guess everyone else is as dead as I am or worse, because I’m not doing shit and my sales are well below the old goal to make commission.”.

The good news is that I should be able to pass a drug test (My new year’s resolution was slow to get off the ground, but I’m pushing six weeks without fake weed, and I don’t really miss it.) as of next week and start shotgunning applications. I don’t know what or where to do next, but this ain’t it. If I fail such that I’m still working here mid-April, I’ll make my one year anniversary and get a week of paid vacation.

I’ve done some good jobs and gotten lucky draws here and there, but that doesn’t mean that I’m good at my job. Good would mean fixing the hard calls.

Fuck sake, are you me? This is exactly how I feel about how I'm performing in my job (am a disaffected tax accountant). No matter how much smoke people blow up my ass I can't think of myself as performing particularly well. It's also supremely boring, and I am probably performing at about 30% of my actual capabilities at the moment because of that. "The quality of your work is good, and your self learning skills are impressive" no, no they're not, either you're lying or your standards are just nonexistent.

In my last performance review I ended up letting slip how monotonous much of the work was to me. My managers seemed fairly defensive about that fact, and one of them said she had never been bored at the job. The amount of sheer disbelief I felt at that statement was so immense she may as well basically have said "It is not normal to sneeze. I never sneeze."

Anyway, I have nothing to offer outside of my commiseration and maybe it helps there's another Mottizen largely in the same boat. Being stuck in a job that wears you down isn't fun. For my part, I'm also aspiring towards finding other work, and trying to automate my job with Python and seeing how far it gets me.

For me, the frustrating part is that I could be a lot better at this, but the training was just so limited that there's far too much that I don't know or don't know enough about to speak with confidence on. Post training, the problem has been similar to the problem I had during training: most of our calls are fairly unsophisticated stuff and our call volume has been low, so it's hard to learn and retain knowledge. TBH, while my supervisor is prone to excessively exuberant positivity, it appears that our standards are just low (in keeping with the pay).

During a call earlier this week I noticed a massive nitrogen leak on something someone else had done (I suspected us due to the fact that the gas lines were the same brand we use.), due to the fact that every crimp connection on a splitter was loose (fitting was too small for the size of gas line used, clamps can only do so much). I mentioned it to my supervisor and she laughed; apparently we installed that setup last year. I don't know if it was our install team (wouldn't be the first time) or the previous service tech (also wouldn't be the first time) that did it, nor am I immune to making mistakes, but come on, at least make sure your crimp connections are tight. Oh, and to add insult to injury the same supervisor forgot to add a gas regulator to the quote on the job I did. I should've caught that (and called my boss and was like "I feel like I'm missing something here."), but for some dumb reason I assumed that the pressure straight out of the non-adjustable blend box would be okay to run cold brew coffee since it isn't carbonated. Our parts inventory is a total shitshow so our other guy who could've done it today didn't have a regulator, nor did we have one in our storage unit, but I have two in my truck (but was on a call 200 miles away from where he was), so I get to drive 5 hours round trip to deliver him a regulator tomorrow and run one call, with another call possible/probable depending on customer approval.

The drive time can wear on you (I was a delivery driver for 14 years and loved it, but driving on the interstate is mind-numbingly boring.). If I'm lucky my calls are an hour away. My shortest drive this week has been two hours to the first call, 90 minutes home from the second call. Three days with 5 hour round-trip drives. I drove six hours round trip today to sell a restaurant manager a $30 coupler and tell her that her line was foaming because that product was either improperly handled, defective from the brewery, or had a bad keg seal (My guess is one of the first two because the seal looked fine, but I'm certain it was a bad keg. If you swap products to different tap lines and the problem follows the keg, it's the keg.). We charged her nearly $500 in labor for drive time (not so much because of pure distance, but because it was to a part of the state that we don't normally do much business in). I get that we quoted her that much in hopes that she'd call someone else, and it's not my fault that the restaurant manager didn't think to swap the kegs before assuming that her system was broken, but man it's hard not to feel like a bit of an asshole when presenting that invoice for 30 minutes of work.

Apparently I have a call lined up next week that's a 9-10 hour round trip drive for a 1-2 hour job.

In my last performance review I ended up letting slip how monotonous much of the work was to me. My managers seemed fairly defensive about that fact, and one of them said she had never been bored at the job. The amount of sheer disbelief I felt at that statement was so immense she may as well basically have said "It is not normal to sneeze. I never sneeze."

Reminds me a bit about how, in my first full-time job, we had some kind of introspection activity and were meant to enumerate our reasons for working at the company. I just went for honesty, "Because my friends work here and also it pays.", and the manager present practically jumped down my throat about how "you can earn money anywhere else, that's no reason to work here!". Some people either are true believers or consider it inacceptable to break the kayfabe.

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/

When I first read that bit it was scary how accurately it mapped to my actual working environment. Like forget about the lower stakes squaring off between the various Queen Bees and their various departments leading to a hilarious plea from the then CEO for staff not to get into public spats on Facebook and mass unfriend work colleagues based on office battle lines. That was amusing, sure, but we actually had a full blown sociopathic power couple in the C-suite doing most of the Deciding for the better part of a decade, then hired another one to replace our outgoing CEO!

For our resident doctors - is it common for nonsmokers to get lung cancer? I'm wondering because my mother in law got a "probably cancer" diagnosis from her doctor recently, but (to my knowledge) she never has smoked nor lived with smokers. It seems kind of like she has gotten royally unlucky, but maybe it's more common than I would've thought.

In addition to air pollution which was mentioned, and the simple fact that other organs can get cancer also with no apparent cause, there’s also radon. At least which I’m located, many basements have unsafe levels of natural radon which can significantly boost cancer risk. Not a doctor. Estimates of how much radon causes lung cancers overall vary but the link itself is pretty strong and has been known for decades, it’s often listed as the number 2 cause in a lot of literature.

It is certainly most common for lung cancer to be caused by smoking (at least in the U.S.). It does depend on the type of cancer though, one counter example you may know is mesothelioma - it's usually a lung cancer, and usually related to asbestos exposure.

I'd say in my clinical experience I've run into crypto-smokers more than people who got traditional lung cancer from other causes.

Keep in mind that the problem is more "pollution" than cigarette smoke. People with lives who brought in the in touch with all kinds of shitty carcinogenic bullshit can easily end up getting lung cancer without smoking, but that is less common in the U.S. Grew up next to a tire fire? Life history may present alternative examples.

Lastly, you do run into smoker-pulmonologists - they rightly point out that smoking is a genetic disease (even if it is a "two hit" situation). High genetic predisposition? Makes sense that lesser exposure would cause problem.

crypto-smoker

Huh?

Some people smoke but don't want other people to know about it, a common sample motivation is because they know it's bad but don't want their kids/relatives to pick up the habit.

I see.

Any idea how much of a risk factor is exposure to (black) mold in the home?

Not really off hand, I'd want to do a lit review for that to have some certainty (although I think the answer is not high risk). You can do that yourself though! Yes it would be a bit dry but if you search "pubmed lung cancer black mold" you can probably get a reasonable impression for a pretty narrow question like this.

Does this count the ‘smokes but lies to the health insurance company’ crowd or are they mostly honest with their doctors?

One of the things you learn in medical school realllllll fucking fast is that most people are shockingly honest with their doctors. Some topics are tough but many topics you think people would lie about (like drug use, or wanting to murder someone) are often whole heartedly endorsed.

It's more of a problem for families, and for often good reasons (I didn't want the kids to think smoking was cool!!).

Thanks for the info!

So I’ve been asked to take an MBTI for a work activity and was told that we would be assigned to teams based on our results. Mildly surprised to see it used this way since I’m in a STEM field, but whatever. It’s not a significant project by any means (a few hours per week at most) and I self-reported my results honestly (INTJ).

They likely want to mix personality types. I don’t buy into MBTI, but I think the I-E and T-F axes are at least somewhat consistent. Based on the quiz they sent us, EXFX types appear to be people uninterested in logical thinking, impenetrable to reasoned argument, and less organized (literally had questions like "I tend to miss deadlines" and "I go with my emotions over logical thinking").

So if this were actually an important project for your career progression, how would you self-report to get the best potential team?

ENTJ because i'm a team player and a people person that just loves to work!!!

Psychometrics in the workplace is oppressive and can do nothing but harm you professionally. Never cooperate honestly with these.

I used to be very into MBTI types, because as an ITP woman, I often felt like I needed an explanation for my personality.

So if this were actually an important project for your career progression, how would you self-report to get the best potential team?

I would probably be honest. MBTI is fairly values balanced, such that there aren't universally better or worse answers. That's its main value proposition, in addition to having a more constrained number of possible results.

The problem with OCEAN, from an employee's perspective, is that it's more threatening. Employers always want their workers to be conscientious, agreeable, and emotionally stable. Especially conscientious. So if it were an OCEAN test, I might try to look more conscientious than I actually am.

Adding: you'd want an extroverted feeling teammate if you're planning a social event.

Depends on the job, I guess, and I haven't taken the test in awhile. I usually get ISTP, but if I'm emotionally dysregulated (therapy-speak for "excessively stuck in my feelings, usually with a connotation of despair and self-pity but on rare occasions excitement?!) I'll score ISFP, and while I haven't taken those tests in 5-10 years I would consider myself a lot more extroverted than I did then (but probably not enough to earn an E over I).

MBTI has a bunch of different uses, one example is managers using it as a shortcut to determine what feedback style is most likely to work (at least initially) for the employee. Try and figure out what exactly they are doing with the data beyond sending people to various teams.

I don’t buy into MBTI, but I think the axes are at least somewhat consistent

The problem with MBTI isn't that the axes aren't consistent. They're obsoleted by OCEAN, because "factor analysis" performs better than "Jung plus guessin'", but they're reasonably consistent and informative.

The trouble is that half the time (or 90% of the time?) you see MBTI used, the axes aren't treated as axes, they're treated as binary categories. If your MBTI test doesn't rank you from "100T, 0F" to "0T, 100F", it just calls you "T" or "F", then it's approximately as useful as a nearly-blank tape measure with a single mark to delineate the boundary between "Tall" and "Short". Yes, those are real concepts, not imaginary ones, but they're not describing bimodal distributions, so at least there should be a third category that the modal person can fit into, stably and without having to flip a coin.

It actually goes beyond that. In MTBI a T isn't just a T, but a cognitive function at a particular placement. You have 4 placements: Dominant, Aux, Tertiary, and Inferior and together they make your categorization. Cognitive functions can be extroverted or introverted, the E/I on MTBI marks which starts first then they alternate. So not only are they an axis but a T in two different types means two different things.

For example, a T in an INTJ is their Aux function: Extroverted Thinking, a T in an INTP is their Dominant function: Introverted Thinking. There're all sorts of analyses on what that actually means but it definitely doesn't mean that all Ts, Es, Is, Fs etc. are alike, will get along together, or will connect.

The hardcore real MTBI tests require an in-person psychologist visit that takes hours. the hokie test that corpo's give you or that you can find online generally aren't very "accurate" and thus really lend to the stereotype of sciency-astrology.

It's a long time since I took a MBTI test, but I'm pretty sure I got percentage results that I could evaluate myself, which is why I always said I'm XNTP despite consistently scoring higher on I than on E (but always only ca 60%). It's not really a fault of the system that many people are lazy that they boil everything down to two categories.

INTX here. I like that coding.

It's been a good 20 years for me, but back then I encountered both types of tests, and the catch was that while the one administered in an educational system was a proper continuum-results test, the ones that were rapidly spreading around the internet like astrology-for-nerds were all binary-result versions. People debating MBTI validity often seemed to be talking past each other as a result, arguing about two significantly different categories of test as if they were the same because they were named the same.

Long update - tl;dr worked during terrible conditions, had a spiritual experience, developed some self respect.

Happy Mahashivratri to everyone! Shivaratri translates to the night of Shiva and celebrates his birth, I have recently begun to be influenced by Kashmir Shaivism and would meditate to celebrate the festival, it's not a real big festival like Diwali or Holi but people still offer prayers and fast.

I have two updates, the first is easier to understand as it's about work, the second relates to spiritual progress which is linked to Kashmir Shaivism.

Last weekend my family and I embarked on a journey to Mahakumb, a holy site where people celebrate the particular festival once in 12 years, it was a massive affair in India and I'll not sour everyone's Wednesday by whining about it, instead I'd like to post something I never thought I'd be abl to to do. My last month has been terrible productivity wise, past week being the literal worst, due to eye strains despite my 6/6 eyes, I got barely anything done and was worried that I'd get kicked out of diamond league on Mathacademy. We left on Saturday evening and I banged out 3 hours worth of math in 7-8 hours in a train where my family had to share the berth with me since due to constraints on expensive tickets we only got two berhs instead of 4. The other two was with another family of two, I studied for the entire duration under a pinhole light sitting without any back support inside of a small berth with constant chatter.

On the flight back, I did the same on the airport, instead of waiting around and scrolling, I decided to do math and ended up finishing my quota of 3 hours before we landed back home, even did 30 minutes on the drive back.

I have never done anything like this before, boomers here tell stories about how they studied under a street lamp on a public railway station to highlight their struggles and I was always the opposite. Fory entire life I was always the guy who looked for excuses, my aim was to live an easy life, get validated and quit as soon as things got difficult, instead this time I actually worked. Not so that my co working partners would appreciate me or because I want this forum or others arounde to think better of me but because I am a different person now. I do all that I do for my own self, I am genuinely happy when I successfully do a good days worth of work.

My posting here has reduced and that's because I can't bring myself to post updates at times since I feel that it may be kinda perverted or validation seeking to post small achievements. Though if there's anyone who's posted about his life as publicly it's me and if I can truly change from a guy who's default is to lie to himself and waste away his life to someone who genuinely acts.

My second update is one that I shared with @TowardsPanna and it's about my first spiritual experience. On 14th February I achieved what one calls Shaktipat (edit - used an incorrect word here). It's the first experience you have which marks the beginning of your spiritual journey. I woke up, worked out,meditated and when I opened my eyes after my sit, I sensory overload, a level of clarity I have never felt before. It's beyond words, you read these accounts of people who meditate and it all seems figurative, hyperbolic.

It's not, it's all real, the accounts are being literal, I've experienced some things including drugs and nothing comes close. It's not due to the euphoria, the clarity I felt was startling. I put on some drum and bass and every note was crisp for all the instruments.

So yeah, after 5 years of posting, I finally felt some tangible changes in my life, experiences that I worked for and got via sustained efforts and life feels different. I no longer care about what people think, when I have a good day I'm tired, I sleep well and look forward to repeating it the next day. I'm not as consistent as I want to be but I'm getting better and if I don't post a lot of updates, then it may mean that I'm doing well. My view of myself is quite low, working and getting better at something helps me respect myself, just a little bit.

A big reason behind all of this is this forum, I finally have a real update worth sharing and I feel a sense of joy doing so on the day of Mahashivratri. It's a long long journey, I really want to finish two more math courses, work on foundational ml models, continue my Web dev slogging as a backup plan, meditate, workout so that I can finally have some modicum of aesthetic physicality. Life is still terrible, my parents curse me every single time I chat with them but I don't reset them now and they don't resent me as much either as they see me working.

I read masters of doom before I hopped on the train and John Carmacks defining trait seemed to be his focus. They'd bring topless hookers to deliver pizza and blast porn, yet he'd be the only one working, it's quite admirable. I want to write a review of it, maybe another thread.

Life's really short, I don't want to judge people who do the minimum or are happy being in the little leagues, my aim for myself is to be as good as I can. All the things my mom or elders told me about not caring about others and distractions if you're focused enough came true. I'm satisfied, somewhat and want others here to know. It's an auspicious day for the update.

Hari Om.

That sounds really good, I'm happy for you.

Appreciate it pal, the more I work, the less I care about everything else, it's very humbling seeing how little I know, how far I have to go.

Got some oxytocin nasal spray coming in the mail, I'm curious to see how it works. Anyone else here used it before?

This is the only thing I've ever read about oxytocin nasal spray. Might be useful, might not.

Why do you want to use it?

I want to feel good!

Have you tried drugs?

Oh, wait.

Lmao yeah already been through the feel good - feel bad arc of drugs.

fair!!!

Ash Wednesday is next week, what are you planning on giving up for Lent?

Last year I did sweets, I could try again, but the timing is very unfortunate.

Alcohol doesn't even count as a sacrifice for me, so I'm not sure what else I could try.

No alcohol in the home, partial abstinence except for Sundays and accepting hospitality. Full fast on ember days, fridays, and during Holy Week.

Last year I drank only water- and I still intend to be closer to this- but as I’ve been having more difficulty getting going in the morning cutting out caffeinated beverages seems unwise.

All junk food outside the home. Fast food, sweets, baked goods, chip局的, ice cream，everything in that range. Wish me luck.

I've tried to do the alternative "do something" lents and they just end up weird, and last year I was sober but it was too easy and kind of against my current life goals.

chip局的

This all but confirms my suspicion that you're a PLA infiltrator.

Curses, foiled again. Shouldn't have tried to reply from my phone.

Definitely technological black holes. Youtube, TV, maybe vidya.

Remember that part of Lent is also doing something good. I might stretch my neck out and do food service at a local church, it depends on what time I have.

Social media, just like last year. No YT, Reddit, Motte. I planned to follow all four Orthodox fasts, but missed both Assumption and Christmas fasts in 2024.

I'm going for no alcohol, no meat this year. Wish me luck!!!!

You could always try the Orthodox fast and go full vegan. ;D

Orthodox can do shellfish during fasts. However, I find them abominable and don't eat any.

We can also eat reptiles apparently, but I've never seen this come up in practice.

No meat is a good one!

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