The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
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Math and CS
I finally hit 12k on mathacademy, my mentor sent me a book, "the courage to be disliked" as a gift for hitting 12k. It seems trivial to me at least, 200 hours of math, could I not have done all this faster? is this even worth celebrating? But I know that it took me a lot of effort. I nearly flunked out of my uni in my first year as I did not remember any math at all and it fucked my grades and confidence permanently, I now know more than any of my classmates did since you barely get taught much beyond high school. My progress CS wise has been kinda alright, I realised that boot.dev does not have enough programming volume, so I will do a bunch of books and projects alongside it to be better. I partake in atcoder weekly contests. I never go beyond the first question but the sight of a contest would scare me. As far as I can remember, even when I picked up soccer, i was always very afriad of stuff, what if someone passes the ball to me, as a result I never got better and had to play with kids a year down after my first year, which is why I quit.
I went on exercim and I could solve the problems there with some ease. This is not a lot, but I could not see myself doing anything in my own head, ever. I list this out because I truly do appreciate that I have gotten better. The programming concepts I plateaued on and could never get past seem easy now.
My workouts are doing ok, too. I add a rep to every single exercise every week. I work out three days a week, all three days have different exercises, and I have been able to progress so far. I do not miss days and try to do some rehab work on my off days. Yesterday, after I got back home, I felt some pain in my right shoulder. Is my slap tear back? I was super concerned and went to the physio. He called me a pussy, laughed and told me to consider smoking weed as a joke and come back when I am stronger. I felt relieved.
Spiritual practise
This is the major update. @TowardsPanna once suggested that I meditate for longer durations. I had my first experience, shaktipata, on the 14th of Feb. Well, yesterday, after I hit 12k, I sat for my session. Every time I felt that I was going to get distracted, I relaxed my attention and somehow became more attentive. By the end, I felt extremely sensitive, my alarm went off, and my mind was blank. I was undergoing my second spiritual experience. My senses were in overdrive, I felt a sense of equanimity for the world. All my worries felt pointless, it's difficult to describe any of this with words. All the accounts people write about this are very real. The world seemed divine. I then had my injury scare, which did wreck my evening, but until then, I was super happy. I discovered Kashmir Shaivism via my mentor, too. The recent attacks in Kashmir also happened yesterday, though I stopped feeling bad since I know the government will never fix issues there.
Overall, I am doing better, slightly. The math stuff is not for direct jobs. When I started, I was too distracted to even read textbooks properly. mathacademy, more than math, instilled basic discipline and a belief that with proper drilling, I could, in fact, learn more. My parents do not know any of this, and the most I can do is post my small incremental steps here. I also started 10 mg of melatonin at night, it does not do much but hey, this place did start from a psychiatrist's blog, so I had to mention it.
I decided to self-study math as well. Took a long time for me get to the point where i could answer difficult questions on mathoverflow/exchange. There are no shortage of practice problems on there, like integrals.
What resources did you use?
no specific source; mostly trial trial and error and PDFs for more advanced concepts. Wikipedia is surprisingly good for the basics
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Cool. Keep in mind what you really want is changed traits, not states. :)
Had to re read this. Spiritual journey for me isn't something that I base my identity on or should discuss publicly. Whether I get burnt or achieve peace is irrelevant, the pursuit of truth is all that matters.
Hari Om!
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Try 0.3 mg instead: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/
I know, I got 60 tablets so can really return them now.
I cut my 5 mg ones into (approximately) 1/8ths so it's at least close to the right dose.
Also, I tried 5 mg once, and it's a very different beast from 0.6ish mg. If I didn't already know it was the same drug, I wouldn't have been able to guess from the effects.
For the future, you can get 300mcg pills from Nootropics Depot.
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Please tell me more, what difference did you notice? Compared to 5.
0.6 mg made me quite sleepy after a short while. In the morning, I woke up from a deep sleep and (after a minute) felt well-rested.
5 mg made me almost collapse in exhaustion. I had vivid (though unremembered) dreams, and I was still tired as I got ready for the day. I was fine by the time I left for work, but it didn't feel like a normal good night.
Weird, I did not feel extremely sleepy after the second 10 mg dose. I have tried other sleep meds before, sove 10 or diazepam, which gave me hallucinatory experiences, I actually did not dislike them lol, but melatonin is very tame by comparison. I think they are considered benzos?
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