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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I,too, am often serious, and for whatever reason appear to have a permanent scowl across my eyebrows where I apparently look angry all the time. This is not me being selfconscious; i've literally been told this more than once by people as varied as literal strangers all the way to my wife, recently, after more than a decade of marriage. And like you, I benefit from a buzz. I lighten up. I am probably more fun to be around, at least until I'm not.
But I am not always serious. I have moods where I am relaxed, and without any booze. Are you of one consistent mood all the time without your concoction?
Regarding your metaphor, I once knew a guy who forced himself to become literate in SEC football just to be able to converse casually with other males--it's almost like a secret handshake among men in certain areas of the South. And he did this with some success, to the point that eventually he married a woman who was an extreme football fan, and when my friend died his after-funeral wake was festooned with the colors and logos of the local college team. Be careful what tools you use to become social, I guess. Or maybe there's no lesson there. I myself never learned to bullshit about football, but I admittedly escaped 10,000 miles to another country.
Yes, I'd describe it as a stoic mood. If it is nice outside I'll think the weather is pleasant, but it doesn't cause me to smile. I don't get mad at people when they do dumb things, I just think that it is interesting or useful information about the world.
Even when I'm in social situations I usually just think about how I can quickly and politely end the conversation so I can go do something else. If I were to be in a social situation with a large group that I couldn't leave then my mood would be much more anxious. That is one of the only times my mood changes much when sober.
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