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Wellness Wednesday for July 12, 2023

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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Recently I saw an old friend and some of his buddies that were all very left leaning and weren't aware I've shifted right. Occasionally some "white people" remarks came up that put me off, though it was nice to allow myself to actually feel put off rather than pile on with it like I used to.

But I actually did enjoy doing the tricky thing of finding agreement on more right-wing ideas while still presenting as leftist.

The best example that came up with my friends was me saying how much I like Biden because he forgave my student loans. I make enough money that this is totally ridiculous, but it's true, and it's a fun way to kind of present the absurdity of a policy I don't like, without harshly committing to any real position out loud.

By doing this I don't feel fake, it's more like, I'm saying what I believe in a crafty way, and if you really want to know what I think I'll tell you. But if these people don't poke and prod, which they won't because people just talk about themselves, then I can just drop hints as long as I'm clever about it. And the archetype of the clever right-winger can actually be very attractive or interesting to the leftist. Just watch this Bill Buckley interview with Betty Friedan: https://youtube.com/watch?v=E7BJyQmqo_Q