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Wellness Wednesday for September 13, 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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I don't dive, but I have gone snorkelling on some tropical islands. The biggest sharks I encountered were black-tipped reef sharks, and those are so non-dangerous to people that I actually gave one a pat on the head (which mildly annoyed it, but it then just swam away from me). The nastiest interaction I had with a shark was when I went deep sea fishing - I was bringing up a kingfish and a shark decided to fight me for it (and the rented fishing rod). I'd been powerlifting and was in relatively good shape (140kg squat) and this shark did not let go and continued to try and take the fishing rod into the ocean for about fourty five minutes. My muscles were on fire at the end of it, but I did manage to avoid losing the rod.

I'm guessing you didn't simply cut the line but actually defeated the shark or at least old man and the sea'd the fish.

I managed to get the head of the fish I originally caught up onto the boat. The shark wasn't even hooked, it just didn't want to let go until I got it to the surface.

Did the shark eat the rest of your fish, leaving you just the head? If so that is both funny and fucked up. You fight an epic battle with a shark only to get a fish head you throw back overboard.

Yes, that's what I got at the end. At least the shark didn't take an expensive rented fishing rod with it, so I had at least some small victory.

I am clueless about deep-sea fishing, but: why didn't you cut the line?

That would have cost a bunch of money as I would have had to replace the hook and sinker etc.

Also I was a young male who really did not want to give up, I'd been working out for a while and wanted to put those muscles to use.

Got it - you had an expensive hook and sinker attached to the other end. No wonder you fought the shark for it!

Well, you also get to honestly brag that you've wrestled with a shark. That's pretty dope.