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Wellness Wednesday for November 15, 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 was going to suggest getting married or having kids. I'm forced to sit on the couch and watch idiotic television for, often, 2 hours a night.

Idle time doing nothing is overrated. The instagram memes that urge you to "practice self-care" by sitting on your ass all day are public squeals of inferiority and copium.

The maximum amount of unproductive pleasure you should force yourself to partake in is taking time to read before bed or on the couch with your coffee. I, too, toned down my fiction in recent years, and regret having to chew through a ton of dry junk to avoid pleasure. You're allowed to dabble in fun books too. Remember, very little of that non-fiction is going to be useful. My 8-hour slog through the history of Insurance got me a fraction of a brownie point with an executive this one time. Not worth it.

if I'm hanging out with someone and they step out to the bathroom I'll pull out my phone and start studying something on Wikipedia or a think tank or whatever.

This may be the last bit of adjustment that may be worth making. Get comfortable being silent and thinking, even if someone's not in the bathroom. It can even be planning for the meal you'll cook in the future, but every human should be able to disconnect for the time it takes someone else to pee. No silver bullet besides practice.

I was going to suggest getting married or having kids. I'm forced to sit on the couch and watch idiotic television for, often, 2 hours a night.

Ironically I've thought about doing this for sort of the opposite reason - I figure if I'm going to keep myself busy anyway I might as well be doing something genuinely productive like raising kids haha.

The maximum amount of unproductive pleasure you should force yourself to partake in is taking time to read before bed or on the couch with your coffee.

This is something I actually want to start doing, at least before I go to bed, in party because I assume it might also be a healthier way to prepare for sleep than screentime.

every human should be able to disconnect for the time it takes someone else to pee

Wise words.