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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Notes -
Different strokes I guess. I think the following points you’ve listed as downsides of living in a rural area are, to me, upsides:
To offer the perspective of someone else I know, my dad grew up in a village in Malaysia (that has significantly modernised since) and spent his childhood riding up and down forest trails. He remembers that period of his life as being extremely idyllic, and the nostalgia he has for it is clear.
Similarly, I enjoy being isolated, I enjoy proximity to natural spaces, and vastly prefer the “depression” of the outskirts compared to my daily experience of being shoved in with hundreds of people in a tube, packed like sardines. That’s how my morning commute is, and I always come out of the experience mildly frustrated.
When I’ve been in the outskirts I’ve always enjoyed when people have been friendly to me, or when the odd local has tried to make conversation. It’s felt welcoming without being utterly and completely overwhelming the same way the city centre has been.
To me, this is a bonus: I welcome most if not all animal sounds, including those of insects; crickets and even cicadas do not bother me. Birdsong is especially welcome. I find it much harder to ignore ambient noise in the city, which is far louder in general and much more unpleasant in terms of timbre.
Perhaps I should’ve been more clear as to what I mean when I say "city", which is a major urban hub. I find small cities somewhat fine as long as there are adequate outdoor recreation opportunities in close proximity to the town. But I think you’re underestimating just how much density my partner prefers - he actively enjoys going downtown, and his idea of a “depressing and isolating” place is living in a suburb of a major (and I mean major) North American city. He has some level of flexibility around this, but he does enjoy the density of urban cores quite a bit, and doesn’t enjoy when he’s too far distanced from it.
It would be nice of dogs could STFU somewhat, but otherwise I agree.
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