Self Improvement

Hello comrades! I quit using snus (mouth tobacco-nicotine pouches) since 1st January. It's hard, and I get extreme cravings during the days and have problems falling asleep in the night, but I'm not gonna start again!

I want to lose weight so this week I installed the Waistline app from f-droid for weight tracking & calorie counting and setup an indoor trainer with my bike so I can ride in the mornings. Good luck to everyone working on their goals!

i have a txt file called diary on my desktop. Open it, on the first line i hit enter to shove old entries out of the way, put the date, and start writing. Whatever. Sometimes it's a lot, sometimes it's next to nothing. Whatever I feel like. Some days I forget to open it. That's okay.

In the past week, I practiced meditation on 4 days in a row, went running on one day and cooked my healthy lentil & chickpea stew.

Next week I would like to touch grass with a friend and hopefully do some reading. It's gonna be too cold for running so I would like to practice my bodyweight routine on at least one day.

I wanna share a subreddit called Fitness Material Heaven where people are pirating and sharing paid fitness programs and books. There is a lot of good stuff, check it out!

Good luck to everyone with their goals

My first goal of the year has been to cut back on sugar consumption. I'm still at the stage of becoming aware how much sugar is in the stuff I normally eat and figuring out what I can cut out or replace. The easiest target so far is obviously cutting back on snacks, but it's also gonna be hard because I love my baked treats.

Thanks again @[email protected] for linking me that sugar free reddit!

Today marks two years of veganism! Yesterday was the start of week two of regular exercise. I'm finally regularly eating enough to gain weight. The scale said 130 for the first time in my life! Only like 25ish pounds to go to get to a healthy weight.

Bought an ereader that should arrive today, hoping carrying it around at work will make it easier to study in my down time, and also at home away from the distraction box that is my computer.

I haven't played a video game since new years, and I'm hoping I can make it stick. Last time I tried, mid last year, I went for a month, but picked up a stupid browser game out of curiousity and was back to the slop. I have to stop falling for the 'Oh I'll just check this out because person X said it's fun' trap and actually have alternatives to choose that I find fun.

I've got other things to do lined up to replace g*ming this time but I haven't quite started on them. (A friend sold me a cheapo electric keyboard, and my brother is encouraging me to grow mushrooms lol). It's intimidating to be at the foot of a new hobby and not know where to start. I guess that's why I fell back on games because idk I at least felt I was good at them.

Thanks for making this thread.

I want to build more muscle. I have a very lean look with not a lot of muscle. It has always been this way. I do not gain weight very easily but I want to add more muscle on my body for a triathlon in a few months. I also need to work on my swimming cardio for that portion of the competition.

Started running again this week. 2x this week, very slow.

Picked up the trash from the floor of my apartment bedroom. Maybe I'll get around to cleaning the rest of my apartment sometime.

I did some weeding in the garden and planted a wildflower mix :)

I keep trying to cut back on cannabis and am semi successful getting down to smoking about half as much. I've been trying to give my brain other addictions. During the day i'll go touch sunlight and pull weeds, in the evening i try to get into a really absorbing game.

I've also been making an effort to be active each day and it's worked out. I'd like to get more aerobic exercise in, but winter feels like the worst time to start that. It's cold in my house, it's cold outside, it's so cold i don't even want to get undressed to shower. And i want to use my kettlebells but i'd need to shut myself in a room without the cats so i feel a little bad about doing that lol. I just need to figure where to fit into my routine and how often and start doing it. For now, doing walking/dancing/yoga is fine. I don't want to change my routine too much at once in case it won't stick. So i'm just trying to add gardening to my daily routine until it feels normal, then i will replace the yoga step with a more intense exercise (hopefully)

I'm starting therapy for the first time soon. Was meant to start going to the gym but I'm not able to stay at my apartment right now so that's delayed till probably next week. I have lots and lots and lots of other aims I'd like to work on in the theme of self improvement but I feel like getting those started will be the most beneficial and set me up for working on other stuff in the months that follow.

I'd like to even start the things I planned to do this new year but managed to put my lower back out and it's been screwed up for the last week or so. Not enough for me to be immobile or in considerable pain but I can feel it's not right and can't do exercise on it.

Been sticking to my japanese duolingo for a week now. Feels good because I'm absolutely atrocious at sticking with any self-improvement. I haven't really learned much yet because I've got basic phrases from over a decade of being a weeb, but just keeping at it feels nice.

I mostly recovered from a flu

Today marks day 15 of no marijuana. Trying to go 21 days for fun and also to re-define my relationship with the substance. I don't want to have to rely on getting high daily to cope with the horrors of this world anymore.

Appreciate reading everyone's comments-- it's nice to find solidarity in our communal efforts.

Last week my evening meditations dropped off for a few nights but I sat on Sunday night and want to keep that going. I normally try to sit zazen but lately have been using a guided meditation of sitting meditation that is helping me get "butt-on-cushion" time and I hope eventually I can work my way back up to just sitting.

Been on a diet since Jan. 2 and today my weigh in was 4 lbs lighter since then!

Definitely backslid on smoking weed but I didn't last night, even though I had already made my mind up that I would!

Exercising for the first time in months due to back issues. Single leg squats are really hitting me hard now, I forgot how hard they were.

I already posted about my attempting to get our house organized. I got my desk(me space) almost done and it is already starting to feel less noisy.

We took a bin and put it on our water cooler and filled it with our meds. So that clears a bit of my cooking space over that I've been trying desperately to reclaim.

Unexpected but also completely expected but I think I'm going down a rabbit hole of neurodivergent focused texts and suddenly wanna know everyone's story. Got done with "Unmasking Autism" and started on "What I Mean When I Say I'm Autistic" by Annie Kotowicz and although it feels like she wrote it for NT's to read, I feel like it's very apt for newly diagnosed Autistics because you get a view into another NDer's life and get a better understanding of how we are all different and also very similar in many different ways. I literally want more of this. It's a super easy read too so it's going in my rec pile.

This next week I wanna do a bit of digital decluttering. I'm gonna finally migrate my comms from lemmygrad over to Hexbear and actually set up a sub list. I love my lemmygrad comrades but I feel more at home here. I've been hanging out here and neglecting a wider community I feel like and wanna get more active across both servers.

I think that's my big one.

I need to re-edit this story I'm working on because I use Transhuman as a main story device but I really don't like how that word looks, especially after reading a bit more on Epstein. So that's another big one.

I got a double session with my therapist coming up by my request too. I have a lot of shit I need to unpack after the holidays and after finally reading more about my diagnosis and wanna start working on how to both still be me but also how to mask when I need to(or should? Like with meeting new people or interviewing for jobs and such.)

That's sort of my current stack.

I'm also gonna look into what I can actually do locally to help ND friends and other marginalized people. I used to say I wanted to get into politics and fix it that way but our local politics is an absolute clown show. I think I might be better suited just pissing them off instead since they don't wanna work to better improve our lives unless we are old, rich, white, trad nuclear marriage enjoyers. I have no idea what this idea will look like as it develops, or where it goes but I feel like maybe it's finally my mark to leave on this shit hole town.

Tried out some new recipes that I loved, most involving chickpeas or black olives. For now, eating intentionally during the week and openly during the weekend is working for me.

If you can, try to go for a 30 minute walk every day. I usually spend so much wasted time just doomscrolling (demand avoidance go brrrrr). I lift weights and eat right too, but juggling all these demands can be tough.

Do you want to share something you've done in the previous week?

picked up drawing, socialized, cleaned up my place, working, getting tasks done sooner, read a long journal article, gettig a surprise in on useless liberals, at least had regular walks

What would you like to do next week?

Past job shit, I wanna practice drawing whenever I get the video g'me bangs, also regular and more exercise, reading more academic things, reading more literature, reading more everything

Do you have any streaks? For example, "sober for one day." Feel free to post your streak every day in this thread.

1 week and a day no video g'mes

I've been doing okay on my other goals and pretty well on my weightloss goals. I'm easily under my calorie limit while eating healthier and haven't had many issues with cravings so far. I've also spontaneously decided to start intermittent fasting (not eating anything from 8 pm to 12 am the next day) and that seems fairly easy to do, although with university starting again this week we'll see how well it actually fits into my schedule. Also been meditating 10 minutes every evening which feels great.

Trying to kinda-sorta partake in Jamuary this year. A couple of years ago patricipated in the "proper way" by making one jam/short track per day for the entire month, and while it was cool and all it was fucking exhausting and started feeling like a god damn job by day 4.

This year my goal is a bit more lenient: Spend at least 30 seconds making (or just try to make) any kind of music, every day. Tapping out a rhythm on my lap, playing a stupid melody on a piano, slapping together a cheesy acid bassline, wander up and down a minor scale a few times, whatever! Just go with it! If you're done after 30 seconds, that's ok! If you keep going, great! No pressure, no expectations.

30 seconds though? Really? Yes! It's absolutely enough for me to get the creativity and inspiration going. Every day I've sat down in front of my music machine of choice and thought "well let's get these 30 god damn idiot seconds out the way so I can play video games in good conscience", and then discovered that woah, this is actually kind of more fun than video games, and gotten completely hyper focused. This weekend I made a heavily swung blues/boogie type thing with vocoded lyrics and a 303 bassline. I started from the boogie thing because I'd been singing a silly song to my cats with that melody and I couldn't get it out of my head and wanted to do something with it and then it just kind of snowballed from there. It's stupid as hell, but making it made me a better musician. Today I think I'll start out by recording a short old-school jungle type drum pattern with wacky syncopation and hella snare hits and work from there. It's gonna be fun.

9 days no video games

7 days of gardening (mostly weeding) completed

i also got some native seeds in the mail today, gonna plant those this week :)

I finally begin to lift weights and am happy with the improvement even if I am very sore 😅 It feels good to know that progress is being made. I am also hoping to practice swimming more so I can have better cardio and resistance for that.

OH THE MEGATHREAD!!!! JEQVZODNABD

13 days no games let's fucking go!!!

I've picked up bouldering at a new rock climbing gym that opened recently. I can climb quiet a few V3's and am eager to break into V4. I think I can hit V6 this year if I work on technique and strength training. Speaking of training, I started a calisthenics push-pull-legs routine this week, and can already hold an L-sit for 10 seconds!! Been getting stronger just from climbing without really realizing it. I want to be able to a planche and handstand pushup eventually. And then finally achieve the muscle up.

I gardened almost every day but the day i was soaking wet from coming from a vet appt, on that day i fertilized my inside plants. Every 10 minutes outside is like gaining 10mental HP points back. i'm gardenpillled

not my own self-improvement but my parents decided to quit drinking this month! i'm a lil ho so i've drank a few times since but it's really refreshing and i'm proud of them after december was like, non-fucking-stop boozing

you can't g'me if you are overworked