Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff

[Auspice]

@Thenomain said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

The other great advice: if it's truly important, you'll "find the time."

A lot of people don't do things that they should. "I can't find the time" is my biggest lame excuse right now, even though I have logged over 20 hours in Wolfenstein: New World Order. Really, Theno? Can't find the time?

Depends on what the rest of your time has banked. 'Downtime' is vital, too. Your brain needs to unwind and relax. If you pack your entire day with work of some stripe or another, you will burn out.

I work full-time and am in school full-time. I am not, at all, ashamed of how many hours I am clocking before bed in Elite Dangerous. Mind you, it's like 2-4 hours a night. Could I be spending those 2-4 hours working on learning to code? Sure.

Am I? Fuck no. I already spend roughly 60 hours a week on other "work" items. Relaxation is vital for my health, too.

ETA: I did spend most of my day off in ED also. I managed to get homework done a lot faster than expected. Again, not at all ashamed. Relaxation is important. Be it hanging out, reading, etc. For many of us here, it's video games. You need to do things to give your brain a break from the hard shit.

[Catsmeow]

I have struggled for YEARS on how to lose weight and more importantly how to do it in a healthy manner. I've starved myself and lost a lot. I have restricted. I have over-exercised. This time around I'm seven weeks in and I'm doing it by not beating myself up over it.

If I eat too many calories, instead of thinking what a pig I am. I realize that I will just make better choices after and then try to figure out WHY I splurged. Was it to an emotional thing? Was I bored? Have I not been eating enough through the day and felt deprived? If I don't exercise that day, I remind myself that my body needs a break instead of telling myself how horrible of a failure I am. We negative self-talk ourselves all the time. That is the real problem in my book.

Look at this conversation for example. @Thenomain is already putting himself and his choices in a negative light by saying he should and doesn't, etc. Or by saying he's spent X hours doing X thing and should be doing... we really need to eliminate 'should'. He enjoys gaming, there is nothing wrong with that. We need to work on changing our self talk. Like we say things to ourselves we would never say to a friend or a stranger.

Find a thing you like to do and then focus on the activity and not on it as a weight loss tool. If you like to bike, go bike. Enjoy the beauty around. If you like photography, go bike ride to a place and walk around and take pictures. You need to enjoy how your time is spent. I mean I'm just giving an arm chair opinion here, so it could all be bunk.

I walk 2-6 miles a night with my sister. We have been out of touch almost my entire adult life. We are now living together. We walk slow (18-20 minute miles) and we just sort of catch up on our day. What was funny? What was crazy? What made us mad? It's something we both enjoy and gives us time to get back to the relationship we had. That's my only exercise. I'm more mindful of what I am eating, but hey, I just ate a bowl of chips if I'm honest here. I don't feel bad about it. It was totally worth the calories to me.

As a positive -- I am officially down 20 pounds since May 8th. Woot. I still have a ways to go, but I find my thoughts are shifting and that's the real ability to do it. Also, accountability. I know my sister is waiting to go walk with me and she gives me crap (nicely) if I bail out or try to bail out on her. So @thenomain - find someone to check in with. You want to text me (I don't mean that in a creepy way), I'll set up a time to check in with you if you want.

TL;DR - It's more about shifting your self-talk and your mindset. Also, woot this is working, albeit slowly.

[Thenomain]

@Catsmeow said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Look at this conversation for example. @Thenomain is already putting himself and his choices in a negative light by saying he should and doesn't, etc. Or by saying he's spent X hours doing X thing and should be doing... we really need to eliminate 'should'. He enjoys gaming, there is nothing wrong with that.

Except I don't. I mean I do, but I don't enjoy it as much as I'd enjoy time outside. Staying inside and online is easy; I am very notably a lazy person. I grew up in the era when going outside as a kid and not coming home until dusk was a thing. Every day, all day, all summer long. I love to camp, to walk, to bike, to be outside, I absolutely adore it. So why don't I do it?

I believe that being adult means knowing what needs to be done and doing them. There are two incredibly hard parts to this, and only one is "and doing them". That part is absolutely hard, but the part that's just as hard is "knowing what needs to be done".

Yes yes, "knowing is half the battle, yo Joe," but you know what, knowing isn't that flipping easy! And being able to recognize a situation, recognize a solution, and then carrying out that solution are three parts to, well, Adulting.

[Catsmeow]

@Thenomain

Do you have friends to walk with or go out and do things with? I am old and thus that was my childhood too. Meeeemmmorries. Although, I do have to say I like being back East. It's so green and stuff. No one has ever taken me camping no matter how much I have asked.

[surreality]

@Auspice This post is made of gold. It does not need to be bronzed, it needs to be gilded. For real.

I have spent the past 3 years skidding from one RL 'holy shit wtf where the hell did that come from' disaster to another, all occurring while working on whatever I was working on for 12-16 hours/day, with little time to spare for downtime or fun. (The folks who I played with here and there over the past couple years can verify how impossibly hard it tended to be to pin me down to times for anything without triple-checking the schedule, and then being prepared for some new catastrophe to arise, 'cause something always did.)

Burnout is real. So damn real. Living primarily in 'nothing but work and crisis control' mode for a period of years will fuck you up but good. (Hello, my name is Dee and I'll be your cautionary tale for the evening, how may I be of assistance?)

Seriously. Do not guilt yourself over time spent on fun. You don't get hours of your life back to catch up on enjoyment you missed because you were trying to be as productive as possible or handle a crisis, because there's always going to be work waiting to be done or a crisis looming in the future. Fun/chill time is important. It's essential to keep life in balance, and once that balance gets screwed up, it's really easy to crash and burn way beyond the level of burnout.

[Auspice]

@surreality

And that is why I hate that "if it's important, you'll make the time" shit. Because it tries to guilt you into feeling bad about the relaxation that is so vital. Any therapist, hell even most doctors will insist you take that time off to unwind. Give your mind and body a break. Especially as you get older.

Play with your kids. Watch some TV. Read a book. RP. Engage in a hobby that you enjoy. I watch Netflix while I eat, before sleep, and between poses now. My other 'downtime' is games like Elite Dangerous, because it still engages my brain (that way I still feel like I'm keeping things kicking up there while having fun).

[surreality]

@Auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

And that is why I hate that "if it's important, you'll make the time" shit. Because it tries to guilt you into feeling bad about the relaxation that is so vital. Any therapist, hell even most doctors will insist you take that time off to unwind. Give your mind and body a break. Especially as you get older.

Exactly this.

My family has a habit -- and by habit I mean this has gone back to age four and persists now, 39 years later -- of trying to force me into monetizing absolutely everything I do, especially anything I pursue as a hobby. They do not see why this is so damaging or counterproductive, or, in many cases, astonishingly stupid.

We will not discuss how brutal the arguments about how and why I was not going to attempt to monetize this hobby have been, but I will mention they went on intensely and in earnest for over 12 years before they gave up trying to force the issue. (They threatened to disown me more than once if I didn't make a game for profit. We all know to laugh at that, but they don't know enough to realize: that isn't really how this corner of the hobby even works.)

These are people who took my old vacation photos out of the little boxes I kept them in to put on cards to sell them without my knowledge or permission after I told them I was not going to go take pictures for sale in order to force my hand on the matter. Seriously. "That isn't how you go about doing that thing," is huge, but not so huge as, "Oh, well. There went the thing I enjoyed doing as a hobbyist, at a hobbyist skill level... and now I look like a pompous fuck who doesn't know what they don't know skillwise trying to shill everything I do to make a buck, even though I had nothing to do with... any of that... and now I'm being yelled at that it didn't work?" Nnngh. (Of course it wasn't going to work, idjits. Sigh.)

Hobbies are important. Bigtime.

[ThatGuyThere]

@surreality
I feel your pain. If I had a dollar for every time an extended family member thought I should start a comic book shop or sell my collection to buy some other thing then I would likely have more that I would earn running a comic shop. Thankfully my immediate family is not like that.
On a side not I am much happier now that comics are a hobby to me again and not an addiction. About 7 years back I was buying something along the lines of 70 titles a month and enjoying it very little and buying more out of habit or because I have always bought than out of enjoyment. In 2011 I quit cold turkey, and didn't buy again until last year, now I buy here and there when things look good to me without getting a bunch and I have found I enjoy them a lot more. Some of it might be a change in product but I think most of it is that i am buying because I enjoy reading them again rather than it being Wednesday and time to buy the comics.

[Auspice]

I am a slow-ass knitter. Seriously. I am so slow.

And I am constantly being pestered to sell my knitting. No. Nope. Not gonna happen. Then it becomes pressure and then it becomes ruined as something relaxing.

[surreality]

@Auspice That, exactly. That's even the most recent instance. Made a shawl for my mother for mother's day; instant pressure to make clones of it for sale.

First, no can do, not my pattern. (Law is law is law is whew thank gods there's an out.)

Second... holy shit. I dyed the raw fiber for that, carded and blended it, spun the damn yarn, then knit the shawl.

People don't just 'do' that like it's a nothing to sell for $25 at a frickin' craft fair.

[Auspice]

@surreality said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Auspice That, exactly. That's even the most recent instance. Made a shawl for my mother for mother's day; instant pressure to make clones of it for sale.

First, no can do, not my pattern. (Law is law is law is whew thank gods there's an out.)

Second... holy shit. I dyed the raw fiber for that, carded and blended it, spun the damn yarn, then knit the shawl.

People don't just 'do' that like it's a nothing to sell for $25 at a frickin' craft fair.

That's the other thing. People do not understand. I paid $25 for the yarn alone.
And then my time is about 20 hours into it. Even if I charged a measly $1/hour for it, that is $45.

Most people aren't gonna pay $45 for something when they can buy their own mass-made version at Target.

And then if I charge, say, "minimum wage" of $8/hour, that makes it $185. Yeah, no. I am never, ever selling my knitting so long as I am slow as fuck at it.

[surreality]

@Auspice Yup. Minimum wage and materials, that yarn alone would have been $85 at least. Without markup.

The most annoying thing is that she is the person who got me involved in fiber arts in the first place (seriously, when I was four) and she collected handspun yarn back in the 80s. She knows how much it costs. That's less than she'd pay for a single skein back then that was 20 yards of simple bulky stuff, not 250g of hand-dyed and mixed and spun luxury fibers.

We do the jewelry thing together -- or did, she retired with almost no warning last year and dropped the business (including all the things of it she did and would never allow me to be involved in to know how to do or who to contact/pay/etc.) on me -- so she knows. She actually has gone to the same 'how to price your work' seminars I have.

How she has become as brain-damaged as some of our worst customers is just... beyond.

My father just does things like tell me I have to create a web site for the 2k+ different items we have on hand from scratch over a three day weekend or we'll be sleeping in our cars, which, while more ridiculous and more extreme, is sorta forgivable because this is the same man I had to explain the use of scrollbars on a web page to when he thought the porn companies were trying to scam him by 'only giving him half a picture free' and 'did he have to pay for the lower half of the picture, this is a scam, it's a scam!!!' (We will just ignore the fact that he was using word processors back in the days of the suction cup modems as a journalist often on the road, 'cause... we have to.) As unreasonable, panic-inspiring, and certifiably insane it is, I can usually send my husband over to explain to him why this is impossible (because this answer is not acceptable unless it comes from someone with testicles and cannot be true if it's coming from... the person who had to explain scrollbars to him).

[Arkandel]

@surreality said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

First, no can do, not my pattern. (Law is law is law is whew thank gods there's an out.)

Pardon the extreme ignorance, but there are (enforceable) copyrights on knitting patterns?

... And are y'all nerds going to stare at me like I'm completely stupid now?

[surreality]

@Arkandel I'd have to look at the specifics again, and there are weird things re: garments, but usage rights are listed on more or less every pattern of every kind you buy. Some allow use for commercial sale, some allow personal/gift use only, others allow personal/gift/can use for charity fundraising, typically. It tends to be one of those three with knitting patterns, anyway.

[Ganymede]

@Arkandel said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Pardon the extreme ignorance, but there are (enforceable) copyrights on knitting patterns?

Like plays, the copyright gives the owner control of who uses the pattern and how often. So, you basically are granted a license to use the pattern for a price.

[surreality]

It's all sort of here-nor-there, too, when it comes to thinking of knitting things commercially. You have to be perfect at it, lightning fast, and have a very wealthy customer doing the commission, because practically speaking, even at minimum wage, a garment like a shawl or sweater will probably never have less than 20-40 hours of labor in it, and that's a really low estimate for someone fast as fuck.

The vast majority of people out there are really not even remotely interested in paying for that labor. This holds true for most artisan craftwork; it definitely crosses into jewelry all the time. I have pieces that may only have $50 in materials in them -- but 20 hours of labor. Guess which of the two totals out to more in the final price, even well below the standard of 'you really do need to be asking this much hourly' (which, in the 90s at least, was $20/hour for the wholesale price point according to all the 'experts').

[Auspice]

Applied to extend / add on to the loan I have (and have about half-paid off) at a credit union.

Now to sit on pins and goddamn needles that they approve it. I got the original loan (which was twice what I'm asking for now) when my credit score was (marginally) worse and I was making less money. I've never missed a single payment. I've paid roughly $10/mo over the monthly payment.

...so they should want to extend it to keep me around right... right?

Fuuuuuuuck I need the money to make this move. Not least of all 'cause I don't wanna be homeless at the end of August.

[SparklesTheClown]

I thought I'd post again, since today is weird.

This morning I thought we had an earthquake, since my bed was shaking and it felt like the earthquake we had years ago. Then I read online that we did not, in fact, have an earthquake.

Due to my upbringing, and googling "bed shaking" on the internet, I quickly came to the conclusion that my bed was haunted due to the fact that I spent the last few weeks telling ghosts to come fight me because I'll kick their ass. Then the other day I declared that ghosts did not exist because they clearly never seem to show up. It all made sense.

Then I remembered that I have an actual medically diagnosed disorder that causes me to have waking hallucinations (sleep paralysis), among other related symptoms that come with it, plus only sleeping for about 4 hours a night for like the last week or so and having a weird headache.

So like, I'm thinking it's probably my brain and not ghosts, but just in case I think I might give my bed a mild exorcism when I can find some olive oil.

[Auspice]

Loan didn't happen. Funny enough? Because I have too much money going out compared to what's coming in.

...the whole reason I'm moving is why I can't get the loan to move. Awesome.

ETA: So I'm trying the GFM thing. Because, well, I hate to do it, but I gotta try? Erf. I guess, hey, at the very least if folks can help spread the word... https://www.gofundme.com/uzzqh-moving-to-austin

[Ganymede]

Totally serious, but does anyone want to try a plant-based diet with me?

Truth: I just saw the documentary "What the Health?" on Netflix. My partner and I saw a similar documentary last year, and her current medical (sort of) school is run by Seventh-Day Adventists. We want to try a plant-based diet now -- vegan -- despite the fact that I'm allergic to nuts and legumes.

Anyone have any recipes, if they are already doing this? Share some successes?