As a bit of an excuse, the air was so poisonous today until the evening (I use the Aerostate service to check its quality) that it was -EV to even open the windows. Generally, I need to go 20 km away to get reasonably fresh air. When I complete the move, a forest with fresh air will be at my immediate disposal.

But you said once that you like to walk in the forest. So more like or more dislike it? Do you have a smart phone now? Can you download maps and orient yourself in old-fashioned way? Can you learn it? I do go in forest without my phone :P


No ....... Seriously.... I don't want to be pushy in any way. I just..... I don't know.... I kind of feel connected, because I have a bunch of similar issues. And from my experience...... some amount of movement outside is essential for getting good grip on my mental state. It is not a sufficient, but necessary condition to be at good place mentally. And another thing is to somehow work through your issues whatever they are. To find a solution for things that is optimal for your happiness. Usually this solution is at the boarder of your comfort zone. If you stay completely in your comfort zone you loose, if your step out to far, it is gonna be a disaster.

Public logging is not for external motivation for this or that task. It is social interaction in a pretty simplified form. + Writing things down for an audience does change them.
I don't know if I can convey clearly enough my thought on this. You understand better yourself in connection with things you do the log about when writing things down. You have to think how to express what you feel, and that in itself is pretty powerful. Clearly I expect something more than just: "I went today for an hour through Moscower forest"

And you didn't object to yoga..... Sooooo

No..... Again on the serious note
You don't have to do any of that and don't have to reply to this. Just think about it. May be something is gonna resonate with your feeling.

I've never learned how to use GPS and 3G. As a compromise, I can go to a park of culture and leisure (with tall trees) in a reasonably clean neighborhood. The park was renovated this spring and its paths were tiled, though of course in Russia, some of the money allocated to this kind of reconstruction allegedly lands in officials' pockets

If so, I won't bother to take photos because the place is well-known and a few images of it can be found on the internet.

Sokolniki? Or which park?

Yoga? Link to a vid you gonna be doing?

Lol @ Sokolniki. One doesn't get a satisfactory air quality unless one moves at least 15-20 km to the north, south or (better) west of the Moscow Ring Road, i.e. to the farthest end of one of the satellite cities.

I can send you a PM with the exact location but I think it won't interest you anyway. Or I can send an opinion on worthwhile places if you specify along which highway(s) you'd prefer to go.

As for yoga, I have no idea but here's what Youtube has recommended to me as an introduction (in Russian).

Yoga vid is not bad, but did you do it? Just watching is not enough.

I mean it is only 20 min, you should be able to find time for it.


"As a compromise, I can go to a park of culture and leisure (with tall trees) in a reasonably clean neighborhood."
And I am interested in a park, where you went today for walk. I am interested in your impressions. Why did you choose this special and how did you feel, when you walked there? (annoyed? bored? like waste of time?) And will this become a routine for you?

gogogogogo! doitdoitdoit! gogogogogogo! Step out of your comfort zone!

One gets no benefits at all if one DOESN'T LEAVE THE HOUSE and just provides excuses.

Just

GO

OUT

SIDE

Do you realize that I have a very limited amount of willpower than can't be allocated to all my projects at once, especially on a less-than-one-day notice?

Time for that vid will come later tonight, even though I have bigger poker-related priorities that I'm procrastinating.

Walks are going to happen 4 days a week 2 hours each, from Friday to Monday starting this Friday, for economical reasons.
________________________________________

This is once again not a log. Accountability makes me perform even worse than secrecy - I have strong sabotage tendencies, like to break promises to spite others.

The initial purpose of the thread is to ask general questions and get general answers. The purpose is going to stay the same.

Regarding the comfort zone myth.

Bill Eckstrom gives a balanced approach in his TEDx talk.

According to him, there are 4 kinds of environments called 'The Growth Rings', from most to least static:

Stagnation
Order
Complexity
Chaos

In order to grow, one has to enter the ring of complexity (an equivalent of 'stepping out of the comfort zone'), at the cost of becoming uncomfortable. The order and stagnation rings are where comfort is.

Though Bill promotes entering the complexity phase, I think that the importance of the order ring is underrepresented by motivational speakers who obviously want people to become addicted to their products. Or, at least, on my list of values, order is very high.

There are many stable states of order, like quantum states, and the transitioning to a higher energy state does require a bit of complexity / excitation, but that excitation might as well be very temporary.

Always being outside the comfort zone means never being at home.

And I've got enough complexity in my life already, thank you very much, I'm fed up with it and perhaps inducing some of it was unnecessary.

We'll all die, and the value of being the most energetic human in the graveyard is questionable. I believe in no afterlife so I'm going to disturb myself only about as much as is really necessary to avoid bigger suffering on the earth. The majority of my remaining time should be spent in the ignorant bliss of stability interrupted briefly by transitions between quantum states.

The great cheat month (June 13 - July 17)

I think I'm finally entering a hypomanic phase thanks to lapka and Josie angering me

Sadly, H&F doesn't have too many (any?) logs dedicated to specifically cognitive improvement in relatively healthy people (the case of Holliday's poor wife is somewhat special; great progress is being made there with great patience, btw ).

Lifting and weight loss are fashionable pursuits that surely have longterm benefits and I've fallen for the latter fashion in order to procrastinate but that's not what I need right now.

It's better to be rich and temporarily obese than permanently lean and in debt imo.

Undereating seems to have been triggering depression in me at the most critical moments when I should have avoided upsetting myself over anything at any cost. I'm still bad at eating well without restricting myself too forcefully.

Historically, I tend to put on 2 kg (4.5 lb) per month of not caring about what I eat. What's good about the approximately linear relationship of the weight and the energy balance (1 lb per 3500 kcal) is that it works both ways. It's as hard to gain weight fast as it is to lose it fast, considering that I hardly ever go on Malucci-style 5K+ calorie binges. My binge days tend to be 2.5K-3K.

And I surely can afford to put on even 9 kg / 20 lb (from the current 81 kg / 180 lb), let alone a more realistic figure of 2.2 kg / 5 lb, in a one-off cheat month.

Therefore, in the next 5 weeks, I'm going to focus on not upsetting myself, which is supposed to help me maintain the hypomania and channel it into working intensely and increasing the probability of earning 'bout $3.50K this summer.

This includes taking therapeutic doses of cognitive supplements (even as dubious as caffeine, yolo) as well as removing all the restrictions on satiating foods, even those loaded with carbs (allegedly helping serotonin cross the BBB) such as:

- apples
- oatmeal with a little sugar
- legumes
- wholemeal (a replacement for ordinary flour)
- (pop)corn

and obviously all cleaner protein containers (eggs, dairy) though IDGAF about protein in these 5 weeks - the muscle loss over this timeframe isn't going to be dramatic.

Once my main stressor - poverty - is dealt with, I'll have both more time to fix everything else and less need to comfort myself.

Take care.

I think I should start logging my caffeine and fructose powder intake tomorrow - it's got out of control - as well as the sleep and meal hours. Now that I have blackout curtains, a much bigger part of the blame for not maintaining the schedule is on me. The schedule may converge to something weird because the optimal poker hours are at night in my current time zone (which is the reason why I'm making plans to change it this summer or autumn), but there has to be some schedule for both sleeping and eating.

On a side note, I'm mourning over my childhood that was spoiled by the narrow-minded post-Soviet way of parenting that was conditioning children to fit into the binary.



I wish I'd been born at least 30 years later

On a side note, it's sad that I don't know a better psychotherapy show that Dr. Phil's (which seems rather a talk show with focus on sensational guests than actual help; it's a lot of fun to watch, though ).

That said, I've enjoyed a quote from the Sexy Vegan episode:
Everyone has the right to be their own kind of a Sexy Vegan if it's not disruptive

Nice to see you logging again bro.

I know of 2 good psychotherapy shows.

In Therapy is a show from the UK with a therapist who is really good. Her clients on the show are all from the uk tv/entertainment industry. I like her style and I think she gets to the core of the issues very well.



The Therapist Is a US show produced by Vice. The therapist is very spiritual and has a style that probably wouldn't be very helpful for me, but the show is interesting to watch nonetheless. Most of the guests are rap/hip-hop artists.

Unfortunately there's still a considerable social stigma associated with seeking out help from a psychotherapist/psychiatrist/therapist, so Dr Phil is likely to remain the most well known in that regard for a while.

I know you're not asking for advice/help, but Dr Daniel Amen's books seem to be pretty well regarded (I personally read "Magnificent Mind At Any Age" years ago and still occasionally refer to it) and might give you some of that more cognitive flavor that H&F doesn't provide.

Thanks for the advice, folks, I'll check that out

I know, but at least I'd be able to feel comfortable at home instead of feeling comfortable nowhere.

Actually, I'm going to eventually start switching between acting like a male outside and being myself at home, just like those kids. That's the maximum deviation that I can realistically afford in my society without being bullied

Sleep: 9 PM - 8 AM (yesterday's was 4 hours long, so it looks like my body decided to return the sleep debt). 2 tsp of black tea incoming...

TIL that breast orgasms and skin orgasms are possible

I've had 4 tsp overall; the proportion of black tea to fructose that I maintain is 1:1 (in volume), otherwise the tea tastes too bitter, even with artificial sweeteners.

I recall that a blend of black and green tea can be bearable enough to drink without sugar, though its taste isn't great either.

Meal times: 9:00 (?), 13:30 (?), 20:30, iirc (no schedule yet). I'm interested in logging the times only, as weight loss isn't the focus now: macro restraints would eat too much of my willpower, I need it for poker badly this month

There won't be much action happening in my life until I move (in July-August, hopefully?), that will be the earlier moment when I'll be able to afford to 'ball out of control' (in an idiosyncratic way, of course)

cewn is there some other thread that a bit more backstory as to how you've developed into the person you are now?

I mean, I suppose its possible your brain chemical make up is just radically out of whack by nature but that would be an incredible coincidence I think.

Of all the things you seemingly know about the female sexuality based on N1's thread, I'm surprised you've only just learned nipple orgasms are possible.

Well, I knew that the nipples and the skull behind the ears are erogenous zones, just I couldn't have imagined that a significant share of females are so sensitive that they can orgasm from nipple stimulation alone. Maybe I'd read that somewhere but totally forgotten it.

As to how I developed, of course I can't disclose everything, but I'll try my best to present an edited declassified version of my background story when I have an opportunity to write a 'best of me' post / thread. Right now, I urgently need to put in poker hours, so 2+2'ing must take a back seat for the next 10 days, sorry.

Guess what?

Text-only NSFW:

I've been looking for mental health tracking apps at review sites... meh, they all look rather primitive. What's the point in making a 2-week graph in Moodpath when it's gonna be a constant nut low? The CBT apps may be more helpful, but again, they're designed to treat mild depression and anxiety and merely scratch the surface of my narcissistic dysphoria.

Which of the members of my utterly dysfunctional family will die first is a nontrivial bet, that might as well be me.

To add insult to injury, I didn't know what a porpoise is until I looked the word up a minute ago