Retired at age 40, am now 60. Wish i had done it at 35.
I got a longer USB cable.
Yes! I got a 10 foot cable for when I’m on the couch.
Quitting Facebook. The decision was somewhat pushed for me after Mark banned me for “inciting hatred”, I kept sharing a gif of a nazi getting knocked out.
Eating healthier and lightly working out.
Blood pressure medication.
Was high for years. doctor said we should do this or you should get healthy.
I kept ‘getting healthy’ for years
walking up the steps was pain, knees where pain, i’m like jesus i’m just getting old.
new doctor: you need to stop fucking around and get the meds.
me: ok
i took the meds, 3 days in… I run up the steps like I was 20 years younger.
HOLY FUCK, why the ever-loving hell didn’t I do this before?
Eating breakfast every day.
My eating habits were so dysfunctional that I can only describe them as a disorder. It affected all areas of my life, from sleep to energy to mood. I didn’t know the core problem was my eating habits, all of my problems just meshed together.
One evening I decided that my only goal for the next day was to eat breakfast. Not lunch, not dinner, not go to the gym, not get any work done or change the world. Just eat something when I wake up. I made a beautiful baguette stuffed with everything delicious and placed it by the bed before going to sleep, so I didn’t even have to get out of bed to achieve my goal.
Once I got my breakfast, I automatically got lunch and dinner too. Lots of other habits naturally fell into place when I wasn’t starving.
That as 15 years ago. I’ve not missed breakfast since. I’ve still got tons of issues. But this one, tiny thing, made a massive positive difference.
I manage to get a nice breakfast for like one or two weeks before i start to get lazy, then its downhill for a few months.
In my experience, it doesn’t need to be a nice breakfast. It just needs to be something.
Raising the head of my mattress ≥30° improved my sleep so much that I’ve made more life progress in the last 2 years than I have in decades.
I’ve had sleep problems my whole life (even as an infant). Did a home sleep test for obstructive sleep apnea, was negative so was sent to the in-person sleep lab. Got wires glued all over my head and did the full night + several naps the next day of testing. Nothing. No cycle dysregulation, no narcolepsy. Resigned myself to “guess I just suck at sleeping.”
A few months later I get an awful ear infection and go to an ENT. Something I mention (I forget what) leads him to check for a deviated septum (don’t have that either). BUT! He noticed acid damage in the back of my throat.
I have nighttime acid reflux that was not bad enough to notice, but just bad enough to disrupt my sleep.
Propping up my torso slightly and minor dietary changes were all it took to stop my stomach from slightly drowning me in acid every single night. FUCK I wish I had figured this out sooner.
Eat less and healthier, do lots of sports -> lose weight.
At some point in university I started to eat too much and excercise way too little. There were no “real” reasons. It started somehow and I lost control. So for ~the first half of my 20s I was very overweight. To the point that I was ashamed of my body so I avoided situations in which my weight was obvious even more.
Gladly I was able to turn that around at some point and only then there where comments concerning my weight. (Some congratulatory and some concerned that I was becomming too thin now).
I’m almost 40 now and miiight do to much sports, but I think I found a healthy balance, don’t have backpain anymore and am rarely sick.
If I had found the strenght / inspiration sooner, I wouldn’t have “lost” quite as much time as I did.
Knives that don’t suck. Also getting chickens. I love them so much, great pets and they lay eggs :)
bokbok bok
Dude chickens are the best. Some of them can be wicked smart too. I miss mine.
And I highly recommend sharpening your knives with a sharpening stone or whetstone. It makes such a huge difference to how fun it is to be in the kitchen.
To add too this, one of those rolling guys with the 15°/20° magnetic holder. I can’t recommend it enough! You might not be getting a piece of paper falling through without stopping. But I no longer have to make sure all fruits and veggies are skin side down when chopping, because I can’t tell the difference any more.
Delete Facebook and twitter
X is for nazi pedos
I only have facebook still because my older relatives use it to communicate a lot, otherwise I’d never touch it again.
Unfortunately some places you can’t delete Facebook. For example my local town dump was shut down this weekend due to -40 temps, only place it was posted was Facebook. Yea I went to the dump with a car load of trash and recycling to find myself staring at the shut gate. Wasn’t happy about that…
X is for Nazis, you’re right. I actually deleted Facebook in like 2010 and Twitter in 2019 or something; long before Elon bought it. It was already becoming a drain on my mental health thanks to Trump. honestly, it’s crazy i kept using it much after 2015.
You can have messenger without Facebook. At least it’s possible in the EU
LASIK.
I was scared of the procedure. What if it messed up and now I had permanent eye damage???
In reality, it took like 15 minutes and now I can see in the morning, ditch the whole contact lens daily ritual, and (most importantly to me) wear fun sunglasses right off the rack.
If you’re thinking about it, just do it. I wish I had done it WAY sooner.
how long has it been since you did it?
Got it done during the summer of the pandemic in 2020 - the LASIK place was offering an insane deal since their sales had dropped to like zero. Not just a crazy price but also lifetime touch-ups if the sight degraded to the point of needing it.
I can still see insanely clear and far. No need for a touch up yet and it’s been 5 years.
Only downside is that I am starting to hit the age where I need reading glasses - no surgery for that. But I love not needing distance glasses or contacts for driving.
Linux
I wouldn’t say changing to Linux changed my life so much as it preserved the life I wanted. The change was just some (thankfully) brief adjustments to get comfortable with it. Way easier than I thought it was going to be and so much of that is thanks to the gurus online leaving answers and blogs for us folks in the transition period.
The point was that I didn’t want my life changed by windows becoming worse and worse anymore. In a disposable world closing us off from each other with too much change too fast going on right now because of the heavy handed over implementation of AI hard yanking control away from user: Linux gave me an option to retain the permanence, connection and control I wanted from my experience.
Apparently windows AI update broke recently . I don’t even remember the last time I loaded windows. I think it’s been a few months. Now I don’t even want to look back. Just relieved that if something like that happened on a Linux distro, rollbacks are easier to accomplish on the user side. Already theorized, practiced and prepped my parachute for something like that. Ok maybe you’re right. It has changed me. I don’t think I would have thought and behaved like this had I stayed on windows.
Things that helped;
- Blocking Lemmy and Reddit on my phone, and limiting time browsing the News
- Delete social media apps from the phone
- Switching from diet sodas to just cold water
- Reducing coffee from 4 a day to 0-1 a day
- Get diagnosed for ADHD and get on Vyvanse
- Eat high fibre, starting the day with oats/fibre
- Meditating
- Journaling, with weekly review of how I progressed towards my goals
- Cutting back on smoking weed to once every other month
What I’m still working on;
- Cut down on time browsing porn. I’ll probably binge porn for an afternoon once a week or two. Still too much.
- Consistency in the gym. I’ve had a lot of life altering events happen recently, so I’m trying to get back on the ball.
- Just vegging out on the computer while at home. I should be doing things like writing, reading, or exercise. But instead I sit here and type out long comments while my meds kick in. :)
The more I read, the more this sounds like toxic productivity. It’s okay to have downtime. It’s okay to just relax. It’s okay to have hobbies that aren’t entirely focused on health or mental wellbeing. It’s okay to occasionally indulge hedonic tendencies like porn. Hell, most doctors say that jorkin it a few times a week helps keep things healthy.
Maintaining this kind of lifestyle will likely result in burnout sooner or later.
It’s okay to work on yourself too. Nothing toxic about anything they said. Stop trying to discourage people from working on themselves.
porn addiction is probably hard, there are forums out there usually about porn-induced ED that may give insight.
Being gay³
Having boundaries
Thinking of myself as attractive
Accepting that a lot of advice is bad advice and that a lot of people are confidently incorrect AND heavily damaged
Accepting myself
Deciding to continue to actively try to be a better person
Learn about psychology
Going back to school
Stopping painting
Smiling more
Actually learning how to stretch
Getting a mini split heat pump system
I must know what being gay cubed is.
Why was painting bad for you?
Also curious!
Probably lead paints
Cut contact with family and friends who were bad for my mental health.
