What POSITIVE CHANGES are you making in your life?

Going to try and quit smoking next week. My enabler is on board and I tasked this British guy to be my chaperone

Hipster vaping?

I’m giving up all illegal substance use after Oct 17th

What's the significance of October 17?

Weed legalization day in Canada lol

Dropping a load and then stripping naked sounds like a good idea, but I only check my weight when at the doctor. I seem to be hovering around 186 pounds and would love to not suck in my gut throughout the day. My recent hope came from starting (I seem to have gotten stuck around page 50) a book called the Circadian Code. The author argues that we have over 20 biological clocks within our body that we would benefit from respecting. Our pancreas is meant to "wake up" at a certain time and would like to shut down 10 hours later. Working 10 to 11 hour days doesn't quite get me in that window, but I have made a strong effort to not eat any food or alcohol once dinner is over for the past 2 months or so. We'll see how long I can keep that up. I've got 30 years of 10 pm ice cream, oreos, candy etc that I fear relapsing to.

I’m in the process of setting up all of my guitars again, cleaning them, and oiling them. I haven’t played my Strat in six months because it sounded ass, tonight I spent 3 hours leveling frets, getting the relief and action right, and getting the pickups right.

Well, this thing is a fucking monster now. The neighborhood crowd we hang with begged me to play so I broke out the Orange Crush and blew their fucking minds

Um... I'm largely a hermit. Partly by choice, and partly due to my local.

I work with horses, so being around animals is alright, even if they are dumber than rocks.

Between the above, and having a GF with disabling anxiety and raising her kids basically by myself, I don't have much if any social time.

It's weighing me down pretty hard, not having an outlet.

On the one hand, I understand that nobody wants to hear my shit, but on the other hand I know that not trying to find an outlet with legit friends who can have a discussion on very honest and blunt level, isn't helping me either.

Ive been in this state for a decade now (both the state of Minnesota and this lonely state of mind), So I've resorted to long bike rides of introspection dotted with writing long letters while vocalizing my thoughts, and throwing them away. The other outlet I have is working on game retheming/pimping (currently casting and painting a set of Wiz-War stuff for a user here).

I guess my positive change is attempting to do something about it. It's obvious therapy is a better step, yet that option isn't available ATM.

So this will have to do for now, while I navigate the whirlwind of life around me.

You are all trying so hard to make yourselves better. I applaud you for this. When things are shitty, just know that I love you all. You guys are like family to me.

Move to Kentucky, Crayons. I’m always here.

What do you do re: horses, Color, if you don't mind? Farrier? My wife worked on a ranch for a long time and has often thought about going to farrier school.

I started my Master's degree in late June. It's a regular MBA with a concentration in leadership. It's a ton of work, but I feel like my mind is opening up to things I hadn't realized before so the rewards are there.

Gary Sax wrote: What do you do re: horses, Color, if you don't mind? Farrier? My wife worked on a ranch for a long time and has often thought about going to farrier school.

I train horses and riders for dressage.

Farriers make good money once they become established and pay off their equipment trailer.

I don't know where to start here because there has been so much change.

The vague background is that 8 years ago I was 10-20 pounds overweight and exercising regularly, so while I could always stand to lose weight my body was tolerable and didn't hold me back. Then I started to get extreme pain in my knees when I ran and then later when I rode a bike, so the exercise I normally did was denied to me. Then my wife got cancer, and being a stress eater and struggling to find exercise I could do, my weight ballooned out, particularly as my wife became more infirm and I lost even the small amounts of incidental exercise. A couple of years ago I broke my ankle and they found a birth defect there which explained all the ankle and knee issues I had been having as I walk and move in a slightly unnatural way. And there is the long term news that things won't ever get better and I will need surgery on my ankle at some point and will never be allowed to run or hike recreationally.

So my wife died 3 months ago and my life is a blank slate. I stopped eating due to depression, and started doing my ankle exercises regularly for the first time. After a while I also worked out that the exercise pedals my wife required for her therapy could be used with your arms and so I started doing that and have now found an exercise that I can do at home without stressing my legs.

So in 3 months I have dropped from 240 pounds to 205, and still need to lose another 10. I have gone from officially obese to overweight with a tolerable dad bod. My ankles and knees haven't been causing me too many issues day to day and they haven't held me back yet. The real test will be in a week when I go to a theme park for the day as previously being on my feet all day meant that I struggled to walk on the following day. I have had to buy a whole new series of outfits because a lot of my clothes were falling off me.

I also discovered indoor rock climbing. I loved climbing as a teenager but I never had anyone to go with. As a scout leader I stumbled on a climbing gym that had a lot of auto-belays, so you can climb without a partner. I was too self conscious about my weight to climb with the scouts, but I have now gone climbing 3 times and I love it and it doesn't cause me any knee or ankle pain which is such a good feeling. If I keep it up until Christmas, I might get myself some climbing gear as a Christmas present.

I have also started writing regularly in a journal. In the first couple of months after my wife died I was over-sharing with my friends, because I lacked that outlet and filter for my thoughts that my wife provided. Getting that shit out of my head so that I stopped obsessing about it made a big difference.

I have also made a few changes to my social life, going to places that I always wanted to but my wife didn't.

I have been fascinated by this lifestyle change since my wife died. I thought that when it happened I would spend more time on my existing hobbies but the reverse has happened and I have spent less time on hobbies and have been more obsessed with socialisation and getting out of the house and doing things.