As long as "who you are" is some fabulous blue-skinned ballerina dude and "who you are not" is some balding fat-ass on reddit.

There's a lot of factors going on here, genetics, snacks etc... it's tough to just pick out one thing to change, and changing everything is just overwhelming, so the tendency is just to kinda forget about everything and perpetuate the cycle.

So I will tell you that sitting is the killer.

I used to work crappy retail jobs, with lots of snacks, terrible sleep, just an awful lifestyle. However, I was on my feet all 8 hours, so sometimes I even lost weight.

Now, when I have a decent office job, I have great sleep, I watch my diet, and I gain weight... just because I sit all day.

Invest in some really comfortable shoes, maybe with special gel or whatever, and try to do half your shift standing up. Then slowly move to doing your full shift standing up. It's not impossible. You're going to see results after two weeks, I promise.

In this economy? Yes, sir, it is.

My net worth hit more than $50k when I focused on my career and continued living in a decrepit shithole driving a beater and wearing clothes from the thrift store even after the fifth promotion.

Literally just living within your means.

I feel like it's just always this way... with anyone that is successful. It's not a bug, it's a feature. I don't think you're broken like the way that you describe.

The key is to never let it go to "nothing". There's ALWAYS a negative consequence to shutting down. It doesn't come from outside you, it comes from within you.

If you let yourself have enough shitty days, then eventually you'll just become a shitty person. Don't take that first step. If you see goals that are unclear or timelines that are far into the future, then CLARIFY those goals. Pull those timelines back. So what if it's due in 4 months? Can you get it done by the end of the week? If you can, why wait? Just get it done!

Turn external deadlines into internal deadlines. Why should anything have to wait one second more than it has to? Complete assignments as you get them, not as their deadlines come up.

Turn external consequences into internal consequences. Look at your day. Evaluate how you did that day. What could be improved? Where are you struggling? Try to do better the next day.

Honestly, the anxiety has a purpose: getting you off your ass! If you had no anxiety, you would be like a capybara the whole day: just a big lazy baby. The point is that you're not just a chubby, lazy baby! You're a responsible adult, dammit. Even though there is always the temptation to just be a gentle soft chubby boy and sleep the day away, don't give in!

That's a GREAT goal Cauliflower! I think you can do it. Well, we know we don't have to worry about you :) You got this!

The best part about being a nurse is that you can keep going and keep investing in yourself until you get to Nurse Practitioner and make decent money.

Always remember to shoot for the stars. The satellites and GPS you use everyday were not invented by people trying to get electronics into low Earth orbit. They were trying to colonize Mars and the Moon. Aim high. Aim for the stuff you thought was impossible 5 years ago and you will go far.

You're gonna see failure. You might lose that lease, you might lose that job, you might have to break up that relationship. Don't worry about that, just take a note and keep going. You're gonna go far if you keep fighting.

Your duty to your fellow human beings.

You're right, OP! Let's live like animals because animals are happy.

Honest answer: The truth is that nobody could have predicted the impact of satellite technology. So the researchers of the 1950s couldn't get to satellite technology directly: they had no idea it existed. The only way to discover it was to shoot for the moon. They strove towards a goal which, in retrospect, was foolhardy: the exploration of an interstellar hunk of rock with nothing particularly noteworthy on its surface. However, it was this goal, as well as the equally foolhardy and impossible goal of "stop communism" that provided the impetus for the discovery of much of the technology of the information age.

You'll recall that the explorers of North America had similar foolhardy goals about spice islands and cities of gold. The medieval alchemists who invented modern chemistry did so with the stated goal of discovering the elixir of life, the cure-all, and the philosopher's stone. On the one hand, what childish vanities these ancients tried to obtain! On the other hand, what wonders they discovered in the process!

The man in the chair definitely isn't denying himself anything! We agree. He is denying, however, something that he owes to humanity: leaving this planet Earth better than you found it.

Similar stories abound, but stories like this didn't land a man on the moon.

A bunny is happy if it is dry and fed. A human also. But a human who denies all aspects of himself except those which he shares with the bunny will live, by definition, as a happy animal: a degenerate.

We are given desperately little time on Earth. Should we not use this time to, even in some small way, ease the path of those that will come after us? Is there any other moral option?

The man who leans back in his chair and smiles quietly believes he is enjoying the fruits of his labor, but is it not closer to the truth to say that he is living off the collective efforts of the civilization around him as much as by his own labor? Standing on the shoulders of giants, he decides he would rather sit.

Dude was a wacko who disappeared up his own ass. He sincerely believed that the human intellect was an evolutionary mistake, like a deer that had evolved horns too heavy for its own head.

I am ALSO tragically too well endowed. All my boyfriends say so.

Council is great. It's the moment where you realize that Tolkien's world is so young, that the entire universe's creation is still within living memory.

I feel like Dickens would probably be replaced by Fitzgerald. The others... yeah, it's pretty much the same.

How much does your painting weigh? Hiring people or buying powertools seems like overkill, but maybe you live in the Hermitage and these are 50 lb behemoths.

DUNE is very focused on the interior lives of its characters, and thinks it's a LOT smarter than it is. Just like Zen, and to a large degree something like Narnia or LotR, you just have to encounter it at the right age. I can't imagine someone who has never seen the movies starting to read Narnia at age 32.

They're classics, of course, but they definitely have a specific age around 15-21 where they hit hardest. "Early Adult" books, maybe?

In a lot of ways, this book anticipated the trend in "dystopian fiction" in teen literature. Reading it got me ready for harsher stuff like 1984 and Brave New World. Getting this book banned from school is absurd. What would the children read, then? Only the Bible?

You've got food in your belly and a roof over your head. None of these things will change much whether you work hard or not. Honestly, there's nothing wrong with just stagnating... working whatever stuff is available and only doing enough to get by. Millions of people do it every day.

It's not fun or popular to talk about but... people are not really motivated by positive stuff so much. Those Olympic athletes who say "oh, I just wanna be the very best!" are bullshitting you. Everybody wants to be the very best. Everybody wants to see their name in print, or report on a big story, or have a thriving career. Just wanting stuff and having goals is not enough.

I'm very much the same shiftless layabout that you are, just a decade older. My brothers, though, are both really motivated big-shots. In their case, and in the case of everyone that I've seen who is really successful, the motivation is fear. Fear of failure. Fear that not doing 120% today will lead to disaster tomorrow or 10 years down the line.

You (and I) have the opposite: fear of success. You're afraid that something will change irrevocably when you actually become "a real" journalist. Nobody will take you seriously. It'll be a disaster, etc. Think about what happened in the past when you "succeeded." Maybe it really was a disaster. But... you know, "real" journalists don't know what they're doing either. I'm sure you've already realized this intellectually, but it's important to realize that "real" journalists write copy that is mostly used to line birdcages, clean up spills, and wrap fish. Very rarely do people actually read a newspaper anymore.

You mentioned journalists don't make any money. If your goal is just to make money, there's hundreds of dull office jobs that make you boatloads of money. They're always called something very vague like "Systems Analyst" or "Software Consultant" but they usually just boil down to playing around with some pivot tables in Excel. In other words, something any trained monkey could do. Because your dad has money, he probably knows some businessmen that need an Excel-jockey or even someone to just proofread their emails. Nobody dreams of being an Administrative Assistant, but if you're looking to make money it's a heck of a lot better than folding clothes. If your dad has no connections, just sign up for a temp-gig. Offices always need asses in seats, and they prefer to hire from the temp pool because they know what they're getting. Hope this helps!

I don't really think it makes sense grammatically, even. What are they trying to say?

I think OP may be a living testament to the saying "Those who can't, teach."