Oneiros512

I've done this with reddit several times as well. It seems a positive thing to me to retain a level of detachment and not get too involved in building up the karma score or trying to build some kind of reputation. I've also taken to using the randomly generated usernames that it recommends rather than customizing them.

Regarding social skills, I feel like I can relate to how you describe your situation. I was extremely socially anxious when I was younger and basically avoided any social interactions I could. Throughout highschool and college I never had any friends to speak of or dated. I mostly shut myself away with video games and other solitary interests.

I moved to a new city away from my family when I was 27 and that was when I finally pushed myself to start changing things as the loneliness really hit me. I started going to meetup events and work lunches with people. I started reading up on social skills and trying my hand at dating. Roughly 5 years since then I've actually done pretty well for myself, made some good friends, had some good experiences with dating, and I'm rather happy with how things have shaped out. I'm still kind of awkward socially but gotten more comfortable with putting myself out there anyway and found that a lot of people don't really mind.

The podcast presented by the professor of that course is also excellent. It's called The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos.

One think I like to keep in mind with this sort of situation is that building retirement savings and an emergency fund can have immediate benefits of the added security blanket they provide, aside from the long-term goal of retirement.

Even if someone got a late start or has a high amount of debt and retirement isn't looking so possible, building a safety net and improving your financial situation is never a bad idea.

I just got laid off myself, and while I'm many years away from any kind of potential retirement, my savings over the last several years put my mind at ease because I know I can easily go a year if I have to without any additional employment, even though hopefully I'll have a new job much sooner than that.

I've always had a fascination with tracking things myself. I remember daydreaming when I was younger about wishing I had some kind of way to see how many of some particular food item I'd eaten over the course of my life, or how many words I'd ever spoken. I never got too heavily into making my own spreadsheets, but I got into tracking running and walking with apps like runkeeper, using a site to track every movie I watched, tracking each video game I owned and whether I had beaten it yet, and when I couldn't find a good site for tracking the TV shows I'd watched I did make a very simple spreadsheet for that.

Over time I've pulled away from the practice somewhat as I've started to think the obsession with tracking my activities was detracting from the experience somewhat. I'd end up thinking more about adding to my total miles walked on my tracker than enjoying the walk itself. On a level as granular as tracking 10-page chunks of books you must be getting distracted on some level from the actual content, I would think.

I still use that tracking site for movies and I do use Goodreads for books, and I find them great resources for figuring out what to read/watch next, but those are now more secondary to the actual enjoyment of the experience itself.