If you get a heavy-ish dumbbell you can use it as weight for squats which will help workout your legs and core, if you hold it a little out from your body as you go down + up. Also, you can use dumbbells to do bench presses and Romanian deadlifts. Bench presses, squats and deadlifts are the trio of key body weight exercises, my PT says, and Romanian deadlifts are a good weighted prequel to real deadlifts. (I look at this and am surprised I have all of this new weightlifting knowledge. I hope it is useful.)

Also, your user name is great.

They are great and fun and you do totally need to have flexibility and like an iron core. I did a mid-weight set a few weeks ago and relaxed at the wrong point and something in my lower back went "ARGH" and I was on the bench the rest of that week. I whole-heartedly approve of building up slowly, with flexibility and practicing the movements before going heavy. Once you get the movement down there's a glorious period where you feel so confident about what you're doing and everything is smooth and exciting; Good Luck!

I am going on holiday and I won't be here for the Last Days. So I wanted you all to know that I deadlifted 70kg today and without the support of this community, with its aggressively pro-living-your-own-life I would not have started lifting at all.

So cheers Toast, you are all excellent and deserve all excellent things going forward.

It doesn't count if the couple's ending got adapted into your musical adaptation of a play and the original author specifically said it would never work.

They are already breaking up in the last few seconds, when he asks for his slippers, because it shows he has Learnt Nothing.

I am just so mad because, leaving aside the way it makes no sense at all as a sequel to Phantom, Raoul and the Phantom/Mr Y are back playing tug-of-war with Christine and no-one thinks to ask her? At least in the finale of Phantom, she's given the choice 'Let the Phantom kill Raoul or go with him' which is still rubbish.

But! They at least recognise she might have feelings about some of this, not just; we can gamble over whether or not she'll sing and then NOT EXPLAIN what the effect of singing will be. Then she's inadvertently made her husband leave purely because he didn't say "I have a bet on with the Phantom and if you sing I have to leave and also don't get my debts paid."

Like, he begs her not to sing and she says "I have to" and he's all :( she chose him and I'm sit there and think... or she knows she has to sing to pay off your debts for the good of her kid/maybe your kid and generally everyone's well being. She doesn't know you made a STUPID bet and the opposite will happen because YOU DIDN'T TELL HER.

The Phantom, while still having a great couple of songs, is just as bad. Children, none of you learnt the lesson of POTO and now we are here and people are dying and everything is terrible. Just be poly, it will solve your problems maybe (if Christine can't just leave them both)

Man I wish the EU didn't ban the sale of GM fish because glofish are so cool! If I was in charge of biology at universities, I'd definitely let the first years watch a GFP-type cloning experiment and then give them all glofish to take home...

Well no, but mostly they were talking about drug trial screening and also genetic stuff like CRISPR. I did think the zebra science guy was very good being all "obviously you have to move on to rats eventually but this is a good intermediate." 10/10 for not dissing other model organisms. I guess it's good to know you can use fish and save money, if you're doing a massive candidate therapeutic screen.

My old professors would definitely be cross about the dismissal of nematode worms though! My experience of labs, having done both rats and worms is that everyone thinks their model is the best and will fight you about it, when really it depends on the studies you've done/are doing and what your needs are.

Hey, CBT won't be for everyone, I know - but your doctor should know, even if it's adjusting meds without CBT and there is non-CBT therapy and not all therapists are made equal etc. etc. - I guess I look at therapy in a Mallory-as-Prudence 'pay someone to listen to your problems and advise way' so that you don't end up resenting your partner/your friends if they give harsh but well meaning advise or take time away from you for their own well being.

1. I do want to second that its fine to put progression on the backburner if you're in a good place atm. If you want to have goals eventually and to learn more about what you're interested in, I'd recommend talking to managers and colleages to discuss what progression would look like, so you can get more of a sense if it's for you - now, in two years, in five whenever and so that you Know, so that if you get an itch in a little while, you have a place to go.

2. Duolingo is good for stress free learning and game-ified vocab acquisition. Since you're in London, maybe pick a European language that's also a place you'd like to holiday? And don't think you have to end up talking politics or deep literary analysis with the locals, but it should get you through conversational stuff.
Ah, I totally feel "being surrounded by people smarter than me" I know it, I hate it and then am cross with myself for letting it upset me. Definitely not knitting - if you want not to be pressured you want something that you can do alone that he doesn't do so that there's no competition. Even learning to cook chicken really well of itself is a useful skill or doing cakes (as long as you don't compare yourself to the Bake Off guys) Art, in all its forms is so subjective that it's nice to know there isn't always a Good and a Bad.

3. Yeah, weekdays don't have to be going out days. There are plenty of at home things you can commit to; watching a box set of something you'd both like, reading some classics you've not go to (or some new books) Maybe a monthly book club, if you like reading and would like to do that and feel like you're achieving at the same time. On weekends and not even every weekend, then yes, all of London is available but you don't have to do it all in one go; pick one or two things and have a long term plan to go see them. Most of London isn't going anywhere.
Also; if you're free Sunday I will be Passing Through London so if you need to meet someone for coffee and just have a chat and an unload, that's an option. I too wish you all the best and would be happy to help (and to hear how it's going) with whatever you need in the future

It sounds like you have many problems;
1. That your job is low-level and progressing scares you
2. That you don't have any enthusiasm for learning new things/the future
3. Not socialising/having hobbies/doing new things

First of all, before any of that; I really think you should talk to someone professionally (are you in the UK, given A-levels, can you use the NHS?) about the 'killing [yourself] would be easier' thing. That's not a healthy thought and a therapist would be qualified to help with that, if you don't already have one. Without wanting to scare you, that's pretty heavy and I know when I was last having a bad depressive period I wrote off my suicidal inclination as thinking that way; that death was easier or better than working things out and I used that as a cover for my thoughts so I could avoid facing how bad things were.

Beyond that I have advice for all three, though take what you will:
1. Job wise, low level might be ok; do you need more money and therefore need to advance? Do you need more to do so that you're not bored and need to advance? Do you just hate the idea of doing what you're doing until you die/maybe retire? If you answered no to all of those, then worrying about progress is futile (not that this will stop you, but I find it helps to know fears are unfounded) Keep strolling along and if/when you get a promotion you can try it out and ask to move back/not be promoted in the first place if new responsibility is too much.
If you do need money/stimulation/etc. then it may be worth looking at what sorts of jobs you can get into and which of those will involve what awful things as far as presentations/managing people/data input go and which of those you'd hate to do and which you feel you maybe able to manage. The benefit of low level is that you can chose how your career progresses from here and if you know you want to do some element later on (or to desperately avoid another) you can target yourself to that.

2. There's a difference between learning new things as a 2nd degree and learning new things just for the joy of discovering a new skill/area of interest. The second is a lot more relaxed/non-structured and has a lot less of a chance of failure. Are there things that are more in the line of knitting/languages/art that are interesting to you? Maybe try a language on duolingo, which has a level progression so there's some structure, but there's not an option of failing/flunking like if you did more language a-levels or anything. Or watch some Khan Academy videos on youtube to see if there's an area of them that interests you Does any of that sound appealing? What level of unmotivation are we talking about?

3. There's nothing wrong with living a quiet life and not doing very much, but depression can put you in a cycle of inactivity. If you talk to your partner, maybe you can agree on a fortnightly/monthly activity to do, so that you don't feel like you're losing every Sunday or every evening to a particular event. You might have to try a variety of things; salsa dancing/Italian cooking/sailing until you find something that you enjoy enough.

But they do sort of; Donna spends some of the time she spends arguing for vote swapping with various Republicans that Wisconsin is swing and Washington is safe Bartlet, so her vote is worth more and they're getting a good deal!

I know that's not the same as "a different number of EC votes per state" but it is definitely a contribution to votes not being equivalent!