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I love this for you. Here to cheer you on. 💜

I'm so excited for you!! Here to cheer of course!

Here for this! 💜

AAAAAhh! Congrats Rookie!

Altered beast!!! I loved that game and how you've connected your goals to the theme is brilliant. This is all intriguing. I'm very interested to hear about your experience.

This resonates, I do this as well. In fact, with bench I sometimes find that if I'm willing to compromise on form I can keep lifting, but if I insist on keeping good form, the lift fails just the way you described. Deadlifts on the other hand do not compromise. When gravity says we can't lift the bar one more time, then we don't lift it one more time. That's just how gravity works.

Highly recommend adding it to black tea. Yummmm. I'm currently in a 5e campaign where my Bard has become the party's main caster and healer, and I quickly adjusted my original plans to level her up according to party healing needs, but I'm thankfully not at the healbot stage. The rest of the party does a good job of staying out of harm's way in combat and we take full advantage of the short rests we get. Doesn't 2e have any of the alternative methods of regaining health, like using hit dice during a short rest, the bardic Song of Rest, or even med kits? If not, can you convince your party to be a bit more tactically savvy when they go into fights and actually make use of the terrain to find cover, or optimize their ranged damage dealing a bit more? And I'm sorry about Jasper. That's a tragic loss, but I'm glad you're safe from the largest fire and hope the air quality continues to improve.

We love photos of shiny things other nerds have made!

Challenge Wrap-up How did I do? Knee PT exercises: Goal was 5/7 days = 25 sessions over the challenge. I actually did 15. Maybe they are helping? I don't feel like I have been consistent enough to say one way or the other. My right knee has been unhappy in general, so this is still a priority. No Dairy: Excellent I had a couple of cheeseburgers and that was it for dairy. I also had some Ritz cheesy cracker sandwiches, but I don't think those contain real cheese. I will continue the no dairy but it no longer needs to be a goal. I have shifted my mindset to "I don't eat dairy". I might have some by accident in sauces, but mostly I can avoid it. Sleep: Mixed I certainly tried to go to bed on time. None of those evenings of staying up late because I wanted to get things done or have extra down time (except for weekends). I had about one sleep fail a week. Mostly for no obvious reason. I also had several evenings where my family needed my help with things that ran past my target bedtime. My efforts to shift my bedtime earlier did not work. Getting enough sleep is still a high priority and a struggle. It stays on my goal list. Aikido: 15 sessions. Goal was 10 or more. The 15 includes weapons practice at lunch which is just 30 minutes and free exploration rather than drill. I am counting that because it is valuable. I am just tracking the aikido, it is a habit rather than a goal. Zen: Goal was every day. I missed 7 days out of the 35 of the challenge. Work on doing better next time. Doing the zen seems to be helping me cope with doing less-than-fun tasks. I might eventually get better at meditating too. I feel better about doing it now that I have a community again. I have more thoughts about what worked and didn't, but those can go in my next challenge.

today is the 26th of july day of the jubilee river, son of Father Thames flow swim | yoga Not started summer festival Not started summer style I smell like fancy flowers and green tea. And I'm wearing an upgraded version of my usual. Not started Ink magic Project selected. started energy magic Not started 3 is a magic number Will write up the short responses Will clean the guest room Will clean the office (And will break down these goals into short steps) water is life drank 1.5 out of 3 liters Will add electrolytes put on morning moisturizer Will put on evening moisturizer Not started sleep is a river "...in the early morning, with senses rejuvenated and spirit cleansed by the night's long healing draught of Lethe." Not started

I started playing a kalimba this week, it's much easier than a violin. Learned the main bit of Avatar's Love and Suzume.

I don't know how my science brain feels about this one, because it's very art-brain, but this dude writes a lot of fairly serious books for artists on creativity and other mental challenges of art-making. My science brain is trying to get on board, since it doesn't seem entirely out of line with the general shape of cognitive research. Because here's the thing: it's about sleep and it's about magic, which makes it on topic for this challenge, and it might trick me into sleeping more. Magic to make me sleep more? I think I'm required to be in. And supposedly I get more art out the other end, which I think is the right way to do magic. As an aside, he alludes in this to something he said in a different talk that was pretty attention-getting when I first heard it. Lots of people will tell you, "Not everything you think is true", and that's entirely correct and a good thing to realize about the brain, but it's only moderately useful, because a lot of things you think are true, or are sufficiently true to have some validity. A lot of negativity or discouragement is not a particularly inaccurate model of the world. It's one of the big problems I've had with all those CBT approaches that recommend challenging your thoughts, because it's not very difficult to justify a lot of the thoughts you're told to challenge. And what he said was, "Just because it's true doesn't mean it's helpful." The veracity is neither here nor there if it's a thought that's doing you some sort of harm. So I have a certain amount of time for this guy's California art-brain psychology, because "Is this thought useful" is a much more interesting and pragmatic question than "Is this thought true".

What a lovely challenge! I have been pondering some similar things lately, as I have become very aware of the fact my daughter is clearly starting to understand some words (passively, of course, but it's a start) and I definitely learned a lot of terrible thought patterns and habits from my mom. They're so hard to break though! Following and cheering you along

Don't mean to sound like I'm calling you out or giving you a hard time, so let me explain where I'm coming from. In climbing I would sometimes see people trying really, really hard and it might not look pretty but they got up the wall. Or they failed but they gave it everything, grunting, shouting, throwing themselves, whatever it took. Even professional climbers who are known to climb extremely beautifully will start to lift their elbows and climb more scrappily when it gets really tough. Personally I have a very hard time accessing that mode. On occasion I'd get a bit of that and it feels really cool and powerful, but even then if would ask myself could I have tried harder, the honest answer is probably yes. I don't know what it is - lack of belief that I could do the move, lack of adrenaline, too painful, subconsciously thinking I might hurt myself, not competitive enough, thinking that I need to make moves pretty otherwise I'm doing it wrong, all of the above... I don't know. My point is not that it's better or worse to climb like that, it's only an example to illustrate that bodies have more to give than the brain will typically allow them.

Welcome! Any specific books come to mind with parentheticals? I don't remember them being a thing (I took a peak at your challenge and I'm only a few years younger than you). My current book is a fantasy novel and uses footnotes, which is throwing me off Fingers crossed I don't deal with another one for many many years. This was a baby EF-1 that went through my backyard and didn't do any damage to the actual house (just some trees and outbuildings) and that was plenty

I get that. Money is why I didn't take a sabbatical when I left my old job last year. Someday I'll work things up to where I can take an intentional year or so off

And are you screaming and fighting when you do this or "give up" early? 😉 This is my understanding too. Ohh ok I see your point now! I think it's something you'll have to experiment with and will depend on the lift. I wonder if for some people going to failure every single time could have negative psychological consequences? Either getting scared of the weight down the line, or expecting failure and thus manifesting failure... Probably not so relevant for most people but once things get very heavy... Very good point. I have done this many times with bodyweight stuff and gotten stronger. Maybe not optimally, but it works and it doesn't wreck you. Everyone gets fucked from high rep and multiple sets. The thresholds are just different. There's also a question of general conditioning, but for you improving that will be extra hard mode compared to the general fitness public. Always. Exercise science is such a new science and we don't know shit. We have ideas on how things work either on a cell level or population level, but there's very little we can tell about how an individual will react. And that's before adding CFS to the mix.

It had a rough start! But I did try to have fun when I could. I'm grateful I get to go to work again soon because I've run out of money!

I feel parentheticals take me back to the age of speculative fiction writing that was popular when I was young. (To be clear, I love them.) Have a great challenge! I hope this one goes as well as the last. But maybe without the tornado.

Regarding your phone, I've been taking breaks from mine recently and I find even just leaving it in another room helps considerably, especially if I do so while I'm attending to another task. (IE, I wouldn't leave it in another room and then go be aimless elsewhere because then I'd just wander back....) I also leave it in the house if I'm out in the garden. It helps train my brain not to think about it so much. Good luck with your challenge!

You're hugely underselling the external crap you've had to deal with, as well as not giving yourself enough credit for some massive wins. Yes, these categories you decided 6 weeks ago to focus on haven't been your best work, but some of the stuff you've accomplished and some ways in which you have proven yourself have been exceptional.

We were in Cornwall in June, driving a tiny road up to Rames Head and thinking it must be a nightmare in the peak season. The Forest of Dean is a shoulder tourist area and we get our share of them (mostly cyclists and canoe/kayakers), but we don't get anywhere near Cornwall level! Good luck!

Hey y'all, I survived a brutal week of my body trying to cough up my lung during the last challenge (as well as two shark weeks... the injustice of it all), and never got back to doing my TGU's, leaving the scoreboard mostly bare except for three days of success. I haven't wanted to think about exercising. I've lost interest in making goals to meet in six weeks. Instead, I find that I am flourishing in creativity. I got my art portfolio sifted from my numerous art books, and I've used it as a prompt to reflect on the story behind the progression of my skill evolving. And I've tried drawing the characters in my current skill level (this is a little hit or miss because I haven't been drawing much lately, but it's going okay). I played with clay, and made Funfetti the unicorn (shown off in the last challenge), which is yet another reminder that I can make cute things, though I also recognize the obstacles of completing clay projects. 😅 And I am gearing myself up for the third draft of my novel. I've been doing character questionnaires to confirm I have what I'd want set in stone. I've been working on the outline to make sure there are good heroic arcs and story beats. I'd compiled a doc that pulled details from my scattered docs so I could review it, and two pages in I got excited about a deep dive into tree symbolism. (So far today I've delved into Birch and Rowan. 😅) Yesterday I skimmed through comments on the condensed second draft left by my three beta readers, and I'm planning to revisit the notes I made during our chats when we talked in detail. TLDR: I'm using my hyper-fixation on my book and other creative outlets as my present excuse to not critique myself for lack of exercise. In reflections, I realize that's not the healthiest decision, but I'm excited to see myself getting into gear for assembling what may be the last draft of this novel before I start composing the narrative of what comes next. And I feel like it's been forever since I made things that it feels like a big accomplishment to dive into arts and crafts. Anyway, I'm gonna wrap this up here. I hope you're having a good day, Maerad

Nope, there is no breakdown for me in failure in low rep deadlift and bench. In the deadlift, if I cannot lift it, I drop it suddenly and without wobbles, or I fail to break it off the ground. In the bench, if I cannot lift it, the lifting portion will slow to a halt then reverse, without wobbles. With the squat, on the other hand, I will change my form to try to get the bar up--it will turn into a good morning if I am not conscious of it. One rep max is not the only way to train to failure.You can go to failure on a set of 5, or 10. Volume here means kg x total reps over any number of sets. So two identical volumes could be: 100kg x 10 x 3 OR 100kg x 3 x 10. I haven't memorised the exact studies, but I got the impression that going closer to failure provides more stimulus than stopping further from failure (for the same volume) but that it is more fatiguing (for the same volume) and as you approach failure, the increase in fatigue is more rapid than the increase in stimulus, so there's a point at which the lines cross and it's no longer worth it. So... to optimise the ratio of stimulus to fatigue, you would go close to failure, but not to absolute failure. This is assuming you're matching for volume. A concrete example. 50kg is your 10 rep max in the squat. (Let's assume for the sake of simplicity you don't lose strength over multiple sets) If you do 5 sets of 10 reps at 50kg, you have done five sets with 0 reps in reserve i.e. as close as possible to failure without failing. You got high stimulus, but you're fried. Suppose instead you did 10 sets of 5 reps. Your volume (weight x total reps) is the same. You're less tired but you get a lot less stimulus because 5 reps is too easy. So you do something in between, say about 6 sets of 8. It's hard, it's highly stimulating, but you cut off the exponentially rising tip of the fatigue mountain that you would have got from 5 x 10. At least that's the impression I gathered from listening to stuff. I might have misunderstood or misremembered. But suppose I am NOT planning to match volume. Suppose I refuse to do multiple sets because my recovery from high volume is catastrophic. Then to get sufficient stimulus, my one set should be as hard as possible. To failure? Yes, one set to failure is more fatiguing than one set with 2 RIR. But not as much as you would think, because there is only one set. The fatigue penalty from going to absolute failure is not multiplied by three, five, or eight sets. I think going to failure is disproportionately fatiguing for the same volume. I am going to do less volume. And the reason one rep maxes are fatiguing is that they are very high intensity, AND close to failure, and high intensity is disproportionately more taxing for very large, very strong lifters, because they are capable of inflicting huge tissue and metabolic damage, and their recovery does not increase linearly with their size and strength. If I can only do one pushup, then I am not going to get fried from doing one and a half pushups per day. If I can deadlift 500kg, I might well get fried from doing one and a half 500g deadlifts per day. If I tried to take five or eight sets to absolute failure on heavy lifts, I would be fucked, yes. One set to failure, I'll be fine. For some reason, it's high rep and multiple sets that toasts me. That might be because my energy and recovery are not evenly fucked across the board. They're selectively fucked. I could waffle on about hypoperfusion and aerobic dysfunction and pyruvate dehydrogenase problems but the more I read about CFS, the less I think the details are helpful. What's helpful is personal experience. I'm still learning about what triggers my crashes. Lengthy but minor drains on my energy seem to be much, much worse for me than short, intense hard things. But we'll see. This, too, will be data. Neato! Don't worry. If I don't want to go into detail about something, I just won't. This is fine.

I need this tattooed on my hand. This is a lovely challenge. ❤️