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Allow me to join you in the WE HATES IT club then 😆   I complained about the same thing in one of the Discord servers I'm in, and apparently it's normal for beginner muscle gains to counter any fat losses, if only going by the needle on the scale. I...hadn't realized that I had fallen so far off the fitness train to be able to experience beginner gains, but I'll go with that explanation. The week 2 weigh in will be Monday and the subsequent post I make about it will consist of either being happy with myself or complaining even more, lol.   Re. the previous response you've made in your own challenge thread, about FFXIV things: I tried making a toon on the Mateus server but it's closed to any new characters 😭 I wish there was a wait list, or some kind of an application process for joining congested servers (two of my local IRL friends play on Midgardsormr, which is also closed to new characters).   You also mentioned how it's humbling to come back after a few months of not playing and re-learn all the jobs, and I can 100% believe that. I have a whopping 3 jobs at 90 but only play two of them (BLM and AST). I tried playing PAL--my other lvl 90 job--again recently and was very much "WTF GOIN ON!??" despite PAL supposedly being one of the easiest jobs, lol.   But to be fair, the only reason I picked PAL up was because of the Ser Aymeric glam from the cash store 😆   I am very hype for the NEW CONTENT COMING SOON! EEEEEEEEEEEEE   (I was going to respond in your thread, but felt like it may have been inappropriate to just barge into the more serious discussion 10 days after the fact being all off-topic with FFXIV talk 😅)

Snow alread?!  I would not be happy about that. Way to go on all that walking! Maybe with the  housekeeping, set a timer for 5 or 10 minutes, and see what you can get done. I'm always surprisedat how much I can get done in a short amount of time.

Bought the Kindle version of A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader by the incomparable Rebecca Solnit. I'll probably use it in the presentation in October, but that's the thinnest of all possible rationales. I bought it beucase I'm feeling low and lonely and contemplative, and books have always been my haven, and having Solnit say the same thing feels like having a best friend. I'll probably buy a physical copy when I make my pilgrimage to the New York Public Library in a couple weeks, a potent reason for saying yes to the conference that is the foundation for why I'm going, honestly.

Transparency: Bought the Kindle version of A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader by the incomparable Rebecca Solnit. I'll probably use it in the presentation in October, but that's the thinnest of all possible rationales. I bought it beucase I'm feeling low and lonely and contemplative, and books have always been my haven, and having Solnit say the same thing feels like having a best friend.

Week 2 has been going pretty well.   Bookends mostly being completed with primary exception being that darn pile of laundry and deliberate housekeeping. Part of the problem is our closet is pretty small and our dressers are full. I think I need to go through and really do a purge of alot of clothes/pack away summer stuff to make more room for winter clothes (it's supposed to snow here tonight already!). For the housekeeping I just keep procrastinating it till it's time for bed and then tell myself I'll do it tomorrow. Also not been doing the best about keeping my desk clean. Just more room for improvements!   I am behind on my workouts this week. Did one Monday and meant to get another in yesterday before going to class but ran out of time and didn't want to stink before the one day I'm out in public lol. Will try to get one in this afternoon before DnD, but I just saw that alot of my art assets on Roll20 have disappeared so I need to get those sorted before our session (this is gonna be a wild session that may change the entire chapter due to one nat20 intimidation roll [why did I allow the barbarian to assist to give the druid advantage, dropped a 2 for the nat20!]).   Only had one meal yesterday. Been enjoying driving the 2 hours over to the university and bigger city and have been eating poorly while there so I skipped lunch to allow for the extra calories. That gyro and baklava were worth it tho MmmmMmmm.   Didn't get home till about 11:15 last night after class due to bad weather on the drive and then with the Aurora on Monday my sleep has been less than ideal. DnD tonight has potential to be another late one :P.   Walking has been going pretty well and I think that I'm going to up my watch's step tracker goal from 6k to 7.5k a day.     Week 2   M 9/18 TU 9/19 W 9/20 TR 9/21 F 9/22 S 9/23 S 9/24 Intermittent fasting 12:30-8 1:30-8 30 min         Calorie intake 1400 1000 1,100         Daily Bookend Routines 8 7 8     *weekend *weekend Homework / Reading     Journaling & Meditation 2x Curfew 11* Aurora 10 11:30* Class         Steps 10,000 9,800 7,700         Avg Daily Distance ~4mi Workouts 1x   And random music to share, this is the first track on my DnD mood music I put on to get myself in the mood/headspace to do feywild campaign prep. Really love his lyrics for this and his other songs.  

I'm definitely here for this sort of reframing and investigation.   Found your thread and was about to post the following just as you posted.  Great minds, right? I know a bit about negative self-talk as well.    "The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others — who are, after all, deceived easily enough; has nothing to do with reputation, which, as Rhett Butler told Scarlett O’Hara, is something people with courage can do without. To do without self-respect, on the other hand, is to be an unwilling audience of one to an interminable documentary that deals with one’s failings, both real and imagined, with fresh footage spliced in for every screening. There’s the glass you broke in anger, there’s the hurt on X’s face; watch now, this next scene, the night Y came back from Houston, see how you muff this one. To live without self-respect is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, the Phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commissions and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably wasted through sloth or cowardice, or carelessness. However long we postpone it, we eventually lie down alone in that notoriously uncomfortable bed, the one we make ourselves. Whether or not we sleep in it depends, of course, on whether or not we respect ourselves. […] Character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs. Self-respect is something that our grandparents, whether or not they had it, knew all about. They had instilled in them, young, a certain discipline, the sense that one lives by doing things one does not particularly want to do, by putting fears and doubts to one side, by weighing immediate comforts against the possibility of larger, even intangible, comforts." Joan Didion, "On Self-Respect," Slouching Towards Bethlehem     What's important in the Didion piece is that she gets it, and also helps us see a way through: Character. This sounds boring and old-school, and humdrum. She's also right. What's interesting about character is that it allows us to grow our lives to be bigger than our failures. Character doesn't prevent or erase the glass you broke in anger, the hurt on X’s face;  character allows that to become part of the vast and deep landscape of our story of being a human being, and this is what gives it power.   I, too, know about the unanswered letters, the phone as an arch-villain, the crushing weight of expectations assumed and unmet in advance. I wrote about it.   Keep on keeping on, and keep going within. The answers are inside yourself, becuase you really already have and are everything you need. The deeper you go, the more treasure you'll find.  

True!! I did another one this morning and I'm going to be soooooo sore tomorrow morning xD   Also I'm vibing with the All Might gif here and I raise you a....     HELLA STRONK HOBO MAN WHO YEETS PEOPLE AROUND WITH A METAL RIBBON

*Off to share this with everyone I know 😂😂