celerity

busy life! ahh! friends here all weekend (homecoming!) so made very little progress on long term life goals, but that's another story. this week is going to be crazy--halloween costume crunch time. goal 1: 8/9 sessions. had to squeeze two into the same day to make scheduling work out, but i did it. did a bird of paradise in class today--not fully or well, but still. had never encountered that pose before. crazy stuff. goal 2: my legs were sore for literally like two days after my half-hour run early in the week. crazy how little i must be using those muscles! i stopped and walked a significant amount, but i already feel like i have more stamina now than i have historically. 2/3 sessions possible goal 3: same old, same old, plus haven't been weighing myself in the mornings lately so not even sure what's happening. partying with friends means i drank a lot this weekend, and although i ate less food it was probably less healthy also, so i'm thinking of the weekend as a slight net loss in progress. goal 4: so, i was late to work all three days at the end of last week. it was because i chose to head into the city for a show on wednesday, and the prep + staying up late coming back + recovery just killed my mornings. i would wake up an hour after my alarm, for instance--so it wasn't a willpower thing, it was a priorities thing. i knew that i was killing my chances at this goal, but i realize that i would make the same decision again. i guess there's an aspect to this goal, then, besides just will, that's planning ahead and making sure these kinds of mutually exclusive "needs" in my life don't arise...... (show was amazing though!!) so 8/15 timely mornings i've been noticing a big strength increase in my arms from yoga. that's exciting since arms are the area i'm probably weakest in. since my favorite instructor doesn't have classes here anymore, i'm going to try out the other studio in town for one day this week. i had my yoga classes all planned out for this week, but i just realized that this weekend is halloween.... and i might be in the city for friday and saturday nights. which butchers 2/3 of the classes i wanted to take. so i will reassess... planning ahead is key! i know at least that tuesday i want to go to yoga after work, and wednesday i'll run (tomorrow is reserved for shopping/cooking). night druids!

update! quickly because i've been feeling kinda crappy this week (everyone at work is sick SIGH) and should be sleeping. goal 1: filled my 3 sessions last week as planned. the ashtanga on friday with my favorite instructor was an incredible experience. i was so moved. i think i cried in shavasana, eep. i can already feel the changes from practicing yoga regularly--i just seem to have more energy and focus. and it's helping me face goals in other areas of my life as well. no time to really muse about it, but it's been amazing so far. today i was planning to just do a session at home, but my body missed class so much that i decided to speed-run my grocery trip after work so that i could get to hot yoga by 6.30 instead. and it was great. felt a million times better after it than when i woke up this morning. tl;dr: 5/6 sessions and on track this week goal 2: planning to go for a run after work tomorrow since the weather will be nice. so still at 1/2 sessions for the first two weeks. goal 3: no noticeable changes. headed for a C right now although this is obviously one goal that needs the full timespan. goal 4: haven't been late another day (although it was close this morning--stuck behind some kind of ridiculous real-life tonka truck going 15 mph halfway to work ) so i'm up at 7/11 days on time. \m/ go get em druids

went for a hike today. was really nice to be outside in the quiet and fresh air... it made me really nostalgic for this preserve i used to go hiking in with my family when i was little--turkey mountain in the hudson valley (NY state). if anyone is nearby westchester county, i recommend it--it's a challenging but manageable climb with a gorgeous scenic area at the top that gives you a distant view of the NYC skyline. perfect. here in NJ, though, it took me longer than i thought it would to get back to the car... was hiking in twilight for a bit near the end and praying not to get eaten by a bear! xD so walking/running is at 1/2. i think i'm going to have to keep my hour-long jaunts to the weekends from now on, the sunsets are only getting earlier... also got into work four minutes early today. wish i could give two of those minutes to yesterday, lolol. on time to work is at 5/9. going to go to yoga after work tomorrow. i'm really looking forward to it, actually. i've been missing it all week since sunday, but the instructors i really like (and whose classes i can make, i.e. not during work hours) teach at the end of the week. i already did my at-home routine on tuesday, so i'm planning to go to class tomorrow and then sunday morning to hit my 3x goal this week. forgot to weigh myself this morning. was at 131 yesterday; right this moment, with the day's food and drink in me (minus dinner), i'm at 132. more updates to come! gotta stay regular!

dayum, nice pushups. and i'm excited there is a book thread now. i have the perfect book in mind but i'm not done with it yet, so this is motivating me to finish it!!

welcome! yoga is not only a great workout but in my experience, restorative, so it sounds like a great activity for you. and your other goals look smart as well! good luck!

your food sounds soooo deliciousssssssss and congrats of course on the job!

goals: woke up right on time today but hadn't set out my clothes the night before, plus some other time wasting meant i was 2 minutes late to work today. draaaaat. that brings me to only 4/8 days on time so far. gonna hike after work tomorrow. the sun sets early these days so need to pack my clothes and look up directions, etc. tonight. hopefully i can get in an hour of hiking by about 6.30. did take pictures this morning, though i don't know how useful they'll be. my body goals are mostly just shaving down on the pinch-an-inch layers, which aren't the most visible in pictures. but couldn't hurt to have! druid challenges: finally got approached by the woman who lives under me after my last set of 150 rope jumps. thought i was lucky and lived directly over the laundry. double drat! gotta find a different jumping site tomorrow. she didn't seem mad or anything, but things like that always make me feel really irrationally guilty anyway. maybe a future goal to work on--give myself a mental break once in a while... time for a hot shower and delicious veggie dinner, then some life tasks before i sleep!

yay, welcome! i really really like the stretching idea too. my only movement at work right now consists of walking to the kitchen for coffee breaks (probably not the healthiest habit anyway, haha). just make sure you don't stretch too far if you're not warming up first. my dance teachers always pounded 'stretching cold is a big no-no' in pretty hard.

just wanna say i'm also super inspired by your pushup progress. i can do a pathetically small number of REAL push-ups in a set. like eight or something. xD kudos for being strong in mind and body!!

nice travel plans. i've never managed to successfully work out while on the go, but Steve has shown us that it's possible, and it seems you will too... kudos! planning must be the key!

i love that you have game improvement as one of your goals. i'm really of the mindset that gaming skill, esp realtime esports-type skill like the ones you want to improve, is serious and should be appreciated. and i've always wanted to train myself to get good (i love video games, but i'm terrible! haha!). nerddruids ftw.

Thanks guys and it's nice to see my sadly inactive thread being poked with challenge links! This place is full of accountability I need to find some jump rope equivalent and then I'm actually pretty excited about this one... in my opinion there should be a level 2.5 which is running with the jump rope, that was all I did at recess throughout my childhood! haha. Off to a rocky start re: actually finding time for everything... but I tell myself that as my schedule calms down (was driving up and down the coast last week and had a friend staying with me), I'll get more consistent. Of course part of my goals should be consistency with no excuses!! (and updating regularly, even if I'm not officially participating. sigh.) Re: bonus goals, I'm going to use those as "remedial" points as options to make up points I lose on my primary ones. I think the chance to redeem myself will discourage abandoning things if I get off track. as of today... goal 1: only managed two sessions last week, so no more misses if I want an A! i decided if i do make the grade, I'll buy myself some nice yoga gear as a reward... ;3 goal 2: fail so far. again, scheduling, but there are always ways to get around that so it shouldn't be an excuse. this week I have my hike planned out. weather on thursday looks beautiful, so thursday's the day (unless tomorrow looks more beautiful when it comes around). goal 3: nothing to track here really. hovering around 132 right now. decided I should probably take pictures for my own reference, aiming to do that tomorrow morning so time of day is consistent. goal 4: 4/7 days so far. all the misses were last week. getting into the rhythm of the whole waking up thing though, barely snoozed this morning. and it feels muuchhhh better (: godspeed fellow druids! breathe!

a pull up is definitely a "one day" kind of thing for me too, haha. awesome that you're going for that i'm totally in for the book club. i have a couple of great titles that this group is better prepared than most to enjoy, i think

hi druids! i am quite a latecomer to this challenge. i'm new here on NF (although have had some minor success in the past with the site's nutrition information and body weight routines, which i love), and so of course this is my first six-week challenge. but various commitments last week and a weekend out of state made it pretty impossible for me to start on the official date with the goals i wanted. so i'll be competing informally--only for the attributes and personal satisfaction. the changes i need to make in my life aren't enormous. i try to eat relatively healthy and i'm only about ten pounds above a pretty ideal goal weight. but i've hit a wall in my life where the smallest effort feels impossibly enormous to me. it often takes so much energy just to get through my day, and instead of enacting even simple solutions to my problems, i'd rather ignore, avoid, procrastinate, run away and sleep. the past few years have been kind of bad for me. i've gotten through them because i'm very good at scraping by. but it feels like crap and i don't want to scrape, i want to live again. i can't let depression and a resigned attitude keep me from that. there are very few times in my life i feel i've truly improved myself, but i know i have the potential to do that. so! i have a long background in dance with some gymnastics (long ago) and yoga (recently) thrown in. good core strength, terrible upper body strength, pathetic stamina. --- my goals are all about accountability. ~for all goals below, "week" is defined as mon-sun. ~i am extending my personal challenge to cover the entire week of oct. 5th, since i started late. so weekly goals will need to be met through sunday the 10th to count. ~i'm only counting grades A through C, because well, i'm half asian, let's just run with the stereotype goal 1: do yoga 3 times per week. i'm lucky to have a wonderful studio right in town that operates by donation (i'm new to adulthood and not exactly overflowing with funds at the moment). one of these sessions can be a short (15-20 min) sun salutations routine at home in my apartment, but only one of these short sessions can count per week. 18 sessions possible; A/B/C = 17-18 / 14-16 / 11-13 | +2 dex | +2 str | +1 wis | goal 2: walk/hike for an hour OR run for half an hour at least once per week. walking back and forth to my car / destinations in town (~15 min/day) does NOT count. this can be done in any combination, e.g. 30 min of walking plus 15 min of running is OK for a week. 6 weeks possible; A/B/C = 6 / 5 / 4 | +2 sta | +1 dex | goal 3: get down below 130 lbs. i weigh in the 132-136 range right now. so it doesn't sound like a huge goal, except that i'm fairly certain my body fat is quite high while muscle is quite low right now... so if i meet my other goals i should be building muscle, which may make this more of a composition change than real weight loss. this is my motivation to eat healthy and show myself that diet choices and exercise discipline DO have results. measurements taken after a night of drinking don't count (dehydration cheat). A = below 130 for at least three consecutive days at end of challenge / B = dip below 130 but sporadically or fail to stay / C = below 132 for at least three consecutive days at end of challenge | +2 cha | +1 con | goal 4 (LIFE): get to work on time. this is enormously difficult for me; i'm paid by the hour, so if i get in fifteen minutes late it's easy to stay fifteen minutes later at the end of the day, and there's effectively no difference. but i'm tired of something as simple as standing up from bed defeating me morning after morning; and the mornings are a depression trap because of this issue. on time means IN THE BUILDING by 8.30AM. this normally entails going to bed by 11PM (on track for failure right now, clearly). 30 weekdays possible; A/B/C = 24-30 / 19-23 / 16-18 | +2 sta | +1 wis | +1 cha | bonus goals: (kosher to award points for these? i don't think just listing them will be enough to get me going.) 1; pay my parents back the 1k i owe them from getting settled in my new place. my parents are angels and they would let me put this off forever if it were up to them. achieving this by the end of the challenge rewards a flat +1 con 2; start blogging again. writing is really important to me and i feel that when i don't put my thoughts down i waste a large part of my mental energy each day. i'd like to blog at least once per week. each three blog posts reward +1 wis. w/r/t remainders, 2 posts count as +.5 wis; 1 post doesn't count. --- hope i can belatedly find a spot in the druid fold! i'll try to post my starting point info soon. need to find a morning that's not too hectic to take pictures.

exciting to hear about your success with that approach! i think that's one of the biggest benefits to the druid school of activities as a group... increased awareness of just how your body moves from day to day can make a big difference in well being. and it sounds like you already have a history of making positive changes for yourself, which can only be a good thing now

no idea, but 'HTC Desire' is a pretty sweet phone name ^.^

...or at least, it hasn't worked for me so far. sorry, that was cheesy. ^^ i'm a more-or-less druid: gymnastics early, dance long, yoga and related things recently. i also believe in things like perfection and the unity of infinity and nothingness that would make most people expect me to hit them with a stick and start yelling about enlightenment. well, i'm still figuring it out. but at least my class is set. balance, lots of core strength (at least relatively), naturally flexible. terrified of group sports, zero upper body strength, pathetic stamina levels. we're talking 90-second plank but zero real pushups. i discovered NF back in the spring and it was a small enlightenment even then, dropped about five pounds just by tracking what i ate and incorporating some body weight circuits. accountability is a huge thing for me. five pounds doesn't seem like a lot. my weight has only ever fluctuated within about a 20-pound range. but the utter lack of discipline this has let me get away with is a chronic problem, and i don't feel comfortable in my own skin like i used to. it's a theme in my life: i had an easy childhood and adolescence re: school, friends, diet. i never had to work hard for anything. and so i never learned to work hard. so when i went through some moderately challenging years--intellectual stimulation, difficult relationships, time management--i hit a wall and spiraled straight down to depression, avoidance, procrastination, paralyzing fear of failure. and the knowledge of how easy it should have been to claw myself out of it--just suck it up, get some discipline, do your work--only made it worse. it's not apparent, because i'm what i call high-functioning. this is a bad thing. it means i'll do just enough work to not be singled out as failing, drink just to below the level of being called an alcoholic and stop there, indulge in emotional eating as long as it doesn't quite show through my clothes. in other words, i'm great at scraping by. but it's a miserable mode of existence. it feels toxic. it used to be a given that i'd achieve--now, it's exhausting even to meet baseline. i used to live, not just survive. and i want that back. so, NF, and accountability. you'll notice my saddening sta:wis ratio, and perhaps that's confusing to see in someone who seems to need a lot of life goal-setting. but i have plenty of wisdom about my own situation. what the spiraling did do for me, the giving up: it humbled me, it crushed my ego and then made me walk back and forth over it and realize that i could. that the world still went on. i'm a very self-aware person. ...but even though i have this knowledge, and i understand exactly how i'm going wrong, somehow i can never act on it. i lack the energy, the courage, the faith. i lack the stamina. i also ramble. sorry about that. but onto the fun stuff, no? i joined up to start my first six-week challenge--which i'll do tomorrow, when i'm not whittling away my remaining hours of sleep. mainly i'm excited to set a yoga 3x/wk goal. can't say enough great things about yoga. and i've done pathetically little of it. number one fact about me, i love zelda. this can never be overstated. i am constantly comparing real-life men to link somewhere deep in my heart. which is damning for them, of course. i'm also increasingly obsessed with g-dragon. his collab with TOP has produced some of my kpop objects of all time ( , of course). anyone? ^.^that said, kpop is atypical. this is more my usual musical taste. if anyone else is going to this fest i will be tickled pink, i'm going all alone and my mother is just terrified xD last cultural artifact plug: FLCL. cowboy bebop. just kidding not last. COMMUNITY (bring back dan harmon!!1!) i just recently graduated from college with a BA in english and am currently working in assessment development. but i'm a huge nerd, constantly regret not majoring in CS after early positive experiences, and (not-so-)secretly long to run away to U Washington, get a degree in UX, and work for nintendo in my dream city of seattle ;_; you would never guess from this essay i've spewed, but i love listening to people. if anyone's made it to the end you are incredible, and i hope to do the same for many of you during my stay here ^^ that is, once i've gotten some sleep~