sarakingdom

No harm in giving it a shot, if you're trying things! It probably won't be your thing if you're a striking person, but it could be fun to try a couple of times. The throws and falls can get really fun, with some experience. There's something of an airborne quality, as you get safer in the air. The moves are more like a sleight of hand than a strike; you think you're attacking, then they're somewhere else, and whoops, you're on the floor. It's a slow art to learn, compared to striking arts, and I don't remotely think it'll prepare me to deal with genuinely dangerous situations until I've been training a very long time, but I do think that, statistically, it's actually very good for the things I'm likely to face: falling safely, followed by attacks by people I know or am not in a position to hurt, followed by attacks where I don't have a size or strength advantage. (It's designed to remove the size and strength advantage, and rumor is that smaller people actually have an advantage in aikido, because of their low center of gravity.) Ultimately, though, it's not a striking art, and people love what they love, so it might just be a fun diversion.

It's not why I chose aikido, but one of the things I came to appreciate about it is that there is the option to control an attacker without injuring them. For women, it's more common to be attacked by someone you know than by a stranger, and it's really difficult mentally to commit to injuring someone you know, especially if that person is a minor.

Week 1: Day 5 Weekly measurements: Taken8 hours of sleep: Alas. Not that high. I haven't been sleeping well this week... I'll have to try to get to bed early tonight.Three hard strength days: TomorrowActive rest days: A lot of walking.Ten a day on something aikido-y (5x): This week, I'm using my meditation for that.Daily meditation: Two mini-meditations done. Find a habit trigger for my meditation: Actually, not so good on the formal triggers today, but meh.Do a small amount of a stressful task (3x): Not sure it'll be today, but let me see what I can come up with. Okay, I think today will be tricky to get through as is, so I will pick a modestly stressful task. Off to do it now. 2x for the week so far.

Re: sleep, that would explain a lot. And I believe it, though I wouldn't have thought it was so high on the list. Now if only I could sleep reliably. I worry that the flexibility stands in the way of consistency, which is a problem for me, but I think that's another challenge. This challenge is just getting it done flexibly. The mini-meditations are pretty good, and because the main version is standing, I think they'll be a good thing to do every 20-30 minutes when my "stop sitting down" alarm goes off, and I have nothing to do when I get up. So that may be a two birds with one stone sort of thing. Which I like.

A self-care challenge for sure. I don't know if the research backs Lumosity, but I'll buy the protective power of learning new things against dementia (though I don't know enough to know if that's Alzheimers-specific dementia). One of the most interesting theories I've heard recently about Alzheimers is that some researchers are referring to it as Type IV diabetes, a type of diabetes that impacts the brain. Which, if true, would be why exercise seems to be linked to some Alzheimers protection.

The impression I've been getting from reading about some sword schools is that, pre-1900-ish, the name of the style was synonymous with the name of the physical school where it was taught, and these multi-school affiliations are a relatively new thing. I don't know if that's true, but that might imply that the senior students who go teaching on their own effectively do create their own niche style. (Which is largely what Ueshiba did, after starting out as an aiki-jujutsu teacher in Takeda's style.) Maybe there's not a whole lot of precedent for how it's done now, with large international affiliations. Kano's judo was probably the very first national style, and that might well be the influence of western sporting and education ideas. So that may be true, that there's more precedent for senior martial artists to have their own style, versus being governed from a central dojo. I always got the impression that there was something irregular about the Ki Society split with Hombu that no one really talks about out of respect for Koichi Tohei sensei - that it wasn't entirely proper for Tohei to break away and it put many of the younger uchi-deshi in a difficult position, choosing between a duty to Hombu and a duty to Tohei, who'd taught them. Of the students who followed him, a great many of them broke away from him for one reason or another. Some of them re-associated with Hombu, some just went out on their own, and no one spoke about it openly, but there were a lot of whispers about problems with Tohei sensei, either problems with how he was running the organization or him throwing people out. It's left me with the vague sensation that Tohei sensei was one big walking personality conflict, but no one wanted to air problems with their teacher in public. That's what I always attributed the proliferation of styles to - he seemed like the epicenter of it all. That said, I think there are big differences between the aikido Ueshiba was teaching in the 1930s and the aikido he was teaching in the 1950s. The senior students who started schools at the two extremes might not have enough in common for the same affiliation to be useful, in terms of classification, and IIRC some of those early divergent schools were formed before Hombu was really Hombu. IIRC, his very earliest uchi-deshi were awarded ranks as aiki-jujutsu dans rather than aikido dans, so they may call themselves aikido, but most of it, certainly the modern concept of aikido and the modern internationalization of the style, postdated them forming their own schools. They are aikido, but I think calling them a different style of aikido makes sense.

That is an awesome workout space, and a great workout. I like that.

BLACK ALWAYS GOES WITH BLACK. This is my firm fashion rule.

*poke* *poke* *poke* *pokepokepokepokepokepokepokepokepoke* Are you going to come flaunt your delicious, delicious coffee at me? (Although, actually, I bought decaf especially so I could drink coffee if you did. So we should have coffee sometime.)

Week 1: Day 4 10 minutes crawlFirst mini-meditation done.Sleep was okay. Pushing it a little. Could do better.I'm thinking I might re-order things this week, and do tai chi today instead of a strength session. I'm behind on my tai chi, and tomorrow will be a physically demanding day for me, so in the interests of prioritizing recovery time, going a little lighter today might be a good plan. Between the crawl and the tai chi, I'll get some strength benefits out of it. It won't be pushups and squats, but it'll be pretty good. Actually, let me do a more formal goal check-off this challenge: Weekly measurements: Taken8 hours of sleep: Haven't checked my tracker today, but I'm probably at 7.5.Three hard strength days: Half points for the crawl session. I'll make it a pass with some tai chi, given tomorrow's activities.Active rest days: Tomorrow. Ten a day on something aikido-y (5x): This week, I'm using my meditation for that.Daily meditation: Three mini-meditations done. Find a habit trigger for my meditation: That actually is the benefit of the mini-meditations.Do a small amount of a stressful task (3x): Ah. I forgot about this one. Well, I can count finishing my taxes on Monday for one... I think I'm due another today.Right. I'll turn that all green by tonight. The irony is that my calories expended during exercise actually seem to be higher on my rest days this week. That's probably not ideal. But long periods of slow movement add up. I'm liking the mini-meditations. Short standing stretch with breathing, only meant to be a minute long. That's the sort of length where I can find lots of habit triggers in my day to put them in, so I'm going to try that for a while.

Week 2: Day 3 Yesterday, I did not do the extra strength training I intended to do. This is poor follow-through, but the bear crawl stuff was pretty good. A little short for the workout I intended, but a good whole-body strength thing, so that's not a total fail on the strength workout. Today: Middling sleep. I need to get some extra rest.Light cardio workout, rather than my planned tai chi.Meditation.I'm not getting the aikido-related stuff in, really, but I'm going to let that go the first week. I have a big challenge this time around. I'm doing a Japanese breathing exercise for meditation, so we'll call that close enough for week 1. Nice slight ache from the past few days' workouts. Not soreness, but awareness of the muscles. That's nice. Very tired. It's mostly a healthy "could sleep for days" sort of tired. Hopefully it's still around at bedtime.

Basically. I'll do better at the harder stuff if I take a few extra days to get my muscles used to the easier stuff. (And I suspect that women and upper body strength, doesn't do you any good to rush it.) Yeah, it seemed like the closest to what I wanted. Not spandexy American tai-chi-lite, not hours and hours of academic study in subtitled Chinese videos, just something practical and straightforward and used by fighters as part of their training. Y I no have guest nerds?? No nerd chat for me??? That's okay, my morning was sort of fucked by not sleeping well last night, so I split up my sleeping hours a little.

SAUNA. I miss access to one of those. I wish I'd used it more.

The post boxes have a text recovery feature. If you put your cursor in them, there'll be a little message in grey on the bottom if it has saved, unposted content from you for that post box, and it'll let you restore it. It's not 100% (if it didn't have time to autosave, for instance, or if you post something else via the same box in between), but I've been able to recover almost everything I've tried.

Breakfast of champions.

Week 1: Day 2 I didn't get my workout in yesterday. I did taxes instead. But that's okay, there's some flexibility in my schedule. So today is workout day. meditationnap - I'm trying to get more rest in with half-hour naps, if I don't sleep enough at night.10 minutes crawl, level 1 - I might stay at level 1 all week. My upper body strength made the full ten minutes challenging. Not failure-hard, but a bit more of an endurance challenge than I expected. Good to know. That's why I started at level 1.HIIT later, or, worst case, The Shogun's Triforce Challenge.

It makes sense, I'm just surprised it can be such a major factor. I need to find a way to get more sleep. There's just so many things to do...

I can indeed:

It does, it's pretty interesting. It does hit muscles you might not, going at speed. I suspect the momentum is able to compensate for some of the muscles that don't usually get hit. Which is an interesting way of discovering sloppy form. Well, all right, if you insist. It's so hard to resist their little faces. I am going to practice that every night. YOU'RE BACK! It's good to see you. The morning is evil. Pretty exhausted lately. Yeesh. I need to practice more Tiger Dreaming of Catching the Crane.

That is genius. Because I have been known to get caught up in a book and not stop reading, and stay up way too late. And I keep a tablet by my bed.

Sunflower seeds are pretty cheap, as nuts and seeds go, and they're good fiber. Peanuts and raisins, too. I just checked my food log, and Teirin's right, carrots and sweet potatoes are pretty good for fiber, as are bananas, and frozen spinach is also pretty damn fiber-rich per serving. (Even for a regular serving, but more so if your idea of a serving is I HAVE A MASSIVE BOWL OF SPINACH.)

There are loads that are good and publish online, but I've always enjoyed what I've read on tor.com. I don't read it as often as I ought, I just dip in occasionally. The same could be said for all my recreational reading, I think. But they've got a strong editorial voice. Can't recall who else publishes online... Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Crossed Genres, maybe Asimov's/Analog? There are a handful of short story podcasts, like Podcastle and Escape Pod, too. I just got recommended this, which looks interesting. Yes, there are some interesting nominations. But you're not wrong about the taint. Slates curated by a handful of guys that, at best, the decision of what deserved a slot this year was non-random and non-representative of the voting pool. And they don't all look like "at best" cases. I wouldn't say I was very familiar with current SF, but I read last year's Hugo winner, and it was a well-deserved win. Likewise Mieville's "The City and the City" from a few years ago. Not as keen on Gibson's latest as I'd hoped I would be. Bennett's "City of Stairs" was very interesting, and worth a read, though I feel the ending let it down some. I've been hearing huge amounts of buzz about "Station Eleven".

Week 1: Day 1 I'm glad I have a no-scale resolution this challenge, because I took my official reference weight this morning, and I know I did not really jump 3.5 pounds in the 72 hours since I last got on the scale, but the number bothers me. So a challenge just concentrating on doing shit right and taking measurements will be helpful. I'm beginning to think that sleep might actually be the big factor in why I hang onto weight or lose it. All my weight losses seem to be in periods where my sleep is really good, and all my weight gains in periods where my sleep is bad. That seems to be a far stronger correlation than net calorie levels. (I think there's some exercise component, too, like my metabolism behaves very differently when I'm getting regular exercise than when I'm taking it easy, even if I keep net calories the same.) One of the many reasons why I think my body behaves like it's under stress from not enough rest, along with some intermittent symptoms of long-term undereating that relate to failure to repair. This is something I've got to outsmart. And I think it also means I need more sleep today. Today is a crawl day. I'm going to start with the easiest crawls and progress up in difficulty until I hit one I have trouble doing for 10-15 minutes. (It'll be before bear crawl, I suspect. Last time I did that, I needed timed sets.) The platypus-bear crawl, presumably harder than the bear crawl.

From all accounts, "nominated for a Hugo in 2015" is a phrase that's going to be infamous for decades, if the Hugo awards even survive the shenanigans of this year's nominations, so I'd be careful about using that as a recommendation for authors you like.

For SFF. I've had short story anthologies edited by John Joseph Adams pretty much blanket-recommended by someone I trust. Haven't really got around to it, but they look pretty neat. (I started on a weird-West anthology he edited, but had to return it to the library before I finished. What I read in it was fun, and I'll be checking it out again to finish.)