rowan

HAPPY ALMOST NEW YEAR, YA NERDS! I petered off at the end of the last challenge due to holiday stuff and also being real sick for a full week (I am very very bad at being sick and I kept trying to get up and wander around, and once I walked into a wall. Bad Rowan!), but I am happy to report that I did my week 4 workout just before getting sick, ate pretty well for the holidays, and was very very good with my dental hygiene. I just got back to Gotham last night, so everything is poised and ready for a new year, a new challenge, and a new age of not having to blow my nose every four minutes! Hooray! I am considering this to be challenge 2 of my respawn, and for a nice little New Year's theme and maybe the theme for the whole rest of the year, it's BREATH OF THE WILD! I love how the game starts, you are absolutely at level 1, and you have to explore, train, gather and solve to pull yourself up to hero level. You know the feeling. So this month, I'm keeping it basic. BE STRONG! - work out once a week! I have a membership to a rock climbing gym near my work starting on January 2nd, so just going and noodling around on the wall for an hour will be my plan for weekly workout - hopefully I will like it enough to go twice a week! I will pretend I am Link climbing around in Hyrule :3 - Daily movement: I am bringing my daily movement plan up to the following: 2X7 knee pushups Five squats Cat/cow spine motion 20 leg swings, each side each way 10 sec plank My intention will be to get it done in the Secret Workout Room at my work on my lunch break every day. SECRET! BE BRAVE! - Listen to spanish audiobook! I'm hoping for something originally written in spanish - any recs? - Say something in spanish once a week. That's it. It can be to myself, to a nice dog, to my dad, whatever. Just gotta start getting the words out of my mouth. BE STILL: White noise sleep five days a week! I listen to podcasts or audiobooks almost constantly, including when I sleep, and it is cluttering up my brain and making creativity harder. Before I start meditating, I want to clear some space, so I will be falling asleep to nature sounds five nights a week. Interesting. BE FOCUSED! Write and thumbnail a comic! I have an idea I've been wanting to execute for a long time, so this month I am going to just write it out, and thumbnail the panels. Maybe do some character study sketches. All my work will be shared at the end of the month. Daily drawing: Handuary! Every day I will draw some hands and post them on the social medias. Hands are hard. Handuary. BE BALANCED: Batch cooking! Food is so expensive, y'all. So very expensive. So in an effort to move myself closer to my budgeting goals, I am going to batch cook one thing every Sunday, and pack it for the week. Pics and recipes will be forthcoming! Five Drinks: You know what else is frikkin expensive is booze. Let's do five per week, see what it does for me. ADDITIONAL: NF check in 2x week Brush teeth 2x/day, floss daily Ok, there it is. Not pretty yet, but it's out there! Will be checking back later to repost this in a way that is organized and nice, but right now I gotta shower and boogie. Hope everyone has a happy new year!

NYMERIA! HELLO YOU ARE VERY COOL! Also, I'm considering getting an insta pot, so pls share all recipes!

Hallo! Am here, not dead, but sort of dead from travel, holiday, two solid weeks of heavy extroverting and a whole battery of routine doctor checks squeezed in before new years. Week 3 numbers as follows: Workout: yes! three rounds of the Apex Predator workout Flossing: 7/7 Brushing: 7/7 Movement: 5/7 Draw: 3/7 Read the News: 7/7 Delicious Booze Units: 11 This week has been bonkers, but assuming I don’t completely space out tomorrow my week 4 should be nice and tight as well. Did a kickboxing class, got a bunch of fillings done, gave blood, saw Spiderverse, started playing the new Smash, flew across the country, got my Legend of Zelda christmas sweater, read two books, made fudge, so tired, full wrap tomorrow. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hey hey, solid habit lifting guy with good food! I hear a lot about the apparent wizardry of having a coffee before a workout, but I’m always afraid that I won’t sleep or that my stomach will hate me. Seems to be working out well for you though, making me rethink my reluctance... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Rurik – you know, you just sort of hit the nail on the head regarding some weird feelings I was having about my 2019 challenge list – I think part of the reason why it’s been so hard to make headway in these five areas of my life is how much attention I’ve given to the fear – fear of initiating a conversation in Spanish and being laughed at, fear of working hard on a comic and it not living up to the vision in my head, fear of walking into the gym and lifting the bar, just the bar, while a jacked up dude stands behind me looking at his watch. Fear is the reason I go so long without going to the dentist, it’s the reason I avoid finishing my creative projects, it’s the reason I stayed for so long in an industry that was eating me alive. I’m already pretty over it, to be honest, I’m bored of it, and so I’ve refit the challenge a little bit to suit me better: 1. BE STRONG: Go to the gym twice a week, hit (fitness goals to be decided) 2. BE BRAVE: Speak Spanish with Real Humans, regain fluency 3. BE FOCUSED: Make 4 comics, finish one every 3 months 4. BE STILL: Meditate, cultivate stillness 5. BE BALANCED: Budget, spending, blah blah I’ve been thinking about having a Breath of the Wild theme for The Whole Year, but we’ll see in a week or two if that still feels like a good idea. Week 3 Day 4 Today I did a brave thing and I told my work counterpart that I was planning on practicing my Spanish and regaining fluency in the new year. He’s a native speaker and was really excited to hear that, and we chatted for a while talking about words that were different in the respective dialects that we grew up hearing (Mexican for me, Dominican for him). Twenty seconds of courage, and very good results! Did my workout for the week yesterday, felt stiff in the hips and also everywhere, and felt some frustration and embarrassment about how out of shape and crunchy I am right now, but it’s just a monkey-brain response, and I am steadily overcoming it. Daily movement and pushups is becoming a pretty steady habit, I have a whole map now of secret Pushup Zones in my office, and I am kind of enjoying Clandestine Strength Missions to the back supply closet. I’ve been reading a lot in an attempt to clear my docket before the new year – currently I am reading A Madness of Angels, The Name of the Rose, Fuzzy Nation, and The Collector. I think I can finish everything by New Year’s, which will give me a nice clean slate to read Annihilation in January for my Science Fiction Book Club, and Laurus for my own enjoyment. I have a lot of books on my list that I’m very excited for, and I can’t wait to get to the next few on my list (Brave Story, Under Heaven, John Dies at the End, The Disaster Artist, Battle Royale…I could go on..). One of the many perks of my new job is a certain allotment of cash each year for employees to spend on their personal development or health – I have been puzzling over what to use mine for before the new year, and I finally decided on a set of day passes for a local climbing gym. Rock climbing and bouldering are something I love but tend to be pretty expensive, so this is a nice treat for me and will, I think, have good results in terms of me doing my workouts. Plus, I’ve been playing Breath of the Wild over the last year and I WANT TO CLIMB EVERYTHING SO HERE I GO TO CLIMB EVERY SINGLE THING! UPPER BODY STRENGTH HERE I COME!

YEEEAHH. Man, I really like that - kind of needed to hear it too. You are an inspiration! Also, yes yes what books are you looking at?

RAXIE! You are dancing so much dance! Dance....magic dance?

WEEK THREE DAY TWO! Let me tell you, it is pretty hard to keep up with the forums when I can’t really check in at work and the rest of my life is crazybananas holiday busy, but I am here and I am STILL IN THE GAME! Sorted all my clothes this week, and put together a winter capsule, folding everything else mari kondo style in rolling bins under my bed – truly, this is my wizard power. I’ve now had a Normal Desk Job for just over two months, and I am living all my wildest fantasies of Wearing My Own Clothes At Work -this life is absolutely living up to the hype. I have been already thinking ahead to January and the general things I want to change or accomplish next year, and I have boiled it down to Five Main Things: 1. Get Over Fear of Silence: meditate, reduce noise and clutter, cultivate stillness 2. Get Over Fear Of Scarcity: Rebuild my depleted savings and commit to a budget plan 3. Get Over Fear of Weakness: work out twice a week, do the long slow work of building strength 4. Get Over Fear of Effort: Make one longform (10-25 pages) every three months, total of 4. 5. Get Over Fear of Failure: Practice speaking Spanish with other live human beings, regain fluency. I’m pretty hype about it, tbh, but before we can get to that we have… WEEK 2 WRAP UP!!!!!!!! Workout: nope. I didn’t work super hard to plan this for myself, and ended up having to do laundry and run errands during my tentatively allotted time, so I think having a solid schedule is going to be key here, rather than just hoping to fit in that hour when I get the chance. Movement: 6/7 super super acceptable! And man are pushups feeling easier… Booze: one beer at dungeons and dragons, three drinks at the office holiday party, three whiskeys at Sea Captain Night (long story), two glasses of champagne at the War On Christmas party, two glasses of wine during movie night with a friend, for a grand total of ELEVEN DELICIOUS ALCOHOL UNITS. So, that is exactly the same as last week, which is mrrr, but no worse, and there wasn’t a crazy night like the concert last week to throw my numbers? Each individual instance has been pretty moderate, but social events with alcohol just keep happening one after the other. I did pick up a good trick from a friend of mine, which is to have a Delicious Alcohol Unit (DAU) and then use the bottle or glass it came in and just keep refilling it with water and chugging that to satisfy the mindless sipping impulse. Works extremely well for me, and I think this coming week I’m going to try to lean on that tool and bring my intake below 11. Flossing/Brushing: 5/7! I brushed my teeth every day but I only flossed five times, which again is the same as last week. Interesting. I’m finding that I’m super super tired at the end of the night, and on the nights I don’t floss what actually happens is that I collapse in bed and then remember I still haven’t flossed, then just choose not to because bed. Drawing: eeeh 2/7. Having a hard time finding the energy for this, even when I have the time, and that is not the best. I do have an idea for a challenge in January, which I am very excited about : 3 News: Solid. Barely even a thing I need to check in with now, but it does help to have to tick the box off. Being Rad And Excellent: 7/7, AS EXPECTED.

Week 2 Day 4 Hahaaaah well here I am again with an update, and BOY HOWDY am I tired. I looked at my calendar yesterday and realized that I had had a Big Extrovert Event every night for the last SIX DAYS. Then of course last night I ran around getting all my holiday shopping done and got home at midnight, so tonight. TONIGHT I AM GOING TO SIT IN MY BED AND PLAY ZELDA. Bleeh. Monday night I had one delicious fancy Christmas Beer at DnD night, Tuesday night I had the company holiday party, and I had three glasses of wine over the course of five hours, and tons and tons of oysters and tiny hamburgers. Delicious. Not a drop on Wednesday night. It’s that time of the year again and I’m feeling the need to declutter and make space – I don’t want to make it a long and drawn out process however, so I’m considering doing something like a Kon Mari or Getting Rid of One Hundred Things In One Day or something like that. Oooh, even just thinking about it makes me shiver….I want to go home RIGHT NOW and just start throwing things out the windows but I know I have to wait until I have tiiiimmeeeeee……. Also it’s hard to draw every day especially when you are busy and your brain is tired from talking to people all the time and when you have free time you just want to lie down and stare at the ceiling… Week 1 wrap up! Workout: Yes! Three rounds of the Darebee Apex Predator workout with knee pushups. It definitely made me sweat, and it’s a good workout for mobility and hips, which is good. I think this might be my go-to for a while! Daily Movement: 7/7! Hooray! I think I can feel the pushups getting easier, and I definitely want to step up that element next round, but man building muscle is frustrating. I just have to keep telling myself that this is strength in the bank, and at this point it’s as much about tendons and joints as it is about triceps. My back, hips, hamstrings, calves, feet, and neck are a mess. Booze watch: Two glasses of wine at book club, two glasses of wine at Lasagna Night, six beers at Mitski concert, one cider during the LOTR Marathon, for a grand total of ELEVEN DELICIOUS BOOZE UNITS. Definitely a step down from my previous consumption, and even if I keep this rate up I’ll be at about 2/3 of last month, but I think without the outlier of the concert the numbers could be much lower. Here’s to a nice moderate week 2! Flossing: 5/7 – Missed the very firstest day and also Saturday because I was drunk. BUT! Five out of seven isn’t bad, and after a few weeks of intermittent flossing and one week of pretty much every day flossing, my teeth do feel much better and my gums don’t bleed anymore when I floss! Gross but hooray! Maintenance: no issues with reading the news, journaling, or brushing my teeth. Drawing has just fallen by the wayside this week. Hrmf.

Ok so here's how it goes with the sea monster: I get hit with a ton of arrows while maintaining a nasty Witch Bolt on a giant angry Blood Cult Viking, and I fall down on the dock, my HP at zero. THEN a sea monster rears up and swallows me, and I'm about to really bite it when our Cleric heals me and I come to INSIDE the monster, immobilized. I then whip out my signature Lighting Bolt, a five foot wide wave of electricity that shoots up out of the monster, propelling me out of the smoking carcass and back onto the dock. It was a pretty fun session! Dungeons and Dragons has become a pretty big part of my life these day,s and I am super excited to level up after our next session so I can get a PRISMATIC RAY WHOOOOOOO! Currently our party is raiding a chaos blood cult viking temple so that our Bard can become Queen of the Wastelands and promote her new opera about how great we all are. Oh, the powers of the imagination! I am really happy with my character, Quarthiel, a vain and effete High Elf wizard who wants to found a magical school in order to impress his dour aristocrat mother. But to found a Hogwarts, you need a big ol pile of cash.... SHADOWLIOOONNN! HELLO! I think I very well may post some drawings - I've been doing pretty well at drawing and posting stuff on instagram and tumblr, but I've been slacking off the last week due to my Big Crazy Social Life! Man it's so hard to be popular... Hi there! The drinking is going alright - I think cutting it out all at once was overly ambitious, but I'm definitely making progress! As for drawing, I do a lot of cartooning and comics, but I really want to work on my fine art styles - I'm taking figure drawing classes on and off, and liking those very much!

I LOVE YOUR BATMAN TREE DANGLY! SO FESTIVE AND POWERFUL!

Hope sleep is doing better - the brain is a finicky thing!

Hooray for no surgery! Now you can focus on ULTRA BUFF FINGER WORKOUTS and BEAUTIFUL TRUCKS! Also, tell me more about these stair laps, sounds pretty brutal!

Holy moly cannoli you are killing it, friend! LOOK AT ALL THOSE THINGS THAT YOU ARE DOING, and going out and havign ADVENTURES outside...one might almost say...if one were so inclined....ranging? Like some kind of...person who ranges.... You have inspired me very much, maybe I will have an outside adventure sometime soon Also. Duct Tape. No judgement. ONLY HONOR.

I'm glad you had a decent day! Those are good to have when they come along. Any word on the kittens?

Holy heck, my dude, that was not a classy move on her part. You deserve a million times better, and your hair is amazing. Adding my echo to Mr. Tank's wisdom, and I hope that today is a good day

DORKY BIKE RIDES FOREVER IN THE SILVER FIELDS OF THE SKY! Seriously though that thing WAS ABSOLUTELY GOING TO KILL ME. Week 2 day 1! I’m gonna week 1 wrap up tomorrow but it’s been such a weekend I’m just gonna dump here to keep track of it all. Went to see Mitski at Brooklyn Steel on Saturday night with a friend of mine who works in wine, and somehow we ended up at the very trendy Grimm’s Artisinal Brewery downing glass after glass of I think something called Kites Are Fun? Final count was six. Eeek. No hangover, and I had fun, but I don’t want to have days like that on a regular basis. Sunday was THE MOST GRAND AND EPIC ANNUAL EXTENDED VERSION LORD OF THE RINGS MARATHON that my friends have been doing since college, and I watched every minute and it was AMAZING, and there were like fifteen of us and we roasted some chickens and I had exactly ONE Angry Orchard Cider. I also finally learned why Arwen was able to choose mortality, and learned about the origin of the wizards! LORE! Tonight was dungeons and dragons, Special Pirate Edition, DID I MENTION I NOW HAVE A VERY ROBUST 5TH EDITION CAMPAIGN I AM A PART OF? I play an elf wizard named Quarthiel, and today I got eaten by a sea monster snd I used Lightning Bolt to electrocute it to death from the inside! Finally, I especially wanted to relate that our GM quizzed us each at the beginning of the game about how many pushups we could do at ourlimit, and at the eleventh hour, when our backs were against the wall, said that if our warrior could do twenty IRL pushups, she could re-roll a failed attack. In short order, we are all down on the floor roaring and straining our way to a smashing victory, and even though we almost didnt make it, we won and that’s how I got my pushups done today! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hooray for the week! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I did in fact escape! It was a rather large bathroom in my boyfriend's parent's apartment, so decently large. Usually actually at work I do pushups in the bathroom as well! Ooooohhhh wow this is a powerful magic - my parents keep asking me what I would like for a christmas gift so maybe I will send this their way! OH HAI THAR MR. WOLF! Parkour is so great but starting up here in the winter is tricky - I'm hoping to get back to my regular tuesday sessions by the time spring starts rolling in, which should give me time to regain a decent fitness level. Then - ALL JUMPING ALL THE TIME! Welcome welcome! Week 1, Day 6 GUESS WHAT I JUST DID? OH YES THAT IS RIGHT I DID A WORKOUT! I feel kind of silly being all hype because I did three rounds of a darebee workout (Apex Predator!), but it really did make me sweat and ache, and worked out my hips and upper body which I sorely need. With that out of the way, I feel super duper confident about bringing it home for the week and putting a bow on it and then SHOOTING IT INTO THE SUN! I've been thinking a lot this week about time, and how I've been building foundations and habits and slowly raising my baseline for YEARS now - while I was doing my workout here in my room I was thinking about all the time I've spent in gyms, in my room on the mat, running, logging, researching, and how grateful I am that while my muscles and lungs and heart were like GUUH my brain was like "oh right I got this." I'm super grateful that I've done enough footwork that restarting a workout practice is less a crazy uphill climb and more of hitting a switch back on. Yay! Other things - I did a little research yesterday and it turns out that one of the many perks of my new job is eligibility for a very nice college gym right across the street from the office, which is extremely affordable and has all good things including a POOL. Lemme tell you, a pool in New York City is a RARITY, and most of them are in fancy hotels or prohibitively expensive gyms, so maybe at some point I will try swimming a bit? The gym memberships run on a semester schedule, so my plan is to sign up for the spring semester and use that as a time marker to start leveling up my workouts and doing some LIFTS. I miss gym. Last night I had two glasses of wine at LASAGNA NIGHT, an annual feast of glory and friendship. We had an assembled sixty pounds of lasagna, three cakes, four salads, garlic bread and two pies. Plus wine, cider, and a giant feast table comprised of a huge door that had been taken off its hinges and laid across some boxes. Many were the toasts, many were the stories, many were the songs. Truly I am fortunate in my friends. Tomorrow is LOTR feast day and I can't decide which Lembas Bread recipe to make as there are literally hundreds, ranging from basic lemon shortbread to coconut milk chia seed based concoctions - it is chaos! IS THERE ANY TRUTH TO BE FOUND? UPDATES TO COME.

YES GOOD ALL MUST LOCK THEIR CAPS IN ORDER TO ENGAGE MAXIMUM HYPE DRIVE! and speaking of hype it’s FRIIIDAY! Week 1 Day 5 So far so good! Full marks yesterday, although I did go to my sci-fi book club last night (IS ANYONE ELSE LOSING THEIR MINDS OVER THE THREE BODY PROBLEM?) and I had two glasses of red wine, as well as Dried Squid Noodles and savory Acorn Jelly. Don’t ask cause i truly do not know but it was all delicious. Yesterday i also went to the dentist for the first time in a year, sweating bullets because I thought I was going to have to get a root canal. BUT! Turns out not at the moment. Which is good. But jeegus. Feeling EXTREMELY motivated about flossing rn. Another busy weekend- Annual Fancy Lasagna night tonight, going to see Mitski in concert tomorrow, and Sunday is the Annual Extended Version LOTR Marathon And Feast. Planning to work out tomorrow- i have a few classes lined up in case i flake or sleep in. Gonna do itthough. GONNA DO IT. More later, as I’m currently in a Sweetgreen on my lunch break and gotta head back to my Desk Job, but i love you all with a love like unto several volcanoes stacked on top of each other! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

YES GOOD ALL MUST LOCK THEIR CAPS IN ORDER TO ENGAGE MAXIMUM HYPE DRIVE! and speaking of hype it’s FRIIIDAY! Week 1 Day 5 So far so good! Full marks yesterday, although I did go to my sci-fi book club last night (IS ANYONE ELSE LOSING THEIR MINDS OVER THE THREE BODY PROBLEM?) and I had two glasses of red wine, as well as Dried Squid Noodles and savory Acorn Jelly. Don’t ask cause i truly do not know but it was all delicious. Yesterday i also went to the dentist for the first time in a year, sweating bullets because I thought I was going to have to get a root canal. BUT! Turns out not at the moment. Which is good. But jeegus. Feeling EXTREMELY motivated about flossing rn. Another busy weekend- Annual Fancy Lasagna night tonight, going to see Mitski in concert tomorrow, and Sunday is the Annual Extended Version LOTR Marathon And Feast. Planning to work out tomorrow- i have a few classes lined up in case i flake or sleep in. Gonna do itthough. GONNA DO IT. More later, as I’m currently in a Sweetgreen on my lunch break and gotta head back to my Desk Job, but i love you all with a love like unto several volcanoes stacked on top of each other! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Anxiety is such a dumb stupid liar, being all like “people hate you” and “you’re a failure” and “there is a shark in this bathtub dont you laugh at me there is a HEKKIN SHARK IN THIS BATHTUB WITH YOU RIGHT NOW.” Your honesty and clarity about the beast is really cool and encouraging, and walking right through it even if you do need a strategic bed-hide now and again. Take good care of yourself my dude, and I’m glad things are going well with the Baker! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

DECEMBER IS ETERNAL. WINTER MAGIC IS ALWAYS WITH US. SPARKLESPARKLESPARKLE. May i congratulate you on eating and drinking not like unto an asshole, but like unto a Very Nice Badass? Yes, I may! Thank you, rowan. You’re welcome, rowan. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

PUPPY SWEATER ALERT! Even if said puppy is an insubordinate little monster. Do you have a go-to dog mess product? I am...looking.... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hi Raxie? How is your life today on a scale from one lonely sequin to A MAGICAL UNENDING FOUNTAIN OF SPARKLES? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk