Kishi

* Goal: 6/6 Whoof, yesterday was rough. OT got me again Thursday night leading into Friday, so I was able to deduce a pattern: that I'm staying up too late because I'm working too late on OT. So I got to bed late, and rolled out of bed early enough to write just a little bit and still not finish that character bible before having to make a meeting with my unit, where among other things it was revealed that our budget's cutting off paid OT at the end of the month because neither the state nor the federal governments have been able to pass a budget. So, if I work OT after the end of the month, it'll basically go into restoring my leaves and I wind up getting sick time and vacation time out of it. Which isn't a bad outcome to me, necessarily. I've been using my leave more and while I'm not in danger of running out, it would be nice to have more of it on tap. Meeting ended and I managed to sneak out onto the mats. Coach said we were going to do half-guard stuff and then we spend the rest of class doing takedowns. Which I was cool with. Came back and worked the rest of the day and had my boss flub up on one of my closures, so a case did not get closed. And it shouldn't matter, because I got the week off of new assignments, but it did because I wanted to close at least one case but every single thing that I sent out got kicked back to me because my boss has decided that she wants to dress up as QA for Halloween and is trying to get into the spirit of the thing. She emailed me to apologize and I really had to bite my tongue to avoid saying "No worries! It's par for the course this week! >:D" The roughness of yesterday is really just about having to deal with a mixed bag as far as being personally productive without being professionally productive. It feels weird. I think it's a net positive, as I'm figuring out what works best for me. A big incidental win is learning that I sleep better without an alarm and I'm recovering my sleep habits to the point that I can more smoothly fall asleep and wake ahead of job and other obligations. It's taking time and adjustment, but it's happening too. As to today? Well, I haven't completed my writing yet. I think I'm going to focus on the job a bit today, since I'm receiving new cases again next week, and since the paid work is set to expire in a couple weeks, I kind of feel like I need to prioritize this. Work'll cut off early tonight, and my plan is to ruck and train afterward. I'll have plenty of time to write, then, although whether I use it or not? That's the real test.

Wow, yeah, ok! For sure. Well I'm glad I could give you somewhere else to go from here. Have fun!

A spy? Wait, what. What is going on in y'all's schools over there.

Yeah, that tracks. Steps burn a lot of energy, and they don't care where they're got, whether it's on a treadmill or on the job. I think I'll echo the others in saying that you're probably walking enough now as a part of your job that it may not be the most constructive to add additional time on the treadmill, especially if you've got foot issues.

If you're looking for horror/thriller type stuff, Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones is a fun, short read. I moved on to Mongrels from there, which is a werewolf novel that really leans into the visceral and the horror even as it's an exploration of life on the road.

Goal: 5/5 Another day down! Wanted to go out to the mats last night but didn't. Shoulder was feeling better, but any time I threw a straight on it, I'd get a twinge in that shoulder. And since I don't have a sensei anymore yelling in my DMs about how I can show up and practice if I can move the shoulder, I decided to be gentle with myself and skip out. Shoulder's feeling a little better today as a result. Yesterday was a squatting day, so I went and did Kettlebell Zercher Squats, 5x10x16. A Zercher, for those who are curious, means that the handle is held in the crook of your elbow as opposed to being held out in front, so for me this meant putting my arms through the handles of a pair of 8 kg bells to get to 16 kg total weight. No feedback from my shoulder on that, which was kind of surprising, but I'm not gonna complain. Also, hitting my five sets of ten is excellent as it means I'm now cleared to bump up my weight. I think my next move is to do a Zercher with a 12 in one arm and an 8 in the other, for 20 kg total, albeit asymmetrically loaded. It's tempting to go out and buy a 20 kg bell and just goblet squat, but 1) I'm reluctant these days to spend money since I'm working on rebuilding my shambles finances, and 2) I kind of like the challenge to my creativity to find ways to progress with the equipment on hand. It'll require some nuance in my programming going forward, but not much. Today, I worked further on the character bible. Realized I was about to go down a rabbit hole of research that I didn't really need right now and prevented myself from doing so. Major win. I'm just about finished with my protagonist, I think; depending on whether I go to write tonight with my friend or not, protagonist will be finished either today or tomorrow and I can move on to the next. OT's still a bear, but it's only a coincidence right now, because it's only gone wrong twice since I started watching. If it happens a 3rd time? Well, I dunno what you call that, but whatever it is, it ain't a coincidence anymore. Guess we'll see. Tonight's wide open. Anything could happen.

Yeah, it's been a rainy summer down here too. Reckon it's that climate change coming for us down here. Apparently we're supposed to wind up with something similar to the Pacific Northwest - lots of clouds with some rain, which I might be OK with since I like cloudy weather and I skip tanning on the way to turning red.

Good gravy! You are in the thick of it right now. Maybe some spam musubi is in order here? But, yeah. Really sorry to hear that things are rough now. I hope you can find good moments to carry you through and that these challenges pass sooner rather than later.

For sure! I used to test INTJ, but the last time I tested I was kind of cusp-y between INTJ and INFJ. Also, apparently there's a 5th letter now, which actually kind of impresses me as a sign of dedication to a scientific understanding, for all that I think it's still astrology without the stars. Yep! Yep. To be satisfied and to be gracious with myself. These are the goals. * Goal: 4/4 Welp, I wound up not able to do more work yesterday, between having to go to the office and working OT when I got home from BJJ. It sucks, but I saw it coming, and it's accounted for in the goal, so no loss of credit or anything like that. BJJ was OK. We worked on Lockdown, which is a kind of counter/stabilizer to being stuck in Half Guard where you basically catch one of their feet with both of yours to anchor them in place. Had a hard time with it; I'm not sure if it's a matter of the other guy being a weight class or two heavier than me and me just not being strong enough yet or if it was my technique, or if it was both, or if it was neither, but I didn't click too well with this one. Which does not mean to ignore it and go away. I can't really do that since a lot of escaping from mount involves very similar positioning and footwork, so, I gotta figure it out. I tried to figure it out in rolls but it didn't go well. We had situationals where we started from that lockdown position and I wound up giving up mount and an Americana to a 2-stripe white belt who hadn't been in in a while, and that just hurt my feelings. Although the fact that I can laugh about it now is a good sign. I was stupid with the Americana though and tried to escape whilst he cranked it since that was my hurt shoulder, and it's a bit mad at me today but it's responding well to stretching and other therapeutic interventions, so I don't think it was that bad. And it's a credit to the guy what did it that he was careful and controlled and didn't set it in wildly and immediately like most white belts do. It's my fault for being stupid and arrogant, both for thinking I could escape when I couldn't and refusing to acknowledge the technique. Final situational though was with open guard and knee shield, and I had a real barn burner with a gent who was heavier than me. Lot of back and forth before I ultimately got him with an Americana. This was a good one to end on as he's both heavier than me and also similarly skilled as a 4-stripe. The wisdom in BJJ is that you lose a stripe for every 20 lbs your opponent has on you, so I thought I was hosed. Being able to keep up with technique was a really positive way to end the night. As far as balancing work and life goes, working OT is letting me make up for lost time on the job, but it's not perfect. I may have to set some harder boundaries with myself than I have been, although one day does not a pattern make. There's still some time to sit and observe this week and figure out what works and what doesn't, and I also managed to get this week off of new assignments, so even if it goes really badly, it's not going to be noticeable and it won't hurt me any. Still. Better to know now than later and get things under control. Also, working OT makes it really hard to get to bed on time since it's hard for me to get dinner cooked and ate and me cleaned up and down. I wound up eating dinner about the time I should have been going to bed. That's not OT's fault per se, but it's how I'm interacting with it, and I need to correct that. But that's just another thing to observe for now and to try to learn from. Today's writing was to work further on the character bible. This is a weird hybrid of tasks as it's both a lot of time thinking about who my character is and researching the things about them that I say they are so that they can feel real to life and like I'm not just projecting my expectations onto something. So it's slower work and I don't get as much done as I think I should, but what is done is worked for, so I feel good about the little I've accomplished. It might be little, but a lot went into it.

Deeply so. But it can be made up for, and generally a bad night's sleep lends itself to short-term correction pretty well, so. Hope it goes that way!

Your description of NE mountain towns sounds a lot like a description of NC mountain towns. Dunno. Something about the mountains. They just kind of seem to be a magical place. Might be something to do with the air. Anyway! I'm really glad to hear you had a good trip! And hey, just because you're not working a job, doesn't mean there isn't work to do. It's just now that the work is purely for your benefit rather than somebody else's.

Goal: 3/3 Man, it's nice to be able to log this early in the day. So yesterday, when looking at how the Snowflake Method does character bibles - and taking my cues from it - I noticed that one of the character traits is a Personality Type. I reached out to my Writer Friend for her advice, and she advised the Myers Briggs corporate horoscope capitalist labor-extractor profiler nonsense personality typing tool. So this morning, I went looking for information. I thought I'd have to struggle to find something in-depth beyond, like, a Harry Potter personality quiz, but I was lucky and struck gold on my first search. Much of the task today was reading up on the nonsense to see how useful it'd be for the draft, and I found enough there to think that it's gonna be useful for my cast of characters. So I researched until I found what sounded like my protagonist - whose bible is what I'm working on now - and plugged it in. The vibe is uncertain at this point. I could live with this amount of work, but I kind of think I'd like to do some more too. We'll see what the day gives me; I gotta go to the office today and it'll be an OT night tonight. Like I said at the start, there're gonna be some days where just showing up to do a small thing is all I can realistically do. Think this is gonna be one of those days. And if so, then it's better to have done something rather than nothing. But I'm going to try to stay open to doing more too, and if I get an opportunity, I hope I don't waste it. In the meantime, off to train, trim my nails, pack my lunch, and go to the office. I'll be about as I can!

IDK! But I reckon if we died, it would be the same way as we apparently lived: deliciously.

That would be hard! For the chart, tho, they say that a serving of spices works out to 1 tsp. Although now you got me imagining, like, a cup of turmeric and like, just. How?

I mean, that's an option, but he'll be visiting in the RDU area and I'm not sure that he'll want to hit the road a few hours to go climb a mountain without the framing device of An Event. Of course, we have hiking around here too, which, maybe he'd be up for? But it wouldn't be anything close to what we did before and I'm not certain he'd go for it. * Goal: 2/2 Phew! Good strong start, although Sunday being a social day it wasn't easy. Everybody wants a piece of my time, which, you know, is nice but not convenient. But it was good work. Finished off the long synopsis and started up on character bibles - mostly the gritty details like hair color, eye color, defining their personalities, stuff like that. Got some advice on where to go with that and I'll be working on that for a while. May need to do a bit more character work afterward as far as adding characters, but that's not a bad thing. As far as training: Saturday was a Hinge day, and it was a day for Power work as it'd been a week or so and I was feeling good. So I did KB swings: Every Minute On the Minute, 20 swings at 12 kg. It's not the most weight I've ever swung, but this particular dose is Enough for now. Previously, I'd had to drop my weights down from 12 to 8 kg based on my ability to do the job, and that was appropriate, but this time I was able to hit all sets and all reps with that weight. Thinking about where to go from here; I'd like to get my Farmer's Walks a bit heavier before I bump up to 16 kg on my swings. I could do other kinds of swings w/ 12 kgs of weight - 1-arm swings and double KB swings with up to 12 kgs of total weight. That's enough for now, I think. I don't have any external program telling me where to go, what to do, when to do it. There's no need to rush. Sunday was a busy day, training-wise. Made it out to strike where we started to work on Long Guard, which is a way to transition from shorter-range, where I'm not comfy, to longer-range, which I like. Landed something we practiced in sparring; I died, but I was happy. Afterward, had a Pull day, so did 1-Leg Assisted Pull Ups. I've been doing jumping pull ups, but I can't do them as slowly as I'd like to and I don't feel like I have good control on the eccentric portion of the lift. Kind of had to experiment with this a bit to figure out the best step from my last progression. I don't know how much of this is a function of slow cadence and how much of this is a function of relative weakness in pulling. Today, I got my training done in the morning. It was a Lunge day, and I was feeling kind of frisky about it, so I did reverse lunges and added a KB orbit to it. It's basically a KB halo and then you drop the bell down to one side whilst lunging with the opposite leg. These felt good - long and smooth and controlled, and so far my back isn't complaining about them. It's a fun way to do a move that I otherwise find necessary but tedious. Hope things stay good. Anyway, like I said, goal's done for the day already so now it's just a matter of putting in time at the job. Like I said, I've re-prioritized things so that the job doesn't get top priority any more, but I'm still trying to figure out just how much it needs so that I can do this whilst taking care of myself. We'll see how this week shakes out and adjust from there, although I get the feeling I'm going to need to continue working on getting up earlier.

Good afternoon! I got myself to bed relatively early, but it's still later than I'd like. I told myself if I slept in too late to make the mats that it was a sign my body needed the rest, and I wouldn't hold it against myself. That's what wound up happening. But it was a good morning for sleeping in. Had lots of vivid dreams and woke up to a thunderstorm outside. It was perfect for just lying still and listening to, and when I finally roused myself, it was after noon. Usually when that happens, it means that I've been burning the candle at too many ends, and I didn't even know it, so now I'm making up for lost rest. I know better than to punish myself for that, so today is going to be relatively lazy. Training yesterday was significant for the return of the Ruck! Now that I don't have an event to plan for, I can get after this in my own way. Brother advised me that when rucking, the general order of operations for Getting Good is Weight->Distance->Time. I wound up muddling all three because I was desperate to get volume for purposes of distance. My results weren't bad, but they were a reflection of an external circumstance that doesn't exist now, so now I want to take time to get stronger. Incidentally, I went looking for something like another GoRuck or an OCR to train for, since he's coming back to visit us in November, but there's nothing. The closest I could find was on December 1st, and it's a Light event in Charlotte, which basically works out to getting hazed with a bunch of strangers whilst carrying the Stars and Stripes like a totem. That's, uh. Not our vibe. Regrettable, though, that I couldn't return the favor, and I know that brother hates the climate around here enough that he wouldn't come back just to go suffer. Also, I can't host him in the same way that he's been able to host me, which, you know. Just feels unfair to ask him to do. But yeah, I loaded my backpack up with ~29-30 lbs and made time on 2.5 miles. After that, did Jump Dips. Double compression breathing, 4 sets, 9 reps. No additional core work since I did the strength work right after coming home, and rucking works the core really well, among all the other things. This is one of the things I missed in the rant earlier. Generally, I'll do some kind of strength thing superset with some core work of some kind, but I make exceptions depending on what exactly I'm doing. When I had to incorporate rucking, I found that I didn't really like doing core work afterward. Just makes my back say interesting things that I wish it wouldn't. Also, doing leg work of any kind on a Ruck day is no fun. Beyond the fact that I got absolutely smoked, it made my knees hurt in ways that I wish they wouldn't. So, Ruck + leg stuff. Bad mix. But Ruck + arm stuff? Good mix so far. The other time I'll skip out on core is if I'm doing some kind of power work, just because I'd rather conserve energy for my efforts on any given day or time. That's probably going to be today, since I'm well-rested and feel good in my body. It's a Hinge day today, so that's probably going to work out to Kettlebell swings of some kind. I'll let y'all know how it goes later. Also, I need to get some writing done today, so, get that too.

Yeah, as soon as I saw it in the news, I thought of you. Sorry it turned out this way, but I'm glad you're safe.

Happy Friday, y'all! Last night I went out to write with my Writer Friend, now that her hand's on the mend and she's able to engage in this again. Wound up writing at her place that she's sharing with a bunch of folk and we were able to put a lot of time into our respective projects without the external demands of a coffeehouse getting in the way. Was able to get dinner there too. We're kind of thinking at this point that if we're gonna be doing writing like this that it's better to meet up there than anywhere else, and I'm cool with that for the moment. It does cost me some mat time, but at least for now, I'm kind of sanguine about it. Did my work on the project this morning too, and managed to problem solve using the rules as I set them up, which felt really good. I still need to finish the long synopsis and then it'll be a bit more work to develop my characters... then after that should be scenes and sequels and that should be it. Training yesterday was a Squatting day, so I elected to work on some pistol progressions. The new hotness these days is to do Tapping Step Downs, which means that you stand on an elevated surface, hinge your hips back, stick the off leg down into that space and slowly sink down until your heel taps the ground. Then you come back up. This, allegedly, is a way to work the strength, balance, and ankle mobility portions that other pistol training variations tend to miss to some degree or another. I think it works! Hit 5 sets of 4 per leg, which was enough volume to necessitate shorter breathing. Did some kneeling side planks alongside. Today, I took a good, hard look at what's going on between me and my job. I got away with some stuff this week that I probably shouldn't have, since the job sabotaged me a bit (full week's workload on a 4-day work week, and no opportunities for overtime. Since I can't keep up on even a regular week without overtime, it's reasonable to conclude that I couldn't succeed in the way they wanted me to, so I slacked off). It's not clear how these new boundaries are going to work long term, although I'm pretty chill about it for the moment. Getting to bed earlier so I can be up ahead of the job to my stuff beforehand and overtime after the job should be enough, and I can set my week up for both. I did it last week. It didn't carry over to this week for no particular reason, but I can be disciplined about this. And I have a good incentive: since my landlord restricts a/c use, it gets warm in my bedroom ahead of time, and sleeping in late isn't really any fun. So, just another reason for me to be up early.

I hear you on yogurt/fruit for dessert! I've found some satisfying substitutions also in using cool whip with mascarpone as a cream base along with fruit; presently, blueberries are my favorite. Have fun!

Ah, geez, twist my arm why don't ya OK So There's a bit of a rant about how I sourced this stuff and I don't mind doing that, but I'd rather just give you the useful stuff first, and I can rant about the background stuff later. The present protocol is based on the work of a few different people: Bill Maeda, Steve Low, Paul Wade, and Mark Sisson. There's some additional input from the folks at GMB, too, but they're fill-ins at this point for me. So, I don't think about pursuing specific moves too much, so much as I focus on different patterns of movement. I have three upper body patterns - Push, Pull, and Invert. I have three lower body patterns - Squat, Lunge, and Hinge. I have one full body pattern: Carry. And I work core a little bit every day that I train, although what form this takes varies depending on what I'm doing. I draw the movements I do from this chart here. It's an updated version of the movement charts from Overcoming Gravity (Low). I set my schedule so that I'm working one pattern a day. So one day I work Push, the next day I work Hinge, and the next I do Pull, etc. The exact move I'll do on a given day is based around whatever level of movement I can do from that chart. Right now, I'm not even at Level 1 with my pushing strength, so on a Push day, I'll do Parallel Bar Jump Dips or I'll do Regular Push Up Negatives or I'll do a Ring Support Hold. I'm not going to move beyond Level 1 in my pushing until I can do Jump Dips, Regular Push Ups, or Support Holds at the standards that I have chosen for myself. In my case, I've chosen 5 sets of 10 for dynamic movements, 3 sets of 30 seconds for statics, and 5 sets of 60 total seconds for eccentrics. (these are based on programming principles as laid out by Low in Overcoming Gravity. There's no particular magic in the sets and reps beyond them being programmatic sweet spots for strength and hypertrophy gains [except for statics. You're not gonna build a lot of muscle on a handstand or a lever, even though you'll get wicked strong]. The book does go into detail about this, tho). For my legs, I do a weighted version of a move and an unweighted version of a move. With Squatting, for instance, I want to build toward a Pistol, but that work gets boring day in and day out. So one time, I'll do whatever Pistol progression I'm working on, and then the next I'll do squats with some kind of weight. Right now, I'm exploring Goblet/Zercher squatting with kettlebells because of the carryover to grappling, but really it's just a matter of what I have access to without going to a gym ATM. When doing these movements, I tend to do them very slow. I use my breathing to calibrate my cadence; in particular, I use what's called "double compression breathing" (Maeda), where I take a deep breath at the top of a movement, release a quarter on the way down, inhale again at the halfway point, and then release my breath all the way on the way back out of the rep. So, example: with a squat, take a deep breath, hiss out a bit until you get halfway down, inhale to the bottom of the rep, and then hiss all of it out on the way back to the top. When you get to the top, you should be empty, braced, strong. Breathe behind that shield, and go again. Although I should note that I tend to do this based on what feels right, and that can vary depending on what I'm doing and how much I'm doing. When I get to 5 sets of something, that kind of volume can be hard to squeeze into 10 minutes if I'm going that slow, so I might just do a single breath instead. It's still a slow, controlled cadence, but a bit faster; at that point, the raw volume gives you all the time under tension you need. Every 7-10 days, I'll break these rules and do whatever I'm doing with some speed and violence (Sisson). Usually this means stuff like KB snatches or swings, or push presses or that kind of thing. A lot of what I just spend all this time ranting about goes out the window in the name of power, although I'm still very attuned to how my body's doing, and if I'm feeling off, I'll either cut the work short or else adjust my weights downward. Afterward the 10 minutes are up, I'll do a few static holds for active mobility (Wade). These being a Bridge progression, a L-sit progression, and a Seated Twist progression. These feel wonderful at the end of the session and also make me stronger. I'll wrap up with some horse stance and forward split work (GMB) because I do striking too and I need the mobility, but that doesn't take very long at all. So, all told, the whole thing runs 25-30 minutes, but I still find that it's hella convenient because most protocols have you do 25-30 minutes of strength/conditioning work on top of warming up on top of cooling down on top of cardio or whatever. This is a much more condensed way of doing things that I can do pretty much any time of the day without any ill effects and which lets me do all the stuff I want to do, whether it's taking long walks or spending time out on the mats. It's a long answer, and I apologize for that, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized was going into it, and I wanted to take my best shot at answering the question. I still feel like I left some stuff out, so this may be too much and not enough at the same time. At this point, I tend toward trying to observe internal satisfaction, which thus far has been different on the daily depending on what I had to overcome to get to the point where I could do whatever I was going to do. Also, the task itself changes that too. So, the degree of internal satisfaction I'd get from x amount of prose is different from y amount of planning or z amount of research. And as you say, it's pretty hard to quantify that stuff. The units don't necessarily convert cleanly back and forth. And also, just the act of showing up can be huge on a given day. So... I dunno. This is relatively uncharted territory for me as far as writing goes. I'm used to harder metrics like you say, words and minutes; I don't really know how to measure v i b e s ~. Even as those are what I'm chasing. I don't really know how this challenge is going to go. And even if it goes well, I don't know 1) what going well is even going to mean, and 2) if it's going to result in something that could be useful for me or others going forward. But then again, if all I get at the end is more questions, maybe that's a win too. If they're "right questions" that I don't even know to ask right now, the time spent getting to know them doesn't seem like a waste to me. Nah, I think you're right! I do something like that already with writing in the morning 1st thing, before I've had tea or read the news or started my job for the day. I do a few pages of free-writing just to loosen the mind up a bit and it's good stuff. Sometimes I'll write about martial arts stuff I did the night before or I'll write about my feelings or whatever else comes up. Just writing without judgment. Thanks! I guess we'll see soon enough. For sure, for sure! IDK if I'm just overapplying a solution, here, but I think it's worth playing with since my other experiments didn't lead to long term consistent practice. Which may be the fault of my circumstances, but if I can work around those, then... it's worth a shot, you know? * T-minus some days. Showed up to write yesterday and finished off my last character synopsis. Did not have to go back and re-summarize the draft based on what I found, which is good. Means both the plot and the cast are more integrated than they have been before. This is progress. Now back to the plot. Need to expand my summary into a longer play-by-play kind of thing. I think. Will need to recheck my checklist on this one, so there may be a bit of research/homework built into this too.

I mean, 2 things can be true at the same time, right? You can want very much to travel to a place and you can be very stressed about that travel. These are not mutually exclusive things. But it's not fun when they hit at the same time. OTOH, yooooo! You get to go to Morocco for a week! Holy cow! That's awesome! I hope the stress passes sooner rather than later and that you're allowed to enjoy what sounds like a really good time.

Ooh, you're working in coffee now? Thank you for your service. <3 I'm not sure how much walking you're doing now compared to your last job, so you may already be ready for this, but the 2 things to watch the most that I remember from that line of work are your feet and your lower back. Deep squat will be your friend as far as this goes, if you can. Really, though, anything that relieves the sense of compression you might get there will be good.

If I was in your shoes, I'd be traveling. Fulfilling your dreams makes total sense to me, given everything that's going on and having the opportunity to do so. Have fun!