Kyellan

Ahoy! I yet live and breathe. I totally flunked the no candy challenge last Thursday. I have many excuses and few reasons. I managed to not inhale perhaps quite as much, but it was still very not good. I am in myself disappoint. Got another chance at it today. On the brighter side, the 5x/week fasting is pretty easy to hit because it's more a return to familiar and good patterns than something new. I've been having trouble tackling the 5-minute cleanings because I pretty quickly got to a point where I need to make DECISIONS about STUFF and that immediately saps away all my remaining willpower at the end of a day. The worst of the stress actually seems to have been a co-condition with the nasty cold/laryngitis combo that's going around my area. The horrible sickening stress faded along with the rest of my symptoms, which is nice. I feel like I've returned to something of a stress equilibrium, where it still feels like a lot but no longer like I'm drowning, so woo. Meditation & quietude also has not been a huge problem. I've been doing some actual focus meditation, some that's a little more zazen like @Mistr described above, and some just quiet listening to instrumental music to calm my mind at the end of a long day. In my recent love of podcasts, I'd kind of forgotten how important music is to my mind's coping abilities. On the whole, some wins, some losses. Guess that's how the game goes. Just gotta keep keepin' on as best I can.

Oh, hey guys. Didn't see you there. So, I've gotta do something about my stress. That's where I'm going to be for this challenge. I've spent the whole end of the year so stressed out that at times I actually was verging on panic attacks, and things have been very bad. Stress has woken me in the night, prevented me from going back to sleep, and actually kept me home from work one day (because I didn't really sleep the night before and my job requires me to interface with systems worth literally millions of dollars). I am hoping to draw on the wisdom of all the others on the path here, in order to perhaps find some zen and maybe touch the enlightenment of the avatar state. Also, I have drastically changed my diet and myself over the past couple of months, but I think in order to get anywhere near the Avatar State, I'm going to have to enforce some discipline on myself, so there's also going to be fasting and a sugar restriction, because I'm sick of bingeing on free sugar and then waking up in the middle of the night unable to sleep because of heartburn. GOALS: 1) Stress Management 1a) 3 5-minute blocks per week of space cleaning (my office needs it SO MUCH and this is something simple and little) [ X ] [ X ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] 1b) Week 1: Make a list of all the things that are causing stress/need to get done [ ] 1c) Meditate/Quietude: 10 minutes, 3x/week [ X ] [ X ] [ ] [ X ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] 2) Intermittent Fasting (8-hour eating window, 11am to 7pm) After some testing, 11-7 seems like a good 8-hour window to aim for. I'll make it smaller if I can, but this is the goal. 5 days a week minimum [ X ] [ X ] [ X ] [ X ] [ X ] [ X ] [ X ] [ X ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] 3) No more f*cking candy This one is tougher to measure because it's a [not] goal instead of a positive one, but it's important. The real test will be my Thursday game night. I need to have as close to none as possible on that night, and if I can manage that, I'll be in a better place. Maybe, just maybe by the end of this, I'll be able to touch some of that inner strength and power I used to feel, but have been cut off from of late.