Odonate

Not being a dumbass is always a good plan. I, too, need to remind myself of this sometimes, probably more often than I do. (Not about exercise, though.)

Man, it's been way too long since I spent much time sitting at my desktop and there's so much stuff in this thread that I saw when it was first posted and haven't gotten around to commenting on yet. I've been mulling over some sort of tracking endeavor myself, but mulling is not at all productive; I need to do it or not do it. (Also it would help a lot to have someone who wants to geek out about such things together and then hear how I'm doing, and it's not as if I don't know people who might be up for that.) This Precision Nutrition stuff looks very interesting! The two sets of recommendations you've listed look very reasonable; the stuff in the 15-20% range (which I see would be 25-30% for me, and is probably where I actually am) is not that far off what I actually do, and the 13-15% range (23%-25% for me) seems like something I could reasonably aspire to. Of course, the fact that I don't always feed myself and trying to always feed myself would cost a lot more money is a factor, and I'm not motivated by weight/body fat at all outside of my hatred of having to buy new pants when I already had perfectly good ones. (Which applies just as much to new smaller pants as it does to new larger pants, for the record.) But being happy with my weight doesn't mean I wouldn't like to eat healthier food. (Also this is where I remind you that you are a skinny weasel who should punch your learned food issues right in the face. And also that you shouldn't hold yourself to standards you wouldn't hold your friends to. But unlearning things is not easy and healthy food and eating habits are good for you either way, so here is cheerleader crab: I think I need to look into inexpensive printing of holographic pictures just so I can carry cheerleader crab around with me everywhere I go.) Peanut butter banana "burrito" sounds delicious except that I am lukewarm about the tortilla. (Maybe if it were a chocolate tortilla.) I suspect that mindful eating probably helps with slow eating, but while I'm not a speed eater, I'm much too scattered to be any good at mindful eating, and distracted eating can slow you down but is awful for noticing that you're full (as you may have, and I definitely have, observed at D&D). (Honestly I also suspect that mindful eating would fuck up my appetite, which sometimes can be really fickle in conjunction with how much effort I am willing to expend to prepare food.) How has the tracking been going? I hope the housemate wrangling has not derailed you too much?

As a former professional cat-petter, I am up to the task!

If only I knew where to find my own breakfast-buying cheerleader! I would get out of bed with more enthusiasm for either the promise of tasty protein-heavy breakfast food I didn't have to cook OR the promise of a low-key social outing, and that's before someone else buying the tasty food even entered the picture. (Can we recruit him for our monastery? Clearly we're going to need a morning person to drag us out of bed for Auge or Anatolia.) If you discover the secret of getting to bed earlier, please share; if it works for your brain, it might work for mine, and I've got nothing. (Well, except when I'm actually tired enough to do so, but that's usually inappropriately early and then later I wake up and can't get back to sleep.)

I do like hiking, as long as it's not super hot out. Once my schedule is a little more settled we should plan something. (Next week is a total zoo for me and I have no idea yet what I'm doing the week after (or any of the weeks after) other than keeping up with my usual weekly stuff and working 22.5 hours in some mostly unknown configuration.) It really is easier when someone else is doing the cooking. I hate having to feed myself all the time. Is Gina still camping out? How about Riley (Rilee?)? (She reminded me a little of my ex-spouse, not in a bad way.) I'm sure I will be amazed; the living room's been pretty crowded for as long as I've been coming around. Hmm, I'm not sure I want to start a new challenge here, but I need to start some good habits up to go with this new job and whatever hopefully regularish schedule I manage to put together for it. (It's flexible scheduling, which is great, but I like a reasonably consistent schedule, so I need to figure out what I'll be scheduling around.) Not rolling out of bed directly to the bus stop might be nice. -.-

The master bedroom being done is very exciting indeed! Yay house progress! As an easily-overwhelmed person, I cheer on your scaling back and refocusing. Those sound like good goals for today. Also, once I get myself properly vehicled, we should hang out more (assuming you want to and have time, but I want to!), and I am totally down for helping with the eat-some-veggies thing, because I love me some veggies, raw or cooked. (Or for maybe providing a less-hardcore fitness buddy sometimes, because I am often better at getting stuff done when I have company in general, and when it comes to stuff I don't have good motivation to do on my own, it's basically mandatory. I do not have good motivation to exercise on my own.)

See, I would love to have a casual gym buddy, because social activity might actually motivate me to exercise, but I'm 25m away with no vehicle, boo. (Ughh, ab day.)

There are all sorts of wrist or ankle weights that might work for the idea of attaching more weight to your 20lb kettlebell. (Which reminds me that I should see about digging my ankle weights back out of wherever they've crawled off to and see if they'll help with my poor sleep lately.)

I'm kind of the same about actual roleplaying in person. I've been doing text-based roleplaying online for over 20 years, and I can get REALLY deep into character for that (some of my characters have basically been tulpas, some of whom have persisted (some of whom STILL persist) long after I have ceased to actually do anything with them), but even with my partner (with whom I've been RPing in text for over a decade) I never get particularly deep in character face-to-face. I don't really do improv. I still enjoy tabletop, though; it's just a very different experience than the written roleplay. (Fortunately our (I'm the one who lurks around here reading Darth Yoga's posts because we know each other even though the NF stuff didn't really stick for me) D&D group seems to be about the right mix of serious characterization vs. having fun hanging out with each other for me, and the other activity I share with most of the people in it is a tiny choir which already regularly pushes my limits of what I feel comfortable doing in front of other people despite feeling self-conscious, so it's a group of folks around whom I'm already accustomed to ignoring my awkward-turtle nature in the name of MOAR FUN sometimes.)

I am so there with you on the unintentional vegetarianism and the living on low-effort carbs if left to my own devices. And unfortunately also on the 'my life would be so much better if I could get in bed by 10 or at the very least 11 but everything, especially me, is conspiring against me'. Particularly since I actually DO have a set wake time M-F.

I use a US$2.50ish graph paper composition book from an office supply chain for my vaguely bujo-style planner. I personally prefer 1/5" grid but 1/4" seems to be more common; if you have a preference then be sure to check on whether a given graph paper item is 4 or 5 squares per inch.

I fail at commenting, but I am glad that you were able to identity the long-term progress underlying the fits and starts of the individual challenges. That's one of the things that I struggle with too.

Ugh, trying to figure out wonky sleep is the WORST. Mine's been kind of crappy lately (leading to napping, leading to more crappy sleep habits), but part of that is inability to fix sleep hygiene issues and part of that is self-discipline and part of that is my circadian rhythm not lining up well with my current schedule. (Sleep hygiene is, sadly, a real thing -- sadly because I'm pretty stuck much stuck at present with having 'space that I DO STUFF in!' include not only my bedroom but my bed, and I've had the luxury of separating them before and it really does help. Likewise eliminating light from my sleep space.) Your astrolabe project is really cool! And ILL is awesome; I've managed to get libraries all over to cough up some VERY obscure books and ship them to Worcester, some of which I now own because ILL let me determine how much I was willing to spend on them and then wait for that price.

Ooh, blog! *finds* *adds to Feedly* I think I'm gonna take this month off, because the last couple of challenges have led to pretty meh results, but I'll still be poking my head in from time to time. I probably have no convention tips that you're not already aware of; my main rule has always been that, of sleep, food, and water, if I skimped on any one of them, I couldn't skimp on the other two.

It sounded good once you did find the key, though! If at least one of us still remembers next time I see you, I'll give you a gold star. <3

I don't know how your NF stuff has been going, but I know you had a generally crappy day recently, so here is a cheerleader crab to cheer you on!

Well, the first week of the challenge is over, and so far I have failed pretty miserably at actually getting out of bed even for long enough to take my meds at 9am (but the meds-taking itself has been happening pretty regularly right after I do get up) and at getting some physical exercise in the evening. However, I've been doing the card study and grounding exercise every day, and am getting better at remembering to do the grounding exercise immediately after prayers. The solution to actually getting up at 9am is not to stay up so damn late, which would work better if I wasn't having some trouble falling asleep whether I go to bed early or late. The exercise would probably help with that... maybe I should set an alarm for it.

Ooh, this is a neat idea. Clerics unite!

Ugh, believed the little voice that told me it was ok to start reading the 200k word romance novel at 10pm, I could totally stop at the end of a chapter and get to bed at a decent hour... it was lying, of course. That killed yesterday's wake time, I forgot to ground after prayers, and then around lunchtime I got hit with something possibly-migraine-y and retreated to bed with a blindfold. Feeling somewhat better today and have done grounding and card draw, at least. And next week I get to start the crochet class that was my main Christmas present, yay.

Eww, no fun. I am so with you on not wanting to actually cook breakfast. Every once in a while I can convince myself to make myself scrambled eggs or fried potatoes, and now and then there are breakfast-suitable leftovers, but the rest of the time... it's either super low effort food, or breakfast doesn't happen. Some of my standbys are bananas (sometimes with peanut butter), oatmeal (usually instant for me, but real oatmeal and other whole grains that make good cooked cereal can be made ahead and frozen for reheating, and you can throw your fruit and nuts in there), yogurt (I usually just get cups with stuff already in, but there are many options to put your own goodies in too and those tend to be cheaper), or toast with variously ricotta and herbs (occasionally cottage cheese and herbs), sesame tahini (or sometimes actual hummus), I'd probably do the avocado toast thing my sister's always doing if I ever had avocado to spare... rarely nut butter (I tend to find nut butter + bread too glue-y for me) or jelly. And there are actually some very good frozen breakfast sandwiches nowadays (I usually get the ones with no meat because strangers never make the bacon crisp enough and microwaved frozen sausage is kinda gross), but those are usually expensive. And now I want breakfast. It's almost 4pm and I already ate lunch, but I want breakfast. -.-

Yay for figuring out how to get around the texture issue! I'm not too fussy about texture most of the time, but almost all of the major food dislikes I still have are texture-related, and running into them sucks. And yay for big freezers and killing two birds with one stone and saving money while also freeing up freezer space!

Saying hi on your thread since you posted in mine and we're working on some similar stuff!

Last night I got home from choir and totally failed to engage in any physical activity more strenuous than diving under warm blankets, boo. I told you choir rehearsal doesn't count, self! Did not get up right with my alarm this morning, but did get out of bed before 10am (which did not happen yesterday), took my meds immediately, caught myself about to go downstairs without grounding after prayer and promptly did it, and did my card study after lunch, yay. On the agenda for today: working on the bead project I keep forgetting until my mom has her knitting buddies over (have been doing this already), and tidying my floor so I can't use THAT as an excuse to not exercise either.

I totally did not get up at 9am today, but I hadn't posted this, either, so it doesn't count, right? I am dressed and did my grounding and centering after prayer (which happens right after I get dressed and thus can put up the blinds to let the natural light in), and as soon as I post this I am going to go draw my card. Today is also Monday and therefore look-at-job-websites day, but that can wait until after lunch.

I like your scoring system! I think I'm just going to go by how I feel about my progress this time, but I might take some inspiration from it in the future. I also like the idea of making getting a working routine in place one of your goals -- for me, it's been such a long-term thing that I have to break it down more than that, but it definitely is one of my longer-term, bigger-than-one-challenge goals. The song is also very cute, although I'm not so fond of Asimov's last line -- it only accounts for one type of love! Phenethylamine would totally scan, too. Also, when it comes to working on food prep stuff, don't underestimate the usefulness of making a really big batch of something and then freezing a bunch of it in individual portions -- especially if you have a microwave, but even if you don't, it's nice to be able to just grab a bin or bag out of the freezer to reheat, and if you REALLY get it together you can even get tomorrow's lunch out today and put it in the fridge to defrost, making it even easier to reheat. (At least, for me that constitutes REALLY getting it together.)