Jarric

Thursday - week 2, day 4 Yesterday was a good day. Got up late and did some yoga (should have set my alarm late rather than having to turn off 3 separate alarms ). I was feeling pretty dreadful, between a cold and a headache - not sure if that was the late Wednesday night, the 4 beers I had, the cold I've got, or a mixture of all of that. Getting up early gave me plenty of time to get to work on time, and I totally failed to do that. I can't even remember why, but I ended up late late (rather than just challenge goals late), and stumbled in feeling crappy and sorry for myself. It was a busy day but I did manage to get a handle on the most urgent thing on my list, and after a few hours and a lemsip I started to feel a bit more human. In the evening I had to go into town for a networking event that I really didn't want to go to. I'd be dreading it all day (and really regretting having signed up all week), but it was too late to back out. Then my train was cancelled so I found out I'd be arriving late as well. And you know what? After all that, I had a really good time. The talks were interesting, the people I spoke to afterwards were nice, and I came away feeling much better than when I'd arrived. Funny how that happens. Despite travelling for 4 hours for a 2 hour event, I did find time to do token French and Dutch lessons, and to brush my teeth before bed. Calories were tracked at 3,000 (lower than the 3,800-odd that I had on Wednesday, but enough to mean I've exhausted my buffer for the week and then some). No drawing or hangboarding today, but I am catching up with reading the Daily Dracula thanks to all the train journeys - think I'm only a couple of days behind on the plot.

Excellent! Spread the Fascinating Aïda love! I'm currently at work, and will not be clicking on any of those videos Remind me to go back to them over the weekend.

That makes a lot of sense; I'm a fan of morning workouts for similar reasons. Luckily WW goes to bed about 10pm, so we don't miss out on that time together, though I often miss walking her to work by the time I get home from the gym. The afternoon break is a good thing to learn - I'm also a fan of taking plenty of breaks (if I can get them!)

That's definitely a big victory - consistency is key and not letting the weather derail you is mega important. For the workouts, I was going to suggest something similar to what @Elastigirl said for the housework. If you don't have time for a full workout, maybe do something like the Darebee daily dare - that only takes about 3 minutes and you can almost always find 3 minutes somewhere. It's not as good as a full workout, but on a day where you otherwise wouldn't workout at all it's better than nothing. Edit: apparently it's now called the 'Exercise of the Day' rather than the 'Daily Dare'.

Hey Sylvaa, good to see you! Do you think this is likely to end up being the long-term plan, rather than mornings?

Yeah, they were incredible live. I only knew 'Dogging' and 'Try not to be a cunt, it's Christmas' before I went, so I had a lot of funny surprises. One this I was really impressed about is that they wrote a song specifically for the city we were in. It's obviously something they do everywhere, but a little bit of time to write a couple of verses about where we were and then learn them for the show was really cool to see.

Wednesday - week 2 day 3 Yesterday was a good day. Yesterday was Wednesday. I went to the gym first thing. Felt pretty rubbish so kept it fairly light on the squats. Not sure I went light on the yoke carry, but as it was a timed carry there's a limit on how heavy you can go under the time cap, so it wasn't totally crippling. I ended up procrastinating a bit after walking WW to work again - I'm going to give these timings 1 more try, and if that doesn't work I'm going to give up and allow more time before starting my day. I ended up not calling the electrician, and skipping my long French lesson, in order to fit everything else into the time. I did do my Dutch, and I did dust off the drawing tablet (literally - the thing was filthy and I foolishly brushed it off with my white top which I then immediately had to change out of. The theme this week was 'twisted elephant hag'. It's not my best work - it's mostly a copy of what one of the artists on the show did and I would have needed about another 4 hours to make it look really good - but it got me used to using colour/layers/other tools again. I also called Dad, put out the washing, and messed around trying (and failing) to get Baulder's Gate 3 to run a bit better. I didn't actually get much time to play the game, just enough to TPK against a load of goblins I shouldn't have been fighting. Bouldering was good, ticked off a few decent problems despite being tired, and left on time. In the evening we went for dinner and then to see Fascinating Aïda, who were excellent. If you haven't heard of them, they're a group of 3 older women who play light piano music with hilariously offensive lyrics. The following clip is 100% NSFW: I did a bit of French when we got in for my goal, brushed my teeth, and tracked all 3,823kcal of food. All goals hit except for the illusive timekeeping one.

Yeah, thank you, that really helps. I'm going to work on cultivating that mindset more; it feels like it should be helpful. I could probably make better use of my bujo now that you mention it; I'll give that a try. The trick will be resisting the voice that says 'it'll only take 2 minutes, look it up now!'. Losing 100# in a year is amazing btw, that's something to be proud of. Yeah, it's all homebrew, from our GM's weird mind. It's not even really part of the plot either, just something to fill a session whilst we were 1 player short. He's a very good GM.

Tuesday - week 2 day 2 Yesterday was a good day. I felt really tired first thing, and whilst I got out for my run (6 miles with 5 x 0.5 mile intervals) it was pretty slow and grindy. I've decided that, with Tough Mudder coming up at the weekend, I'm going to take Thursday and Friday morning off running/Crossfit. Didn't get to work on time, despite working from home. Between getting back late from my run and being knackered I wasn't moving very fast; I think rest is needed. Work was mega busy, just desperately trying to catch up after being out so much of last week. I sort of did, but I didn't manage to get to all of the really important stuff I wanted to clear, even with working late. We were late to Pathfinder, thanks to me being late from work and then needing to cook dinner. Had a great time though; we were travelling through some mountains and started to hear a horrible screaming sound. Being PCs, we of course headed straight towards the screaming. After quite a lot of travelling, we discovered that this noise was coming not from a creature, but from a set of pipes installed on the side of the mountain, which were angled so that the wind blowing through them created a horrible screaming noise. Travelling further we eventually came across a lot more of those pipes, surrounding a shrine to Deimos, the god of dread. It appears that the pipes were designed to put fear into the hearts of travellers, to please the dread lord. We also found the belongings of a pilgrim who had travelled this way before us, and had died en route, left by one of his travelling companions. We rifled through and got a lot of pretty cool gear, and then left some things we didn't need as well as some wine and a small statue as offerings to Deimos. Apparently this action pleased the dread lord, as he filled us with a sense of unease which will give us a +1 to our next initiative roll. I did a bit of drawing in my notes for the drawing god goal. Food was tracked, languages were done, and teeth were done. I also planned out my Wednesday before bed: 05:50 - get up and out 06:30 - Crossfit 08:00 - walk WW to work 08:30 - shower, dress, breakfast 09:30 - Dutch practice 10:00 - set up drawing tablet and do some drawing 11:30 - mess around with monitors and see if that improves Baulder's Gate 3 12:30 - lunch 13:30 - call Dad, call electrician 14:00 - French practice 14:30 - leave for bouldering 15:00 - bouldering 16:30 - head home 17:00 - leave for the station 17:30 - night out seeing Fascinating Ada

That would be wonderful. Just need to find a friendly sorcerer to balance those things (maybe a druid or a shaman actually, that magic feels more about balance), and we should be away. It most definitely counts. It's about framing for me - every day there's some good stuff and some bad stuff. and I can always choose to remember it as a good day. Yeah, as far as I know you can ask for any requirements you need. You still won't know what you're getting, but you can veto things - one of our party said no seafood, for example. I think you might just be spot on there about the self-sabotage. Perhaps thinking of myself as a person who can manage their time would help.

Monday - week 2 day 1 Yesterday was a good day. Work up feeling knackered, after being woken in the night by thunderstorms (and possibly still recovering from Sunday's 15-mile run), so I took it easy at Crossfit. We had deadlifts, then 3 rounds of 400m run, 21 kettlebell swings, 12 pullups. I was in a perfect position to be on time for work, but then I decided I just had to look up whether the word 'dishevelled' is an orphaned negative* and that made me miss my target time by one minute. I'll ask again, why am I like this? Work was really busy - between a team meeting and a client meeting I did very little to clear my massive backlog from the time off last week. I worked a bit late, think I got home about half 6. In the evening I cooked beef in a black been stew, and we chilled in front of Taskmaster NZ while I caught up on here. Languages, teeth, and food tracking/shakes were all done. No progress on art or hangboarding yet. I restarted my proper calorie targets (having gained 3lbs last week), so I have a budget of 2,513kcal per day, plus a buffer of 2,513kcal for the week. Yesterday I ate 2,885kcal, so I have 2,159 left in this week's buffer. *turns out that dishevelled is not an orphaned negative. It comes from a Middle French root meaning 'without hair', which came into English as 'with hair undressed', and then became not correctly dressed in general, before the modern meaning we have of 'scruffy'.

Oh that sounds really cool! I guess you get pretty good at navigating your environment in the dark if you work in it all the time? And thank you! You're right, I'll get there, just need to keep chipping away.

On the desktop website you don't have this, so you can play to your heart's content (pun not intended, but I'm keeping it). To be fair though I don't mind it. It's not really a game if you can't lose, and you can practice to earn hearts or go and try to get legendary status when you don't have any hearts. In the mobile app, if you tap on the heart icon at the top it should give you an option to practice to earn hearts. That sounds good, is that going down the legal executive route or the solicitor route? (I started training as a legal executive before I switched careers.)

Week 1 update Well I've already fallen off this challenge, so let's do a really quick run down. Wednesday was a good day. I managed to slip well behind on my planned timings, and ended up losing all 1.5 hours of Baulder's Gate 3 and still getting home half an hour late from climbing. I think I need to budget in transition time between each activity, maybe say that any half-hour slot only contains 25 minutes of doing the thing so I have 5 minutes padding. I also need to not spend an hour procrastinating rather than doing the plan. I've been saying this a lot recently, but why am I like this? I did do some good stuff though, French, Dutch, seeing my Dad, updating here, drawing stuff. Dad was on good form, which was nice. And the draw along had the wonderfully ridiculous prompt 'fancy beholder otter'... Thursday was a good day. I was at a conference all day, but it was pretty interesting and I caught up with some people that, in addition to being people it's useful to know for work, I actually like. I left the pub at 9pm after several beers, but thanks to a series of train fuckups didn't get home until almost midnight. Friday was a good day. I was actually in the office, for a bit, but left early to go out for dinner with a colleague and a client. We went to a restaurant where you eat in absolute, pitch-black darkness. All of the waiters are blind, and you have no idea what you're eating; they just put food in front of you and let you try your best. It was really interesting and really good fun, both from a food point of view and a people point of view. It seems that people lose some of their inhibitions when you can't see them, and of course everything sounds like an innuendo when you're sat in the dark and talking about what you're doing with your hands. It was a right laugh. I actually got home at a reasonable half-10-ish time, but then decided I wanted a whisky and got stuck in a loop where I would rather stare at my phone than go to bed regardless of being really tired. Think I went to bed at half midnight? Saturday was a good day. I got up a bit late, unsurprisingly, but eventually made it to climbing. Had a chilled afternoon watching Wakanda Forever, in my bid to catch up on MCU while I have a couple of free months of Disney Plus. Then in the evening we went to a charity gala for a deaf charity, organised by MG. It was a really cool evening. Dinner was good, and we were sat between a couple who were really into D&D, and someone who's running the same marathon as me in a few weeks. There were a range of performances, including a signsong rapper (that's not a typo, he was rapping in British sign language), so that was really interesting. Another late night, though think we were home by midnight at least. Sunday was a good day. Got up late, as D&D was cancelled, and eventually went out for my run. After 3 nights on the beer with inadequate sleep I thought it would be really tough, and about 2 miles in I considered giving up, but in the end I had quite a good time and wasn't ridiculously slow overall. In the afternoon I did very little, which felt much needed. So, about those goals... The chronologist 0/5 - I've been consistently shit at being on time this week, and it's going to cost me those dice . Not sure if I should consider recalibrating the reward, so I've got more motivation to continue with the goal? I'll think on it. The muscle 3/7 - I somewhat gave up on tracking calories when I started eating out for events on things, which is a poor excuse. I think a lack of energy, and motivation, in a busy week was what was really going on here. The second-story specialist 2/3 - Got my two climbing sessions, but forgot about the extra hangboarding until Sunday, and then didn't have the energy. The translator 5/7 - I did at least one language every day, but missed out on doing both on a couple of days. The cartographer 2/3 - I didn't have Pathfinder this week, so I missed out on that drawing session, but I made it up drunkenly on my very long Thursday train journey. Again, I was aware of this and could have done the final session on Sunday, but I didn't. The face 5/7 - not ideal, a couple of those late evenings missed.

HEY DEFFY! Welcome back! It's really good to see you. And thank you!