Jarric

On 3/26/2024 at 3:10 AM, titsworth said:

Goal 2: Find a Gym Buddy / Accountability Buddy

Haaave ya tried Crossfit? (As someone who does Crossfit I am of course obligated to try and get as many other people to do it as possible.)

In all seriousness though, it's really worked for me to have a consistent group of people that I meet at the gym and are doing the same things, without actually having to find a friend from outside of the gym who wants to lift together and do the same programming.

18/03 - 164.9lbs

25/03 -163.9lbs

01/03 - 163.1lbs

Was quite surprised to see a drop in the scale today. I did make an effort to be sensible last week, but I also ate a ton of chocolate yesterday and finished the week about 1,500kcal over target. I'll take it though!

This week should be a bit more back to normal, though I've still got a couple of Easter eggs to work through I'll just have to take it easy with them.

2 hours ago, Snarkyfishguts said:

How do you deal with stress? I'm struggling in this department. I handle situations pretty well, and I am getting better about talking about my thoughts and feelings to family, but I'm still stressed out a lot. Is this something that requires practice, you think? Like practicing letting go of the "AUGH!"

From an eating point of view? I try to remind myself that eating won't make me feel any less stressed. When you're craving a release from stress, or a distraction from it, then your brain my tell you that this is a hunger craving, but eating doesn't solve it and doesn't resolve the things that are causing you stress.

If you mean how do you deal with stress in general, that's harder! Short of resolving the stressful situation, there's a whole raft of stress management techniques out there but what works is pretty specific to the person and situation.

19 hours ago, titsworth said:

Hey all! The NF Team recently did a pretty significant overhaul to the website. I know some of the plug-ins to the back end they used for XP and character quests were not working with some of the new changes. They were correcting a few things, like epic quests, and getting as much back up as possible. The academy may still work because it is on a slightly different configuration than the main site (I think). There's not an attempt to put some of these things behind a paywall or anything like that, rather just trying to move to some newer platforms/designs and losing a bit of older capabilities.  I'll reach out to see if there is an ETA for some of the character pages getting brought back.

Thanks for the update! Will wait to hear.

Glad you're son's ok mate. And well done on reaching Lothlórien!

Welcome back! Sounds like you've been through a lot recently; glad you got it all sorted in the end.

On 3/29/2024 at 12:11 PM, Mad Hatter said:

My first keystone goal is to care of my sanity. I'm staying with my grandma who has Alzheimer's and it gets tiring. Her mood swings make me tense and her behaviors make me sad.

Sorry to hear about your grandma, that sucks. My Dad has dementia - it's different in that I don't live with him, and everyone's situation is different anyway, but I sympathise. If you want to talk about it, feel free to drop me a line.

On 3/30/2024 at 6:10 PM, Mad Hatter said:

- I didn't come to a full stop before attempting the handstand, instead I was mindful of how I placed my hands down on the floor, moving softly and only pushing when I needed to push.

Most of the fun things you did would look really weird in my Crossfit gym, but I might have to have a play with this one.

3 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Her other carer is so good with her, and laughs off everything, and I feel like a complete asshole because I can't be like that. 

Your feelings are valid, and you can't help how you feel about this. Someone different reacting differently does not make your reaction any less reasonable.

I don't have any advice on how to stop being angry, if that's what you want to do. You're in a horrible situation and it's reasonable to be angry about that.

Hope that Wight's ok (and that you are able to send her home after a not stupid amount of time)

Congratulations on the new job mate (whichever one you pick), and the provisional wedding date!

Saturday - W1D6

Yesterday was a good day. I did a charcoal pencil drawing of Adam Jensen, the protagonist in the latter Deus Ex games, in the evening:

Kneehab was done first thing before a bike ride. It was a busy morning - a few miles on the bike, then a short bouldering session, drop off Easter flowers at my Grandma's, then home and get ready to go out to the ballet.

The ballet was good, but a bit weird. It was A Midsummer Night's Dream, but they did the entirety of the plot before the interval, and the second half was just dancing in costume but with no plot. It felt like a very odd choice.

Friday - W1D5

Friday was a good day. Needed to do art after I posted an update here, and a nerd friend on Discord told me to draw dragons and shared a dragon design video on YouTube. Here's some quick sketches which are very much copied from that video:

Kneehab was done after Crossfit, because Crossfit was a weird bank holiday session. We started out with a load of handstand practice, which was fun, and then a workout of:

20 rounds for time:

5 strict press

5 calories

5 ring rows

I did the press with 2 15kg dumbbells, most of the calories were on the air bike with a couple of rounds skiing, and finished in 23 something minutes.

In the evening WW was out, so I had pizza and cake for dinner on my own, with a beer, caught up here, and then played Deus Ex for the evening.

On 3/29/2024 at 9:09 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Sorry didn't mean it like you had a problem with movement. I was referring to that we're touching on similar concepts in the floor flow classes I'm taking, where we talk a lot about flow states and how to access them, creativity and non-linear movement and movement quality. I feel like many of the issues with accessing flow in movement are the same as what are preventing us from accessing flow in art. For example expectations on what's attractive versus what feels good, fear of being judged, that we don't belong in a space because we don't have the skills or look a certain way...

Oh, I see what you mean. That is an interesting parallel between the two, and a lot of those comments ring true for me.

I didn't think you thought I had a problem with movement to be fair. I was more approaching it from the perspective of 'I've cracked regular exercise as a habit, why does that work and can I apply the same principles to art?'

On 3/30/2024 at 2:22 AM, sarakingdom said:

 

YES. YES I DO.

 

 

He does have a nice dryly funny prose style, and a good feel for language.

 

 

Yeah, he's good with the novella length, pretty much the heft of a full novel in half the space.

 

  Hide contents

I was glad he did a story about the pacifications of the Virginia Gentleman's Company. That bit of backstory in Lies Sleeping was really enraging.

 

Yeah, I don't remember that annoying me too much, but I certainly appreciate him filling out that part of the world.

4 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Same here. Interested to hear your thoughts, it's on my backlog of games to play as well.

I beat the first boss last night, and so far I'm really enjoying it. It's got a lot of the good stuff I remember from the original - good stealth mechanics, actions feel like they have consequences, the hacking actually works really well (much better than the original), and a nice bunch of conspriacies already in the story.

One of the complaints I remember hearing about in reviews, now that I've experienced it to be reminded, is that there's a pacifist achievement for completing the game without killing anyone, but the bosses can only be defeated by killing them. You can still get the achievement, because boss fights don't count towards it, but thematically it's a bit silly. On the other hand, I'm never likely to replay it to try for that achievement anyway.

I think the reasons I gave up on it before were a) I was trying to explore every area and talk to every person like I did with the original, but I'm not a teenager any more and I don't have the time or inclination to play the game for 100s of hours to the exclusion of all other activities. b) I turned off object highlighting, because I was being a snobby PC gamer about it feeling like a console-style assist, whereas now I recognise it as a good quality-of-life feature which just makes the game a bit more fun. I feel stupid now - I pre-ordered this game, and never got as far as the first boss. Then I bought it on console and still got no further, and it's taken 13 years for me to come back to it.

One minor grumble, the inventory is too small. It doesn't help that the pre-order perks include a sniper rifle, which is fully half the size of the inventory before you unlock upgrades.

I got Mankind Divided free on Epic Games a couple of weeks ago, so I'm keen to complete Human Revolution and give that a go.

Thursday - W1D4

Yesterday was a good day. I did some drawing after lunch, drawing along with The Sketching Hour. The prompt was flowery dragon parrot:

Not great; the body angle's weird and it's not a very dynamic pose, but it was a nice chilled session anyway.

Kneehab was done at Crossfit.

Crossfit was good. Deadlifts felt horribly heavy, so I went pretty light, and then we had a chilled 'for quality' workout of ring muscle ups, power cleans, and wall balls. I got 8 muscle ups over the course of the session and felt like I had more in the tank; really pleased with how far these have come on in the last few months.

Spent the morning reading, then drawing after lunch, and then loaded up Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the first time in many years. I own it on PC and console, and the last time I played it on PC was when it came out in 2011. Don't know when I picked it up on console but I didn't get much further through it then. Anyway, I'm enjoying it so far - I loved Deus Ex and didn't hate DX: Invisible War, and I'd like to finish this one so I can give Mankind Divided a go.

In the evening we started watching the latest series of Taskmaster. I was exhausted again by the time that ended - not sure what's happening with my energy levels recently, so that's something to keep an eye on. Might just be the calorie deficit.

On 3/28/2024 at 4:35 PM, sarakingdom said:

 

"Into this man’s blameless life would come Thomas Nightingale like a carelessly thrown brick in the glassware section of Lillywhites." I mean, I'm sold based on that.

I love that - the man can certainly turn a phrase. My favourite line from today was today "The British had made if clear they didn't want to see them again on pain of sarcasm."

On a related note, I finished Winter's Gifts this evening. Very much enjoyed it, and also with the limited amount of reading that I do I thoroughly appreciate novellas (novellae?).

10 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

Beats me, but I hope someone else will answer! The only time I've managed it's through brute force, but that didn't form a habit. I suspect somewhere in the answer there's a bit of letting go of expectation and pressure. And something about creative work best done with a lighter, more playful mindset. But it can be challenging to switch to that when most of the day is in work/to-do mode. This question has been nagging me because I feel like there's parallels with the movement stuff I'm doing but I can't quite crack it.

I think the movement stuff I do fine with because I have a lot of accountability. I book my Crossfit classes, I plan to meet friends at bouldering. I was doing fine with running on my own thought, but I did have a definite scheduled time for running rather than just trying to fit it in. Maybe I just need a set block of time that I can use automatically every day?

10 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

STRONK!

Thank you 😊

6 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

Cant garantee it will work, but i would suggest getting a small sketchbook and pencil and just carrying them around with you. Then when you stop or have a cuppa or whatever, you can pull them out instead of the phone. 
less screen surfing, more sketching time. 
hypothetically a win win

That's a good shout. I talked myself out of buying a pocket notebook the other day on the basis that I didn't really need yet more art supplies, but maybe I should reassess that...

3 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

Body doubling. Which is to say, peer pressure. Find a drawing buddy to meet either in person or online to draw together. Or join an accountability group that discusses sketchbooks once a week so you need to have work to show them.

Yeah, I really like that. I'm not sure where to find that group yet, but I think it would help.

2 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

That might backfire - when I was doing a taught drawing course with weekly homework I mostly ended up panicking in the last minute. It was great and got me drawing, but perhaps not the most positive habit forming. 😄

 

Body doubling could be fun though, wonder if we could create an NF group?

We could definitely create an NF group. I'm not sure how we'd structure it though. A weekly drawing prompt? An actual set time drawing together (either drawing separately but at the same time, or together with digital drawing tools?). I'm open to ideas.

1 hour ago, sarakingdom said:

 

Time zones are always the killer, but otherwise doable.

 

There's also Focusmate, if that works. They give three free body doubling sessions a week, and aren't too expensive beyond that (though I see their price has gone up in the past year).

I've just looked that up - it's a really interesting concept. I quite like that idea, thanks for sharing.

On 3/27/2024 at 4:15 AM, Scaly Freak said:

15minutes on the rowing machine, because the myocardium is an important muscle group that should not be neglected. Then side leg lifts, barbell squats, and single-leg deadlifts with a kettlebell.

Now that sounds like a fun workout.

Wow, 4-day DOMS are nasty! Hopefully in a couple of weeks they'll be a bit more reasonable in their duration.

Good luck on the pullup goal too - always a fun thing to aim for.

13 hours ago, ViperN7 said:

I do not know much about designing a Calorie deficit diet, but I have heard quite a few sources say that you should eat at least your BMR every day, as a minimum. In  other words, don't cut so much that you're below this number (The reasoning is that it's not healthy to eat less than this: your body thinks you're in a famine and actually cuts corners to burn less and store more energy ie fat.) 

As far as I know, this is more of a concern if you have an average to low body fat percentage, but less of a concern at a higher body fat percentage. If you're carrying a reasonable amount of fat then your body should be able to burn that to keep you from going into true starvation mode even if you're below your BMR. I wouldn't recommend doing it, because you probably still won't feel date and the diet will probably be miserable and difficult to stick to, but it's probably not dangerous so I also wouldn't worry about accidently dipping below your BMR if you don't have a good way to reliably calculate what your BMR is. (Disclaimer: I'm a random guy on the internet, not a doctor, this is not good, or even mediocre, medical advice.)

2 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

And it turned out I still maintained at 400 calories above what I thought my maintenance was.

I'm in a similar place with this - my observed maintenance from calorie tracking is a good 300-400kcal higher than most calculators will give me, and one calculator gave me a maintenance figure the other day that I'm currently losing 1lb/week at.

1 hour ago, sarakingdom said:

 

My library system doesn't have it as a book! Maybe just a matter of time, they have most of the others. I may have to relisten, though, despite the reader making me want to painful things with a spoon.

 

(The next novella is coming out this September, by the way. Title not announced, but subject announced.)

I went to look up the new one to see the subject, and it looks like the title's been announced too: benaaronovitch.com/wp-assets/uploads/2024/03/MOS-cover-reveal-FINAL.mp4?_=1 (I don't know why that video won't embed, but still, it's there!)

Wednesday - W1D3

Yesterday was a good day. By the time I'd had dinner I was falling asleep on the sofa, so I didn't art before bed, but I did do my kneehab at Crossfit.

Crossfit was box squats - they felt pretty solid at 95kg (209lbs) x 3 x 5, despite feeling knackered from the late night on Tuesday. Then we had hamstring curls, natural leg extensions, and box step ups - all very hard on the legs!

Spent the morning reading Winter's Gifts by Ben Aaronovich (thanks @sarakingdom for alerting me that I'd missed this one!), then had physio in the afternoon that I talked about in my challenge intro. Then off to climbing, home for dinner, and an exhausted, early night.

17 hours ago, Loveable_Bouncer said:

Does any of your savings accounts have a "bucket" system? I opened my high savings account and they are selling it hard. But that type of thing in your accounts might help for you goals you have that option without opening any more accounts. 

It doesn't, but I suppose that there's nothing to stop me doing that manually actually. Food for thought...

21 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

I have been reminded to plant fennel in the garden. I love fennel.

 

Sometimes the simplest gifs are the best  

1 hour ago, Sea-to-sky said:

 

just wanted to show the water tracker for April. Its half done and I'm really happy with it. Lot of fun to draw. 
i sketched it out in pencil before hand just to get the spacing right.

 

i need to prioritising replacing my finest fine liner. Its nib is split and is really annoying me every time i draw with it as it makes a mess 80% of the time i use it. 

That's a really cool tracker - love that!

20 hours ago, Sovalis said:

Yay for pizza box art! 

 

Here to follow and support. Good to see you, Jarric!

Thanks! Good to have you here Sov!

20 hours ago, sarakingdom said:

18 hours ago, Ranger Hal said:

It makes me so happy that I know who this is!

I'm happy you know it too! (Less happy that I forgot how to draw it  )

18 hours ago, sylph said:

Here for less.

(I don't know what that gif's from, but I now really want to.)

18 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Hello there, friend! Will be keeping up with your updates and cheering you on yet again.

Thanks man! Good to have you here.

16 hours ago, Artemis Prime said:

Jester approves.

 

I just tried to search for a gif of what Jester likes drawing even more than Captain Tusktooth. Honestly, I should really think before I type out my internet searches

16 hours ago, Sea-to-sky said:

Here to cheer. 

6 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

 

Can I tempt you with a "showing up is half the battle" challenge this go around?

 

I beat you to it by a whole 6 minutes, but you're not far off on the theme. Great minds think alike?

Tuesday - W1D2

Yesterday was a good day. I drew a bad Captain Tusktooth face on a pizza box at half 11 in the evening, because I wanted to tick off this goal. Kneehab was done prior to a morning bike ride.

The bike ride was the fastest I've done this route. Really hoping for some noob gainz here as I suck at cycling.

Work was busy, but I left at 4pm to go to a charity quiz run by a supplier. It was almost a 3-hour drive there and a 2-hour drive back, though thankfully I got a lift. Had a big curry at the event and some beers, so calories were high, but I've still got about half my calorie buffer left for Easter eggs on Sunday. Got in very late, drew on the pizza box, did Duolingo and went to bed.

Monday - W1D1

Monday was a good day. I did some work on a group shot of out Pathfinder party in the evening, and kneehab was done at Crossfit in the morning.

Crossfit was good - I managed a 100ft farmers' walk at 169kg (372lbs) which I'm pretty happy with. Not sure if it's a PB, but it's bloody heavy at the very least. Also got a set of 5 weighted chinups at bodyweight + 20kg.