avril.obscene

I've written just over 6,000 words now! My story had characters that changed drastically when I started putting it down on paper. Characters changed gender, changed race, were created that didn't exist, and more. It's been very exciting! It's a modern ghost story, where the ghost is being haunted by the living. The idea is this woman died from an illegal firework to the face. She wakes up dead, and feels tugging, and ends up at her own funeral, where she meets another kind of dead girl (who originally in my notes was going to be an unliked man who was in his mid thirties and wore a trench coat, and is now a 17 year old girl who is bubbly and fluffy and happy). The other dead girl claims she is a Death Coach, and explains that when the living have exceptionally strong feelings about her (like a group of people at a funeral, for example) she would feel drawn to them. She was casually dating two guys before her death (one of which magically became a person of color because I'm in love with Sam Sanders and wanted to write all about his handsome face), and had a best friend (that decided that she had to exist, when she didn't before) that she rarely saw in person. Oh, and two cats, which may or may not be able to tell that she's there. She's not sure, since they act pretty much the same way they always did. I don't really have a toolbox. I need to have a keyboard of some sort, I'm not comfortable writing on a phone. On my work computer I get most of my writing done,and I'm using the free trial of Scrivener. It gives me locations for all my notes, allows me to keep outlines as index cards that I fill out and can rearrange at whim, and it has a place for character profiles and inspiration images. At home, I just write into a google drive document from my laptop, and then transfer the words the next day. I didn't start with an outline, just a vague idea about a dead girl being haunted by the living, but I have cobbled together some ideas and whatnot and used the index card feature on scrivener to put them in place. If something comes to me and I'm not near my laptop or work computer, I take brief notes on Google Keep until I can transfer them into a document somewhere. I'm very excited about my story this time around! This could be my year!

Not a great day yesterday ... I got bad news about my therapist and I felt very personally persecuted. In hindsight, 24 hours later, it wasn't all THAT bad. But I skipped on a lot of my obligations due to a quick toe in the water that is depression and paranoia. I did not walk, I did not do my workout, and I did not study, although I did write 3500 words for NaNoWriMo, which wasn't on my goal list but probably should be. Epic quest to write a novel! I did log all my food, even the three glasses of wine that I had, and I flossed before bed last night, because I'm responsible with my teeth. Today I'm going to at least start my 15 minutes of studying before 2pm, to get a head start on fulfilling my goals today. I will reschedule yesterday's workout and tomorrow's workout, and still get in two this week. I can still do this.

Is anyone using Novlr for this Nano? I was trying to decide if I wanted to sign up for it, it looks cool but I don't want to pay for it after November, so is it worth using now? Also, I'm duckiechaos on the Nano site. I wasn't planning on jumping in this year, but why not? I've got a novel in my heart!

Sure, do you use google docs at all?

I love using spreadsheets for goals! I have a great one that is tracking my measurements and workouts and my walks and food tracking and ... yeah. Spreadsheets are my jam. Good luck with your interview, but really it looks like you've got the whole being prepared thing down pat. Happy hunting!

Week 1 recap: Work out 2 - 3 days, as per the schedule: 4 pts Walk 20 minutes / day: 4 pts Log food every day: 4 pts Study for at least 15 minutes each day: 4 pts Floss every night: 4pts So week 1 was largely very successful. I had a few days when it was difficult to get into the mood to study, so I would put on a timer for 15 minutes and just study Spanish using DuoLingo. If after that I felt more motivated, I would move on to trig or data science. I worked a lot on my trig this week, I'm learning about inverse trig functions, like inverse sine / cosine etc. So far they make sense to me on a unit circle but I have not the slightest grasp of them with real numbers. Over the weekend I made my daughters walk with me. The big one was good company, she could keep pace with me and we walked a little over a mile together in twenty minutes. The little one, not so much ... with the dragging and the stopping and the whining, we walked for 25 minutes and didn't quite make it to one mile. Hah. She told me she'd be better company if I let her eat breakfast first next time, but to be fair, the goal of our walk was Wawa for breakfast, I just took the long way to get there. I felt good about the workouts, they definitely challenged me at points and left me sore. I was feeling the desire to increase the workouts to a solid 3 / week but I think I'm going to keep on at this rate. I'm awfully good at setting myself up for burnout, so I am going to do what I can to avoid that this time around. I logged all my food and attempted not to make value judgments on it. Sometimes that was difficult, I felt guilty about some stuff, but I've reasoned with myself that all I'm doing now is trying to be more aware of what I'm consuming. Between my workouts and my food watching, I lost .6 lbs this week. I guess I would prefer more, but that is definitely better than gaining so I'm trying to be grateful. Not sure how good Halloween is going to be for me, all that candy around the house. For hand out candy, we bought stuff that I won't eat, so the only risk is me eating all the girls' candy.

What kind of beef did you make in the crock pot? I'm always looking for new slow cooker recipes, I think the family gets tired of the same three that I make over and over again.

Day 5 recap: My little brother came down to visit! He used to live next door and then in June his wife decided she didn't like Pennsylvania and they moved back to MA, which was a total bummer for me and the kids, but he is here to visit and take the girls trick or treating on Monday! He has a gluten allergy, so I have to do special meal planning to make sure I don't poison him, but he has said that my house is one of the few places that he feels confident eating without second guessing everything we make, mainly because my partner and I are very very diligent and watch each other like a hawk, hah. So anyway, workout 3 for the week was not on this day, so I was just sore all day from the workout on Wednesday. How do people live like this? Either worn out from the workout of the day, or sore with DOMs the day after? I went for my 20 minute walk. It was cold and a tiny bit wet, so I wore my hood up on my jacket, put on my gloves and wrapped my scarf tightly around my neck. I made a new playlist for walking, it's all Sia, and it's very inspiring. I love it. It's going to by my new workout playlist. There's only like seven songs on it but that's enough. Logged all my food, and flossed. Studying was difficult for me, I had a hard time mustering up the motivation for it, so I decided to do Spanish stuff on DuoLingo for 15 minutes. When that was up I decided I would run through my Anki flashcards on various trig concepts, and called it a day for studying. I got more cleaning done on my cleaning binge to prepare for the brunch -- this time it was cleaning off the bathroom vanity and cleaning out the drawer in the bathroom vanity. I threw away so much stuff. Told my partner not to look in the trash -- he never used this stuff, now was not the time to regret never using beard softener.

Hi PunchTonic! I love your goals! It's great that you are looking for unorthodox ways to get yourself up earlier in the morning. I struggled with that (enough that I finally gave up around 7am and now that's alarm time), so I'll be watching your challenge to see if it could help me too. I'm a fellow flosser, working on it at least. And that's some great loot! Good luck!

Day 4 Recap: This workout killed me. Jelly legs and the whole deal. One legged romanian deadlifts and the inch worm, I'm not sure which was worse, but by the time I was done I just wanted to curl back up in bed. I considered about halfway through not doing the complete number of sets, but I can be stubborn sometimes and decided that if I literally collapsed I would stop. Hah. I decided that I will be recording the RDL next time to check my form, because it's just a weird movement. Looking at my schedule however, that won't be for two weeks. There is a small part of me that wants to change my schedule to a solid three times a week, but I think it's better to stick to this right now, to ease me into it for the first month or so of working out. Thoughts, anyone? Walked for twenty minutes over my lunch break. I was considering using Map My Run to see how far I was walking in addition to time, but idk how important that is to me at this point. At 20 minutes it's probably close to a mile, anyway. I logged all my food on YouFood, even the dinner that I was less than proud of (three medium slices of cheese pizza, anyone?), which I refuse to feel guilty about because even Steve says that he occasionally will indulge in less healthy, more fun foods. My studying was highly productive today; after reviewing my trig flashcards multiple times, I took the quiz for the week (which I got 100% on) and then watched the video modules for the week after, took the quiz, and passed that too! I also took notes on several more sections in my data science course. I have ten more minutes of videos and slides before the quiz for the unit. This course in the progression is all about programming, and it is a lot to take in for a non-programmer such as myself, so I'm definitely all about taking notes and practical exercises. I embarked on a huge kitchen cleaning project after dinner, because we are planning on hosting a brunch on Thanksgiving and we were out of room for food and guests already. So my partner and I cleaned the kitchen; he helped for the first half hour and then went to bed ... two hours later I joined him, lol. Once I get in the zone I hate to get out! While cleaning I found a jade necklace and a jade earring that are part of a set that belonged to my grandmother... it's over 50 years old. My grandfather bought it for her when he was serving in Korea. That was an exciting end to my day! Oh, and I remembered to floss.

These are great goals! Welcome to the forums! I fell out of practice on the Headspace meditations. I think I'll feel best if I start again at the very beginning, but that is kind of disheartening. I took a long break between the first ten and the second ten, and the length of meditation and time of silence increased and it was just a really difficult transition for me altogether. Which program are you doing? The foundation?

Day 3 Recap: My next workout is tomorrow (Bodyweight 3B), so I've laid out all my equipment and my shoes, and I've changed into my workout clothes to sleep in. Also read over the workout from beginning to end, to make sure I understood how to do all of the movements. There was a movement I was unclear about, so I got on the Facebook NF Academy page and begged for clarification, which was happily provided. This is such a great community! Walked for 20 minutes during my lunch break. I put on chiptunes for my music to walk to -- Kubbi. I love PewPewPew, it's always a great way to start off ANYTHING. I started worrying during my walk outside where I was going to walk and how during the winter, but I reminded myself, baby steps, one day at a time. Let's not go borrowing trouble, right? After my walk, I figured I was warmed up enough to do my posture stretches, so I did those. I'm pretty sure that stretching in between workouts can't hurt, as long as I'm warmed up first, right? I logged all my food on YouFood, although dinner I logged a mostly empty bowl of broth because I forgot to take a picture of it before I started -- I was really hungry and trying to eat it in the five minutes before my First Aid class started. But I still logged all the things. I only took 7 packets of sugar in my coffee this morning (in addition to the creamer, lol), tomorrow I'm aiming for 6. I want to find where the "sweet" spot is, so I can make alterations from there. I did some quick math, and found that 7 packets of sugar was equal to 1.68 TBSP of sugar. That is actually less than I expected, to be honest. But I can do better! I think my studying went pretty well today, I definitely did more than 15 minutes in a row on my data science course, but I also spent a good amount of time today reviewing my trig flashcards, putting them away, pulling them back out and reviewing them again, repeating. Just a few minutes at a time. Lastly, I flossed after I got home from my First Aid class. Teeth, successfully cleaned. First Aid, successfully renewed for another two years. Huzzah!

This looks like a very solid start! Awesome!

I'm also food logging every day! How are you going about it? For me I'm just doing a picture food diary (there's an app called YouFood that you can post pictures of your food and descriptions or whatnot of it). I'm just using it to be conscious of what I'm eating, rather than calorie / macro counting at this point in my journey. Where are you?

I'll have to look and see if that wine is available in my part of the country. What's the name of the vineyard? I can't read it easily. I love red wines with spices though. Also, hooray for studying!