Giogina Scarlet

@Vonayen@Rainelf @TheMunckinLion Thank you all so much I feel really good now, almost excited for the future. My foot still hurts, but now with a quality of "gonna be fine if you let me rest for a bit longer". At least my right leg is gonna be really strong from all the 1-legged squats I'm doing while getting up from chairs The talk went well, my prof suggested I write a paper on a part of it. Sounds like a good idea, a chance to properly understand this one thing. Ok, time to get back to work, I'll write more later

My body started falling apart for no good reason 0.o I felt fine (though tired) after yesterday's run, three hours later I walked back to Campus, and my foot started hurting. I still barely can take a step without the pain coming up. And I had two races planned this week, 4k tomorrow night and 12k on sunday... Still kinda hoping it'll improve over night. Am I old now? :V Was kinda frustrated all day and overate somewhat. I gotta give a talk tomorrow, still only 1/3rd of the slides done. What am I doing, sitting here and complaining. This is not helping. I'm in such a good situation overall. I'm finally where I always wanted to go. I get to do science, science I chose for myself. I have every freedom I could wish for. (My prof is unrealistically awesome.) And I'm not using it, not to my full potential, not nearly. I have fought for years to get to this point, and finally reached my own white spot on the map. And now I am sitting here that I have no clue how to proceed. That is the POINT. Nobody has figured this out, ever. If I can, if we can do this, that would be amazing. I keep complaining about how I don't make progress. About how I'm still at the same level as three years ago, and some things even got worse. But am I putting in the effort to improve? That's the key here, really. And the answer is no. I do short sprints, oftentimes when I need to (exams, deadlines and stuff), and during those times I'm surprised at what I can do. But usually I just hang around, beating myself up about my lack of progress instead of making some. I wonder, do I still truly believe in my goal? Achieving it would require me to be amazing, and I don't think I am. Is it possible? The sings point to yes. The patterns are there, showing themselves from every angle I look at things. Am I able to figure this out? I don't know. Well, I do know that if I don't believe in myself, then no, I won't get anywhere. The first year or so after I got here I felt like this to a much worse extent. At least now I know I'm good enough to be here. It's not like I'll have to drop out. (At one point last semester it looked eerily close to that because I mismanaged my credits... was kind of a new and scary thing for me.) But, am I also good enough to truly achieve something? That's what I came here for. There's plenty of other places where I could have graduated much more easily, hell, I'd probably be done already. But I don't care. I didn't want that. I'm not here for the degree, but for the research. This is what I wanted to do. Maybe that's what holds me back, that it's all kind of realistic now. I've always had these crazy dreams about making some amazing discovery, back when I was little... I would mess with prime numbers, knowing very well there was no way that I'd ever find something new there, far too many much greater minds tried before. But I didn't care, it was a child's dream. And now, if I worked really hard for longer than a short burst - such a thing would technically be possible. And that, the comparison to reality, makes it feel so much more unrealistic. Yes, I'm scared of really trying and still failing. And I'm scared of taking too long, so instead I'm running around aimlessly. I'm not sure I believe in my true self. She's crazy. Keeps trying to achieve the impossible. Has way too high standards. Has no idea what's realistic. If my life was a movie I'm watching, I'd find her amazing. I'd want to be her. What if. What if I tried being her, just for 24 hours. Cast off my protective shell. Stop pretending there's nothing I can do. See what I can. Sure, things will go wrong. But that's progress too, figuring out what doesn't work. I should learn to fail more systematically, so that I can learn from it. Take better notes. Go to the bottom of things, even if it's tedious or makes me feel stupid. If I'm honest, I know exactly how to proceed, it's just scary. I get to give a talk tomorrow, to people who care about the same thing as me. Let's see if I can show them something interesting. (I started writing because of my foot - that may have been a good thing after all.)

Day 8 Ran home the long way, 3.1 km at ca. 8.5 km/h - yeah, still not feeling super fit. My ankles still seem to be recovering, and my belly hurts -.- (Sometimes I rather dislike being female.) Did the posture stretches when I came home, the rest of the exercises I'll do later today. I'll rest for a bit now, and then prepare my big whiteboard It's gonna go up on my wall, showing my progress in a bunch of goals, as well as the work I put into each. And I'll pin pictures to it that show where I wanna go!

How is it going?

Ooops, time for an update before I forget everything I did :V Logbook entry, day 2: 1.5 k run home, then full posture workout. Logbook entry, day 3: Walked and was lazy about everything else. Logbook entry, day 4: More laziness. Logbook entry, day 5: Went for a run, about 9k with ca. 170m climb. Played a game of trying to not let any other runners pass me - won against the first one (to be fair, he looked like he was planning to run 10x as much as me, I was the only one serious about this ^^), lost against the second. Finished my run at home, completed the entire posture workout, took a shower, fell asleep until 6pm. So much for 'get it done before lunch' XD But it was a very relaxing thing to do. Logbook entry, day 6: Rest day - went for a walk during sunset. Did half the posture workout once I got home. (Every exercise, but one set instead of two... was really tired.) Logbook entry, day 7: Legs are still feeling tired, so another rest day... :/ Got some errands done by bike, about 10k in total distributed over the day. Will do a longer run again tomorrow! Did a few posture exercises between these errands, but I'm not through everything yet... In total, looking back at week 1: One long and two tiny runs. Gotta learn to distribute this more evenly. 3.5 / 7 posture workouts. That's barely passing. Maybe I can split it up and leave more reminders, so that I do 4x5 mins per day instead of 20 at once. Currently I have my foam roller next to my door, so that right when I come in I see it and use it. If I leave more clues like that, I can maybe automate things and become more consistent... BUT! I really feel results, already. I have tried to fix my posture before, the only thing that's really different this time is the foam roller. My back really feels more mobile now, like I need less effort to stand up straight, it feels lighter in a way... I still can't keep it up for very long though, my back muscles start hurting from being too weak after a few minutes. Journal - 3/7... I have this problem of not allowing myself to internally "let the day go" when I feel like I havn't achieved anything in my work; and my work happens to be something where a certain amount of luck is involved in getting results. Something to work on. Aikido - not yet. I could WILL go tomorrow evening. - Hazard, thanks for checking up on me

Oh, cool! I see you already have swords (I recently noticed that I tan quickly enough to get clear boundaries between tanned and non-tanned regions, so that I could get myself a "tan-tatoo" by putting some UV-resistant sticker somewhere... And now here I am debating whether I'm nerd enough to get myself a fairy tail mark.)

Logbook entry, day 1: Went running before lunch! About 6km at a slow pace (went with a friend, and she wanted to take a few breaks) - about 50 minutes (excluding the breaks). Well, at least for once I'm not overdoing it on day one XD I still could do a bit more, I think. Gonna aim for 8k on my next run Did some posture workout in the evening right before bed.

Hi there, fellow dragon This looks awesome!

That... MAY... have been what gave me the idea of joining the cycling club :V (Yes, I'm a huge nerd, why do you ask?) And, thanks

Hi there! I'm new here too, and about to jump into the challenge last minute ^^ I remember the horrors of chemistry undergrad well, good luck with that And also, what you say about staying accountable in the long term - i know that one far too well -.- (Started mounting a big whiteboard in my room today, which I'm planning to use to track progress and remind myself of where I want to go - I hope that'll work ...) Anyway, best of luck to you, I'll be following your story!

Hi there! Just noticed a challenge is about to begin, so I'll jump right in It's late right now, so I'll elaborate more tomorrow. My goals are: Level up my endurance Goal 1 is to improve my running and cycling. I have a 12k race on the 1st of April that I'm barely prepared for (I've been running every now and then, but mostly more on the 4k scale...), and I recently joined my university's bicycle club, and was barely able to keep up uphill (while they were chilling out) - I wanna do better than that! Not to mention, when I'm busy I barely leave my office, which leaves me in a rather unbalanced state of mind... running through the forest really helps with that, and we have an awesome forest right here. 2k away from my office! Thus, my plan is to do some kind of endurance training every non-Aikido day (see point 2) before lunch. I'll allow every second day to be a rest day where I only go for a walk - however, I'll still put on my running gear and go outside, so, no excuses! Now, I guess you'll ask for a specific plan for the running - I don't have one yet. Thing is, I really enjoy just running through random forest paths, picking whatever way looks the most interesting. It's like the trees pull me forward. And this makes it rather difficult to track or plan, since the paths aren't on any maps, and I don't have any GPS device to carry around. So I think I'll track the time instead and assume I run at a 10 km/h pace, and approximate some running program in that way Start over with Aikido I've technically been practicing Aikido for three years or so, but after a year of fairly intense and regular training, I moved to a place without good dojos, then I got injured and couldn't do anything for over a year... I finally found a good dojo, now - two hours away by bus, but that's worth it to me. I can go there for the class on friday noon, then sleep in that city, attend the saturday morning(+noon) classes, and go back home. The frustrating thing is that I forgot a lot, learned some things weirdly, and am still (/again) on the level of a total beginner. I was never in the same dojo for long enough to take a belt exam, so... it's like I never made any progress. I want to finally get somewhere... but need patience to re-learn a lot of things from the beginning. So, my goal is to attend at least two Aikido classes a week, ask sensei what it would take for me to take my first belt exam, and work towards that. Posture workout I have some problems with my posture (upper&lower cross syndrome, the latter so much that, when I lie down with my back in neutral (as-it-should-be) position and my legs straight, I am unable to touch the ground with my feet. Kinda explains why I can't *stand* straight, doesn't it XD). Thus, I will do a 15 min posture workout every day when I get home. I bought a foam roller yesterday, that's something I've never tried before and that's supposed to make a huge difference - so, let's see what 4 weeks straight of stretching+strengthening+foam rolling can do! I'll post the specific exercises later. Level up my life I'll journal every evening! Just a short description of the day is ok. I feel that some reflection on my day would really benefit me. (There's a lot more I'd like to put here, like not watching youtube to avoid being present, not generally procrastinating on life, etc... but one step at a time, right?) Edit: Switched out the 'less sweets' goal for the 'posture workout' goal - I think that one is more important (and it will take a long time to really fix the problem, so it's better to start earlier...)