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Last Challenge, I didn't have many concrete goals because I was living a bit vagabond-ish. This Challenge is going to be about going back to the basics of my life: sleep, practicing, food, and foundational gymnastics skills! The format will be a @maegs-style checklist of things to do every day. And the theme is going to be Tenth Doctor gifs, because, idk, that's the kinda mood I'm in. Sleep I am totally in the swing of using my sleep cycle app! My sleep goal for this Challenge is to get 8 hours or more of "time in bed." (i.e. since the app can tell when you physically fell asleep, it tells you how long you spent between putting the app on and the alarm.) Ideally, this would always mean getting to bed early, but realistically it might sometimes mean sleeping late. Right now my average time in bed is 7:07. i hope to have it approaching the 8 hr mark by the end of the Challenge! Checklist item: Was I in bed for 8 hrs or more the previous night, yes or no. Practicing This is something I haven't talked about much on here, but I am a freelance classical musician and finding the time/motivation to not only retain your skills but hopefully actually improve while not having a fixed schedule and travelling a lot is hard. Most musician my age/position basically go back to school for multiple post-undergrad degrees (masters' of music! Artist Diploma! Performance diploma! Chamber music diploma! So many options!) just to have the institutional support of a school or conservatory while they practice and hope they win a job some time soon, and I chose not to do that because I just really don't like being in school all that much and, well, didn't want to. (Also I won a one-year full-time orchestral position for last year, so partly I didn't have to.) So I have more professional orchestral experience than a lot of my peers my age, but I don't have an official teacher or a nice practice room or the motivation of regular placement auditions in school ensembles to keep me going. Basically my career right now is an exercise in being hella self-motivated. Checklist item: 2 hrs of practice and 1/2 hr of reed work, every day. Food One of the houses I stayed at in Thunder Bay was a friend who has a bunch of roommates and they are all very into fermentation! They eat lots of rad food and I am inspired to try to make friends with some bacteria this Challenge. For now, the two foods I want to try are yogurt and sourdough. Yogurt because I eat a ton of it so why not make it healthier and super cheap. Sourdough-- I had actually never tried non-commercially-yeasted bread before two weeks ago? And it was ind of a revelation, in that I always thought I just didn't like bread, and that bread was a tasteless substance that went down like sandpaper and made me feel heavy and lethargic and I was just not into it. TURNS OUT bread is actually a magical food that has actual taste and texture and nutrition and is filling and awesome. I dunno how to turn this into a checklist... once I get the sourdough started, "feed sourdough" will probably be the item! Making yogurt will be more of a once-a-week thing, but I aim to always have homemade yogurt on hand. Handstands For someone who's been going to gymnastics multiple times a week, I sure can't hold a handstand for very long. It's actually pretty pathetic... I can't hold it at all, basically HANDSTANDS ARE KIND OF IMPORTANT IN GYMNASTICS. Checklist item: Every day, a 1 min wall handstand and 5 attempts at holding a freestanding handstand for as long as I can. And that's it! I'm going to keep lifting 3x/week and going to gymnastics when I can, of course, but those aren't really things I ned to Challenge myself to do any more Oh, and I am visiting a friend in Montreal this week, so I am probably going to keep week 0 as week 0 and post a bit but only technically start counting stuff at week 1.