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As Julie finished unpacking and settling into her new home, started exploring the nearby landscape, and made an effort to take care of herself, she felt herself brightening again. And the crows watched. She walked home, grocery bags in hand, enjoying the beautiful summer day. It's not the swamp, but this too is a beautiful place. And the crow did say that I would need to spread my wings, so to speak. She smiles to herself at the pun. I'm sure there are lots of weird problems to solve here too. I just haven't found them yet. Though I should probably.... She stopped, taking a seat on the kerb. Her arms ached. She didn't remember groceries feeling this heavy before. She caught a flicker of motion above and to the right. On the big Giant Tiger sign, above the proud declaration that canned corn was but 88¢ this week sat... a crow. She squinted. Was it... what had Master Tun called him... Sparky? She watched as he pecked at the logo. No, just one part of the logo. The eye. Of... the tiger. She laughed as she put it together. Of course, just what she needed! A training montage! She picked up the groceries again and continued home, a spring in her step. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've been reading bits of the story I wrote when I first started out on here. I had a lot of fun with it. I'm not sure why I stopped. The story arc I wrote at that time was leading up to the Big Walk I'd been planning, so it would have ended anyway. But no reason for the adventures to stop! In a shocking turn of events, I'm actually going to focus on fitness this challenge. My exercise habits are very lax, I have an itch in the work-on-a-cool-human-trick direction, and I'm still hoping to pull off, if not the walk across Ottawa (might be a bit much with a weeklong event not long before I'd have to set out), some other big walking goal. STR: My annual goal says, more or less, exercise daily and make a list of interesting moves to work towards. Sounds good for this challenge round. Might pick one to work on before I make the list though. DEX: Is also about building a list of skills, and a skill tree to build up to more challenging moves. Let's do it. CON: Walking. Food. Both good. Keep walking every day, unless there's a really good reason not to (like a thunderstorm). My current step count averages at about 5000 steps per day, with wild variance between days I don't work and days I do. Goal: get the weekly average up to 7500/day, and break 10,000 twice a week. Oh, and I'll also need to buy new shoes. 😅 INT: Continue on my reading plan. Currently reading Just One Damned Thing After Another. Non-fiction title for the month still undecided. (Mostly dickering between The Border by Erika Fatland and How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil.) WIS: Continue to work on making scripture reading a daily habit. Trying to link it with my Duolingo, which is a solid established habit at this point. CHA: I have a mental health type book. I think it will be useful. I'm also in an online CBT program. Do something from the book every day (reading or an activity), and the readings/activities my program assigns me. Occ: Respect the work/practice time I have set aside for myself by actually doing them. Art: my paperwork stack is two feet tall, and my try pile is cluttering up my closet. One item from each per day acted upon. Also, daily fiddle practice. @WhiteGhost and my long-planned mini-concert is going to be a beautiful disaster, but I want to hold up my end as best I can. Might pick a goal song this challenge too. Depends on how much of a struggle the daily practice is. Lang: Just keep on keeping on.

My goals are geared toward preparing for my introvert hiking adventure in June! I am super stoked for the trip. I'm hoping it will be rejuvenating and that I might learn a thing or two about myself. Last challenge my physical goals were: Move your feet, Endurance, and Strength. I did great on moving daily, pretty good on endurance, and pretty lack luster on strength. I feel that everything needs a bit more work to really settle into habit. Because they went well last time I combined daily movement and endurance into one maintenance task. Strength got it's own task because I really struggled with it. Physical Health: 1. Maintain progress made in last challenge Move your feet - get up an move daily (walk, hike, ruck, run, etc). Endurance 2 times a week - run/walk or ruck 2. Strength train 2 times a week - weights, body weight, core, or ruck. 3. Make it out for a hike at least twice during the challenge. Somewhere other than the little local nature preserve. Life Goal: A Cleaner House - do a 5 minute clean up daily before bed. Set a timer for five minutes and clean/tidy up. If I'm traveling I can clean/tidy up my luggage, hotel room, or car. If I'm sick in bed I can throw my pile of tissues away or something. I'm considering making this a 100 day project. On Going Projects not part of this challenge: Daily Fiddle Practice: This is a 100 day project - the goal is 100 straight days. Read 24 books in 2018: Only two completed so far Introvert Adventure Planning

My long-term goal is still to be awesome, as defined several months ago. Continuing with my quest, I still have several issues that keep coming up, so will address them this round, hopefully making some better habits. Physical Goals Eat low-carb. I define low-carb as anything below 100g of carbs per day, with 60g per day as the target to allow some overshoot. My goal is 100%, but I will count it good if I do it 80% of the time. I have been doing better lately, but not there yet. +2 STA, +2 CON, +1 CHR Work at learning a handstand. My long-term goals include a headstand, but handstands are more impressive. Steve just posted an article on how to gently pull it off. I will practice for 5min per day during the challenge. With any luck, I should be able to do it by the challenge end, since my major problem is dizziness inverted, not strength. +2 DEX, +2 STA Start tracking my workouts again. I used to track repetitions and weight, but my old PDA died and I have yet to find another app to do it well. I have a shiny android phone with a nice display (Nexus 4). I will find an app and start using it. +2 STRLife Quest I love playing my mandolin and violin, but don't do it enough to stay sharp. I will practice music for thirty minutes at least three times per week. Goal is five to seven times per week, but life has been a bit too complicated lately to make this realistic. +2 WIS, +2 CHR

After having several challenges under my belt, I have had beat into my thick head that I really can't do more than a couple of things at once and keep up with life. I have too many plates up in the air. So I am going to make this challenge very simple: Long Term Goal: Make a low-carb / primal diet a deeply ingrained habit. This will enable and boost almost everything I do, since it will give me more energy, help my fitness level, and speed my thoughts. Health Related I will stop eating excess sugar and starches. This means less than 100g of carbohydrates per day. STR +1 DEX +2 STA +2 CON +3 WIS +1 I will decrease my waist size by at least an inch, stretch goal two inches. I am currently at 37". CHR +2Life Related I will trade playing video games for singing/playing/recording/writing music. I have a large number of music related projects I need to get done. CHR +2 WIS +2Just to give a bit more accountability, I will buy the video game of their choice for each of my sons if I do not get at least a B in all items. Since they are somewhat addicted to video games, I really do not want to do this. This will get my "year to awesome" going in the right direction. Diet is the key to everything. I accidentally originally posted this in the last challenge thread a couple of days ago. My two day summary so far: Two days and I have managed almost perfect execution. I substituted a glass of water or a couple of nuts for my sugar urges, and that has seemed to work. Substituting music for video games has also been good. As the Power of Habit says, to override a habit, you need to replace it with a stronger one. So far, so good. I spent the last two nights cleaning up a set of Renaissance dances I digitized from a couple of old vinyl records. I burned them to CDs for the car and created FLACs to use at work. The recording I did last year for my family helped make it easier. I know the software (Audacity) a lot better. I still need to photograph the album covers for reference. It was kind of late last night when I finished. My plan for today is to pick another thing off my big hit list I generated last challenge and start getting it done, after I finish the album covers.

After having several challenges under my belt, I have had beat into my thick head that I really can't do more than a couple of things at once and keep up with life. I have too many plates up in the air. So I am going to make this challenge very simple: Health Related I will stop eating excess sugar and starches. This means less than 100g of carbohydrates per day. STR +1 DEX +2 STA +2 CON +3 WIS +1 I will decrease my waist size by at least an inch, stretch goal two inches. I am currently at 37". CHR +2Life Related I will trade playing video games for singing/playing/recording/writing music. I have a large number of music related projects I need to get done. CHR +2 WIS +2Just to give a bit more accountability, I will buy the video game of their choice for each of my sons if I do not get at least a B in all items. Since they are somewhat addicted to video games, I really do not want to do this. This will get my "year to awesome" going in the right direction. Diet is the key to everything.