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It took me a couple tries to figure out how I was going to share this image with you but this is my NF Challenge for myself. It's imperfect because that's just how life is sometimes. I'm The Most Loathed and I've done a few challenges and been keeping a battle log lately. I've decided to jump into a challenge because it's been a while since I've done one and because I've dealt with a lot of change in recent weeks and am working on trying to settle into habits one again. First, the big ass photo above. These are my quests for the challenge. They come in the categories of Social, Training and Writing. If I decide to add more, I'll add more but those are my baselines. Training I've been working out for years. It hasn't always been perfect, it hasn't always been good, but it's been there. My new schedule has really cramped my training schedule so I'm trying to reestablish the habit. I teach fitness classes on Tuesday and Wednesday. Saturday I take a fitness class but at least once a month, sometimes twice a month I teach that class instead. It's a mixed class so it's not really my normal level of intensity. When I'm not training I'm trying to balance my relationships versus my need to train. In a magical world where I had all the time in the world, I'd work out everyday but I know enough by now to leave at least one day empty and also to realize that it's quite likely that at least one additional training session per week will get blown up. In addition, when I write the training program for my classes each week, I like to give it a trial run, so that's one more workout eaten right there. I'm trying to trail three times a week, outside of classes. I know I'm going to be traveling one week so that's 9 sessions. I'm giving myself one session of mercy. I have noticed that my mobility has suffered in recent months. The best fix that I know for this is Active Release, foam rolling for most people. I also get a marathon stick and a lacrosse ball involved but the principle is the same. So, I'm going to challenge myself to do two sessions of this per week, during the challenge as well. Writing I've made a choice to improve my handwriting. To take some the of the drudgery out of that I have bought two refillable fountain pens and some nice paper. My fountain pens are bottom of the price spectrum for refillables, a pair of Pilot Metropolitans, one in a medium nib and one in a fine nib. I also bought a Retro 51 rollerball pen for times when that's the right choice. I bought some Rhodia A5 dotpads for the fountain pens and that's what you see in the image above. I've been working on my printing and it's gotten better but I have lots of practice ahead of me. So far it's largely been just free form writing which is a good opportunity to pratice writing and just clear my head. What I've not been doing are deliberate exercises like just repeating a letter and really trying to get it right. I have 28 days and 26 letters. I feel like I should give the whole alphabet a go in lower case. Next challenge I can try uper case. I also got me a penpal. It's not on the list specifically because writing to him will fall under the freeform writing. I've had three penpals in my life now. Sometime back in middle school or so we were assigned one from another school. In college I got a german penpal because I was studying german. She wanted to practice her English (which was pretty close to as good as mine) and I wanted to practice my German (which had a long ways to go to fluency). Now, this guy who live down in Georgia. I sent my first letter yesterday and am awaiting my own first letter. Social I'm a nerd just like most of you. I'm quite content to not talk to people. When I do they often do things like ask about my family or weekend. I sometimes respond but don't bother to ask in return, which I think is the social norm. To try and make myself take a more active interest, I'm going to try and learn the names of the family members of my three closest coworkers. I have no idea how I'll go about it but I'm going to try. Also, because I'm now teaching these classes, I'm going to try and learn several of the attendees names. I've picked up a few already but being able to call anyone by name seems like a good skill to have I'm taking a trip during this challenge This heading one compounding factor to this challenge is tha the week of the 20th, I'll be running around the Rocky Mountains with some friends. I've attempted to account for this in my calculations but we'll just see how this plays. I've never taken a vacation with another couple before. I know the other husband has ambitions of summitting fourteeners but I also think he's physically less prepared than he thinks. I also think he may try to push on regardless. Deliberately Excluded I'm not trying to do everything, here are some things that i'm not doing this challenge although they may just come up from time to time. Diet - I'm not following a specific diet. I tend to eat paleo-ish but I've not been particularly dialed in of late. I'm just going to try and keep myself below 210 and call it good enough, especially with a trip in here. I will likely mention what I eat at times but I'm not tracking anything here. Meditation - I got on a good kick of meditation several months back. It lasted about three months before I just dropped it. At some point I'd like to get back to the habit but for now it's not on the radar. Classes/Instruction - I don't have any goals around the act of teaching my classes. I will definitely talk about it but I'm not trying to measure it.