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Literally, but more on that later. Hi lovelies! How are you all doing? 🤗 Feels a bit strange to be back. Back to the forum I mean, not back to real life. 😄 I’ve been traveling around south east Asia since January and it’s been quite awesome and quite eye opening. I’ve been to Bali, Singapore, Borneo, Brunei, mainland Malaysia, Thailand for rock climbing and pole dancing and now I’m in the Philippines where I did marine conservation volunteering for two months and where I’m now going to learn to freedive for the next 3-6 months! I’m super excited and super scared because I have no idea whether I’ll be physically or mentally capable of doing it and could do with moral support. My goals for now are 1 do the training to the best of my ability and try not to get frustrated or pressured by benchmarks and numbers. 2 keep a detailed log of the training That’s it for now, maybe I’ll add something more specific later when I better understand what I’ve gotten myself into. 😅

I'm new to NF, created a character about a year ago but didn't do anything further until I signed up for the Academy about 2 weeks ago. Claiming myself as an Assassin has really helped to inspire and motivate (because how awesome is it to say: I'm an Assassin!) I am frightfully overweight, as the years have gone by and I have slowly let things fall away. But I'm done with that now. I am fascinated by human evolutionary potential, how our bodies are tailor-made for things like endurance running, freediving, moving over difficult terrain by leaping, climbing, swimming, etc.; and even things like echolocation and magnetoreception are a part of our evolutionary heritage. I'm so happy to have found a community that is interested in health and fitness and movement and strength and totally nerding out while going on awesome adventures. This is my first 4 week Challenge (so let me know if I'm doing this wrong), and it is going to be a doozy. I am going on a trip to Egypt for 4 weeks from 01/18 to 02/18. For the first week I will be taking a freediving course with freedivedahab.com on the Red Sea. (freediving is basically scuba diving without the scuba gear; just one breath and total freedom.) So my challenge goals will be centered around my trip. 1. learn to freedive to at least 60' (I've never done this before but 60' is supposedly a reasonable goal for a week of training.) 2. leave the country (kind of a cheat since I bought the ticket a couple months ago, but this is a very important goal for me as I am a born traveler and yet have been stuck in place for too many years now.) 3. be 95% vegan (I've been vegetarian for about 25 years but struggle with going full, or nearly full, vegan - which I want to do for ethical reasons first, health reasons second. Basically 95% means only an occasional, small cheat like a candy bar or a slice of cheese pizza) 4. lose 20 lbs. (Not to make a habit of stepping on a scale, as that can lead to frustration, but a loss of 20# would be a wonderful and noticeable start to my goal of being a lean, mean Assassin!)

Epic Quest: Run my own Business New Year=new energy, new life, and new adventure! I’m so excited for what this year will bring! I will be starting my own business in the spring. I have a lot to learn though and a lot of things that need to get done before I register my business. So here we go! Journey to the Bottom of the Ocean I'm going to the deep unknown this month, to start the new year right and to gain experience for my budding business. This is all about freediving and breath holding. I want to improve my flexibility along with my leg (tail) strength as well. I need to be powerful enough and have a great breath hold in order to explore the dark depths. Build Tail Strength My tail is quite heavy out of water and I can’t assume there will always be a sailor willing to carry me to and fro at my leisure. Now in the water it’s almost weightless, but I have to displace a lot water while I swim in order to propel myself faster or dive. I need to gain tail strength to lift my tail on land and to dive deeper on less air. M-strength training, W-yoga, F-body weight training. Swim the Distance They don’t call it 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for nothing! I'm setting out to improve my endurance in and out of tail by swimming at least 300m a week (100m Monofin swim, 100m mermaid swim, 100m free swim). That's just the minimum, but I will be adding 25m each time I swim if I can. Training Under the Pressure Get it? The deeper you go the greater the pressure? But in all seariousness (oh yes I love terrible puns), this is only a pass or fail, unless it takes longer than expected. I will work on getting freediver certified this month. Send Word of my Journey’s End Once I return form my journey I must tell everyone what I've learned and what I've seen. At the end of the challenge once (if) I get certified, I will notify my agents along with sending my updated portfolio photos. Side QuestsWith any good Journey, there's always side quests to complete. These little add-ons will not give me any attribute stats, but will instead contribute to my XP once the EPIC QUEST page is launched. These are things I need to work often throughout the year. Quests are as follows: Linguistic Mastery Learn 280 Vocab words this monthGold KeepingSave $10 this monthKnowledge ExpansionRead 2 books this month