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Good afternoon fellow rebels, I have tried this a couple different times, and under a different name. I have burned that building down because I need to start over, and reading through Level Up Your Life I feel like I am finally getting a hold of my path. There has been a lot of planning, and a lot of dreaming, and now is time for action. Besides all of my big bullet points, I need to choose those 4 things to make actionable items and stick to it. So here, we, GO! Fitness: Go to the gym 3 times a week: To be honest, I am mostly there already with this. I have a lot of fitness goals for this year and beyond, and making the trip to the gym is really one of the biggest habits I need to instill. Stretch 15 minutes everyday: Secondary to my fitness goals is stretching. I am a desk dweller, working from home, and do not focus on the smaller maintenance things very well. This is starting to hamper me in a lot of ways, and needs to be addressed. The goal is to complete this every morning around 10. My morning salvo of work is typically done by then and it is a good time to take a break. Mental: Post on rebellion 1x a day, blog post 1 every other: Going to lump these together because the first part should be mostly self explanatory. One of my long term goals is to get paid for writing, whether it be as an online contributor, or off of my own website, but get paid in some capacity. Writing more and developing both my voice and consistency is what is going to make that happen. No alcohol until Feb 4th: This is under mental because it really is a mental thing for me. I like the way I feel after a couple beers, and social drinking is something I have been doing for a long time. However other than basic training, I know I have not gone 4 weeks without a drink since then, and I think it is time to give it a shot. The only caveat to this is I have another goal of finishing both a Gundam model and a Halo model, and if I do, I get to open the Japanese Sake I got for Xmas. These clash a little, but I think it is fair enough. These are my rules gosh darn it. Other than that, honing my list of quests and goals is going to continue through the month, and beyond, and I need to be more productive with my time in general. See you guys on the flip side!

To be honest with myself, my last two challenges have pretty much been crap. And after some deep thinking this weekend, I'm going to make a restart both of this current challenge and restart my thinking here. I'm going to get a little deeper in my new challenge post so check me out there!!

Adventure! Excitement! Cthulhu! Join Ravnos on his ninth challenge as he battles demons, breaks PRs and continues on his merry quest for strength, honor and wisdom. Come! Join the merriment! Weep at the tragedy. Cheer on the excitement! Ninth official challenge time. Let's see where we're at with this. I've reached many of the goals I started out on NF with. I've gotten my waist to below 32 inches (and still improving) and I'm dropped my body fat considerably. However, it's time for a change. My focus now is on strength and endurance gains, as well as putting some muscle back on. GAINZ! I, of course, have the continued goals of working toward doing Salmon Ladders, dropping to 8% BF, eliminating stomach fat, squatting 1.5x body weight, deadlifting 2x body weight and OHP, Bench and Row 1x bodyweight. Last challenge kind of fell through the cracks and my life got hectic afterward, preventing me from signing on here... ever. In that time I maintained my paleo diet, participated and defeated my first Spartan Sprint and hung out with the ever-amazing, Teros. As we go into 2015, however, I'm recentering my life around what's actually important, me. This means less time stressing about a shitty job (I did not end up succeeding in my goal of getting a new job by the end of 2014... working on that) and more time on my health and personal goals. So without further ado, here are my quests for the first challenge of 2015 and my return to NF. Quest 1 - One More Rep Continue improving my lifts. My main, main focus this challenge is going to be breaking a 100lb Press. I've been plateaued between 90 and 95 pounds for a while now, and I took nearly 3 months off from the gym, so it's fallen back down to 85... Now it's time to break down my press technique and start making some real fucking progress here. Gym three times a week, no excuses, and a focus on OHP for gainz. Quest completion - 3 workouts, every week. +3 STR. Bonus: OHP 100lb 5x5. Quest 2 - Adapted Paleo I've adapted my paleo diet to improve gains, because I was struggling to stop losing weight. I added milk and potatoes back in (organic milk from grass-fed cows) and I've seen some great results. No fat increase, no gut problems and my weight went back up to 160 and stabilized. SO! the plan is 6/7 days of the week I eat modified paleo. Saturday is my cheat day, were I can have a little sugar, fruit, whatever. I still avoid gluten because it makes my gut very unhappy. Quest completion - follow diet plan 100%. +3 CON. Quest 3 - Nerd Fitness! I have failed miserably at even signing on here to check PMs since October, so it's time to get back on a regular checking/posting schedule here. My goal here is to sign on at least three times a week, update here and check friend's challenges. Let's get the gang back together... Quest completion - +3 CHA Quest 4 - Stop spending so much god damn money Try to recover from blowing some savings. Part of this will be selling some items in my home (comics, Magic The Gathering cards and vinyl). The other part is GETTING A NEW JOB. I've been doing weekly IT training with a friend of mine, so the goal here is to make sure I go every Tuesday and work on my skillz. Plain and simple. Motivation! Quest completion - Increase savings. Do job training, start applying for IT positions. +3 WIS Quest 5 - Turn on endurance I've been ignoring my endurance and conditioning for a while now, and while I felt comfortable doing the Spartan, I know I can make some marked improvements. My goal here is to do some running, once a week. Probably in the morning. I don't mind running in the cold, so we'll get this started soon. So... Quest completion - One run per week, 3-5 miles. +3 END More to come!