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All children, except one, grow up. However, some of them grow up quite a bit less than the others. This was the case for Lalie. This does not refer solely to stature, although she did seem to have gone 'round the corner the day that height was passed out to all the other elves. She never stopped playing with her oldest friend, her best friend: Peter Pan. Sometimes she would have to play a different game for a bit—the one where she pretended to be an all-the-way grown-up, and do things like sit at a desk and put paper in the copying machine when it made that beeping noise. Peter didn’t like that game and he always went away when she played it, but at the end of the day he would come back and tell her a better game to play. Lalie had been learning all sorts of new games since she got to Neverland, and she loved all of them. She knew that if she wanted to be The Pan someday then she would need to be able to beat the Lost Boys at all of them, and the grown-ups had always said that you should work to get really good at just one thing before you start on a different one. But she couldn't pick just one. That made her sad until Peter reminded her that grown-ups just say that because they can't handle more than one game at a time. Growing up makes your imagination shrivel, so just like fairies only have room for one feeling at a time, grown-ups only have room for one game--if they can even handle one. Lalie felt silly when she remembered this, but she didn't mind. On the contrary, she felt silly quite a lot and generally enjoyed it. There was no reason to try to choose. She would practice how to fight, how to fly, and how to crow all at the same time. Main Quest: I have three specific, small goals that I want to achieve, but they don't tie together into an overall goal that I can achieve in six weeks. So I guess my overall goal is to make my three little goals. Got to fight: Be able to do conveyor belts and fishtails with my staff. I can unreliably do conveyor belts to the left, but I have yet to make that translate to the other direction. (Which frustrates me; I’m right-handed and I’m having trouble getting my right hand to duplicate what my left hand can do.) I also need to get fishtails because this is a basic technique that other things build on. For fishtails I need more forearm strength; for both I need more practice. I do set a timer for myself when I'm practicing because otherwise I'll lose track of time and keep going for hours. Ability to do both moves with both hands by the end will be an automatic A. But if I can’t, I’m not counting that as an automatic failure—it would probably mean that I need more than six weeks of practice to learn them. In that case, I’ll follow the guidelines below for grading myself: A: Practice at least 1.5 hours per week, for a total of 9 hours by the end. +3 Dex, +1 Wis. B: Practice 6 hours to 8 hours 59 minutes by the end. +1 Dex, +1 Wis. C: Practice 3 hours to 5 hours 59 minutes by the end, +1 Dex. 37%37% 200/540 minutes Got to fly: Consistently go barefoot running without hurting myself. I need more practice with this before I start giving myself related goals. If I hurt myself by pushing myself too hard instead of invoking my Self-Care Is Not Laziness Clause this will be an automatic fail. If I hurt myself in a different way I will adjust my goals accordingly. A: Walk/run preferred route 3 times per week, 18 total by the end. +2 Sta, +1 Wis, +1 Con. B: Walk/run preferred route 12-17 times total by the end. +1 Sta, +1 Wis. C: Walk/run preferred route 6-11 times total by the end. +1 Sta. 38.8%38.8% 7/18 runs Got to crow: Be able to do my bodyweight routine with three sets of ten regular pushups. What does this have to do with crowing? I enjoy the crow pose (lame pun is lame!) and want to branch out from that. I need more upper body strength before I can manage other goals that will go in this section, and I generally need more strength overall. A: Do bodyweight routine at least 2 times per week, 12 total by the end. +2 Str, +2 Dex. B: Do bodyweight routine 9-11 times total by the end. +1 Str, +1 Dex. C: Do bodyweight routine 6-8 times total by the end. +1 Str. 8.33%8.33% 1.5/12 workouts Life Quest: Try to find places to go to make more friends. I only have a few friends. I'm usually happy with that arrangement, but I rarely get to see my friends anymore, and my psychiatrist helped me realize that I'm lonely. I have a really difficult time finding people who share my interests AND general moral inclinations. Usually I find that I don't have common interests with the people at church, and a lot of the other nerds don't want to hang out with me after they find out I'm religious. (Or after I don't laugh at dirty jokes.) This is a big city--there have got to be more people out there I can hit it off with. I know how to make and keep friends--the hard part is meeting people. I don't think it'd be realistic for me to expect myself to go somewhere every week, so my goal is to do something every week to find places to go, or to go to one if I find something. A: Do something to find friends each week. +2 Wis, +1 Cha. B: Do something to find friends for five weeks. +1 Wis, +1 Cha. C: Do something to find friends for four weeks. +1 Wis. 33.33%33.33% The "Self-Care Is Not Laziness" Clause: I have a tendency to pursue goals too aggressively and end up hurting myself. Sometimes this is just due to indulging my enthusiasm too much, but some of it also goes back to a history of self-harm. This clause is to help prevent me from doing that. I will not lower my scores if I miss a day because I think I'm getting sick or developing an injury. I will adjust my plans accordingly depending on the situation. If I need to invoke this clause enough times it may result in more points going into Wisdom or Dexterity (I can still stretch when sick). 1 use in place of a strength workout.