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So I've been feeling like starting a YouTube channel about my art, and being a working mom but finding time to game still. But my biggest problem is I don't want my family to see it. My sisters are really critical and I wouldn't hear the end of it if they saw me on YouTube. My husband keeps saying, " Who cares?" True. I just still can't stand them finding out about my personal life. Any suggestions? Any tips on starting a YouTube channel and a blog?

Challenge number 12. It is now turning into autumn down here. This challenge I will start to reduce my intensity, and the next winter challenges will just be enough to keep the momentum ticking over. My demon brain keeps on telling me I am not doing enough, so: On the good side: I wake up most mornings at 5. I do Stronglifts 3 days a week. My breakfast is paleo 80% of the time. I am at work before 7 every morning I do some rolling and stretching almost every day at work. I do 15 minutes of meditation almost every day. I clean around the workshop every day. My lunches are 95% paleo. I leave work most days before 17:30 I take my dog for a walk after work, this include a wrestling session on the grass. I am busy teaching him basic commands. I do some gardening at home every day. My suppers are 90% paleo. I play some games every evening. I take my dog at 9 for a late night walk. I work on my running technique for the first part of the walk. At the turnaround I do stretching and movement stuff. I am in bed before 11 most nights. I have no debts. I owe very little stuff. On the bad side: I do not get enough sleep. I am busy moving from a weight-loss diet to a weight-lifting diet, and I am still in the fumbling stage. So too much chocolate. I do not clean enough. I am still battling depression and anxiety, and not looking forward to winter at all. I have to buy winter clothes, everything I do own is too big for me. On the ugly side: My life is too interwoven with the business, and things are not going well at all. I've got a very painful sciatic nerve thing going on in my left leg. I've got very little time for myself. I am poor. I've got no friends except online. And the people I do see on occasion I do not like that much. Random goal: I need to get together some money for a holiday, my last one was in 2009, and that was with family. And for this challenge: 1. Journal Write something every day. This must include 3 things I am grateful for. And I have to do it using proper typing, not my usual hunt and peck style. I can do it, I am just too lazy to change. 2. Checklists Keep on making checklists. It works. I must add in 3 things for work: Do something every day for my soul, Do something every day for money, Do something every day for other people to do. 3. Stronglifts Ja, ja , ja. Keep on doing it. No magic involved. If needed, stretching, flexing and rolling is a good substitute if my sciatic nerve is playing up again. 4. The life quest thingy. This thingy is called a website. I want a vanity website all of my own, I've registered the domain name and everything, I just have to do it.

1. Jumpstart my journaling. For this challenge I am going to do the 31 day challenge from the Art of Manliness. I did keep a journal in previous challenges, but the habit has gotten lost, this is now time to pick it up again. Saturdays and Sundays are excluded. 2. Make lists. I have been meaning to do it for a long time, so maybe this will be a good time. Wrote out checklists of things that I must do every day and put it up to keep myself accountable. It is bad to never manage to do things that will only take a minute or two. Also from the Art of Manliness. Some sort of a trend forming? 3. Stronglifts Been doing this last challenge. And in between. I am getting some nice muscles. Life quest: Website. This is now the third (fourth?) challenge for this, and I have done nothing so far. At least I am consistent, but I think this is one streak that needs to be broken.

Main Quest: My primary goal is to add 10 lbs in six weeks to my 5-rep max for squat and bent-over row. My motivation: I really just want to get bigger and stronger. I am a relatively small guy (5'8" 165 lbs currently) and I want to put on some more muscle. I have already put on about 25 lbs from what my natural weight would be and I would consider myself an intermediate lifter. I want to start back into a program that hits strength but really focuses most of the effort on hypertrophy. I have been as big as 185 lbs in the past and I would like to get back to that point within the next 18-24 months. Mission 1: Do not miss any workout days. I am usually good about this, but I have noticed a trend in the last year where the continuity of my program gets screwed up when things get really busy in my personal / work life. I have recently rearranged my daily schedule and that seems to be working well. Here is my workout schedule (I won't go into the finer points because no one wants to read that): Thursday: Legs, glutes, lower back Friday: Chest and back Saturday: Shoulders and arms Sunday: Legs, glutes, lower back Monday: Chest and back Tuesday: Shoulders and arms Wednesday: OFF Note: this may seem like too much frequency, but I have adjusted the number of sets per workout to reflect half of what most people would do for a single workout (once a week). There is a lot of evidence to suggest that splitting up that workout into two workouts and overloading the muscle twice (but with the same overall volume) will stimulate more hypertrophy than simply hitting the muscle once per week. You could do the same thing using three workouts, but as a famous lady once observed, "ain't nobody got time fo' 'dat." Mission 2: Don't hurt your shoulder, idiot! So I worked bench press a little bit too much in the last few months. I made some really great progress on the lift and added weight to my max, but the volume caught up to me. I can definitely feel some clicking in my shoulder that has worsened slightly, as well as a very little bit of pain when I bench. So I have completely cut out the bench press and all variations thereof, as well as all other exercises that cause my shoulder to grind like that. It is severely limiting what I can do for chest, but I have found one exercise that doesn't work the shoulder in the same way and is allowing me to work my chest pain free. I am resting and icing it, as well as using an anti-inflammatory. This way I can treat the irritation before it actually becomes an injury and let my shoulder heal fully. I don't plan on going back to the bench press for several months, when I am sure that the shoulder has healed. I know this will cause me to lose some of my gains, but that is preferable to knocking myself out of training forever. Mission 3: Work on my website for 30+ minutes per day So one of my side projects is putting together a website with one of my good friends. I am currently in the stage of writing the substantive material we are going to use on the site. It is the type of thing I can sneak in here and there, while still making good progress on it. I am going to spend 30+ minutes per day working on this project. I would like to spend an hour, but I want to make it harder for me to find an excuse not to fit it in, so I am setting my official goal at 30 minutes. Mission 4: Eat 3,000 calories and >165g of protein per day This is nothing revolutionary, but I have a bad habit of not preparing my meals ahead of time. This often results in haphazardly throwing together some meal or, more often, just missing out on calories I needed. I will consume 3,000 kcal per day and greater than 165g of protein per day. Life goal: More family time! I have been getting better at this, but I still need to improve. I would like to spend at least 30 minutes of quality time with my kids each day. I am defining "quality time" narrowly, however, as time where I am able to give my full, undivided attention to them. This could be wrestling time, going for a walk, going to the playground, etc.