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RAISE THE BAR !!!! ^CHORD This challenge is going to be about raising the bar! And that includes working on the F bar chord in guitar too, because boy - that thing is a little punk. For a long time NF challenger, it's very easy to get into the place of just doing the same old same old. And that's great. But it's time for me to add a few rings to my tree trunk, -er, I am talking about 'growth', not putting weight on lol! I've coasted a bit and want to get back into growing as a person; improving myself physically, emotionally, spiritually and relationally. That's too much to try and do all at once, so we'll break it down into smaller things that get focused on per challenge. When one gets leveled up, we work on the next, and so on. I am also setting a long term goal here, in writing. I want to compose and record an original song before I am 50. (Honestly, I think I can nail that one far before the expiration date, but I didn't want to feel pressured - I want to enjoy the learning process, so we're setting this out there a few years.) Now for the list of longer term things I want to start working on over the next few months. Understand Starpuck, be the best Starpuck I can be. Step 1: Read "The Road Back to You" (An Enneagram Thingy) Conquer fear of change, and move out into my own place - be it an apartment or a house. Step 1: Rework budgets, set savings goals and plans, use envelope method for 'allowance/eating out'. Find guitar teacher, take a short term session of lessons. Step 1: Reach out to Perry's music. Stop judging teachers by awful pictures, lol! Go meet them. 5 WEEK CHALLENGE GOALS Goal #1 - FOOD! In 5/4 Timing - What? This means, aim to eat 5 times through the day, with quarter note sized meals lol. I was debating if I wanted to track calories, but coming from a total free for all, I don't want to swing too hard to the other end of the spectrum. I think just being mindful will get me back to a good 'starting point'. Plan: Eat Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, Dinner, Snack each day. Avoid adding extra snacks, especially in the evening or on weekends. Track It: Must note when I overdo the snacks, otherwise, each day assumed to have been 'in time' with the band. Goal #2 - Groove and Move - This is about keeping my physical body up to snuff. I want to be healthy and active long term, and that means putting in the work now. I also have noticed that over the past several years, the better my nutrition and sleep have been, the less illness I've had to face. That seems like one heck of a perk there. Groove is for strength training (not that I'm doing grease the groove) and Move is for any other intentional movement. I want to keep my cardio/pulmonary working well too, so getting heart rate up and lungs kicking is a goal, but it can be chill like walking or hiking too. (Not that either of those will be happening during the midst of winter. Plan: 2-3 Strength Days / Week. (Winter means less options for cardio, so a great time to increase strength days to 3.) 2+ other activity days. Track It: Yeah. Easy track here. Did I do them, or skip them? Goal #3 - Pick, Pluck, and Pen - This is the creative ensemble. It covers my music practice, which, I have set a pretty decent achievable goal of 2 hours / instrument per week, and 3 hours of art. I often go over, but this allows me to still hit targets on weeks that have extra changes in the line up, or outings, or hiccups that make practicing harder. Plan: 2 hours / week of guitar, bass and piano. 3 hours of art. Track It: Use Timelog app to keep track of this. Great app! 10/10 would recommend. General To Do's - Boldness, Books and Budgets - This final goal is just to track that I am remembering and paying attention to Step 1's of some of the longer term goals. I don't want to put "weekly" rules and requirements on this, so they will just be general to do's, and check marks that I am, in fact, putting some time and thought into them. Continue search for guitar lessons, check Perry's out. Local is a + and they are cheapest I've found. Read the book. Take it slow. Add notes in the side or on Post-Its. Use this to continue to sort out my challenges and learn to overcome my repeat hurdles. Create budget. Set up house savings / move money monthly into this. Create envelopes and use them. (app, or actual cash?) Start planning for 2023 vacations. (Hawaii still on radar?) Smaller trip / via car somewhere. Start working on the audio interface and software. Take it slow. Don't panic. Also - after original excitement about this theme, lol, I might change it in a week or so. My mood is all over the place right now! LOL. Short Bio

THE CHALLENGE!!! STARPUCK FIGHTS THE BEAST I've fought this beast before. He's often goes by the title Gloom Monster, but we're referring to him as The Beast on this challenge. He gets more powerful as summer ends and autumn gives way to winter. He's a little stronger this time around, because our heroine has been fighting a side of apathy lately. One of my greatest weapons against that is momentum. But to get momentum, you have to get a first step underfoot and follow it up with a second, and third and so on. Bio: ON TO THE CHALLENGE Doing much of the same old same old! In fact, I found a google sheet tracker I made in May 2021 and just changed a few of the things I plan on tracking. I really need to get my food consistency back in place. I do fine at work and during the early part of the week. Going into the Thursday gaming night and weekend tends to unravel full tilt. Exercise is not a problem ever, but I'd like to be more focused in what I am choosing to do. Art is back on the table, on top of me trying to practice three instruments at once. (I did mention Ranger, right?) Goals: Track food daily. If unable to track on a weekend meal, eat sensibly, guesstimate cals. Exercise 5x a week. Art some times a week. Music - try to get 3-4 practices on each instrument, length of time not important. (** Might switch this to amount of time on each per week. Some days I get on a roll, and might jam out for a good amount of time on just one instrument.) Track Spending. I gotta get this under control too. As a side note, I am 8 sessions into our latest TTRPG game; Vampire the Masquerade. I am SO into this game right now, so lots of art for it has been kicked out. It's also where I have borrowed the idea of fighting against the beast within. For vampires, that beast is their monstrous side. For me, it's apathy and inconsistency as we hit the S.A.D heavy days. I'll try and catch up on sharing some art (and a quick backdrop as to what it means.) Vampire Art Taking Zero Week to get slowly back into a better groove after this last hurrah, lol. See ya Rebels tomorrow!

Let's keep the music themes going eh? 8 weeks till Vacation, or 4/4! And I've set myself four goals to chart. I still haven't gotten my consistency underfoot, but I got really close to nailing it this last week. (Then had a really stressful weekend and by Sunday, I needed liquid courage and woops.) So, this challenge will be a continuation of trying to get my chops back. Figuratively. Exercise Goals - 5x a week. I do best with strength twice a week and random intentional movement on at least three occasions. Some weeks a third strength is fine, but I know I don't do well with 3x every week right now. Music & Art - I was able to get 4 sessions for each instrument in most of last challenge, and, since I want to improve my skills, I do need to aim for this kind of thoughtful amount of time spent. Monday's and Tuesday's work great for getting lots of music in, so do Friday's and Sundays. The rest of the days, if I just strum a bit before other commitments, cool beans. I would also like to get pencil to sketchbook again too, but no pressure on this. Food - Either track, or don't eat like an ahole. Pretty straight forward here. I know what I should be eating, and how much. Just need to do it. Socials & Self Time - I need to work on two things. Getting social and being with people, but also carving out time for myself to unwind and reflect. This can be tallied up in an easy, totally contradicting phrase. "Start saying yes -- Start saying no." Going to track on here, because that should have me checking the forums more often lol! Weekly trackers below. **ALSO! I want to start doing the recreate gifs thing, so look for that! EXERCISE 🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲 FOOD 🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲 ARTSY STUFF 🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲 PIANO 🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲 BASS 🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲 GUITAR 🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲🔲 SKETCH/DOODLE

Perfectly timed you say? Timed?!? Perhaps, because someone has defected to the rhythm section friends! I, along with some other wonderful nerds, decided to "#BackToMusic2022" and folks, I really have done a smashing job of this. I've been playing piano consistently for the whole year! About 6 weeks ago, I also picked up acoustic guitar and started slowing learning that. (It's wrecking my finger tips yo! LOL - And the D chord is impossible for me to play nicely even still.) And, so, what else does one do in that case but decide .oO( Clearly, I am not learning enough instruments, I should buy a bass! It will help my fingers get used to strings, but more gently!) So I bought a bass last week and it's now in my possession. As far as everything else goes... I have major regrets that one thing after another this year has become an excuse for why I am not on track to be slimmed down and back to strong and healthy for the summer. Part of that is, well, health. In January I started dealing with some weird, non-critical but annoying symptoms that lead to several trips to docs and diagnosed theories on what is to blame. About 2 weeks ago, the last of the weird little symptoms were gone and I was anxious for not only a return to feeling myself, but also a much anticipated vacation in early May. And then I got Covid. In fact, I still have 3 more days before I can leave the 10 day 'quarantine and/or mask up' schtick and return to normal routine. I had it mildly, but, as someone who has not even had so much as a two day sniffle in like 4 years, being sick is still being sick. I am not quite fully back on my feet yet, but I have high hopes that at the 2 week proper mark I should be pretty much okay. It did cause my sis and I to also have to cancel our trip. Soooo, yeah, long and short of it is that 2022 hasn't been the easiest year thus far. But, post recovery here, plus the turning of the seasons, plus a brand new bass in my possession are all great reasons to get back to the right tempo! I also am really inspired to clean up my eating habits again after this whole Dances with Germs thing. A well fueled, well nourished body just does things better, usually. I've also been watching more anime again lately, so my interest in getting my art going again is kind flooning. So we've got, piano, guitar, bass, art, strength training, cardio health routines, and my usual D&D nights and friends hang outs, lol. I know that tracking food works best for me to shed a few pounds, so I need to get into the mindset to do that. If I do more cooking with the boyfriend, (who also just had covid, but we didn't catch it from each other actually) that will help with tracking on the weekends, and reining in the spending that's gotten out of hand with me. Woops. So, some goals. Track Food Daily - if a meal out can't be actively tracked, then rely on sensible eating for that meal. Strength Train - 2x a week is my sweet spot. Cardio-Ish - 3x a week. Piano - 4x a week Bass - 4x a week /or 20 minutes daily (lets see how it goes) Guitar - 15m daily has been working, but with other instruments, I won't keep this as a MUST do daily. Art - 2-3x a week, let's see how it fits in Connect - Do that connect with people thing that I talked about last challenge. Follow on the forums, dangit, Starpuck, DO THIS!

Brief semi-place-holder. Yup I'm turning up this month. There's all sorts of life stuff (mostly good) trying to take all my time, but no, I'm going to 1) play that bass 2) actually do my morning injury prevention routines (back maintenance, dodgy foot mobility, arm flexibility) more mornings than not. 3) Exercise = make it to yoga, turn up at JJ and kickboxing, do some running All other things are optional (except for making it to work on time, that one is compulsory, oh and playing with cats, also compulsory). Am I all or nothing it again? Maybe..... But I do not like the nothing end of the scale. Good to be back, in preparation I got to the gym yesterday, and did my morning body maintenance today. Feels good. Now emergency practise (mighty hard music to learn by Saturday - a nice mix of Milhaud, Mozart and Schoenberg, but ouch, it is a challenge to learn).

Hey everybody! In case you´re wondering, I took a while off and used week zero to think about life, lifting and love. Which takes me to my challenge: You´re used to me filling my threads with tons of gifs and pics (because more gifs is more gainz u know), you´ll be surprised. No funny gif themed stuff, I´ll keep it simple this time: BarbarianBassBro starts success simply living, lifting, loving - short BBBSSSLLL Quest 1) Lift 3 times a week and don´t forget the accessorys Quest 2) Eat selfcooked meals and drink at least 2 liter water, avoid fast food and such. Ah and stop drinking soda! Quest 3) Get at least 8 hours of sleep, before early shift at least 6 hours Quest 4) Meditate daily for 15mins Bonus Quests as needed I´ll try to get up to date with your challenges and update mine daily if possible. Now I need something to blow my headache away...

And I'm back! Late for the challenge, but I'm here. And that is the important thing. Life got complicated and busy and I've not been here for a while....... I'm not going to make this a massively complicated challenge - and I'm allowed some wriggle room. After being complicated and busy, I then ended up feeling quite bleugh - tired and not right and a bit post viral (of course after being crazy busy I got sick, cause thats how it works) and generally faded. Not how I like to be. So I've tried to remember to do stuff that makes me feel good, and I've started cleaning up my diet , and all of this has helped. Feels like I'm heading in the right direction...... Goals: 1) MOVE - ideally 6 days a week, the big movements are a selection of martial arts (jujitsu and kickboxing), running, biking and yoga. The little movements are going to be back care exercises, feet care exercises, and stretches (focussing on shoulders, hips and lower back rotation). Monday is most likely to be my don't move much day, aka rest day. 2) Play that bass - ideally 7 days a week, but 6 or 5 is ok, less than that and I never thrive...... Who knew music was addictive? 3) Look after me - if I need more rest, take it. Block out time for baking (I do better on home made gf bread, gf crispbreads and my own muesli, so make them!) and cooking (having a pot of something in the fridge for quick meals works for me). 4) Play time - two strands to this, carving out a good amount of time to spend with my lovely man (who I thought I had an abbreviation for, but it didn't look right here, possibly HP cause he'll hate that almost as much as the bailed from abbreviation), and cat therapy - cause that makes both me and them happy. Walks with the cats definitely come under play time rather than movement, cause yes I'm not sitting down during it, but its on the leisurely side of vertical. Bonus: my next kickboxing grading is approaching (I don't have a date, and the coach is much keener than I am for me to do it, I suspect that she'll win, so I need to get my head around this) and it involves a couple of my own combinations and a 10 opponent kata that I need to work out. Each week I'm planning on sorting out 2 opponent worths of kata. They don't have to be perfect, they just need to be a starting point for further tweaking. They also have to be simple as I suspect I'll have to do the kata at least 20 times in the grading. Knew there were reasons for putting this off........ Phew. Lets do this thing.

Now that I´ve got your attention, welcome to my challenge! In regard of my maybe provoking title I´ll start with a little disclaimer: Yes, I´m german. No, I´m no Nazi. I don´t want to prove any political points here, I just love trashy films and to play with stereotypes. Kung Fury is a masterpiece in playing with stereotypes and bad puns, aims at typical 80th and 90th cliches - in short it hit´s my sense of humor perfectly and who doesn´t like it is invited to avoid my challenge. I´m not harming any board rules here! I just loved this film so much and had sore abs after laughing 30 mins without a break watching this the first time. Now I want to create a challenge about it and even go further: I´ll do a gaming challenge with it, pen and paper style! The rules are still in progress, I´ll use week zero to work on them and do some testings with it. I will write about my results here. So far the challenge goals: Train to wreck the Führer in the Final battle! Avoid his propaganda! The hero of the film is confronted with his friend getting murdered by the most dangerous kung fu master of all time Adolf "Kung Führer" Hitler. He travels back in time to kill him in Nazi-germany, but accidently lands in the Viking Age and needs to find a way to travel into the right time line. Of course he needs to train to beat his arch enemy and take revenge for his friend. And fuel with the right stuff of course!!! Never listen to your inner demons propaganda and eat like an asshole! Get back to lifting finally! (Lift 3 times a week!) Track your food and hit your calories and Brotein! (2500kcal and at least 80g Brotein) No freaking soda!!! Soda is Nazi magic, which is even worse than black magic (no racist nazi pun intended) and makes you weak, fat and unattractive!!! Surround yourself with allies and become your strongest ally yourself! Supercop Kung fury has a number of allies on his side I´m not sure how to make it a countable challenge to make new allies, but one sentence came into my head while thinking about it: Your subconcious is your strongest ally! Battle your inner demon (represented by the Kung Führer) daily with a positive mindset and meditation! Bonus: Get to know new people if possible and meet your friends when your time allows it. Master your weapon of choice There´s an audition running and I´m improving in bass playing. Keep it up and get even better!!! Get as good as the Hoff is in eating Cheeseburgers drunk! Play at least 90mins bass guitar per week outside of the rehearsals!

Hey fellow nerds and welcome to my third bad ass challenge! Yeah, it´s another Game of Thrones challenge...good to know it never gets boring nerding about your favourite fantasy stuff (besides Lord of the Rings of course). I´ve been on Dracarys the past two challenges and life is getting better and better right now! Well then, what are my goals for this challenge? There are some big deals in my life incoming or in progress: 1+2) Train to fight the mountain! Thx @miss_marissa you´ve been faster on that one I´ve had a hard time lifting the past challenge because of several issues regarding back, knee, all from my sciatic nerve and some twisted stuff. The drugs helped so far, my osteopath will be visited this wednesday and I´ll take more care of my health from now on. Part one: Get back to lifting 3 times a week, do at least 2 times a week cardio and core! "Thor" does cardio and core too, so should I! Not only does it help removing the useless surroundings of my adamantium abs, it helps me build up a strong back without issues like bitching sciatics, weird back pain and other stuff you never need. Part two: 2000kcal daily and 2g Brotein/kg of lean body mass minimum (around 140g) Do that body recomposition! I should know better, but I´ve tried several stuff instead of being consistent. Of course without any bigger effects. That will change now! My calorie intake to keep weight would be around 2500kcal, so I´ll take a deficit of 20% and eat a lot of brotein for noobgainz! The goal is to loose body fat and build up some muscles. I´ve read several (scientific! no broscience bullshit!) articles about body recomposition and I´m pretty sure I can live the dream of every gym-nerd: build muscle, loose fat, at the same time. Ooooh yeah! Level up your life 1): Be like Tyrion - be smarter and greater than the tall guys! I´m sick and tired of my shift duty and working on getting out of it since last years summer. Registered at a advertising website, invested some money, visited workshops, bought books and I´m trying to get a job at their academy where I could start coaching people on being successful, how to use the website etc. It´s fine right now, I could end doing nightshifts without loosing money last march, but I want more! My plan is to end my nursejob next year or reduce it to 50% maybe. I will invest more time in my online marketing stuff and establish the stuff I learned last weekend at the workshop about mindset and will take a look at several software stuff. The fun part about it: Most stuff can be related to normal personality improvement easily! Be awesome and successfull! Tell the dude in the mirror every morning and before you go to bed how awesome he is! Flex your muscles, smile at him, tell him compliments about this cool outfit! Meditate and realize how awesome and freaking good looking you are! Visualize your success and work for it!!! Yes, I will talk to myself! I will not only visualize my stuff, I will make it real! Sounds weird? Rated R in Spoiler!!! (Sorry for rated-R, but I couldn´t resist If anybody gets offended by it, feel free to PM me to remove it) Regarding the job stuff I can´t really set numbers on how to add them to my challenge, because I can´t tell myself things like "Buy that software until date X" or some. It is a long term goal, but I want to focus on it! If I´m not meditating about being successful I will for sure take a look at some new workshops etc and how to improve. Level up your life 2): Get some social life! I hate shift duty for a reason. You usually work when others don´t and have free time when normal people have their 9-5. Not good! Visit friends, go out for dinner or a good old german beer or date somebody at least once a week! Take care about your social contacts the other days of the week! Of course getting drunk will be related to IIFYM (macros!!! @SpecialSundae ), but hell I´m tired of being some kind of lonely! I need to meet new people, meet my old and oldest friends again, just do something else than working, working out and surfing the NF Rebellion! Level up your life 3): Stop Bassism! I can´t tell how many bass player jokes I´ve heard this year alone...for those who aren´t musicians: bass players are by cliche dumb, have no clue about music theory or music at all and mostly considered not being a musician. It´s what I call "bassism" Keep on playing at least 1,5 hours a week and GET THAT GODDAMN JOB AT THIS BAND!!! I improved really great at bass playing thanks to last challenge (show that narcistic guitar junkys how to rock!) and next weeks wednesday will be my audition for a real big deal: a semiprofessional rockband! I know some of those dudes in person (one guitar player is a good friend of mine), they make great music (a mix of punk, metal and gothic) and they satisfy the nerd in me: They´ve got horrormovie-stageoutfits! It´s like building a RPG-character, give him a story and act like him on stage! LARP for musicians!!! In one of my favourite genres (B-movie horror)!!! Summary: 1+2) Train to fight the mountain! Part one: Get back to lifting 3 times a week, do at least 2 times a week cardio and core! Part two: 2000kcal daily and 2g Brotein/kg of lean body mass minimum (around 140g) Level up your life 1): Be like Tyrion - be smarter and greater than the tall guys! Be awesome and successfull! Tell the dude in the mirror every morning and before you go to bed how awesome he is! Flex your muscles, smile at him, tell him compliments about this cool outfit! Meditate and realize how awesome and freaking good looking you are! Visualize your success and work for it!!! Level up your life 2): Get some social life! Visit friends, go out for dinner or a good old german beer or date somebody at least once a week! Take care about your social contacts the other days of the week! Level up your life 3): Stop Bassism! Keep on playing at least 1,5 hours a week and GET THAT GODDAMN JOB AT THIS BAND!!!

Greetings, friends. Since the last challenge in which I participated, I have moved even further south in SoCal, switched offices (thus the move), and inherited a whole new daily routine. For this challenge, I'm re-establishing my regular workouts, tweaking diet, and restoring meditation/yoga to its rightful place. Here's the latest iteration: Body: I recently took the plunge and bought a no-kidding Concept 2 rower. I love the thing, so now it has joined the TRX and emergency treadmill in my home gym. There is a half-olympic pool in the building behind my office, so that lends itself to regular swimming. The schedule is as follows, with each workout scheduled for 30 minutes: SUN: AM Yoga; Rest MON: AM Row; PM Swim TUE: AM Yoga; PM Run WED: AM Row; PM Swim THU: AM Yoga; PM Run FRI: AM Row; PM Swim SAT: AM Yoga; Rest There is also a nutritional element here. I need to make breakfast a regular thing, and I need to take a more substantive "main" lunch. I've been ranging on small snacks, but the net result has been coming home super hungry. I think the protein-bar breakfast is the culprit, so I'll experiment with heftier breakfasts. Mind: All the yoga above (which is not going to be ballistic yoga, by the way -- restful and focused on flexibility) will bring meditation, so one of the big goals here is to sit well for 5 minutes per day. The AM row is low-impact enough to conclude with meditation, as well. Spirit: Music is my primary religion. I recently did a new setup on my bass, and am continuing to learn and practice. For this challenge, I'd like to master the Circle of Fifths and apply it to my own playing. I'll also read at least one book of a spiritual nature (probably one on spirituality and the elements, since that's a theme for me.) That's the structured part. I haven't been good at points, so no evaluation other than I want to make at least 80% of the goal. Regular check-ins will ensue. Get some.