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I’m back again! For the last few months, I’ve been struggling to keep up with like, basic life skills, so participating in challenges has been kind of off the table. This year, I’ve decided to work towards a group of year-long goals and structure my challenges around them. I started a Daily Battle Log to declare my intentions for the year, and to keep track of my progress during times when I don’t feal up for participating in a structured challenge. I’m going to start of slow with some non-overly-ambitious goals. Almost every one of my goals is something I’m aiming for making a daily habit. The only one I’m not looking to have be a permanent daily thing is French movies, just because I don’t normally have that much screen time. I’m going to be increasing my screen time during this challenge as a French practice, and probably for 3-5 months I’m planning to watch more TV and movies than usualy to practice my comprehension, but in general, I don’t plan to watch TV every day (more like once a week.) So otherwise, all my goals are smooth, lightweight changes that I’m looking to incorporate long-term. French goal #1: Immersion. Only watch French TV/Movies I really need to work on my auditory comprehension, and the only way to do that is to listen to stuff. I found Masha et Michka on youtube which is Masha and the bear. It’s a weird as heck kids show that I’ve already watched in Russian (I think it’s originally russian?) and there’s apparently a french version. I also borrowed Les Mysterieuses cities d’or and La Princesse Astronaute from a friend of mine, both of which are pretty fast/complicated for me and I miss a lot of the dialogue, but I’m highly invested in the plot of both of them so i’m motivated to pay attention. I’m hoping that after watching them through once, the second time I’ll pick up more and understand it better. I also got a handful of my favorite movies (pacific rim, lilo and stitch, treasure planet) in French, and I’m going to look to see if I can find original trilogy star wars in french. Scoring for this one was a little hard to decide on, as I don’t have a set amount of TV I watch, But i’ve decided on 1 point per half hour of French screen time, with a goal of 5 points per week and 20 points as a perfect score for the challenge. If I wimp out and watch something in English or Spanish, I’ll deduct a point. French goal #2: Putting in the work. 20 minutes per day of Book Work. I gotta do my book work and put in my time with this one. I’ve found I really like “workbook” structure, so I got a Schaum’s outline of french grammar. I also researched the best french text books and ordered one from aanother library. I need to sit down at my table, put on some background noise, and fully focus on this for 20 minutes. Ideally this will be daily, but I’m going to give myself a goal of 20 sessions during the challenge (a leeway of 2 days a week to have scheduling issues) Be a supple beast: STREEEEETTTCHHH Working towards my splits goal for this year, I need to stretch every day. I’ll increase this time in future challenges, but for this slow start, I am aiming for 5 sessions per week of at least 10 minutes each. 1 point for each stretching session, 20 points for full challenge. Brain Recalibration: Do something artistic every day. I tried watercolor for the first time during a work program that we just started (it’s for the public, but while we’re running the program, we participate.) It was so much fun and I actually ran overtime because I got so into the painting I didn’t even notice the time going by. I told my therapist about it because our session was literally right after the program, and she said it sounds like I should really continue doing art. I have essentially no artistic ability, but I want to start doing art as often as possible. Just a little sketch of my breakfast or even just coloring in a coloring book for a few minutes before bed. Anything that gets me into the chilled out, flow state. Scoring is, again, going to have a little leeway (2 days per week) because I don’t want this to feal like a chore. This is supposed to be something to decompress and relax me. 1 point for each time I sit down to do anything artistic. 2 points for sitting down to a big project, say spending a sunday afternoon for 3hrs doing a painting on canvas. Goal is for 5 points per week, 20 points for total challenge. Zero Week goals: Aquire paintbrushes and paint and stuf to paint on. Find a follow-along stretching video on youtube that I actually like. Get my textbook from interlibrary loan. Stockpile french movies and TV shows.