Search the Community

Nettis Clovenmark felt the aches in zer knees as ze squatted in the brush, observing the narrow animal trail leading down to the river. Ze had been out in the forest for days, ever since the sickness came to the village. Ze knew that the link must be in the meat the hunters brought back, but Nettis was no hunter. Zer attempts to find the deer and geese were all ending in frustration. In order to solve the mystery Nettis would have to work on getting quiet, being still, finding calm inside zerself. Ze would have to make zer body flexible enough to fit into small spaces and remain still while the animals approached zer. Nettis stood and stretched, shaking zer head hard enough for zer ear tips to flap, chasing off the gnats. A deer snorted and dashed off through the underbrush, startled by zer loudness. Ze sighed in frustration. This was going to take some work. --,--'-@ @-,--'-- 2020 finds me coming back into NF in order to get some structure and accountability for my quest to get my mobility and active lifestyle back following grad school, a depressive episode, two moves, and a double knee injury. I am a clinical psychologist, Heathen magical practitioner, and giant dork, so I am using the story of a DnD character I made to journal my trials and tribulations in getting healthy. GOAL1: Nutrition. I am going to be working the NF Academy 10 level system in order to move towards level 7 as a long term stopping point. This month I am shooting for level 3. I will track my calories and macros on MyFitnessPal 7/7 days with the goal being to have at least 1 vegetable in every meal and limited liquid calories 12/14 days. The challenge gives me 2-ish tries to get it right. GOAL 2: Meditation. I used to have a robust daily meditation practice and I miss the mental clarity and the ritual of it. I will meditate at least 10 minutes daily, 7 ays a week. GOAl 3: Movement. Due to the knees I am keeping low-to-no impact until I lose 50 lbs. My movement goal will be yoga for 10 minutes 5 days a week. LEVEL UP MY LIFE: Creativity I neglect my creative development all the time. I am a fiber artist and a writer. Both of these passions are things that I want to grow, but that I never seem to find the time to do properly. I have finally been given my own office at work and I want to put some of my weaving up. I also have several writing projects including a short story collection, a DnD campaign, and 2 professional CEU trainings to work on. As such, I will plan to spend 5 hours on each of these passions weekly.

So here I thought I'd start a regular kettlebell routine again, looking into the Simple & Sinister program. I did some initial benchmarks to figure out where to start and how to progress eventually. Enter not the kettlebell, but the possibility of Patellar Tendonitis. Exit my challenge-plan-to-date. Now I'll need to figure out what all I can or can't do in order to fix the buggy knee. Since it's been buggy for the past 11 months and didn't even hint at getting better despite all the physical therapy and strength training I threw at it, it seems like I need to do something different. Meaning I need to talk to various people who know more about this than I do. In the meantime, I'll use the time slot in the morning I had reserved for the S&S practice for GMB's Movement MultiVitamin. Which is all about the exploration of movements, not learning any specific exercises. I hope this will be easier on the knee as well as help me un-klutz a bit. Goal #1: Movement MultiVitamin It would be great if I managed to do the practice every day for the next four weeks, but being realistic, I'll be happy with an average 5 out of 7 days a week. The program runs for 4 weeks, after that I'll either ease into a modified Simple & Sinister routine (knee permitting), or I will repeat parts of the Movement MV program until the end of the challenge. Goal #2: Wussy conditioning + handstand practice Again, it would be awesome if I did it every day, but I'll aim again for 5 out of 7 days a week. Wrist prep is a MUST on all of those days, actual handstand practice will depend on the current state of the wussies. Goal #3: Be prepared for the attack of the Holiday Sugar Monsters It's that time of year again when the Sugar Monsters turn up in droves (or insert appropriate term for a group of Sugar Monsters). I'm keeping my usual goal of staying sugar free at least 21 out of 42 challenge days. Life Goal: Set up Git and possibly a Virtual Machine at work I've been meaning to do this ever since we started our current project earlier this year. As usual, life got in the way, and I'm still sans Git and a sensible development set-up. I need to: Set up (or download) an Ubuntu VM and have it accessible via LAN. Would be nice to have for VMWare player, but any VM environment running on Windows 7 and 8 would work. Set up Apache + same PHP version as current dev machine on said Ubuntu VM.Figure out which DB* to use (DB on current dev server? local DB on VM?).Install Git on VM, clone project data and set up repo so that we all can work with it.Git happily ever after.At least that's my theory so far. Aside from that, I'll keep doing the usual (if the medicos don't nix that): kettlebell class 1 - 2 x / week, yoga class 1 x / week, doing fun stuff with Rosie 1 - 2 x / week. Grades and stat points tbd later. *DB as in DataBase. Not DumbBell. I think trying to store client data in dumbbells might be more of a challenge than I can handle...