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This write up is going to be done in installments, but at least I'm getting posted closer to the real start of the challenge this time! Note: The following will span multiple challenges. 09/23/2017 First Installment A chef, a fighter pilot and a surgeon walk into ShadowLion’s dinner party, where she serves a mashup of “Meeting of Minds”, a personal mastermind group, and interactive TED Talk. “What? ShadowLion, whatever have you been drinking?” you might ask. Well… Way back when, when I was a spring chicken, there was a show on PBS called “Meeting of Minds.” Hosted by Steve Allen, each episode placed actors portraying historical persons - thinkers and doers who had major impact on the world - in a relaxed round table setting where they would discuss their lives and times. Nerd girl that I am, I loved it. As part of updating my Epic Quest, I realized that I have not been giving enough time to non-technical subjects and that I rarely have time to read or just sit and think any more. I also realized I have a lack of mentors and have not been utilizing my imagination as much as I might. This could lead to a shadow lion becoming less creative and inspired, and possibly burning out. So, I decided to use my nerdimagination to remedy the problem, with the idea that I would populate my dinner party (parties?) with a mix of historical and contemporary figures that had/have skills, knowledge, experiences, and/or qualities that would help me in my quests, and use these exercises in imagination to spur me to read their works and apply what I learn from their biographies to my own life. I’m still working out how to pull it all together into some learning projects, but figure that may be something that works itself out by doing. At this stage, I plan to do some brief writeups, not even “scripts” so much as notes and then do some active imagination exercises followed up with additional notes about the insights and ideas I gain. The chef, fighter pilot and surgeon are three people who relate to goals directly from my Epic Quest. Learn to cook. I’ve realized that part of why I don’t eat healthier is that I really don’t know how to cook. Julia Child to the rescue. Doesn’t hurt that she was a badass that worked for the OSS during World War II and that when asked to “solve the problem of too many OSS underwater explosives being set off by curious sharks,” she cooked up a shark repellent that is still in use today. Second Installment 09/25/2017 Improve my business acumen, creativity, and inventiveness. I made some errors in the last couple of years on my business strategies. In taking a nice, stable job working for a company I like and in a great team, I’ve bought some time to dream up another venture (or not). I’ve given myself at least the next six months to find an idea and think it through. (Have made a commitment to myself to stay at current job at least one year - can't believe I am nearly at 90 days already!) I want to not only reflect on and learn from my previous mistakes during that time, I want to study the masters of strategy, game theory, leadership, and innovation. Chief among those is master strategist Lt. Col. John Boyd, the fighter pilot in my title and dinner guest at my first meeting of Minds. Future “guests” Elon Musk, Sun Tzu, John Nash, Leonardo da Vinci Improve my productivity, workflows and accuracy I read “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande several years ago and always meant to go back and reread it and implement more of the ideas from it. This year, I will. And, read this eminent surgeon’s other works, including “Being Mortal.” Still more to come...

Whew! I took last challenge off, because I was stupid-busy and basically had no faith in my ability to keep up with a challenge thread of my own, let alone any one else's. But things are calming down now, and while the break may have been good for my mental health, I've got some make-up work to do physically... Enough. I'm done with watching the scale creep up. Done with feeling out of control with eating. Done with feeling like shit in general. Goal number one: Get my food choices back in a good place. I've been trying, but falling in to the whole "eat well through the day, eat whatever is in the house at night" trap. So this: 1. Track EVERYTHING. Just track it. While I know what a good day of eating looks like calorie/macro wise, I'm not going to make hitting those metrics my goal for now. Just be conscious of and make a record of all the food. (7 points per week) 2. No snacking after dinner. (Sometimes dinner can be pretty late, so I'm not making a time-goal. But we always eat a proper evening meal at some point) If I'm genuinely hungry, I can eat vegetables without losing points. Raw vegetables. (7 points per week) 3. Meal plan: Weekly planning, grocery shopping, and bi-weekly meal prep. (4 points per week) 17 points per week (this allows for one evening of snacking, but it must be social). Week Zero: Week One: Week Two: Week Three: Week Four: XX / 85pts +3CHA Goal number two: Start working out again. The best news: my favourite kettlebell instructor will be offering a class once a week! She didn't teach at all last year, and the other classes offered were too early for me to make it to them. So Fridays at 630, I kettlebell. I am SO excited to get back into it! I will supplement with at least one additional workout per week. There's a super cheap membership option from my work that would give me access to the community rec centre by my house on Mondays and Wednesdays, so I'll probably do that. I do have a set up in my basement to do yoga or kettlebells or whatever as well though. 2 points per week: Week Zero: Week One: Week Two: Week Three: Week Four: XX / 8pts +3 STR Goal number three: Get walking, baby! I'm barely on track for my year-long step goal. I had really hoped to have some excess banked from the summer to carry me through the colder months... not too late though! 77,000 steps per week: Week Zero: Week One: Week Two: Week Three: Week Four: XX / 385,000 +3 END Goal number four: Purge this house. This has been a long time goal, that has occasionally been chipped away at.. Basically, my hubs and I are living in a house that is excessively large for two people, and we have managed to fill it with STUFF. Stuff we don't need and don't use. I'm so sick of the clutter. We've done some good cleaning lately, so the kitchen and living/dining rooms LOOK uncluttered, but there's a ton of stuff hidden. And don't even get me started on all the various rooms. We have a bedroom, spare room, craft room, office, another bedroom that's being used for storage, and actual storage room, a large laundry room and a rec room. It's ridiculous. I get 1 point for each hour I work on these things. (I found giving myself points for completion kept me from starting if I didn't think I could finish...) Taking progress pics too! I'm going to come up with a sliding scale of progress for this one, because I'm not totally sure what's reasonable. Update coming. Week Zero: Week One: Week Two: Week Three: Week Four: XX / ?? +3 INT