[Jarric]

2022 Road Map

 

Usually I start a year by making a roadmap for the year, and then create my first challenge with that roadmap in mind. This year is no different, but rather than running a battle log for my roadmap I want it at the top of every challenge so I remember what I'm trying to do (looking back over my 2021 roadmap just now I was surprised to find out what some of my goals were!).

 

Goals for 2022

I've been trying to decide what my goals should be for the year, and that's proving quite difficult. I have the option to enter a few endurance races - I'll be doing Rat Race Dirty Weekend that clocks in at 20 miles, and then there's Nuclear Oblivion Extreme (6.5 hours), Nuclear Oblivion Maxx (13 hours). I could add in Europe's Toughest Mudder (12 hours) and even Quarry Events Longest day (16 hours 38 minutes). The trouble is I don't know if I really want to do endurance events; they're really hard work! At the same time I don't know what I would want to focus on if not that; there was talk of the Spartan European Championships being held in the UK this year, but I can find precious little information about that at the moment.

 

With that said, I can always decide these goals later in the year. This arbitrary change of date doesn't have to be the time that I plan to do something cool in the future, so if I do find something that really captures my imagination I'll add it here.

 

The 5 pillars

So I don't really have any big goals in the same way as I had in previous years. But I've been thinking recently about what's important to me, and I worked out that it falls quite well into 5 pillars. And then I worked out that I could map the 5 pillars to RPG stats, which made it much more exciting. So my goal for the year is to advance as much as possible in the following:

 

Exercise (Strength) this includes everything I do physically - climbing, OCR, lifting, crossfit, running etc. I really enjoy seeing progress in all of these areas, and as long as I stick with them I'm bound to improve. I couldn't really separate what would fall under STR and what would fall under DEX, and I don't think it's really a useful distinction for the kind of things I do, so I just chucked everything under STR.

 

Nutrition (Constitution) this is about putting the right things in my body (you heard!). That includes food that fuels me well, but also things like moderating caffeine and alcohol intake, and generally balancing anything else I consume.

 

Creativity (Charisma) being creative is really good for me, and it's a side of myself I want to foster. That includes drawing, playing music, and writing. I still want to write and publish some basic D&D stuff, so hopefully I can incorporate that at some point.

 

Self-care (Sanity) this is really just about doing the basic stuff that I know keeps me ticking over - cleaning my teeth, cleaning and tidying my house, keeping in touch with friends. Really basic stuff, but it has such an impact on the way that I feel, so it deserves its own category. Arguably I could have stuck with core D&D stats and put this under WIS, but SAN makes more sense to me for this goal. Also, I'm a super low-WIS person; I have very little awareness a lot of the time, and it's not something I'm really interested in working on (or even know how to work on) right now.

 

Learning (Intelligence) I feel like it wouldn't be Nerd Fitness without an INT goal. I want to get through the professional qualifications I'm doing (which feels easier said than done right now, as I've somehow ended up working on three units concurrently). I also just love learning things. I'd like to get back into learning French, which I did a good chunk of on Duolingo for a while last year. Really, all learning is good.

 

Under the hood

The plan is that my goals for each challenge will have stats assigned to them, and over this course of this year I'll try and get each of these stats as high as possible. I'll start everything at 0, and hopefully by the end of the year I'll have a decent looking stat array. To tie this in with my previous format, I'll be looking at levelling up backwards compared to most systems. Every stat point will be equivalent to 5XP under my old system, and every 20 stat points I will level up. That should mean I can gain 3-5 levels in a year, which feels about right.

 

I don't have to hit every stat every challenge. If I want 3 STR goals one month or need all my goals to be SAN based another month, that's all fine; it'll work itself out over the course of the year.

 

*    *    *

 

Last challenge

I think it's good to pick up where you've left off, so here's my summary from last challenge (spoilered because it's real long guys):

 

Spoiler

  

41 minutes ago, Jarric said:

Challenge Wrap-Up

General thoughts

I feel like this challenge started well. Then I had a week and a half off work, which I partially spent painting my kitchen. That meant a few things:

• A break in my normal daily routine
• A break in my routine of updating this challenge
• My kitchen being out of action for quite a while, particularly as it took me almost 4 weeks to getting to finish the damn job

All of this did not bode well for my challenge goals, and I struggled to come back from it afterwards. Those first two points are a particular concern, as I'm going on holiday in week 3 of the next challenge, so I need to have better systems to deal with a break in routine, or at least to recover afterwards.

 

I've also spent a lot of time where I could have been updating here, or completing goals, reading up on stuff. And it's all stuff which might be important, or is at least interesting, so I need to balance that with challenges too. In order of appearance, this challenges distractions were:

• Monster of the Week - I did some reading up and decided I really, really wanted to play and run this RPG. I've spent a lot of time reading up on rulebooks and watching actual play stuff, and I'm really loving it.
• Limitless Heroics - this is an RPG kickstarter I backed, to model disability in D&D 5th edition, and it really caught my imagination. This lead me down a rabbit hole of looking into ableism, in general and in tabletop RPGs specifically. My sister had cerebral palsy, and was quite severely disabled, so this is something that's quite close to my heart and brought up some emotion when I started looking into it.
• Aphantasia - this is a condition where a person is unable to voluntarily create images in their brain, and I'm pretty certain I have it. I only came across the word a few weeks ago, so I've been doing a lot of reading into this to see if there's anything useful I can take from research into this, in that knowing more about my brain might help me to work with it better.

Anyway, before I get too distracted talking about the things I'm distracted by, lets talk about the goals!

 

Running

 

Lol no. Instead of 3 runs per week, I managed 2, 2, 1, 1, 1. I struggled to drag myself out of bed most Wednesdays to go for a run, and I didn't prioritise this on the weekends either. The mad thing is, I've really enjoyed my runs this challenge, I've just really struggled to get out of the door in the first place. I have a plan to change this up slightly for next challenge, as I need to get on those running events.

 

7/15 runs: +1 STR 

 

Calories

 

I dropped off this pretty hard from week 3, which is pretty much the same with all of my goals. Despite this I think a bit of mindfulness around what I ate really helped, even when I didn't actually hit the goal. I'm about the same weight I started the challenge at, and that's fine.

 

12/40: no stat increase

 

Creativity

 

I didn't do a very good job of hitting this even before I had time off work. Part of this is the other distractions I mentioned, part is kitchen painting, and part is too much time staring aimlessly at my phone. I think this goal is important though, and it's here to stay.

 

8/35: no stat increase

 

Revise

 

I massively failed on this, only beginning to start in week 5. Why is the amount I procrastinate directly proportional to how important a task is?

 

1/20: no stat increase

 

Teeth

 

This didn't start too well, but it really tanked when I had time off work. It's a routine problem partially I think, as well as a mental problem as alluded to above.

 

7.5/35: no stat increase

 

Final thought

A single point of stat increase was not what I had in mind for this challenge. Not much is going to change with the plan for next challenge, but hopefully my attitude will!

 

 

 

*    *    *

 

Rolling up a character

This challenge looks very like the last one, but I want to plan a bit better around real life events. I have an exam in week 2, after which my study goal will change. I'm in holiday in Wales for the entirety of week 3, so I need to ensure I do my best that week and get back in the game straight afterwards. It's also my birthday in week 3, but I'll probably go out to celebrate that at the end of week 5. Finally, in week 0 of the next challenge I'm going to the memorial service for a friend who died at the end of November. That last one's not in this challenge, but I am expecting to be stressed and emotional leading up to it, both because of the reason for the event and at the idea of seeing a lot of old friends I no longer have contact with.

 

Run 4 times per week [+3 STR]. Last challenge I spectacularly failed to run 3 times per week, so now I'm going to 4 instead! If that sounds daft, I'm also changing the plan for how I do this. I'm now going to go to Crossfit 5 mornings per week, because I'm really enjoying it and it gets me out of bed. Morning runs are out, and lunchtime runs are in. I'm working from home two days per week, so that's two lunchtime runs, and then two runs at the weekend.

 

Planning: In week 2 my exam changes my work schedule, so I'm going to have to go for a run the day before the exam when I go home to study. I will play this by ear in week 3 when I'm away. I also need to make sure I get runs in at the weekend around watching the rugby on TV.

 

Calories - 600 x 4 x 8 [+2 CON] I don't feel up to tracking calories too exactly at this point, so I'm sticking with the plan from last challenge. Estimating my calories as best I can, I'm going to aim for 600 calories per meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and 600 calories worth of snacks throughout the day. That's 2,400 calories per day, 7 days per week.

 

The 8th day of the week is beer . There's no restriction on when I drink, but I'm aiming for no more than 2,400 calories of beer over the week (about 10 UK pints, 12 US pints, or 5.7 litres). Adding that to my 2,400 of food per day gives me a daily average of ~2,743 and, if I'm at all accurate, that will lead to a reasonable amount of weight loss.

 

Of course, I'm estimating calories, not recording them formally, so I might be well out, but just the mindfulness towards eating and drinking will still be helpful. I'll score my days based on if I feel I've got it about right. I don't have too much weight to lose, and it's not a priority, but if I could shed 5lbs over the challenge that would be nice.

 

Planning: There's no particular life events that should stop me being mindful of this, even if I'm not always successful.

 

Creativity every day [+2 CHA] I don't mind what it is, whether I do a little doodle in a sketch book, or play with a bit of digital drawing, if I pick up my guitar and strum out a couple of chords, or even write a little narrative on here. I'd like to work on the D&D adventure I'm writing up; that would be good. Hell, this could even be prep work for my own D&D game. It doesn't have to be much, but I want to do something.

 

Planning: I should always find 5 minutes for this.

 

Study 4 x 30 minutes [+2 INT] In weeks 0 and 1, this will be revision for my exam in week 2. In week 2 I want to double this all on the Monday, and I have leave from work just for that study time. I want to pass this exam damnit!

 

I'm then taking week 3 off, as I'm on holiday and realistically I'm not going to pretend I'm going to do this. For weeks 4 and 5 I'm going to use the time to write my next work essay, and hopefully get it out of the way so that I'm only studying one subject rather than doing 3 concurrently!

 

Planning: is baked in to this one.

 

Teeth brushing twice daily [+1 SAN] This is something that I do better when I'm accountable for you guys about doing it*. It's also inextricably linked to my mental health and, though I've never figured out where the cause and effect lies, I'd like to think sticking to this will stop me spiralling when I'm having a bad time.

 

Planning: I should be able to do this regardless of life events.

 

*in theory at least - last challenge went pretty poorly**

**then again I also didn't check in here very much, so maybe that checks out

 

Right, if you made it through that whole intro, congratulations! Lets go do the thing.

[deftona]

Here to watch you smash it! Do that thing! 

[Jarric]

1 hour ago, deftona said:

Here to watch you smash it! Do that thing! 

 

Thank you! I will do the thing!

[Jarric]

Yesterday was a good day. Started off with Crossfit, doing 3 picks of farmers' handles followed by a 50ft farmers' walk. I worked up to 164kg (~361#). That was followed by some max duration free handstands, which felt really solid, and sets of max reps pullups where I managed sets of 8, 6, 8, 6, 5. Not quite where I want to be; I'm sure I hit a set of 12 at one point during lockdown, but it's still not bad.

 

Work was good - spend most of the day working on one big thing; it's nice to have it out of the way in good time.

 

In the evening I finished painting the kitchen (pictures to follow), and cooked pork steaks with a mustardy peppercorn sauce, tenderstem broccoli and crush potatoes - it was lush. Then I spent the rest of the evening wrapping up last challenge and writing up this one.

 

Oh, and I did a couple of tiny doodles on my challenge tracker for the creativity goal. Teeth were done, calories were on point, no running or revising today.

[Jarric]

Kitchen pics! Before:

 

 

 

And after:

 

 

 

[deftona]

Oh I have major cooker envy over here...

[Jarric]

17 hours ago, deftona said:

Oh I have major cooker envy over here...

 

Thanks . We often say that we bought a cooker and it came with a house!

[Jarric]

Tuesday - week 0 day 2

Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing - bench press, push press and skiing. On bench I attempted 70kg (~154#) and crashed and burned at 2 reps, so I went with 65kg (~143# for 2 sets of 5, and finished with 5 at 60kg (~132#). The push press and skiing were together in a brutal little interval workout, which was quite good fun. My neck and shoulders are killing me today; I can't quite pinpoint why but it has to be some of this.

 

Working from home was pretty productive. I did some revision too, which doesn't count towards the goal as it was in work time but is nonetheless extremely useful.

 

In the evening I rushed to make a quick sausage and tomato pasta dish with stuff we had lying around, and then went off to run a Pathfinder game.

 

Pathfinder:

We were playing the second half of a short Pathfinder 2e  adventure call Sundered Waves (so spoilers for that follow). It was really nice to run an in-person session for the first time in ages, and it was also really nice to have the adventure and all of the notes on a laptop rather than 3,000 sheets of paper. The party defeated a living waterfall, stole some weapons, and solved a riddle involving matching some statues to some plinths.

 

Then came the final battle - a giant pirate skeleton with a huge gaff (boarding hook), wicked claws, and an eyepatch of course. I rolled a 30 on initiative and went first. Running forward I tried to stab the swashbuckler with the gaff, and rolled a natural 20, impaling him on the stick. He had some terrible rolls trying to escape or hit the creature, and dropped 2 rounds later due to ongoing damage from the spike through his chest. Then the investigator dropped. Then I straight out killed the druid's summoned cactus leshy, and then the druid's tree companion. I've never rolled so well in my life.

 

It was looking bleak for the party, they were whittling down the skeleton by a few hp each round, but it was guaranteed to hit once per turn, often hit twice or more, and took about 1/3 of a PC's health with each hit. At the same time, I had two players feeling frustrated that they had no input in the game - they were unconscious and stable, so weren't even rolling checks to try and recover.

 

I could feel that it was ceasing to be fun. It was getting late, and I had two players forced to be spectators, so I made a call. The skeleton had 21/125 hp left, but I decided that the next hit would be the killing blow. Pleasingly, the next hit was a crit from WW's fighter. It still only dealt 14 damage (though that was the most that character had dealt in any hit all game), but I called that the kill.

 

I feel like fudging the creature's hp was a good call - the players got a tense final battle, and a satisfying end to a one-shot adventure. I've never done that before, so it felt weird, but it made for a better story.

[Terra]

Following along as much as I can!!!

[WhiteGhost]

On 2/8/2022 at 5:32 AM, Jarric said:

Usually I start a year by making a roadmap for the year, and then create my first challenge with that roadmap in mind. This year is no different, but rather than running a battle log for my roadmap I want it at the top of every challenge so I remember what I'm trying to do (looking back over my 2021 roadmap just now I was surprised to find out what some of my goals were!).

This is smart.  Every time I have tried creating a roadmap battle log, I inevitably end up forgetting about it until I go to create my next one 

[Jarric]

16 hours ago, Terra said:

Following along as much as I can!!!

 

Good to have you! As much as you can is always enough

 

 

3 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

This is smart.  Every time I have tried creating a roadmap battle log, I inevitably end up forgetting about it until I go to create my next one 

 

Thanks, I hope it works! I remembered to put it on this challenge, so that's definitely a start.

[Jarric]

Wednesday - week 0 day 3

Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing was squats. I went for 110kg (~232#) for 3 reps, but something felt weird coming up off the first rep and I panicked and bottled it. Deloaded to 100kg (~220#) for 3 rep, 90kg x 5, and 80kg x 7.

 

That was followed by 5 rounds for time of 5 toes to bar, 3 cleans, 100m (~110 yards, so I guess 0.5 furlongs?) run. I came in just under 7 minutes with 50kg on the cleans, and it was actually quite good fun.

 

Work was ok - it feels a bit less overwhelming than usual at the moment.

 

In the evening I had snooker, so I had to rush dinner and rush out. WW made Welsh Rarebit, which put me maybe 150kcal over my dinner calorie budget, but it was quick and oh so tasty.

 

I saw my Dad at the snooker match and got some troubling news, which didn't put me in the best headspace after a few beers. I stay up late on the NF Discord discussing language and regional variations in foods.

 

0/5 for goals yesterday, and I'm at 1,320/2,400 calories on beer day.

[Rurik Harrgath]

On 2/7/2022 at 3:32 PM, Jarric said:

Self-care (Sanity) this is really just about doing the basic stuff that I know keeps me ticking over - cleaning my teeth, cleaning and tidying my house, keeping in touch with friends. Really basic stuff, but it has such an impact on the way that I feel, so it deserves its own category. Arguably I could have stuck with core D&D stats and put this under WIS, but SAN makes more sense to me for this goal. Also, I'm a super low-WIS person; I have very little awareness a lot of the time, and it's not something I'm really interested in working on (or even know how to work on) right now.

 

Sanity is such an overlooked characteristic. It's almost as important as alignment really. I could see it totally being my character's dump stat where he's absolutely brilliant one moment, and then totally clueless and spaced out the next.

 

Just like me IRL 🤣

 

I love the roadmap plan for your year!

[DarK_RaideR]

On 2/8/2022 at 8:52 AM, deftona said:

Here to watch you smash it!

 

 

[Jarric]

On 2/10/2022 at 2:48 PM, Rurik Harrgath said:

 

Sanity is such an overlooked characteristic. It's almost as important as alignment really. I could see it totally being my character's dump stat where he's absolutely brilliant one moment, and then totally clueless and spaced out the next.

 

Just like me IRL 🤣

 

I love the roadmap plan for your year!

 

Sanity is an interesting one, because in some systems it's handled really badly and can include some really problematic themes. To me though it definitely makes sense that if CON determines my physical health then SAN determines my mental health in a very similar way.

 

Thanks! It's weird thinking of the year in foundations rather than goals, but it feels like what I need right now.

 

17 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

 

 

 

I haven't had a more apt use of the 'that's metal' reaction since it was introduced . Great to have you mate.

 

[Jarric]

Thursday - week 0 day 4

Yesterday was a good day.

 

I slept in, having stayed up past 1am on Discord, so missed Crossfit. Work was ok though - had a day full of meetings but nothing too stressful.

 

I'd had a crick in my neck all day Wednesday and yesterday, but when I got home I sat down on the sofa and something just went. I spent most of the evening lying on the floor and on various massage balls to try and feel better, whilst drinking beer. Then I took some painkillers and went to bed early. No goals were completed.

[deftona]

Sorry to hear about your neck. I heartily recommend a heat pack, ibuprofen and sleep (all three at the same time) if it hasn't gone but I am really hoping it has. 

[Jarric]

On 2/11/2022 at 4:51 PM, deftona said:

Sorry to hear about your neck. I heartily recommend a heat pack, ibuprofen and sleep (all three at the same time) if it hasn't gone but I am really hoping it has. 

 

Good shout, I went for a similar method of beer, painkillers, sleep, and a hot bath, as well as a bit of yoga and kicking the shit out of it with a massage ball. It's almost back to 100% now

 

[Jarric]

Friday - week 0 day 5

Yesterday was a good day. My neck and shoulder still felt crap when I woke up, and it had kept waking me up in the night, so I didn't go to Crossfit. Instead I got up and did some neck and shoulder focussed yoga, as well as lying on a massage ball for a bit, which all started to improve it.

 

Work was ok - plenty to do at the moment but I feel like I'm trucking along with it ok. I was working from home, so I managed to get out for a quick 2 mile run at lunchtime too.

 

After work I played some Solasta: Crown of the Magister. I'm not sure about this game at the moment, but I'm barely past the tutorial so I feel like I should give it a proper chance. I also drank the two remaining beers in the house, bringing me up to my maximum beers for the week.

 

Lunch was outside of my calories as it was leftover pasta bake from the night before. Not sure if that influenced my decision to order pizza for dinner, though at least it was a very good pizza.

 

I stayed up way, way too late watching a very stupid D&D stream. Teeth not done, no revision, no creative stuff.

[Jarric]

Saturday and Sunday - week 0 weekend

Saturday was a good day. I intended to go to parkrun, but when I arrived slightly late I discovered I didn't have my timing barcode, so I gave up and drove home. I ended up spending at least 90 minutes in the bath, in which time I managed to do an hour of revision for that goal.

 

Spent the rest of the day finishing off my swashbuckler for Pathfinder on Tuesday, and even started drawing him for my creativity goal. Pretty sure my calories were ok, but teeth weren't done.

 

Sunday was also a good day. I went to Wild Forest with some people from the gym. Wild Forest is a big obstacle training place with a real range of rings/bars/rigs and other obstacles - it was great fun to just wander around there and have a play.

 

In the afternoon I intended to study in the bath again, but ended up watching Critical Drinking in the bath instead. I roasted a gammon for dinner and read a short adventure that I might run for the Pathfinder group at some stage.

 

I'm counting adventure reading as a technical pass on creativity, and running around Wild Forest as a technical pass on the running goal. Calories were over, and teeth not done again.

 

Week 0 stats

Running: 3/4 for the week - I didn't run very far, but not bad at least

Calories: 4/8, including hitting the mark on beer day

Create: 3/7, but I'm feeling like I have more energy to do this for the first time in a while

Revise: 2/4, with a week until my exam I need to do better

Teeth: 2/7 - must try harder

 

Overall I've felt pretty good this week; a lot less stressed and anxious than I have in a while. Now the trick is translating that into results!

 

Average goal completion is 48.29%, so I get to keep £19.71, and need to transfer the remaining £20.29 to my mortgage account.

[starpuck]

Late to the thread because I took Zero week seriously this time around, but am here now.

I still really love your pillars so much and when I have more spoons, I think I will adapt into a similar plotting!!

 

[Mr_Willes]

On 2/11/2022 at 3:54 PM, Jarric said:

To me though it definitely makes sense that if CON determines my physical health then SAN determines my mental health in a very similar way.

 

You made something click for me!

 

I think i have a pretty high SAN stat, but lately i have just been making rolls on that stat that are under average. The outcome surprised me as i am not used to it.

 

A great way to look at this and to pick it up from there, and just keep on going!

[Jarric]

On 2/14/2022 at 3:44 PM, starpuck said:

Late to the thread because I took Zero week seriously this time around, but am here now.

I still really love your pillars so much and when I have more spoons, I think I will adapt into a similar plotting!!

 

 

No worries, I'll come and investigate your new challenge soon. And glad you like them

 

 

10 hours ago, Mr_Willes said:

 

You made something click for me!

 

I think i have a pretty high SAN stat, but lately i have just been making rolls on that stat that are under average. The outcome surprised me as i am not used to it.

 

A great way to look at this and to pick it up from there, and just keep on going!

 

Sorry to hear that mate, but glad I could inadvertently be of help. I hope your rolls improve, and if you want to talk about anything in the meantime just drop me a message - you know I'm always up for a video chat if you want one too.

[Jarric]

Monday - week 1 day 1

Yesterday was a good day. Crossfit first thing, and pleasantly I wasn't too achy after Wild Forest on Sunday. We had bench press, and I managed a respectable 67.5kg (~149#) for 3 sets of 5. That was followed by an 8-minute AMRAP of 8 pullups, 8 pushups, and 8 dumbbell snatch. I managed 5 rounds with a 17.5kg dumbbell. It was quite a nice little workout, though my hands were screaming at me after that following the obstacles the day before.

 

Work was ok - a day full of meetings which is simultaneously nice in that I get to see people, and a pain because my e-mails don't stop coming in when I'm in a meeting!

 

In the evening I cooked a sausage casserole with mash and crispy kale, and curled up on the sofa with WW and the cat watching re-runs of Taskmaster. No creativity done, as I really wasn't feeling it, and teeth weren't done.

 

I managed to adjust things to hit my calorie goal at least. Not sure how (and I'm not 100% sure I hit it at all) given that I had pizza for lunch, but that's what I've written down now so we're going with it!

[Jarric]

Week 1 update

Well, I've been bad at updating this week, I know that much. It's been a good week, but I've been busy at lunchtimes which is when I normally get on here.

 

I got out for a run on Tuesday lunchtime, but that's the only run I've done so far this week. Thursday should have been the other one, but a busy day of work meant I only had about 30 minutes to grab a bite to eat and get back to my computer.

 

I've not done great of the calorie front; I'm keeping it in mind, but I've just been so hungry recently for some reason. I'm on track to hit beer day, so that's good at least. I wonder if maybe it's the 5 mornings per week of Crossfit that's making me want to eat more; I'm certainly feeling it at the moment. Hopefully I'll acclimate to the increased workout volume soon. Crossfit has been fun though - had a nice day of pullups and dips on Thursday followed by a 20 minute AMRAP of Russian dips, handstand pressups, and kettlebell swings.

 

Friday's workout was much tougher - 5 rounds of 15 double unders and 10 dumbbell lunges. I really can't do double unders, so a workout that took some people less that 3 minutes saw me hitting the 12 minute time cap a round short of the finish. It's good practice though - one day I'll be good at skipping

 

I've managed to get a couple of sessions of drawing in towards the creativity goal. I'm working on a picture of Tadgh, the halfling swashbucker that I'll be playing in our Pathfinder game on Tuesday. This is my progress so far:

 

 

I did a bit of revision on Tuesday, and I got in an hour this afternoon, so I'm nearly there for the goal. The be fair, having an exam on Tuesday is a really good way to focus me on this! Teeth brushing hasn't been good.

 

Other than that, it's been a fairly quiet week. Work's been busy, and that's taken up a fair bit of my time. I'm also conscious that I have a half day off work for study leave on Monday, the exam on Tuesday will keep me out of the office for most of the day, and then I've only got 3 days before I go on holiday. Why is it that holidays are always preceded by so much stress of getting things in order first?