Kel's 20 Seconds of Beast Mode: Reboot

[Keldream Nebula]

Whew! Finally making myself take the time to sit down and plan out my goals. 

 

This is my second (and a half) challenge, and I learned a lot trying to do the last one. I was terrible at posting and the goals I had written down didn't end up being practical, or were too much. But instead of changing them, I just veered off on my own course without having that written confirmation of what I wanted to accomplish...not the best strategy for me. I do better having a plan, even if its very general. 

 

I'm sort of at a weird point where we are in April, classes finish in May and then I graduate . Because that messes with my mentality of how much I can accomplish or what I should start doing that is new, I am going to try very hard through this challenge to really set up my goals for success so that when it gets down to crunch time of the end of the year I am not even more stressed out by trying to figure out how to achieve some sort of goal that I haven't defined. 

 

That being said, I'm going to list a whole bunch of goals, some are just to be kept in the back of my mind and others I need to do on a daily basis. Definite possibility of them changing in the next couple of weeks as I start figuring out how much is too much. 

 

FOOD:

 

--Regular Breakfast (caramelized onion meatballs, sweet potatoes and eggs)

--1 coffe in the morning (only if I want it, if it doesn't sound good, don't make it. I only drink it because it tastes good, so why drink it if I don't really want it? So silly sometimes.) 

--Pick ONE MEAL A WEEK to make. As in, one recipe that will provide me with food for one meal everyday of the week. Hopefully a new dish to try, but it doesn't have to be. Also best if it includes a vegetable...but if I can get enough food easily, then I can focus on vegetables. 

--Drink enough water every day. At least 8 glasses to start out with so that I'm in the habit. 

 

SUGAR: 

--1 sugar snack/day

--1 sugar drink/day

--Bonus: only 1 of those/day (might need a reward system for this...)

 

EXERCISE: 

--Meet daily workout goal: currently finishing up the Hero's Journey from Darebee (~10 days left)

--Practice my basic martial arts techniques 2x a week so I don't feel like a loser when I go back to the Dojang in the summer

 

LIFE: (these are temporary, I need to think about them more)

--USE MY PLANNER (no homework left behind!)

--Use Workout & Food Log! 

 

OTHER:

--2x a week anti-study-stretching (hips, chest, neck, shoulders; everything that holds stress and gets beat up by studying all the time and poor posture)

--Handstands: 2x a week handstand practice (to start out with); regularly be able to hold a handstand for a few seconds by the end of the month

--30 push-ups (currently 20 is about my regular max, and I really want to improve that, so I'm starting with 30)

--"Wall climbs": I can't remember what these are called. Walking your feet up the wall and hands closer, a really good back/shoulder work and I need that. (2x a week?)

--Pick one thing to clean/make a junk box for in my room (4x a week)

--Pro/con list of the grad schools I'm waiting to hear back from

 

WANTS:

--Duolingo Daily

--Meditation

--Reading for pleasure

--Dulcimer (my sister got me one for christmas because my harps are at home and I always find music relaxing...this one really needs to become a regular thing, but I'm not sure how yet). 

--weight-trainign (think this might wait until I'm home for the summer because we have an exercise room, and right now with school I'm not likely to find a gym and make myself go regularly. Keep with the more assassin-feel for now and add in weights later)

--1$ in a jar/day

 

Welllll.....That's a long list. I just need that visual to try and track for a week/two to see what works and what doesn't and then I can refine the list. 

 

Sorry for the rather long, boring post, but hopefully it'll get me set up for a good challenge  

 

Beast Mode: Rebooted!

 

[Jothra]

Plan! Woohoo!

 

Obviously the Hero's Journey is working out.

[Keldream Nebula]

2 hours ago, Jothra said:

Plan! Woohoo!

 

Obviously the Hero's Journey is working out.

Yes, definitely is! I've sort of come to the realization that somewhere along the line the results I knew I would get/the goal of me doing this got confused with other goals and ideas (as well as how much time everything takes), so that was a bit of a bump the other day. Had one of those "boo hoo everything I've been doing is worthless" moments and then got myself back together because obviously its doing a lot when I can do more pushups and everything than I could before (and every little bit helps!). And now I know more where I want to get to in the future from where I am now. 

 

For me, it really helps having the day-to-day plan because I don't have an excuse not to do it. Especially having the accountability to others and myself. i know I'll feel worse if I don't do it at all than even if I have to modify it a bit to make it happen one day. 

[Keldream Nebula]

I'm going to do my daily update now because I'm going to be gone the rest of the evening for a production of Othello my Shakespeare course is seeing. 

 

Food has been alright, had breakfast late enough that I'm just now hungry, so I guess dinner rather than lunch. 

 

Water....working on it. 

 

Sugar: Fail.  I was going to be doing fine on this because I had a small bit of chocolate earlier and am planning on buying a coffee for the drive to the play (takes about an hour/two), mostly for the way back since that'll be close to midnight and I am not a night person. However, my roommates and I walked to a nearby coffee stand to enjoy the outdoors and as a bit of a pick-me-up because my martial arts instructor passed away this morning and I just found out about it (while not expected because he has had cancer for two years, still upsetting)--when we got there they had a new special for the month out and I got that. Basically a milkshake with even more sugar AND coffee in it. Almost too sweet (*gasp* too sweet!? yes....too sweet...) So not a choice I regret, but still not a follow-through on my goal. Though I probably won't get a sugary drink later, just a coffee. 

 

Exercise: Hasn't been done yet.... sort of lost track of the time. I guess I'll do part of it really quick before leaving and then make myself do the rest later (I count night time as "today" when it comes to exercising lol) before bed--which should work well because its some balance/meditation stuff so that should be a good relaxer. 

 

Everything else:

I'm going to make more corned beef and cabbage and potatoes this week because the corned beef was on sale and its one of my favorite dishes. 

Nothing else happened today, though I got these posts up and that's always a big step. 

 

Yay! Tomorrow is Monday! Oh boy! School! Yay! (hahahahahahahhha....) 

[Luciana Valerosa Culming]

Hi Keldream Nebula,

 

What martial art have you been doing? Taekwondo or something else? Perhaps you want to drop by the Courtyard some time. We would be happy to hear from you.

 

Welcome to the Rebellion and best wishes for your challenge.

 

[Cataleya]

I'm sorry to hear about your martial arts instructor. 

 

Your challenge looks really good. Be sure to check in with us from time to time!

[Keldream Nebula]

10 hours ago, Luciana Valerosa Culming said:

Hi Keldream Nebula,

 

What martial art have you been doing? Taekwondo or something else? Perhaps you want to drop by the Courtyard some time. We would be happy to hear from you.

 

Welcome to the Rebellion and best wishes for your challenge.

 

 

Thank you!

 

I have been practicing Tang Soo Do (traditional Korean martial art) since 2004 (wow almost 12 years!). I love it, though while at school there isn't a studio near me and when I'm home its for such a brief time that I don't attend much. I will be home this summer, however, and we have a championship in July so that's some good motivation to practice on my own (especially now that I'm on the road to getting stronger like I've always wanted to be and admired in the instructors and students around me, while never actually feeling that strong on my own). 

 

[Keldream Nebula]

1 hour ago, Cataleya said:

I'm sorry to hear about your martial arts instructor. 

 

Your challenge looks really good. Be sure to check in with us from time to time!

 

Thank you. 

 

I will definitely checkin this challenge Might need to be a goal, but its going to happen! 

[Jothra]

Sometimes I think I need to set an Updating Things goal myself...

[Jarric]

On ‎04‎/‎04‎/‎2016 at 6:07 PM, Keldream Nebula said:

 

Thank you!

 

I have been practicing Tang Soo Do (traditional Korean martial art) since 2004 (wow almost 12 years!). I love it, though while at school there isn't a studio near me and when I'm home its for such a brief time that I don't attend much. I will be home this summer, however, and we have a championship in July so that's some good motivation to practice on my own (especially now that I'm on the road to getting stronger like I've always wanted to be and admired in the instructors and students around me, while never actually feeling that strong on my own). 

 

 

I used to do Tang Soo Do! Gave it up 8 or so years ago when I ran out of time/money for it. Would love to get back into martial arts at some point.

 

What grade are you?

[Keldream Nebula]

2 hours ago, Jarric said:

 

I used to do Tang Soo Do! Gave it up 8 or so years ago when I ran out of time/money for it. Would love to get back into martial arts at some point.

 

What grade are you?

 

Yay Tang Soo Do !

 

I'm a third degree black belt (Sam Dan) in the World Tang Soo Do Association--which sometimes sounds so intimidating to me because I don't get to train very much (and am definitely not in the state of fitness I would like to be for saying I'm a Sam Dan haha). I would always recommend doing a martial art if someone has the ability to, though that isn't always possible  I'm always amazed at how many styles there are out there and how different studios of the same style can be. I guess its similar to dance or gyms in that way, so much of it depends on the other people who are around. 

[Keldream Nebula]

Well, its Friday night and I'm on a class field trip...and trying to do homework, yay. I need to do a more in-depth post, but i wanted to put something up in brief for the week. 

 

My week has been...off. I don't know why. It might be senioritis or that I just needed a break or just had an off week, but I literally didn't touch homework until Wednesday, and spent Thursday working on one assignment that I still managed to make so little progress doing I had to scramble Thursday night and Friday morning to finish that one assignment and get it turned in (to the detriment of getting anything else done). 

 

Because of this and not checking back in here, I haven't really accomplished many of my goals so I have to get on track this weekend. 

 

Food: has been fine, ate a ton of orange chicken from the store on Monday, and otherwise I ate decent meals. 

 

Sugar: I'll have to double check my food log (which I did for most of this week until I tried to do homework on thursday), but I think I broke that one by having a lot of sugared coffees (especially with 80-degree weather in the middle of April...all I wanted to do was walk outside!)

 

The water has been on track, and I never made my meal this week so that'll turn into a project this weekend for next week. 

 

Exercise: I couldn't do it on Tuesday because I had dance, which was very intense and I'm not sure what happened but my hips started seizing up at the end and stretching didn't relieve it a ton so I decided to forgo the exercise so I wouldn't injure myself (and shifted that one day). All other days I "did" the exercise, but with limited energy and not necessarily with the numbers that I was supposed to do (eg yesterday I forgot it was a throughout the day thing and so I only did a small portion of the workout at one moment last night when I remembered). Tuesday is my last day of the Hero's Journey and I really want to finish strong, which is starting to concern me that I've been doing so little this week. I'm not sure what I'm going to do once this plan is done, I'll have to put some thought into that this weekend. 

 

That's about it. This week has just been a complete dud in terms of accomplishing anything but staring at walls and even the computer screen (though yesterday I spent the entire day obsessing over the Rogue One trailer with my sister and trying to figure out who everyone was...The Force Awakens has also become a study movie for me haha, guess I'm in a Star Wars mode). 

 

I may have to consider my homework, and depending on who I feel tomorrow when I get back from the field trip I'm currently on, might need to take a long look at my goals and motivations and figure out how to get excited about what I'm doing again. 

 

Have a good night!

[Cataleya]

We all have rough weeks here and there, but at least you'retaking care of yourself. Sorry to hear about your hips--someone else was having issues with their hips earlier in the week. Sometimes you really just have to say, look, I did something, and maybe it wasn't as great as I wanted it to be, but I did it. I know I've been there.

[Luciana Valerosa Culming]

Sometimes changing your goals is the best way to optimize your challenge. Don't feel bad about it. It's all a learning experience.

[Luciana Valerosa Culming]

So did you find a way to deal with your goals?

[Keldream Nebula]

On April 21, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Luciana Valerosa Culming said:

So did you find a way to deal with your goals?

 

This has been an odd couple of weeks. I finished my workout program and needed a break from going everyday--was just a  bit too much. The problem is I didn't have something immediately lined up to continue on with so outside of my 2 hours a week of dance class I haven't exercised except for some dancing around the apartment while listening to music. I realize this challenge is over, but until the next one is up I'm going to post here so that I get into the habit of posting while I'm in the mood to do it. 

 

Goals have been a bit revised, but I'm going to re-look at them again (I did that while ignoring a boring lecture one day....) and post them up here in the morning after I write them out on the white board. Ideally I want to be posting and writing them out, or at least writing out a food log, but I know the whiteboard worked really well when I was first trying to make all these changes a couple of months ago. 

 

Senioritis is hitting really hard, I didn't think I would ever find it this difficult to do homework, and I'm not really a go-getter when it comes to homework. So, while I battle that I figured I might as well fight a battle I enjoy, generally speaking: trying to become healthier. I definitely was feeling better when I was exercising regularly and not going out and getting sugar just as an excuse to leave the apartment. 

 

Have a good night, everyone, I'll post more in the morning (but actually will this time not just say it. I've hit the point in my slump where it just makes me feel anxious that I'm not eating right or exercising, so that's a total pro of the past couple of months of activity. I don't need more anxiety on top of school, and I can do something about this, so I'm going to.)

 

 

[Luciana Valerosa Culming]

Hey that sounds like you found out a lot about yourself. I see some good strategies here. Keep it up and I'm definitly looking forward to seeing the rest of your update. Sleep weel. I needed some rest from last week's university stress, too.

[Jarric]

Looks like you've got some good motivation to keep going and are honing your goals down well. Good luck moving forward with it.

[Cataleya]

Are you going to be doing the next challenge?