7.26 - 11.1: A Review

Before we get into the meat of the blog, I'll go ahead and mention it here: although I'll still be writing, transcribing, etc... I'll be taking next week off from posting a blog.

Summary of Major Accomplishments

Skies Over Aefala

Journals:

• 8th Nudon: Written; 3 879 words

• 9th Nudon: Written; 738 words

• 10th Nudon: Written; 626 words

• 11th Nudon: Written; 330 words

• 26th Uros, Morning: Written, Edited, Posted; 5 201 words

• 26th Uros, Night: Written, Edited, Posted; 1 262 words

• 27th Uros: Edited & Posted; 913 words

• 28th Uros: Edited & Posted; 674 words

• 29th Uros: Edited & Posted; 548 words

• 30th Uros: Edited & Posted; 326 words

• 31st Uros: Edited & Posted; 1 070 words

• 12th Nudon: Written; 2 558 words

• 13th Nudon: Written; 839 words

• 1st Nudon: Written, Edited, Posted; 1 632 words

• 2nd Nudon: Written, Rewritten, Rewriting Again; currently 2 557 words

• Wordcount Total, Excluding Rough Drafts: 23 153

Transcriptions

• Sessions 90-95, avg ~10k words

Other

• Abandoned Performance for Brod: ~5 900+ words over the course of a few weeks of obsessive planning

• Correspondence between Cael & other characters

Health & Fitness

BWS

• 7.31 - 10.6 for the 4-day version of Phase 2

  • Upper 1 → Lower 1 → Upper 2 → Lower 2

  • Progressive overload until 9.19, after which lowered weight & upped reps

C25K

• Weeks 1-5 finished

• Repeated Week 4 until jogging pace fell below 6'00"/km

• Week 4's hard work influenced Week 5's results for Days 1 and 2, also below 6'00"/km

  • Day 3 was 6'18"/km

Meal Planning & Nutrition

• Went from keeping a file on the cloud to writing it on a weekly dry erase board that we have on our fridge

  • It's been working out really well

• Tracked protein and calories up until about the middle of October when I decided it wasn't serving me in the way I wanted

Fear No More

Blogs

• 16 blogs written, including this one

Design

• Logo rough sketches

• Homepage rough sketches

• Color palette chosen

Technical

• Set up e-mail automation

Other

Wawfuls

• Not listing any in particular, but there were a number of 'em

Learning

• Logo Design

• Wix Web Design

  • Only ~1/3 of the way through the course

• Dorico 5

  • Still just the first 2 lessons...

• Drawing

  • Watched some of Proko's Drawing Basics videos on YouTube

  • Restarted Draw a Box just this past week

    • Joined the Discord community this time

    • Completed 1/2 pages for the Superimposed Lines exercise

What's Working

• My corkboard of tasks to accomplish

  • I use it every work day

  • At the end of each week, I take all the sticky notes from each workday and put them in my journal's daily pages; it gives me a boost when I feel like I'm not doing enough; it's also great for tracking trends and seeing what days/weeks were really just not good for me

• Transcribing in a single day instead of multiple

  • Before, I spread it across multiple days because the soul-sucking tedium can really get to me by the end, regardless of trying to do it in one day or not

  • I've found that just knocking it out the day after a session drains me of less energy overall throughout the week, leaving more time open to write or plan

• Keeping an ideas book handy

  • How often ideas will come and go without us even noticing them or thinking, "I'll remember that later," and then we don't

• Blogging my ups and downs from week to week

  • It helps put into perspective where I struggle and what weeks I'm more likely to struggle

• Remaining overall consistent with writing and working out

• Filling in my daily pages only on work days for my 13-week journal

  • Technically speaking, you're supposed to fill out a page every day regardless, but I found that on days where I'm not working, I would just neglect to fill the page out until the next day, which defeats the purpose

  • I still have 3-weeks' worth of daily pages in my current journal even though the 13 weeks themselves have ended, but I like to view it as walking vs sprinting. I'll still work over the course of these next 13 weeks, but I won't fight so hard to accomplish as much...I say even though that ideology may not align appropriately with one of my goals listed below

What Isn't Working

• Tracking my calories and macros while also trying to lose fat and gain muscle

  • Was actually impeding my progress because I was gaining unwanted weight by trying to meet the standards set out by the program and app

  • When I enter a bulk phase, I may retry tracking, but for now, I've lightened my expectations of myself and am not stressing about the process so much

• Trying to do strength training alongside reaching 10k+ steps every day

  • Part of the reason I enjoy jogging is that it kills 2 birds with one stone: I get a good workout in, and it increases my overall step count

  • When it gets to be too cold to jog outside comfortable, I'll resume strength training and decrease my daily step goal to 8k

• No matter how much I try, setting 3 main Outcome Goals for my 13-week journal never seems to go well

  • It's the 3rd one where I tend to fall off the wagon

  • Granted, this could be because catching up on Cael's journals has been my biggest priority; I've almost always been trying to catch up on something instead of having the freedom to really focus on 3 different types of goals

• Working on more than one large creative project

  • I know it's not going to work, and yet I always try to divide my attention between multiple creative projects, especially at the beginning of my 13-week journals

  • I'm somebody with many interests but a single-minded focus on one long-term project at a time; it's why I've hardly done much more with the site and put all my focus in writing

Moving Forward

• I'm going to try to commit to one or two interests outside of my writing and exercise. I notice I tend to switch between interests, especially when I hit a wall with one or whenever it increases in complexity. For example, I might commit to just learning how to draw better instead of dipping into that, then composing, then web design, etc...

  • That's not to say I'll be attempting any projects, per se. Just building up the daily habits and discipline.

• Won't be starting my next 13-week journal until the new year

• I might alter what days I blog so that I can dedicate Fridays to writing Cael's journals, since on average Fridays tend to be really good writing days for me. Wednesday would really be the only other day I could post though. We'll see. The more I think about it, the more it appeals to me.

Goals for the Remainder of the Year

• Get caught up on Cael's journals

  • Currently

    • 2 more to write

    • 2 to finish

    • 12 total to edit

    • It's probably my most ambitious goal for the remainder of the year, since I'll probalby have other journals to write as we continue our sessions, but as long as I can keep myself out of ruts like for the journal I'm working on, it should be feasible

• Get Week 5 Day 3 down to 6'00"/km or below

  • Work on jogging a full 5k within 30 mins

• Send out my friend's package (sorry!)

• Commit to finishing the Dorico 5 lessons on Skillshare

• Continue Draw a Box lessons, hopefully reaching the actual "boxes" challenge before the new year; I have no idea how long it'll actually take to get there

This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Mura

(Toothless, is that you?)