Indefinite Hiatus

My apologies to everyone, but I'm going on an indefinite hiatus while I work on getting my life back in order.  There are many things I need to take care of.  I still have a desire to get this off the ground, and to get back to the roots.  I will wait until I can do that in a quality manner, and consistently, before starting up again.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me so far.  I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.

Motivation

Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something.  Not even yourself.  If you've got a dream, you can accomplish it.

Moving (Somewhat)

To get more on track with the content goal for this blog, I'm moving my fitness quest over to a new blog.  That can be found here: http://kevinsquestforfitness.blogspot.com/

That is all for now

Momentum

Motivation that you can do anything!  I'm lost more than 10 pounds in my quest for getting into shape!  It's helping me keep going!  Even when I want to eat all of those nasty (Delicious) carbs, I'm managing to tell myself not to because of the progress I've made.

What I've taken out of it, is get the ball rolling.  Starting the ball is very difficult.  Instead of throwing all of my strength at it, and getting so tired that the ball stopped before I could recover, I had to give it a series of shoves.  It didn't tire me out completely, so after the first push, the ball was barely rolling.  But before it stopped again, I gave it another shove.  It was rolling faster now.  More rest, then shove again.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Now, several weeks later, it's taking less effort to at least keep the ball moving.  Which is basically momentum!

Whoever you are, whatever you are trying to achieve, I believe in you!  Let's get everything done that we wanna do!

Running!

So, the past few days I've started to get back into running!  It's been several weeks since I trained it, and expected to be a lot worse off.  Boy did I surprise myself!  Today, I was able to do 5 min. jog/2 min. walk, three times in a row.  Going back to planning out my running, I'd like to start by adding 15 or 30 seconds to a 4th set, every day until that is up to 5 minutes.

Then, after I hit that, every day I run, I'll cut off 5-10 seconds from my walking portion until I'm jogging for 20-30 minutes straight.  When I get there, I'll pick up from my other plan.

I'm planning on coming into work early everyday to work on my running.

As a side note, keto flu is coming and going in spurts.  Bleh.  Here's to just a couple more days.

Stage 2 of my Diet

So, for the third time, I've finally hit the second stage of my diet.  This is the stage where I've finally removed most of the glucose and glycogen that was floating in my blood, or stored in my muscles and liver.  With that, my body is now forced to look for an alternative energy source.  That would have to be my fat stores!  Now, my body will start using ketones as its energy source.

The only problem with this, is that my body isn't adapted to using it as an energy source yet.  This is where the next couple days to couple weeks will suck.  I've got to stick with it though!  Even one day of cheating will set me back at least 2-4 days.  I can do it!

1:16PM Update: I've got Keto Flu again.  Headache and tiredness.  Only lasts about a day though.  Bleh.

9/15/14 Update!

So, as I "cheated" on my diet again last Friday eating out at this delicious sushi place with my friends (Very rare opportunity, and then we went to the Book of Mormon afterward), I began dwelling on the effectiveness of the place.  In the end, it came down to being a product of how consistently you adhere to the plan, multiplied by some factor of how efficient the plan is.

Well, even with a couple cheat days in the last several weeks (Almost once a week, unfortunately), I have validation that my diet is going great.  I'm down 9.2 pounds as of this morning from my heaviest point!

9/4/2014 Update: -3.4%

I was going to post later on progress, but I'm super happy.  Today the scale informed me that I'm down 7.4 lbs.!

Temporary favorite quote

"Just because someone stumbles and loses their way, doesn't mean they are lost forever." - Charles Xavier

Moral Definition

I'm working on defining my moral views.  To my knowledge, this is under what conditions I deem an action taken to be good or bad.  As an example, this is more or less my definition of whether or not an action brings good or bad karma.  This will start really rough, and I hope to discuss with some people to refine it.

Long story short, it's equivalent exchange.  From the perspective of those affected by the action being taken, if the action results in neither a net gain or loss in resources (at the cost expended by the action), then the action is neutral.  If the cost of the action outweighs the gain in resources for the affected people, it's a bad exchange, and vice versa.

Here is the list of things related to this:

1. The ultimate resource is life.
2. This only pertains to intentional actions at the moment.  I haven't defined unintentional actions yet
3. The conversion rate between resources, for the intent of judging the action, is from the perspective of the people affected
1. There is a point where the conversion rate gets ridiculous, and I haven't accounted for this entirely.  But it will have to be taken into account.
4. Time and money are the most common resources

This is what I have now.  As I think more on this and receive feedback from others, I'll refine it.

9/2/2014 Update

So, an update!  This weekend was my birthday.  I started Saturday (my birthday) at 209.2 pounds.  That meant I was 4.6 pounds down from where I started.  Considering I "cheated" on my diet a couple times over the past week, I was still fine with this.  However, I went to my favorite restaurant for lunch, and a decent, but fattening, dinner at my father's house, and drank quite a bit.  I woke up Sunday at 215 pounds.  Ouch.  Oh well.  I have to deal with the consequences of my actions, and I'd say they were totally worth it.

Over the past 3 days, I managed to get my weight back down to ~210 today.  I also started hitting the gym again.  I'm going to try and avoid looking at my weight on a daily basis now, and see where I'm at in a few days.

There's one major change to my diet... I've removed my snacks from in between meals.  I'm going to try and eat 3 larger meals instead, while keeping my caloric intake pretty low.  With a reduced calorie diet, I'm expecting to lose muscle mass.  The two main reasons I'm going to the gym is to try and reduce how much muscle I lose, and to improve my neural connections to my muscles so that I at least have better control over them in the future.

To everyone who is struggling with their own diet, Keep with it!  I'm stumbling myself, but each time I recover, I'm getting a bit stronger with my resolve.  You'll only get better if you get back up each time you fall down.

8/29/2014

An update!  While I stumbled a bit last week on my diet, I've done some research, and can say that I'm doing strong on this third go.  I've modified my diet a bit in my attempt to achieve maximum fat loss.  I'm doing that by trying to get my body into a state of ketosis.

A brief overview of Ketosis:  When your body doesn't have sugars (Or a ton of protein, which can be transformed into glucose), it has to find a new way to produce energy to sustain the body.  It does this through ketosis.  Long story short, it uses fat as it's primary source of energy.  The neurons in your brain cannot process the fat or proteins in your blood to give it energy.  Therefore, it relies on two other forms of energy.  When it's present, glucose.  When glucose isn't present, the body tells itself to form ketones, which the brain can metabolize.

Long story short, minimal carbs for me.  A diet high in fat, medium in protein, and tons of filler vegetables so I don't get hungry.  It's already day 2, and I can already feel some differences.  The main one being what I can only say is a more consistent awareness.  Other than that, I don't feel as hungry.  We'll see how it goes, as it's supposed to take 3-10 days for my body to fully go into ketosis.

8/22/2014 Update

Yesterday was hell.  It was release day.  I wanted to rip some hair out.  I survived, but looked pretty bad in the process.  Although, I'd much rather take the slow path that I took and only got a little out, instead of going much faster and putting out errors.  We'll see how that reflects on my one-on-one today.

As for my weight, which is the big thing I'm watching the next 25 days... I'm back down to 209.8.  So, I'm back down to almost 4 pounds under where I started.  Considering that I'm starting a new diet, changing up my regiment, and starting to creatine load, I think I'm doing fine.  I'm hoping that I've retained as much water as I will in my cells, and that I'm back to actually losing weight.  We'll see where I'm at come Monday!

It would be super encouraging to see the scale tip back under 200... That'd mean I'm no longer carrying 10-15 pounds when I'm running!

8/21/2014 Update

So, yesterday was a weird wash.  By not having bananas, and by missing my protein shakes, I kinda screwed myself over for muscle repair and also cut back a lot of calories.  The calories were evened out because it was Sushi Night!  And I had that instead of my normal plans.  Between eating a heavier dinner, and because the creatine supplement that I'm taking initially increases my water weight, I woke up today to 211.6.  I'm fine with this small bump.  I'll just have to keep monitoring it, and keeping to my diet.

Also, I managed to go to bed early last night, and had tons of sleep.  I had some fun dreams, and one not so fun one where I was stabbed.  I don't remember a lot of details about them, so I'm going to work on my dream recall.  This is going back to my goal of lucid dreaming!

8/20/2014 Update

Day 2 successful!  Gym, diet, lack of extra food, all great.  Here's where I stand now: 209.4 pounds, with 28.9% Body Fat.  That puts me at 60.51 pounds fat.  Makes me think that my scale isn't the most accurate when it comes to body fat.  I'm just going to look at the longer trends, and weight at the moment.  I'm 4.2 pounds less than beginning (In only 48 hours).  Again, I know this is mostly excess weight stored in my intestines, but either way, its 4.2 pounds I'm not carrying around!  Every pound I lose will make it easier for me to run, which means that I'll be able to run further!

12 Days until checkpoint 1, and 28 more days until Phase 1 is complete.  At this rate, I think I can do it!

8/19/2014 Update

Whooo!  I beat out (most) of the temptations of bad food, and managed to stay within my calories yesterday!  It clocked in around 1600 calories.  I also probably ate the most broccoli that I ever had in my life.  And... I didn't hate it.  So, I'm doing well!

It's also showing.  Since I didn't stuff my mouthface full of food, I'm down to 211.8 pounds.  I'm completely aware that this is probably waste, as my BF% went up to 28.2%.  This puts me at 59.7 pounds of fat.  I also know that I didn't gain two pounds.  I'm just mentioning it for trend-sake.  My first checkpoint is after 2 weeks.  We'll see where I'm at then.

(FAIL: I forgot to post this yesterday after I wrote it xD)

Day 1 Diet Status Updates

I'll just be updating this through the day
~9:30: Hungry.  Resolved through drinking of water

Update: I was hungry in the evening, because I didn't take my evening protein shake.  Did fine the rest of the day otherwise.

Second Restart

Here we go.  I'm prepped.  I have a 30-day supply of healthy foods.  I bought some supplements, a crap top of protein powder, and a complete ban on alcohol.  With my baby-step method, I've managed to get to the gym, and slowly increase the number of vegetables I'll eat.  However, as I improved in one area, I'd slack in another.  In the end, I've achieved negative results these past couple months and even these past couple weeks.  It's time to change that.

COMPLETE OVERHAUL OF SOME OF MY PROCESSES!

Strict diet.  I've got a plan, and on top of that plan, I'm going to work on accountability by recording what I eat and posting it.  I had started doing that personally, but stopped because I was discouraged on what I ate.  I did do well with my diet at times, but I would get bored of it because it would just be a salad at lunch, or just a sandwich.  Now, with this new meal plan that I bought to get me kick started, I'll have variety, portion control, and plenty of vegetables.

My core diet:
Breakfast:
3 Eggs: 210 calories
One piece of Toast w/ butter: ~120 calories
Sausage/Bacon: ~150 calories
Mid-morning protein shake: 170 calories
<Lunch> 200-400 calories
Mid-afternoon protein bar and banana: 245 calories
After-workout protein shake: 170 calories
<Dinner> 200-400 calories

Total: ~1465-1865

Now, for the record, I'm going entirely for cutting.  I'm aware that my working out will probably not net me much muscle.  This month will be for me to A.) Cut a chunk out of fat and encourage me that I can do more, and B.) Get into the habits of working out 5 times a week, a vegetable at every meal, and smaller portions for lunch/dinner.  I'll evaluate how I feel for a couple days and make any modifications that I need.  I'll do this by taking notes about any time I'm feeling hungry/off.

This first stage will be about 30 days, but I'm kicking off a 3 month plan this time instead of the 6-month one. I wasn't ready for it.  I'll be working on before/after pictures as well as weight/Body fat %.  As for those... embarrassingly, I'm at 213.6, with 26.8% body fat.  That's a total of 57.25 pounds of fat.  Time to finally make a change.

Confidence

If we don't have confidence in ourselves, how can we expect anyone else to have confidence in us?

Here

I'm here, floundering about.  It looks like my first process I need to work on is my time allocation processes xD.

Failure

Failure is the hardest thing I deal with.  It's the reason I try so hard to cover up my mistakes.  Failure to me is 100% the opposite of success.  So much so that I avoid it like a plague.  But a recent article by NPR has made me reevaluate this.

Failure is not, not succeeding.  It is just not accomplishing your goals.  Failure shouldn't be as horrible of a thing that I've made it to be.  Just because you haven't succeeded in your short term goals, doesn't mean you've not succeeded in the end.  Failure is an opportunity to learn from your mistakes.  If you never make mistakes (Especially because you don't try), then when you do try, you're going to make those mistakes.

It sound so simple now, but it was hard for me to come across.  I'll make mistakes, it's inevitable.  The best thing I can do is learn from those mistakes.  A failure should be viewed as a success.  I successfully learned a new way NOT to do something.  Just learn.  It shouldn't be such an issue.

Just learn.

New Writing Line

I hang in my cell, dangling like the X that I seemed to have painted on my forehead.  I suppress these thoughts that distract my from my current goal.  I draw in a large breathe, and hold it for 5 seconds.  As I exhale, I tense my muscles against the shackles.  I repeat the process, steeling my nerves for the pain to come.  I inhale for the third and final time before my task, closing my eyes and arching my back.  This final exhale, I scream.  With the piercing noise, I contract every muscle in my body, as if I attempt to pull the walls into myself.  The action results in me raising myself several inches off the ground.  I remain tightened for as long as my body allows.  Eventually, I collapse into exhaustion.  Relaxing all of my muscles, I allow myself to heal, growing stronger with each attempt at escape.

Struggles

I have yet to fully implement my diet.  I keep dropping the ball during dinner time.  I'm going to have to address this.  This will be the first focus for my self-evaluation.  I'm going to start taking notes on how I feel/reasons I come up with for not sticking with it in the evenings.

Introspection

This is more of a reminder post for myself.  I'm about to go on a week long vacation with my In-Laws.  I'm excited, as it should give me a week away from the stress of work, and plenty of time to read/write/do what I want on the way down and back.

I'd like to spend that time in order to understand what it means to be introspective.  I have a definition in my head, but I haven't really applied it to my own life.  This trip should provide ample time for me to go into my own world and think about things.

I'll try to make some posts while I'm down there, but I won't make any guarantees.  I will get back to you guys after the trip, at a minimum.

Writing Pt. 3

He flitted in and out of consciousness.  Each time, the world shone a little less brighter through his eyelids.  However, the pain lingered through his dreams.  His subconscious brought him to the outskirts of the burning town.  There stood no place where the flames didn't rise several feet into the air.

The guilt of the destruction his actions wrought upon the town pushed him to walk into the flames, toward the town square.  Everywhere he looked, the scared and scornful looks of all the residents drilled deep into his soul.  Walking past each one, his shame grew and grew, until he wished with his whole being that death would save him from it.

The world started rocking around the man, so he burst into a run.  As the street he was on opened into the city square he knew so well, he expected to find the shallow pool drained of all liquid.  As he slowed down and approached the lip carved with all of the names of the past mayors of the city, he was surprised to find that the water stretched infinitely downward.

He spun around to the voice of an elderly, female voice, represented by an unclear specter.  "Let the guilt go.  Take the plunge and purge yourself of everything holding you back right now."

The man stood dazed, not knowing what to do.  The specter chuckled softly and said, "It's alright.  I'll give you a hand."  Before he could react, the figure pushed him backward into the pool.  As the cool water washed over him, he made the transition from unconscious to conscious again.  This time, he found himself sitting up in darkness, breathing heavy and sweating.

"Shhh shhh shhh, relax," the voice from his dream whispered.  "It's not yet your time to die."

6 Month Quest

Inspired by the main blog that I follow, Nerd Fitness, I am going to begin a 6-month quest.  Now, I've already stumbled.  I intended to begin this on July 1st, and have it end on December 31st.  However, I'm just going to recover from my stumble and start on the right foot.  This quest will begin today, 7/8/2014, and end January 7th, 2015.  I'll do an overview of what I accomplished then.

This quest will revolve around self-improvement of my whole life.  My body, my mind, and where they overlap, what I'll call my spirit.  I'll outline what I'm going into this quest intending to improve.  I expect that this will change as the months go on.

Body: 

One of the things I've been focusing most on recently has been the welfare of my body.  Over the past several months, I have gone from not working out and eating horrible lunches, to going to the gym 2-3 times a week.   As of this morning, I'm 212 pounds with what the scale says is 28% body fat.  Doing some simple math, that puts me at 59.36 pounds of protective casing covering my body.  That is quite a bit extra to be carrying around.  It's going to be a huge focus on dropping this down.

Stats:

Here are my weightlifting stats right now.  All I'll be looking for in this is an improvement, as I don't understand enough how I'd improve to give a realistic goal.

Bench: 145 lbs.

Shoulder Press: 80 lbs. 

Deadlift: 75 lbs.

Lat Pulldown: 105 lbs.

Row: 125 lbs.

Squat: 80 lbs.

In 36 minutes (30 minutes of activity plus 3 minutes warmup and 3 minutes cooldown), I can get 2.75 miles.

For the Fitness test, I fail out at 8:00 minutes.

My sitting heart-rate is 72 bpm.

Goal: 

My long term goal is going to be to drop down to 9% body fat.  After doing some more math, going by the numbers above and assuming I don't lose or gain muscle, I'm going to need to drop 44 pounds of fat to make this happen.  Optimistically, this is safely doable in the next six months.  The maximum recommended weight loss is 2 pounds a week.  However, I'm going to take into account holidays, delicious family dinners, and other unforeseen factors, and set my goal to be at 20% body fat by the end of this year.  That will require me to only drop 21.45 pounds of fat.  For reference, that's a little more than two and a half gallons of water that I'm carrying around on my body all the time.

Approach:

Here's how I'm going to approach this.  First, in regard to my exercise plan, I'm going to work on kicking up my workouts to 5 days a week.  I'll still be strength training 2-3x a week, but for the rest of the time I'm going to put a heavy emphasis on cardio.  Strength wise, I'm squatting 85 pounds 3x10, benching 150 pounds 2x10 + 1x10 @ 145, and in one 35 minute period, I alternated jogging 5 minutes and walking one minute, and manage to complete 2.75 miles.  Dietary wise, I'm going to work more on calorie replacement.  I've cut back my sweets a lot and my fats a little bit, but I can do much better.  On top of my daily lunch salads, I'd like to decrease the calories of my dinner and make sure they revolve more around vegetables and lean meats instead of cheeses and heavy carbs.  I'll work on documenting my diet a lot more, and then making tweaks where I see fit.  Go science!

Mind:

It took me awhile to decide what would be categorized as my mind.  I've come up with what I'm training in Lumosity, and crystal memory (What I know).  This will be a lot looser, as I haven't decided strict goals in this area.  As I work on the spirit portion of my quest, and understand my mind better, I will come up with my goals and approach more clearly.  As for now, my goal is to improve my BPI in Lumosity, finish my machine learning class, and take at least one more class.  I'm also not sure if this belongs here, but I'd like to work more on my writing.  Having confidence in myself and just getting stuff done.  More on this in the future.

Spirit:

This is where I'm hoping the most noticeable changes that might be viewed by others would occur.  Spiritually, I'm not very in-tune with myself.  I have plenty of processes that are inefficient, and my mind is usually uneasy/unfocused.  I'm going to work on mainly on attempting to understand myself better, and to improve on developing good and healthy habits.  This is also more or less undefined, but I do have an approach.

Approach:

Weekly, I'd like to work on a process.  At the beginning of each week, I'd like to meditate and determine which of my most commonly used processes could be evaluated.  I'd like to make a move toward thinking about how I do things, in order to determine if they are the best for me.  As the week goes through, I'd like to formulate a new way of doing the process, if I think that a new way would work out better.  Finally, at the end of the week, or during the next week, I'd like to reflect on the change and see if I want to keep my process the same.  

Writing Pt. 2

The man dropped to his knees, under the weight of the sun's scorching beam.  It was low in the sky, but that didn't seem to help with anything.  The man looked into the distance, and saw on the horizon the tiny speck that was his goal.  He allowed himself to fall forward onto his hands.  He ignored the burning of the sand on his palms.  Sweat streamed from his face into sand, where it evaporated in seconds.  Like his will, it was leaving his body, without any way that he knew of getting it back.

He completely detested suicide.  It was a cheap way of removing yourself from your problems.  However, when did giving up and allowing yourself die change from suicide to death by dehydration?  Was he committing suicide by allowing his body to collapse now?  Did it matter what the root cause of it was, if the fact remained that he'd be long dead before anyone found him?

With labored effort, he pushed himself back onto his knees, and opened his arms to the sun.  Wishing that the sun was feeding him energy instead of sapping it away, he allowed himself to stay like this for a couple minutes.  Eventually, he made his decision.  He determined that he had passed the line, and he was fine with it.  He allowed himself to fall onto his back, slowly closed his eyes, and let exhaustion overtake him.

Awakening

So, I lucid dreamt last night.  Side note, auto-correct is telling me that dreamt is no longer a word xD.  Here's my story though.

I vaguely remember the things before it.  My buddy MattDave told me an important lesson, but I either forgot what it was or I didn't grasp the meaning of it.  That happens often.  He has such great wisdom but I find myself getting lost.

I was in a school.  Probably symbolizing the metaphysics school that my friend Levi was telling about.  And within (Where I was doing the learning, it was where I met MattDave as well), I eventually met someone I went to school with who asked me if my siblings and I wanted to go over to her place for the 4th of July.  I told her no.  These things are actually unimportant and I'll skip them.  Eventually, one of my old friends from Altoona asked me a question about my lucidity.  I responded that I was completely lucid, but to question myself.

I walked into the night, out of the school, mulling over this.  Confused.  It was then that I questioned why there was a Target next to the school.  Both the school and Target disappeared, and it instantly transitioned into day.

I was left to talk with Kayla.  I meditated on ways to make life better, and discovered that I am unpleased with where I'm at now in life.  I am staying at my job, which I'm capable of doing but not enjoying, out of a sense of loyalty. We lost a teammate, and so the team is pretty much spread thin as it is.  I am realizing I am coming to enjoy it.  I'm not sure if I'm just not comfortable with working in general.

That's a place holder for a different discussion.  The other key point was that I tried very hard to fly.  I wanted Kevin time to mull over those things.  That's where, struggling with flying, I found Superman.  Though he didn't say anything, I realized that the key to flying is not the velocity, it is simply the will.  I will fill that in later.  It's time to actually wake up in real life and begin my run.

Note to self

To everyone else, I'm sorry, but this will sound weird.  But I'm in an era of change, and this is the only way it will happen.

KEVIN: LISTEN TO YOURSELF.

Step 1: Experience
Step 2: Notation
Step 3: Meditate
Step 4: Review
Step 5: Decide
Step 6: Update

Random Quote

Remember:


The reason most major goals are not achieved is that we spend our time doing second things first.

- Robert J. Mckain, writer

Physical Update

So, working on updates: I went to the gym yesterday (Totally all on my own accord, because I wanted to run, w00t!).  Moved up to 17.5 minutes of jogging consecutively, with a hard run at the end for the last minute.  Ahead of where I want to be.



My current training strategy for running: I'm going to try to move up a couple minutes more per every 2 runs, up to my goal of 30 minutes consecutively.  When I get there, I'm going to begin to up my pace.  Every day I run, I'm going to try to go 0.1-0.2 miles per hour faster.  I'll do this until I get to 6.7mph.  After that, I'm going to slowly increase the incline until its at about 6 degrees.


When I get here, I should be able to do a 5k in 30 minutes.  A bit more if it has obstacles.  This won't be my stopping point though.  This is my just first set of goals.  I'll redefine them as I go along.

Lesson of the night

Live, feel, believe

Slowing down even more

So, just some proof that slowing down really helps.  In a couple of my lumosity games, I'm scoring about as high as I normally do when I go fast, as when I slow down and make 0 or 1 mistakes.  However, I believe that it's allowing my mind to learn to do these processes faster, instead of finding short cuts and accepting more errors.  I'll keep an eye on this for a couple weeks and see where things go.  However, in the past week, I've recovered almost all of the BPI points I've lost over the past two months, where speed/scoring the highest was the main concern for me.

Random Quote #2

Long-range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions.

- Peter F. Drucker, management consultant

Free Write 1

So yeah... Free write.  I'm adverse to this.  But I'll go with it.  I'm supposed to speak my mind.  So we'll see how this goes.  Eventually, I hope to get better and maybe move more toward storytelling.  Hmmm.... HERE GOES!!!

So, I'm just going to talk about the 2 hour conversastion I had with my buddy David.  I'm going to miss out on a lot of great information, because my methods of keeping information long term isn't the greatest.  But the first thing...

EVERYONE IS TRYING HARD TO FIT IN AS WELL!  We all put up a good front, but that doesn't mean we all aren't struggling.  And struggling hard am I.  I want ot do so much, but I don't get as much as I want accomplished.  But who cares.  Life is a learning process.  I'll fail.  I can expect to fail.  Failing is just a new way of not doing something.

So, why not fail at writing?  Just write.  Find out what doesn't work.  When you finally find out what does work, set that gem as the center piece of your new assignment.  Mold that, shape that, and either throw it away, learning something that didn't work, or reconstruct it to be a new gem.  A new centerpiece for something.

But it doesn't matter.  Just do something.  Spending all of my time playing League or flash games won't expose me to things I may enjoy.  And when I say enjoy, not just enjoying because I want to enjoy them.  I have to get outside of my comfort zone to start enjoying things. 

Also, take care of people.  And be careful around people.  To people.  We all feel just like each other.

I don't have too much now, but I started this.  Incremental habit building.  I'll get there.  Until then, bye!

Writing 1 Revision 1

The man looks around at the desert that stretches around him.  He knows not where he's exact destination is, just that it lies somewhere on the other side of this desolate land.  It's been 4 days since he started this journey, and he's struggled the entire way.  Although he brought enough water to last him the entire trip, he's already drank too much and must ration it now.  Turning back and peering into the distance, he can still barely see the fire and ruins of the origins of this trip.  He thinks on how he caused that destruction, and knows he shouldn't return.  However, it is so close, and he has so far to go.  How easy it would be to turn around and return.  He could rebuild a small house in the ashes.  No one around for him to hurt.  The thought lingers on his mind, pulling him mentally toward the past.  He begins to step forward...

And a thought pierces his destructive command.  There's still hope.  There are people on the other side of this trial.  People who love and care for him.  He can start again.  There is always the chance at a new beginning.  Braving this, and coming out stronger, will make him the man he wants to be.  He dwells on this thought for a few moments.

Then, he gazes at the place he's called home for as long as he can remember.  He reminisces about the laughter and memories, all of the joy he's shared with his friends.  The same ones who are waiting for him, if he can but brave this journey.  Elation replaces despair.  Motivation begins to return to him.  Even with the sun beating down on him, attempting to sap his will, he perseveres.  Smiling, he turns his back to the ashes, and begins to move forward in order to rebuild.

Writing 1

The man looks around at the desert that stretches around him.  He knows not where he's exact destination is, just that it lies somewhere on the other side of this desolate land.  It's been 4 days since he started this journey, and he's struggled the entire way.  Looking back, he can still barely see the fire and ruins of the origins of this trip.  He thinks on how he caused that destruction, and knows he shouldn't return.  However, it is so close, and he has so far to go.  How easy it would be to turn around and return.  He could rebuild a small house in the ashes.  No one around for him to hurt.  The thought lingers on his mind, pulling him at least mentally toward it.  He begins to step forward...

And a thought pierces his destructive command.  There's still hope.  There are people on the other side of this trial.  He can start again.  There is always the chance at a new beginning.  Braving this, and coming out stronger will make him the man he wants to be.  He dwells on this thought for a few moments.

He gazes at the place he's called home for as long as he can remember.  He thinks on all of the good memories he has, and realizes that he can have more memories similar to that.  Smiling, he turns back around and continues his trek through the unknown.

Fitness Challenge!

So, I've been working on getting my life in order.  Even though I've been doing great with my exercise (And by great, I'm consistently going to the gym 2 out of the 3 scheduled times a week xD), I'm still struggling with my diet.  I've passed the point where I get physically sick when I eat vegetables.  However, I still have a preference to not eating them.  So, I've decided to find a source of motivation to get me into the habit of eating lots more of them...

A fitness challenge!  Yesterday was day 1 out of 84 of a fitness challenge on reddit.  I took down my weight, and posted pictures, and now I have a solid starting point.  My approach will be as such: Workout and be active in general, and consume 1500 calories a day (1700 calories on workout days).  A majority of my calories will be from protein, in a hope to still gain some muscle, or at least curb any muscle loss I'll see from the huge deficit.  This means I'll be eating a salad with a side for lunch, and a salad for dinner.

This will be a huge will power test.  As such, I feel it's a great way to start easing back into that part of why I created this blog.  I'll be sure to cover my struggles, what I'm doing to overcome them, and see if I get any comments/support/techniques anyone has for me.

I'm optimistic though.  Although I'm 33% heavier than I spent most of college/high school, I'm also lifting heavier weights than I ever have before and just being more active than I have in a long time.  While my goal will be to lose 20 pounds of fat, my real measure of success will be whether or not I stick with it for the whole 84 days (even if it's at a minimum).  1% is infinitely better than 0%.

Journal 4

Hey guys,

So, I think I'm finally at a point where I'm comfortable trying my hand at Dungeon Mastering again.  A few lessons that have been driven home that I'm going to be bringing with me:

Slow down - No need to rush, no need to try to keep things moving along.  Rushing my story will only cause it to lack details, and trying to rush telling the story will lead to mistakes.  With regard to telling the story, I'll trust my players to inform me if I am going too slow.

Keep it simple - Prelude in C is a great example that you can do beautiful work with something simple.  I'm currently learning this for piano.  It has a steady melody, and never uses more than 5 different notes in a phrase.  I'm going to work on creating a world based on simple principles and focus on bringing them together cohesively.

Being aware that I'll make mistakes - I'm not an experienced DM, so I will make mistakes.  I will instead take this as an adventure of learning how I can be better.

Other than that, nothing too much to report new for me.  Didn't play Dark Souls 2 last night, so not much more to report on that front.  I hope that everyone has a great day.

Journal 3

I'm only going to make a habit out of something if I actually do the task I want to make habitual.  I'm not going to write a lot today, but I hope that at least writing something everyday will be useful.  

As for me, I'm doing great!  I had a nice relaxing weekend.  Wasn't as productive as I wished, but was still pretty nice.  

Things I did do this weekend: Went to a wedding at a conservation park.  The weather was beautiful and we went on a nice walk around the lake.  I also visited my father and brothers.  There, I played more Dark Souls 2.  Apparently, I've spent too much time helping other people and leveling up, because I'm at level 125 and still haven't beaten the game.  I'm switching back into dual wielding, but I'm liking sword and shield too much (I love the protection).  Therefore, I'm going to work on switching between the two more often, as the situation arises.

Finally, this is another note to myself to work on the habit post.  Also, to read my own posts again.  Let's see if I re-read this post in order to remind myself to read the other ones xD.

Journal/Diary 2

Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.

- King Whitney, Jr


I've been fearful.  I'm going to work on changing that.


This week I'm working on implementing even more changes.  I've been up and down with all of my other ones, but it's time to start working on solidifying those, and adding additional ones.  Even though I've been going to the gym the last 4 months, I've gained 10 pounds.  While some of it is definitely muscle, there is a significant portion that is fat.  This is what I'm working on identifying with these changes that I'm starting this week.


First, dropping my drinking.  I didn't get drunk all of the time, but I did do lots of casual drinking (What I called casual at least).  To not drink yesterday was a bit hard.  Leading me to believe that I'm more addicted to it than what I wanted to believe.  But I managed.  I'm getting great support from Kayla.

Second, working more on my diet.  I've been great with improving my eating selection.  I'm about 80% comfortable with a huge number of vegetables.  Enough that, for the most part, I won't even try to eat around them.  Moving forward, I'm switching to just a salad for dinner.


I've been observing my diet.  Between getting up and when I get home, I'm following my diet pretty well.  This means the increased vegetables, the dropping of snacks, and the high amount of calories in the morning to supply energy all day.  I start to fail miserably when I get home.  Huge meals (And the drinking) supplied my body with tons of extra calories that it didn't need to make it through the night.  But focusing more on only having a light dinner and light snack in the evening, I'm expecting about a 1,000 calorie swing.  Putting me from the (I'm guessing) 500 calories over to 500 calories under basal metabolic rate (Normal amount of calories my body spends in a day).  We'll see how this goes for a couple of months.


Finally, the more fun stuff!  I played lots more Dark Souls 2 last night.  Holy crap, I'm loving this game.  It's been quite a while since I've been this enticed by a game.  I've got some changes from yesterday.  I've been doing a lot of co-op to help people defeat bosses.  With two other people usually, I'm only being focused about 1/3 of the fight.  I've wanted to do more damage, so I've been experimenting with a halberd for those fights.  And it's definitely helping.  The only unfortunate part is that I've still yet to get a stronger weapon, and all of my levels last night went into faith.


I don't have much to say on faith yet.  It was a considerable investment to begin implementing it.  I'm only faith level 16 and attunement  level 10.  The level 10 attunement only gives me one spell slot.  Also, my lightning spell requires a faith of 22 (There is a ring I can buy that increases my faith, so I might invest in that).  This means I need more attunement (If I want the heal, force spell, and the lightning), and a bunch more faith.  At 10k+ souls a level now, it's going to take awhile.


I'll keep you posted on how that turns out tonight.

Change

No matter how long you've been doing something, if you want to, you can change it.

Journal/Diary 1

Work, which hasn't been too great, is finally starting to ramp up again.  I had a frustrating last few weeks with trying to troubleshoot issues that weren't making much sense.  It ended up being partly my lack of complete understanding, and partly from having to wait for someone who was the connection between me and the customer experiencing this difficult issue.  

On top of that, I've been really itching for more development work.  And now I've gotten it!  Unfortunately, it's due to someone on our team leaving, Zach.  It does mean that in the near future, I'll have more responsibility in terms of releases and maintenance.  But it also means I have more responsibility.  Which means more opportunities to prove myself.

As for home: Cleaning up has still been slow.  The office still has quite a few boxes to unpack.  It will be slow progress, but as long as I get a box or two done a night, I should be good.

Now on what I've really been enjoying these past few days... Dark Souls 2!  Holy crap, this game is fun.  (Not so much with Keyboard/Mouse or a crappy PS3 wired controller).  After we bought an Xbox 360 controller receiver for the computer, the game became so much smoother, and so much more fun.  I'm already up to level 63, but I'm pretty sure I'm not all that far into the game.  

For my character, he's a dual-wielding swordsman with a bow.  I'm calling it the Legolas build.  He's pretty good at starting fights with one or two people, and if I position myself properly, I can even get a couple kills if they are in a mass coming down a hallway or funneling through a door.  I'm going to keep spoilers out of here, but I will say that I've fought 4 bosses.  There seem to be more bosses overall, but there have been a couple that I would deem mini-bosses.  

I'm really wondering if I should dive into magic.  I'd have to allocate quite a few levels now, which are starting to get significantly more expensive.  But I think I would do well with a faith build.  The extra healing for sustainability, the burst damage from the lightning, and the positioning tools from the force knockback all appeal to me.  We'll see.

Til next time.

Understanding

My first amusement with the concept of understanding was that I didn't fully understand what it meant to understand something.  After looking at the word for a few moments, I quickly broke it down to under and stand, or to stand under something.  Why would anyone stand under something?  I don't know... so, I went off to this wonderful place called the internet. 


Define Understanding: the ability to understand something


Well crap.


Define Understand: perceive the intended meaning of (words, a language, or speaker).


Much better!


Well then, what is the intended meaning of the word "understand"?  I'm pretty sure it was lost in time (Or so I hope, as I'm too lazy to search for it right now), so I'm going to forge my own ideas.  And to do this, I'm going to stick with my original train of thought of standing under something.  So, why would someone stand under an object?  The simple answer that I came up with: Because they have enough knowledge about it to know that it won't fall on them.  Or if it does, it won't hurt them.


At this point, it's getting increasingly difficult to talk about this topic without using the word "understanding".  To me, this means that this is a great word.  One without a lot of fluff tied to it.  So, I'm going to wrap up and start thinking about my next topic of how to go about "Understanding" things.   It requires a knowledge of relevant properties of the object, and the relationships that those properties has with the world and other things in the world.  The more numerous those properties are, or the more complex the relationships are, the more difficult it will be to understand something.


Silly final thought:  If you stand under something you thought understood won't fall on you, and it falls on you, you didn't understand it well enough and shouldn't have stood under it :P.

Metrics!

Now that I'm actually (semi) consistently doing things, I'm feeling that it's more important to start defining metrics to see how I improved.  Since my brain and my body are the two things I'm training right now, it would make sense that I define metrics for both of them.

Physically, it's not too hard to define this.  It would be how much weight I'm lifting.  As a way for me to track my progress on the cloud (I write a lot of stuff down... I might want to get a tablet for these sorts of notes in the future), I'm going to post on here.  These aren't going to be maximum values, just the amount I'm doing for most of my reps.

Bicep curling: 30-35lbs
Tricep Overhead Extensions: 15-20lbs
Chest Fly: 30 lbs
Chest Press: 120-130lbs
Back lats/Rows: 130-140lbs
Shoulder raises: 30-35lbs
(Legs, I need to do more of.  I can't find my notes on them right now)

Mentally, I was using the Brain Performance Index on Lumosity.  This worked a bit, but it's really leveled out, and it's harder for me to tell in general if I've improved.  Fortunately, they have implemented a mental test that you take, train for 10 weeks, then take again to see how you've improved.  For myself, I ended up scoring 146 on it.  I will work on training for the 10 weeks and take it again, to see how I improved.  That will also be a good amount of time to revisit how I'm doing physically.

Other numbers important to me:
22-24% body fat
Working out at least 2 times a week
Not running at all, but planning to start after I move

Consistency

I'm having a hard time determining if consistency is something that can be cultured and learned, or if it is the byproduct of simply creating habits, but one thing is for sure:


Being consistent produces results.


I'm attempting to be consistent in a lot of things.  Writing in my blog, expressing art in some form, training.  A lot of things I start and then drop.  It's unfortunate, because I have first hand experience on what doing something consistently will do for me. 


The main thing I've done consistently in the past few months is working out.  Not running (Stupid snow), but hitting the gym during the week.  Fortunately for me, I have a gym at my work.  On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I forego half my lunch in order to take another half an hour in the afternoon.  It's a great break from work, and I usually feel great after working out.  And the results have been showing.  While I didn't get results as quickly as I hoped (This is what would normally deter me), I'm seeing definitive progress. 


First, I've surpassed my previous all-time record for bench press.  Secondly, one day, I started feeling up my arms and I realized that there was a lot more bumps than had ever been there before.  Finally, I'm feeling like I've got more energy.  All great signs!


Now, I'll keep envisioning what I can do if I get all of these habits into place that I want.  Until then, I'm just going to keep making lifestyle changes.  It's no longer (entirely) about me losing weight.  It's about living a healthier lifestyle.  I don't remember where I heard this quote, but "I don't want to spend my life getting into shape, I want to be in shape to live my life"

More progression!

It's about time to step back and take a look at the improvements I've made in my life.  While I've gone back and forth on my goals to losing weight and to writing more, I've done quite a bit in terms of getting my life on track to actually complete those goals.  I'm measuring progression in my life, but not by the criteria I expected to a couple months ago.


The two biggest changes have to do with my eating habits and my exercising habits.  For my diet for most of my life, I avoided vegetables like the plague.  I'd even throw up if forced to eat them (Which happened a lot).  But slowly, I began eating them.  Where even a few months ago it was a drain on my willpower to eat a spinach salad, I've not been eating them for almost every lunch.  I don't even need to take the stem off anymore!  Slowly, I'm going to add in peppers, cucumbers, and whatever I find delicious in my salads.  Because, if I'm going to eat that salad, why shouldn't I make it something that tastes great to me!  (Not others).


Exercising is the other big change.  I've tried starting up an exercise routine quite a few times these past two years.  I'd last only about 2-3 weeks on running ones, and maybe 1-2 weeks with strength training.  Well, it's been almost 6 weeks that I've been strength training.  I'm not seeing large amounts of strength gain, but I am seeing more definition.  Also, yesterday I started running again with Kayla.  I really wanted to start sooner, but I prefer running outside, and up until now, it has been about a bijillion degrees below zero each morning. 


I hope to keep that up.  This summer, I want to join a small soccer league.  Something to get me out and allow me to be competitive.


I just want to give a shout out to Dark Souls, which I've been playing quite a lot recently.  It has the most subtle progression I've seen in a game, and I love it.  The biggest one I saw yesterday had to do with the skeletons in the graveyard.  I attempted to fight them early in the game, and got completely destroyed.  Couldn't even do damage.  Even after a couple of levels, I was still in the same boat. 


So I dropped it and completed the next area of the game.  Came back, and still got destroyed.  Completed a few more areas of the game, and was finally able to come back and beat them.  However, it took a few tries, and I took tons of damage.


Fast forward some more to where I am now.  I came back and these things that were bosses compared to me forever ago, now do about 4% of my life per hit, and I can kill them with one swing. 


In a lot of RPGs, if you are stuck on some sort of mob, you gain a few levels, and then now they are the easiest thing in the world.  In Dark Souls, you can gain a few levels, and still see no noticeable difference.  But if you keep at it, tackle what you can handle right now, and keep moving forward, you'll eventually find yourself doing things you found impossible before.


Keep up the good work.

I'll tell you what I want, what I really really want...

So, I've been thinking what I want to work on.  What really is my end goal.  I kept saying "To make (art) anything"... But if that's what I really wanted to do, I think I would have been more apt to find a way.  I'd get more excited about it than just for a couple days.  Well, here's a more defined direction.


I want to create stories.  I'm not saying write stories, because there's one element I want to add to the mix... I want my stories to be interactive.  I'll be setting up the stories, but I won't be the one dictating where they go.  It'll take a lot of work, and I'll be starting small this time, but this is the first direction that has stemmed from me thinking about it.  Who knows, it might not be for me.


But for now, I want to try.  I want to give it my all.  No expectations other than making sure I give it my best effort.

ToDo: Expectations

Note to self, expectations are a recurring theme recently.  It might be quite beneficial to think about this in depth.

Monday!

It's a Monday, but that's okay.  It's on track to be a good week!  I haven't prepared anything yet, and everything about my cruise that I wanted to write about is in my notebook at home.  So, I thought I'd just leave myself a couple notes.

1. Do it for yourself!
2. Time is valuable, but don't try to squeeze everything out of each minute.  That only tends to reduce the value (Slow down!)
3. While a mess is one huge blob, it's comprised of many individual things.  It takes cleaning up those things one at a time in order to clean the entire mess.
4. 3 rules to help live my life
1. Don't worry
2. Don't hurry
3. Enjoy yourself
5. Consistency is necessary in order to build habits.

Until next time.

Friends

After deliberating with myself some of the sources of stress which I experience, the one I focused on most was that about social stress.  I find it harder to find the correct balance in maintaining relationships then it did before.  The core of it, I think, is that I'm trying to maintain too many relationships at too high of a level.

Now, this level I'm talking about is the position of a friendship on a general spectrum, from acquaintance to very close friends.  On which, I have about 4 main points of reference.

1.) The close friends.  These are the people I'm constantly in contact with.  I'm also making sure that I visit with them every once in awhile.  They are the ones I'll be going to first if I need someone to talk to.

2.) Good friends.  These are the people I'm in contact with occasionally, and after a week or two, I'm going to make sure that I've at least said hi.  I'll visit these people less often, but they are the people I won't hesitate to interact with if given a chance.

3.) Friends with deep ties, that our relationship has died down a bit.  A bit of an odd category, but this one is for the people who used to be in categories 1 and 2, but for now, I'm not really talking with.

4.) Acquaintances.  These are the relationships that I want to keep acknowledged, but that both parties are usually not engaging in any conversations, unless we can be assistance to the other.  I'd still be happy to help these people if they ever called on me.


The biggest realization was keeping people in too high of a category.  This was requiring quite a bit of energy to keep up so many relationships.

So, I am going to work on finding the balance for each person.  Some people may wnat to be on a higher or lower level, and I'll have to balance that as well.  It will be dependent on the interactions between each other, and I'll be occasionally evaluating them.

This is all in an effort to reduce my social stress, and to begin identifying ways that I can give all of my friends more quality time and attention.

Night of the First Day

Here is what I wrote down late the first night, and the poem that came of it (written twice, once in the middle of my sleep xD).  It's how I felt while I was exploring.

Notes:
Fog.  It clouds my vision, so it clouds my senses.  The hour, late, brings with it the true reprieve for which I yearn.  Serenity.  Solitude.  The cold fights for my attention, but this is all it gets.  I'm truly free here.  Words are crossing my mind, like they haven't for so many years.

Realization.

It's all on myself.  It begins with me.  As long as outside sources dictate how I live my life, I may find myself unhappy at times when I could be happy.  I long to know why this thought flees conscious deliberation.  But in the end, I've come to a decision.  It doesn't matter how I've lived my life.  With each mile that flies by, with each second that ticks on, I have the possibility to change it.  It only needs but a thought to start the process, but it does require a belief to maintain it.

Just do it.

Poem, v1:
Respite found in this late hour, centered in my solitude.
Nothing here but cold's sharp bite, to draw my thoughts away from me.
I look to see naught but fog, which clouds my sight, then so much more.
I longed to see the shining stars, unrestrained by self built bars.
After time, with no pleasure, I retire to my room. I'll have more time to find my grace.
For when the fog which clouds my mind lifts, only then will I find my clarity,

On this, but my first night.

Poem, v2:
Thru moonlit mist, I make my way, my anxious mind I hope to stay.
Seeking solace from this queer mood, I find respite in my solitude.
Oh, bitter cold, release your hold.  This time is all for me,
Distracting thoughts, AND THIS FOGHORN!  Please let my thoughts just be!
And after time I find find my focus, I begin to think so clearly now,
I found my center, the simple core, the steps with which just how,
Just how to find this peace once more, to bring myself some grace.
When overwhelmed, and filled with stress, Mind, just give yourself some space.

General Update!

So, I've been enjoying this cruise!  It's been a super nice time just to relax, and do whatever makes me happy. I didn't do a rundown of the last two days, so I'll update you guys of everything I have been up to.

Day 1:
I pretty much lazied about all day.  When we arrived on the ship, our room wasn't ready, so we went straight to lunch.  Here, I had some super spicy Mongolian stirfry, some chicken fingers, and french fries.  For being a buffet style meal, it was pretty good.  Then, afterward I signed up for my Thursday Excursion.  I'll be going with some of my family to a private beach, with a capacity of only 20 people.  Here, there will some personal chefs, and some personal bartenders.  With the chefs, we can go into the kitchen while they are cooking lunch, and help them/learn the recipes.  I'm pretty stoked about that.  Before and after lunch, we pretty much have the beach to ourselves.  There will be some hammocks and some snorkling gear, both of which I'll be excited to use!  When we finally got into our rooms, we lounged around a bit until the mandatory saftey briefing.  Then... We departed!  I spent some time watching New Orleans pass us by, and then it was time to get ready for dinner.  For dinner, I tried Escargot, and had the flatiron steak, french fries, and Mac'n'cheese.  Everything was DELICIOUS!  After dinner, I found the giant chess set, played a kid, barely beat him, then decided it was time to explore.  I spent the late evening, until 11:30ish, walking in the solitude of the night.  (See my next post about that).  Finally, I went to bed and had a wonderful sleep.

Day 2:
Today I was super lazy, and it was amazing.  I started the day with breakfast and working out with my family.  After cleaning up and taking a bit of a break, I went and explored the ship some more.  Not surpisingly, I ended up back at the chess set.  There, I played 3 more games.  Two more against my opponent from the previous night (His name was Tyler), and one against a new opponent named Donald.  All three games were pretty intense, but I managed to win them all (Record until now: 4-0).  It was also fun to discuss and watch other people playing chess.  After some more relaxing in the room reading, I made my way to the Wine Seminar, where I proceeded to get slightly inebriated, and learned a lot about a few of the more common wines.  The biggest thing I learned was that the flavor of the wine is very much dependent on what you eat with it.  It's still blowing my mind how much of a difference it made.  Then, more wandering!  I cheered on one of the ladies who was at our table during the Wine seminar, as she played in the finals of the slot tournament.  Continuing on, I relaxed in the room for some more, had some whiskey, and then made my way to the Formal dinner night!  Here, after all of us taking pictures, I got to have more delicious delicious food.  For starters, I had the vegetable Spring Rolls, some white stuffed mushrooms, and Alligator fritters.  I didn't enjoy the Alligator that much, but it still felt nice to be trying different things.  And then, the main course... Lobster, giant shrimp, and prime rib!  For desert, Chocolate Melting Cake with Vanilla ice cream.  Needless to say, I was stuff, and thoroughly satisfied.  I didn't last much longer after that.  I played some Chess with my Dad (Now 5-0), proceeded then to get dominated by him in Mini Golf (Extreme hard edition xD 20-30mph winds), then retired to the room, watched some TV, then collapsed in the strongest food induced coma I've had for awhile.

Day 3:
Today is pretty quiet, since we are at our first port.  All I've done today is eat breakfast with the family, worked out with the family again, relaxed in the room, and beat myself in chess.  Here soon, we'll be planning on going into the city and see what they've got for sale.  Tonight, I'll probably go check out some of the clubs and maybe the comedian.  I'll let you guys know probably first thing in the morning!


P.S. -  Posts are going to be far between, and clumped together.  The internet here sucks horribly, and it's very limited.  I hope to get on at least once a day, but we'll see how it goes.

Slowing Down, Round 3

Well, I'm 1-0 right now in JUMBO chess against other people for the week.  I won by the hairs of my chin (All 10 of them), but it shouldn't have been that close.  I'm still in the habit of rushing, and the main consequence is that I get very narrow sighted.  It's something I'm working on, but it's a slow process.

I got so excited setting up a move, that when it opened up, I didn't realize that I had moved my queen into a very vulnerable spot.  So, my plan worked!  But, I lost my queen.  Not the smartest move, but I learned.

I have displayed to myself that not rushing is not only possible, but beneficial.  On the way down here, I read the first book in the Incarnations of Immortality series, by Piers Anthony (My favorite author).  It took longer than I normally take to read books (Rushing!), but I can give a synopsis of pretty much each chapter, or at least how the book flows.  I'm going to narrow down to the fact where I had employed a process where I was reviewing what I was reading, even if it was at the end of the chapter.  I added no more than 5 minutes, on top of slowing down the pace of my reading, and I enjoyed this book much more than I did the first time.  I even forgot about half of it happened.

So, all in all, I'm going to make mistakes, but I'm not going to let it get to me.  I can learn from those mistakes, and hopefully become a better person. 

P.S.-  I'm still working on my webcomic.  I've got half of the first frame done.  It's more difficult than I thought.  I thought that by being minimalistic, I wouldn't have to put much emphasis on the visuals.  However, its turning out that with the small amount of visuals, it will be easier to draw, but it means that the visuals are more important.  I'm hoping to have the first one done tomorrow!

Communication

So, I'm on this wonderful trip with my extended family, and I've come to my first realization. Conversing with some people is sometimes difficult. I've identified one of the more common reasons for this: I feel obligated to make conversation. This stems from a fear of consequences from lack of conversation with the people.

Also, I dislike using text based communications as the primary source of communication.  Something I'm going to work on.

Hey Guys

A new approach to this blogging thing.  Instead of trying to force myself to come up with things, or getting frustrated with trying to put things into words, and only writing when I think I've got something "worth" writing... I'm just going to write.  Maybe just get myself in the habit of writing, even if it's just a hello and this is how I'm doing.  Today, I'ma outline what I've been excited for most recently!  A webcomic!


It's going to be about two brothers, Warrior and Mage.  Warrior has it in his head that he's going to save the world, but doesn't have a plan.  Mage wants to be the best he can be.  It's going to be very minimalistic, so I don't have to worry about the quality of the visuals.  I'm going on a cruise for the next week with my family, so I'm hoping to start over the week.  It will initially start here, and if I do commit to it, I'd probably move it to its own website. 


But until then, I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Muscle Memory

One more quick change: I'm liking the term motor processes instead of physical processes.  I'll be using that from now on.  One thing to note, except for muscle spasms, I'm currently under the belief that motor processes can ONLY be started by system processes or control processes.

My thoughts on how user processes interact turned into how processes evolve, in terms of MP usage.  When you know how to do a process so well that you require no MP in order to do the task, you have committed the process to muscle memory.  In my current model, what happens is that by repetitive use, you wire your brain up so that all you need to do is start off the process, and then it will run in those exact steps.  This is what I'm calling a background process.  

Now, background processes have inherent risks.  The biggest is that they will only run the way they have been developed.  If the situation encounters something unexpected, either one of two things will happen: either you will continue your process without regard for whatever new variable has been introduced, and be subject to whatever whims this universe, physics, and the situation hold in store for you, OR you're paying attention to what you are doing, and you can switch to another process (Maybe one that's similar that takes into account the unexpected variable, or just take control and start modifying the current one).

This is the great thing about our brain, and the reason why we can get so good at tasks that we don't need to think about them.   Our brain is constantly rewiring itself.  Through a process neuroscientists call neuroplasticity, the brain is constant modifying the connections of our neurons.  It's this ability that allows us to adapt to new situations, and how effectively your brain does this determines how quickly you can adapt. 

In order for us to adapt, and to avoid the destructive potential that lies within muscle memory, we need to be present for the task we are engaged in.  While we are spending little or no MP on the actual task, we instead devote that MP to experiencing the task.  This is hard to do in a world where there is plenty of distractions, and everybody wants to multitask.  By practicing and applying this process of being present, I think we can more effectively improve ourselves, and live a richer life in general.

Modifications to the Processes Post

So, I've got some changes to processes.

First, I've still got processes in two categories.  System processes and user processes.

System processes are still those processes that are completely out of our control.  This is the beating heart, the digestion, and for now, breathing (I'm not so sure how to categorize this one, as you can take control of it).  I'm also going to add to this list our basic senses, and memory.

User processes are now categorized as both physical processes and control processes.  Physical processes are our muscles, and are anything that directly causes our body to move.

Control processes are decisions.  These processes can then utilize our system and physical processes to do what we decided to do.

I've decided not to do the master control process yet.  That will be my last segment.  For now, I'm going to work toward writing my article on how these processes interact.

Processes!

I'm going to finally take my blog in a new direction.  To do this, I'm going to start by relating stuff to software and hardware.  After I describe my life in terms of software and hardware, I'd hope that I'd be able to apply the many things I've learned about effective development in order to analyze my life.  It's something I don't normally do, so I'm hoping that looking at it from a different way will at least get me started.  (It's got me writing about it already... which is quite a feat).

I'm going to start with processes.  Processes, in development, are what makes the hardware do something.  Processes are made up of code, and is the software side of things.  I won't go too deep into it, but for everything you can make your computer/tablet/phone do, it has a process governing it.  As of now, I believe effective processes are as small as they are needed to be, not as big as they need to be.

Quick pause, I'm not used to this process of fleshing stuff out, so this might be very messy.  I may go back and clean it up, but for now, if you see connections between different articles that I don't mention, I'd love to being a discussion on it.

Now, to apply processes to myself, I'm going to define one other thing.  Mental Processing (MP, for those of you who are nerds), is how much "thought" I put into something.  This is how much my voice in my head is putting things together.  Occasionally, instead of the voice I get just this "flow", but this really only happens when I'm doing something that comes really naturally (Fighting against Connor in Persona 4 Arena is one of those times that comes most naturally).  So, all in all, the MP cost for a process is the amount of effort I have to put in to make the process happen.

So, let's get into what some of the processes are that I can do!  And that's basically... Everything!  I'll begin by sorting processes into 2 main categories: background processes, and active processes.  A background process is any process that doesn't take any MP to do.  These are the ones the brain does on auto-pilot.  Examples include beating your heart, breathing, and digestion.  Please note, some of these processes can become active processes by actively applying your mind to them (I'm looking at you, breathing and swallowing!).

Active processes are ones that I either have to mentally initiate, or that requires input through some part of the process.  This includes things like "Passing a car on the interstate", get out of bed (At a minimum, when I don't want to), and cooking food.  This category makes up a majority of the processes of which I'm capable. 

My final note for this post, is the different levels of processes.  There are processes that govern what other processes do.  These are considered "higher level".  This one includes deciding what I want to [eat/do/play/etc.], and the topic of my next article, master control process.  When I develop this a bit, the discussion will be on trying to define this highest level process a bit.

Until next time, I hope you guys comment or start a discussion.  I can't really learn anything other than the way my brain works if I don't get any additional feedback. 

W00t!

Update and documentation:


I'm going to start taking my weight only in the morning, to try for lowest readings/consistent readings by taking it at the same day.  Hopped on the scale this morning, and voila!  I've actually lost 15 pounds!  Some of the weight being read the other day was probably from meals.  This is huge indications that what I'm doing is working, and a huge morale booster.  Now to keep adding in things that can only help me get better! 


I'm probably going to weigh myself Monday and Friday (Good times to ensure I get posts), and start taking my body fat percentage as well, since that is one of my goals for the year.

Slowing down a bit

I keep trying to work on too many things, and without taking cuts to the things I'm enjoying most, I'm not going to make that much progress. 


That said, I've still got some things I'm working on that have continued delivering benefits.  Mainly, that's my diet.


I'm down another 2.5 pounds from last post!  Cumulatively, I've lost 10 pounds since I really started changing up my diet.  My two biggest changes were replacing my lunch with a salad, and portion control. 


That leads me into another random thought: How I go about modifying my plans to reach goals.  I've been doing a bit too much of winging it, and then accepting results.  Or, after awhile of getting tired of it because its not working as well as I'd hope, I just drop it entirely.  Then, I repeat the process.


To relate this to my diet, I had just come up with a plan of what to eat/how much through the day.  I was finding I was getting hungry at parts, and made slight adjustments, but for the most part just stuck with it.  This week, I decided to start at a point, and build off of it instead.


I took the biggest problem I was seeing, and tried to address it.  I was finding that I was getting hungry between breakfast and lunch, and that was causing me to snack.  So, I changed it up and instead of a smaller breakfast, I had a large breakfast.  I was quite satisfied after eating (Who wouldn't be with steak and eggs? xD).  Next, I had to find out how long I went before getting hungry.  Luckily, I easily made it to lunch time. 


Combine this with cutting back during dinner, and add in snacks to tide me over until dinner, and I'm feeling like I have a better start to a good diet.  Now I can tweak it a bit, and see what I can do with it.


Next thing to address... my lack of getting up and working out.  Even though this is about getting in shape, trying to come up with plans isn't working.  I've determined that this is a personal lack of motivation, and needs to be addressed as such.  I'll work on tackling this, and see where every thing else goes.


Until next time!

Progress!

Happy New Year everyone!  I know its just an arbitrary day, but I like the concept of a solid point to say "I'm going to change".  Although, I kinda do that too much already, the New year is a great point because its the most solid one, with a large period (365 days!).  In the direction of the progress I'm about to talk about, here are some of my New Year goals:

• Write in my blog at least twice a week
• To help give me more content, I'm going to start writing out random dreams I've had in my pursuit of lucid dreaming, or story ideas.
• Lower body fat percentage to 16%
• To help facilitate this, and get me into the habit of working out, I've got my 6-day workout plan, but I'm going to account for various times I won't do it during the week.
• Until March, I can miss 3 workouts a week
• Then, until June, I can miss 2 workouts
• Until August I can miss 1 workout
• After October, I'd like to be keeping up with all my workouts
• Reach Silver 1 in League of Legends
• Beat at least 10 of the games in my steam account that I haven't beaten yet

As for what the title of this actually means, I've been slowly changing habits and working in general to improve my life.  My first one was to start moving toward a paleo diet.  The main thing that this diet did was cut out grains and very processed or sugary foods.  This meant I cut back on desserts and soda pop quite a bit.  I've also replaced my lunches at work with a salad.  While I'm still working on implementing this more fully, it has acclimated me to vegetables quite a bit. 

My second change has been working out.  I've tried to follow my schedule, but I haven't been keeping up with it fully.  However, I have been doing random workouts.  Even with this rugged regiment, I've seen physical improvements as well.  I'd like to start getting more cardio, and will be more inclined to when it isn't freaking -20 degrees (F) outside.

My last notable change was starting to meditate more.  This one is very sporadic, and I will continue on making it more consistent.

Here's what I've noticed in the past month and a half:

• I can do more pushups and more squats before I get tired
• I can also do 100% more pullups!  (4)
• I've lost 7.5 pounds
• My Lumosity scores are slowly increasing again, after dropping for awhile

I'll keep at it, and start making these small habits into better changes!

I hope everyone is having a good year so far!  Until my next post!