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Sova Fanart 2: Class Unit 1 Day 2
UNIT ONE: Sova Model Studies | Day 2 – Half Body
Today I was supposed to work on the upper body, but I found a really cool pose and decided to work on that instead. Unfortunately, it took a very long time to sketch out and I was also very exhausted from drawing until 4AM yesterday. I also had a lot of travel and work coming up so I was a bit stressed and overwhelmed.
I feel sometimes that I put too much on my plate for a challenge. I definitely felt overwhelmed coloring a drawing with this much detail.
This was the rough sketch:

And this was my attempt at more refined line art:

And for reference I used this pose:

Writing Prompt: Waiting For What You Really Want
Prompt: How good are you waiting for what you really want?
I remember the psychological test where they said that they could predict the success of children in later in life, just by how much self control they have for delayed gratification, and I wonder what child I am. Am I the type of child who grabbed the marshmallow, despite being told to wait by the researchers the minute they left the room? Probably not, when I was a child I was a stickler for the rules. But what if they gave the choice to me? What if there were no rules? Well I suppose it would feel like a cruel test, to believe internally that I would get two marshmallows if I waited long enough but one would never come.
I think now that I’m not good at waiting for what I want at all. But really what I am, is not good at avoiding distractions when I feel extreme discomfort. Am I running from discomfort? Or do I really want something and are not willing to wait for it? The answer isn’t clear to me.
Coaching Session 11/18 VOD Review Part 2
Initial Reflections:
- Silence makes me feel anxious
- Flippant responses feel forced
- Would it be artificial or fake to decrease the length of the silence? I like the silences but not how long they go on.
- My hair looks goofy
- I feel annoyed by my laughing, feels nervous
- There is something comforting about this conversation
- There is something valuable here without any editing
- I do feel antsy everytime there is a long pause
- I really hate my laughter
- I really take some time to get to the point, should I cut it down?
- Urgh at the drill sargent ifs stuff I feel like it is dragging on, I’m getting bored
- I think I can just do some initial cuts and ask Brandon to approve them
Responding in the coaching mindset:
- Good! Also we can always get rid of some silence if we need to.
- Maybe there is a way to edit the flippant responses to make them more genuine
- No this is our video, we do what we want with it. Sometimes you can get the gist of the silence without keeping the entire thing
- Goofy is good!
- It’s ok to be nervous. Maybe we can reduce the laughter? Sometimes we gotta risk laughing.
- Hell yea
- Yes, the editing is just to create a curated experience
- We can reduce the silence
- We can reduce if needed
- Sometimes its ok to take a long time to get to the point. Part of the discovery feeling.
- We can entirely cut out portions we don’t like. We can cut a part out and keep trimming it until it makes sense.
- Sounds good to me. We can also ask him for parts we are really not sure about.
Valorant Challenge 1: Spike Rush Cypher
Today I didn’t have the time or the pc to play competitively. I played a couple of spike rush games as cypher.
Impressions:
- Hot damn it’s hard to play cypher. So much to put down in so little time. The cages are HARD to use as well.
- I don’t know if playing different agents will help me play. Maybe I should just refine my mains.
- I think agents like cypher play around their utility (they almost never peek unless they have to). I wonder if I should do that more with all agents (play around flash and grenades, shockdarts and mollys)
- Makes me think flashes are waay worse at getting info. It’s all or nothing. The timing needs to be right and you need to be able to push with your team to gain ground rather than flashing randomly.
- To counter a cypher I need to guess where the camera is and shoot it out. Requires knowledge of common cam spots. Dunno how I will get that knowledge without watching tons of videos. Poopers.
- Cage + wires can be OP since wires reveal and cage block their vision.
- You need to be f*cking fast on the camera or they will shoot it out.
- Crouch and shoot wires head level to get wires you cannot jump or crouch over or under.
I feel like my posture was pretty terrible after the practice. My left shoulder blade was hurting and my stomach was clenched.
I need to work on processing the emotions better and feeling my body more (using the sensual feeling technique I will discuss later). I will also need to work on posture exercises way more. After working my body for about 20 minutes with shaking, stretching, and posture exercises, my should mostly doesn’t hurt anymore and my digestion feels much better.
Fitness Challenge 4: The Evolution of the Challenge
It’s been officially four months since I posted about this challenge, so I think it is safe to say that this challenge is over…well not over per se, but evolved.
So what happened? First, I got very sick on the tail end of the fitness challenge. It was the sickest I’ve been in years and I lost a lot of weight.
Second, I have split this challenge into about 3 other challenges, two that I am tracking and one that I didn’t track but sort of is successfully completed.
Those challenges are:
- The posture challenge. I literally came up with my own posture exercises inspired by some of the most common and popular posture exercises and I’ve literally done it. My posture is much much better than it was before and I continue to improve it every day. What is the best part? I now can tell and feel uncomfortable when in a bad posture. I didn’t document anything and may never do so.
- The bedtime challenge. This is a version of a sleep challenge. My latest attempt involves ignoring the whole sleep side of it. Ignoring falling asleep, ignoring getting enough hours, or even habits of turning off electronics. I’m going to make it simple for myself. In the next 66 days (Dec 12, 2023) I will go to bed by 11 pm every night.
- The jiujitsu challenge. This challenge was a couple of things but I haven’t completely formed my goals around it so clearly yet. The main ideas I have right now are: getting comfortable and confident in moving and utilizing my body to defend myself, getting stronger and more fit, and mastering a lot of jiujitsu techniques.
So, it is a bye for now on this challenge, but there might be some future retrospective posts analyzing some of the biometric data I gleaned from this challenge.
The Jiujitsu Challenge
I honestly don’t really know what I want to say about this challenge.
I know I wanted to learn jiu jitsu but it was for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I could feel myself falling apart and I couldn’t bring myself to work out. I’ve always loved martial arts and jiu jitsu was always something that I wanted to learn as a martial artist because of its practicality and strengthening an area of fighting that I am particularly weak in – which is grappling.
Secondly, I wanted to see more people in real life and make more friends. My girlfriend joined a running class and it helped her get into exercising more and also just interact with more people. I wanted to do the same with something that I love, which is fighting.
So I signed up to a jiu jitsu gym, one that I was really excited about because it specializes in no gi grappling (10th planet), but now that I’m rolling a few times a week, I kind of don’t know where to go.
I worry about my knee a lot, and that actually has given me more motivation to continue working out.
I feel much happier and have more energy after going to class. I feel myself getting stronger and having better posture.
But I still don’t know what to challenge myself with.