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Fitness Challenge

Byjack

In this challenge, I want fill out my body and get a lot more energy and health before my girlfriend visits me on July 15th.

This means that I have approximately 2 months in the challenge.

UNIT ONE: Baseline health: strong enough to exercise bulk and be normal health (21 days)

  • Week 1: Regen from tiring out (no matter how tired, wired or drained)
  • Week 2: Big appetite (increase hunger throughout day)
  • Week 3: Enjoyable rhythms (finding pleasing routines that further my goals in health, wealth and relationships)

UNIT TWO: Bulking and buildup: Gain 3 pounds of muscle (21 days)

  • Week 1: Try everything (bulking trial and errors)
  • Week 2: TBD
  • Week 3: TBD

UNIT THREE: Pushing myself, weight, strength, energy (21 days)

  • Week 1: Decrease resting heart rate
  • Week 2: Double strength
  • Week 3: TBD

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Profit in Peace 15: Workplace Reflections

Byjack

I had quite a stressful workday as I expected but I wanted to jot down a couple of reflections today:

  1. Reminding myself of my boundaries (time, respect, honesty, empathy, and possibility) really helped
  2. It also helped to note down what I cannot control before every major meeting (usually something related to how someone felt about me)
  3. I noticed that keeping pace with my todo list was helpful:
    1. Keep all tasks that come to mind in my todo list (use it as a mental trashcan to throw all my worries)
    2. Reorder todo list to whatever I am working on right now (move something to the top if I am currently working on it)
    3. Do tasks immediately if they are low-effort
    4. Do sweeps (try to do everything on the todo list)
  4. Focus also helped
    1. Close as many tabs as possible
    2. Focus on one thing at a time

I was thinking about how to transition from work to Valorant more effectively since I usually start to feel dead and I end up watching youtube and ordering food and that kind of makes it hard for me to stay sharp when gaming and I end up feeling even more stressed and awful.

I think cleaning is a really good transition point. Cleaning reduces stress and is a great way to transition slowly…if I’m worried that there will still be a call coming in and I might have to go back to work, cleaning makes it easy to go back to work without feeling like I am not ready to transition to the next thing. In fact, if I clean, even if I go back to work, I will still be more ready to game after the work is done because my space is now clean.

I also like the idea of a mental dump to write down everything you are thinking about at the end of the day so that you can pick it up at any point today or tomorrow or the day after.

Finally, I like to look at the schedule for the next day and mentally prepare for it to know what you can do today to give you a lot of spaciousness tomorrow.

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Valorant Challenge 1: Spike Rush Cypher

Byjack

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.

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Sova Fanart 7: Class Unit 2 Day 3

Byjack

UNIT TWO: Dynamic Figure Drawing | Day 3 – Animate

Unit 1: Shooting from Vandal

Stick figures
Gesture sketch
Final sketch

Unit 2: Shooting from Bow

Rough sketch
Structural sketch
final sketch

Unit 3: Camera movement (Sova Drone)

Rough gesture
Structural sketch
Final Sketch
  • I noticed in all of my animation attempts that I didn’t really need stick figures.
  • It was nice going back and refining each step before moving onto the next.
  • The structural step was really helpful, I liked marking where the limbs attached to the body with an X.
  • For the structural step I like to make the torso a tapering box and the pelvis a triangular prism.
  • I really didn’t like the final output compared to the structural sketch it looked super awkward.
  • To transform the manikin structural step into the final you need to focus on adding muscles.

I decided to explore the final sketch a little more by doing another drawing:

rough drawing
structural sketch

After getting the basics down, I played with many iterations of the final sketch.

first iteration
final iteration

I realized I don’t really like the linework on the final and it makes the form look very 2d. I decided to really focus on forms instead of lines when drawing. After all, I’m mostly interested in painting not drawing. The forms will help me figure out where the light hits.

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Profit In Peace 17: Preparation

Byjack

This morning I feel damn tired. And I feel stressed.

I know I have to pack my bags for home, check into my flight, and cook all the raw food in the fridge.

I also want to play more Valorant since I never have time for more than 2 or 3 games without interrupting my bedtime. I finally placed an alt account in Silver 1 and I’m loving it, not having to think very hard, just play for the fun of it.

I would also love to work on my French challenge and spend some time with the mimic technique. I was thinking last night about using connection theory to understand what it would take to think in French, instead of just being really good at translating in my head from English to French and the answer that came to me is that I just need to mimic a lot of French speakers, and not just mimic what they say, but how they say it.

Also, for today, right after my morning run, I would like to continue and finish my next section of my VOD review and perhaps plan out some posts for my art coach Instagram.

Just came back from my run and I have to say, I want to be out there more. A walk out in the world is a wonderful way to think through stuff.

A Sacred Thing

The biggest disservice that they did me

Was getting me onto the ideal of controlling

How others feel about me

Because controlling how others feel

Puts ME into a cage as well

The mask of their surface wants

Is forced upon my face

And I would trade my freedom

For their approval any day

I think, as I walk past people

That how someone feels about you

Is a sacred thing

There is no need to change how they feel about us

Just as much as we can seek to understand not control our own feelings

To look upon the world

Without fear

Means to own the world again

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Knee Mobility Challenge 3: Fasting

Byjack

Today I fasted and I had mixed results. Fasting seems to create more inflammation as my stomach felt irritated and painful and my body felt hot. The left side of my body felt blocked right where my spleen is. It sort of feels like I have an enlarged spleen. The only thing that sort of helps with this is doing meditation. I’ve been having sweats. My lips are cracking from the dryness.

But I decided not to give up. I am going to address the problems at their root, which is certainly the stomach and the spleen. Digestion issues are not new to me. I started using dance therapy techniques and feeling the discomfort in the spleen as sensual and my body started to move. I started to feel pain inside the spleen area. It feels cold. The pressure relieves a little and I feel a trickle.

I wonder if the stress of the drawing challenge and traveling soon are making my stomach clench. It is certainly possible.

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. Dance therapy is like magic. I don’t know why I stopped using it. There is this interplay between feeling the feelings and finding comfort. I guess that might be why I left this technique behind. I left it behind to feel pain. To feel without judgement or plan.

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Knee Strength 9: Videos for this Challenge

Byjack

Other than walking backwards, I found a new video that seems to have some very good videos for knee repair:

Also, I saw this video a long time ago and it did not work great but I still want to reference it in case I want to try them again at some point: