After trying out the first two AGT (ATHLETIC TRUTH GROUP) Zero workouts from the Knees Over Toes guy, I’m feeling very hopeful. The kinds of exercises we are doing legitimately make the knee feel stronger and more flexible and like it was worked out in the right ways.
The main issue is inflammation. After a few days of non-stop traveling, weeks of stress and sleep deprivation, and a workout that left my knees shaking, it’s no wonder I felt extremely inflamed and depleted afterward, the thing I always worry about when I work out.
Luckily, I talked to my coach today about feeling like I shouldn’t work during depletion even though work sometimes makes me feel stronger and more energetic. I finally have a sort of solution to depletion and inflammation. It’s a version of self-soothing that I like to call self-cuddling. I thought of it because sometimes I just wish my girlfriend was here so I could cuddle with her, but I can actually hold myself and freeze in soft comfy positions that I can then move and change. There are elements of stillness and comfort and delicious movement.
There is a sort of feeling that work is similar. That interesting and powerful work can be delicious movement and calmness can be holding myself and cuddling with myself.
All this is very similar to the dance practice I used to do all the time. Some self-massage, holding myself in comforting poses, and fast spinning clearing movements.
A short test of this yields amazing results. I felt the inflammation moving and melting. My system fluid and de-stagnated.
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.
This is definitely one of the most difficult challenges I’ve undergone in a while.
I’ve tried a couple of things and I feel frustrated.
The Reaching for the Untouchable
The frustration
The reaching in my heart
Is getting to me
Reaching for the untouchable
I wonder if I will ever know
The doubt creeps
I seek to know
And when I rush there
There is still nothing
Frustration in my chest
Like a roar that wants to escape
But is trapped behind bars
I have created multiple messages to my girlfriend in French, multiple times I’ve tried to imitate. I feel like imitation is the key, but I grow tired of seeing no results. I feel tired and frustrated.
I feel angry and unhappy.
I suspect failure is such a hard thing for me to grasp. It is such a tough pill to swallow.
I saw a video with a lot of potential:
It is about learning jiujitsu really fast. But really it is about learning. He talks about many ideas in the video, ideas that I’ve myself considered. Ideas that I think are pretty profound and helpful:
Performance vs. growth
Train in the gym to fail – growth
Compete to win – performance
Form to leave form
Repetition until it is second nature
Turn something thought into something intuitive
Smaller circles
Reduce something from intuition to a conscious idea
Look for different ways to apply it
He mentions some really interesting sounding books:
The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance by Josh Waitzkin
The Will to Keep Winning by Daigo Umehara
Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment by George Leonard
Anyway, I feel if I were to embrace my fear of failure, I need to meditate on it, but also come up with a plan.
I first want to come up with the plan to train From to Leave Form…and be repetitive about the most common words in French, say them until they are second nature.
So what are the top most common 10 words in French:
Oui: Yes
Non: No
Merci: Thank you
Je: I
Tu/vous: You
Le/la/les: The
Un, une des: A, an, and some
Le/la/les: It, them
Et: And
Mais: But
Bonjour: A general greeting meaning “hello” or “good morning”
Au revoir: Goodbye
Salut: Hello
Amour: Love
Bonheur: Happiness
Chat: Cat
Chien: Dog
But these words are too basic. What about the top 10 most common phrases?
Bonjour: Means “hello” or “good morning”.
Merci: Means “thank you”.
S’il vous plaît: Means “please”.
Ça va?: Means “how are you?” .
Je ne sais pas: Means “I don’t know”.
Parlez-vous anglais?: Means “Do you speak English?” .
Bienvenue: Means “welcome”.
Madame/Monsieur/Mademoiselle: Means “Mrs.”, “Mr.”, or “Miss”.
Anchante enchante: Means “nice to meet you”.
Sava: Means “how are you”.
C’est simple comme bonjour: Means “it’s simple as hello”.
Et patati et patata: Means “and so on”.
En avoir ras-le-bol: Means “to have had enough”.
Tu m’étonnes: Means “tell me something I don’t know”.
Ok that is a little better, but what about the most common French verbs?
Aller Means “to go” and is also used to describe the near future tense. Avoir Means “to have” and is used to express possession, relationships, physical and mental states, and many other contexts. Être Means “to be” and indicates the action or state of being. Pouvoir Means “can” or “to be able to”. It’s an irregular verb like prendre or faire, belonging to the third group. Savoir Used to indicate knowledge or understanding. It can also be used in many idiomatic expressions, such as “savoir-faire” (know-how). Mettre Means “to put” but can also be used for dropping someone off somewhere, laying the table, taking time to do something, laying a carpet. Prendre Means “to take”, including “to travel” on particular forms of transport. It is also used for having meals. Venir Means “to come”, and it can be easily used to conjugate the recent past or convey the idea that you have just done something recently. Vouloir Often translated as to want and to wish in English, as its main usage is to express desires and wishes.
I want to read more about verbs in French but it is too late and I need to go to bed.
I’ve been feeling pretty lost as of late. I am thinking about my youtube channel, about my job, about coaching, about my health and about my challenges with youtube and fitness. I’ve been stressed out about all these different things and I don’t really know how to tackle all of them at the same time. I don’t know what to focus on, which ones makes sense to put energy into, and how I will go about focusing on any of these things.
I’ve been feeling depressed, overwhelmed and depleted, constantly self medicating with youtube videos and games.
Recently, I’ve been inspired by this video:
Health is everything. If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you don’t have to choose between that and health. You will be a better entrepreneur with better health.
I want to drop all of my other challenges and focus on this for a while.
I want to focus on my health.
I thought about what this meant for quite a while because health is such a nebulous topic. I feel that Brian Johnson in project Blueprint is taking a very scientific approach to health, but I want to take a more personal approach.
Here are the areas that I care about:
Mood: How positive and happy I feel overall
Passion for life: How motivated I feel about life, relationships and projects
Energy: How energetic and strong I feel
Flow: how in the moment and attuned to my body’s sensations I feel
Attractiveness: how healthy I look
Some ideas of times that I can measure these things:
When I wake up: great for seeing how well I slept
Around 10 AM: good for checking up on my morning routine
Around 3 PM: good for checking on my afternoon routine
Before I go to bed: good to seeing the cumulative effect of the day and how fulfilled I feel
I’ve tried these type of challenges before, but I feel that I sort of neglected the mental part of health, feeling healthier physically but mentally trapped and unhappy. I want to really commit to doing video journaling this entire time in order to make sure that I can express myself and work through mental challenges.
What would mean success to me is not just feeling much more happy, passionate, energetic, in flow and attractive, but also to create a lifestyle, mindset and routine that will maintain and grow that over time.
It is time for a crash course in project management!
Objectives:
Understand and be able to apply major project management methodologies (PMP school, waterfall, agile project management)
Review other methodologies that I already know (design thinking, OKRs, SRE, DevOps, UI/UX)
Formulate resources and learning into distinct repositories of knowledge and simple shortcuts and worksheets that I can use as shorthand reminders and ways to kick off processes
Total time: 4 hours
PART ONE: Master project management (2 hrs)
Section one: Learn, research, and gather (1 hr)
Subsection one: Warm up via listening to videos and gathering resource lists (20 minutes)
Subsection two: Create own practice scenarios and find questions in them (20 minutes)
Subsection three: Consume and build resource repos off of resource lists and answer my own questions (20 minutes)
Section two: Create practice scenarios (30 min)
Section three: Question and answer (30 min)
PART TWO: Review other methodologies (1 hr)
Section one: write down everything from memory basic searching (20 minutes)
Section two: watch videos (20 minutes)
Section three: search for resources and worksheets (20 minutes)
PART THREE: Create and organize resources (1 hr)
Section one: create a structure for folders and docs (20 minutes)
Section two: create resources for project management (20 minutes)
Section three: create resources for other methodologies (20 minutes)
