Day 1871: I have normal legs!

I have been having some issues with my feet recently due to ill-fitting shoes as I’ve worn them out. I spent this morning travelling to a shop that could perform gait analysis to figure out what kind of running shoe would suit me best.

I found out that I don’t have much deviation in the angle my legs are at so I run pretty neutral, and so I found some trainers that felt like the suited and tried them on. I knew I needed to be very particular about all of this, as I know how good great shoes can make running feel.

I think I still need to let my foot heal a little more, but I’ve been spending my gym time in other ways. The revelation that going to the gym doesn’t mean I have to run was enlightening, and I’ve spent my gym time working on other things, like general strength things, and bigger compound exercises which are a lot of fun, and have more practical applications than isolated exercises.

I’m hoping that the shoes fit me well, and that my running habits can continue, as I know each day I don’t run, I feel myself slipping behind my goal, but I’m confident that I can catch up to where I want to be.

Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1867: Making Progress

I’m getting up to nearly 100km now in my annual goal of covering 1,000km by foot throughout the year, and it’s feeling good. Sure, my foot hurts a little today, but all in all it’s going well.

I’ve been looking at my exercise routine and I’m happy with it, I just need to keep myself active and moving, as well as trying things to challenge myself. I don’t feel like I’m at the level I was at last year with running, I reckon my mile time is about 20 seconds slower right now, but I’m hopeful I can get it back to where it was before.

This week has been rather demanding at work, and the last few days were a stark reminder of how much there is that goes on that I needed to input towards as my replacement was ill. It didn’t help that other members of staff were also not present, but it all was rather chaotic.

I’m ending the week with D&D rather than playing tomorrow night, so I’m hopeful that I can get some stuff done. I want to record some more music, and chill out. No other real plans. I have two ideas I really want to work on. I know that the lads will be playing Destiny 2, so I’ll probably play with them for a while too, we absolutely smashed it today, played 9, won 9 in PvP with them. It was absolutely wild.

Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1865: Things!

I spent the morning going through all of my folders, sorting out all of my paperwork, finding my degree transcripts, my bank statements for the last 10 years, my pay slips for the last 15 years, and all the other stuff that has accumulated.

I’m feeling motivated now that the apartment has sold that I can actually get rid of a lot of the paper work that I had sitting around, and I know anything that was important has already been scanned and copied and kept where needed. from 5 folders I have 2 folders left of stuff, and that contains the important stuff, my qualification certificates, and employment details.

It’s refreshing to feel like I’m making progress and I know what needs to be thrown away, what needs to stay. As well as organising stuff yesterday to take over, I’ve further refined what I needed, and it’s all just coming together and I’m feeling good about getting stuff actually done.

I wrote a bunch of music as well, actually I’ll write about that tomorrow, but needless to say, it was a good, productive and creative day.

I started playing a little of Apex Legends, and I’m looking forward to playing more and getting to grips with it. It’s enjoyable and I can sort of understand the hype surrounding it.

The week ahead looks kind of like not much will be going on, it should be relatively quiet, I’m just going to aim to get some running done, and that’s about it.

Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1864: Busy time!

The last 3 days have been very productive. I did complete on my apartment and sell my car yesterday, as well as close most of the associated accounts. I got my immunisation records in preparation of the medical examination I’ll have in a few weeks, and did some research about what I can do if I’m missing a few. I also got my new driving licence and sent off the old one, it’s illegal to hold two, and so I rectified that accordingly.

Then today I managed to organise a bunch of the boxes of stuff I have so that I can throw stuff away, and give stuff to charity to sell. There are a lot of boxes. I still have a few things to go through, mainly documents, and then can get them scanned in, and chuck them away too.

It’s all feeling pretty good, I feel like a weight has been lifted, but I’m still awaiting more progress on other things. Nothing is final until I’ve gone, so I’m just trying to take everything one day at a time and try to make progress as and when I can. There are many things I have to do, but a lot of them are time sensitive, so I have to wait, even though I know what to do. I know I need 6 passport style photos, but I can’t get them until 2 weeks before I need them, and I don’t know the date I’ll need them. I know I need to get a police certificate, and that it’ll take 10 days to come, but I need to get it within 1 month of the same date I don’t know yet.

I want to try and get everything I own into clear groups of what can stay, what needs to be sold, what needs to be thrown away and what I am going to take with me. I already have a good understanding of the groups, but I need to be putting it into practice sooner and later. The more I do now, the less I have to do in a rush in the future and potentially forget about.

Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1860: Tuesday, a good day for Squats

I’ve done some running and some walking, and today I did some barbell back squats for the first time in a long time.

In my ever continuing quest to be the best me I can be, I have been running a lot. My mile time is back down under 6 minutes 30, my 2 km time is under 8 minutes, my 5km time is reliably under 25 minutes, and my 10km time is edging ever closer to the 50 minute mark I’m aiming for.

Once I was done with todays 5km, I decided, as no one was using it, to try and see if I could remember how to squat. I learned a few things. Firstly, start with a low weight to make sure you know the movement. I started with 20kg, which was good, and I felt like I got into a good rhythm. Secondly, slowly ramp up the weight to what you know you can manage. I started at 20 to get the movement going, I’ve been doing jumps with a 15kg sand bag, so I know 20 is going to feel like not a lot for me. I stepped up to 40kg, which I was certain I could handle, I’ve deadlifted it a few times over the past 2 weeks, and it was fine. I then stepped up to 50kg, and I wasn’t expecting to find a stopping point for the day.

As I lifted the 50kg bar off the rack and tried to get myself into motion I noticed that I needed to make sure everything was in the right position, my right foot wasn’t where it was on my earlier squats, so I needed to adjust. I went through the movement and got a few reps done before returning the bar and calling it a day. I’m sure the ramp up to that weight didn’t help my fatigue going in but I am glad I didn’t try to jump to 60kg immediately, as I know that would have ended in disaster. I’m also pretty confident in saying that the 5 km that I started with didn’t positively contribute to the maximum weight I could lift too.

My third point then is to know when to stop, where your limits are, the information I shared the other day about going 70% every day rather than having to take days off after going 100% sprang to mind, and I’m trying to get into that habit, of pushing myself to where I know I can get, and ensuring I don’t overexercise and am left fatigued for days.

Sure I’d like to be able to squat more, but that’ll come in time, so for now I’m just going to work on increasing the amount of reps of 50kg that I can do, and maybe try out a 60kg or so when I’ve done a sensible, not over the top, warm up.

Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1853: January 2019 Handwritten Journal

Day 1851: Decent Sunday Plans

Last night there was a wrestling show, the NXT Takeover Phoenix, and the Anthem Demo was still live, so todays plans involved both of those. The wrestling show was very enjoyable, see Wednesdays journal later in the week about that.

The Anthem demo was enjoyable, I mentioned some thoughts yesterday, and all around I had a good time playing it. I’m hopeful that next weekend the whole squad can get together and we can all enjoy it together and see what madness we can all pull off.

My sister came over and as a family we all had a brunch, and tried to do a linking playlist while cooking, eating and cleaning up. In turn each of us would chose a song, and could even tenuously link it to the song before. We went from my mums choice of Carole King to Queen - Killer Queen, because of the tenuous link as Kings are married to Queens typically, and therefore it was a logical next song. It all makes sense.

Rachael and I finished the 4 chapters of Diablo season 16s season journey, and claimed our full sets, and are making progress on objectives, which is a nice change of pace from Path of Exile, but it plays far slower, and is far less deadly. Having actively played both over the last week I want to put together a journal for some time soon comparing and contrasting the two games. I’ll probably start tomorrow and then keep working on it throughout the week. I might even do the same thing with Anthem and Destiny, but that’ll likely be after Anthem comes out if I decide to pick it up. I saw a streamer today who on PC had switched to using a controller, and said it felt great with a controller.

I’m looking forward to finding out more about Anthem, I am still undecided on getting it, even though I’m very positive on it right now. It certainly seems like another game that I could massively enjoy. The start of this year seems to be very strong, with Kingdom Hearts 3 coming out in a few days, and Anthem in a few weeks.

Anyway, I also watched the Hot Ones with Gordon Ramsay and I laughed a lot, a very enjoyable video, as well as catching up with the Slow Mo Guys. Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1850: Anthem Thoughts

I played some of the Anthem demo today, I even got on to play a little last night, despite the high likelihood of it not working.

I enjoyed it, there’s a lot to it, and a lot of if feels very unintuitive. Luckily the core game play loop seems to be there, and that’s very important. I knew nothing of this game before this week, and luckily I have a few friends that are interested in it. Who would have thought, a bunch of Destiny nerds would be interested in a sort of open world shooter, with progressive loot mechanics.

Many times we tried missions though they simply didn’t load us in, we never got to try out the world in free roam, and were limited to the 3 story missions that could be ran, and a sort of strike like lair activity. I think the first time we ran it it took us about 45 minutes, and the second time, now we knew what we were doing it took about 20 minutes. I hope that tomorrow before it goes away we can try it on the hard difficulty. I like the looty progression ideas, and I like that there is higher difficulty options, but more health and more incoming damage unfortunately doesn’t excite me much, but a higher drop rate of higher quality gear is somewhat appealing.

All in all I like what it’s doing, it is a game I’m sure I could sink many hours in to, it just depends whether I want to get involved or not.

Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1849: Fitness Inspiration

While planning todays journal and writing it, I realised that I hadn’t done sufficient research and given it enough thought. So, rather than rushing something I was unhappy with, I’ve put it off for a later date and thought I’d try and do something of a similar length to that of what I’ve already written. Something that’s fully thought out and can easily be conveyed in the amount of words I want to use.

I shared a video link to a group chat the other day, where Joe Rogan and Faris Zahabi were talking about exercise. I would like to share my thoughts on it. It certainly got me motivated, and made me rethink my approach.

They were talking about routines and how a good routine will get you moving every day, won’t leave you tired and aching, losing precious time training and make improvements that you wish to see.

I was very committed to hard workouts where I’d be aching for a few days following, but based on the conversation that I listened to, I understand this to be less beneficial than I gave credit to. The wear on your body can be very significant, and so taking a different approach can be majorly beneficial.

For context, I was going to try and push towards my highest deadlift over the next few weeks, but I’ve indefinitely postponed that idea based on what I’ve heard. If I can do 70% of my max and rep that 5 times, and do that every day, I’m going to have lifted 350% of what I would have lifted if I tried my 100% weight, where I would have only got one rep. Doing this 70% at 5 reps also has other benefits too, such as not needing a whole day to recover, a day that is wasted, so I can effectively do 7 times the amount of work by dropping the weight down and doing more reps. Functionally, the force needed is lower, but all you should care about is the motion, and completing the repetition of the motion as fast as possible. Then your impulse, your power and force exerted is big, it’s going to be close to the force needed to move your 100%. If this is the case, then what is the benefit of ever trying to lift 100%? Clearly it’s safer to lift lesser amounts, which is great, if we aren’t injured then we don’t need to skip an exercise session. We also don’t need to be hurting.

Another thing that came out is how the gym is a fun place, happy when you train, enjoy the training, I try to embrace it, though today I was struggling through my run, but that was a whole other issue that snuck up at about 7km of my planned 10km. I made it through, but it was tough.

I’ve thought about my schedule, and I know I want to get faster, and more variable on my distances, so I’m aiming to run every day, when possible, and mix it up. Hopefully I’ll follow a schedule where I’m running 5km every other day, and alternate the days in between with 10km and 2km, that way I work on my 5km time, my fast pace on the 2km, and my slow pace on the 10km, all while still maintaining a standard to work to with the 5km, that being the middling pace that I’m looking to run with. I hope that training like this will lead me to be able to run 2km, 5km and 10km faster, in a faster time, so that I can make the progress I’m hoping for. I’m also thinking that this will get me covering 22km every 4 days, which helps with progress on my annual running goal.

I’ve linked the video on my website, it’s a fascinating discussion about training, I highly recommend checking it out if you are interested in fitness. Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1848: Thursday Short Journal

It’s been a good week I think. I like doing stuff at work, and I’ve had plenty to do each morning. Rachael commented on it today, and I think it’s been quite noticeable. I think that my exercise schedule has also been helping.

I’m very much looking forward to this weekend, I’m going to try and play some of the Anthem Beta and there’s a lot of wrestling, with the Royal Rumble and Takeover Phoenix. It’s also almost release time for Kingdom Hearts 3 also, and that’s exciting too.

I played D&D last night and we made progress in our crazy adventure, and took on some fun puzzles. I enjoyed it and it was good to play with everyone again.

Today I put out a podcast, recapping what I wrote the other day about my trip to guitar guitar. You can find it here!

Short journal today! Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1842: Feeling Lost

The last few days I’ve been feeling a little lost in the world.

There are a lot of things going on, specifically regarding my apartment sale, and immigration paperwork, but those are relatively outside of my control. There is also not much going on, I have very little to input at work, it’s not demanding, and I spend a lot of time procrastinating. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, and trying to understand my place in the world. While I know where I’m going to end up in a few months, right now I have no idea how I’m progressing along the path of life.

I’d like to point out here that I’m happy, but just feeling directionless. I’m trying to think of things to do that aren’t games and delving fully into just wanting to play them all the time. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at guitars that I want to try out, and tomorrow I’m going on an adventure with my dad to try one out, plus what ever else tickles my fancy.

It’s both microscopic and macroscopic in it’s scope right now too. Moment to moment I don’t know what I’m really doing, and picking up things on a whim, not seeing things through, and doing whatever gets put on my desk as it turns up. Actually, that’s taking work away from my employees too, as we are a little under-burdened at the current moment in time as the balance of work is a little shifted to be weighted to the first person that turns up.

In the long term however, I don’t know where I fit in, what job I’ll be doing, and what skills I should be investing in obtaining, or working on. I certainly could be making better use of my time. I’ve had a lot of ideas, there are a lot of things I either thought I wanted to learn, or started learning, only to discover that I don’t really have a passion in the topic, or lack the understanding needed to progress. It’s not been disheartening, I needed to see what I can and can’t understand. I also don’t know the job landscape of where I’m going. I like being active and getting things done, and so I’d not be immediately keen to jump into a desk job, but I don’t think I should discredit those types of job as an option.

While I’m on that point, one of co-workers was talking about how her partner was out of work, and they were getting to a difficult spot because he couldn’t find a job. That’s all well and good, but it came to light pretty soon after that they weren’t picking up certain jobs because they believed they were above them. I don’t believe that any job is below anyone, any job can teach you things, and can help improve you, even if it is a significant pay cut.

However, I understand that I’m saying this, and I know there are jobs I would not pick up. I do not believe that I’m above those jobs, more so that I have personal preferences that I feel would conflict with my ability to do the work. I am not comfortable handling food, particularly meat and fish, and as such don’t know anything really about them, therefore I believe I would be a bad server at a restaurant. On the flip side, and of what I can only imagine is at a similar pay grade, mainly because it is here in the UK, warehouse work, as I’ve done it before, is something I know I would be able to step into and likely be able to do well immediately.

I’m feeling lost, but I know I’m going to be alright, things aren’t terrible, there’s a lot to go forward to, but right now there’s not much to do and that’s fed into it.

Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1839: Thinking thoughts

Today was the first day starting at 7 am, and it went well. I woke up and got to work in plenty of time, and leaving early, well, at the end of the day was good, it’s nice to leave work while it’s still light outside.

I started the week with a run, I ran 5km in just under 24 minutes, which was a good start, and I’m hoping to increase the pace and distance in the remainder of the week, but I also want to do a much faster shorter run.

I started learning Sanctuary by Elder this week, but for the first time I’m purely trying to learn by ear. It’s going alright, I managed to pick out the key and the first few notes, which has led me to be able to play most of the opening, and keep up with most of the song. However, I probably shouldn’t have started this adventure by choosing a 12 minute song, but I have to start somewhere.

I found a list of songs that someone has put together as songs to know for a cover band, and I would like to try and figure a few of them out, and I need to start working on knowing songs from beginning to end. I also just in general want to play more guitar, and I really want to start a band when I move over to the states, but I’m still waiting.

This weekend I’m planning to go and try out a Strandberg original, just to see how it plays, as I’ve seen a few players use them, and I like how they sound, and hopefully I’ll like how they feel. Ultimately though I’m just continuing on my journey trying to find a new guitar that I can get in the future that is a step up from the ones I’m using now. It’s all in the name of trying to see if I can make myself feel as though I can leave any of my guitars behind so that I don’t need to ship them, and can sell them.

I spent a bunch of time just jamming tonight, playing over some jam tracks. I know I need to get out of the habits that I’m in as all my lead stuff sounds the same, but I think I’m getting there, I definitely have a style. That’s for sure.

I also recorded a podcast this evening, and I need to get it edited and prepared for Thursday, and I’m not sure if I actually gave myself enough time. I know I did though and that it’s all totally solvable, but I know I want to go to the gym tomorrow.

Anyway, have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-

Day 1834: Redesigning

I spent some time today simplifying and redesigning my website. I removed the back image and changed up the colours used. It’s a lot more muted and simplified, it feels far less cluttered. I’m looking to do some categorisation on all my posts going forwards, and using the tags where appropriate.

It’s been 2 and a half years, about 850 days since I started posting on my website and had set all this up. I should have got round to this before, but now I’m looking at it with intent, and want to try and improve it. There are some things I’d like to implement so that navigating is easier, and things can be found easily, so that categorised things are together and easy to find, but I’m working on all of that, it also means that I need to go back and categorise hundreds of entries, which is no small task. I don’t know at this point whether to do that, or just stick to doing it going forward.

Clearly I’d like to invest the time and categorise everything, but I know it’ll take a while. I also need to determine all the categories too, so that I can cover all the things I discuss, and try to tag appropriately. I might set myself a goal, and I know I don’t want to be investing lots of time in to this that’ll make me feel compelled to do this while at work, which I know right now is a major issue I’m trying to think about, and I’m desperately trying to keep myself busy enough that I get work done. I am waiting for my co-worker to return as we have a stack of things to do, but I can’t get it done and expect that it’ll be done next year without training someone else to do it. I know I’m leaving, so I need to show others how to do the job. I know I need to make a template for an annual production report, based on the work I’ve done recently, and that’ll take me no time at all to do, I just need to remember to do it.

I put out a little podcast today, only about 6 minutes long, talking about my 6 goals for the year, and I just went through each of them, much like I did in the journal about the goals. I’m happy with how it came out, check it out here if you’re interested. I’ve been trying to plan the next few weeks out so I can get some good podcasts recorded and start the year off strong,

Have an excellent day! You’re all my favourites!

Peace -x-