Rainbow Dragon's Lair

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

December 22:

Dancing

Fit December:

Challenges:
First Thing Water: Day 29
1-Minute Meditation (modified to five minutes): Day 29
1-Minute Plank: Day 29
1-Minute Yoga: Day 29

Push & Pull (modified to body rows in place of pull-ups):
Better Arms:
Flex Hang (modified to active hangs):
Power Grip:
1000 Calf Raises (modified to do one-legged calf raises, doing all the reps on both sides):

Skipped due to lack of time.

Daily Kicks:
Squat Hero:
Iron Core:
Glutes of Steel:
Daily Gratitude: Day 25

Also skipped due to lack of time, except for Gratitude.

Mileage:
running:
hiking: 11.2 km

Writing:
Got my short story for the week done, plus posted all of the Secret Santa gifts!
new fiction words: 2415
fiction YTD: 158,530 + ? (still have some hand-written stuff to type up)
story-a-week challenge: 49 of 52 completed
54 stories in my 54th year challenge: 49 of 54 completed*
writing days this week: 5/5

* Yikes! Only 3 weeks left in this challenge. And I still have 5 stories to write! Since the week before my birthday I will hopefully be hosting a Rainbow Day feast, getting two stories written that week is pretty much out of the question. Which means I need to write two stories this week and two next, or I won't meet this challenge! Gotta get a move on!

French:
CBC Gem

Scheduling Habits:
GOBOT:
SOOT:
GBOT:
GR:

Cumulative Habit Scores:
Gaming Rules: 72
SOOT: 60
GBOT: 61

Impressed I actually got 2 stars for SOOT and 3 for GBOT this day, considering how much work I had to get done!

Streaks:
Consecutive days of working out: 105
Consecutive days of French study: 1497

 

[Laura Rainbow Dragon]

Speaking of challenges drawing to a close, it's time for me to start making plans for new ones! I'm almost certain I won't do a story-a-week challenge again next year. It was the right challenge for me this past year. It kept me writing during weeks when I'm certain I would have done no writing at all--likely for months at a time--due to the stresses of the past year. But I'm in a very different place now than I was a year ago, and I need to be focussing on different things with my writing. I have some ideas. And also some ideas for where I want to go with my fitness journey over the next year. But I need to get outside with Shelby for a walk soon. So these thoughts can wait for a bit. All I will post now is the below information re: my upcoming birthday challenge/celebration -- because it's the one you all get to be involved in (if you so choose) and I just realized it's only 3 weeks away!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~​

The time is fast approaching when I will be able to lay claim to being another year older, another year wiser. Much of this past trip around Sol was once again extremely stressful for me. Things are calmer now. In some very important ways I am in a much better place than I was a year ago. Although stressors remain re: how best to navigate my path forward (particularly w.r.t. the high cost of both food and housing here, the scarcity of housing, and my own financial insecurity). But I remain grateful for my continued good health and for my community with all of you wonderful Bees here in the Hive. To this end, I will once again be celebrating my birthday (it's on January 13th) with my annual birthday workout. This time around the workout will be:

54 for 54​

Want to celebrate with me? Here's how you can:

• You may gift me with an exercise which I must do for 54 reps or 54 seconds on my 54th birthday.
• If you do, you get to celebrate my birthday with me by also doing 54 reps or seconds of the same exercise!
• The gift has to be a physical exercise. "54 burpees" is a good gift. "54 tequila shots" is not. (I will definitely not be drinking 54 shots on my birthday or any day!)
• Yoga poses count if they are active yoga poses. e.g.: a 54-second crow pose would be a good gift, a 54-second shavasana would not be. (I will definitely be doing a nice, long--considerably longer than 54 seconds--meditation in shavasana after I have completed my birthday workout, but neither the meditation nor the shavasana qualify for any of the 54 exercises of my workout.)
• January is winter in my corner of the Hive. So no biking or swimming!
• A 5.4 km run will hopefully be one of the exercises. (The weather could be prohibitive. But if it's safe to do a run here on January 13, I will do one.)
• The final exercise will be 54 minutes of dancing! (This is the only exercise that's timed in minutes instead of seconds. I need to do 54 different exercises on my birthday, and there are not enough hours in the day to fit them all in if I allow more than one exercise to stretch to almost an hour in length!)
• The equipment I have available for this workout is: a yoga mat, yoga blocks (foam and cork), hand weights (3 and 8 lb. dumbbells), a pull-up bar (freestanding--so no kipping! I can do hangs, assisted pull-ups, and negative pull-ups only), resistance bands, a Swiss ball, socks on a hardwood floor, and my own body. I do not have stairs. My pull-up station also has handles for tricep dips. (I can only do partial-depth dips. But these handles are also useful for leg/knee lifts and body rows.)
• Please post your gifts here in my Lair. (I will add them to this spreadsheet so we can all keep track without the need to scroll back through my log here.)