#habitica birthday

[habitica]

HABITICA BIRTHDAY PARTY!

January 31st is Habitica's Birthday! Thank you so much for being a part of our community—it means a lot.

In honor of the festivities, everyone has been awarded an assortment of yummy cake to feed to your pets! Plus, for the next two days Alexander the Merchant is selling cake in the Market, and cake will sometimes drop when you complete your tasks. Cake works just like normal pet food!

You’ve also got a new set of Party Robes in your equipment if you did not already own all the sets! Don them with pride.

As another present to get you in a festive mood, we’ve awarded all active users Gems! Use them to buy Quests, Magic Hatching Potions, Backgrounds, or any other goodies from the shops you’ve had your eye on.

Finally, everyone has been awarded the Habitica Birthday Bash achievement! This achievement stacks for each Birthday Bash you celebrate with us.

[thatadhdmood]

I got a habitica to help remind me to do things and for instant gratification. Now all I gotta do it figure out how to use it. 🤷 Happy birthday 🎉

i actually put my own birthday on habitica so I wouldn’t forget it, but im not sure when i should mark it off

like yeah! ive had birthday! sure is today ammirght! completed!

ALSO THANK YOU!!!!!!!

[habitversary]

Quartzfox

Yesterday was my Habitiversary. My second, actually... And I celebrated it by mostly being an absolute slug-abed. ;) (In fairness, most of the day was yomtov -- observant holiday time.) It's been a whirlwind kinda year, lots of happenings, lot of ups and downs personally and professionally... But some major changes have begun and I owe the biggest debt of gratitude to Habitica, and to the community here. A few people, especially -- they know who they are. ;) Because without them I very likely wouldn't be doing this at all.

In two weeks I'll be turning 42, IY"H, and I'd like to see that and then some. But I've been very heavy all of my life, and in the last couple of years it's begun to significantly impact my mobility and my health, emotional as well as physical. Habitica has had no small part in helping me get to the point of acknowledging that I'm in bad shape, pun intended, and that nothing I've done has fixed it. I'm sure there's an underlying cause beyond what most of the medical professionals seem to think, but since they're not finding anything definitive, I've begun the process toward bariatric surgery. I'm scared out of my mind but I'm sticking with it and have even remembered to do most of what I need to do as I make my way down that road. ;) Thanks to Habitica.

I've been a bit of a hoarder in the past... But that's much more under control. I still have a lot of stuff, but it's been a couple of months since I've had help in the house and you can still see a lot more floor than piles of books and boxes and stuff. (Still working on it, but I've come a long way!) I've reached a point where I can acknowledge that asking for help is a strength, not a weakness -- and I've asked for help. And gotten it.

I've made some great contacts and amazing friends. I remember to take my medications 98% of the time, as opposed to about 30%. I wash the dishes and water the plants and do my laundry regularly. Sometimes I even put it away the same day! (Sometimes the next day.;) I've learned how to do pixel art and continue to improve my skills. I've become a Contributor, and reached Legendary status - between being a Socialite and an Artisan, within about a year from when I gained my first tier. I never expected any of them and I'm so grateful... because it means that this lazy, awkward, insecure little mess isn't so bad as all that. I've learned that there are people who do appreciate me, who car what I have to say, and they care about me for me. Not because of who I know or what I do or how awesome my hair is. ;) And a lot of that is thanks to Habitica.

Especially thanks to the myriad wonderful people here. Thanks to the friends who brought me here, and to the friends I've made here. Thanks to the support I've found - and also to those who allow me to lend mine, who accept me for myself and who allow me to give back. <3

[asterlark]

jack has been autistic for 31 whole years so here's some autistic headcanons :))

he was diagnosed as a kid but didn't have a good grasp on what it really meant/that there were other people like him until adulthood

most people that know he's autistic have only really guessed but he's outright told bitty, lardo and shitty

he has so many stim toys! his fave is a spinner ring but he loves those silicone bubble popper things for meetings when he needs something quiet

he grinds his teeth from stress so the hockey mouthguard is actually great for him lol & he gets one to use while he's sleeping too. bitty also gets him stim toys for chewing which helps

he used to repress stims like rocking & verbal stims to appear more "normal" but as he gets older he learns to mask less and just stim when he needs/wants to

he has a huuuge issue with masking leading to burnout so he needs a lot of decompression time after socializing or press events

he is Constantly drinking water & gatorade bc feeling dehydrated/dry mouth is a big sensory no-no for him

he has safe foods (chicken tenders & pbj) and has a hard time trying new adventurous foods but always trusts bitty & likes eating what bitty makes bc he knows if it's a bad sensory time for him, bitty won't be offended & will even work to make it better

he loves hockey in part because of all the rituals & it feels like a subsection of social rules he can understand

another part of hockey he loves? it attracts weird fucking people who get his weird fucking brain

he LOVES strategy board games & will read the whole rulebook & annoy others (holster) by reciting from it at any given opportunity

he's Really focused on some things (hockey, bitty, school) and not so much on other things (remembering to clean, remembering people's birthdays, etc) so he sets a lot of phone reminders and uses habitica for habits, tasks & to-do lists

he only has a few outfits bc he's particular about clothes textures and likes old, soft shirts and jeans (same with his shoes. they're comfy! they're predictable! who cares if they're not Fashion)

he can get lost in a youtube documentary hole for Hours. if he finds something interesting enough he'll go on wikipedia and click around and read about it too

he has scripts for interviews & press conferences and rarely strays from them unless he's asked an unexpected question (see: "hockey is a fun sport. don't be afraid to get out there on the ice. i guess.")

he collects vintage coins & hockey memorabilia & gets way too into it bc he's a nerd with nerdy hyperfixations

[paramsiddharth]

#10: Wisdom out in the Grasses

It's been an awfully long time and I will have to make this one very, very long. I’ll try to talk about everything in the sequence that it happened.

Do you ever feel so angry that you don't even know what to be mad at? Do you ever feel so hurt that the cause isn't evident? That's me right now.

Ah! Instead of whining, let me start with something productive for once. So, I have spent a positive amount of time with WSL1 and I am impressed. I’m glad Microsoft created it. I also learnt about how to apply stereo-widening to audio tracks in a DAW, and I found it really amazing how it completely changes the impression of the sound. I was unable to get WSL2 at the moment, but I’ll keep trying.

So, I obviously was dying to record some new songs but didn’t have a microphone. The price went down for a day but my mom missed the opportunity to get it at that point in time. I waited for a couple of days, hoping the price will go down again, but when it didn’t, I just decided to settle with a renewed one for a cheaper price.

Of course very few people remembered my birthday. I got some unexpected late wishes, but yes, it felt kind of nice to know they cared. I feel like the overwhelming personal problems I often whine about have caused people to stop caring for me, and it makes sense. How much could one afford to hear in a busy modern lifestyle?

I studied NodeJS a little further. On his birthday, babu (my brother) registered himself on all social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Discord, to be specific. And yes! The mic was finally ordered.

I learnt about the callback hell in JavaScript. :P I find the name very funny, but it makes sense why it needs to be taken care of. I realize Promises have done a great job at revolutionizing it.

I mourned the demise of a classmate due to dengue. He couldn’t get proper care due to COVID-19, whence such an otherwise less fatal disease took him from us. May his soul rest in peace.

And we finally moved to the first floor. It didn’t immediately have positive results. The very next day my parents fought again. It felt like this would never end. Honestly, it was never a good idea to live in someone else’s control in the first place. My parents deserve a place of their own, and that’s exactly why we were determined to leave Faizabad.

However, I admit that moving up had a positive impact on us and we all feel better, mostly because none of us has to spend the entire day looking at each-other and getting annoyed when one person is happy and the other isn’t. We can choose to be in separate rooms minding our own business, while frequently spending quality time together.

I finally finished and released Pak Raza. I am overwhelmed by the positive response I got. Within just a few days, Pak Raza surpassed any song I ever created. People actually shared it to their Instagram Stories. Some thought it was a cover, hehe. 🤭 I had to clarify that I wrote, sung, mastered, and animated the song myself.

I was then suddenly enthusiastic about completing more of my songs. Meanwhile, Coursera courses were soon going to not be free anymore, so I started giving them more time and dedication. Interestingly, we had guests in the new home. For the first time in the recent while, I saw my mom and dad, both happy about it. I wish the best for them and hope the stay happy like this forever.

After recording and posting 2 song covers, and getting good response, I created Zeher, a song dedicated to anti-intoxication and de-addiction. Intoxicants and harmful drugs are a growing problem among the youth. In India itself, I have grown used to seeing young people taking drugs and other harmful things, without realizing how big a problem they are pulling themselves into. Everything that I would ever want to say to a druggist, and alcoholic, or anyone addicted to harmful items, I summarized in one song and released it.

Obviously I didn’t get the likes and comments of a couple of people. :P I know very well that my surroundings aren’t full of clean people either. I hope they learn a lesson from this song and hopefully try to let go of intoxicants.

There’s a new app out there for beta-testing. It allows us to gamify our life and evaluate ourselves based on our habits. I signed up for it and it has been really amazing so far! It’s name is Habitica, and I would recommend the reader to try it out too. It can be used from the browser itself, so it isn’t necessary to install it. :)

Professor Jogesh Muppala is indeed an amazing teacher. I don’t know how his teachings always push me to create something new. I created an Express middleware named Imaginator, which converts the ‘src’ attribute of all outgoing images to use data-URIs instead of the usual address of the image. It needs improvement, but works decently so far~! I published it on NPM.

I started studying some new technologies, such as Flutter, React, Angular, and ElectronJS. Meanwhile, my friend approached me for help with a project, and I worked with him on the first ever project that involved the separation of concerns. I know less about machine-learning than he does, and he knows less about front-end web development than I do, but we worked together and got it up and running. :) It is a cotton-leaf disease prediction web application.

Speaking of collaborations, a big collaboration was yet to come up. A friend of my friend, who wasn’t directly connected to me, creates amazing music tracks. I don’t usually approach people directly due to the possible consequences. 😅 Still, I took the chance and approached her, asking if she would consider a possible collaboration.

It went left and right for a while, and she sent me one of her tracks, saying I can make a song with it if I want. I am pretty sure she thought I wasn’t serious. That’s because she didn’t know me from before. xD

It was an amazing track. One could tell it from the first listen that it was meant to be a superhit song. I started writing the lyrics and recorded it. I reminded her that I am working on it and it is going to be an amazing song. I sent her a copy, and she liked it, too. We tried to get some of her vocals in, too, but sadly we couldn’t. :( It is hard to do it when you are collaborating from different places in the world and you don’t have expensive gear to make stuff easier.

After 2 weeks of labour, we finally did it! Neutrino was a huge success. The song caught momentum from day one and, everyone was talking about it. Many fell in love with the tune, many with the beats, many with the vocals, but in the end, everyone who listened to it loved it. I and AT (the creator of the track) couldn’t be prouder.

This happens when one writes a blog post after a very long time. It becomes

“long”. I would continue the story with the next one. See you there! :D

[jesstasticvoyage]

This is my first weekend where it’s mostly me time, which is awesome. I think it’s been a month since I last had one.

Fuck, I really needed it, too. I updated my Habitica and am returning to some structure so I’m not so all over the fucking place. It was messing with my mentality in such a way I started to put everything off because I felt too overwhelmed. Not just in RP but my personal life as well. 

Also, my 38th bday is next Friday and I always get kinda blah with every birthday. I think of all the things that have happened leading up to it and how there are some good things but there’s a lot of not-so-great things, plus everything I’ve wanted to accomplish and haven’t because I’m a horrible procrastinator or convince myself I’m not good enough to do it.

I need to constantly remind myself I’m just one person and to take things one day at a time. That I should celebrate the little victories and tweak things if I’m struggling. I also have to remind myself that I���m not a constant disappointment to myself and others. I also need to stop telling myself that nobody wants to be friends with me, though I do feel lonely. A lot. Not that I’m making as much of an effort as I should but this stupid inner voice tells me people don’t want to talk to me. Actually, the Stupid Piece of Shit episode of BoJack really summed up how I feel in my head. It’s all self sabotage, which is what ends up getting me in the end most of the time. 

Been a bit since I’ve done a little unload session on here. Time to go shower and officially start my Saturday. I plan to watch BoJack season 5, play Oxygen Not Included and write. 

Here is to a nice Saturday. :)

[kjsadd]

my hacks

Wash all laundry together (no separating by color, or by person). I put last night's dirty clothes straight into the machine the next morning, and put anything that doesn't need rewashing in a hamper to hang back up once a week.

Habitica app for managing daily/weekly to-dos

Tile app so I stopped losing all my things

A cleaning regime: once a week we do a deep clean of one area. We rotate each week: Bathrooms, kitchen, other. (Other = bedrooms and household DIYs, etc)

Run the roomba and dishwasher every single day

Keys on a hook, keep them in my hand until they're back on the hook

Husband does all groceries/cooking

Slack reminders and snoozing emails in gmail are both super helpful

Trello for managing my work to-dos

Habitica for motivating me to do daily tasks

Google calendar: multiple calendars for different types of things (work, birthdays, personal tasks, events) and a shared one for our family

I use the alarm on my phone for things like "walk with michelle" "call mom"

Listening to audiobooks about decluttering while actually decluttering makes me able to focus and keep at it for hours. Recommended titles: Decluttering at the Speed of Life, Organizing Solutions for People With Attention Deficit Disorder, Goodbye Things, Clutter Busting.

TBD: Keeping my temper under extreme stress, Forming new friendships

[arachnidprince]

Been a bit since I posted again. Horrible at using this electrified meat blob in my skull for anything but hallucinations lately. Habitica is helpful in doing daily tasks and I have decided to keep it because nothing else seems to last 3 days with me. My family has a lot of birthdays this month and within the past week(ish?) a lot of deaths of close friends. So I’ll be online more so I can avoid the usual questions about why I’m such a bitch at any kind of emotional gathering. For the record I don’t think I’m being a bitch, I let the people do their things and I go find a place close by to not interfere but everyone has to be terrifically social and “helpful”. I keep forgetting that telling people you simply don’t care is a cry for help and clearly I didn’t have enough therapy in this life. Not tagging this one, be back soon probably.

[wordsbetweenthelines]

hey there self

today you did SO MUCH

walked keita

and ellie

and maggie

and CLEANED

cleared off closet bookshelves, and tidied sock drawer and pants drawer and threw away old underwear and removed old pants/skirts for donation

and sent off pics of the damaged sign for replacement approval

and read ridonkulous horoscopes and laughed really hard

and returned the timeless dvd to the library

and made breakfast for dinner with mom

and got paid

and watched madam secretary with mom and dad, and sam bee

and started a new quest on habitica because you already racked up so many points so why not get bonus points for it

and nommed on leftover freddy’s ice cream. yum.

tomorrow

clothes

teeth

breakfast

walk

macarons???

katie birthday dinner???

overmorrow

katie birthday dinner??????

[habitica]

HABITICA BIRTHDAY BASH!

January 31st is Habitica's Birthday! Thank you so much for being a part of our community—it means a lot.

Now come join us and the NPCs as we celebrate!

Cake for Everybody!

In honor of the festivities, everyone has been awarded an assortment of yummy cake to feed to your pets!

Party Robes

As a present from us, you’ve got a new set of Party Robes in your equipment! Don them with pride.

Birthday Bash Achievement

In honor of Habitica's birthday, everyone has been awarded the Habitica Birthday Bash achievement! This achievement stacks for each Birthday Bash you celebrate with us.

[parentingroundabout]

Episode 213: What's Your Excuse?

00:32 Birthday Week: It's official. All our kids are now Facebook-legal (13 and up).

8:16 Self-Care Stagnation: With all these grown-up, independent kids, we should be doing great at exercising, scheduling medical appointments, and other important tasks. Just guess how that's going!

23:35 Speed Round: Paw Patrol: Jeff Goldblum and Bill Murray suggest you bring your pooch along when you see their movie, Isle of Dogs. For the sake of everyone's sanity, we're going to pass. (Mentioned: Selma Blair on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show)

31:15 Roundabout Roundup: Apple Music Radio, Jesus Christ Superstar, the Habitica app.

42:04 Shameless Self-Promotion: Polls on our Twitter feed, "How to Boost Little Kids' Interest in STEM," and Nicole's Facebook Live chat with Visions and Voices Together.

Thanks as always to Jon Morin for our fun in-and-out music. If you're reading this somewhere without hyperlinks, come to http://parentingroundabout.com for the full recap experience.

Check out this episode!

[thatadhdmood]

Hi, today (23rd of February, probably late depending on timezone, I was gonna write and send earlier but forgot....) is my bday and I started meds today. (btw there's no need to say happy bday to me and if you're gonna ask my day has been good) I was wondering if you have any tips for setting up anf holding a routine bc I am so gonna need it now that I'm supposed to take meds every morning

OH! I’ve actually been having to take meds for a bit now, unrelated to adhd stuff, and i didn’t have a system in place and i kept forgetting like crazy left and right but now i have a system so I’ll share it!

I use Habitica ( go check out a post on it here ) and set morning pill and night pill as dailies and i tick them off whenever i take them that way I dont forget. 

I go on my computer a lot and automatically open habitica as i click through all my tabs so it’s easy to remember to tick it off.

If you dont like habitica, which is fair, you need to set a system in place where you are checkin down daily whether or not you are taking these pills because otherwise the days will blur and you won’t even know when you stopped taking them.

OH HERES AN IDEA: you could get one of those pill caddy’s with each day of the week written on it so you’ll know whether or not you’ve taken it! I think my brother has one so im pretty sure they work!

Another thing you need to do is, put your meds somewhere you can see them! I put them in the bathroom so they are right in front of my face, so when i’m doing my morning routine I can take them, as well i can get water from the tap. You can put them on your desk if you pass it or do stuff on it. 

Just put your meds somewhere you consistently go EVERY morning so you can see the medications and go, I need to take those!

If you need water to swallow make sure theres water nearby, a tap or a bottle or a glass, otherwise you’ll go but i dont have water so i cant do it yet. and then while you’re searching for water you’ll forget you were even trying to take your pills. 

Uh i hope this advice helps!!!! :D

[habitversary]

AlphaWolf54

So yesterday was my 2nd Habitiversary and earlier in the week my 39th birthday (yikes!) Habitica has helped me to pay all my bills and make all my appts on time. I've discovered a lot of new music in the Metalheads 🤘 and Classical Music Guilds. And I have come a little closer to understanding myself from the Asexuals Who Probably Don't Glow in the Dark, Gender Friends, and Aromatic Aromantics Guilds. These are all great places with highly friendly folks and they've helped me in my personal journey this year.

[blueymoons]

This is such good information and even more reassuring. I hadn't started researching meds yet because I'm still nervous about them. But it's super great to hear that if they give me a stimulant that I could potentially only take it when I need to.

I don't really have any trouble focusing on work...Though I do tend to work in short bursts. And I am easily distracted. Luckily, my 9 to 5 allows for that kind of thing. It's not odd for any of me or my coworkers to have multiple tabs up along with what we work on because our work comes and goes like feast and famine. It's probably the perfect job for me.

My struggle comes from home life. Executive dysfunction and staying on top of chores, remembering birthdays and events that we're supposed to go to. My husband and I are in a band and I swear I'd forget we have a gig if he didn't live with me and remind me. There've been times that he's started loading the equipment in our car and I'm like, "Oh you have a gig?" (he plays with other bands as well) and he'll look at me oddly and say, "No babe...we have a gig."

I've been looking for YouTube channels that can help as well, so thanks for that info and I've already got my phone downloading Habitica to see if that's something that might work for me. I tend to not stick with phone games though...so we'll see. It's worth a try though.

Mostly I'm just overwhelmed with this massive sense of relief that it may not be my fault that I'm this way. That I'm not lazy or incapable. And that's HUGE for me. I'm 39 and I've spent my entire life talking shit to myself because I can't stay on top of things that are easy for other people. And I've had shit talked to me from other people who think I should be capable of staying on top of the things they are. So it's nearly overwhelming to realize that IT'S NOT MY FAULT.

ADHD Brain Dump

Since my post the other day, asking for help with female experiences after being diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood...I've had so many people I don't know reach out to me and I really just want to say...Thank you. So much.

I posted the same message, exactly, on my FB...asking my female FB friends to reach out either in the post or privately and I had a few...but not nearly as many as I had here.

And let me just say...it's weirdly more reassuring to hear from people I've never met that it's okay to be afraid of the medication, but that medication is meant to help me. So many of you have addressed my addiction fears, sharing information your therapists have told you and things you've learned and it's given me a ton of things to add to my list of questions to ask.

I feel so much more prepared and ready for this.

I'm not as scared and I certainly feel less alone.

On a separate note...I think I'm realizing that my main superpower (I'm choosing to claim this as a superpower because for fucks sake...I've built my life from the insanity of this and I function really freaking well despite it) is hyperfixation. The more I learn about this concept (is that the right word?) the more I realize it's shaded my ENTIRE life.

Every movie I've ever watched and loved, I usually watch over and over for the first few days and weeks of owning it. The first movie I remember doing this with was The Little Mermaid. I saw it in theaters when I was 6 years old and when we got it on VHS tape (yes I'm that old...sorry y'all) I watched it every single day for a month.

Pride and Prejudice 2005 (The Hand Flex™ version) is my go to movie when I'm sad or upset or sick. And I will go through periods of time when I will watch it every day.

When I find a new show or book series that speaks to me (Doctor Who, Ted Lasso, Harry Potter, The Cormoran Strike series..etc) I dive into the fandom for that piece of media FULL FORCE and then wallow in it. So much so that I persuade everyone around me to get into it with me and then I get my feelings hurt when they don't love it the way I do.

I hyper fixate on music too and this is really hard for me because I FEEL music with every emotion in my body. I could have whole conversations with songs. You know how a lot of people have synesthesia (not sure I spelled that right) where they can taste words and names, or see colors for words and people's names...I feel people in music. Most everyone I know has a song assigned to them in my mind. One I associate with them, that when I hear it, I think of them, even though we may have never listened to it or talked to each other about it before. But something about that song makes me feel a certain way and I associate the way I feel in that moment to a person and then the song becomes associated to them. (Is this normal though? I don't feel like it is...but no one has ever understood it when I talk to them about it and they all just look at me like I'm super weird)

So it's been really wild learning about ADHD this past week and being able to see where it may have shaped my life and who I am. And I won't lie...There's a part of me that LOVES hyper fixating on things because I feel such comfort from them. I don't want to lose that comfort because the medicine makes me stop hyper fixating...

So...if y'all wouldn't mind answering more questions...Have you found that your medication dulls these things for you? Are you like me and learned to comfort yourself with one of your "superpowers" and then you lost that power with the medicine? Or did you keep it? Did it change in some way?

And again...thank y'all so much for being so lovely to a complete stranger on the internet. It means more than I'd ever be capable of communicating...even though clearly I like to use my words. (Sorry about the length of this y'all...but probable ADHD brain got me like...)

In the words of my current obsession, Ted Lasso...

I appreciate you.

[backwiththemadness]

Back into it.... Hopefully

This is a secondary blog to deal with my health and fitness stuff. That's what I originally used my primary for, but when I fell off the wagon hard, my blog became a lot of nothing. I've tried to rekindle the Fitblr flame, but it never went right. I need a clean slate.

Let's give a whole lot of background here:

I've always been overweight, and I've always been sick. Chicken or the egg? When I was a kid, I was sick all the time but the doctors couldn't find anything technically wrong with me. In retrospect, I think it was either the side effects of undiagnosed ASD/ADHD (so, anxiety issues causing physical issues), or fibromyalgia.

I definitely have fibromyalgia now. I was diagnosed when I was 23.

As a teen, I also broke my tailbone, which made it harder to be active. It was already hard to be active because of fatigue and pain, but it definitely got worse. I did yoga, and I think that helped alleviate some of my symptoms and prevented me from gaining too much weight. In my late teens, my grandma and I joined Curves, and it was a great help.

I didn't start gaining weight badly until my early 20s. I got together with my current partner in 2007, my social life became less active, I couldn't afford a gym membership anymore and my apartment was too small to do much in, and he helped foster a bad fast food habit (which was never an issue for me before... I almost never ate fast food, but he was already a fast food addict).

I hit my highest weight during pregnancy in 2012. I gained 50 pounds during pregnancy, putting me at 260lb. After pregnancy, I managed to get to 220 and stayed pretty steady there.

In 2014, my grandma passed way. She was like a mother to me. I started binge eating, hiding food, etc. I'm not even sure how high my weight got during that time. However, once my inheritance came in (January 2015), I got some motivation. I used the money to stock the house with healthy food, bought some kitchen tools and a treadmill, I started running and lifting weights... I got down to 180 in six months.

By July 2015, I was already slowing down because my symptoms started getting worse. It started with my feet. They became so painful that it hurt to stand. Then my wrists started hurting. It was like carpal tunnel, but on steroids. I was having trouble functioning at work because two of my biggest physical responsibilities were standing (my boss strongly disapproved of using a chair, even though we had one that worked with our standing stations), and using my hands to type and fill prescriptions. And in July, we have a lot of birthdays - - my father-in-law, my daughter, and myself, not to mention Independence Day celebrations. So between my reduced activity and having cake thrown at me left and right, things... Weren't so great. I gained back all the weight and then some. I was up to 250lb by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, we tested for autoimmune disease because I had a positive ANA test while trying to determine the origins of my foot and wrist pain. Nothing came of it. Last week I went to a new doctor for a second opinion, because I have gotten no better: It's even worse this time, even my ANA was negative. I say "worse" in the sense that I'm seeking answers and getting none. Technically not having autoimmune disease is a good thing, but I would rather have autoimmune disease than fibromyalgia. There's not really much in the way of treatment for fibromyalgia (though it's not deadly like autoimmune disease, so that's a plus. You only feel like you're dying!). I'm going to be getting a sleep study done, and if it turns out I have sleep apnea as my rheumatologist believes, treatment for that should increase my energy and decrease my pain. In a couple weeks, I'm also seeing a psychiatrist to start treating my ADHD for the first time. I'm hoping that getting medication will help me overcome some of my issues.

In the last few months, I have gotten down to 230lb through a ketogenic diet, but I've stuck there hard. The scale simply stopped budging. I also stopped eating keto because, quite frankly, I became bored of it. I also started having food aversions. I'm not even sure how to get past THAT mess.

So, I need to start over. I need to go slow and I need to be very easy on myself. Very gentle. Easier said than done.

Goals:

Stop eating junk. When I'm not on a keto diet, it's like my brain sees it as a free pass to eat sugar and empty carbs. It's fucking not. Stop that.

Walk a little each day. Just five to ten minutes. It's difficult because I get numbness in my legs, but I think getting active again will help, especially if it's from a compressed nerve (I suspect it is).

Lift weights twice a week. I can't really do free weights right now, but I did get a gym membership specifically for the circuit machines. They really help me to lift with proper form so I don't hurt myself or hyperextend my joints.

Do yoga. Like, any possible time. I don't think I'm even going to set a schedule for this, I may just set a rule of "I feel like shit, time to stretch."

I want to eat as many fresh whole foods as I can.

On a similar note: Learn how to overcome food aversions. (Uhh... Anyone got tips? Like I can't even eat carrots anymore, I used to love carrots!)

Eat moderate carb and lower calorie (until I can exercise enough to raise my calories). Another challenge in the last year is that I went from a fairly active job on my feet all day to a sitting desk job. So obviously my calorie needs have changed.

Log my efforts and find appropriate rewards. I can log here, on Habitica, in notes on Evernote, or in a paper notebook. I just need to make sure I'm logging it somewhere.

I recently got a sit-to-stand desk at work, and I want to make a goal of using it every day. Not for long periods, just a bit. Lately though, I've been getting dizzy and weak when standing.... So I have to be cautious there.

I think that's about it. I'll try to update this at least once a day. And if anyone follows me here and wants to poke me into action, I will always be appreciative of it.

[uswe]

Trying to use Habitica more - at least for daily stuff and moving stuff, because it doesn’t require a horrifying list to be moved forward. I also called my grandpa today to wish him happy birthday.

Now I just need to wait for the email from the place . . .