erik

There's a lot of just training your brain. Being like: "this is the time we do X" and then just doing it. I'm stealing a bit from the classic writer's book, Bird by Bird, but I found it works well for me. Lamott suggests just picking a time that works best for you for writing in her case and just doing it during that time, even if you just stare at a blank word processor (the book is old, OK haha). Eventually, you will carve a groove.

I'm sure this doesn't work for everyone, but it has worked for me. I decided that right after work, before my child gets home from school, that's my writing time. It took a little while, but now when 4:00 PM rolls around, I'm writing. Almost every time.

I'd start and ask yourself why you want yoga specifically. You look like you just want to work on your balance from a physical standpoint, so let's hit that first.

Look up Proprioceptive Neuromuscular Facilitation stretches. These function similar to some yoga, admittedly less on balance and more on flexibility and range of motion, but all of these concepts are somewhat related. Bonus is that it's very science-based, you won't see too much yoga woo around it. I was introduced to this stuff by Bill Esch in his Ultimate Kettlebell Warrior program (we're replacing woo with cringe, just roll with it) and he put it at the end of a lot of days once the body is loose and ready to really stretch. But his programs are very expensive (he puts them on sale often, wait for that if you want).

Second, in terms of mindfulness, this doesn't have to be yoga here either. I personally find a lot of mindfulness occurring when I do a program that has incredibly short rest timers, like Brian Alsruhe's Reps Per Minute (much more reasonably priced). When you're doing 60 squats in 10 minutes, you really can't focus on anything else but doing squats. It's just you, gravity and the bar on your back trying to drive you into the ground and you saying "no, you will not." Unlike a lot of programs with 2 (even 3) minute rest timers, you don't have time to get in your own head or check your phone. You inhabit your body and listen to it for proper form and go. Your mileage may vary, but I find doing complex movements (squats, deadlifts, etc) with little rest (and then of course, lower weights, like 45% of your 1RM) very big on clearing the clutter out of my mind.

Ultimately, I don't mind yoga even though it's got some woo, but I was fortunate to take it as a college course at a midwest university to satisfy a gen-ed requirement and so my instructor was not some 11% body fat YouTuber talking to me about chakras or something. I had a hearty woman from the plains just telling me how to get into the poses properly. So, I can't be much help if you specifically want to get into yoga.

It was almost assuredly one of those buttons that did him in. I think the tweet was basically just the name of the video with a link to one of those tube sites. It was a very silly title, something about a pornstar named Strawberry or something similar? Honestly not worth looking up. But I remember him actually rolling with it a bit, which was the best way to handle it.

I remember when this guy posted pornography directly to his twitter account on accident. That was a fun day.

Might need to update my pronouns on here.

Certainly Eric Adams is going to perp walk all the decision makers at this guy’s insurance company as they go to the murder trial, right?

Had a similar first time thing taking my child on his first backpacking trip out into actual primitive camping. We had to filter our water and put our food in lockers so no bears or coyotes would come for it, etc. On the hike on in he was pretty insufferable, even though it was only a mile. But even by evening he was already getting very into it, gathering kindling for the fire, seeing his first millipede, stuff like that. We did a lot of hiking around the second day, seeing some ruins, climbing some foothills. He really liked that.

I grew up on a farm, so for me this stuff is already pretty natural. But he's born and raised in a major metropolitan city, so I am trying to make sure he actually knows how to touch grass. We've done car camping before, but it is pretty incredible how much more rustic just a simple mile hike between you and where cars are allowed can be.

Citizen Sleeper is next on my list. Got it for Christmas, but there's been a bottleneck on the Switch since my child started really getting into Minecraft.

I personally think it rules, but I am aware that the hyper anime aesthetic complete with occasional fan service (though to a much lesser degree than other Kodaka games) is not for everyone. So, I don't blanket recommend it to anyone, but if you enjoy or at least tolerate that part of it, the rest of the game is tight.

One thing to know going through it is that the very first play through there are no meaningful choices (aside from a joke bad end choice). You don't get to the branching narrative until you experience the 100 days once through. But even that has an in game lore, characterization reasoning behind it, which I thought was pretty clever.

I'm a sicko, so I'm neck deep in Last Defense Academy. The choices actually do matter is super refreshing. The included story flowchart branching at your choices reminds me of Radiant Historia in terms of bouncing around trying things out. Thankfully Kodaka is not too precious about anything and so the melodrama works. I doubt I get all 100 endings, but I'm going to get way more than I thought I would when I first heard about the concept.

The tactical RPG gameplay itself is fairly straightforward, but as someone that plays every Fire Emblem game at launch, I enjoy it. I should maybe be playing on a higher difficulty than normal, I've gotten an S rating for every battle I've done outside of two of them, but honestly being able to just shred through it has it's own fun to it.

The visual novel type gameplay between battles is good enough. I wish it had just a little more depth, maybe some extra power-ups unlocked for getting friendship points ala Persona would be nice. But it doesn't punish you too much for not min-maxing, which I'm sure most people will appreciate.

I do appreciate just how many gameplay systems have in game lore and plotting attached to them. It doesn't feel like gameplay is divorced from story at all. The way your character navigates the flowchart to the way character death is handled during the tactics RPG sections all tie back into the main story, which makes it feel less discrete than some games that just sort of have story and have gameplay and never the two shall meet kind of stuff.

Domino is one of my favorite films. Maybe I give it extra love because it is so underrated, but what a fun film with a very stylized look.

The Funko Pops had been decimated.