Renga: Brickish

So, I’m in the middle of another ferocious job hunt. Regardless of my habit of jumping jobs, I am continually able to land new ones with little to no trouble. I.E. I decided last Tuesday to drop the Content Specialist job, and switch up and I’m in the interview process right now, looking at either swallowing my personal ethics relating to my writing and staying at the Drury Website plus editing the school newspaper’s website, or becoming a research and office assistant in the Medival Studies department on campus and still doing the newspaper edit.

Switching means a $0.30 pay cut, but maintaining my ethics are worth far more than that. I personally seek to never reflect anything less than 90% of the truth in my writing. Even here where there are some exaggerations on my part just out of interest of readership, I’m still representing almost everything as accurately as possible with little addition or embellishment. Yes, the first post about bloodletting is true, though it’s actually done with really old red ink (Read: about 50 years) rather than our own blood.

Anyway, here’s the deal with the writing: I live across from several properties that the university owns in addition to my apartment complex and two others. I saw a student that I had written a very good, complimentary profile that made him sound almost perfect and a model student at that too. He was moonwalking drunk across ice in the middle of a road. Now, I normally consider this a normal college habit, but it still rang true: acting like this model student didn’t do anything wrong when I can see him do this is just… well, unethical. I can’t continue at a job that required me to do this. It’s actually really shamed me because as wel intentioned as everyone save for one is, I know that they all behave the same way, and whether or not it’s really a good idea to hold it against them, it’s a reflection on my ethics as a professional and reporting truth and facts. 

 That’s why I’m changing, and not to mention my boss is extremely strange. Even for me, she’s a little out there. Stacks styrofoam bowls and makes tops out of them and plays with them for one thing. Just… strange. I don’t like it, and there’s a lot of bad energy in the office that keeps making me feel terrible.

That leads me to the second part of this post: my progress concerns. In studying the "Jiggle Factor" of my body, I’ve realized that the fat in my body really is centered around and added exclusively to my stomach and butt, which explain the abnormally high body fat readings though I can still show definition through my upper chest and arms when flexed and in the morning after I wake up. In other words, I’m getting screwy results by my body’s own natural habits. Now that’s not saying that i’m really like 8% or something. That’s rediculous. It’s just that it’s gathering and not going anywhere. Which stresses again the earlier mention of cardio and restricting my diet to some more healty foods. So, now that I’ve studied what is wrong, I can fix it.

But it’s not going to work without a measure of progress. Part of my problem in the Arts and in my body work is that I’m seeking progress, but not seeing it. So I need to find reliable ways of measure. For the arts, I already have a plan. I’m going to request permission to dual-enroll at another Dojo or MMA Gym as a way of getting the progress measure of competition. I’m going to stop lifting weights, and focus on Cardio, which I believe will get me going again as I don’t feel the need for weights.

For one, being a physically strong person directly contradicts many of the motions of my family’s Arts, and for another, I can push my 300 lb roomate across the room on a stool with little resistance on carpet. I think I’ve got the strength I need. Now I just need to get rid of the fat to show that it’s really there.

Happy Super Bowl?

*shrugs* so I blew off my diet that I had a handle on for the whole of two days between two superbowl parties. back on it tomorrow though. *nods* Totall will be, because I really enjoy it. Who knew knocking out everything liquid that wasn’t available 200 years ago would turn out to be really tasty? Milk, Tea and Water really do work out well for me. At least, until they’re not readily available. I’m still working on that whole "Soda" thing. And I will improve. In fact, I am improving! Excluding tonight, my soda consumption has dropped from about a 24 pack by volume down to about seven or so? I call that progress. Not to mention the near-instant loss of about half an inch from not having as much coursing through my system. The downside is that I haven’t had such a terrible headache as this since my senior year of high school when I was stressed about the whole college thing.

The plan for now on is to follow what I’ve done with liquids into food things. Namely, eliminating most processed food by trying to get rid of everything that would not have been available 200 years ago. So, that means if it wasn’t actually killed by a person, it’s out. It’s like some sort of freaky historical vegitarian thing. Notably, this does knock out my cheezit snackage, but I think that I can argue for them as "crackers" rather than cheeze-its. *shifty eyes*

So why 200 years? again, since that’s the rough age of my family’s martial art, it coincides with a lot of the things I’m beginning to hold up. Call it indoctrination, whatever, but a lot of the stuff isn’t too far off from what I grew up with. When I was younger, I often imagined my older self as a knight. Honorable, strong, chivalrous, and acted that way. So this isn’t really anything different for me–just a little more intense.

Granted, that does bring up some problems, namely the whole "honor" thing. One of my roomates severely insulted my martial and biological family in the same breath, and I had to walk to the other side of campus to avoid the urge to stab him on the spot. Deciding that witholding physical vengance was preferrable to jail time, I haven’t. I’ve simply treated him as socially dead (read: Silent Treatment). Childish, yes, but it’s the only thing I can do to keep myself from hearing him insult me or my families further and really giving me reason to go off on him. Notably, if this was 200 years ago, I would already have his head paraded about the village on a pike… *evil laugh* O.o;; Uh… moving on…

I suppose that this makes me seem rather… psychotic. I’m embellishing a little. Don’t worry. Really, the impulse was more like punching him in the face. With brass knuckles. And stuff. Lots of stuff. Still, I refuse to speak to him further until he apologizes.

But why? I’ve worked so hard to earn Sensei and the rest of the Uchideshi’s respect that it really hurts when anyone insults him in a non-joking manner. It feels more like an attack on me than it probably should. Same kind of goes for my biological family, but not so much. That’s more just attachment issues and protecting them.

Anyway, I’m going to continue this way until he apologizes. And the diet stuff. A little drama never hurt anyone, eh?

Rather than new years resolutions, I set goals inside different categories: Physical, Social and Mental/Arts, dealing with developing various things that fall into those umbrella topics.

 This blog is pretty much for my Physical goals, as well as a Social goal. Getting the "solid" descriptor, gaining physical strength, and cardio endurance, ect. The blog that will be syndicated from Rockband.com traces my a couple Mental and Social goals: Learn to play the Bass guitar, perform in front of at least 50 strangers in a band playing an original song. Of course, my Martial training falls into all of these, so they just go where they go. Anyway, as a recap, here’s as many goals as I can remember for each category:

Physical Goals: Gain physical strength measured by a 300% increase in average volume (Approximately 20,000lbs/workout), increase sprint time from 4 seconds to 30 seconds, learn to eat clean, lower Bodyfat to a confirmed 10%, Have feroucious furry abs.

Mental/Art Goals: Learn to play Bass guitar, Join a Band, Perform an Original Song, Perform in front of at least 50 strangers, Pass "Water" and "Earth", Obtain an Application for Undergraduate Degree approval, Have a B+ or better semester, Regain 2.75 GPA. Write a second Novel

Social Goals: Obtain "Solid" descriptor, Join a Band, Establish Drury University Gamer’s Association (DUGA), Eliminate "the Rock Band Guy" social status, Attend more Clubs at Drury, become Sherriff of the Knoblands in Amtgard (Club President), Obtain full samurai status within the family.

 So, from here on out, I’m gonna make sure that these goals happen. I will obtain at least two goals from each category by June 30th, 2008, and add two more by December 31st, 2008.

 An explanation on the title: So I’ve got a lot of stomach hair, so I wouldn’t have model abs. So they’ll be ferocious. And furry. Rwar!

Yeah, so I know this is supposed to stay as much as possible on the whole fitness end of things, but can I get that out of the way so I can rant?

 I worked out on Thursday, felt good, drop by my Workout Tracker to see how that one goes. I’ve decided that my goal isn’t going to be specific weights, but reaching a particular volume, which I understand is something to the effect of Weight Lifted x Reps x Set = Volume. then you add that up across all exercies to get the Exercise volume. I’ve decided that I want to shoot for 50k volume by this time next year. Sounds like more fun than dropping little numbers, eh? I can record it with little "K"’s attached, adn without them when I feel like it. XD Gotta love it, eh?

 Anyway, rant of the day is the sudden loss of my ability to tell frat people apart now that Fall has started in full swing. What is it with these guys, but some kind of herd instict? Suddenly they go from wearing at least different colors of plad to the suspiciously similar pairs of jeans and frat t-shirts. Now i can’t tell them apart. I tend to tell people apart based on marking/common color/shoes. Winter and styles don’t help that much. Visible tattoos. If you ever want Renga to be able to tell you apart, either get something visible, or make sure you give me such a whooping that I remember you by that rather than what you’re wearing.

*phew* anyway, go play rock band. there’s demos at Wal Mart and Best Buy. Very fun!