My Hero’s Journal sidequests for this week included decluttering a space in my home, discovering a new sci fi thing to get into, and to do a 10 minute stretch.

I started by reaching out to a fellow nerdy friend of mine.

I asked for a couple of recommendations, and his suggestions were either the Expeditionary Force book series or The Expanse. So I figured I would download and read the first book of Expeditionary Force by Craig Alanson. It’s interesting enough – has a little bit of a Starship Troopers meets Mass Effect vibe. Humanity gets pulled into a galactic war that has been ongoing for centuries, and the Expeditionary Forces are the members of the military of several UN countries that are sent to prove themselves to their new allies. I’m still only halfway through the first book, but I’ll likely work my way through the entire series over the next year or so.

In general, I’m a fairly clean person. The most cluttery parts of my home tend to be the storage areas, such as the closets or my bookshelves. That being said, I’ve gotten really bad about just leaving things on my paint desk rather than putting them away properly, so it looked like this beforehand:

After straightening the items out, throwing away the garbage, and putting some of the random things where they belong (or at least, shifting them to a bookshelf… as I said, another bad clutterzone for me), it now looks like this:

It probably still looks a bit more cluttery than other people would like, but at least it’s just down to my painting supplies and blank canvases and nothing unnecessary. Since I would like to paint more this year, it’ll be nice to start off with a space I can actually work in.

And last of all – the 10 minute stretch. I kind of put that one off for last. In order to figure out what stretches I would like to do, I used darebee.com. First I ambitiously thought, “Stretches? Stretches aren’t too hard. I’ll just choose normal for the difficulty.” After getting halfway through my first selection, I realized, “Oh, I am a fucking fat stationary lardass, why did I think I could do this?” and I did a new search under light difficulty to find a workout. I’ve always liked darebee because I’m not super knowledgeable on a variety of workouts and having a resource that tells you a routine and has visual aids and videos is very helpful. It’s a good starting point for a beginner, or if you are more advanced and just want to try something different, they’ve got loads of workout plans to choose from.

This is the stretching routine I ended up going with. It technically comes to a bit under 10 minutes, but since I had worked halfway througha different one also, I figured I had completed the quest, if sloppily. Most of their workout programs are set up visually like this with very simple directions. When it gets into the workouts, it also tells you how many reps to do of each. They function entirely on donations so if you use them and find you like what they’re doing, consider throwing a couple bucks their way.

Also I am not very stable and 30 seconds seems to take forever when you’re doing some of these on a hardwood floor without a mat of any sort. And you have old lady knees.

So, one week down on my year of sidequests!