Fitness Wednesday - Week 2

Another week has passed, and it's time to check in on my fitness goals. In last week's post, I said I wanted to weigh in under 330 this week. I am happy to report success because the scale read 328 this morning. Another three pounds gone!

I have continued to improve my eating habits. I am still snacking on vegetables at work and avoiding soda. I've started eating a little better when I get home at night as well. I did have a couple of slip ups this past week, but not as many as I have had in the past.

This weekend is going to be difficult though. I have a series of Magic tournaments that I'm running starting on Friday evening and running through Sunday evening followed up by the Superbowl Sunday night. These weekends have previously been filled with junk food and soda, but I'm hoping to change that this time. I'm planning on having healthier snacks available and avoid soda as much as possible. We will see how it goes.

The exercise bike I purchased has an 8-week weight loss program that you do 3 days a week. I started that yesterday. My goal is to use the bike three days a week following the program, and then fill in the other days with other exercise.

328 is the lowest I've weighed in a long time, and it makes me feel good. As I see the number get lower and lower, it helps keep me on the path. I lost three pounds this week, so I hope to lose at least another three pounds this week and report in at most 325 next week.

-Eddie

Learning

I love to learn new things. Learning is one of the greatest opportunities we have and should not be wasted. I will go out of my way to learn new things. Learning is how we improve.

I have the goal of writing a novel this year. At this point, though, I know that my writing is not as good as it could be. I have to learn to write better. That's the reason I started this blog.

I also plan on creating a game this year. If I want to create a good game, I need to study the designs of great games that already exist. By seeing what they did, I learn to be a better game designer.

If I want to be a high level Magic player, I have to improve my skills. I have to learn how to be a better Magic player. I watch videos of high level players and study what they do. I read articles they have written so I can learn what they have already learned.

Learning isn't just about improving in areas we want to succeed. Learning also presents us opportunities we may not have had before. One of my favorite quotes is by Louis Pasteur: "Chance favors only the prepared mind." The more we know, the higher the chance we will see an opportunity for what it is and be able to take advantage of it.

I use Magic as a reference for several of my articles on this blog, but that's because I have so much experience with it. This is another prime example. While playing Magic, I will face many difficult decisions during game play. If I have studied information written by professional players, or if I have seen them face the same situation, that knowledge will allow me to make the right decision at the time. Learning allows me to win difficult games that I might not have won otherwise.

Learning has other benefits as well. As I learn more about various subjects, I also learn more about myself. Once I learn something, I may find that I have a further interest in that particular topic. The more I learn about he topic, the more insight I might find about myself. A greater understanding of myself allows me to make better decisions about my life. This allows me to be happier and more fulfilled.

I have no desire to stop learning. I go out of my way to learn new things when possible. I want to be prepared when situations arise, and want to succeed. This is why I learn.

-Eddie

Changes

As I've mentioned before, this year is going to be a year of change for me. I've worked on changing my lifestyle to become healthier. I've changed the way I look at the decisions I make. I've changed the way I spend my free time, choosing to work on projects that I want to finish. I've become comfortable with the idea of change this year.

Fitness Wednesday - Week 1

As I mentioned last week, I will be devoting Wednesdays to posts about my ongoing efforts to get in better shape. This is a very important goal for me this year, but I know that I will struggle with it. I have an issue with willpower when it comes to food and exercise. This has become even more apparent to me this past week.

Characters

Characters are the backbone of a good story. Its important that your characters feel alive to the readers. You want your readers to be emotionally involved with the characters whether it be positive or negative. Even if you have a character that everyone hates, that's fine. The reader is invested enough in your story to actually feel an emotion toward it.

Ideas

In brainstorming ideas for both the novel I plan to write as well as games I would like design, I have discovered I have a lot of ideas. Some of these ideas are quickly discarded as I realize they aren't the best ideas. Even still, it leaves me with a lot of ideas to parse through.

Misses

I almost named this post Failures, but I don't like that word very much. There are a couple of different things that I could label as failures this weekend, but I prefer to call them misses. The word failure has such a negative connotation that it has a tendency to make people give up on what they were attempting. I have no intention of allowing that to happen, so I'm going to go with the word miss. It's much easier to attempt something again if you just missed as opposed to failing.

Choices

This post is about a life lesson I've learned while playing Magic. I'm going to start with the Magic example, then show how it relates to life in general.

Being Organized

Last night, I was in the process of building a wine rack that my wife had purchased recently. It was all going well until I reached the point where I had to nail the backing to the rest of the rack. I realized I had not grabbed the hammer when I had grabbed the screwdriver, so I went to retrieve it, only to realize it wasn't there. I searched all over the house to no avail. I could not find it.

Fitness Wednesday - Week 0

On Day 2 of this blog, I posted that getting in better shape was one of my resolutions for this year. To that end, I purchased an exercise bike over the weekend. I find biking to be better for me. With my current weight, walking or running puts a lot of strain on my knees. This doesn't happen with the bike.

Back in the Magic Saddle

I've mentioned before that I play Magic: the Gathering competitively. My performances last year were the best I've ever had, and I'm looking forward to doing well again this year. I haven't competed lately, though. My last major event was almost three months ago.

Being More Active

As part of my resolutions this year, I have to decided to have a more active life. I'm not talking about just being more phyiscally active. I'm referring to doing more with my time. I feel that I have missed of great times in my life because I have made up excuses to not do things.

Quarriors!

Last week, I bought a new game called Quarriors!. It labels itself as a "dice building game". This is a take on the genre of games called deck building games, where each player starts with the same basic deck of cards. Players collect new cards over the course of the game to improve their decks, working toward some ultimate goal. Quarriors is similar except that you acquire a pool of dice instead of a deck of cards.

By the Rules

One of the biggest pet peeves I have with games is when the rules are not clearly defined. That's one of the reasons I like Magic so much. It may be a complex game, but it has clearly defined rules for any situation that could come up. This removes any possibility of ambiguity.

World Building

Today, I'm going to talk about World Building, which is an important skill to have in both writing and game design. World Building is the process of creating the setting for your story or game. This is important, especially in stories, because it helps your story come to life. It helps immerse your readers into your world.

Thoughts on The Night Hunt

Short post today.

A couple of days ago, I posted a short story for my blog post. It was my first real attempt at writing for the year. It came to me on a whim and I wrote it over the weekend. After taking a couple of days I went back to reread it.

First of all, I would like to say I'm very happy with it overall. I know its not the greatest piece of writing ever, but it is mine, and that means something to me. I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard in this case) and created something. To me that is a success in itself.

While I'm certainly happy that I was able to write something, I also realize that I have a lot of room for improvement. I didn't really do any editing or revision on the story. I posted it almost exactly as I wrote it.

The next time I write something, it will go through a much better editing/revision process. My goal is try to post at least one writing per month as a way to catalogue my process. Hopefully, it will show gradual improvement as the year progresses.

I just wanted to say thank you again to everyone who continues to read this. Your support really does help me continue to do this.

-Eddie

Adventure or War?

I've recently started taking another look at several of the books I've read over the years, in preparation for my own writing. I'm not just thinking about the stories themselves, though. Instead, I'm taking a look at the possible creative process that went into them. It's interesting to look at how the books are structured and how the characters develop over time.

The Night Hunt, Part 2

Continued from part 1
Unfortunately, as Cayel leaped, so did the night wolf. The wolf tried to jump to the lowest branch of the tree, attempting to reach the bird. The wolf fell short of the branch and tried to claw her way up the bark. Cayel landed deftly on his feet, realizing he had missed his chance. Seems the Goddesses weren't going to make it that easy.

The Night Hunt, Part 1

Part 1 of a short story I wrote.

Cayel crouched on a tree branch listening to the forest around him. Night brought an eerie silence to the familiar trees. He had spent many years training to ignore the silence. If he focused, he could make out the sounds of the nearby wildlife going about their nocturnal business. None of the sounds he heard at the moment were important, though. He was listening for something else.

On the Fifth Day of Blogging...

So its only been five days, but so far I'm very glad I started this blog. I've had quite a bit of fun writing it. I found myself thinking about things in a different manner as I relate to how I could blog about them. It's also helped me take a further look at myself and my life up to this point.

Gamer

These days the term "gamer" is typically associated with people who play video games. However, there are other types of games out there, as well. As I mentioned in the first post, I love to play games. While I do play video games from time to time, I was referring more to board and card games. I will try almost any board or card game at least once. I just love to play games.

Mistborn: The Final Empire

Today, I'm going to discuss the book I just finished reading. I do not intend this to be an "official" review or anything of that nature. I'm just going to give some basic information about the book and you can decide if you actually want to read it. As a learning writer, I feel this will help me by looking at other writers' processes.

Fitness

So I've made it to Day 2 of this blog and so far so good. I know it is going to be a challenge at some point, but I know I'm up to it. For today's post, I'm going to talk about something personal as well as lay out my other major goal for 2014 in addtion to this blog.

And So It Begins...

Hello everyone, and welcome to The Daily Eddie. With this blog, my goal is to post a new blog entry every day for the entire year. As this is the first post, it will mostly be just an introduction. I will tell you a little bit about myself, as well as the reason I started this blog and what I hope to accomplish with it.