Tom

Anton, I'm lucky to have got to know you and proud of having worked together with you on something so significant. All the best!

Try washing with hot water and rinsing with cold water. Works wonders and it's actually less shocking than jumping in a cold shower right away.

Happy birthday!

Go go go! Can you believe that after five years of daily cold showers I still have to push through a half-second of hesitation, even though I know I'm going to feel great afterward? It's my daily "flinch fighting" ritual with which I build mental and physical strength. It all started from reading Julien Smith's The Flinch, which I highly recommend.

Hey Phoenix, welcome back! +1 to replacing gaming with playing guitar. It's working wonders for me. I study when I want a challenge, and play stuff I already know when I just want to relax. This covers the active, relaxing, and achievement-based activities on Cam's matrix (see 60+ hobby ideas).

Same here. In fact for me old Hesse > young Hesse, and his last book is the best.

How about the opposite perspective: martial arts teach you to prevent injuries! Think about it: you learn how to assess danger related to people and the environment, how to minimize risk (running vs fighting), how to fall without breaking your bones, how to quickly disable the thug trying to kick your teeth in. It changes you so that you don't look and feel like an easy target to predators, human or animal. It makes your body stronger, harder to harm, faster to heal. To me the pros outweight the cons.

Thanks! At the top of my list I put The Glass Bead Game.I loved Narcissus and Goldmund.Demian had quite an impact on me during the "who-the-heck-am-I" phase of my adolescence.Siddhartha is a great book and a crowd favorite.Bonus: the biggest thrill I got from books lately came from Richard Dawkins. The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene.

Hey SpiNips! I'm doing great, thanks! I wanted to give back to the community, so when Cam called for translators I put myself forward. I've been thinking about you and other friends from GQ. Glad to see you are still going strong!

Days 158 to ∞. Closure is a beautiful thing. Half a year without playing games. Some dreams here and there, a craving or two, and that's it. I had enough time to find root causes, make peace, reshuffle a number of things. And above all, change. It's time for me to move on. And I won't do it before thanking everybody who has been with me in this journey. @Cam Adair , @kortheo, @Phoenix, @AlexTheGrape, @SpiNips, @wookieshark88, @ChrisSatcher, @KoyoteIcarus, @Marchosias, @Zala, @Ed, @Florian, @gankylosaurus, @Elegwa, @cordharel, @bassitone, @Mark, @Django, @Alkan... My wife and my children. Everyone I forgot to mention. You understood, you believed, you made it happen. Thank you! I wish luck and strength to everybody still struggling. Don't be afraid. Dream big. Push your boundaries. Be your own character, build your own skills, level up your own life. Peace!

OK, so I didn't hurt any rhinos. I had some fun teasing cheetahs though

Days 156, 157. Good days. I'm ready to leave for my two-week business trip. It's going to be interesting! Formerly I would have played HearthStone in my room for at least the day's grind. Now I'm packing extra books and music. Gratitude journal: Going to Africa. It's going to be a key experience in my life.A friend giving me a collection of French independent music.Dark chocolate.

Oh, but it will! Trust me on this, first-hand experience! You dug some pretty deep neural pathways. It's only natural that some of the impulses that your brain fires during sleep follow the path of least resistance. Remember: be kind to yourself. Your body and your mind are your allies. Love them, trust them, guide them with compassion.

Days 152, 153, 154, 155. Recovering from the flu, and right in time! Sunday I'm flying out and it will be some intense two weeks. Gaming has nearly never crossed my mind during these days, and when it did it was so that I could dismiss it with a "nah". Gratitude journal: Having a comfortable bed.My fingers getting faster on my guitar's fretboard. Scales and metronomes are king. And Kerry, of course Weird dreams.

I call this "serendipity by design". It's creating chances for luck to strike. One month! Gratz!