Ember King 🥉

Pick one skill weekly, 20-minute drills, and roast yesterday's lines between kid chaos.

Squeezing in 20 minutes between diaper changes and Zoom calls feels like winning the lottery sometimes. I'd say kick off each session with a quick warm-up of scribbling loose lines and circles to get that hand steady and then dive into shading simple stuff like spheres or cubes for the rest of the time - keep it fun by drawing goofy faces on them. Track your progress by snapping a pic of each day's doodle on your phone and jotting a note like 'lines less wobbly today,' so you see the wins without overthinking it.

Buy frozen veggies, cook double, eat leftovers for lunch.

Portion, freeze flat, duplicate condiments at work, backup meals in bag.

At home we run a single "prompt of the week" on the fridge so nobody debates anything. Everyone grabs the same pencil and an index card after dinner, 20 minutes tops. Snap a pic into the shared album named by week number, done. Watching that album stack up is the motivation.

You fix the shakes by training your body it's safe. Daily 10-minute drill: 2 minutes slow nasal inhales with long hissed exhales; 3 minutes straw-in-water bubbles; 2 minutes lip trills/sirens; 3 minutes sing one verse/chorus at conversational volume, one take only. Next, add small exposures: sing to the bathroom mirror, then send one voice memo to a friend, then stand up in shoes and sing facing a corner. Keep knees soft, jaw loose (two-finger massage by the ears), and do 30 seconds of shoulder rolls right before singing to bleed off adrenaline. Neighbor-friendly: hum into a towel or sing in the car, and run a fan/white noise. Skip caffeine an hour prior, sip warm water with a pinch of salt, pick an easy key, and start within three seconds so your brain doesn't spiral.

I am in the Gulf Coast heat and tried both routes over the years... Waterproof mids kept out ankle deep splashes fine but after an hour of steady hiking my socks were wet from sweat anyway and they never dried until I took a long break, and I started getting hot spots. I switched to breathable mesh mids and now I accept that my feet get wet in a crossing, then the water pumps out as I walk and they feel normal again in twenty minutes. Total swamp. A thin liner sock under a thin hiking sock cuts friction while drying. I swap to a fresh pair at lunch, shake out insoles during breaks, and try not to stomp through puddles. Plenty of mid cuts come in under two pounds so ankle coverage without the oven effect is doable.