Pre-Goal Reward..and stuff

As listed on the Goals page, I had "something else" listed with the 170's milestone reward / change.  Due to varying schedules, and time frames, that something else was utilized (for lack of better phrasing).  I'm going to do my best to look at it as:  "I damn well better get my weight down" .  Details after the click....

Quick Disclaimer:  Now that I've managed to get my weigh down to 184 (area), I'm less concerned about making another 10 pound drop in 1 month(ish).  I'm  going to drop the weight, don't even question that.  I'm just not going to be OCD about it.  I found myself getting that way this past week, and I didn't like what was going through my mind or what I saw.  So, once again, I'm going to change things up, my body willing....

Okay, okay, let's get to the point!  What is this "something else" that you keep mentioning?
Simply put:  I got a tattoo.  It was roughly 18 years in the making - no, not the same design or anything, or just getting one.  I had some pretty tight criteria, and everything just sort of fell in place this year.

What was / is the criteria?

• The tattoo needs to have real meaning - "I like this character so I'm getting this design" , that's not real meaning.  That's cool / fun factor.  Nothing wrong with that - but that's not me.
• The design, obviously, needs to be something that expresses me in some manner, and I need to enjoy it.

So, I decided I use this is as a reward for losing weight and getting into shape - which is one of the reasons I originally wanted to wait until I dropped into the 170's, but I did manage to get to a happy medium (I have zero regrets about getting it done early).  Also, as for the meaning of the tattoo.... I wanted something to essentially represent / honor my Papa (grandfather).  From there,  I took something my Papa kept saying to me over the past year or two: "Reach for the moon".  Then I needed it to still be me , and not "like everyone else"...

Let's break this down...

1. Represent Grandfather
2. "Reach for the Moon"
3. Be unique / something that says me

My Grandfather has a thing for bald eagles.  Like, legit.  So, I wanted to find a way to incorporate a bald eagle.  However, that's a very common thing to have tattooed - especially by military individuals and / or the Muricah! type of individuals (you know what I mean).  So, the style of it needed to be different, because I'm neither military or walking around hollerin' Muricah! - except in a whimsical manner.  Needed to convey Reach for the moon without any text.  

I pictured something involving a bald eagle flying by a moon...then imagined a boy pointing or reaching up to the moon (from the ground) while the eagle is flying by ....then it morphed into the eagle carrying the boy by the shoulders in his talons (keep in mind, I'm Google image searching everything attempting to find uniqueness) - after the search for eagle carrying boy, I decided it was probably best not to go that route.  Then it hit me:  Lord of the Rings.  Why not have the boy riding on the eagle?  ..and then having the boy pointing / reaching out to the moon?

I spoke with Brit at The Montana Tattoo Company , gave her my input and explained my concerns / criteria.  Part of the uniqueness / me, I stated that I'd love to have a Studio Ghibli anime style if possible, because having a bald eagle tattoo was really one of the last things I wanted, but this one is about my Grandfather - but I still needed it to be "me" as well.  Since the boy was supposed to represent me, I wanted to have a backwards baseball cap on him.

Brit did a great job at making me feel confident and extra excited about what she had planned out, and she communicated with me during the whole process - explained how things were going, and gave me a heads up about certain areas she was about to start on (I also quickly picked up on her talking to me about whatever, to distract me when she was about to hit some tender spots - maybe that was coincidental - either way, it was greatly appreciated).  She took the information I gave her - which was more verbal than visual - and ran with it.  Once it was all said and done (shading, etc..), it was obvious:  Brit totally beat my expectations with this design!  

Overall:  Great experience - other than the shading near the sternum, which honestly felt like it was getting raw...but suck it up buttercup, it's not like this was going to a be tea-party....then there's the lovely sunburn feeling...yeeeuup....definitely a sunburn feeling....oh so lovely.  But as far as I'm concerned, it's all worth it.

Here are a few pictures from the day of getting it done July 28th, 2018:

Front cam - stencil

Front cam - line work

Front cam - finished

In the mirror - finished

...apparently I just don't know how to smile when I'm taking pictures of myself.../smdh ... I was pretty damn excited though!  I guess that's just my trying to get the camera to focus face....I was more concerned about capturing this outstanding tattoo, then I was my face..

I was going to wait a week or so to post this, because I wanted some pictures from "a week later" just to compare; but meh... I want to post this.

One last side note:  I'm a bit paranoid with doing certain upper body workouts - especially when it involves stretching.  The last thing I want to do is bork the healing process (I kind of pushed things a bit on Monday morning, "watching" for any pains to show up - later today (Tuesday AM) I continued reading an article about working out after getting new tattoos - and it made me realize that I should wait a minnimum of one week, if not 2-3 .... generally speaking ... in other words:  wait until the healing process is essentially complete) 😁

With all that said... Keep your head up, and keep on grindin'!