the phagos blog

Well, this year’s martial arts clinic came and went, ending Sunday. The verdict is still out whether the clinic was the best one yet though. Because of my injured wrist, I concentrated on healing classes this year, not getting on the mat until the last day, and only for a couple of baguazhang classes. Also, I spent most of the first 2 days in a Huna 1 class. I learned this year that I have a lot more internal work that I need to do than I thought. And it only took blowing my third yearly goal to figure it out.

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I’ve been looking at things lately, and there’s something about which I’m unhappy.  Well, rather than turn this into a rant, I’m going to do something about it.  You see, lately I’ve been checking my email more often, about once an hour while I’m home or at work.  I don’t get that many emails, only a couple people email me with any regularity.  But it begs the question - what did I do before email, and why do I check it so often?

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After a chance encounter with a stranger who told him say yes more, Danny Wallace decided to do just that.  The result of his experiment was published in a book aptly titled ‘Yes Man’.  His quest for several months was to answer every question or invitation that could be answered with yes or no as yes.  It resulted in quite a journey.

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Lately I’ve been pretty irritable, and admittedly, on some days, I’ve been down right bitchy.  I look at the things that have become normal, or the status quo for my life, and I’m unhappy about quite a bit of it.  Yeah, there’s a rant coming, because I just need to get this off my chest.

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I went to jujitsu class tonight, and it was rather frustrating to say the least. I almost didn’t make it through the warmup, it was so hot and humid in the dojo, and after we started doing the techniques, I could tell something wasn’t quite right - things felt a little off, like something was misfiring but I couldn’t figure out what.  Then we hit a technique where I just kept getting worse and worse.  Finally I said, “I’m done,” and sat on the edge of the mat for the last 45 minutes to an hour of class.

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‘An unexamined life is not worth living.’ - Socrates
This line of thought finally coalesced Saturday night while doing my food prep, and it was a phone call I received at lunch on Friday that triggered it.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about and and off for a while in bits and pieces.  I’m not talking about the big ‘Why?’ that spawned the fields of religion, philosophy, and science, but rather something a little closer to home.   My question is this: why do I do the things I choose to do?

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Saturday night, while doing the bulk of my food prep for the week, I was listening to the Moody Blues classic Days of Future Passed, thinking about my life as well.  I was looking over the facts and circumstances of my life, and was not altogether pleased with what I was seeing.  Though I don’t remember the thought that sparked a particular train of thought, it’s has huge ramifications for the rest of my life.

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Like many other millions of people, every week I go to Walmart to buy various things.  The last couple months though, I’ve been re-thinking that decision.  The reasons behind it might be a bit surprising, but they make a lot of sense to me.

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Today is Day 10 of my 28 Day Challenge.  Things are going ok - some habits I haven’t been able to establish consistently, others I haven’t been able to give up except for a few days, though the frequency is decreasing, and others need some tweaking.  Overall, I’m noticing a change for the better.  Given that I changed so many things so quickly, it should come as no surprise that some things would need adjustment.

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This morning I was at the gardens as usual, which is where I seem to do my best thinking.  I’ve been giving a lot of attention lately to the things I’m bringing into my life, and how I’m bringing them in.  This morning I finally made a connection about how things come to us, something I hadn’t really seen before but had puzzled over in various forms for quite a while.

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