the phagos blog

Despite the demands on my time, I have taken an interest in the sport of Parkour and freerunning lately. I haven’t actually done it yet, but it has caught my eye, and it won’t be too long before I’m trying it out, I’m sure. Yeah, I’ve seen it in the movies (opening sequence of Casino Royale), and seen some of the demo videos online. I’m not kidding myself here - I may never be that good, and that’s not my goal. It just looks cool, and I think it would be a good way to improve my cardio, and maybe lose some weight.

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There’s a question that floats around in some circles that I personally don’t care for - ‘What would you do if you knew you could not fail?’ Umm, be bored out of my freaking mind after a while. I’ve got one a lot better - ‘What would you do if you weren’t afraid?’ While the answers to these two questions would be very close, the results would be miles apart.

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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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Samhain is coming!  Ok, Halloween, if Samhain doesn’t mean anything to you.  I love this time of year - fall is in progress, the days are cooling off, the leaves are changing colors, the earth is getting ready to rest.  As the planet gets ready to draw inward, so do I.

This time of year I typically start to withdraw into myself, reflecting over the last year, examining my life, and generally thinking deep thoughts, and this year is no different.  So word of warning to my friends and acquaintances - if I seem distant for a bit, it’s not you - it’s just that time of year for me.  I’ll come out of it next month.

Since I started my challenge some weeks ago, I’ve come to appreciate the absence of tv.  Don’t get me wrong, there are still programs I like to watch - I just don’t turn on the tv by default, at least not most of the time.  What I found, among other things, is that I really like early mornings and twilight.

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It is with great pleasure that I announce that I’ve had another article published in Ave News, a bi-monthly metaphysical newspaper published locally in Columbia, SC, and surrounding areas.  Unfortunately, the article I wrote is not available online - they only select 3 articles from the issue for online publication, and mine is not among them.  However, if you are in the Columbia, SC area, please pick one up.

This is my second article published in Ave News, and I had several published in a now defunct paper published in Pensacola, Fl, called The Light.  Perhaps I’ll run a series of posts that are reprints of the articles I’ve had published.  For now, I’ll just celebrate getting an article published again.  Hopefully it’s a sign of great things to come.

For anyone who doesn’t know, yesterday was Mabon, a Wiccan holiday that most people in the northern hemisphere know as the autumnal equinox.  Mabon is a harvest holiday, a celebration of the bounty of the fields.  It’s a time to acknowledge the things we’re harvesting in our lives for the year.  Except this year was a little different for me.

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This past Saturday night was my 25 year high school reunion.  Since that was about 1,500 miles or so from my house, I didn’t make it.  I actually wanted to go, but things just didn’t work out.  When I found out about it three months ago or so, I thought I’d be in the middle of getting ready for my black belt test, but it didn’t quite work out that way.  It would have been nice to see some of my old friends from high school, just to see how their doing, but maybe it’s best not to look back - school was a pretty turbulent time for me, and I have no desire to return to that time.  Still, I do want to go back sometime to see my family, if nothing else.

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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