"Are You Willing To Surrender Everything?"

So I think God spoke to me last Friday driving home from work.

As I have explained before, this sort of event when it happens - and that is rarely - is not the Thunderous Voice From Above or Pillar Of Fire experience.  It is that simple moment where something comes into the mind and soul and one knows - definitively - that God has spoken.

The question was really "Are you willing to surrender everything?"

This is an ongoing discussion I have had within myself for some time, mostly with staying here where we are now.  Not just the usual discussion about schools and churches but rather things about my own personal life and the activities I am in: Highland Athletics for example, or Iai (especially Iai).  The thought has been "I can endure or even should stay in place because these activities make certainly other elements of my life bearable."

But I got a very direct challenge to that concept last week.  And all of a sudden, my intense need to think I should do these things forever is challenged.

Do I need to immediately give all such things up?  I do not think that was the point of the question.  What I do think it involved was my tightly holding such things to myself and perhaps not being open to what God is asking of me.

In response to someone who asked about holding things tightly in their life, Corrie ten Boom replied "...I've learned we must hold everything loosely, because when I grip it tightly, it hurts when the Father pries my fingers loose and takes it from me!" (Charles Swindoll, Living Above the Level of Mediocrity)

Not a bad piece of advice for myself, either.

Gone But Not Forgotten

An Amicable Dissolution?

Some three years ago or so, I posited (on a now defunct blog) the concept that perhaps it was time for the United States to seriously consider the idea of peaceful dissolution.  Now more than ever, I am convinced that this is an idea worth considering.

The reality is not only that we are a nation deeply divided.  The political atmosphere alone should show that.  The more concerning issue, at least from my position, is that we no longer have much holding us together.

We do not really share much in common at all.  We happen to live together.  There is that.

But in reality, we are really not the same any more.  Much like a married couple that has grown distant over the years, various groups within the country have found interests far more compelling - in some cases, they have verbally said things to other members of the union that they would never say to outsiders.

Were this situation to exist in a relationship or marriage, we would urge our friends and loved ones to leave it before things got out of control.  It happens in a political entity, we simply sigh and say " Well, we are one people."

But we are not any more, not really.  We are sets of groups that define ourselves by our differences, not by our similarities.

A break up need not be angry or disastrous, you understand.  Countries in recent memory have done so peaceably - The Czech Republic and Slovakia, for example, or even the greater separation of Scotland from Great Britain.  These were peaceable enough separations.  Sure, there would be disruption and undoubtedly many people would choose to relocate to a place which more reflected their political and social views - but ultimately would not everyone be happier if this was the case?

I do not have specifics, of course.  No sense in trying to plan for something that has never been done this way before.  What size political entity would choose, for example?  What would we do with the debt we all accumulated as well as the assets to be disposed of?  What do we do about things in which we may still share an interest, such as defense?  All legitimate questions of course - but no different than questions that any married union seeking divorce has to resolve or any dissolving business has to confront.  These are not new problems, this separation after being together - we have at least 40 years worth of experience of doing it on the individual level.  We just need to apply that to the nation-state level.

People may think me crazy of course, or even foolish or dangerous.  But they should ask themselves:  Have you dealt with people that have been in a marriage in which each hated the other?  How did that work?  Were they happy?

And did you wonder why they did not try to make themselves be?

Reflections On Rain And Water

Rain is crashing on the rooftop as I write this (last night).

I have to admit that one of the things I enjoy about New Home is the fact that we are far more likely to get rain throughout the year.  Old Home had a very definitive rainy season:  End of October to the beginning of March or even possibly April.  After that, pretty much dry until the end of October again.

Here things are different.  Rain can come throughout the year - good heavens, one year since our arrival it actually rained sufficiently during the summer that we did not have to water at all (on the other hand, for two summers it did not rain at all and left nothing but beastly heat instead).  Most of the rain is not of the sustained variety (day long storms of gentle rains) but mostly hard spots which can be interspersed with calm sections.

(Rain getting even heavier now)

We have gotten up to 5 inches in a single rainstorm.  Five inches!  Growing up, that was probably 1/6th of the total rainfall that fell during the entire year.

There are downsides, of course.  Erosion can be a serious problem if things are not sodded up.  And the rain in the summer only leads to humidity of the rather gross, nasty variety.  And the rain is not regular every year - some years it is heavy, some years we are in significant drouth.

I could use  a better rain caching system - and by better system, I mean "a system at all".  I have played around with some test versions (plastic garbage cans) but the amount is not such that I could make a longer term go of it without an actual collection vessel (and honestly, this is another reason I am working on reducing water needs in general around the yard - the less I pay to water ornamentals that could die on me and serve no purpose, the more I save).

And all of this, of course, points out the requirement of living somewhere that getting to water is not an incredibly difficult process.  I do not know that I would ever relocate again to somewhere that did not have sufficient rain to supply some level of needs.

All of that said, listening to the rain at night is peaceful.  And certainly makes for a pleasant white noise to go to sleep by.

A Vague Plan At The Point Of Inflection

The vaguest outlines of a plan are starting to come together.

The whole thing is quite nebulous, you understand.  In many ways our situation has not substantially changed from the beginning of the year.

But taxes are done - and with taxes done, certain questions and thoughts start to arise.  Such as if I cannot get a deduction for parts of my home loan, why am I paying them?  Or more fundamentally, if I pay a certain amount of my income if I make over a certain amount of money, why am I striving to make more money?

This sort of thing is dangerous, you understand.  Potentially revolutionary in one's own life.

No, we are not at the place that we could take a large hit to our income simply to avoid taxes (although having done my in-laws taxes, the number is much higher than I would have thought).  But it is certainly a thing which can start to be looked at.

A house payment is the largest thing, of course,  If I had that money back a  year alone, let alone what we pay in other debt at the moment, where would we really be?  Add ways to cut down on other parts of life - debt of course, but food and utilities come to mind - and we are talking about a very great change indeed.

We are not there.  We are nowhere near there.  But we are almost at an inflection point, if only we cna see it through.

A Sudden Flash Of Understanding

So I have been trying to work on my skills outside of my career.  Call it work, call it "handyman", call it trying in baby steps to start to practice some of what I want to do - I am trying.  It is a bit hard though, as opportunities seem to be few and far between in my real life.
Today, at the Shelter, I was asked to help build some wheeled bases to replace some that were either undersized or simply not fit for purpose.  Initially I was doubtful - after all, it involved power tools and measuring and cutting and putting things together, things that I am not usually comfortable with.  Still, the animals need the help (after all), and that is what we are there for.

So I measured and cut and screwed boards together.  Put casters on the bottom to allow them to roll.  Had a young man helper who I am pretty sure had never seen a power tool in his life, so I got to show him how to measure and cut and screw things together.

Bottom line:  Got two new bottoms completely built and converted two to smaller units.  Cleaned up, put things away, and carried on.

And then suddenly the thought occurred to me:  I was doing exactly what I wanted to be doing.  I was using knowledge that I had to accomplish putting something together.  They worked.  Heck, I even got to show someone else how to do it.

I do not know that I could make a living at this and still have a very long way to go.  But it is kind of a nice feeling to realize - even accidentally - you are on the road you intended to be on.

More All I Needed To Learn In Life I Learned From Iaijutsu

1)  All the force in the world without the correct angle of the blade (hasuji) will not make a clean cut.

2) Be ready for change.  A kata can change at any time because Soke changes it.

3)  All things have combative application if only we know how to use them.

4) A defender that can attack is more dangerous than the attacker.

5)  Small things make a great difference.

6)  Form can be as importance as substance.

7)  To truly understand something, teach it.

8)  It easy to train as part of group.  It is hard to train alone.

9)  Faced with a longer weapon, you need not lose.  Simply be quicker and get inside.

10)  It is not enough to be effective.  Be elegant

Nine Things

So my friend John at Of Brambles and Bears is apparently my older twin sibling that I never met.  We seem to share a lot:  an interest in outdoors and gardening, the owning of allotments, the fact that we fight with depression ("The Black Dog" as John puts it), and that we both labor to stay sane in our current lines of work
We also share another characteristic:  We tend to over commit to what we want to do.

John wrote recently about about his own habit of taking on more than he could do or, as he put it, "...to take on a project, task, or the like when I already have one thousand and one things on the go. The usual result of this is for me to either not complete said projects, tasks, or ideas or to to finish some off but to a totally, for me, unsatisfactory level which then leads me to berating myself and becoming disillusioned with myself."

Hey, I thought, that sounds familiar.

All of a sudden my despondency makes a certain amount of sense to me.

I have the same pattern year after year:  I set goals in December and January and start making crazy amounts of progress towards them.  I am constantly busy working towards them, perhaps even achieving some of them.  And then suddenly, right around March or April, I lose all steam.  I have interest in completing none of them and precious months slip away while I sort of muddle myself into doing nothing at all.

So it got me to thinking:  what if I have the same problem that John so clearly enunciates, and if so, what can I do about it?

Giving things up is not so hard - after all, it is not giving things up so much as it is simply deferring certain things to another time.  That I can deal with.  The thing I am troubled with is the same thing John mentions, "berating myself and becoming disillusioned with myself."

So if I had to revise the list, what would it look like?

1)  God
2) Family
3)  Work (Sigh, but there it is)
4)  Throwing/Conditioning/Training (Lumped together because they are all involved).
5) Iai
6) Japanese (Need to get more vocabulary now that I have the certificate to match).
7)  Writing
8)  Ichiryo Gusoku (which could encompass gardening, cheese, quail, and some other secondary skills).

And that is without trying more than two minutes to think about things.

Am I okay with this?  If I just kept the eight things there (and gave myself the illusory 9th item for fun) that would certainly more than fill my life - and give me time to do things like read for leisure and not rush to do things.

But I have to, as John said, get past the barrier: that letting some things go for the short term does not mean I have failed in the long term.

A Quiet Of The Soul

Did you ever have a quiet of the soul?

A quiet, almost like the stillness of pond
with no ripples on it?

A quiet of the full moon in
a field of stars?

A quiet of the hare silently bounding
through the night-swept graa?

A quiet of where thoughts do not stick
to your mind but simply dissolve?

It is an odd thing,
when my head is so usually full of things
to simply feel the quiet:
a soft dark blanket that quietly drowns
all else.

Emotional Distance

Sometimes it surprises me how emotional distance can develop.
To be honest, I am not really even sure how it starts.  Irritation, perhaps, or perhaps even a smoldering anger  just below the surface that makes things difficult to discuss.  Or perhaps things happen less dramatically.  Less shared interests with anyone lead to less shared time and less shared conversations about those things.

And then all of a sudden, you find you are emotionally different.

It happens across all relationships.  It happens with family.  It happens with those who are friends, sometimes even with those that have been friends for long periods of time.  And certainly it happens within the closest of relationships.

It is odd, if you sit and look at it clinically.  At one time you find you were the closest of people:  you spent part of every day together, shared interests and weekends, dreamed dreams and made plans.  This person or persons were an integral part of not just your life, but your everyday existence.  You could simply just not imagine life without them

But then you wake up weeks or months later and suddenly realize you have not spoken or thought of them in a very long time.

I understand that people change and perhaps we underestimate the impact of that upon relationships.  if the relationship does not grow as the people in it grow and almost natural chasm seems to develop.  If conscious effort is not made to bridge that chasm, it drifts farther and farther apart until you almost seem like strangers that never met.

It makes me melancholy, this ending of things.  Perhaps it is simply a part of living.  

But every time it happens, a little of the magic of life seems to disappear.

Heavy Weight For Distance

Making the weight fly,matter breaks gravity's bonds
for a brief instant.

(And I swung a 7" PR out of it as well.  Huzzah!)

Of Asparagus and Onions

The task before us today - in what will hopefully become a better trend of sunny weekends and time - was the planting of Asparagus and Onions.

 Here they are. ready to go.

 Asparagus.  I have been promised six per bag (only got ten total).

This is where the planting occurred.  This was a space I originally had identified for a mandarin orange tree but realized it would perfectly for asparagus (and would keep my garden along the fence available).

 Tools of the trade. I made a go of it with just a pick and hoe (to my surprise, honestly):

 The asparagus roots removed from the bags.  Look like little octopoid aliens, right?

 This point of the program is where you see pictures of me digging one trench and then two, measuring them to make sure that they were at least six inches deep, then laying the asparagus roots flat in the trenches eighteen inches apart and covering them with three inches of dirt. You would see pictures - if I had not deleted them.  Take my word for it that this is what happened.  All have is the final result:

 Red Onions and Yellow Onions:

This is where the use of the essentially composted wood pellets has become a blessing.  I merely pulled my hand through and made a trench and then we planted.  First red:

Then Yellow:

 (Hey Look!  It is me!)

Final look after three rows:

The most surprising thing about this whole effort is it took me a little over an hour to achieve.  I constantly think it is going to take so much longer.  

Here is to hoping I see sprouts soon!

Going Grey In An Urban Setting: The Front of The House

So the short term reality is that for a number of reasons (largely related to my current job field and schooling) we are living, and will probably continue to live for the next 3-5 years, in an urban environment.  It is certainly not ideal in some senses, but in other senses it is rather tolerable.   That said, I have two working philosophies:  one is the concept of Ichiryo Gusoku ; the other is of not standing out in the process of doing it.

So I thought - as more of an exercise to myself as much as to anyone else - to discuss the art of "going grey" in the urban environment.

Some starting facts:  We live essentially within a major urban area (although oddly enough, we are just out side of the city limits and in the county, wedged between another municipality.  We are a family of five.  We purchased our home and are approximately 3 years into the repayment period.  It has a backyard - not a huge one, but it is equipped with some areas that lend themselves to growing crops.  The surrounding neighborhood was built in the mid 1990s.  We are surrounded in the near sense by a large church, a school, some open land, apartments, and some light commercial.

The goal of going grey, of course, is to not stand out.  And this begins with the street facing side of your house.

Our neighborhood is a mix of homeowners and lessors; therefore there are really 3 types of yards:  the very well kept, the not very well kept at all, and the somewhat maintained.  The reality in any neighborhood is this:  the elaborate and well maintained as well as the not very well kept at all stand out like sore thumbs.  The one indicates (more than likely) a homeowner; the not very well indicates (more than likely) a lessor.  And you know exactly where these folks are.

I strive to fall into the third category, the somewhat maintained.  Our front yard is raked and grassed but not fully lush.  Our shrubberies and flowers are not elaborate (a fine stand of lavender out front, though).  The sides of the house are essentially just grassed in with an outdoor location for the trash cans on one side (and little else).

(A side benefit:  maintenance time is low and watering is lowered as well.  And as we live in a drouth prone area, that makes a difference in our pocket book.

I want the house to just blur into the scenery as people walk or drive by.  There should be nothing that really sticks in their mind (not like the uber-trimmed grass or the desert overgrown wasteland, anyway).

We are also fortunate (and by fortunate, I mean by design) that our house is such that the wood materials are not much in evidence.  Trim and under eaves are about all the wood.  Why does this matter?  A little maintenance will go a long way and (contrariwise) the outside will maintain for a long time without issues related to decay - again, making the house simply blend in with those around it.

The Garage:  This is an area where I need to put in more effort.  Our garage is the compilation of three moves over eleven years with not a lot of removal of items going on.  That is one of those things that sticks out whenever it is open - and something we need to correct.  Do I think we will ever reach the point of being able to park both cars inside?  That would be ideal, of course - one less thing to catch the eye as folks go by and make them curious.  Unfortunately I am not sure if that will ever come to pass (its one of those "two car" garages - if the cars both suck their sides in as are parked there) - but it is something worth trying for.

The goal is to simply make the house unremarkable.  Not sticking out in any way from the houses around it and in fact sinking into the background.  An house which, as people walk by and drive by every day, will not cause it to stick into their brain or get a bit more curious about what may or may not be there.  Ideally there will be a lot going on there - but nothing that would cause anyone prima facie to stop and enquire.

The Deliberate Agrarian And Voluntary Poverty

I do not know if you have had the pleasure of reading The Deliberate Agrarian, proprieter Herrick Kimball, who describes himself as such:

"I (Herrick Kimball) have been blogging here about Faith, Family, & Livin' The Good Life since 2005.  Browse down this column and you will find a rich resource of contra-industrial thought, down-to-earth inspiration & useful how-to information."

His story is one that many (I should like) would like to emulate:  he left his "good paying" job to move to upstate New York where he farms a small plot of land and has a part-time business in Planet Whizzbang, where he publishes plans of small-scale agricultural helps.

I hope to meet him some day (Here, There, or In The Air, as the saying goes...).

At any rate, he wrote an article yesterday entitled "Truth & Reality in the Midst of Economic Lies" which I would highly recommend you take the 10 minutes or so it takes to read.  In abbreviated form, COLA (Cost of Living Adjustment) is a statistic of questionable value in that it hides economic displacement is coming for either those that depend on pensions or those that depend on retirement savings (unless you are independently wealthy) and that the wise person prepares for this ahead of time instead of waiting for the train to arrive.

How?  I will leave it to you to read Herrick's post but will simple suggest that his idea of "voluntary poverty" is one which should be explored, at least in theoretical form, before being completely dismissed out of hand.

I suppose the post quite resonated with me based on yesterday's column - feeling displaced already, the shackles of "Life As We Have Always Done It" weighs heavily on one.  What would voluntary poverty look like in my own life?   It was fascinating enough that I actually started asking the question "If I did not have the payments I have now - all of them - what would be the minimum that we would need to survive?  If we eliminated all debt - all - how much would it require for us to live where we are now? (Not even theorizing moving in this)"  I do not have that number but I fully intend to find out.

One more quote from the post to whet your appetite:

"Think in terms of less consumption and more personal production.  Think of it as "voluntary simplicity."  Maybe even "voluntary poverty" (which is much nicer than involuntary poverty.)"

"

When You No Longer Belong

That moment when you realize that you no longer belong.

It sort of sneaks up on you in a lot of situations, I think.  You are, for the most part, consumed with living your own lives, carrying on with the day to day responsibilities of what you have to get done.  Head down, hands on keyboard, moving through the seemingly inexhaustible pile of items calling for our attention.

Until suddenly you look up and realize that you are out of place.

Sure, things have changed. Change is a major part of modern life.  People come and go, policies changed, projects rise and fall, furniture comes in to fashion and then out.  These are the normal expectations one has come to have of modern life.

But it is the subtly changed undercurrent that leaves one feeling adrift.

It might seem a little undefinable at first, that nagging feeling that something is slightly different.  You try and shrug it off - you have been pretty busy, to be sure.  Maybe you have been a little out of touch.  But then as you start to pay attention, you realize that things have changed. The power structure has shifted.  Policies which seem disjointed suddenly lock together into a relevant tapestry.

And you realize that you have been left behind.

Perhaps not physically left behind - after all, we all serve a purpose.  But you are no looked to or for as a contributor; instead, you are simply expected to shut up and go along.  The way things were are not the way things are and best that you simply accept the fact and quietly go back to your corner.

All of a sudden all that seemed so important loses its glamour.  The years of sacrificing and going the extra mile are washed away, left on the other side of a gully filled by a stream you can no longer cross.

It is a shocking thing when it happens - and yet, the most freeing thing in the world.  Suddenly, you are presented with the fact that perhaps for the first time in a long time, you can get on with your life.

After all, you are no longer of import.  So who will notice?

Fledermaus Iai

As I work the forms,
bats in the azure evening
dance above my head.

Wheat! I Have A Rye Expression On My Face...

Well, actually all I have is a terrible pun.  More importantly, I also have Rye and Wheat sprouting:

Gazelle Rye (119 days to maturity)

Dylan Hard Red Spring Wheat (112-140 days to maturity)

I am excited for two reasons.  The first is simply that something is growing (in my book that is always exciting).  The second is that this is the first time I have tried to plant Spring Grains. I am hopeful that it will work, as it will open up the possibility of having both fall and spring plantings going at the same time without fully eating up available space.

(As always, great thanks to the good folks at Bountiful Gardens  (www.bountifulgardens.org).  Their order came as always: quickly, completely, and inexpensively.  I cannot recommend them enough.

Gone

Clicking of nails
on the floor no more, as the
house becomes empty.

Syrah The Mighty Is Gone

Syrah the Mighty is gone.

She was diagnosed with  Hemangiosarcoma - cancer of liver/spleen, something that apparently can come to terminal stage rather quickly.  She had been acting a bit out of sorts - lots of getting up and having to go out at night recently, and then today when The Ravishing Mrs. TB got home, she was simply laying in the hallways, her breakfast uneaten.  Something was obviously up.

She was a good dog.

She lived with us for almost 8 years, from July of 2008.  She was a rescue and initially much bigger (and more powerful) of a dog than any of us expected.  But she was perfect with Na Clann - never in all the years we had her did she ever growl or bite them, no matter how much they loved her or rolled on her head.  If it got too much, she simply got up and moved to be somewhere else.

A devourer of all things food, she was relentless in her pursuit of it, constantly lurking about waiting for something to drop  (who will I share my apples with now?).  Her ability to hear the sound of the refrigerator opening - from any room of the house - was almost psychic.  She was a great defender of the home as well, barking if anyone walked by or up to the door (and probably moving more than one solicitor on to the next house).

She delighted in chasing squirrels in the yard although she never caught one, developing a technique whereby she would walk up to the back door as if she wanted to be let in, then suddenly turning and running back to chase the squirrel which had foolishly decided to come down as she was (apparently) going it.

I will miss her.  She was my constant companion around the house during the day, always interested in what you were doing (especially hoping you had food).  Sometimes I had to stop doing Iai because she would walk right into the line of my draw, looking for a pet.  She loved her walks at night, constantly driving me to distraction when she had to stop and sniff virtually everything destroying any chance I had of actually getting an aerobic workout.

I keep turning to my left even now to the dog bed by the desk, where I keep expecting to see her curled up in a ball.

Nighean Dhonn made an observation as we waiting there after she had fallen asleep, noting "It is lucky that it is Easter weekend so that we can remember about death and resurrection."  Would that I could think of such a profound statement in a moment of sorrow.

Godspeed Syrah. We will meet again someday.

Caring For What You Do

Yesterday as I was driving to work, it occurred to me that I do not really care about what I do.

Oh, I care about doing a good job.  Fair enough.  But the underlying passion for what I do is simply not there as it used to be.

I like to do good.  It is funny, so many people look askance at you when you verbalize this at an interview (or at least you can hear them raising their eyebrows over the phone).  It sounds so much like a canned response that a fresh-out-of-college student would give, so eager to land that first job that they will say almost anything to get in the door.

But it is true.  At least for me.  In what I do, I have had (and continue to have but on a much diminished scale) the opportunity to impact people's lives for the good.  And that is an important part of what I do.

So what do you do when you have lost that feeling?  That is where I seem to be now.

There are really only two options of course.  The first is to simply find something else within the industry that I work in and do that.  And that is a possibility, of course - the difficulty is that for what I do, there is not much around here to go to.

The second is to figure out what I really care about and find a job doing that.

So I sat as I drove and started to make a list of the things that I care about.  Responsible land use and good farming practices, for example.  The preservation of skills and techniques from the past, such as Iai.  Writing that changes things.  Homes for all the rabbits.  That sort of thing.

Does any of this look like a job?  Not really.  But does this all reflect things I actually care about?  Absolutely.   And when I do these things, do I put attention and care into how I do them?  Yes, because I care deeply about them.

So perhaps my overall search needs to take a slightly different tack.  One will never successfully execute on that which one does not really care about.  Important, then, to find opportunities in the things one does care about - and do those.

Moonlight Garlic

The green garlic leaves
caressed softly by moonlight
sway in the gray breeze.

Spring Cleaning 2016

This weekend we actually had a 3 day weekend.  What to do? Work in the yard as it is practically Spring!

First off, mulch.  We need lots of it here as we have hot summers.

 My mint has come up in the strangest places...

I like the dark compost.  It works well with the lavender.

 Hey - Look what survived!  Pepper Plants:

View of the pepper plant and the garlic, which has overwintered nicely:

Back part of the garden, now planted with Rye and Spring Wheat:

And here's a view of the back, mowed, weed-whacked, and debranched:

Strangely enough, this work - along with mowing and weed-whacking the rest of the yard - has me looking forward to improvements this year.  Beyond the main garden (the one with the garlic and pepper plant) and the summer bean garden (just to the left of the bushes above) I am planning on a heavy planting of lavender, hopefully in preparation for bees.

Happy Spring!

On Sparta

I have found myself of late consumed by an incessant need to read about Sparta.
I have devoured (again)  Thermopylae:  The Battle for the West.  I have paged through (again) portions of A War Like No Other and The Spartans: The World of the Warrior Class in Ancient Greece.  I am reading through Plutarch's On Sparta and have just about finished Sparta's Kings.

Why, you might sensibly ask, have I been consumed with an ancient state in a province of Greece that is so dissimilar from anything that we experience in the modern world?

I am not sure.  Perhaps it is a longing for a simpler time.  Or perhaps a longing for nobility in leadership (Reading about the Battle of Thermopylae will do that for you).  Or perhaps, especially as I get towards the end of Sparta's Kings, it is the melancholy of seeing the dissolution and decline of a society - in so many ways, it seems like looking into a mirror of the state of the world as it is.

Is there a lesson in all of the things I have been reading?  Perhaps not any I can immediately take away but must meditate on to make sense of them.  But the one that truly seems to stick out at me is that once the fabric of a society is torn, it is never true mended back together.

And it is only fools that otherwise feel this to be so.

Confusedly Depressed

So I think I figured out today that I have been a little (or a little more) depressed.

I have just not had the interest for anything that I am usually interested in.  All I have wanted to do is read.  I practice Iai because I must and weight lifting because it has become a habit - but everything else suddenly seems to have ground to a halt.

This surprises me a little bit because I have been making an honest effort to be more positive.  And I think, at least internally within myself and with my outward speech, I have overall been making progress. This flummoxes me as it seems to be precisely the opposite of what I was trying for.

Honestly, I believe a lot of it to be environmental.  The political and world environment in toto has me completely distressed and while not paying attention to it alleviates some of the immediate concern it is always on the back of my mind, a slope careening into dissolution and chaos.  Work has not been helpful in this regard either:  I am essentially doing tasks that I started doing 17 years ago when I entered this line of work, hardly the sort of thing to raise one's level of enthusiasm.

But the shutting down of all interests, all motivation, has me confused.  I do not understand where this is coming from.  And equally as important, I do not understand how to lift myself out of this and get back on course.

Mountain Laurel

Purple Blossoms dance
in the sunlight, as the bees
sip the blush of Spring.

Spring Break Morning

It is Spring Break here.  The house is eerily quiet at this hour of the morning.

Usually it would be filled with the sounds of preparation for school and work:  coffee would be brewing, breakfast would be cooking, semi-conscious child would be stumbling around getting ready as the alarm was going off in another's room as she slept through it.

Instead, nothing.

Syrah the Mighty sighs and rolls over to one side.  The rabbits gently crunch away at their pellets.  My clicking of the keyboard, of course.  But other than that, nothing.

I do not quite know why I am so attuned to the silence this morning - maybe simply because I have become so used to such sounds of late that their absence is completely jarring.  Or perhaps there is something in my soul that is craving the silence that it hears at the moment.

All will be back to normal soon enough, of course:  Spring Break will pass and we will lurch into the last part of the school year.  But there is a hint here of a future which is coming all to soon, a future in which the silent morning will become every morning, not just the one's around Spring Break.

On Falling Out of The Current

I should consider myself fortunate - become disengaged from the political landscape is becoming easier and easier.

The secret?  I am just allowing my natural tendencies to avoid confrontation and the fact that I really dislike yelling and arguments to take over.  Suddenly the need to keep endlessly tracking on things of no import seemed to fall away.

The silence is surprisingly deafening inside after the constant input is removed.

I know what some will say - "You are avoiding a process that you need to be involved in".  And to some extent that is true - it is  a process that certainly impacts me and something that I will need to participate in - at the proper time.  Until then, all I seem to hear is yelling and counter yelling with any attempt to discuss actual issues being buried beneath layers of rage on all sides.  This is hardly the sort of thing that makes my life better.

And it is driving us apart, not together.  Herein lies the biggest worry - we will get through this cycle and find that we will no longer be able to talk to friends because too much rhetoric got in the way:  we called each other terrible things, imputed actions and attitudes based on outward appearances rather than on the inward person we knew.  We burned bridges and destroyed common landmarks of interest to make our point - and once they were gone, we found that we had nothing left to come back to, no point of reference to meet at or a place to begin to rebuild the relationships.

In our haste to be right, we destroyed our ability to communicate.  And without communication, things like societies and civilizations no longer exist.

Do Not Be Alarmed.....

Your eyes are not deceiving you.  I have updated the blog template.

I know, right?  It has been 11 years since I started this and no updates but to add additional things.  So boom.  New background (Books.  I love books).  And one of those handy blog feed thingies that so many of my friends online use to keep you updated as to when they update their blogs and the name of the update.

Who knows, I may someday get altogether crazy and start one of those dynamic picture things....

Less Social Media, Not More

I have to keep reminding myself:  less social media, not more.
I let myself get soft and comfortable.  I like to post things that people like.  I like to be involved in conversations.  I like to post things that influence people's lives.

And then something happens and suddenly  I remind myself why I do not do it more often.

I have managed to cull down my presence on-line to a smaller and smaller circle of notice.  I should remind myself to make it smaller.  Not because I am afraid that I am going to be singled out by the vast government conspiracy - no, I should think that they already have whatever they would need.  Instead, I need to do it because I need less aggravation in my life, not more.

And every time I post and something gets misinterpreted or goes awry, I feel my anxiety level rise. And remind myself again I really need to do something about it.

More Rain

So it is raining tonight.  Rain heavily last night (1.5" in about 4 hours), then off and on again today, then started again around 7:30 this evening.

It is odd that we have been here as long has we have (7 years this year) and I still have not completely figured out the weather patterns here. It is a bit of a problem, of course, because Spring seems to only here something like 2 weeks (you laugh, but it is really true - essentially we have two seasons only, Summer and Winter, with brief intermissions we call Spring and Autumn) and planting becomes a bit dicey if we go too far into the not Spring season.

I was going to plant this last weekend  but am glad that I did not - I am afraid the rains (we have the potential of "Severe Weather") would have washed away what I had planted (which would have been my grain seeds - trying again this year).  We are supposed to be back up near 90 next Monday so perhaps planting will be more congenial then (plus, with Daylight Savings, I actually am back to having evenings I can work with).

We need the rain badly of course, and I am hardly the one to complain about another rain day (on the whole, I love them).  And hopefully a week one way or the other will not harm anything.

But I sure would feel better if everything was in the ground and growing where it should be.

The Bats of Spring

Storm clouds dull the stars:

the first insects of Springtime
engage the bats more.

A Little Broken

I broke today, I think.

I cannot define the specific moment for you but I can define the time.  It was relatively early in the workday, when I was consulting industry literature to see companies in my space are doing.  There was an article about a leader in industry and his opinion on where the industry was going (in his case, the wrong way).

I read the article and thought "Wow, there is something pretty neat.  Cutting edge stuff, people doing good."  And then got sucked right back in to the mediocrity of my work existence:  broken work flows, documents that need fixing, things that I am supposed to do and have not gotten to because of other things.

And then it hit me:  there are great things going on in my industry.  Really great things.  Life saving things, life enhancing things.  They are just not happening here. And they are just not happening through what I am doing.

It was at that moment I broke.

All of a sudden all of my tasks were laid out before as they really are: administrative exercises in paperwork, minor walk on roles in a play where the action and main characters have long ago passed me by.  I do the work that needs to be done but even in that it is work that is ultimately just plugging holes and filling gaps.  The great work goes on elsewhere.

Not here.  Never here.

What to do?  I am not sure, except I have now discovered a huge hole where my "I care" button used to hang.  I will do the work that needs doing because it needs to be completed and systems need to be maintained, but I no longer have any illusion that this means anything other than nothing.  More effort will not results in greater impact or recognition.  My efforts to go higher will only result in more of the same rather than something different.

All I know is that I broke something today.  And I fear it can never be repaired.

Political Season: A Fine And Pleasant Idiocy

So this political cycle, perhaps for the first time ever, I actually followed a candidate.

It was driven by some vestigial sense of caring, of believing that somehow my involvement might matter.  I signed up for the the mailing list - which one?  I do not know that it really matters as I suspect they are all the same - and waited.

If I had believed the political discourse of this nation was done before, I am convinced now.

The e-mails have only one of two themes:

1)  Give money.

2)  Help us beat the other person because our candidate is the only one that can unite America (oh, and give money).

That is about it.

I receive breathless updates about how the candidate has done this or that, how this candidate took it to the others in the debate, how this candidate showed they were "the one"  (Shades of Highlander) to win.  All (apparently) in the vain hopes to get me to give more money, for which a link is helpful provided every time.

No discussion of the issues.  No plans.  No engagement.  Just

1)  Give money.

2)  Help us beat the other person because our candidate is the only one that can unite America (oh, and give money).

I am done now, convinced that no matter who takes the office of President in November little will change.  Because I do not matter, really, and neither do you.  The point of citizens, apparently, is to simply give money at the appropriate time, vote, and then quietly trust that the folks we elected will do what they say.  Mind you, most of their attention has already moved to the next election:

1)  Give money.

2)  Help us beat the other person because our candidate is the only one that can unite America (oh, and give money).

I sincerely question that I will ever see national politicians worthy of the title "Leader" again in my lifetime.

Harping It Up

So today for the first time in twenty years I played the harp in public.

It was a company talent show for which volunteers were eagerly "solicited". For a good cause and all of course, and with fabulous prizes,  so I signed up.

I have not been playing the harp as much as I should be.  Just got busy, I suppose.  But making myself perform put me in a position where I had to do something.  So for two weeks, I practiced.

It was harder than I initially thought.  I started with three O'Carolan songs that I remembered and was rather diligent to practice them.  The three slowly whittled its way down to two, which then became one about ten minutes before I performed.

How did I do?  Not terribly by even my own rather critical estimation.  There were a couple of moments of blank to be sure, but  this was a slow song (Blind Mary) and so I had plenty of time to correct.  Applause all around when I was done, and a gift card to boot.

The most important part of the exercise, though, was the fact that I did it.  And remembered how much I enjoyed doing it.  And how even carving out 30 minutes a day can make a real difference - perhaps not learning songs as fast as I did when I was without children and this was my other hobby, but progress can still be made.

Two points here:  the one is that it represents (potentially) another source of income.  Not a large one by any stretch of the imagination but something that I am in complete control of and I enjoy doing.

The second, of course, is that it involves entertaining one's self rather than relying on others to entertain you.  And that is yet another point of self sufficiency and ichiryo gusoku.

A Subtle Atmospheric Work Change

I have noticed a trend over the last few weeks at my job.  There is a certain tilt to the tasks that are coming my way, a certain change in what I am being asked to do.

Essentially I - and my group - are being moved to the shadows.

Oh, we still have plenty to do, never fear you about that.  But what we have to do is increasing sinking beneath the level of visibility to the bulk of the company:  where before we managed, now we administer as well.  Where before we verified the work of others, now we are doing their work because they have more important tasks.  Where before management came to our meetings, now virtually none of them show up.

If I look around I realize that I am in a declining department, as least declining in relationship to the rest of the company structure.  Parts of the business are increasing in size and scope, but not us.  The problem, of course, is that we will be the recipient of that increased work force's output.  We should be growing now - and of course, we will not.

There are days when I enjoy what I do, that I feel it makes a difference.  But what I am finding now is different - it is not that I am doing my job function, but rather that I - and my department - are picking up the work to support us that others no longer view as important.

If you think the work we do is not important enough for you to do, imagine how you will feel when we are not there to do that work either.

Overslept

The mind is willing,
but the exhausted body
will win every time.

Leap Year Night

Cold Front moves over
my bokuto as oak leaves
cascade from above.

Basket From The Past: A Cautionary Tale

Longaberger is moving from their Big Basket Building.

Longaberger, in case you have never heard of them, was a company that made baskets.  It was started in 1973 by Dave Longaberger, whose father J.W. had made baskets in Dresden, OH in the 1920s and 1930s.  Dave began making baskets and then began having others make baskets; in 1978 he went with a direct home sales route.  The baskets were handmade, signed by the individual making them.  They branched out into iron working and ceramics.  By 1999-2000, the year of his death and the passing of his company to his daughters, the company had over 8000 employees and $1 Billion in sales.  They had numerous plants, a sort of retail shopping theme area (The Homestead), an annual gathering where the Columbus Convention Center was filled with screaming consultants and hangers on, and a regional business model built on the industry and the people that bought the products and came and visited.

In 2003, it began to fall apart.  I am not in the know why specifically, although (see below) my guess is in a tougher economic market handmade baskets (not cheap, by any stretch of the imagination) had less of an appeal.  The company was bought by an investment firm, CSVL, in 2013.  Currently (according to the news article) they have 340 full and part time employees now, only 70 of whom make baskets.

I have more than a tangential knowledge of these things.  Once upon a time, The Ravishing Mrs. TB sold Longaberger Baskets. In 2004, she and I went back to the convention (called the Bee).   We just looked - we had a basket we made when we were there.

The thing that strikes me most about the article as I read it was the memories I had of a thriving business and community.  It was not just the two or three plants that we visited, it was the regional economy that existed because of the baskets.  Restaurants, shops - all drew their life from the baskets that were made and the people that flocked like crazed groupies to buy and shop them.

I have not really thought about them in a long time other than the fact that we have their product in every room of our house (and several boxes in our garage) as well as the flatware that we use.  They are well made products and will probably last more than our lifetimes - but there are only so many that you can use.  The Ravishing Mrs. TB mentioned them going out of business and all of a sudden I had to go look.

The thing that makes me sad is that I can imagine the economic impact without even being there - one does not lay off 96% of their employees without it having a drastic impact on the regional economy.   Doing a quick Ixquick search reveals a series of news articles like mile markers on a descending path - Apparently with 3 years of our visit they were already down 65% of their employees.  The ripple effects of such a thing are staggering:  businesses and families are impacted at every level.

 I note (with a little investigation) that the Bee, their annual convention, has relocated back to Dresden, the town where the company started in the local high school - and they only expected about a 1000 attendees.

This story should serve as a grim reminder to all of the risks and costs of having economies based on single sources, especially single sources which are not really critical to any industry or any one's lifestyle.  And it should also serve as a sad warning to all about being willing to see over the horizon unflinchingly and preparing for it.

Prayer of the Day - 28 February 2016

"Lord, make possible for me by grace what is impossible for me by nature.  You know how little I can bear and quickly I become discouraged by a little adversity. I pray You, make every trial lovely and desirable to me for Your Name's sake, since suffering and affliction for Your sake is so profitable to the health of my soul."

- Thomas A Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

If You Are Not Excited...

This resonates very deeply with me at the present time.  Everything I am excited about is on the fringes of my life and the main part of it merely fills me with a mediocre feeling of something I have to do.

That needs to change.

(Hat Tip: American Viking)

Quail Spring

"Spring" say the Quail,

ignoring the wind and rain;

Sunlight tells them all.

A Discouraging Day

Yesterday was a discouraging day.
It was discouraging on two fronts.  The first was the realization that, in order to bring documents into compliance, I would have to go through 105 documents, figure out their status, and get them revised.  This involves, on a simple move, working through 5 different computer screens and three different folders.  To give you a scope of the time involved - because our system is really not all that efficient - it took me 3 hours to figure out the status of 8 documents and get them moving appropriately.  By that math, I only have 37 hours left of working with the system to get the documents moving - and that is just moving.  All of them will still have to be reviewed, formatted, and signed off on.

The second was the realization that a Key Performance Indicator, one that has trended within specification for well over a year, has suddenly fallen off during the last quarter.  This is not a good thing.  Not only will I have to conduct an investigation to figure out what it is up, it will mean additional meetings and follow up  (my guess - going to two meetings a week on this subject instead of one).  Yes, the system is processing more - which means we are catching more, which is a good thing -but it appears that the system is also failing.

These are not the droids I was looking for.

I left feeling discouraged and defeated - discouraged because the work that people and systems are supposed to do has fallen upon me (and it may be assumed, is thought that it will be done by me), defeated because it feels as if any attempts at progress are ultimately futile; in the event of a failure, the work simples rolls back to me.

I will go in of course tomorrow and start over - I have blocked out large portions of the next three days to complete my tasks to ensure that the work will get done.  What bothers me, in my heart of hearts, is the simple and inescapable fact that even if this all gets done and moved forward, in the end it simple will be rolled up and disappear into the atmosphere as if it had never existed.

I long for more meaning from my employment.

Cold Wind Over My Career

I had the cold touch of reality caress the back of my neck today.

It was a chance thing:  a conversation that got me thinking, and in thinking got me to realize that in some ways while I am incredibly blessed at the moment, this all could disappear much quicker than I could possibly envision.

That gets the mind working, of course:  How much are we paying now?  If we got rid of debt, how much would we owe then?  What do I have to have and what are really luxuries in my life?  (Hint:  Like most people, they are a lot less than I tend to think that they are.)

It was a needed reminder, of course.  I got sloppy and happy over the last couple of weeks - a bonus and a retroactive pay adjustment will do that to you.  Suddenly you feel flush and in control of things.  Your plans tend to change a bit, the purse strings get loosened up.

And then the wind hits.

And then you get back on track to what you intended to accomplish this year in the first place.  Because in this environment, banking on a career to carry you forward for the foreseeable future is a rather high stakes bet indeed. And one that I would rather face prepared than surprised.

The Relentless Pursuit of the Unattainable

This weekend was the Kickoff of the 2016 Highland Games Season.  In some ways it probably functions just as the old Games 700 years ago did:  coming out from the Winter, seeing friends you have not seen in four to five months, brushing the dust off and trying to throw again.

My game has not wholly failed me - I got two minor PRs, one in Heavy Weight for Distance and one in Heavy Hammer (both of which are super sweet because the heavy events are the most adverse to people with my weight) and came super close to 18' Sheaf above bar, smacking off the bottom of the bar three times (which will be mine next year).  Other throws were, for the most part, where they probably needed to be (except for Braemar Stone, which was a heavy nasty 24 lb lumpy mess that had no handle and did not fly so much as waddled through the air).  It was a rather satisfactory beginning to the season.

But that was not the important thing.

The thought struck me, as I was standing under the bar for Weight Above Bar preparing to swing the weight, that really Highland Games was no different from Iaijustsu or Weight Lifting:  a series of prescribed motions that we repeat over and over, attempt to get them better.  Progress is occasionally measured in large bumps but more often in the small forward motions of inches or slightly improved form:  the sword held at the correct height, the back that is where it should be on a deadlift, the drop after going down but before up on Weight Above Bar right after the weight becomes weightless (yes, it is a thing).

We are chasing the Unattainable.

We are chasing perfection of form and execution.  In a sense, there is never an ending place to where one can be with these things - or almost anything, actually.  There is only the continued to work to make one's self adhere closer to the standard, of seeing things become more and more elegant and beautiful and appear as if no effort is expended when in fact the effort has been channeled into perfect motions and movement.  We may never reach it, but we are always trying.

My Weight Above Bar only hit 9 feet.  My PR is 10 feet.  My goal is 12 feet.  But that is okay.

I have all season to pursue it.

40 Days of Positive: An Update

How do you return to the positive from the negative?

This is the greatest challenge I am finding as I go through my 40 day challenge of positive thinking.  I am very accomplished at bringing myself down - how can I be at bringing myself up?

I am not going to lie - for me, it is a lot harder than it originally sounded.  I all too easily get myself into a dark funk where one negative thought takes root and before you know it all that it bouncing around inside my head are thoughts that go nowhere but down.  I am sure it has always happened this way, just that I was not aware of it.

How am I combating it?  One is simply by becoming conscious that such a thing is happening.  It takes a certain stepping outside of one's self to get the perspective, an acknowledgement of what is going on - almost as if I am outside of my head looking in on it, an active watcher to my own thoughts.

The second is then to consciously redirect my thoughts to something else.  If I am driving, doing some sort of language learning seems excellent for this - it forces my brain to actively engage on learning instead of theorizing and hypothesizing.  Another thing that seems to work well is to focus not on my  current situation but on the goals that I have set for the year.  This gets my focus off of whatever is going on in my head and onto the future and the things that I can control to get there.

(It probably goes without saying that Iai and Exercise will drive the thoughts out of my head as well - focus on form leaves room for little else).

Is this what I imagined it would be?  Not entirely, no.  But am I making progress?

Undoubtedly, yes.

Spring in February?

Second week of warm
while others are under snow:
Guilty Clear Blue Skies.

A Simple Decision

Yesterday was a good day.

I cannot fully tell you why it was a good day.  Certainly my outer circumstances did not significantly modify themselves from the day before:  my house was the same, my job was the same, even the drive home was the same.  Nothing changed outwardly.

But something changed inwardly.

The moment it changed, I think, was the moment that I made a decision to act independently.

It was certainly not some kind of great action or sudden revelation that caused me to perform some great and noble deed.  It was the simple action of getting up and away to get something done, work that needed to get accomplished and I was unable to focus on accomplishing it.

But it was the decision to do it that made the breakthrough.  Rather than get angry or frustrated or not get anything done, I simply went somewhere to get it done.  And everything changed - because I had made a decision.  Beyond just getting the immediate work done - I started making and doing all kinds of things for the rest of the day, things that actually would move me forward in my life instead of just staying in the same place.

It gives credence to what Gary Ryan Blair, The Goals Guy (http://www.100daychallenge.com) says:  Everything Counts.

Even the simple decision to get up and move.

Morning Naginata

Every Tuesday and Thursday I practice Naginata in the morning.

The original purpose of doing this was both to break up my running a bit (5 days a week is somewhat hard on my body) and to practice Naginata on a more regular basis.  The practical application of this has become practicing a polearm in the dawn.

The sidewalk in front of my neighbor's house (our Oak trees still hang too low) has become the track over which I practice.  Back and forth practicing cuts - the overhead takane and the side cutting tomoe and forward thrusting tsuki - in the pre-dawn darkness.  I finish with kata, connecting the cuts together with movements to make one continuous flow of spinning and cutting across the gray concrete.

The splendid part of doing this early in the morning, of course, is that you get the early morning encounters:  the neighbor across the street coming out for a cigarette, the commuters driving by on their way to work, Crazy Running Guy who moves off of the sidewalk onto the street as he runs past and then gets back onto the sidewalk to continue on.

I always wonder what they think as they come by and see me out there.  No one has ever slowed down or stopped to look and so perhaps I am merely another fleeting wisp in the morning, the deer that is just out of sight or the cat tail disappearing behind the tire.  Perhaps I am not any more worthy of attention than any other athlete out in the morning doing their athletic thing.

Which is fine, of course.  I do not perform for themselves but for me, the (somewhat ungraceful) dance of the naginata done largely to the audience of oak trees and night birds and starts.  If the birds and trees have comments, they carefully keep them to themselves.

The stars, of course, just silently shine on.

What If?

What if we all simply tried to mind our business?

What if, instead of continually looking at what others can do for me or give to me, we simply just started asking "What can I do for myself?"

What if we exercised the fiscal responsibility to fix our own finances rather than hoping someone else would do it for us?

What if we agreed that sometimes our differences are just to big to be bridged and parting amicably is infinitely better than arguing incessantly?

What if we valued personal responsibility higher than we valued anything else?

What if we sought to live to the edges of our personal possibilities instead of living far beneath them?

What if we simply tried more?

What if?

Valentine Day's Summer

Eighty two outside
as hearts are placed in windows:
can it be Winter?

Positive in a Negative Environment

One of the great challenges of trying to be positive is the environment that surrounds you.

Yes, I know, be a thermostat, not a thermometer.  Intellectually I understand that but practically it becomes somewhat challenging.  Even if I can manage my own thoughts about myself (which requires an iron grip on my consciousness and the willingness to drag the least little excursis back from the brink) it is multiplied by an environment which does not encourage positive energy.

It came from two places: the first was the world in large (and that "I am going to have to avoid current events" is going to have to become a real thing.  The primaries on both sides are going to completely destroy my composure) and the second was the world in which I work.

The world in which I work was not so much a single thing that encouraged me to be negative but a series of small and annoying events which slowly settled my mood to the floor.  Mediocre systems that resulted in repetitive tasks to be completed.  The ever growing list of things that must be done, buried beneath the list of things that I should be doing.  And the frustration that while there are things I can do to impact my own direct world, there is little I can do to impact the way that world impacts on me (except leave, I suppose, of course).

My secret for getting through the day?  I wish I had a profound one - instead, I muscled my way through clinging to the thought "No negativity today.  No negativity today."  And was it successful?  I did not go completely negative when I left but there was a high level of anxiety when I got home, as if my frustrations were seeking a way to vent themselves as they could not do it in the usual fashion (I fought them of course - we took ourselves for a walk tonight).

So completely positive today?  No.  But did I manage to stave off the bottom?  Absolutely.  And that is a form of victory in itself.

40 Days of Positive

Yesterday this came as part of a message from The Viking:

"I say this with love, you need to change your inner monologue to focus on positivity.  You're a smart, talented and kind hearted man.  I place a high value on you, we all do."


It came from completely out of nowhere.  It was something that was neither mentioned in conversation nor prompted by anything I am aware of.

But there it is "You need to change your inner monologue to focus on positivity."

I know that I have issues with, I guess, negativity?  Not quite depression, but never quite happiness either.

Tomorrow, as you might know, is the beginning of the season of Lent.  We are counseled to deny ourselves things as a outward sign of denial and mourning.  I will do the one or two things I typically do for denial, such as giving up sugar (a standby) or fasting from internet news (a necessity).  But this year I think I will add one more thing, an adding to rather than denial of:  for 40 days I will not allow (or will try to not allow) myself to fall into negativity.  If I find myself falling there, I will simply have to come up with to think about instead - a list of 10 things to be positive for, or simply a self pep talk.  But for 40 days, I will try to not allow anything negative into my thought life.

It will be hard - far more challenging than simply giving up chocolate.  But if The Viking says something like that, it is something I need to pay attention to.

Taking Myself For A Walk

Tonight was another journey around the block, this time with Syrah in hand.

As I wandered around the neighborhood - again as last night, sheathed in darkness although not nearly so many groups of cars and flickering ghostly lights - I laughed to myself as Syrah was sniffing yet another spot where obviously someone had stopped visit.  "Taking myself for a walk" I said and chuckled.

And then thought about the statement for a little while.

Taking myself for a walk.  Implies a few things, does it not?  Like I need to be taken for a walk - or rather, I need to allow that I should be taken for a walk.

And to be taken for a walk is not a one time thing.  It is a daily thing, something I have let slip to the side in the last few months as other things came up.  Justifiable things in my mind, but nothing so justifiable that it should prevent me from doing this.

The investment?  Time of course, that most precious of commodities.  But just like walking Syrah, the benefits of a walk - 30 minutes out of a day - far outweighs the simple use of the time.  It is not just the practice of exercising - indeed, it is the practice of getting away from all and being able to be alone with one's self with purpose and yet relaxing.

I certainly have not been taking myself for a walk as I should have been.  But there is no reason to believe that it carries no less criticality for myself than for Syrah.

Besides, only one of us has to wear a leash.

On A Super Bowl Night's Walk

Realizing that I have let my aerobic activity drop off during the winter months (I use the excuse of the cold when it is just a much lazy) I decided to take a walk tonight.
Tonight is an unusual night.  This night, or rather whatever night this falls on, is the night of the Super Bowl.  There is no other U.S. sporting event that has a single focal point (all the other big ones are the best of 7).  For one night, even I can make a predication about where millions of Americans will be:  at home, watching the Super Bowl.

So I went for a walk (we do not have cable and have not actually watched the Super Bowl since perhaps 2008, so there is no sense that I am missing anything).

The odd thing was how quiet the neighborhood was.

Our weather has lurched back towards unseasonably warm so I would not have been surprised even at 2000 to find people walking their dogs or even just enjoying the respite from winter.  Instead, nothing.  Literally just myself walking along (except for one group of rogue children with Nerf guns, either bored with the game or conveniently moved outside by the adults) amidst darkened houses with the ghostly flickering of lights denoting a TV set in so many of them, small clusters of cars around some indicating a party.

It actually saddened me as I walked between the pools of light formed by the streetlights.  I cannot fully tell you why, although the thought of millions of people being excited by a game had something to do with it, I suspect.  It is one of the sad parts of this society and (perhaps) this civilization, that we have raised passively watching games to a level of almost worship.

No, I think the thing that saddened me the most as I walked is that we have come to be this:  cocooned in our little homes, bands of light from entertainment devices bouncing off the walls as the silent world goes on around us.  Someday the end may come but most will scarcely be aware of it, unless it happens to enter the screen they happen to be watching.

We have become a civilization of the passive.  And passive civilizations are never the ones that endure.

Otsuchi

Today my Otsuchi came in the mail.

An Otsuchi, in case you have not been keeping track of your traditional Japanese weapons, is a wooden maul or mallet used by Japanese warriors, primarily for bursting through doors or gates or even walls.

Mine is a 10 lb head mounted on a 3 foot shaft (apparently they could go up to 6' shaft, which would be handy for breaking into things.  Not so much as a weapon).  I have taken some practice swings with it and it is amazing how heavy 10 lbs can be when you are moving it through the air.

In a way, the Otsuchi describes my life:  an obscure weapon with no practical purpose to be trained with simply because it can be done and I want to do it.  Really true of so many of the interests and activities that I pursue.

Which is okay.  Because in the end, Thor does not really exist - but I and my Otsuchi do...

Frustration in Weightlifting

Today was a back to back lifting day:  bench press and deadlifts.
My bench press has proven to be the most disappointing part of my weight routine.  I simply feel like I am making no progress in it - or if I am, it is very slow progress indeed.  It frustrates me because progress in my other lifts - deadlifts, squats, push press - has been steady and demonstrable.  But bench has been almost impreceptible - my best single was 1 x 160 lb in November; I just managed 2 x 160 lb last week.  That is close to my body weight but hardly the sort of the thing I was hoping.

My deadlift was frustrating today as well. Deadlifts have shown a much steadier improvement over time but today was not as good as I would have liked - max of 5 x 220 lb and a downgrade of 3 x 175 lb.  My form was terrible - my stance is (I think) too narrow and my knees are going askew in ways that are not all that grand for me.  I have gotten 5 x 240 lb in the past, but today was not the day - the  5 x 220 lb barely recognizable as a finished set.

This whole thing is something which I have not yet fully come to grips with yet in lifting:  the fact that it does not seem to be that linear of a process.

I want Personal Records.  Everyone, I think, does.  But as sometimes these get knocked down almost week by week, in other cases they linger for weeks at a time.  And other cases (like today) things take a backwards step in ways that I do not fully understand.  I would think that the ability to lift would increase in a linear fashion:  more weight over time would equal heavier lifts.

Apparently I think wrong.

I will be back in the gym on Friday for another back to back - Push Press and Squats - and will probably hit some of the same frustrations.  But it is at moments like these that I have to go back to my workout book (yes, I have become enough of a meathead to keep one of those now) that I can look and see that while I may not feel like I am making process, I have in fact made a great deal of progress since I started in July.

Eyes to the sunrise, keeping them on the prize.

The Review

So like it or not, today was review day.  How did it go?

Surprisingly well.  In fact, the best review I have ever had here.

A promotion (for the first time to a new level in 14 years).  And a pretty decent raise.  And 101% of the possible bonus.

Only negative in the review?  Not really a negative, but it is desired that I take more of a leadership role (which has already been added to my list of goals for myself anyway). Other than that, well done, good job, keep it up.

As I said, best review I have had in seven years.  Strangely gratifying after all these years.  14 years is a long drought, a very long drought indeed.

Sure, the bar is set high.  Sure, I will have to really push if I want to get close to this next year.  But for one moment, there was a brief sense that after a really long while, someone finally noticed.

And that is the best feeling in the world.

Just Sad

Last night I was inexplicably sad when I got home.

I do not know that I have a formal reason why.  Yes, the day was not the best it could have been and yes, I little sarcasm (meant in fun, no doubt) was directed my way later, but it certainly did not explain the fact for the feelings I had.

I am not sure.  There was just no energy at all for doing anything when I got home at night except for the bare minimum of what was required.  And underlying it all,  a great sadness.  Not depression - depression, I know all too well.  Just sadness.

And I do not know what to do with sadness. Not really.  Depression I know what steps to take, as I have had to take them many times.  But sadness I have no idea what to do with.

I just want to hide - shut myself off from the greater Internet and interpersonal world and just hide among my rabbits and books, my iai and the very small kingdom of Ichiryo Gusoku.   Cut off communication.  Just go silent and emerge for interaction when I have to.

It is silly, of course, and I eventually will find my way through it.  But I am struck by the fact that something can still affect me deeply, an emotion which I have no meaningful way to combat.  It makes me fearful and hopeful at the same time - fearful that it will come again, hopeful that there remain emotions that I still have the privilege of working through.

Garden Fragrance

The Rosemary bush,
alone among the garden,
scents me as I work.