The First Answer

The first answer is "no." Doesn't it seem that way? When you call customer service, they say no. When you try to bend a rule, they say no. The powers that be, whoever they are, often greet any request with "no."

Do I do that too? Is my first answer "no"? Maybe I hesitate because I think I might be imposing, or because I think someone doesn't mean what they say, or because I am too shy?

With my children and family, I always try to make my first response "yes," but I don't think I am readily positive that much with others. Something I've noticed, more lately than ever before. In friendships, the closer the friendship grows, the more "yes" responses occur, and "no" just drops out of the conversation.

In a world often filled with "no," those "yes" words are sweet.

OK i'm going to try for before 12 'o clock

Here I go ten tigers before 12... I did it!!! Before 12, well... you get the picture...

AH yes the sweet taste of victory.

An interesting quote ...

"Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good."

Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers, 41.

Six black, a brown and a purple ...

... and a red (along with the littlest, sleepiest, practitioner ever, and two aggravating dogs) went on a paddling trip that was a little longer, a little sunnier, and a little more fun than anybody expected. What a great adventure! This weekend was so much fun and so energizing, that today (though I am sore and sunburned) I feel like I could accomplish anything!

Perhaps, over the next 6 months, each tiger could propose their own adventure for everyone to participate in. After getting others' agreement, that tiger could do the planning, etc., for their selected trip -- developing skills in group organization, leadership, etc.

Thanks to each of you for being such a fine group. I am honored to be a member.

Strength and Weakness

I have been exploring one of my strengths and one of my weaknesses over the past few weeks.

The strength is tenacity, the ability to never give up, to get the job done no matter what.

The weakness is tenacity, the compulsion to keep going when I should rest, to get the job done without help no matter what.

Working on it.

also.

i'm also recovering, i could have gone up to loiusville and skinned my boat come back here gone to kung fu on thursday spent the night and done my birthday party that day. but no, R&R is what i need.

Recovery

For my part, right now, I am choosing not to use sheer willpower to keep going. My body is in need of recovery. I will grant it that, and adjust my plans after I'm back up to full speed.

yesterday, today, tomorrow

What I could not accomplish yesterday, I can do today. What today seems impossible can be overcome tomorrow.

A new experience

I seem to have reached a point in my life that I have never experienced before. It is not a point at which I want or need to be. It is subtle and yet profound. This point affects all aspects of my life. It takes much of the joy out of life and has turned me into a robot. I have reached the point known as mental exhaustion.

I have went as long as a week with nothing to eat but a par boiled rabbit and one eye ball during an extremely physically demanding training course. I have operated in water for 5 hour lengths, never touching a bottom or having anything to rest against, relying only on my own ability to tread water. I have operated concrete pump hoses without pause for 8 continuous hours with only a drink of water occasionally, for days on end. I have stayed awake for 76 hours straight (not recommended as hallucinations can be experienced). I can honestly say that I have pushed the limits of my body's endurance and never reached my physical limit. When my body seemed too tired to go on, I found that sheer willpower would take it further.

If only the mind worked in the same way. Its funny that the mind can support and renew the physical body but the body can't reciprocate. Being exhausted in the mind is not a pleasant experience. When I make it to class, my motivation comes from my classmates. I have relied on them to refresh my memory when I simply can't remember the next move of the form. My mind works constantly but somehow seems less productive. My sleep patterns are totally disrupted. I am running on habit. I write this after waking from a 4 hour nap in which I had no choice in taking. It was a necessity. I struggled through my homework but managed to finish.

I have gained focus in my life with martial arts, with school, with self-exploration but my continual state of tiredness has narrowed it down to a sort of tunnel vision. Where in the past I used willpower to push my body past its perceived limit into new territory, now it is used to complete my obligations and responsibilities as best I can. This point I have reached is not without its benefit. I have learned much about myself. I have learned more of what I am capable of doing. I have learned the value of rest and how I must take care of not only my physical body but my mental health also. I have always considered willpower to be an extension of the spirit. This has brought to me a greater appreciation for the terms body, mind, and spirit. The goal I have at this particular point in my life can be summed up in five words...

Five more weeks to go!

Challenge.

The challenge of the program for me now, is just staying caught up, I keep falling behind, then working to catch up, then falling behind.

Discipline and determination shall pull me through, I must avoid allowing frustration to put me in a "quitter" mentality, that will just get me further behind.

i'm holdin' even!

i going to hold everything even, so at a later date i can start an even more intensive program to catch up. i'm catching up on computer work though.
and i have an awesome new undertaking, boat building!

Flexibility

I've been forgetting about flexibility in my training, and when I forget about something, it comes back around to get me sooner or later. Last sparring rounds, I realized that I could not land a kick above Dean's knee block (of course, that block has always been very effective and very high). Then, in the next rounds, I kept finding the sole of my partner's foot planted near my head (Steven's, of course). Now, I'm not too bad at kicking underneath (thank you, Doc), and there are some very effective lower targets to go for (and I know that a kick above the waist is a waste), BUT ...

I'm going to get back to working on limbering up. A while ago I had been working on backbends, handstand pushups, etc., and had read that, to be more flexible, at least half of my exercises should be on my hands. Yoga-style workouts are a good example. (oh, hey, isn't Sifu Tammy getting into yoga now?) And a lot of the stretches we do in class are something I should be doing everyday! As I've gotten stronger through this ten tigers program, I've let my muscles only get bigger, not stretchier! Time to wake up, and get back on track!

halfway

halfway through my job, i hope my boat works out.

Relaxing! I have never heard of such a thing

OK that was a blatant lie, but still every night try as I might I can't help but run through the list of things that I didn't do, that I should have done, and I try to let go but I can't..... if I had a beard I would be stroking it now

Relaxing about it

All through this ten tigers stuff I've juggled and struggled to fill in the spreadsheet, rocketing from despair to pride and back again. Today I'm feeling relaxed and I think I'm getting better at letting some things go sometimes, only to pick them up again when the opportunity comes along. Forcing things works sometimes (it's my default mode), but when I can flow with it, wax and wane like the moon, then a rhythm seems to grow out of the chaos.

For instance, while writing this, I've been in horse stance for over two minutes (not low, not high, mid-range). If I remember to add the little things in, like 5-10 pushups while waiting for a program to load, then there's a rhythm rather than a rush. I like those days best. Over 3 minutes now, in the same horse stance.

I'm behind in stances, and typing distracts me ...

4 minutes. Done.

Adjusting to new schedule

Now that I'm working 4-5 days a week at that other job, it is very hard for me to schedule all the stuff I'm supposed to do in a day. I keep getting behind in one thing or another.

I guess my organizational skills will have to step up.

my first JOB.

i'm going to this camp called skipping fish boat school, and its 9-5 building a kayak.
but its the best job EVER, there is chocolate muffin breaks, ice cream on the way back from the dean lake, Popsicles in the fridge. plus we learn to roll in our kayaks.
and i can lash 15 strips in 30 minutes, which is three times faster than any one else.

new under taking here I come.

yow!!

2am in the morning, i didn't do my stances yesterday, i"m fatigued.
BUT!!!!!! ITS THE 4TH OF JULY!!!
AND WE BLOW STUFF UP!!! AND WE SET STUFF ON FIRE!!! AND WE, burn our hands on lighters.......

good night. meh.

Goals

I reached a goal last Tuesday in class that I had ... well, not despaired of, exactly, but perhaps shunted aside. Maybe I had decided it wasn't as important as when I set it. Maybe I thought that the effort wasn't worth the result. So, as we started the "how many pushups can you do in a minute" sequence in class, I had a surge of strength and ended up hitting the 50 military pushup/minute mark -- much to my surprise.

I set the goal in March 2008 of continual military pushups for a full minute, refined it to a more specific goal of 50 a few months later, so it's been well over a year. Now, since I had to put my knee down three times to reach 50, I have more work to do to make it better.

Sometimes when it's been a while since reaching a goal, it's hard to remember how good it feels.

J-U-N-K junk.

well, today i was cleaning my room and i found a bunch a junk, i mean a LOT of junk.
and i was amazed by how much stuff i would have considered valuable a year back.
i think that just shows how quickly your priorities change.

Fatigue

12 hour work days.

Miles on feet, miles on bike,

hundreds of pushups

out of gas.

Falling a little behind on stances and forms, but I've got no more to give tonight.

A good night's rest, a hot shower tomorrow, then back on the horse.