closer

60 seconds
87 pushups

Do what you want first

This morning I completed my TT requirements before breakfast: 100 push/situps, 1 mile walk, 1 warrior palm, 1 kind act, 10 minutes of stances ...

I hope to fit in more, but my theory this morning was to do what I wanted to do first, then squeeze what had to be done in a smaller space. It's too easy to let our own desires slide in the face of these full days we live.

The End is Near (in more ways than one)

Left to go -- of the Lite version of Ten Tigers:
Pushups/Situps: 509 out of 10,000
Forms: done
Miles: 11.2 out of 150
Sparring: 0 required (completed 1782 minutes, not required in Lite, but tracked anyway)
Cardio 2-minute rounds: 0 required (completed 193 --again, not required in Lite, but since I was doing it in class ...)
Stances: 33 out of 1825 minutes (now isn't it odd to have spent as much time in stances as sparring?)
Acts of Kindness: done 376/365 (I think I'll keep doing these ...)
Blogging: long since done. Yep, I'm wordy.
Empathy: 16 days without electricity should suffice.
Private lessons 11/12 done (1 to go!)
New undertaking, community action or env cleanup: I am learning to teach community college students (who are different from any group of students I've had yet), I am learning to officially save for retirement in an organized way, I've helped with Hopeful Tomorrow fundraisers, but I have not yet done a thing about cleaning up the environment in any organized way. As a matter of fact, I was caught just the other day casually throwing away a plastic bottle. More work to be done in this category.
Books of wisdom: Read and distributed to others. More on the way.

The dissertation is NOT done -- a goal I had set alongside the Ten Tigers requirements. It's hard to reset after a complete miss. I'm having a little trouble with motivation and seeing the possibility of ever getting it finished.

My new goal is to have the dissertation completely drafted (though it cannot be edited and approved) by the time Ten Tigers begins again (February 1, 2010). I'll take a step toward that right now by ending this incredibly long blog and finding my research that is buried on this desk ...

Another new goal: reduce procrastination.

Left to go

Miles: Finished
Acts of Kindness: Finished
Forms: 157
Push ups and Sit ups: 4832
Sparring: 105 minutes
Cardio rounds: 236
Stance Work: 463.5 minutes
So now, my biking will be done in intervals, 2 minutes intense cardio, 1 minute recovery.
Soon my sparring will be done the same.

today i slept till 12'o'clock it felt good you should try it Steven. How's the storm troopering coming i just beat one the newest games we got two or three day's a go but it's one of those games with a whole bunch of like you have to collect this and that ya da ya da ya da so on and so forth

4,902

Pushups/Situps to go.

The Power of Myth

I ordered a book from Amazon that I thought might be interesting because Sifu Tammy had mentioned it: Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth. It came, and sat nelected by my beside (along with several other "significant" books). This morning I picked it up, opened it to the middle, and read a bit. Mostly I thought I would convince myself that it wasn't what I was looking for at that moment, and I was going to stuff it deeper into a bookshelf to get it out of my way.

I read: "The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are that they should be living for."

Hmmm ... I turned down the corner of that page to return to it later.

Then I read more about what myths involving slaying dragons represent : "Slaying monsters is slaying the dark things." And how those representations apply to our daily lives.

"If the work that you're doing is the work that you chose to do because you are enjoying it, that's it. But if you think, 'Oh no, I couldn't do that!' that's the dragon locking you in . . . . What you think you want, what you will to believe, what you think you can afford, what you decide to love, what you regard yourself as bound to. It may be all much too small, in which case it will nail you down. And if you simply do what your neighbors tell you to do, you're certainly going to be nailed down. Your neighbors are then your dragon as it reflects from within yourself."

Next came a segment that explains the importance of teachers -- how a good teacher can illuminate the path "like a lighthouse that says, 'There are rocks over here, steer clear. There is a channel, however, out there.'" (This sounds to me very much like a finger pointing at the moon.) Campbell says, "[I]t's nice to have someone who can give you a clue. That's the teacher's job. . . . "

Now I have to make time to read this text from the beginning.

Extra Effort

The Ten Tigers meeting today was so productive and satisfying -- a busy two+ hour session. Now I'm home tonight gleefully practicing the butterfly knives versus spear set that we just learned.

And so it occurred to me ...

Sifu Steven just taught us a set that was new to him, and had to put in many hours of extra training to learn both sides thoroughly enough to teach it all in one session. It didn't dawn on me until tonight how much effort he put into just this one meeting to offer us something special that was not on the standard list. I heard him say that he hadn't performed the set with a partner before, but it took hours for that clue to fall into place.

Earlier this year, Dean posted a comment that pointed out how much effort Steven puts into making Ten Tigers work -- effort that often goes unacknowledged. Today was another example of the planning and training that makes this program -- and our school -- so fine.

Thank you, Sifu, once again.

Over quota and nearly out of goals

I've long since reached my quota of required postings ... and would really like to continue this kind of forum conversation. Maybe Sifu Steven's Ning network idea will help, and even encourage sharing beyond just text: http://eastwestkungfu.ning.com/

This blog has been especially enjoyable for looking over past postings and comments and seeing our moods, achievements, concerns, and so on over the last year. I had imagined at the beginning that this might be the longest year of my life -- that this program would slow things down and help me take note of each day. But time passed anyway and the year has nearly ended. I can see each of my goals being reached and it's almost time to set new ones.

I am prematurely nostalgic.

So today.

Oops! I hit the wrong button and published the blog without my consent!

So today I'm one-hundred and twenty push-ups/sit-ups behind schedule. also I'm EIGHTY FIVE minutes behind on my miles, DO NOT PANIC, I will make them up fast at least half will be gone before Ten Tigers.

:b
bye

Shopping is When I Lose Perspective

When shopping at the store, and trying to balance nutrition value of foods with the dollar value of foods is when I most forget that I have more than I need.

I'm sitting at a ten year old computer connected to the internet by dial up, but that is more than I need.

I have a 19 year old television set, receiving broadcast TV through a DTV converter box. It is more than I need.

I have a Playstation 2, one of the controllers has the outer covering of the cord worn away and recovered with duct tape. It is more than I need.

We have 2 cars. More than we need.

We have a 3 bedroom house. More than we need.

Plenty of people in the world live in one room mud and straw huts, no TV, no plumbing, no electricity. Some people go get water from the same source the local cattle bathe in. When we think we need things like sattelite TV, smart phones, new cars . . . it is because we have forgotten that we have more than we need.

push ups again

Recovering from extended suffering from a cold (or maybe two colds), I did one minute pushups with my class, not expecting to perform well.

I got a personal best again.
81
54 in the first 30 seconds.

Life is good

I saw a shooting star tonight on my walk. It was just before moon rise, and the stars were vivid. I rarely see one. Maybe I have more patience than I have had before, and so am spending more time contemplating the night sky. Maybe I'm just lucky tonight.

Earlier today, driving home as the sun set, I noticed how very beautiful fall is.

Life is good.