Day 452 - Trip, Fall, Catch

Publishing everyday is no joke.

It's a serious commitment.

Life with all it's dynamic demands often get in the way. But here's the cool part: I'm always at will to catch myself in a fall.

Parkour lesson #1: Falling with grace.

(This will probably turn into another post.*)

When the ground is coming at you, there's actually a lot of time to respond to its/our velocity. When I first started playing with this concept, I was really drawn to the 'damage control' aspect, minimizing the overall impact for longevity of the body. Especially considering how a simple fall can have devastating, life-long consequences, I'd say it's worth it to practice and hone the skill of physical response capabilities the moment your inner ear tells you gravity is not operating within normal perimeters.

So, with the blogging, I didn't catch myself in 1 or even 2 days, and I find that interesting. I had plenty of moments to correct and perhaps not even miss any days. As soon as my evening plans changed, I could have incorporated my blogging time into my early afternoon time, for example. When I break it all down, all the excuses are BS.

What's valid, what stands, is that I do need to redefine, reshape, reconfigure these posts, to fit a "daily" style. What does that mean? I'll let go of pictures. Sometimes, but not all the times. The pressure I put on myself with the picture can sometimes be a reason for me to go into resistance, verses just simply dropping into my keyboard and the blank post and sharing candidly. Self-honestly, if I didn't procrastinate till 11:55pm to post each night, adding a picture isn't really such a big deal, and probably worth my while.

What else? I'll still do basic formatting. And I'm keeping the once-over edit, which is how I say: giving my post a single re-read, fixing, adding and subtracting as I see fit, and then publish. I'll keep adding keywords or labels, but how I do it may change. Instead of trying to attract others by using words that may help my search engine ranking, I'm going to simplify it and just do the basic few + some to categorize the main point, instead of trying to hit every angle.

And: I'm going to create 30 posts in the 30 days of September. That's what I signed on for initially, and when I missed these past few days, that's the agreement I made with myself, that instead of forcing myself to skip a day, I would let myself make it up. It's an odd excuse, "I'm not allowed to post TWO Day's in one day!" - I'll give this point its own post (soon), but the idea that "I can technically do what ever the hell I want to do," is really empowering. I set my own rules because it's my own self-expression. When life throws a curve ball, I adapt to the circumstance in my unique way. I commit myself to completing 30 posts in 30 days, even if that means I have to double or even triple up on some days.

The point of facing myself in a fall can be challenging (posts on that to come as well). It's a humble, recognition process, and then it's a decision to change the outcome for the best. It happens at all different time-levels. Fast-fast, when you're changing from high speed or heights, and much slower, at a different pace altogether - a 'life fall' (using that term loosely) happens when we just fall out of touch with ourselves, our interests, our joy, our meaning, our decision to be our best self..

I forgive me for accepting and allowing me mistreat me, by being less than I can be, and hiding from myself the reasons for which I'm sabotaging my best-self, so that I can't be honest with myself enough to see, realize and change without further ado.

I commit to treating me, myself, my life, with a little more respect, as this is the foundation of me in the world. I am responsible, within my capability, to grow as a human. All habits and behaviors that are not supportive of myself and others, are suspect and require deep, written examination (in posts to come).

I commit myself to reshaping how I approach this blog, being 'okay' with utilizing it more as a processing space for myself, however, publicly. So, it'll be more raw and behind-the-scenes style Dan, and I'll reserve the more fancy, SEO compliant, picture populated posts for another platform.*

For now, rest assured, I'll continue my writing. Fathom that it's totally possible to blog two days in one day, and just be ok with it, don't judge me. Ok?

Here we go!

Day 213 - Self-movement: Perspective

Today, I kept thinking about this perspective for some reason. It's the perspective of the detailed effort involved in a physical movement or set of movements to get a task done. This is hard to describe inside of myself, so I'ma write it out!

This perspective that I am going to do my best to describe it seemingly common sense movement. Great example: Walking across the street. What does it take to do that? FIRST, it's a turning of the head in both directions to check for cars. Then, there is a step, followed by another step, etc, but even before that there is a neck movement to place one's head slightly off balance in the direction we want to walk.

One of my real life examples from today: I waxed my snowboard for the first time, so maybe that was another reason why my movement-perception wasn't so automated. From one perspective it takes a lot of work, almost an overwhelming amount of work (thus the $8 alternative of paying someone else to do it). This overwhelming perspective happens before any time is spent. When one is willing to dedicate the time, the series of steps naturally unfolds when the tools and the know-how are available. Heat the iron, drip the wax, spread the wax with the iron, scrape off the excess, clean up the excess, turn off the iron. Even this quick description I didn't immediately think about having to toss the excess wax in the trash. Heck, we could have swept the floor if we wanted to be thorough.

The point of sharing this perspective is to unfold the decision process and bring a little awareness to the physical. I notice that I make quite a few decisions based on the perception of all the effort required to complete a set of physical movements for a given task. This "effort" is a loaded term. Effort is relative. How I relate to work determines effort perception. The relationship indicates a separation, and I think with today, for some reason, I was more tuned into what is required to complete physical tasks in a simplistic perspective that was intriguing. Just doing what has to be done.

The inverse perspective (instead of this perspective), is that the movement is automated. Decision to cross the street does not normally consider ALL of the physical movements/effort because there is a relationship toward these movements. Tilting the head forward is easy. Placing one foot in front of the other by bending the knee in conjunction with a minimal effort abdominal contraction is easy. The only real consideration that happens is how many of steps it will take.If the road is 7 miles wide (i know, crazy) then we may choose not to cross the road depending on the reward vs effort of walking that far.

Yes, this is a broad perspective, but I was intrigued with insight. It's not a new perspective, but I've never written about it before. It's a perspective I am drawn to and the primary reason I like to study parkour, free running, and everything related to balance. I really like trying to understand and gain mastery over the physical movement through space time...I think I like it because there is so much room to learn, grow expand my body vocabulary. The newness of learning how to balance on a unicycle is some kind of physical intimacy.

free use flickr image

Again, the inverse perspective would be that I already know how to...make a sandwich, or say with yoga, when I already know a posture or a movement, it is automated. I make a decision, and my mind just put my body there automatically, and I have room to think about something else. Ah, here lies the crux of it all. Long distance running, another example, on a treadmill even. The know-how of each physical body movement is squared away in the mind, and it leaves the space for us to zone out and think other thoughts and daydream. With parkour, there is more of a continual challenge and adaptation to the environment that keeps me more present with the physical reality. The main flag point of mind participation within parkour is when ego and pride step in, especially when others are saying "ohhhh, so cool, great job!" And that's how people get hurt: trying to uphold a reputation of being good or great instead of practically considering the physical limitations.

Ok, join me for some self-forgiveness tomorrow. There's a lot to this perceptual shift, and I want to see how deep I can go in releasing my physical movement programs. Also, I will report on what I notice in relation to daydreaming (separation from the physical) that occurs while I'm boarding down the mountain.