But I digress.

A big part of mindfulness is arrived at via meditation.  Hmmm.  So I am attempting to learn to meditate.  Easy right?  Nope.  I have now been practicing for almost a week.  The idea is to calm the mind by focusing on your breath.  It is like trying to stop a run-away train with strong language.  So far it is not going well.

What IS going well is that I am on day 24 of sticking to a fitness plan.  The “Plan” is to do a minimum of 30 minutes a day of high output rowing on my Concept 2 erg.  So far I have mixed and matched 30 min,  12km, and 8x500m sessions  with intensity that leaves me just short of throwing up or falling down.  My resting heart rate has already started to drop.

The other effort involves a strategic diet strategy, namely:  EAT LESS.  That also is going well.  I am down 2.5 lbs.

Tonight I have been scheduled to work from 9pm until 4am on short notice.  Can’t sleep, so here I am writing away.  Dumb but relaxing so w/e.

Onward.

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I hope it will be more though. I want to de-stress, to be happy, to find some peace. So finding some perspective and balance would help. That’s a lot to ask maybe. But I am the only person who has direct control over my well being. So I’ll give it a whirl.

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Today will mark 20 consecutive days that I have either rowed or run.  I am starting to feel like a fat version of the old me.  Aerobic capacity is starting to return.  My left shoulder is weak but starting to come back.  Aidan and I went to BJJ last night.  We sucked.  But damn it felt good.

So I’m older and have to be smarter to be able to continue being physical.  The rowing machine is helping…low impact  Low key BJJ will mean I don’t get injured.  Being mindfull will help essential ego supression so I can focus on learning.

Conclusion – I’m actually optimistic about 2012.  It will be a good year.  Day by day.  Minute by minute.  Second by second.

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On Thursday and Friday Chris had us working on a deep half-guard with options to:

1. Grab the foot for an old school sweep
2. Come to our knees and if they whizzer and try and drive us down, then limp arm out and take their back
3. Come to our knees and if they push in to us, then reach for the opposite knee and go with their push and roll them

Chris is experimenting with doing this same lesson for another week to drill the movement deep into our brains.

Cool idea.  Execution might be painful though because in the first two days I wore all the skin of my elbow and knee from the high number of reps.  It’s sooooo goood to be back.

 This is one strong 16 year old with 3 times my flexibility.  Grrrr.

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Now in the media, questions are being raised about the manner of his death. A waste of time in my opinion. He knew what he was doing. He rolled the dice.

Freedom is the ability to do what we want, provided it harms no one else. “License” is the same, except you have no regard for other’s right to freedom.

No photo for you Mo. To got what you deserved. Be grateful there is no hell.

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I haven’t blogged for a while.  Life intervenes with little challenges.  Right now I’m dealing with getting my son through the first term in university.   It’s a struggle.  He’s up to the challenge but there have been some substantial road blocks.  Epilepsy being first and foremost on the list.  Our health care in Canada may be free but it is sure hard to get an appointment with a specialist.

Still life proceeds whether I will it or not.  I sometimes wonder how much of a mark any of us leave.  All the effort we put in for ourselves,  for our kids, for loved ones, at work…what does it amount to?

I’m tired and that often leads to a state of exasperation when I feel I have no time for myself.  I need to tweak my schedule so that I can start working out again, so I can get back to BJJ, so I can spend more time with Annette, walk the dogs, fix the deck, wash my filthy car.

I always feel like I’m on the brink of some kind of epiphany that will allow me,  this time, to pursue my goals all the way past the endless obstacles.  I’d like to write, start an online business, get really fit, travel more, climb a mountain.  Mark Twight might ask “what am I waiting for…I’m not going to live forever”.  The thing is,  I beat myself over the had with that concept every day.  And eventually, I become resigned to my failure, reset, and try again.  It emphasizes my humanity while failing to deliver results.  Maybe I don’t want it enough, maybe I’m trying to do too much, maybe my stressors are too mild, or too numerous.

The reality is there are very few people who excel in any one aspect of their lives.  We are mediocre by design maybe.  But it seems that a good theory might be that in order to be happy a need to be exceptional in only a single facet of our lives.  More than that is a bonus.  The theory is I think, sound, because whatever I choose, the discipline it takes to get there will set me up for the next experience / journey.

The proof is in the pudding they say.  What pudding?  And who is “they”.  Time to choose my pudding.  What should I tackle, to the exclusion of most everything else?

I’ll let you know with the results.  Annette knows because I’ve asked for her help.  But she’ll never tell.

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So yoga seemed like a good idea.

Instructors make it look natural and seamless. But it’s not. Because the preparation happens in the background, it looks easy.

Fortunately my yoga instructor is also my girlfriend so I see first hand what she does to prepare. The process appears to be straightforward:

1. Put together a class on paper 15-30 minutes
2. Rehearse and tweak 30-60 minutes
3. Arrive 20-60 minutes early to prepare the studio
4. Teach the class
5. For hot classes, spend 15-30 minutes mapping the floors

Not as easy as I might have guessed.

My body really felt the stretch last night and I slept well. Annette has a very calming voice too which helps me relax.

I always avoided trying the yoga class and now I am wondering why. What better way could there be to stretch for BJJ, to relax, and to develop core strength without the wear and tear of rolling!

Nice!

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Computerless and disconnected, I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and snagged a Toshiba Thrive Tablet on an open box sale from Futureshop. Once I cleaned off the sticky sauce and cat hair, it looked presentable. Part of the shiny name on the back came off with the sales sticker. Cosmetic!

Why did I opt for a tablet with no 3G connection? Price, price, price. I am broke. HOWEVER…my cell phone is an HTC smartphone. And it can act as a wifi hotspot with the simple toggling of the appropriate box in my wireless settings menu on the phone. Then the Toshiba Thrive Tablet automatically found the hotspot.

Benefits?

1. Price for wifi only tablet is a lot lower
2. If you have a smartphone, then you don’t need a separate sim card and plan for the tablet
3. You can choose the Toshiba Thrive over the sexier tablets and enjoy the only Honeycomb 3.1 tablet with a full size usb port and SD card reader.

Given the number of people out there with smartphones, I would think that wifi-only tablets will be hot selling items.

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When I started this blog I must have had some point or purpose in mind.  I fear though, that this odd desire to share thought, experience and emotion online is commensurate with some need to have a voice or some sort of public validation.  But I can’t remember.

Oddly, I have lost the drive to share my head space.  Not that it has become abhorrent; rather my motivation has simply disappeared.  I can think of any one of a number of reasons; work, health and family issues are obvious.  Mostly though, I realized that my immaturity was being blazed across the internet for anyone who cared to look.

The process of writing can be cathartic.  And blogging is an opportunity to hone rusty writing skills.  So I’ll muddle on and see if I can’t string together some decent posts.  I’ll steer away from “maudlin”, and aim for the “informative”.  I have lots of good ideas surrounding parenting, BJJ, health and philosophy so it’s just a matter of string the ideas together and getting them down on “paper”.

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The last couple of months have been very stressful.  In times like this I often have the urge to vent through my blog.  The experience is somewhat cathartic…for me, but there is really no excuse for publishing.  That just brings everyone down.

The key in times of stress, at least for me, is to realize that I just can’t do it all.  So…its ok to forget the load of washing in the machine.  It is okay that the grass is getting talk.  It is alright that I haven’t been to Jiu Jitsu in over a month.  The clean clothes will stay clean even though they are stacked on the ironing board instead of in the drawers. 

I still vent through my blog but those posts stay in draft form until the crisis passes.  Then I delete them. 

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