spirituality 1 Comment

What Can I Let Go Of?

I was posed a question today, via the ZenCast: What can I let go of, to make me happy? There are things in life that we all obsess over, think about, worry about, that tie up our minds and drag us down. If we just let go of some of those things, no longer allow them to have influence over us, we reduce our suffering and therefore become happier.

Sounds like tree-hugging hippie crap to some of you, I know. I challenge the rest of you to read on.

I gave the question some thought. What causes me the most grief? What in my life makes me the most unhappy, and how can I release it? Here’s what I came up with:

Expectations. I’m reminded of one of my first marching band performances, back in September of 1992. My high school was in the middle of a cornfield, and we played football against other schools in other cornfields, and went to band contests hosted by still other schools in other cornfields. I forget whether this was our first away game or our first contest, but I do remember being on the field and being disappointed that the grandstand was no larger than the one back at our school. I mentioned this to my best friend, Mel, when we boarded the bus to go home, telling her that the evening wasn’t what I’d expected.

Her response? “Never expect anything.”

I’ve held that piece of advice with me for all these years, although I’m not always good at following it. I always expect myself to pick up on new skills faster than I do. I expect myself to be generally more successful than I end up being. I set expectations of how things “should” go or “should” be.

I can let go of expectations, and my need for expectations. (Not to say that I can let go of aspirations or goals, although I suppose the true Zen practitioner probably would.) If I let go of my expectations, it becomes harder for me to be disappointed, either in myself or in a turn of events. It also becomes easier for me to be satisfied with whatever happens, because I didn’t come into things with prefabricated expectations.

Being disappointed in myself brings me to the next thing I can let go of:

Self-judgment. Every morning, when I turn off my alarm clock and roll back over for just five more minutes, my conscience speaks to me in my mother’s voice. “Come on, girly-girl. Time to get up.” But I don’t listen. I close my eyes once, twice, three times, often oversleeping to the point where there’s no physical way I can get to work on time. Every morning, my conscience turns from sweet and motherly to caustic and abusive, taking on my own voice instead, a tone of voice I don’t think I’ve ever used with another human being. I berate myself for being late to work, and hurl insults at myself for opting out of my morning shower in favor of getting to work only ten minutes late instead of 20.

I tend to take the Bible with a grain of salt these days. Even so, as with all holy books, there are still some nuggets of truth for all. Romans 14:22 is one of my favorites (emphasis mine):

Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.

Translation: If I allow myself to sleep in, I needn’t beat myself up over it after the fact. Take note, come up with a strategy to avoid oversleeping in the future, and fix it. Don’t be so judgmental of yourself.

I can let go of my self-judgment. I can appreciate that I am a work in progress, and I can give myself constructive criticism, but I can let go of the need to mentally flog myself over small things.

Which brings me to my final luftballoon:

Who I Am Not. Sometimes, I wish I were more motivated. Or thinner. Or that I didn’t procrastinate. Or that my hereditary jowls weren’t beginning to make an early appearance. Or that I weren’t so self-deprecating. Or that I could rid myself of any number of negative qualities. I often find myself depressed over who I am not. Rarely do I celebrate who I am.

In line with the ideas above, I can still give myself guidance on how to improve myself and cultivate positive qualities to replace the negative. But I needn’t obsess over who I am not.

I can let go of who I am not. She has no power over me. If she exists in another dimension, her life is much different than mine… and I wouldn’t give up certain parts of my life for all the world. Just like I wouldn’t want to change certain events in my life, because I wouldn’t be where I am today, I wouldn’t want to be who I am not, because I also wouldn’t be where I am today.

I can let go of my expectations, and my need for expectations. I can let go of my self-judgment. I can let go of who I am not.

What can you let go of?

aikido 2 Comments

The Universe is Conspiring in my Favor

…At least as far as aikido is concerned.

I know you’re all probably tired of hearing me go on about my chosen martial art, so I’ll just mention a couple things:

  1. Sensei chose to teach a class entirely on ukemi today.
  2. Sensei never read my e-mail, because it got lumped in with the spam.

This means that a.) Sensei doesn’t know how much of a goober I sounded, and b.) his somewhat random choice of topic was entirely fortuitous and had nothing to do with me. It may, however, have had a little to do with the two mighty new mukyu in attendance.

I feel much somewhat more confident about my ability to fall and not hurt myself now. I at least recognize what elements I may be missing. Now I have some more simple ukemi exercises I can do at home, too.

The leg is feeling a little weak after class, but not painful. I’m feeling pretty fine overall. Being all nervous about going back to class after two weeks was a little silly in retrospect.

jobhunt 7 Comments

Come On, Baby, Finish What You Started

I’ve been droning on about aikido a little too much lately, so I suppose I should write about something else already. I’m sitting here at work, with a painfully light workload, so this seems as good a time as any to write a blog entry (via e-mail to myself, of course).

Not that I have anything particularly pressing to blog about, mind you. Most of my “free” time lately has been spent job-hunting, nursing my pulled muscle, or escaping into Civilization IV.

Speaking of the job hunt: I’ve gone through my list, submitted my resume for those jobs I hadn’t yet, followed up on past inquiries, and have started putting the finishing touches on my portfolio. I think I’ve got the portfolio working in all modern browsers, including Firefox 2, Opera 9, Safari for Windows, IE6 and IE7. Granted, there are a few minor display discrepancies: IE6 has an unfortunate space at the bottom of the page which activates the scroll bar, and Opera (or is it Safari?) doesn’t highlight the items in my submenus. Those are minor details, though, and I can deal with the differences for now. Now, I’m going through all my featured projects and including examples and samples and links for each. I plan to have my portfolio complete by the end of next weekend.

In other news of the me, I ordered my very first Little Black Dress™ and a couple pairs of work-friendly Skechers online. I need to get myself down to Lane Bryant and spend a decent amount of money updating my wardrobe, although I feel funny either a.) shopping alone or b.) shopping with Aaron, and I don’t really have any local girlfriends to shop with. What I’d really like to buy is a brown tailored pantsuit to go with my new shoes. (Wow… matching an outfit to a pair of shoes? That sounds unusually girly of me.)

Last time I really went ballistic on clothes shopping, I sorely needed a wardrobe update due to having lost, oh, fifty pounds? Now, though, I’m just tired of wearing the same crap to work all the time. Of course, I should probably hold off on buying work clothes until I get a new job and find out what the dress code is there. I’d hate to update my business casual wardrobe, just to find that I can wear Threadless shirts and jeans to work — or, worse, that I have to go out and purchase an actual professional wardrobe, with multiple suits and accessories.

Also: Aaron and I had an in-depth conversation this weekend about my ability to finish what I start. I am absolutely notorious for starting a project, either coming to a hard part or just getting bored with it, and dropping it for the next Flavor of the Month. Websites, fiction, genealogy research, major cleaning, all have fallen prey to this habit of mine. He was particularly concerned with me finishing my portfolio website before I get involved in something else — namely, instructing marching band for the first time. He reminded me that I don’t do anything by halves — quite like him, now that I think about it. I immerse myself in whatever new project I undertake: genealogy, candle-making, learning SQL, weight-loss, drum corps, aikido, whatever. I don’t just try something or dabble in something. For this reason, I’ve specifically avoided starting any new projects, even though I’ve wanted to work on my fiction and genealogy research in the past months.

I might have to gracefully and humbly bow out of the marching band gig, even though I don’t want to. I can see things that need fixing in the band, things that I might be able to help with, but I don’t know if I should really be dedicating literally an entire evening a week to band, plus a good part of another evening a week to aikido.

I have some time to think it over, though, and to finish my portfolio before the next rehearsal I’m slated to attend. We’ll see how things pan out.

aikido 1 Comment

Permission to Quit

I talked to my Mom on the phone today. She’s been reading my blog, including my aikido injury reports, and suggested that maybe I should find some other discipline to try. As she pointed out, I’m not getting any younger, and I haven’t been doing sports or other activities during my life so far to build up to this. Most of my aikido writings *have* been focusing on how I hurt myself, or how sore I am, or how bad I got my ass handed to me.

The thing is, though, that I want to be better. I want to test for rank in October. I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it, since I have to have thirty hours logged at the dojo to qualify… but I’d like to try. I want to be limber. I want to be strong. I want to be able to do crazy ukemi acrobatics without fucking pulling my groin.

A month ago, I would have taken this suggestion as a godsend — you’re absolutely right. It’s too hard. I’ll tell Sensei I’m done. Now, though… I guess I do need to talk to Sensei, but I need to ask him what I should be doing to practice ukemi at home without hurting myself.

It feels like dancing, like art, except that I don’t know all the steps. It still feels like it should make sense, if only I had the muscle memory and the strength and the knowledge. I know that’s what practice is for, but it’s frustrating that I keep trying to learn, but I feel like I’m limited physically rather than mentally. It’s not a limitation I’m used to dealing with; I’m used to learning something, and it being learned. The end. I’m not used to imagining my position in space and time (and midair) and maneuvering myself in a certain way and not knowing whether I can even physically *do* what I’m supposed to do, let alone coordinate my mind and my muscles to do it.

This is why I joined the dojo, though, isn’t it? To open up my comfort zone? To become more disciplined?

I want to practice here at home, but I don’t want to hurt myself again and delay my return to class. Maybe I’ll e-mail Sensei before Wednesday and see if he has any words of wisdom for me.

Update, 7:30pm: I sent an e-mail to Sensei, letting him know what had happened and why I haven’t been at the dojo. I also asked him if I should lay off until I heal, or just come in and do what I can, but then I deemed my question silly (yes, all in the e-mail) and told him I’d be at the dojo on Wednesday. We’ll see if he responds, or if he just greets me on Wednesday like nothing ever happened.

aikido 2 Comments

Damn It.

Two weeks ago, I pulled my groin at aikido by doing a poorly-executed roll. It was finally feeling better, though, so I decided to do a little ukemi practice in my basement tonight before going back to aikido tomorrow morning. Even set up the point-and-shoot to take some video of myself rolling, to help pinpoint what I’m doing wrong, or where I can improve. Ended up doing upwards of ten to a dozen rolls total. That’s a lot for me at this point.

Guess what I did.

My groin doesn’t hurt nearly as bad as it did when I first injured it — I probably just aggravated the injury. But now I have a conflict: do I go to aikido anyway, and risk exacerbating my leg further, or do I sleep in and skip aikido again and basically wipe my ass with over fifty bucks total for these two wasted weeks?

If I do decide to rest my leg instead of going to class, is my injury just a mental crutch, an excuse not to stretch my comfort zone anymore? I don’t think so, since I had been looking forward to getting back to class. Still… maybe. I don’t know. It’s a tough call, because I *am* paying for this, even if I’m not attending.

*checks credit card statement*

Apparently, I pay for this in arrears; I just got charged for my two-month initial lump sum. Still, though, I’m paying for this. A goodly amount, though not an unreasonable amount. It’s unreasonable for me not to go and get my money’s worth. But it’s also unreasonable to go do the most intense physical activity I’ve ever done in my life on an injured leg.

Can you tell I’m of two minds with this?

This is ridiculous. If I wait until tomorrow morning to decide whether to go, I’ll end up staying in bed. I know me. I know how my half-asleep mind works. I’d really hate to make things worse, though…

We’ll see.

(I can’t believe I’m actually posting this asinine stream-of-consciousness argument with myself. I sound ridiculous. However, I will go through with the post to amuse and entertain you, my readers. All fifteen of you.)