Done

As my voluminous output for December demonstrates, it's been a freakin' busy month. Trade shows, gup tests, XMas planning and execution, weeks of house guests and the overall blur of things-to-do that accompany all of these things have all contributed to an incredibly high-pressure / low-pleasure holiday season for me. Frustrating, to say the least.

On the up side, it's nearly over. One more party tonight (someone else's, for a change), a day off tomorrow, and then we plunge into an extremely busy quarter here at the office. The kids get back to school on Thursday, which will hopefully go a long way toward getting their behavior back to normal -- the complete lack of structure over the past couple of weeks has them acting like loons, not to mention stomping repeatedly on my last nerve. And this weekend we'll have our house to ourselves again, so with any luck we'll be back on an even keel by next Monday.

One thing I've learned about myself this past year is just how much I like my routines. Not that I live a terribly regimented and rigid life. But I like having a pretty solid idea of what I'll be doing on any particular night during the week. Training Tuesdays and Thursdays, sometimes Mondays as well. Gumdo on Friday evening. I like knowing that once the kids are down for the nights I can look forward to a couple of hours of just relaxing on the couch with Christine, watching the tube or reading a magazine or whatever. Knowing that Saturday goes like this: I get up around 7:30 and make a pot of coffee. While it's brewing I make 2 shots of espresso, and use one of them to make Christine a latte. Then I sip coffee, read email and news on my iMac until about 9:00. Then we start rallying the kids for 10:15 family class, after which we hit Starbucks so the kids can get their respective treats (Trevor: vanilla bean creme. Miranda: tangerine juice blend made with the cream base instead of tea). Then, typically we run by Target, do a little shopping, then head home and just chill out for a couple of hours. Maybe play some video games together. Then, maybe some dinner with friends, or invite some folks over to watch a movie.

Nice.

That's what our Saturdays usually are, except we haven't had one like that since prior to Thanksgiving, what with all the "fun" of the holiday season. And I haven't been able to just relax on the couch with my wife after the kids crashed for nearly a month. So I'm really ready for the whole holiday season to end so I can get my humdrum on.

-=-

So, 2007 is pretty much over, and I couldn't be more pleased. While we've made it through alright, this was not a good year, characterized predominantly by Too Much Change. I am atypically, enthusiastically embracing the illusory "clean slate" that January the first theoretically brings. And with this come a few general goals -- not exactly resolutions, so much as ideals. This year, I'm going to try to laugh more. I'm going to try not to dwell on things I can't fix or change. I'm going to try to count to ten before reacting when under stress. I'm going to play Rock Band at least once a week. I'm going to take one really amazing vacation with my wife and not freak out about how much it costs. I'm going to take my kids someplace that's not a theme park that they'll remember for the rest of their lives. I'm going to pay more attention to tending my friendships.

And I'm going to train my ass off. Tang Soo Do got me through some very rough spots this past year. And even though I'm feeling a bit stagnant right now (not testing again until February, and I'm getting antsy) my commitment to achieving my training goals hasn't wavered a bit. I've got a small tournament coming up at the end of January, my first as a red belt. Much higher levels of competition, especially from the more established 2nd and 1st gups, so I'll need to train hard to have a shot at bringing home anything shiny. But I'm going to try my best and see what happens. And then I've got testing in February, after which the tournament season will kick off in earnest in March/April, capped off with the Nationals right here in Texas in July not to mention the Lone Star Invitational (Master Nunan's tournie) in August or September. Big year for us Tang Soo Do Mi Guk Kwan Texans, I'll tell ya.

So, here's to 2007, and the setting sun. And here's to 2008: may the best things that happened to you in the past year be the worst things that happen to you in the coming one.

Mood: Weary
Now Playing: Death Cab for Cutie, "Transatlanticism"

Bah Humbug

No, no, I’m not dead. Not yet, anyway. Just having yet another one of those months where I'm spread so thin that time to write is nearly non-existent, and inspiration/motivation to write when there is time is even more so. Frenzied and frustrated, but well.

Not a lot of Tang Soo Do talk to engage in just now. Still training 3-4 times a week, still loving it, but no big new events to report. Christine, Miranda, and Trevor all tested last weekend, and they did fantastic. Miranda is now a 3rd gup (red belt) while Trevor and Christine are 4th gups. Now they’re all on a 6 month wait until their next test. As for me, I’ll be testing for 2nd gup in February and I feel solid enough in my techniques that I have no real concerns. It should be a cake walk, more or less.

I’m having my usual holiday stress. I try not to be too “Grinch-y” at Christmas, but this year I’m feeling a bit more melancholy than usual. 2007 has not been a very good year – there have been some decent parts, but mostly it’s been a bit of a rapid-fire run-on sentence of a year, punctuated with notable negatives. Job loss and (thankfully brief) unemployment. Turning 40 (not a bad thing in and of itself, but something that has led to a lot more introspection than usual). Cancelled vacations. The death of a friend’s mom who was, also, a friend of mine. One notable broken friendship that is pretty much beyond repair. A couple of other friendships that are starting to fray around the edges due to distance and other factors.

Not that the year has been all, or even mostly, bad, exactly. We’ve had some great times this year, but the significant events of the year were largely negative ones, so all in all I’m looking forward to flipping the page on the calendar.

But first, I have to survive Christmas. I am so sick of spending money I could scream. We only have a few more gifts we have to get, and after that we are more or less finished. Of course, I know that “finished” actually means “well, aside from a bunch of last minute items that will occur to us in the next few days. Plus stocking stuffers. And candy. And all the stuff we have to buy for our Christmas brunch for 12 people.” So we won’t actually be finished until we get past the 25th and can stop it already. Or until we run out of cash. Whichever comes first, I suppose.

I wish I could convince my family to only do “gifts from everyone” for the kids and just do the “buy for one other person in the family” bit for the adults. I’d so much rather spend a couple of hundred on one really fantastic gift for one person than try to come up with gifts for everyone that all cost somewhere around the same amount and that they actually want. The worst thing is that we almost never come up with really great gifts ideas for anyone, anyway. This year a lot of folks are getting gift cards because we just can’t come up with anything that we think they want that we can actually afford, especially when it’s factored in with the budget of buying for everyone else as well.

I guess that’s why I dread this season so much these days. Every year it just turns into 4-6 weeks of stress about cash and little else. I enjoy seeing the kids open their presents, I enjoy throwing our annual brunch (a lot of work, but nice all the same) but otherwise the entire season is just a tawdry exercise in commercialism and greed with no focus whatsoever on anything meaningful.

People get all worked up over this idiotic fictional self-pitying “War on Christmas” garbage, claiming that people saying “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” is somehow ruining or devaluing their holiday, when in fact the entire way we “celebrate” this season is crass and meaningless. Pundits blather on about “them” (choose your “them” – no matter where you are in the political spectrum you’ve got your preferred Bogeyman, and you blame them for everything – just admit it and more forward) destroying The Meaning of Christmas between periodic commercial breaks filled with messages designed to make you feel like less of a wife/husband/father/mother/brother/sister/child/friend if you don’t buy more expensive disposable plastic distraction that signifies your love for people. Instead of actually, you know, showing them that you love them all year round, you buy sparkly junk, wrap it pretty, and give it to them this one day and that means you’re a good person, even if the rest of the year you were sort of an ass. And apparently this has something to do with Jesus.

So yeah, all these outraged talking heads – or, more precisely, talking heads who make tons of cash by finding things to be outraged about and telling you that you should be outraged, too, and buy their books to express your outrage – are getting all Chicken Little about clerks in the stores selling people all this crap being instructed to say “Seasons Greetings.” This is, apparently, one more example of secularism destroying the holidays.

Sigh.

I have news for you -- the holidays are already destroyed. And it’s not because some PC folks have decided it’s better to use more generic, “inoffensive” greetings designed to avoid offending easily offended people who are actively looking for something to be offended by. They were destroyed the day we collectively decided that the only way to celebrate Christmas was to spend as much of our cash as we possibly could to make the holidays “special.”

Because like it or not, in our culture cash in not just physical currency (i.e. an abstraction of the value of a physical item, enabling barter without actually having to exchange the physical items themselves), but emotional currency as well. It’s become an acceptable way to say how we feel without actually, you know, saying it. The more you spend on someone, the more you love them. Combine this basic attitude with a constant barrage of advertising that assures you that you are inadequate or lacking and this can be easily fixed by purchasing something, along with ready access to any number of credit card offers are you have a perfect misery cocktail. Spend until you can’t possibly spend anymore, otherwise people won’t think you love them. And no matter how much you spend, there will always be One More Thing you should have bought.

Arrgh. It’s just depressing. I’ll try to find a more inspiring topic for my next entry, but for now I’m just sort of weighed down with cynicism.

Mood: Gloomy
Now Playing: Feist, “The Reminder”

Truth Whispers

As I've mentioned before, I tend to surround myself with music at just about every waking moment. In the car, while I'm working, while I'm exercising, and so forth. If I'm doing anything that doesn't involve listening carefully to someone speaking (such as while watching a film, receiving instruction during class, etc.) then I tend to have music playing. Sometimes this is to provide a sort of background noise of familiarity to mask out more chaotic sounds: such is the case in my office, right now. My cube-mate, a salesperson who works from our home office every couple of weeks but is otherwise typically working from his home in North Carolina or is on the road somewhere, is notorious for a) talking on the phone continuously while b) using an astonishingly loud speaking voice. Headphones and loud music enable me to almost completely block him out and to get work done. Other times it's just to provide a distraction that helps pass the time while I'm doing other things: driving, working out, etc. This morning I realized that sometimes this distraction can really be a detriment, though.

I'm trying my best to get myself back on a reasonable gym regimen. I used to hit the gym at least 3 or 4 times a week, heading straight there when the kids went to school and working out for about an hour before showering and heading to my office. However, when I was out of work this summer I kind of fell out of my more strict gym routine, and once I began working again and Christine started substitute teaching my gym attendance fell off to maybe once or twice a week, tops. some weeks I've been unable to go at all, owing as much to native lack of motivation as to lack of opportunity. So I realized last week I needed to kick myself in the ass and just start going 2 times a week, then up it to 3 or 4 times a week once I get back in the habit.

So, this morning I headed over at about a quarter past seven or so. Once i arrived in the parking lot, I began to dig through my gym bag, grabbing my membership card out of my wallet and pulling together the various parts of my iPod so I could get my music going. However, I quickly realized I'd screwed up and forgotten to put my headphones back in my car. So, no headphones, and therefore no music.

Ugh. Half an hour on an elliptical runner with no music. I felt a stir of dread in my chest. Oh well, nothing to be done at this point, so i headed on inside, dropped my stuff at the locker room, and hit a machine that was poistioned directly below one of the gym's PA speakers, ensuring that I'd at least have music of some volume to listen to while doing cardio. All in all, it wasn't so bad.

Then I moved onto stretching -- a big part of my exercise regimen for the past two years has been 15-20 minutes of stretching 4-5 mornings each week in order to increase my flexibility and it's paid off tremendously. I can kick comfortable over my head and rarely get strained muscles in my legs or hips anymore, so keeping up the stretching routine is important. But stretching without music is borrrrrrring. But, again, I just sort of plodded through it.

Now, this left me with about 20 minutes of time to fill in before I had to hit the showers. I used to spend this time on doing weights, but as my training has become more advanced and demanding in the past year I've instead used it for additional time working on forms or one-steps. Usually this is when I most crave music, as I can use the music as a sort of pacing mechanism, ensuring that I maintain a certain rhythm when performing forms. But today it was just me in an echo-ey studio, with the sound of standard health club dance music seeping through the glass walls. At first I was a bit distracted by this: the sound wasn't clear enough to really identify easily, so part of my brain kept trying to figure out what song was playing, sort of the way your mind automatically will try to piece together half-heard conversations when you're walking through a crowded store. But after a bit I began to just filter the sound out altogether.

And then, something fairly unexpected happened. I realized, quickly, while working on forms, that I was paying far more attention to the details of my form, to the finer poitns of movement: hand and foot placement, the angle at which I had my hips turned, my breathing, and so forth. I suppose this shouldn't be too much of a shock, really: I mean, I know that listening to music while doing things that demand attention and focus, like forms, will have something of a negative effect. but I just hadn't realized how much of my attention was being sapped away by a little background noise. I was so much more able to critique my own performance, to judge where my strengths and weaknesses in my pyang ahn o dan, chil sung ill rho, and bassai were and to adjust, compensate, and improve on the fly.

It reminded me of something I once heard -- I'm not really sure where, but I'm sure it came up in a conversation I had years ago, long before I began training in tang soo do. The gist of it was that one of the ways you can tell that someone isn't telling you the whole truth is they tend to yell more. The idea is that people know when they're not telling you the whole truth, and they know that if they don't bowl you over a bit you might start asking too many questions, so they use force and volume to drive their point in. Conversely, people who are telling the truth and who are confident in the rightness of their words or ideas whisper. The idea would be that the power of truth ensures that it will be heard and believed, but the irony is that liars tend to drown it out with volume. Thus, people who want to glimpse truth need to learn to listen, carefully, to small things, while learning to ignore all the racket of lies and half-truths around them.

This is a pretty big concept, I think, something that applies to many aspects of our lives: obvious "big" things like the news media, advertising, religion, and such as well as less obvious things, like the voices we use when we speak with ourselves. We can sometimes expend so much effort drowning ourselves in stimulation and distraction that we simply are unable to hear the voices in our hearts, telling us simple truths. I think sometimes we do this on purpose, intentionally drenching ourselves in stimulation so we can avoid facing facts we'd rather not deal with, but sometimes we can just get so used to the noise and racket that we forget that sometime all we need to do is stop, take a deep breath, and listen to what our minds are saying, quietly, to us.

We know, inside, the truth, or at least what we know of truth, and sometimes we just need to stop for a minute and listen to really hear it. Whether we want to know it or not.

Mood: A bit harried (lots to do this week, and I'm attending my first trade show next week, so there's stress too...)
Now Playing: Nothing