UBBT: Talking to myself, I am

“All his life he looked away to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing.” Yoda (2:25 on the youtube video)

We talk about being in the moment a lot. “where am I, what am I doing?” These two questions are constantly being put to us in class. It’s a concept I only understand on the superficial level right now. It’s easy to get so fascinated by something and so caught up in it that you are focused, passionate and fully immersed in it… sometimes. It happens to everyone sometimes. The piece that I am trying to figure out is how to be in the moment and fully immersed when I want to be. Part of my nature is being able to get swept away for a short time by something shiny and focus on nothing but that one thing until the next shiny thing comes along. That’s easy. But it’s only a small part of what I think “being in the moment” is. The real trick is to not let that other shiny thing steal my attention.

So I know what it means to be “in the moment”. Theoretically, it’s pretty simple. It’s just putting aside all of the shiny junk—like what I’m having for dinner, my annoying boss, that cute girl in my class—and keeping the moment pure by remembering where I am and what I am doing, be it on the mats in a horse-stance throwing a simple punch and making each punch another significant step towards a perfect punch, or at a table with my books open and pouring over my notes and textbooks to give me the knowledge to be a well rounded teacher. But even though I know what it is, I still don’t understand it.

A thought just came to mind: What about “Why am I doing this?” where does that fit in to The Moment? It’s obviously important, no question of that. But is that a thought that I should sideline while I’m doing something? To go back to Yoda for a second, “All his life he looked away to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing.” The part I like here is that he doesn’t say to be in The Moment all of the time. To never look to the future, to never cast your eyes to the horizon would just leave you entirely focused on nothing in particular.. Having no thought past where I am and what I’m doing would be disastrous. There is no way to know my intent without thinking of the future, of Why I’m doing this. Without looking ahead there is nothing to drive me forward, but if I only look ahead, how can I get anything done now? All things in moderation.

Being in The Moment is about Doing something. It’s not about Thinking about something. They’re both important, and both very different. Did I answer my own question?

UBBT: Figuring out why "Ultimate" is in the name

Part of this thing, to me, is figuring out new ways to do things that I have to do. What I usually do when I have things to do is assume they will get done eventually. I am noticing, by looking at my UBBT numbers, that things are NOT getting done. I spent a little time and calculated the difference between what I’ve done and what I should be done and it’s… bad. The good news is it’s not woefully bad. That is why I am jumping into a new idea with both feet: I will, every weekday, get up and be at the UofA gym at 7am. There I will do my KMs that are lacking (my excuse is that it’s winter and I can’t run outside or ride my bike and I go places too far to walk), find some open space to do my forms that are lacking (excuse is that I have no room in my house for it), and maybe even do some stretching, push-ups, pull-ups and whatnot just because they are good for me. I’ll have almost an hour before my class on Mon and Wed, nearly two before my classes on Tues and Thurs, and as much time as I like on Friday. I have to remember that if there’s not time in my schedule, I have to change my schedule. Slowly realizing why this is called the ULTIMATE Blackbelt Test.

Side note: A school-wide challenge was sent up by our Sifu Prince to do 1000 kicks this Friday. Just wanted to say I’m in. Should be fun.

Dream: Construction, Malls and Lost Children

I was working on a job in a construction, but my boss was the same as at the restaurant I work at in real life. He was ragging on me about my poor attitude and lack of work ethic when I decided to ignore him and jump off of the scaffolding I was working. As I fell to the ground I noticed nails sticking up from the dirt and slowed myself down so that I could gently step between them, proud of my lithe movements. I walked across the street and bought a sandwich. As I sat there enjoying my sandwich (ham, I think), I wondered if I would get in trouble for ditching work. Just then a guy named Bob was driving a truck with a monstrous load of beams and cables, all connected in the most complex way. It resembled a tree in a way, but all right angled branches. He screwed up a dozen different ways in a very short time. He backed the truck into a pile of building materials, he scraped the truck along a building, knocked over a fire hydrant, smashed into another truck. He did even more and all of it was hilarious to me and everyone around. Eventually he drove on to much of a slant, tipping this huge construct over onto the building we were trying to make. He fell as he got out of the truck and started scolding people for still talking about it, even though it was in the past and happened so long ago, although it had just happened. I wandered into the mall behind me and, still munching my sandwich, started to wander. It was so big that I soon lost my bearings and decided to look for an exit. I noticed many armed guards everywhere and just figured that they must be on the lookout for terrorists. I also took special note of the racial diversity present in their ranks and was quite pleased at the equal opportunity employment. I followed one of the guards to a stairwell that wound down and down, below ground level I assumed. The walls were different, kind of a wood pattern, thought I doubted they were actually wood. “where does this stairway lead?” I asked. He replied simply, “I don’t know.” And kept walking, a look of confusion, anticipation and excitement on his face. He was enjoying exploring as much as I was. At the bottom stood a solitary guard. I asked him where we were. “the whole village” I heard him say. what he actually meant was “the hole village” meaning this small shanty town in the mall’s depths that had a hole in the wall as the entrance to it. Hole village was populated entirely by children. I was flabbergasted at this and asked who the leader was. “Baby Bang” they said, a scattered chorus of children’s voices as they all pointed at one small black kid. He stood up and started to walk towards me. he couldn’t have been older than five years old. “why is he the leader?” and they showed me. he had power to create things. specifically, he reflexively made the opposite of what someone else wished on someone else. On kid demonstrated, wishing their friend was thirsty and they had a bottle of water. I caught on quick, took a deep breath and shouted, “I wish you were all fed, clothed, and taken care of!” a few of them had food appear, a teddybear appear, some clothes. I wondered what happened. The boy had fallen asleep as he was too tired from my request, not having the strength to do it all at once.

UBBT: Break the Cycle

I am definitely not motivated. I’m giving up. I feel myself doing what I usually do when I’m presented with a challenge too great for me to simply coast through. I can feel it: a shadow on the edge of my senses, like a warm hole in the ground, quiet and secure. This thought comes to mind: if I don’t try and I do better than more than half, then that’s actually really good, in a way. My bed is right behind me; flannel sheets, perfectly comfortable pillow, warm duvet. All the thoughts running through my head say to lie down, figure out my stuff in the morning. School, kung fu, the UBBT, upcoming banquet, I have so much reading to do, I should be doing my situps, kempo, it’s all dragging me down. I could just go down with it. lie down in my bed. Eight hours of sleep before I have to get up in the morning—the perfect amount of sleep they say—I can do my workout then; there’ll be time for reading tomorrow at lunch; I can rework my resume next week; I’ll really start to focus after I have a good sleep…………

I just read Master Brinker’s blog. I am the “negative cycle of acceptance” that he’s talking about, not specifically, but it’s a description that I can see fitting me very well. I am nonchalant about failure, about not trying and the excuses for it are everywhere. But I’m starting to realize that there’s no chance of any of this going away. I can’t drop school without sacrificing my future profession and dream of becoming a school councillor, not to mention the respect of my parents. I can’t ignore my current jobs without cutting out everything that they pay for: food, car, roof over my head, school. I can’t drop the UBBT without losing the respect of this group of people that I have spent the last five or so years training with, without cutting off the one thing I haven’t stopped half finished, the one thing that I can’t coast through, without losing the chance to change myself, to stop this cycle of acceptance, to become who I want to be, to become the kind of person I would trust teaching and counselling children through some of the trickiest times of their lives. It’s becoming more and more clear to me that I can’t let any of this drag me down. I have to shoulder it and pick it up. I know I can, I just have to do it.

I’m smart enough to know I can’t do it alone, which is why I joined this thing in the first place. Just by reading a few blogs I am already feeling good about this. I’m not in this to get in shape. I’m in this to change myself on a level far below the surface. Time to stop my b(censored for sensitive readers)ing. I’m here to break this cycle.

Time to do some reading and sit-ups.

Dream: Camping Trip and Enchanted Swords

Me and a group of friends decide to go on a camping trip. The road is tricky and there are large puddles everywhere, enough to hinder the passage of our truck. The truck comfortably holds all fifteen to twenty of us. Eventually we get out to walk. We talk and laugh as we walk down the path. We’re getting close to our campsite and half of the group has crossed over a slow and low river using a rope bridge. as I step up it starts to rain and the river floods. The bridge is being skimmed by the rushing water underneath and I cannot tell which way the water is flowing in the turbulent waves. The last of my friends that have yet to cross as well decide that the bridge is too sketchy and start to swim across instead. I tell them that they are idiots and will be swept downstream and die but they’re unconcerned, 100% carefree. I start to cross, my legs shaking, my hands white-knuckled on the ropes. The water swells up and I hold on as it threatens to sweep me downstream. The bridge, which started out wide with healthy planks under my feet, is now narrow enough for me to grab both sides as I walk, skipping over the broken boards as I hurry across this death trap. I get to the other side and the weather lightens. Downstream I look for my friends, expecting to find nothing. Instead I get there just as they’re climbing up on shore, laughing at how easy it was. I’m amazed that they made it across at all. We keep walking to the campsite. Everyone busies setting up their gear and I wander off. I find myself in a cave where the air is acidic and there are pyres set up for light as I walk down into the darkness. I find a sword. It is huge, about eight feet long, but it weighs nothing in my hand and I swing it freely. The blade is a half foot wide and the edge is razor sharp. The whole blade is covered in mystic and foreign symbols, nothing that I can recognize; they look burnt into the blade, a dark charcoal colour against the shining metal. I’m walking out of the cave when a man with a sword much like mine takes a swing at me. I dodge back but fire leaps from the sword and I barely block it, falling backward into the dirt. The man stabs the pyre and his sword absorbs the fire. He tells me he wants the sword back as it is his, one of a pair. I might have given it back if he’d just asked but now I’m mad that he attacked me. He stabs the sword at me, letting loose a scorching attack. I parry it and absorb the blaze as I spin and lash out with my sword, catching him with his own fire. With this dark man down, I leave the cave with my new prize and wander back to my campsite.

UBBT: Bumpy First Step

Things are starting to work out. This UBBT has had a rocky start for sure but I am figuring things out in my own flawed way. My numbers and tracking system looks like a random mish-mash of data, no two days with a constant number. Some days are below what I want some above. I want to tell myself that I have an entire year to figure it out but that’s the tricky part. The year is very short when taking into consideration all that I have to do. Like I said before, I’m a procrastinator, but I’m trying to change that. so far so good, in my opinion. I’m already getting in a rhythm and I’m never in a rhythm. At least i’m on schedule with my pushups and situps. Some of the other things are lacking a bit right now but they won’t be for long.
At the restaurant I work at, while waiting for the last tab table to leave, I snuck off to the storage room in the basement and did 70 pushups and 3 rounds of kempo. I'm beginning to see how i can use the tiny chunks of time, the five minutes here, the two minutes there, the ten minutes i might have wasted otherwise. And if work continues to be slow like that I should be way ahead in no time.

Dream: Moths and Awkward Situations

Craig and I are sitting in the hands of a giant statue, each on the other palm. We have a stupid idea, one that could get us killed or in a lot of trouble. I have a light in my hand that shines either green or orange. In the distance I see an orange light. Our idea is that we use the orange light we have to lure in the giant moth, which is glowing in the distance, to us and then turn off the light and laugh at its confusion. It starts to turn around and come our way when we notice a car pull up behind us. Man and his very fat wife get out, aim a rifle at us and fire. A tranquilizer dart ricochets off of the finger of the hand I’m sitting. As he tries to reload I sprint at him as fast as I can, trying to get him before he has a chance to shoot. He drops it when he sees me coming and runs a little distance before taking cover behind a rock. The wife comes at me with a knife and I hit her with the gun and as she’s stumbling back I shoot her with the dart, knocking her unconscious. The man now has a handgun and before he gets off more than a couple of shots at me, Craig takes him out. We realize then that we are at a very odd looking crime scene and that we probably look like the bad guys as our attackers were fairly old and unassuming in appearance. We decide to hide in a nearby school’s theatre. There are people in it still, all bundled under sleeping bags watching the end credits of a movie and about to leave. Craig steals a sleeping bag as a disguise and we walk out of the theatre with the crowd. we realize then that we have to go to a harmonica jam session at the house where the people whom we had just been attacked by and beaten up live. We figured it would be awkward but went anyway. The wife comes in, bruise on her face from the butt end of the gun, carrying a plate of cookies and the man is sitting on his couch, sipping coffee and giving us the ol’ stink eye. My uncle Rick is there too, but has no idea what is going on between all of us. There are moths fluttering around the room the whole time and I start to hit them out of the air at random and the man winces every time I do. I then realize that he is either a moth as well or is using the moths for some evil plan; It was just common sense at the time. I keep smacking the moths to annoy him as I am still bitter about the whole trying-to-kill-me thing. craig and I keep making little remarks about the other night and how we came out on top and that moths are stupid and he can barely keep in his anger. My uncle leaves the room for a moment and the man finally lets known what he thinks of me. he tells me off, insulting me, my family, my upbringing and everything I hold dear. My attention slips and I look out the window at some windmills in the distance, completely ignoring his surely scathing words. the only thing I hear is mumbling nonsense, almost white noise, from the man and Craig laughing at how I’m ignoring him.

UBBT: First Ramble o' the New Year

Well, I'm in over my head. The year is just started and I feel like I am already behind.
This is a wild card for me right now. I have no idea what to expect except for sore muscles. I’m slapping things together to organize what I need to do into some kind of manageable system because I am one of the most disorganized people I know. I asked for a large whiteboard for Xmas, a pedometer as well, just made a spreadsheet to track my numbers day to day and there’s a list of things as long as my arm of things I’m still doing to get ready for this as well as the new semester of school. I’m also a procrastinator. I like to do things at the last possible second and hope for the best. This coming year I can’t afford to procrastinate. I have to do this stuff every day. Not only that, but I need to stay focused and think this stuff every day. Yup, this is going to be hard. But, that’s the reason I got into it. I don’t want to have time to be lazy, I waste so much time doing it as it is.
Best Case Scenario: This Test helps me change some bad habits, helps me get into good shape and teaches me valuable life lessons that I’ll cherish forever.
Worst Case Scenario: Nothing changes, I fail.  This is doubtful. There is such a good group of people in on this with me that I don’t see this happening.
Sleep time. I need to get up and be productive tomorrow. I promise my next blog won’t be such a disjointed ramble.