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There is neither darkness, nor light; There is only the Force. There is passion, yet peace. Serenity, yet emotion. Chaos, yet order. I am the shadow cast by the sun, I am the candle burning in the night, And the Force alone shall guide me. A Gray Jedi walks on both the Dark Side and the Light. I walked in the darkness for a time. Now it's time to come back to the light. A chunin (in the fanon) doesn't have a lot of explanation. The role is described as being, and I paraphrase, good enough to teach and lead whilst learning and being led. As I don't feel I can teach or lead well by word alone, I must stand in the sun, stark and simple, and cast my shadow as far as I can. The overarching theme of this challenge is to keep things simple. I am fighting the urge to complicate everything. I seek, as Bruce Lee put it, the daily decrease, the elegance of doing little and reaping much. It'll take longer than six weeks to be sure, but as the overall epic goal is to Know Myself, I think this is the next step. I started off with goals of spiritual discipline, and then moved on to attempting to apply those (and boy, did I get a lot of opportunities to apply those). Now it's time to build something again. Or to tear it down, as the case may be. Goal 1: Write Camp NaNoWriMo is in full swing, and I let myself get fooled into thinking I'm gonna do something productive with it. I need to take that lie and make it true. 15000 words at the end of the month - quality words, too. Should be feasible, because I've finally given myself the permission to not be identified by how original my thoughts are. It might just turn out to be thinly-veiled fanfic, but so what? That's most pop-lit anyway. Goal 2: Log Reads like a cop-out unless you've watched me long enough to know that I'm prone to jumping ship at the first sign of not getting what I want. The point of this goal isn't to log. I do that already. The point is to keep myself to what I'm doing, and to have the accountability to stick to the damn program. Which I like. And have no reason to change. Yet. This goal is to carry me to the end of the month, at which point, I will reassess and adjust as necessary, and then carry on to the end of the Challenge. Goal 3: Read A Praying Life So, I gotta admit, most of the religious stuff I read about cultivating discipline doesn't really appeal to me. It doesn't seem honest on a fundamental level - it doesn't acknowledge that a disciplined life is hard. It tacitly blames you for the lack and just seems to think that if you just say this formula and do this thing that you'll have an easy life. This is not the truth. Not even remotely. Fortunately, I've read this book before, and I know that it has good in it. It's a hard read, but an honest one, and I can stomach the difficulty because of it. One chapter a week. And if that makes you uncomfortable, you can think of it as me tuning myself to the Force. It works. Goal 4: 20g of Fiber per Day So, in my calculations and such, I've noticed that I tend to go really low in my fiber intake. It's not really bothered me before, but for all the probiotics I eat and such, I don't seem to see much benefit. I want to fix that. But I also know that if I go too far too fast, my body will react... poorly. So, goal this challenge is to ingest at 20g per day for the rest of the challenge. We can upgrade that further later. Means lots of veggies and some gluten-free psyllium I managed to score. Should be... cleansing. And, that's it. You'd think I'd have more Karate-flavored stuff in here, but until sensei gets back to me about getting in to build, there's not much to do there but keep on practicing with the processes I've got in place. Set it on fire, Monks.