ProjectMoment

I used to be a fanatic about reading fitness gurus, magazines, books and websites. The fascination took up major portions of my day. I picked up a lot of tips along the way. I still keep my eyeballs in there a bit, but only to check to see if anything useful has actually been done.

You see, the one thing I learned most of all is this - with amazingly few exception it’s all been said before. Jack LaLanne came up with 99% of what Bill Phillips said in Body for Life. Mike Mentzer mostly re-posted what the old greats like Eugene Sandow had already wrote. Don’t get me wrong, I salute the folks like Mike Mentzer and Bill Phillips (Mike Mentzer was a genius in my estimation) who keep the flame alive and carry the message of health to new generations, but very little has been added to the base line knowledge of what it takes to get fit.

My mind keeps going back to the simplicity of calisthenics. Our bodies are our first tool, and every baby knows that the way to get strong, agile, and mobile is to lift and flex the one set of weights you always have with you: you.

Here’s a very simple and effective exercise routine that has served men and women alike since they were first recognizable as such. Get up. That’s it. Lay down on the ground, let your body be completely stopped as if sleeping, then get up. Repeat. There are almost a limitless number of variations here. Speed, position, reps, sets. You can do it with both arms, one arm, or no arms. Both legs, one leg, or if you are fit enough to handstand, no legs.

Do that 20 times as fast as you can I you will be puffing. And, if you are not, just do it 10 more times.

In our modern age we often look to complicate things. In fitness it is not necessary. Just get up.

So there I was, driving home on Friday night from work singing my lungs out to the song Good by Better Than Ezra. The song has the line, “Maybe we’ll see on the 4th of July.” My wife, and I had our first kiss on the 4th of July. After parking the car and dropping off my bags I went out to the cafe to get a cappuccino. While I was at work I had been reading the book On Writing by Stephen King. I had just finished with his tale of being a recovering alcoholic and re-reading his book Misery after a few years of sobriety. He had commented on how prophetic Misery was for an alcoholic writer, the book is about a nurse (a symbol of being institutionalized - which is what they used to do to alcoholics) who drinks heavily holding her favorite writer prisoner and torturing him into writing for her.

So, on my way to get my capp I glanced at the free bin outside of my favorite used book store, Dog Eared Books, and there on top of a large pile was Thinner. Me being a recovering overeater in the 12-Step Program Overeaters Anonymous. I picked it up.

While standing at the line for my coffee a couple of guys walked down the sidewalk outside. One of them was singing, Good.

Life looks back at you sometimes.

In any area of life where we acquire a set of skills, techniques, or tools it can be easy to become lost in the skill and loose the original creativity that drove us to the learning in the first place.

What good is a carpenter without a hammer? What good is a carpenter without carpentry?

What good is Bruce Lee without his amazing kicks? What good is Bruce Lee without martial art?

What good is the Buddha without his teachings? What good is the Buddha without enlightenment?

We, each of us, is a creative force in potentiality. And that creativity is stuck inside until we learn a method for getting it out, and acquire the techniques and tools to make it happen. When the artist gets too focused on the techniques and tools however, the creativity gets stifled there.

In martial art we find creativity in conflict. But we can become stuck in the hand positions, foot work, and snazzy tricks we learn. In a self-defense situation, in its rawest basic structure, we have exactly two choices in our response to an attack - collapse or expand. Collapse can take the forms of freezing or physical collapse. Expansion can take the forms of ‘flight’ or ‘fight’. But, at the base level these are your two options - collapse or expand .

In martial art we aim for expanding. This is where different schools diverge wildly. Bruce Lee would expand his foot right through the attacker’s face. O’Sensei (founder of Aikido, which I study) would expand to join with the attack and lead the attacker away, down, or into a pin. The techniques of martial art (which ever one catches your fancy) are absolutely essential , without them you have no refinement of the use of your tools, but they are only a means to an end. A way to expand creatively in dealing with a situation.

Just like the difference between a painter who has never learned painting formally and one who has years of tutelage and guidance. They can both express their creative urge in the medium of paint, but I am willing to bet the trained painter will do a better job of it.

In Aikido, by my thinking, the basic method is to reach out to touch our attacker, and to keep moving. What options we have then are predicated by the tools we have learned and perfected, but without first touching and moving we have nothing.

The tools are critical, but they are not the aim.

I have long struggled with getting my life more organized, and making sure I don’t let things fall through the cracks. For me it is an uphill battle. My mid-term memory has never been that reliable. And, I suffer from a basic lack of education in this area. My best attempts have involved keeping notes in a pocket sized notebook.

I have toyed with the idea of getting a PDA, like a Palm or some such, but have had serious doubts as to whether I would actually use it. I have also dismissed the idea of a planner like the Day Runner because of it’s size and clumsiness.

In surfing some of my feeds today I came across the Computer Zen site entry on Personal Systems of Organization, which lead me to the Hipster PDA (and it’s wiki), and to the D*I*Y planner, and to the Moleskine Hack wiki, and to the GTDTiddlyWiki, and to the amazing PigPogPDA. Obviously I have some reading to do for today. But my initial reaction is - EUREKA!!!!

I do not know yet if this all will lead to me finally getting more organized about getting things done, but I do know that it will improve my currently sub-par system.