The weekend of the Memorial Day holiday, instead of hanging out at home and going about doing what I usually do, and then trying not to do what I wanted to do, I decided to take little trip and visit a friend a couple hours away from here. This might have been the best thing I could have done.
Sometimes we just need a minor change of scenery to help adjust our perspective or give us a different way to see something. The time with my friend did just that. It’s not that we did anything major or what others might call exciting. Mostly we just hung out. He’s just moved to Cary and so we took part of Saturday and had a short wander through downtown. That was interesting, it was hot. We had to go back and have a nice cool nap to recover before heading out to a music store, because. See, not too exciting. Neither was Sunday. A trip to Target and then helping him make a little more sense of his new home. And then a movie on TV.
So why would that be the best thing I could have done? Well, for starters, I wasn’t home. I wasn’t staring at all the things I think I need to do. Or staring at all the stuff I want to go through because I think I have too much. And I wasn’t flitting back and forth between social media and email and whatever else looking for entertainment as I try not to do those things that could have caused me added body pain.
I was limited in my electronic interactions. I had my tablet and my phone. I never got out my tablet and I tried to limit the time I spent staring at my phone. I made a specific point of this. I was there to see my friend. I think it’s rude to go visit someone and then spend all your time engaged with your electronic device. It would have been different if there had been a problem at work. There wasn’t. So phone time could be limited. This was awesome.
As I drove home I had time to think and enjoy the beautiful day and really appreciate the time away. Short though it was. It gave me time to think of things that I’ve been working on how to change. It gave me time to think of a lot of things I want to change. And then I got home and within a few minutes of being home I had turned on 3 computers. What the…? How necessary was that?
That’s surely a sign of having something amiss. Time to start re-thinking things in ernest. The first thing I’m trying to tackle is sleep. I think I might have mentioned how I’ve adjusted my alarms so I get up a little later in the morning because between my friend’s comment on how little I sleep and a TED talk about how sleep deprivation is killing us, I figured it was time to look at that. The later alarm in the morning is helping. It’s still not enough. So my next step is to try to get to bed earlier. It’s a work in progress.
I’ve also started looking at the habits and routines I’ve fallen into over the years. I want to evaluate if they are still working for me. I have a feeling some are not. Like in cleaning my home and how I get that done. Like habits at work. My habit of Taekwondo. Or even how I approach music and the Blues Jams. It’s kind of time to start looking at these things and make sure they still work or fit and what doesn’t work needs to be fixed or adjusted.
I suspect my Taekwondo will shift a bit. It always seems to as I get higher in the belts. This weekend was the weekend that I have been trying to keep myself injury free for. And the weekend that I’ve been working so hard towards for the last six months. I finally tested for 2nd Dan in Taekwondo. That means I tested for my 2nd degree black belt. I passed. I was a little surprised at how I did on a few things. And unlike my test for 1st Dan I didn’t have anything that at the end I felt I had messed up. I did my best. I gave it my all. While I would have liked my body to have been in better condition, and shape for the test, I can’t say that it didn’t do what I asked it to. As I write this, I’m not entirely certain that it has sunk in. I suspect it will the first time I put on the belt to go to class and when I start learning the next set of poomse (forms) for the next test. It’s three years away though so I’ve got time to learn them and to work on the body.
With the Black Belt test done it’s time to move on to focusing on the next major thing for this year. The test for the day job. I’ve been lucky the last few weeks, I’ve had a lot of time at the day job to do some studying to get me ready. The training course I’m using is helpful and I’m about 60% done with it. I’ve finished the reading in the course and I’m doing practice tests. It’s not really enough to make me comfortable so I’ll be reading the Microsoft books for the test as well. That is probably the most challenging part of test prep for me. Though, maybe, with my new push to get more sleep, it won’t be too bad. I hope. My goal with the test is to have it done and passed before going on my trip to Australia. That means I need to take it early enough this summer to have time to re-take it if needed. So that will be my next big focus.
I’m shaking up how I approach the Blues Jams a little. For starters, I’m probably not going to be taking the camera as often. I’d started doing that to be able to review what I was doing and how I was or was not progressing. It’s been really helpful. But, as I’ve been recording the whole jam thinking I would go back and watch more of it than I have, it’s become a little more work and a little less fun. So the camera it going to get a little break.
I’ll still be working on new songs and practicing the older ones regularly. I still need and want to expand my catalog of songs I can sing and play. The difference right now is that with focusing on the test for work and trying to get more sleep, progress may slow a little again. That’s ok. Sometimes we rush to force progress by getting all in with something and then we find a point where we discover that we maybe took some of the fun out of it for ourselves. When that happens you can quit completely or you can back up and back off and regroup and adjust the pace. That’s what I’ll be doing. Partly for those reasons and partly out of need to give other things more time.
So there you are. Some of what’s been going on and some of what’s to come. I’m including some photos from my black belt test. We had a good size group with nine people pre-testing for 2nd Dan, 7 of us testing for 2nd Dan, 2 pre-testing for 3rd Dan and 1 woman testing for her 4th Dan which is Master level. I hope to be there one day.