It’s getting closer. I can feel it.
The freedom I have been promising myself for months is slowly materializing; Very Slowly. I wish I felt more like the tortoise with his certainty to accompany his limited gait, but instead I feel more like the narcoleptic hare trying to run through molasses.
As part of my preparation for upcoming changes, I am going to be updating with regularity. Daily posts, every time I go to an activity, probably even stuff from my martial arts classes. It’s going to be boring, and for that I apologize, but this is part of my training to get used to rapidly and effecetively translating experience into written word along with visual aids. Thiss will be made more difficult by the fact that during the latest upgrade to my site, I seem to have nuked all the formatting to my upload pages and someone hacked my page and put a bunch of bogus span code into key parts of the site.
So, whilst I sort through the varying technical issues surrounding my infernal web site, I’m going to be pulling some incredible copy and paste action to put this stuff out there. If you know anyone who is good with apache and securing wordpress, please let me know!
I’m most of the way across the united states right now in a westward journey, stuck in the middle seat on a Boeing 757 with a laptop that only recently got a functional battery due to my guerilla search and recover tactics and a little help from a fellow adrenaline junkie who works in the desktop support section of my office.
The recent weeks have seen the first steps in the latest of re-inventions that my life has undergone. My sensei, Sam Carlson, a First Sergeant gone ROTC instructor has been called to Afghanistan. His area of expertise is Armored combat; tanks. He will be going back now, not to destroy, but to rebuild. He is in charge of a PRT, a team tasked with rebuilding the infrastructure of the country with new buildings and health services the likes of which many locals have never seen before in their lives.
As part of this, I and the other Black Belt, Shodan Eddy, have been asked to take an increased role in the development of the school and it’s students. I’m teaching, assisting, or attending classes at my Dojo in excess of 9 hours a week. Which doesn’t sound like much but when you add that to a 50+ hour work week and my ceaseless hobbies, it becomes a significant portion of what once may have been called my “free time.â€
I can think of few activities that hold more reward for me personally than teaching. I decided years ago at the prompting of my mentor to find my purpose in life, that it was to teach. The students that were just faces to me previously, have gained names, personalities, and immeasurable worth. To top it all off, these kids are hilarious; you can’t pay for this kind of entertainment.
More updates to come. I am sure the weekend in SF with old friends will give me plenty of writing material.
