coffee… mmm

ear­lier this year I was bummed that Moonbean’s, the coffee shop around the corner from me, had closed. They had pulled a “going on vacation” and never came back. It was a sort of per­sonal loss as I had a lot of his­tory tied up in Moon­beans. This past week I was pleas­antly sur­prised to find a new coffee shop has opened in Moonbean’s space. The coffee wasn’t bad, so I again have a place to get my fix within walk­ing distance.

Moon­beans wasn’t the first time that a favorite haunt went on a per­ma­nent vaca­tion. A few years before Savannah’s, a restau­rant also near me that used to have the best Sunday Blues brunch, never returned from vaca­tion (now there is a Greek restau­rant in its spot). I wonder what moti­vates the “Going on Vacation” vs. “Closing” announce­ment. Is it that the owners just don’t want to admit that they’re clos­ing? Or that they reach some type of clar­ity while away and give up.

out­side vs. inside

i’ve been con­tem­plat­ing mea­sure­ments today. How we mea­sure our­selves. In a note to a friend I remarked that from our ear­li­est moments we’ve typ­i­cally been judged against exter­nals (usu­ally our peers). This most obvi­ously hap­pens as a by-​product of the main­stream edu­ca­tion system. And that’s a faulty system. Or at least one that leads to large amounts of frus­tra­tion. Ulti­mately, while we all have sim­i­lar skills, every­one has cer­tain pre­dis­po­si­tions towards cer­tain things and biases towards others. When it comes down to it, we’re not cre­ated genetically/biologically/mentally/psychologically equal.

The real goal would be to be judged against our own poten­tial. But that’s a lot fuzzier. And frus­trat­ing. I mean there is no easy way to gauge one’s ulti­mate poten­tial. And most attempts to come up with stan­dard­ized meth­ods for test­ing poten­tial (to my knowl­edge) have been dismal fail­ures, most likely doing more harm than good (see IQ). Even if there was a method, there’s an argu­ment that poten­tials can be increased through effort (or con­versely decreased through lack there of).

All of this leads me back to the need to teach our­selves to mea­sure our­selves against who we were yes­ter­day. And do that in light of who we will be tomor­row. And that’s dif­fi­cult, at least for me. I mean, I still often get down when I see a begin­ner make cog­ni­tive leaps in the Mar­tial Arts that took me years. And in that moment, I ignore all the progress that I’ve made. I’m told that’s a pretty normal thing to do.

And some­times, around all this, I wonder how much fur­ther along we could be as a species if we just were able to inter­nal­ize wisdom the first time that we heard it: that we were not pro­grammed, for some unknown reason, to only be capa­ble of learn­ing cer­tain things through expe­ri­ence and through pain.

pre­dictabil­ity

You might have noticed that I’ve posted a basic sched­ule on the top of this and the mar­i­tal arts blog . I’ve decided this is this will be the best way for me to keep on top of things. So look for post­ings on this page on Mon­days, Wednes­days and Fri­days. The other blog will get updated on Tues­days and Thursdays.

That isn’t to say that either might get updated more often if I have some­thing to say (like today). But for the moment, this is the guar­an­teed schedule.

One of the things about being behind is that I just can’t jus­tify taking the time to post and rant the way I’d like. And with the emi­nent war I have tons to say. That’s not to sug­gest that:

a – It will change any­thing. Things are set and that isn’t going to change

or

b – That it mat­ters. Quite frankly I’m no expert in inter­na­tional or mid east rela­tions. So for the moment, I’ll leave things to an expert… This audio inter­view with Jour­nal­ist Thomas Powers should be required lis­ten­ing for every Amer­i­can. Doing his best not to take a side Powers, an expert on the CIA and other clan­des­tine orgs, really breaks down what the real dri­vers are. And the real pit­falls of what lays ahead. It’s a fair asse­ment and impor­tant to here. It comes cour­tesy of the NPR pro­gram, Fresh Air.

behind

that’s what I still am :-(

sick

I’ve been rather ill for the last few days. Vio­lently ill. Exor­cist ill. :-P

I’m on the mend now, but the week­end was a bit of a wash and I missed work yes­ter­day, so I feel rather behind the 8-ball.

steps for­ward, steps back

Life seems to be a mix of those right now. I’ve been able to read more and have been improv­ing on the Mar­tial Arts side of the house. But at the same time that’s just making me real­ize how much I need to sac­ri­fice for my own self devel­op­ment. Or at least focused self devel­op­ment in par­tic­u­lar areas. I’ve always tried to be a Renais­sance person, and with a full time job, there’s no way to do every­thing (espe­cially if you want to main­tain friend­ships, espe­cially those over great dis­tances). So for the moment, I need to put some things on the back burn­ers to finish the things that I have in front of me.

My biggest goal: is to try to gain a teach­ing rank (Sifu) by the time I turn 30. I’m not sure if it’s pos­si­ble, I’m a year and a half away from that. But I’m going to try!