And Life Comes to a Grinding Halt

I was at work today when myself and a coworker got pulled aside to have a “talk”. As I go into my boss's office, I have nightmares of being laid off running through my head. So we go into his office and he says, “Kearl Lake”. Apparently we got a bid on a new gigantic job, surveying a new 240 kilometer power line, at Kearl Lake, roughly 100 kilometers North of Fort McMurray. So we’ve gone from having little work and short hours to too much work and ridiculous hours.

Problem is it’s out of town and we have to work on their schedule. They work 20 on 10 off or 10 on 4 off. We would probably be working 20 on 10 off because they are in a rush and have to be done by spring when the ice roads thaw. The company I work for usually doesn’t do much out of town, 3-5 days out in Cold Lake or something, staying in hotels, but with the slow down we’ve been trying to expand and get work wherever we can.

This job would be in a camp in the middle of nowhere. I’ve never stayed in a camp or worked more than 6 days in a row. I have no desired to work 20, 12 hour days in a row or stay in some crappy camp but it beats working half days here. I can’t very we’ll tell the office I’m not going, they really need people (I’m also one of the few that can pass a drug test lol) and the work has been slow, I’d be worried about getting canned and I could really use the cash. So I’m probably going to go for a bit. I told them I’d be willing to go out but I can’t go the whole time, I might go once or twice and never back to back.

If I go everything I’ve been doing will come to a screeching fiery end. I’ve been very busy lately and I like how much progress I’ve made. Here’s a rough look at my weekly schedule: (whenever I say mess around or I have free time I’m often doing UBBT stuff)

Monday: Home from work at 5:00, eat and do whatever needs doing at home, off to Kung fu at 7:00, home by 10:30, in bed by 11:30.

Tuesday: Home from work at 5:00, mess around for an hour or two, go play squash for a couple hours with friends, eat supper, in bed by 11:00.

Wednesday: Home from work at 5:00, eat and do whatever needs doing at home, off to Kung Fu at 7:00, home by 10:30, in bed by 11:30.

Thursday: Home from work by 5:00, mess around for an hour or two, go to gymnastics for an hour or two, eat supper, in bed by 11:00.

Friday: Home from work by 5:00, leave to Kung Fu at 6:00, back home at 8:00 or 9:00 depending on the day of the month, eat supper, shower and leave my house by 10:00, arrive at improv theater by 10:30, leave improv at 1:00 am, go out to play pool somewhere for an hour or two, get home around 3 or 4 am, go to bed.

Saturday: Wake up at 11:30, leave for kung fu by 12:00 or 12:30, get home from open training by 3 or 4, mess around for a few hours, meet up with friends and spend the rest of the day doing stuff with them, home late, go to bed.

Sunday: FREE DAY!! Nothing too pressing to do. Write a journal entry, do some UBBT stuff, buy groceries, do laundry, maybe go out with friends for a bit. It’s my lazy day of the week.

Not to mention the stuff I’ve been trying to do like drawing, plan the black belt retreat, research becoming a registered charity for the Benevolent foundation, try new things with friends, go snowboarding…etc. I’m really worried about going out of town for such a long length of time. It means I’m not going to be able to get near as much done and it will be tougher for me to keep in contact with people. At this point in time I don’t even know if the camp has internet and even if it does I don’t have a laptop. I might have to buy one or just bring my desktop.

If I’m going I have to decide by Friday because we will be leaving Monday morning. As usual everything at work is last minute and in a rush. I have a lot of stuff to finish before then. I’m really going to hate missing so much class and activities. ARRRGGGGHHH! I wish I had money!

I’m going to make a point of training my butt off in camp. I’m assuming there’s nothing to do down there anyways. It will be very easy survey work too so I’m sure I’ll be able to find time on the job to practice some forms, do some pushups and heck maybe even run a few kilometers in snowshoes. I will totally get behind in sparring and Jujitsu though (unless someone wants to come visit me, or maybe I should start fights with camp workers)

I’m about 90% sure I’ll be going so when its 100% sure I’ll let everyone know what’s up. I apologize to my fellow black belts and Benevolent Foundation Board Members if my absence becomes a problem; I’m hoping to only do this once. From all I’ve heard about camp life it’s not for me. At least I won’t have to cook for myself for awhile.

ZZZZZzzzzzzz…

I really enjoy sleeping. I love a good sleep and hate not getting enough. Even when I’m sleeping, while dreaming, I can be conscious of a good unconsciousness. Sometimes I wake up refreshed and go back to sleep just for fun, wishing I was tired enough to make it last longer. It’s like a day at a spa for my mind, an activity to be savored.

It’s safe to say I’m not a morning person. My energy peak hits around 7 – 8 pm and I always feel more energetic in the evening and at night. I like to sleep in; in fact I look forward to sleeping in all week. On the weekend I’ll usually sleep until 11:00 or 12:00 and love it. I recharge my batteries on weekends. I find I get more and more tired throughout the week, from not getting enough sleep, and on Saturday I make up for it.

It seems that how much sleep I get (within reason obviously) isn’t as important as what time I get up. If I go to bed at 4 in the morning and wake up at 11 I’ll feel way better than if I had gone to bed at 10 and woke up at 6. I need 7-8 hours of sleep to feel good, 6 to be functional and 5 or less to feel terrible all day. I wish I was one of these people that could be energetic and productive with less sleep, it would be much easier to get stuff done if you only sleep for five hours. The quality of my night’s sleep often determines the energy level of the rest of the day.

As much as I like sleeping I don’t like taking naps. Any time I take a nap in the evening I wake up feeling disorientated and tired. So no matter how tired I might get I won’t go take a nap because it makes me feel worse. Plus a half hour nap often becomes a three hour nap and it sucks going to sleep at 7pm and waking up three hours later.

The exception to this rule is power naps at work or school. I don’t have to drive at work and we’re often driving all around Edmonton and area to different job sites. Being in a moving vehicle makes me drowsy (if I’m not driving) and I’ll nod of sometimes for 10-20 minutes. These little power naps feel fantastic, I swear, 10 minutes in a truck sleeping feels like 3 hours of good sleep.

My sleep schedule isn’t usually a problem but there are a couple clashes. The big one I’ve been worrying about is the Tai Chi class offered on Saturday’s at 9am. I have to learn the Tai Chi long form for second degree black belt but I wish there was a class at another time. I always stay up late on Friday nights with friends and sleep in Saturday mornings. Getting up at 9 is not an option unless I don’t do anything Fridays and even then the rest of my weekend suffers. Plus I like to go to open training on Saturday’s for the last hour or so when it’s less busy and I have more room to swing stuff around. Being at Kung Fu from 9 am to 2pm is a bit too much for me. I’m going to have to explore my options on this one; I’m hoping I can get someone to teach me the form at other times.

I hate how sleeping, or enjoying sleep, is often associated with laziness. Everyone has a different, natural sleep schedule and you have to accommodate for it. Just because you like sleeping in doesn’t mean you’re lazy. Sweet dreams everyone, until next week.

I Should Hire a Drill Sergeant

These past couple weeks I’ve been a little lax with my UBBT requirements. I was working out of town for a few days and it threw of my schedule. I injured my left shoulder doing gymnastics stuff last week and it’s still giving me trouble. I don’t know if it’s a strained muscle, a pinched nerve or what but it hurts moving it certain ways and I can’t put a lot of weight on it. So I haven’t been doing pushups because they hurt and I want it to heal. I’m trying to do more sit-ups but I’ll have some catching up to do.

To top it off I went snowboarding this weekend and wiped out hard once, on my other shoulder, so now it’s bugging me too. I think it’s just bruised though, its sore but it doesn’t feel as serious as my other shoulder. These injuries and a bit of laziness (largely laziness) have made the last week and a half my worst contribution to the UBBT requirements so far. I have to work extra hard this week, if you see me at kung fu and I’m not working hard, yell at me.

I can’t go to gymnastics until my shoulder stops bugging me and its really bumming me out. I’m excited to get going with it but I’m already riddled with injuries. I feel like I heal twice as slow as I did two years ago. Writing down my daily workouts really helps me analyze my routines. It’s nice being able to see my highs and lows and what contributed to them.

Something I’ve noticed, since starting the UBBT, is that time seems to go by slower when I have really active weeks. The busier my week is, the more important every day seems to be. If I have a couple days where I don’t get much done it feels like a week and it gets me on track faster since I start to feel anxious sooner. I have been appreciating my days more since starting the UBBT. Time seems like it’s not flying by quite as fast and I like that.

Face Meets Mats

The other day I got a call back from the gymnastics club that I was hoping to go to. A coach was available so I booked a private lesson. We met up last Thursday at Capital City Gymnastics on the west end of the city. My coach asked if there were any particular techniques I wanted to learn so I told her I’m interested in learning handsprings, back flips and front flips (Self chosen UBBT requirement).

She said if I can learn those basic techniques I should be able to experiment with a bunch of other agility maneuvers. We started out with some simple handstand stuff and moved on to handstand hops. My wrists are going to be a problem; since I can’t bend them back far enough to be perpendicular to my forearms.

After the handstand stuff we worked on backwards handsprings. She covered a pommel horse with a mat and put a landing mad behind it. I’d stand about a foot away from the pommel horse with my back to it and try to jump backwards over it and land on my hands on the other side. This is my favorite exercise so far, I’m getting pretty good at it too.

The last thing we worked on was using a small trampoline to do front flips onto a big mat. I have habit of going over my shoulder, probably because of shoulder rolls, instead of straight forward so I’m going to have to get break it. I spent awhile experimenting with the front rolls and flips.

The session was about an hour long but I stuck around for another hour to practice the exercises she gave me. I think I over did it because I could hardly move my legs for the next couple days and I’m still a bit sore three days later. The gym is pretty cool, absolutely everything is covered in mats, foam or padding of varying softness. You can pretty much face plant from three stories up and not hurt yourself. I did my share of landing on my head, face and back. I probably landed on my head more times in two hours than the past 22 years combined.

It was a ton of fun messing around. I’m going to try and go once a week for the adult drop in to mess around and practice. Every now and then I’ll make an appointment with a coach when I feel confident about moving on.

Campbell’s Soup Comin’ Right Up

I had a small epiphany today. I realized I want to be an artist. I practice martial arts, which is most defiantly an expression of art, but I’m talking about a more classical sense of art. Specifically, I want to draw. I’m not saying I have grand dreams of quitting my job and becoming a full time artist. I have no delusions about becoming rich and famous, going down in the history books as the greatest artist of the 21^st century. I want to become a casual artist, an amateur artist that does it for the love of doing it, going home in the evening to create a picture instead of watching one.

This isn’t a sudden impulse from out of nowhere. It’s not like I’ve only drawn stick men my whole life and suddenly I think I have talent. If I could go back in time to alter a direction in my life, not counting silly things like asking that girl out a week sooner, I would take art classes in school and pursue my artistic talent. Not pursuing my drawing ability is one of my biggest regrets. I can’t play a musical instrument or sing to save my life but I always could draw.

I feel I should elaborate: I am not amazing at drawing, I can’t whip up a lifelike portrait on a whim but I feel with practice I could. I do have some natural talent. Ever since I was young I’ve liked to draw for fun. I used to get home from school and draw for hours; I liked making pictures based on the fantasy books I read. I came up with some good stuff for my age and throughout school, whenever a project required some artistic skills, myself and another friend were always the ones picked to do the job. For some reason, I never took art in school. I’m still kicking myself for that, I’m sure I could have learned a lot.

I can recall four things I’ve made that I’m really proud of; a portrait of another classmate I made in forth grade that myself and my teacher were surprised to find fairly accurate, a stipple portrait I made in high school, a landscape I did at work while I had a couple hours to fill, and my kung fu banner for black belt. I drew the landscape on the back of a long piece of graph paper and used a mechanical pencil. I was just messing around for a couple hours but it turned out pretty nice and the guy I was with put it in the job file with his notes for fun. Every now and then someone at work comes by and says, “Hey I saw your picture, all I can draw are stick men.”

At some point along the line I stopped drawing for fun. I would dabble now and then, having a blast doing so, but those were rare occasions where other people required me to draw. This has been in the back of my mind for a long time. A couple years ago I felt the urge to reunite with my old friend and I even bought a few books on drawing techniques. It didn’t catch though and I stopped again, mostly because I was frustrated with my lack of practice and general knowledge of the art. Since then it’s been a voice hiding in my subconscious, growing louder and louder as time passes.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about artists and their art. I finished reading “A Passage to India,” today and the ending was a catalyst for this realization. I really liked how poor Doctor Aziz decides to leave behind his good job and friends to move into the jungle so that he can write poetry and be at peace.

I’ve really come to respect and admire artist’s abilities. I think it’s very noble to express yourself through the creation of something beautiful. It’s a very simple concept but very few people actually do this. So lately I’ve found myself enamored with the concept of “being” and artist. I think the term “artist” can apply to anyone, as long as you are creating something you’re passionate about, and it’s a routine part of your life, I think you’ve earned the title.

I’m going to start drawing again. This isn’t like the other couple of times I’ve thought of doing it, something’s clicked and I feel like it’s important. I’m going to start small and see where it goes. It should be a great challenge, I feel less frustrated with my inexperience and excited about developing my skills. I want to be serious about it and I’d love to reach the point where I could put on a show or actually sell art. It would be fantastic to be able to make some money on the side doing something I would do for free.

I figured I’d end this with one of my favorite anecdotes about art. In the introduction of one of his books, my favorite cartoonist Berkeley Breathed (Bloom County: The best comic strip ever), said his interest began in elementary school art class. For one of his projects he drew an astronaut in space, leaving out a head, filled his mouth with red poster paint and spewed it where the head should be. This gave the picture a fantastically exaggerated head explosion. Upon presenting this picture to his art teacher her response was,

“It’s awful; you’re going to be famous.”

I’ve always liked that art teacher.