The important thing is that everything is okay. This has not, mostly, been a day of everything being okay--having nothing to do, I spent some part of the day in the mental equivalent of rocking back and forth in a dark room with my hands over my ears. But I can see that in a way I couldn't in 2002, I can evaluate my moods and behaviors and make choices to change them. The change needed for today's mood was to go do something, and later sit down and breath for a couple minutes, and generally stop spazzing.

From a Bill Maher rant:

Yes, we think we're doing something educational because we're sitting at a keyboard, but really the Internet is good for two things: stealing music and meeting thirteen-year-old girls. Yes, there's never been a better time to be a pedophiliac jazz buff.

I got my ass kicked at aikido this weekend. In a good way--just a lot of intense playing with people. I'm perceiving a shift in my relationships with people, and I'm not sure why. I think, although I don't always feel it to be the case, that I'm more open to them, and more willing to communicate that I like them; I've probably demonstrated to everyone through my training that I'm not going to quit, and therefore I'm safe to be friends with because I'm not going away; and not only did everyone see me get my new rank, but wearing a blue belt instead of a white one may remind them (or make them think) that I can play harder because I can safely take harder or more complicated falls. (I'm not willing to rule out that my teacher has gone to black belts I know and told them to start working me harder, but I think there are sufficient less-paranoid reasons for it.) It's a nice feeling all around, getting farther into the way that dojo relationships communicate and express themselves...only occasionally in words, but much more usually in the desire to train together and the manner of the training.

Actually, today's asskicking came courtesy of the early weapons class, where we finished with maybe 140 sword strikes, and then the general class, where, to commemorate the 108 worldly concerns that we wish to leave behind to start the new year with renewed purity, my teacher had us do 108 iterations of irimi nage, in 10 sets of 10 and one set of 8. It's hard to give some perspective on that, but irimi nage can be pretty tiring for both people, and 108 is really a lot of times to do anything.

And so we put our concerns of the previous year behind us, and embark on the new year with a renewed intensity and focus.