Yep, did tai chi.  Yep, got it done.  Nope, not particularly satisfied with the quality of my performance.  Yep, some knee issues linger.  Yep, did druidry work immediately after doing tai chi.

But in truth, something has changed in the last few months of practice.  The challenge has not been getting up to do the tai chi; it’s been sitting down to write the explanation of how the tai chi practice went, and what I would change about it.  That’s a complicated line to navigate.  On the one hand, I want to tell the world that yes, I did Tai Chi again today — just like I’ve done for 292 + 366 + 366 days ( = 1024 days) beforehand.  But it’s getting boring explaining that.

At the beginning, it was me encouraging you (and encouraging me) to take up a practice and do it every day.  Then it was me explaining the wrinkles of daily practice and the challenges; and now it’s becoming a “yep, got it done, nothing more to say” sort of experience.

I’m reminded of St. Augustine’s Confessions.  If you’ve ever read the book, you’ll know that the first three-fourths of the book is Augustine of Hippo’s explanation of his life — what he’d done, how he’d done it, why it mattered, how it affected his approach to God, and who it helped him become.

And then comes his conversion.  And while it’s inspiring to hear his conversion to a life in Christ, if you’re into that sort of thing, there’s also the genuine truth that his explanation of his life after his baptism is, well, boring.  Or at least, the way he writes about that experience is boring.  The writing after that point is not the work of a man or woman struggling to decide what his soul is telling him — it’s the work of a man convinced he’s bought the right car, and he’d like you to buy the same car as him.

And I’m concerned that this is what this blog is turning into — buy a model Tai Chi in 2015! You too can have a crazy-difficult daily practice that you do through vacation and hard days at work and more! you too can be up at 5am in your pajamas swinging your arms around in the spare room realllllly slowwwwwwwwwwwly!

You’d tell me if you were bored, right?  If it began to be too much of a sales pitch? Or not enough of one?

Probably not.  You’d just stop reading.  And so I’m thinking that this blog will make a change in 2015.  Not tomorrow, not next week.  But there’s a big Y3D366 in this blog’s future, and I’m beginning to consider what comes beyond that.  I don’t think I’m anywhere near as good a writer as St. Augustine of Hippo — but I also know that I don’t want my audience to slog through tedium on a daily basis, either.

Liked it? Take a second to support Andrew on Patreon!