Thirty-three days left in this year. Year four almost in the can, a little more than a month to go.
I felt a little bit of accidie rising as I stepped into my office this morning. My girlfriend moved into my apartment yesterday. There are boxes and bags and extra furniture everywhere, and my office is no exception to this rule. Eventually everything will have a home (surprisingly more things have homes than I would have expected, already!). But for now, the office where I do tai chi is a mess. Who wants to study tai chi in a messy dojo?
But the moment I began the qi gong form called Five Golden Coins, all my reluctance vanished. I mean, it melted away like the snow from Monday melted in Tuesday’s warm rains (and why is it raining warm rain in mid-February in New England? Behold, the new normal — no normal).
It wasn’t a great practice. Somewhere in the middle of the West-facing form, I completely forgot where I was in the form. I started over, and the second time through I got it right.
The North-facing form had another wrinkle, too. As I was stepping into Box Ears with Fists, I encountered a long splinter on the floor. It was so long that it didn’t stab me — I just felt this thing that said ‘wood’ and ‘thin’ and ‘long’ to my foot. Reaching down, I plucked a tiny strip of wood, only 4-5 mm wide, maybe 1mm thick, and 4-7 cm long. Tiny. I was surprised I discovered it. It’s the same color as the wooden dolley that carried a small tree into my office. The ends were sharp. I carried it to the trash, threw it out, and then went back and started my North-facing form again.
I started at 6:04 this morning (vacation week, otherwise it would be 5:04-5:15am), and as I finish typing this, It’s 6:57. So, a little less than an hour, including the starting and stopping. The New York Times wellness blog reports that a little more than an hour a day of daily exercise, with thirty minutes a week of more intense workouts, is probably about optimal. So I’m going to try to record the number of minutes I spend in practice for a few weeks, and see how I’m doing.
