Freeze!
Over the last couple weeks I've had about a thousand great, fascinating and interesting ideas that I wanted to blog. I was actually walking around writing them in my own head; whole metaphors, parables, narratives, philosophies, stories, all sorts. I was so intent on this, I actually walked in to a door. So what did I do about blogging it then? Nothing. When I sat down in front of the machine to start typing away, all the different ideas I had crowded in and I got total freeze.
This interested me. You may have heard about, or even experienced, freeze in a conflict. Your brain starts looping and everything you know tries to crowd out at once and you stand there doing nothing whilst someone knocks you about (physically, verbally, whatever). Now I have experienced it in a writing context too. So question is, what qualifies as a conflict? Does my trying to bang out words into the digital universe qualify? What about when I write an essay? I'm in the unenviable position of being an undergraduate again, having left the dizzying heights of doctoral research, in order to retrain for an actual job. I have to write essays again. As I was walking along the other day (before I hit the door), I was likening essay writing to kata and randori (mind-wrote a whole blog post about it; it was a good one), so clearly I do link it to my martial practice at least on some level.
I should probably point out at this stage that I have no idea where I'm going with this; they are, as per usual, just thoughts that come in to mind and that I then proceed to splurge out over the screen with little or no real idea why.
Anyway, it's not the only time recently I froze. I recently got tapped out in a grapple on the ground because I stopped doing anything. Why? Because i was debating the relative ethics of attacking my partner's eyes! I actually allowed him to choke me out, knowing it was coming, because I was too caught up in over-thinking the boundaries of martial practice.
And today ... today I stood outside in the rain for 20 minutes because I couldn't figure out whether I wanted a coffee or some food. how ridiculous is that? I'm not even particularly indecisive normally, so I have to wonder why this new pattern is emerging. I vaguely remember something from the Hagakure about making decisions within a time frame of seven breaths. This shall be my new rule: if I find myself doing nothing, I will just do anything within a seven breath span. Once again, it seems, martial arts has come to my rescue.
This interested me. You may have heard about, or even experienced, freeze in a conflict. Your brain starts looping and everything you know tries to crowd out at once and you stand there doing nothing whilst someone knocks you about (physically, verbally, whatever). Now I have experienced it in a writing context too. So question is, what qualifies as a conflict? Does my trying to bang out words into the digital universe qualify? What about when I write an essay? I'm in the unenviable position of being an undergraduate again, having left the dizzying heights of doctoral research, in order to retrain for an actual job. I have to write essays again. As I was walking along the other day (before I hit the door), I was likening essay writing to kata and randori (mind-wrote a whole blog post about it; it was a good one), so clearly I do link it to my martial practice at least on some level.
I should probably point out at this stage that I have no idea where I'm going with this; they are, as per usual, just thoughts that come in to mind and that I then proceed to splurge out over the screen with little or no real idea why.
Anyway, it's not the only time recently I froze. I recently got tapped out in a grapple on the ground because I stopped doing anything. Why? Because i was debating the relative ethics of attacking my partner's eyes! I actually allowed him to choke me out, knowing it was coming, because I was too caught up in over-thinking the boundaries of martial practice.
And today ... today I stood outside in the rain for 20 minutes because I couldn't figure out whether I wanted a coffee or some food. how ridiculous is that? I'm not even particularly indecisive normally, so I have to wonder why this new pattern is emerging. I vaguely remember something from the Hagakure about making decisions within a time frame of seven breaths. This shall be my new rule: if I find myself doing nothing, I will just do anything within a seven breath span. Once again, it seems, martial arts has come to my rescue.
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