The Clam Before the Storm (aka Feeling a Little Shellfish)....

My body is revolting!

Hang on, let me explain....

So, for the past few weeks, I (and a handful of other members of the cast of a certain webseries I'm rather intimately involved with) have been undergoing combat training, in preparation for something we are likely going to shoot soon... If you're wondering why I've been silent here in this blog for the past (almost) month, this is why. For the most part, I lead a fairly sedentary existence. I work out with a physical trainer once per week, which consists of 10-15 minutes of cardio warm-up (usually jumping rope), followed by thirty minutes of fairly strenuous weigh-based activity... it has kept me from getting too potato-like, but that's about it...

But now... lol...

The combat training regimen increased that to 4 days per week: 3 hours M, W and Th, and a 90 minute class on Saturday... this covers strength training, endurance conditioning, boxing, self defense, aikido, judo, fight choreography, reaction training, grappling, knife fighting, throws/flips and more. My body is nowhere near used to anything even close to this level of frequency and intensity; therefore, it is revolting...

I am overflowing with aches, pains, soreness and various other clear indicators that my body is not amused... but I am determined! I will persevere and endure and learn it all, even if it destroys me!

It's actually a very fascinating endeavor. The hardest part for me is trying to learn so much at once. It's like trying to learn all 12 grades of math at the same time. I'm learning about geometry and algebra when I'm also trying to learn to count to 10... compounding this problem is that rather sizable disconnect that exists between my eyes/brain and my body. Meaning, I can see something and understand it, but getting my body to do it is a whole other story, lol...

But I have that same problem in other areas of my life, so it's not new. In acting class, I can hear a concept, see it demonstrated, understand it... and then when I try to do it and watch the video-taped results, I see that I missed it by a mile, even if it felt like I nailed it. That connection between "how it feels" and "how it actually looks", has been my nemesis for some time, and still is. The good part is that one of the lessons I'm learning with all the combat training is that it is imperative to relax. When you tense up, it causes no end of problems... Your balance is off, you're easier to injure, your power flees, you can't think straight, you can't see what your opponent is doing, you're unaware of what your own body is doing... but when you relax, you can see and think much more clearly, and you can be infinitely more aware of what your body is doing...

I don't want to wax long-winded about this here, though I feel I could write at length very easily if I wanted to. I will say that learning to relax and observe and be aware of "right now" is something I'm eager to try in other parts of my life. Being tense and thinking about 10 things at once is sort of the way I've approached every part of my life, since my youth.

All that to say, I'm usually so spent when I get home that I veg for a while, and then go to bed. Hence, no blog updating...

That's the major bit of blog fodder I wanted to hit, but by no means is it the only bit... The BTI production continues on its strange and multi-faceted journey, rife with wonders and perils and head-scratchers and powerful memories... Usually, trying to understand everything and make sense of it all is an exercise in neurotic frustration for me, which (I'm sure) gets on the nerves of others on the project, but I'm trying to apply the above-mentioned relaxed approach to handling all things BTI-related without getting so high-strung... I'm just going to roll with it and see where it goes.

Beyond the BTI train, I have a meeting next week with Andrew and the board of the local theater I mentioned in a previous post, and we're going to discuss setting the schedule for the year, as far as original plays we'll be able to produce for them. Looks like it's actually going to happen! If any of you need me to give your regards to Broadway, let me know.

Also, there's the possibility of getting to film a short screenplay I wrote back in December. Lots of great info I'd like to share about that, but I won't, on the strong, sage advice of my good friend Jeff P., who has convinced me that, all things considered, when it comes to producing entertainment of various kinds, keep as much secret as possible, and then when you spring it on people, it catches them wonderfully off-guard.

Plus, Easter is fast approaching, and we have a project idea for that at church as well.

Lots of stuff going on!

So sometimes I buy a book, thinking it will be a particular shade of awesome, and start to read it... and then it isn't anything like I thought it would be, so I stop. An undisclosed length of time will pass, and I will see the book again (in my library, or a review, etc.)... and I will contemplate reading it again, my mind reverting to that initial idea of what I hope(d) the book would be... and I start reading it again, apparently somehow hoping that it magically transformed into the book I was hoping it was! And obviously, I stop reading it again! It's the same "miss" it was before!

I wonder why I do that?

I do it with movies, TV shows, songs/albums, games... I get intrigued by the idea of something entertainment-related, begin to interact with it, have a rude awakening, give up on it and move on... and then much later, contemplate it again, and hope that if I dive in again, it will be as awesome as I wanted it to be before... that I was wrong the first time....

What causes that? It's a weird sort of optimism-based psychosis of some kind...

I think I do that with certain people, too... I meet someone, form an opinion on who they are based on initial impressions plus wishful thinking and educated guesses etc, then as I get to know them, I find out they aren't like I hoped they would be, and so I phase them out (stop reading them, if you will)... and after time passes and I reconnect with them somehow, I revert to what I hoped they were, and proceed again as though it will be different now, magically! But usually, people are still who they are, and so they get phased out again... it repeats...

My wife has a zero tolerance policy with most people. Burn her or disappoint her once, that's it, you're done. For me? I can get hurt by someone and eventually try being friends again... nothing to do with forgiveness (not trying to be all altruistic or anything), it's that weird self-delusional hope that somehow I got it wrong before and they really are awesome after all! Somehow, the fault was mine all along!

Weird.

Oddly, the reason this came to my mind was the fact that I reinstalled Diablo 3 recently, to play it again. It's been 3 years since I last played it and gave up on it. Here's the funny thing... the game has been patched and updated and tweaked so much in the past three years, it has become the game I hoped it would be initially! It's like a whole new game! Basically, it has become the exception to the rule, somehow proving that my shameless optimism actually worked this time, and the game "changed itself"... I like it now, whereas before I didn't...

Life is strange.

If I ever need to cry, I look at this photo... it rips me to pieces every time... including right now...

So it's been a wild past few weeks. If somehow you find yourself reading this far into this post, thank you. I hope you're doing well. I'm peachy. This is such an interesting chapter in my life, I'm really enjoying it. Rich, robust, productive, promising... I can't wait to see what happens next...

I'm going to risk making the non-religious readers of this blog feel a bit awkward for a moment, and say, "I hope God richly blesses you as well."

Take care,

Dave the Relaxed