Finally went back to iaido, finally meditating, finally exercising

I finally got back to iaido practice. This makes my second practice since things fell apart, but I feel confident that I'm going to make it to practice again next week. More good news: My sensei said I looked good, almost like I hadn't been away.

A month or two ago I decided to restart hung gar practice again on my own. I'm not starting a school or anything like that (it'd be dishonorable to do so without my sifu's permission). Rather, I'm going through all my old notes and increasingly fuzzy memories, trying to reconstruct my old school's forms and other training. It's been surprisingly interesting to go through everything. Interesting and very physically demanding. I can't believe how rugged I used to be. No good news regarding weight loss though (in fact I'm up to 255 lbs!) but my body's starting to remember how to move again.

I've also started meditating again. Not much, just five minutes a day, and unfortunately I forget often enough. However it makes a difference. Just five minutes in the morning colors how I go about the apartment getting ready for work, and then that changes the way I drive, which in turn alters my mindset at the office, and so on. What a difference a few minutes of breathing can make.

Of course, my cynical side believes that this is just an upswing in the cycle of life, and that it's unlikely that I'll be able to maintain this positive trend forever. That is, there must be a corresponding period of unproductive behavior, probably no matter what I do to avoid it. This blog, for instance, has many examples of trying again and again to maintain my exercise and mental development, and failing again and again.

This time it's going to be different, because I've had a realization: If I focus on success, I fail. If I focus on failing, I fail. If I don't focus, I fail. The only thing that really works for me, so far, is focusing on my state of mind.