Sometimes I feel like a nut...

...sometimes I don't.

Ok, I haven't heard that for about a million years, and yet it popped into my head just now. Whateva. :)

I went to something called "Kata on the Beach" this morning for karate. It entailed waking up at 0600 on a Saturday morning to go work out at White Pine Beach in Coquitlam with the rest of my karate dojo. It was incredibly cool. It was almost another "in touch with the universe" moment. We had a Native American flute CD playing, wind blowing, waves moving against the sand, surrounded by trees and people who subscribed to many of the same philosophies that I think I subscribe to. It was a truly amazing experience.

I've learned so much about myself, I can't write it all, or fast enought, I can't write it the way it should be said. It is sometimes easier to say thoughts than to write them because saying something is living it, feeling it, connecting with it again. No writing can capture that fully. In a way, speaking is alive, writing makes it become dead. What is written is not really a thought put to memory, as why rember what you can go back to and look up, if need be?

--Yvonne Johnson: Stolen Life-The Journey of a Cree Woman

The above quote is one that I'll be placing on my sidebar. It really feels right to me. I have to have at least a modicum of skill with the written word (I is English major...) but I tend to have problems writing about my feelings. It's kind of like telling someone about a dream...they weren't there and while there was great emotional attachment within the dream, other people just don't get it. The section below has been thought through many times over the last couple of days and I wanted to write it down before I lost it. I was going to wait until I moved to my new area, but I'm going to record it now. Mostly because it feels right.

Life's a journey, not a destination (Aerosmith: Amazing)

I've been feeling strangely spiritual lately. Last Tuesday I went for my longest bike ride ever. I rode out from my place to Candyman's...it was about a 16 km bike ride, but it felt like it was a journey that was more than a physical movement of one place to another. For most of my life, with the exception of a brief time in elementary school, I've been very unathletic. I was very unactive through high school and university, although I tried going to the university gym and I took a couple of semester long martial arts classes through the schools. While I was playing Ultimate Frisbee over the last year, I still felt much less athletic (both physically and mentally) than everyone else on the teams. Slowly this has been changing as I've been increasing my fitness level...I'm able to keep up with more people etc. By pushing myself to complete this bike ride, I felt as if I had crossed a line in my own mind. Suddenly I was athletic. Definitely not of professional athletic calibre, but I was someone who could hold her own if there was ever something physical that I needed/wanted to do.

Another line that I crossed on Tuesday was one of self esteem, but unrelated to the physical side. I'd told a few people that I was going to go for a ride, but I wasn't dependent on their approval. I was doing this ride for me, not for anyone else. I didn't do it so that I could feel good when another person praised me. I was doing it because it was something that I wanted, and a goal of mine. I'd wanted to make this bike ride for about a month...maybe a little longer. Most of my goals tend to fizzle out in that time frame, so being able to complete such a goal is thrilling for me.

Especially one that allows me to cross a heavily marked and guarded line in my mind.