The Void Outside

I spent this weekend at the Net Impact national conference in Nashville, TN.  Definitely an interesting experience.  I feel like I may have learned a few things about myself that I really didn't necessarily know before, or at least diddn't realize.  First, striking up a conversation with random people isn't actually that hard.  Not my favorite activity, but certainly something that can be done.  But more importantly, I think I have more fully come to understand the need to have a passion for something in my work.  In coming to that realization, I think I also realized that passion is something that has largely been missing from my life for a number of years.  There are some reasons for that, perhaps good, perhaps not, but it really doesn't matter at this point.  The important thing is that I have to remember or relearn how to really get engaged, how to commit myself to things.  I've spent quite a while now being cautious and detached, but I don't think that really works for me anymore.  So I think this will largely be a exercise in not just falling into old habits.  Anyway.  I do have some thoughts on the conference that I'll try to share sometime when I'm slightly more coherent, but I just wanted to get some of this stuff down before the bum rush of this week, which might make me forget what I'm thinking now.

Sometimes I wonder if all the effort I put into staying in shape is really worth it.  I mean, on the one hand, it's good to be in shape, because the body works better that way, you tend to be less susceptible to sickness, etc.  On the other hand, it's a lot of work.  Admittedly, I probably go a little bit beyond just "staying in shape" in my efforts, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a lot of work.  And a lot of time.  Then there's the additional fuel requirements and all.  Of course, I have definitely noticed a correlation between regular exercise and having additional energy, so certainly part of the time is essentially regained by increased productivity levels.  And of course, it's not like I'm really doing anything better at the moment, anyway.  Even if I were, I'm quite tenacious (read:stubborn), so I'd probably continue to get my workouts in, even if not quite at the same level that I'm currently able to.  I guess it's really just coming off of a tough workout that makes me wonder if I really know what I'm doing.  Overall, I suppose that I'm pretty certain it's a good thing, but having most of my energy drained in the course of an hour can raise some doubts, I guess.  For now, I certainly intend to keep with it, and maybe eventually come up with some convincing arguments as to why it's really worth it.

We've been doing a lot of shopping, the last couple of weeks.  The objective has been to buy me a coat.  Or perhaps a jacket... I'm not entirely clear on the distinction.  Anyway, for some reason A. has decided that I really need a new coat.  Well, need is probably a strong word... she's decided that I should have a new coat, one that fits me properly.  By which is meant that it's more or less tailored to my body, and has some sort of style.  The biggest problem with this is that my body is apparently not proportioned well for your average jacket.  A large number of them have one of two major problems... either the body is too long/large, or the arms are too short.  This actually seems to be a trend with many of my clothes... it's difficult to find things that fit just right.  My shoulders are apparently too broad for the rest of my upper body.  Anyway, all of this shopping has involved me trying on a lot of different jackets.  This wasn't too annoying, until yesterday.  The finger is healing quite slowly, and wasn't overly appreciative of being put through many different jacket sleeves.  Other than that, the process wasn't all that bad... A. went through the racks of clothes, pulled out the jackets she wanted me to try on, I tried them on, discussed them as appropriate, put them back, rinse, repeat.  Finally, at the last store we were planning on hitting yesterday, we found several jackets that fit properly.  Which was odd... we probably found as many that fit correctly in that one store as we did in all the other stores combined.  The end result of all this being that I now have a new jacket.  It's a nice jacket, tapers well and all that.  Whether or not it was really necessary... I'm not sure.  A. has this thing for dressing me nicely, so it makes her happy... I guess that's a good enough reason.  Anyway, the good news is that shopping is done for now, hopefully for quite a while, since I rather strongly dislike it.  Although the last couple of times weren't too bad... coat shopping isn't quite as annoying as other clothes shopping, because the whole process of changing clothes is avoided.  Well, no idea what this post was about, other than to say I have a new coat, and complain about shopping, so... whatever.

Dislocated the pinkie on my left hand while playing ultimate on Wednesday.  This is the type of thing that can happen when you fail to follow your own plans... in this case, my plan to not play ultimate until spring, so I could concentrate on my yoga practice.  Admittedly, as injuries go, this one doesn't seem like it's going to be too bad.  I immediately put the joint back into place and taped it tightly, which kept it from swelling out of control.  I've been keeping it taped and trying to avoid doing things to the finger (which is somewhat difficult... you don't notice how often your hands lightly brush against things until you injure them).  I think it's going to heal better than the right pinkie, which I jammed back in October and still hasn't recovered, nor does it seem like it's going to be back to completely normal any time soon.  And it doesn't particularly much get in the way of yoga (or at least it won't, after another few days), because it straightens out fine, and typically doesn't need to bear much weight.  Still, it's annoying that I gave in to temptation, and have set my yoga practice back another week or two because of it.  One of these days I'll learn... at least, I think I will.  I seem to learn, in general... it's just a very slow process at times, particularly when the learning involves not playing ultimate at every available opportunity.  Anyway, just another complaint about injuring myself playing ultimate... maybe next time I write, I'll have something else to talk about.

Let me start off by saying that I love playing ultimate.  Over the course of my life, it's pretty easily my favorite sport, I think.  If I could, which is to say if there were games and my body could handle it, I'd play every day.  The only thing that somewhat diminishes my love for the sport is the fact that I'm constantly injuring myself.  Don't get me wrong, I'm a lot better about not injuring myself than I used to be.  I mostly credit this to the fact that I consistently do a yoga workout before each time I play, and that I do yoga in general.  Since I always stretch before I play, I'm very rarely hampered by cramped or pulled muscles.  Back when I was in college, almost all of my injuries were either cramps or pulls, usually in the hamstrings or quads.  Those injuries tended to linger for a while, and limit my effectiveness.  I even stopped playing ultimate for a number of years, partly because I had a hard time scheduling it in, but more importantly because I was so tired of injuring myself.  Nowadays, most of my injuries are quite minor.  It's pretty rare for me to even have muscle cramps, and even when I do I'm able to work them out immediately because they're very small.  But because I'm avoiding the major injuries for the most part, I'm seemingly acquiring a lot more minor injuries.  Nothing that stops me from playing, and they often don't even noticably affect me while I'm playing, but little stuff that just lingers.  For instance, earlier in the season I hurt my right (throwing) wrist.  It wasn't enough to keep me from playing, but it did affect my throwing a little, and it annoyed me quite often when I wasn't playing.  I've probably spent half the time since I started playing regularly again, last June, with varying degrees of shoulder injuries.  Just last night, I jammed my pinkie when I laid out for a disc.  And I'm not even really considering the frequent scrapes and abrasions of the skin, and the bruises I get on my hand nearly every time I play.  Now, a lot of these injuries are my own fault.  I don't have the greatest technique for hitting the ground, and since I hit the ground pretty often, probability states that I'm going to injure myself with a poor landing some percentage of the time.  I fractured a bone in my elbow earlier this year because of a poor landing, and the aforementioned wrist injury was also the result of a poor landing.  One of the many things I want to work on for next season is landing better, which should greatly reduce my shoulder injuries.  Anyway, not really certain what the point of this entry was... I guess it's just a lament that I can't seem to play my favorite sport without injuring myself.  I'm planning on taking a slightly more sensible approach next year, and taking a day or two off from ultimate in order to heal when I need to, but we'll see if I stick to that plan or not.  I've historically been very bad about passing up chances to play ultimate, regardless of what injuries I may have, so we'll see if I get any more sensible in my old age.

Well, after some long period of procrastination and avoidance, I finally took the GMAT today.  I suppose it would be more accurate to say that I procrastinated and avoided scheduling an appointment for a long time, finally did schedule it, and have now taken the test.  Of course, after all the initial procrastination, I waited until the proverbial last minute to start studying for it.  Not surprisingly, this resulted in me getting a lower score than I would have liked.  However, it's still adequate, so it seems as though I'll most likely be applying to some business schools for next year.  I suppose that's been the plan all along, such as it were.  The only problem with it being that I'm not entirely convinced that this plan is the direction I should be moving in.  Unfortunately, the time has come that I need to pick something, pretty much anything, and run with it for a while.  To be honest, it's probably well past that time, but since I haven't gotten to it before now, getting to it now will have to do.  Anyway.  The plan is to apply for first round, at least some places, so I need to start getting my applications ready, and more importantly, my essays.  That's a process I'm certainly not looking forward to.  I can hardly convince myself that I'm a good candidate for business school (or much of anything else, for that matter), so how am I supposed to convince a business school of that?  Hopefully I'll figure it out in the next month, since that's about the amount of time I have to do so.
Enough of that for now.  In addition to taking the GMAT today, I played a round of disc golf for the first time all year.  It went... probably a little better than I would have expected, all things considered.  At least, after the first 5 holes it did.  It's always a little tough playing a course you haven't seen before, and when you haven't played in a year or so, that makes it a little bit tougher.  My putting was fairly atrocious, but it usually is, so that wasn't a surprise.  Although I did have some success with it the last time I was out.  Anyway, hard to say if I'll start playing more often or not, since there still aren't any courses terribly close by.  Although since ultimate is down to only twice a week now, perhaps I'll look to fill that gap with something.
Played some DDR tonight as well.  Because I spent the weekend studying for the GMAT, I only got one pilates workout in.  So I was feeling the need to get some more exercise in, especially since up until last week Monday was a regularly scheduled day for ultimate.  Didn't do anything exciting today... worked on a number of 6 foot songs on standard.  The variation in difficulty of songs with the same foot rating really amazes me at times, but perhaps that's just because I'm significantly better at certain types of songs than others.  While overall I'm a lot better than I used to be, my strength is still far more in flow than anything else.  I'm a lot better at hitting halves now, and can even do really well on some songs with them, but there still has to be a good flow to the song for the most part.  I'm not describing it all that well, but that's okay.
Anyway, so it's been a moderately busy day for me, at least by some measures.  I think a lot more days are going to need to be busy in the near future, occupied with more scholarly pursuits, perhaps, or at least activities designed to allow me to engage in scholarly pursuits of a specific nature in the future.  Heh.  For the moment, I think I'm going to get a yoga workout in, and maybe get some sleep after that, depending on whether or not anything else is going on.