The trick, then, is capitalizing on the bonus time and being productive with other projects. Today I decided to get back to work on my pig sty of an office. I put a dent in things, but there’s still a ways to go.

As much as I like having an office, I don’t spend near enough time in there. I’m trying to get to the point where I get some writing business done every day, be it writing, plotting, editing, or even just research. However, I’ve not been very successful due to a combination of both things outside my control and a general lack of discipline. I’ve been trying to do it from a laptop in the living room, but the temptation to spend time with the family or stare at the television has trumped discipline.

When I go into the office, though, I only see all of the other work that needs to be done. I see the mounds of paperwork on the desk, and the comics the kids scattered around the floor. I see the unopened comics shipments and stacks of books that don’t fit on the shelves. I see the miscellaneous junk the wife finally got tired of seeing in the kitchen, and the various electronics I’ve squirreled away for no particular reason.

I don’t stare at the monitor, I stare at all that other shit.

It’s time to shake things up. There’s no guarantee it’ll solve my discipline problem, of course, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Matt has a lot of good discussion of the video, and he ties the video to martial arts. Something that really struck me, though, was the video’s mentions of purpose or, as the Okinawans call it, ikigai. Ikigai is something you live for, your reason to wake up every morning. The presenter, Dan Buettner, says the two most dangerous years of our lives are the first year and the year we retire. That means infant mortality and losing our sense of purpose. The Okinawans, it turns out, don’t even have a word for retirement.

I’ve never understood retirement. I’ve been told many times I need to be ready to retire at 55, or at least by 65. Okay, but then what? If I retire at 55 and my life expectancy is 75, that’s 20 years of sitting with my thumb in my ass. Sure, I’m supposed to have enough money to take a couple of trips a year, or go golfing or something when I feel like it, but is that going to fill up an entire year? Or as much time as a day job currently does? Nope.

Now, that doesn’t mean I want to be at this same day job at that point. My goal is to move on from this job, preferably through writing, before I have to retire from it. If the Okinawan fisherman is content to fish for his family three times a week at age 100, then more power to him. He’s happy to do it, he enjoys it. It gives him purpose. The way I feel right now, I’d love to be writing and practicing karate (and playing with grandkids or great-grandkids) at age 85. I’d love to go out working at my desk, like Robert B. Parker did. Or in my sleep after a good workout (or after sex, as Buettner says a number of Okinawans do).

“Retirement homes” scare the shit out of me. Sure, sometimes disease and other misfortunes result in people stranded there, but it just freaks me out seeing people sitting in chairs, vacantly staring at the walls or windows. Some of them simply stopped moving, and their bodies just didn’t know they’d quit. What’s their ikigai, their purpose? Salisbury steak day in the cafeteria? An over-enthusiastic intern dragging them through an activity they have no interest in?

I’ll pass, thanks.

This is just another reminder I need to keep working. I’m fortunate my creativity is something that can (potentially) fund this kind of dream. Even if it couldn’t, though, I would like to think I’ll find another passion to keep me alive when I finally get fed up and walk away from this job, even if it means learning something new. (I’m also a big believer that people should never stop learning, but that’s a whole separate blog post.) Maybe I’ll learn to build and repair motorcycles, or turn my writing sideline to editing and publishing. Maybe I’ll finally learn to play an instrument and songwriting will take over. Who knows? Whatever I choose to call retirement is a long way in the future.

My present is my ikigai.

Rock on. \m/

I don’t want the urn, though. I’d like the Wife to divvy up the pencils, maybe keep a few for herself, but distribute the rest to my kids and my friends.

I want my kids to use them in the future, to create with them. I want guys like Brian, John, Cullen, and Ommus to jot in their notebooks with them. I want Russ to pencil his artwork and draw character sketches with them.

What better way to live forever than to be a part of their work?

The winners are:

@Monrozombi
@JohnUrbancik
@DavidAPrice
@VanHalen1970
@TriumphCIO
@Greyhawk68
@Wolfnoma
@BrianKeene
@JasonCopland
@ThomasBahn
@uberguineapig
@BobFord
@Locnar1970
@NewTrendsCigars
@Cairnwood
@Dathar
@CullenBunn
@Crazy_apps

What’d they win? Check it out:

I’ve got some kind of cold that’s settled into my chest, and it leaves me winded just walking up the stairs. I’ve been absolutely buried at work, and it’s left little time for just about anything else, including writing, which I really, really need to be doing right about now.

I’ve been lugging a printed copy of Time Management for Creative People around in my laptop bag for a few months now. Yesterday I finally pulled it out and sat down to read it over lunch. I learned I’m a huge violator of two of its central tenets: getting organized and not allowing interruptions. One look at either of my desks would be enough to demonstrate I’m not organized. However, I always felt pouncing on those interruption emails (teachers saying “I need this” and “can you do this” for the most part) would be more productive than letting them sit. Instead, it’s probably resulting in the backlog of other emails that I’ve filed away as relating to separate projects. Not to mention it’s a dumb idea to use the Inbox as a to-do list anyway: once those emails scroll off the viewing window as new ones roll in, they’re long forgotten.

So, while I’m trying to kick whatever virus this is, I’ve gone ninja on my home email inbox. It looked something like this:

How many broken limbs did you count? I lost track at a gazillion.

The inbox is empty. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen anything like that. I feel like I’m staring at the trash folder after dumping the contents. It’s a small accomplishment, but it feels like progress.

Now to regroup for the umpteenth time this year. Wish me luck.

I just finished a long night of karate and I’m not sure I’m ever going to stop sweating. It started in class, and it was Sensei’s birthday so he decided we’d get in a really good workout and do some sparring. Two and a half hours later, most of us were dripping (especially Sensei, who sparred everyone in class one at a time — and yes, he kicked my butt). But review is next week, so shortly after I got home I warmed up again, ran two kata, and started in on all of my wazas. I really want to be ready for review next week, so I ran them all normal speed, redid the ones I messed up, then ran them all slow for refinement and muscle memory.

So yeah, long night.

As I’m cooling down I’m composing this on my iPod touch. I found a WordPress app and so far it’s working like a champ (unlike the BlackBerry WP app). Writing in landscape mode on the on-screen keyboard is very quick, especially with the built-in word recognition. Faster even than on my CrackBerry physical keyboard. I really wish either AT&T would fix their coverage out here or that their exclusive contract would end because I’d buy an iPhone in a heartbeat. Evernote and WordPress on this touch could very well become my killer apps.

Enough rambling. Time to hit the shower. This weekend is bachelor weekend and I’ll need to be well-rested for the carnage.

How to Spot a Good Cigar
Originally uploaded by MikeOliveri.

This new batch of Romeo y Julieta Reserva Reals I purchased is killing me.

Not because they taste bad or anything like that, but because they take so damn long to smoke. The sticks in this box have averaged two hours a piece, which keeps me on the porch far longer than I expected. It’s a good thing my wireless is still in reach.

As you can see from the picture, I stick through to the end. How do you know when a Reserva Real is done? When it goes out and it’s so short you risk burn your face off relighting it. Mild flavor, good ash, heady smoke, a clean draw… it’s hard to find anything to complain about with these bad boys. My only mistake may have been opting for the Double Corona size, but I’ll live.

I had this one out on my folks’ porch Friday night, and I thought they lived in a sleepy little town until this weekend. The Fourth of July weekend brings out the crazy in rural Indiana.

For starters, two of their immediate neighbors lit off so much ordnance I thought I was sitting in the middle of the Hatfield/McCoy feud. Judging by the frequent cries of “Oops!” and “Oh shit, run!” they were more a danger to themselves than one another, however. After the rest of the town joined in, the place sounded like a war zone. I was tempted to grab a rifle and start painting “Wolverines!” on the sides of trucks.

I watched the largest raccoon I’ve ever seen walk down the sidewalk across the street. That struck me as odd until a kid shouted “Raccoon!” and burst out of the front door. His thick goggle glasses reflected the street lamps, and as he sprinted after the raccoon it struck me that this may well have been the inspiration for the karate kid in Smokin’ Aces. His sister shouted after him and he stopped short at the curb, then slunk back to the house. He emerged twice more, each to do little more than run in a circle or to sneak around Bluto Blutarsky-style in his front yard. I’m not sure what he’d have done with the raccoon had he caught it, but I imagine getting his face torn off was high on the list.

Then came Scooter Man, who doesn’t know it but he came within inches of the end of his life. The motor on his little turdmobile sounded like a swarm of angry gnats all digging into your ear canal at once. And he rode up the street and back several times, sometimes on our street, sometimes on the next block north or south. One time someone else rode by on the scooter and returned, and then he reappeared. I thought he might have been making a beer run from a party, but he must have gotten really, really lost along the way. That or he decided it would be more fun to shuttle the case home one can at a time. After the fifth or sixth pass of his whiny little engine, even the Wife wanted to end him.

There were other instances of minor strangeness: the large woman on a bicycle belting out “Angie” by the Stones; the SUV with tinted windows and thumping bass that rolled to a sloooow stop in front of the house, then drove on a moment later; the giant, unidentified bug that I stomped flat and burned to a crisp with my butane lighter, just to be sure it was dead, dead, dead; the trio of children who were obsessed with a six-inch square of asphalt for over ten minutes.

Normally these nights on my folks’ porch are completely uneventful. It was like I fell into some redneck version of the Twilight Zone. Meanwhile, tonight’s main fireworks display was postponed due to rain, so the neighborhood idiots have filled in. A third neighbor put on a nice display, but then three window-rattling booms shook the neighborhood, so we took cover.

There’s a fire extinguisher in the next room. I’ll let you know if I have to put out any pinheads tonight.

I learned a new kata on Saturday called Shudoso. It was developed by Robert Trias, the founder of Shuri-ryu, the style of karate I study. It’s short and sweet, but I was already losing the proper ending, so I hit Google to see what I can find.

Not much, as it turns out. But I kept finding constructs like this:

“i feel i shud oso settle for 912, but worry of the wet road performance”
“They shud oso hav 24/7 polyclinics to serve a rising population mah?”
“de org shud oso consider de fact dat most likely de attendees wud be within those teens dat have waited patiently for dis bands”

I scratched my head for a moment, then noticed they were trying to translate should also. These were all posts to message boards and websites in Singapore, so they were typing the words as they understood them. It’s kind of like how we get “vamoose” out of vamos.

Of course, this is also how most of the English language was born.

As for Shudoso itself, my school’s director, Shihan Joseph Walker, didn’t claim to know what language the name came from. It’s supposed to mean “monk form” or “priest form” because Grand Master Trias developed it after a visit to the Shaolin Temple. He demonstrated another tension kata and the monks told him it was too long, so he developed Shudoso. It appears to be part of the Kosho Kempo style, which includes Trias in their lineage.