I’m exhausted. It’s late. I should be going to bed, but I want to write. Here I am.

Vanilla chai, this time. I never drink this tea, so it seemed some­what appropriate.

My limbs are sore. I’ve been prac­tic­ing my Tai Chi on a reg­u­lar basis, and my under­stand­ing has sur­passed my phys­i­cal abil­ity. I’m start­ing to over-exert myself. I’ve also been using my arms instead of my whole body when advanc­ing in sin­gle push hands, caus­ing my arms to work more than they should. Tonight, it got to the point where they were com­pletely weak. I sus­pect Elizabeth could feel this, and she switched arms before I had the good sense to do it myself.

It’s get­ting cold in the house1. The ther­mo­stat says 20, but it feels more like 18. I stood in the shower for a good 15 min­utes, let­ting my skin burn under the hot water, to the point where I stepped out of the shower into the cold air and started to sweat.

No edit­ing. No back­track­ing. Just type, and publish.

I hap­pened to come across a video today by the Grass Roots.

When I think of all the wor­ries peo­ple seem to find
And how they’re in a hurry to com­pli­cate their minds
By chas­ing after money and dreams that can’t come true
I’m glad that we are dif­fer­ent, we’ve bet­ter things to do
The oth­ers plan their future, I’m busy lov­ing you

One, two, three, four
Sha-la-la-la-la-la live for today.
Sha-la-la-la-la-la live for today.

And don’t worry ’bout tomor­row, hey hey hey hey.

Maybe I’m just read­ing into it, like a born-again, but the lyrics struck me as very Taoist, and the idea of detach­ment in par­tic­u­lar2. Darren jokes that I’ll start preach­ing to him the next time I visit him because our con­ver­sa­tions always stray to Taoism.

I’ve been feel­ing decid­edly dark, decid­edly yin, lately. Not sad or upset, but in an ener­getic way. I’m bouncy. Maybe this is the way my brain adjusts to my pre­vi­ously cheer­ful upswing. The funny thing is that I’m no less cheer­ful, just in a dif­fer­ent way. I feel more bal­anced. It’s as if the mind aches from some unknown force, expressed through an emo­tional state, yet rel­ishes and wal­lows in this.

And I’m lov­ing every minute of it.

  1. I’m try­ing to wait as long as pos­si­ble before turn­ing the heat on [↑]
  2. Something I’ve only recently been able to achieve to any rel­a­tive degree of suc­cess. [↑]