A New Year; A New Beginning

Long ago, I had a blog.

Originally, I wrote in a vain attempt to keep myself from talking too much while I taught at Aikido Kokikai South Everett. That, however, proved unsuccessful. It seems that, when I teach, I cannot help but talk. A lot.

Anyway. In addition to the blog failing its original purpose, it also became, in my mind, repetitive. Too often I would have an idea, write about it, and then realize that I had already written about that very topic some months or years earlier. That didn’t bother me, necessarily; I think it’s normal and good to rehash old ideas and see if any new insights emerge. But when I started to find the previous writings to be better than what I had to say in the present–that’s when I knew things had to stop. Or change. Or something.

(In hindsight, perhaps the blogs slide into obscurity was an omen of things to come, a marker that my time teaching aikido was coming to its conclusion. But that’s a different post, I suppose.)

So I stopped writing. Well, I stopped writing here. I write for a living, so I never really stopped writing, per se. And life, like water across stone*, filled in the cracks in my schedule, so I didn’t notice that I wasn’t writing.

But over the past several months–perhaps longer–I have felt the urge to write for me again. To put some structure to my thoughts and, perhaps, share what I have written with others. With the new year upon us, it seemed a good time to write again. I toyed with creating a new blog, on a new platform. But in the end, I already have a blog here; to create something completely from scratch seemed an exercise in making things more difficult for myself.

And so here I am. I no longer teach aikido, so I can no longer say this blog is about its practice. But I can say that, after 20+ years teaching, I am unable to extract aikido from my thought processes. So the title of this blog, Aikithoughts, is still appropriate. It’s just that now I plan on thinking about more things. Maybe aikido. Probably about a lot of other ideas.

I didn’t want to write this post, in a way. I think I’ve written a couple of “I’m reviving this blog!” posts before. But, like a diet, or a workout routine, you have to hold yourself accountable. So writing down that I’m starting this process again is my way of making a proclamation: I’m going to write.

Let’s go.

* I do enjoy a good turn of phrase**. I don’t know if this is one of them, but I do enjoy them.

** I also enjoy footnotes.