Taiji Day 136: humid heat

I did tai chi in the back yard today. It’s oppressively humid, and it feels like its going to be a real scorcher of a day. Not looking forward to the heaviness.

A shout-out to my mom, whose birthday is today! More later.

Taiji Day 111: it’s hot

It’s summer and it’s hot. Still have house guests, so I did tai chi in the kitchen again. By the third sequence in five golden coins I was sweating, even though I was basically in my underwear. By the end of the eight pieces of silk, I was overheated and sweating profusely. By the end of the form I was mentally confused.

I’ve never had an experience like this before, and it was a bit alarming. I could not think through what I was doing.

And as soon as I stopped doing the form, I immediately felt better. I don’t know what doing it tomorrow will be like, but I don’t plan to stop. I do plan to take care of myself.

Learning Goals

School has been out a week for me, so I’m thinking about what I want to accomplish this summer in terms of learning goals.  This list is a draft form, but feel free to ask me about the results of this project at any time this summer.  I’ll give periodic progress reports through the summer on Thursdays, and feel free to ask me at any time how I’m doing:

• Learn to speak, read and write in Spanish (using livemocha).
• Beef up my tai chi practice
• Learn to play and sing along with six songs on my guitar
• Plan for a paperless classroom this fall.
• Attend three conferences on learning
• Write a novel using the NaNoWriMo guidelines (50,000 words in 1 month):
• Write 100 poems

What are your goals?  How can we bloggers support each other in our own personal efforts?

Year’s End

I think this school year just ended has been one of the most challenging of my career. In ten years, I don’t think I’ve had this many disappointments, sudden reversals, and strange difficulties. I’m also conscious that some of the flaws of this past year have been of my own making.

In any case, I had this notion that I could do my own NaNoWriMo in June, since November is such a trying month for me. But I’m basically out of ideas. I’m so far out of the writing habits necessary to do good writing (daily practice, editing, word vomiting, etc.) that I’ve not got a single good idea about what to do or where to go.

I did win an award. The school’s board of trustees honored me with their annual Educator’s Award (which came with a copy of The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch). It’s a nice bit of recognition, but I also screwed up because we do these mini-biographies of each ninth grader that’s read as they graduate… and all four of the ones I was supposed to do were wrong. I goofed. It made me feel awful that I screwed up these kids’ memories of their graduation day.

At the same time, there’s not been a class that I’ve been as happy to see graduate as this one. In many ways, they were a great group of individuals, but I never felt like their abilities and powers gelled as a class. One on one, I enjoyed their company; four or more in the same place tended to overwhelm me.

and I are committing to each other for a year-and-a-day on June 21, and if you’re interested in coming to that please let me know.

Other than that, though, I have virtually nothing planned for the summer. I’ve been dithering about teaching summer school or participating in boy scout camp, though — anything longer than a few days of effort is not on my calendar at all. Part of me feels like I need a break, and the absence of ideas for writing is kind of the proof of that.