This schedule... might be the best schedule (cf. Dinosaur Comics)?
Evenly divided between practice/recovery/sleep, still! It's more than just having fourteen pink boxes, fourteen blue boxes, and fourteen silver boxes, it's more that every day has a flow or rhythm of tension and relaxation. Which is to say, every day has breath. When you can feel that you are breathing, it's pretty much being in touch with being alive. Which may not seem remarkable because here we are alive and breathing, it ought to be old hat by now. Except that it isn't, it feels new. Do you remember at the end of Adaptation when everything's gone all pear-shaped, Meryl Streep wails "I want to be newwwww," god, that was one of those movie moments that's like getting hit between the eyes with a shovel, but here I am, I feel new.
Did you know that Wikipedia defines rhythm as "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This is amazing to me, the idea of rhythm and the idea of opposites have been separately so fundamental to how I feel and think; but I never considered that one might be inherent to the other. It's kittens and Batman all over again.
We decided that the thing to do with climbing was to do one cycle on, one cycle off, substituting strength training for climbing in the off cycle. Which we did, I just spent the last six weeks training the sweetie man in movement and functional strength. And I love this schedule so much and we haven't even added weight yet, so we're going to continue with this for another six weeks at least:
| SUN | MON | TUE | WED | THU | FRI | SAT |
| SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP |
| HOBBY Systems | HOBBY Home | WORK | HOBBY Home | WORK | HOBBY Home | PLAY^ strength |
| PLAY^ | PLAY | WORK | PLAY | WORK | PLAY | PASTIME |
| PLAY Leag/Ref | PLAY Fury | PASTIME | PLAY^ interval | PLAY^ Scrimmage | PASTIME | PASTIME |
| PASTIME | PASTIME | PLAY | PASTIME | PASTIME | HOBBY | HOBBY |
| SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP | SLEEP |
Seriously the flow of my week is so good, I want to tell you how good but don't know where it starts. I suppose it starts with Sunday, Sunday starts with breakfast with the sweetie man at Hollywood Grill. I forget when this started to be every Sunday, it hasn't always been. It's so great though, just to get out of bed and get breakfast. After breakfast we have a team meeting about blog and business stuff, and after that I do desk work, and after that I go to practice; so Sunday pretty much is a work day, a play that is work day. MWF starts with housework, then desk work after lunch and practice after dinner. I used to feel guilty about doing housework in the morning—how weird am I, yeah I'm going straight to hell for doing housework—until I realized that I'm not on the clock at 9:00 AM, I don't work 9 to 5. More like 12 to 8, I actually have to be sharp and at my peak post-6:00 PM and not phoning it in. So I get to putter around in my pajamas until noon. Except TuTh I do work 9-to-5ish, but I like how that breaks up the week—if I ever feel snowblind writing, which is what I chiefly do MWF afternoons, I can always smack into the solid shapes of Tuesday and Thursday to keep myself from getting lost in the blizzard. And I suppose it ends with Saturday, Saturday starts with training the sweetie man and after that I do a whole lot of nothing or whatever I want. Do you see how that is, though? How Saturday starts with something to do and finishes with nothing to do, and Sunday starts with nothing and finishes with something, with the week wedged in between. It's like a perfectly designed rollercoaster, and furthermore like a Möbius rollercoaster. I could ride this forever.
The carats are client sessions, I have four of them including the sweetie man. I may talk more about them later, but for now I'm just grateful and learning a lot.
