Thursday, July 25, 2013

State of the Biz
 summer 2013

odie drinking his coffee

Odie is ready to talk business.

I'm in a smooth sailing stretch this summer. I have four regularly scheduled clients, I work with each of them most every week. If somebody has to miss a week, we just skip that week and move on to the next week. I suppose that's not ideal for my cash flow, but it works for everybody's life flow. Which is shaping up that I'm offering a particular style of training, which is shaped by my own life demands and by my developing training philosophy. Which are what.

Life demands: I had honestly planned to be retired from derby by now, but instead I'm on Third Coast and having the best time ever. Not a problem, I'm not too bound up in preconceived notions of what I'm supposed to be doing, obviously, I don't even have a doorknob on my door. It just means that in any given week I'm fitting in a lot, and I feel like I should always say, not fitting in a lot, there are lots of things that I'm just not doing until I don't know when, maybe never when, because I'm doing what I've chosen. Work. Keep my house in order if I don't want to be crazeballs, which I don't. Practice with my team. Train clients. Blog. Be alone at least one night a week. See people, like, in person, not at practice, at least one night a week. Sleep. Eat. And not much more, and even these aforementioned things limit each other, training clients limits work to 2-3 days per week, practicing limits training right now to the aforementioned four clients, mayyybe I could take on one more, being alone limits seeing people... I mean, not in a bad way! I'm just saying that at the heart of successfully doing a lot of things is NOT doing all the things. Isn't that funny, "all the things" and also the reason I can now remember the correct form of "a lot" come from the same person. Anyway if a surprise peg suddenly pops up, I don't stress myself or you out trying to fit now twenty-two pegs into twenty-one pre-drilled holes, which is unpossible, or trying to drill more holes, which I think inadvisable. I don't live that kind of life, I wouldn't ask you to live that kind of life, and if you live that kind of life I wouldn't want you to ask me, it's not a matter of right or wrong, it's a matter of fit. If the shoe fits, read on!

Training philosophy: Welp, I guess it's that training isn't just, like, a block that you stuff into your life. I mean, it can start out like that. My favorite metaphor involves the difference between therapy and training, wherein therapy is like unstuffing your closet, looking at all the stuff, throwing some stuff out, and putting the rest back in more neatly, and training is like putting shelves—or you know, a shelf—in your closet, wherein you have this hard piece of furniture to organize your stuff around; it takes up its own room so you might have to throw some stuff out, and then you can put the rest back in more neatly. And does this work for everybody? No, it does not. If you've ever put shelves in a closet and stuffed everything right back in, raise your hand. How's this for empowering: you can defeat any system. If you know that you can do that, know that you can also make any system work. It's the same power, it's just up to you whether you want to use your power for or against yourself. And if you're having trouble with that, well, we're back to therapy. My point being, I don't think training is for fighting your life with. I guess it could be for fighting for your life with, but gah does everything have to be a fight. I like working with your life better. Sometimes life comes into training and flips over a chair, but I think more often training sneaks into life and rearranges all the chairs.