Yes, martial arts are supposed to be about self defense or combat. Injure, maim, and take out the threat. But there’s a difference between training and applying the arts in real life. One of the aspects of martial arts where people struggle with is their ego and their desire to win. This is rampant in…

“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” -Henry David Thoreau

Up here in Northern California, we’ve been under a cloud of smoke for a week from the fires in Napa and Sonoma. Horridly beautiful colors in the sky. Ash descending on our cars. Burning in the back of our throats. I am miles away and outside of the reach of the fire itself, but the…

Not really. Maybe not yet. Though I’ve got a really good idea for a lifestyle brand that does sell hats. I’ve got a lot of good ideas. Just as I’m sure you do. So how come those ideas never materialize? Was it just a bad idea? Can an idea be good or bad? Until it…

A jacket is a jacket. A hat is a hat. You choose how to wear it. That person yelling at you is that person yelling at you. The deadline is the deadline. How do you wear those? Your life won’t last forever. Wear it well.

This happens four times per year. I am late to watching the quarterly sumo tournament. It always creeps up on me. Then I am days behind, and I will mini-binge watch it, but never quite catching up to the current day. Because I want it to extend into the future. To go on forever with…

The nautilus, the seed unfurling, a meditative shape. That’s one direction the spiral can go. The other is straight down to hell. One bad thought opens the door to a flood of other bad ones. A single thing becomes a million things. But the single thing can also lead to nothing. A spiral is a…

Is a life ever completely fulfilled without a side hustle, a crazy off program passion project? It’s not about the money, the fame, the accolades. It’s about the thing that floats out there just beyond reach, that bright shining light against the darkness that will swallow us all. Easy to hang in the shadows, and…

At a certain point in an athletic career, one has the option to pivot towards coaching. I’ve reached this level in my Brazilian jiu jitsu journey. I am more interested in coaching and helping others out than competing. This had made me think a lot about what it means to be a good coach. Some…

Not much of the traveler am I. Five continents. More countries and states than I can easily recall. Travel by Russian army truck, speedboats, Tuktuks, and airplanes that were so crowded that a passenger had to stand. All these places and experiences. But even so, to travel out of town for three days, and I…

Cooperation. Or competition. When we are working together towards something at what point are we no longer working together? Once there was a movement towards something. Maybe I am romanticizing it. Maybe it never existed. But once we fought towards a single thing. Together. Even with our differences. Now the space is crowded and no…

You can either lift it or you can’t. Doesn’t matter how much you talk about it. Doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t like it. If you can lift it, you own it. Sure, people cheat a bit. Sliding the bar over the thighs or not dropping down low enough. Iron doesn’t give a shit about your…

Is most of life just throwing stones against the waves? Why is it so hard for any of us to give up control? Especially over others? We know better. We have more experience. We’re not sure that the other person is doing the right thing of making the right choices. But, in the end, do…

A second, a minute, an hour, a year, a lifetime. Beginning and end. How do we exist within a measure of time? Whether a second or a life. That space between.

I remember the first time I competed in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The moment I stepped onto that mat, I could not feel my legs. My opponent looked like he was standing at the far end of a tunnel. I’m not sure I could actually hear anything. A high level of stress and my body was…

Because I deadlifted really heavy today. And then I did squats. And I accidentally added ten extra pounds of iron to the bar. Everything was heavier than it should have been. So my brain is in my legs. No blog post today.

Sometimes the water is leaking. And the pipes don’t fit together. So you gotta go a little crazy. Rage against the plumbing. The dark has to come out. Curse, swear, see red. It’s not who you are. But it is a part of you. Ugly, raging, angry. It’s there for a reason. Then it’s gone.…

Is it fun anymore? Can this be the central organizing question for change and whether we stay on a path that we have traveled? On a surface level, the question appears flippant. Not everything in life is supposed to be fun. Within everything that we strive for, we accept that there are hills and valleys.…

You introduce an input into a function to get an output. If you want to change the output, you can either change the function or the input. In life, what should we change? The function or the input? In life, neither is particularly certain. Here I am. Here’s where I want to go. What do…