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In the past weeks, I have been pushing myself to do more.  It has been working, and I feel much better for doing so.

I have been exercising more.  Again, I note that I have been studying aikido at the New York Aikikai since I moved to The City in 2009.  For most of that time, I have been...less than diligent in my study; years saw me fortunate to make it to the dojo twice a week.  In the past weeks, however, I have been going to the dojo four or five times a week, and in the past couple of weeks, I have been going for two or more hours at a stretch.  Not long ago, I remarked on the effects the resumed, intensified study has had on my body.  Those effects continue in some measure; I am sore in a few places, but that is to be expected from the kind of workout that I have been doing.  More to the point, though, are other expected effects; I am getting stronger and my technique is getting better.  Certainly, I have far to go in both regards, but I am making progress, and I appreciate it greatly.

I have also been writing more.  Since the end of April, I have in this blog made some twenty-five posts (with this one being the twenty-fifth), more than I had from November into April.  I also have made a number of posts in the blog I maintain for my renewed teaching, as well as adapting materials on the related website and commenting extensively on the work my students submit to me.  My personal journal, which I have maintained with some regularity since the end of my undergraduate work, has also seen some updating (if not as much as I should like).  The training I took to earn my doctorate in English has inculcated in me a drive to be productive in terms of making more text; I am not at ease when I do not write each day, usually several hundred words if not one or two thousand in cohesive bodies.  That I have been doing so, turning out five hundred word blog entries or three page journal entries or sample conference papers for students to use as models for their own work, is helping me improve my own writing abilities.  It is also helping me to feel better about myself; I am actually getting things down on paper or on screen, as I damned well ought to be.  Some of it even helps other people to do things and be better, and I am not unmindful of my call to be of good and useful service to others and therefore to the communities in which I exist.  Witness this, this, and this.  That, then, also helps me feel better about my work.

Yes, I am tired at the end of the day.  Yes, I am a bit stiff when I wake up in the morning.  But I am very much alive, experiencing the greatness of creation, and it is well worth the cost to me.